Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

+++

It was a warm summer morning in the middle of August and Finis Beckford was about the business of murder.

Ruthless, unrepentant murder.

The air was sticky and damp as he stood in the garden glaring at the frail, withered body before him and the evidence of the dozen blows he'd leveled against it already as he lifted the ax to deliver another. 

Finis, who had taken the surname Beckford only at his sister’s insistence and was still rather uncomfortable with it, had killed thousands of people in short life.

A nameless, faceless many far beyond his desire or ability to recollect.

He had served as the director of a covert organization, overthrown governments, assassinated monarchs, brought entire countries to heel. 

He had done horrifying things in the name of queen and country and for the sake of his-upon reflection-really quite horrible father whose approval he’d longed for and never received.

He was nothing close to human as, even if he did eat and sweat and stink as they did, he was still a monster through and through.

Though, perhaps, a different sort of monster than he'd begun as.

Certainly a more mortal one, at any rate.

Still, he refused to believe he'd sunk so low as to find himself outmatched by the diseased tree that had been failing spectacularly in their back garden for the better part of a season. 

But, even he had to admit, it was beginning to seem fairly likely that his body would give out before the tree did.

He was absolutely drenched in sweat despite having removed his jacket and shirt and having rolled up his trousers before beginning his work. He could feel the prickling discomfort of a burn etched into his skin by the sun's unforgiving malice and his muscles were trembling with the ache of overexertion and he'd—through sheer bloody-minded stubbornness—managed to chop his way halfway through the trunk and yet the damnable thing still refused to concede. 

He'd dealt it blow after blow and still it stood, as if mocking his efforts.

It was infuriating. 

If he'd still been the creature he'd been before, before Cardia and before his fall from the Nautilus and before all that had happened since, he'd have simply put this body out of its misery and moved on to another and given it another go.

But he couldn't. 

And it was... awful.

And to make matters worse, any moment his sister would return home with her obnoxious friends and she’d chide him—softly and kindly, blissfully unaware of how every word bruised the tattered remnants of his fragile pride—for not waiting till they were there to lend their aid to the task. 

As if he were so delicate a creature he needed their help to fell a tree. 

And the worst part would be that she would be right. 

Which was absurd. 

It was just a tree! 

And half-rotten at that!

And yet there it remained, knobby and stunted and grotesque, unmoved by all his efforts to bring it down.

And here he stood, panting, aching, utterly exhausted and wishing with every fiber of his being that he had never even bothered to pick up the bloody ax in the first place.

It shouldn't have been that difficult to take care of such an incredibly mundane task on his own.

And yet.

And yet.

Despite the effort of hours and a freshly sharpened ax, the damned thing still refused to just fall down and die like it was meant to and the idea of being caught out having failed in his attempt to murder it was as mortifying as it was inevitable. 

“You’re doing it wrong,” a voice commented, soft and far too close for comfort and he was swinging the ax round at the offender’s head before he could think better of it, a strangled shout on his lips. 

Not again.

If there was one thing he hated more than the permanence of his body it was this.

He was sick to death of this place and its trees and the local clergy's propensity for whipping up the well-meaning, god-fearing ignorant townsfolk into a lather and putting the foolish idea in their heads about doing away with the monsters who lived in the forest. He’d been carried off five times since they’d moved out here and like hell he was going to let it become an even half-dozen. Lupin and his lot were quite insufferable enough as it was, without getting to rescue him from the town pyre yet again.

If he were to be caught again he privately hoped they'd manage to set him ablaze before anyone even noticed he was gone.

Better that than another lecture from his well-meaning sister about how he really must thank people when they rescue him from mortal peril.

Unfortunately, this time it wasn't someone come to drag him off to a pyre in the town square.

It was something far worse.

He grimaced as the boy behind him dodged the unplanned blow with the ease of several lifetimes of practice, leaning back just far enough that the passage of the blade merely stirred his ridiculous curly hair, leaving him unharmed and unperturbed as if people swung axes at his head every day which, to be honest, was a fairly realistic possibility. 

Hansel Hexenhaus was the sort of person who inspired violence upon his person merely by showing up.

He'd have rather faced the pyre, honestly.

“What are you doing here? You’re lucky I didn't take your fool head off,” he snarled, his heart still  in his throat. 

“Do you think you could have?” Hansel asked thoughtfully, as he rocked forward to lean against that giant fork that was his constant companion once more.

If there was one thing he hated more than the fragility of his body or villagers on the march it was Hansel and his insistence upon turning up like a bad penny at random intervals like a warden come to oversee their progress.

As if they were prisoners in need of oversight.

“If I’d had to, I'm certain I could have managed it. Wouldn't be the first time I’d managed to deal you a blow that should have been mortal.”

“Fair,” Hansel replied, smiling his soft, ridiculous smile. 

He hated that smile.

It was so…. unaccountably fond.

He leaned so heavily upon the fork in his arms it was rather astonishing he didn't simply fall over. “You smell of sweat and exhaustion, fear and frosting, cinnamon and frustration.”

“Charming. As you can see, I am busy, so feel free to go back the way you came.” 

He long since stopped trying to figure out where Hansel came from or how he came to be in his yard or his house. He'd made the mistake of asking once and gotten some nonsense about forest paths and the smell of something or other and it was infuriating. 

“How is your sister faring?” Hansel replied, ignoring his less than subtle attempt to send him on his way.

“Fine. You've poor timing, as usual, she's out with Lupin and his lot just now. So, if you're thinking she might return and feed you, you're out of luck. I have no intention of offering our hospitality to an unwanted guest. Feel free to leave.”

Hansel’s smile turned sly, “You know, if you were to offer me something sweet in exchange, I might be willing to advise you in your task.”

“Oh? Are you suddenly an expert on trees? I can not imagine there are many trees plotting to overthrow the world order.”

“You might be surprised,” Hansel replied and something about the way he said it gave him pause. “And though I am hardly an expert, I was a woodcutter’s son.”

“And my father was a brilliant scientist, but I doubt that makes me particularly adept at the subject.” 

“Do you wish my help or no?”

“Fine, tell me how to kill the bloody thing and I’ll give you a few biscuits for your trouble. My sister just made a batch this morning.”

“You have to deal it blows from the other side as well if you wish to fell it properly. It makes the work a much simpler task.

“I doubt it,” Finis grunted, but he hadn't any better ideas so he took a swing at the as yet unmarred side of the tree’s trunk. The ax bit into the wood, the impact jarring painfully up his already aching arms.

“Would you like me to do it for you?” Hansel asked, leaning against his fork and watching with keen, inexplicable interest.

“No,” he snapped immediately, before he could be tempted by the notion. “I am perfectly capable of doing this on my own. What are you doing here this time? Did my sister invite you?”

It sounded like something she might do. She was entirely too kindhearted for her own good and never seemed to mind when people popped in for no good reason as if over half their impromptu visitors hadn't once or weren't currently attempting to do them in.

“No, I was simply in the area.”

“Oh?” he grumbled, bringing the ax to bear against the trunk once more. “How thoughtful. Certain you haven't finally come to finish the job you started on the Nautilus?”

“It seems quite nice here,” Hansel remarked, ignoring his query.

“Typically,” Finis replied, striking out at the tree once again and again as he spoke, trembling muscles protesting each new blow. “When the townsfolk aren't getting ideas about who might be to blame for their latest troubles with home and harvest, it's generally quite peaceful. Rather noisy today though.”

“You should move,” Hansel commented, in the same drawling, lazy tones with which he said everything, the sound of his words almost drowned out by a tremendous crack and a great whooshing sound. 

Cool fingers closed tight around his upper arm and he was jerked backwards as the tree tumbled down into the place where he'd been a moment before, its falling limbs scrapping against his bare chest as they crashed to the ground before him.

He loosed a shaky breath as he stared at the fallen tree and the jagged, broken stump it had left behind. 

“Well done,” Hansel murmured, the touch of his hand lingering for a brief moment before he drew away.

“Yes,” he replied instead of the thanks he probably should have offered, heart still racing from the near miss. “You might have warned me earlier.”

“I might have, yes,” Hansel replied, thoughtfully. “Or I might not have warned you at all.”

“Well, if you're expecting me to thank you for bothering you might as well put the idea out of your head. It's obvious enough you only did it so I would be alive to make good on my promise to feed you.”

Hansel smiled at him, leaning heavily against his fork, “Oh, yes, you promised me biscuits, didn't you?”

“You're ridiculous. Come on then,” Finis sighed, unaccountably annoyed as he snagged his shirt from where he'd laid it upon the shrubbery earlier and shrugging into it, doing up the buttons as they walked together across the yard. “The sooner you’ve been fed the sooner you’ll be on your way.”

The biscuits Cardia had made that morning were still sitting neatly on their plate in the kitchen when they arrive and Finis rinses his hands in the sink before gesturing to the plate, “Go ahead, have as many as you like.”

Hansel peers down at the plate for so long he's almost certain he isn't going to choose one at all, before finally selecting one of the iced monstrosities nearest the side of the plate.

Finis can't help smiling as his uninvited guest takes a bite, chewing thoughtfully.

“These,” Hansel comments after he’s chewed and swallowed his first bite, “are awful.”

“They are, aren't they?” Finis replied, clamoring awkwardly up to sit on the counter so he could stare down at Hansel. His arms felt like they might give out and he had to use the stool they kept in the kitchen, but he managed it. Though from the way Hansel was devoting all his attention to his biscuit, it hardly seemed worth the effort in the end, though it did make it easier to snatch up one of his sister's misshapen monstrosities and pop it in his mouth. 

Even when she managed to get the shape right, there was always something off in the flavor. 

This time they were too salty.

Hansel took a second bite of his biscuit continuing to chew at the same slow, thoughtful pace, "They're interesting though."

He liked him better for it.

“There's something off with her sense of taste," he found himself offering, though he hadn't the least idea why. "I imagine it's some lingering aftereffect left behind by the poison. I should probably tell her at some point, but I... what? Why are you looking at me that way?” 

“You are a good brother,” Hansel murmured, smiling dreamily as he shoved the remains of the salty biscuit into his mouth and chose another from the plate.

He could feel heat rising into his cheeks unbidden. 

If he thought it wouldn't just result in a mess he'd have to clear up, he'd have pulled a knife from the drawer and stabbed him just to wipe that ridiculous smile off his face.

“Shut up,” he snapped, sliding down from the counter, scowling. “That means absolutely nothing coming from you.”

“Yes, I can well imagine,” Hansel replied, still smiling, as he bit into his next biscuit. 

That smile was doing terrible things to his digestive tract.

It had to be stopped.

“You’ve had your biscuits, I assume you’ll wish to be on your way now."

"Might I take a few for later? The road is long and winding come evening and it will be some time before I find my way to Mother's house."

He was vaguely horrified to find himself somewhat touched by the request.

Feelings were terrible and he wished he'd never begun acknowledging them at all.

"Take as many as you like, I'm sure Cardia will be thrilled to know you enjoyed them." 

Some how the words came out far more sincere than he'd intended them to.

"Yes, they were very interesting. Please tell her so."

As he led the way back towards the kitchen door and the yard beyond, he sees Hansel take a few more biscuits from the plate, tucking them carefully away in a pouch at his waist as if he truly meant to eat them later.

Hansel Hexenhaus was easily the most utterly absurd person he'd ever met.

“Are you quite certain you don't require assistance breaking up that tree?” 

The sudden offer made him wish he had stabbed him after all.

“No, I do not require assistance," he snapped, throwing the door open and stomping out onto the back steps. "Besides I doubt I could afford your rates when it comes to actual labor. I haven't immortality to offer and from what I've gleaned from Saint-Germaine I believe that's the going rate for your services, is it not?” 

“You asked about me?”

Finis inhaled sharply, whirling back to face him, thoughtlessly, his inattention throwing him off-balance and sending him tripping over his own feet on the stairs.

He hadn't realized Hansel was so close at his heels, until the vile man’s hand caught at his elbow to steady him. 

His hand was cool even through the linen of his shirt sleeve.

“Hardly,” he scoffed, forcing himself to breathe past the sudden lump of fear in his throat.

Careless.

Again.

He could ill afford such carelessness.

It was a difficult habit to break.

One body.

One life.

He jerked free of Hansel's grasp and stomped out into the yard, winding his arms tight over the queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, “My sister inquired, I merely happened to overhear.”

“Ah, I see," Hansel murmured, his voice so soft he almost lost his next words beneath the crunch of their boots against the dirt. "If you did wish to know about it, I wouldn't be adverse to telling you.”

“I have no desire to know anything about you, Hexenhaus," he answered quickly, perhaps too quickly given the hint of a smile that still haunts Hansel's lips when he chances a glance back at him.

“Hm, I can not say the same, but I fear I have worn out my welcome so that might be a question for another day. Thank you again for the treats.”

Before he could summon a suitable reply, he found himself alone in the garden once more with only the lingering holes Hansel's great stupid fork had dug in the dirt and the fallen corpse of the diseased tree as proof that anyone had been there at all.

He spent the rest of the afternoon breaking the tree into pieces and determinedly not thinking about anything at all.

Chapter Text

“I still get nightmares. In fact, I get them so often I should be used to them by now. I'm not. No one ever really gets used to nightmares.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

+++

Finis pulled the heavy door open just enough to be able to slip out into the quiet of the midnight garden.

He winced at the icy chill of the stone beneath his bare feet and the whisper of the night breeze as it cut through the thin material of his nightshirt like a knife.

Unpleasant.

That was the word for the experience.

Though the shiver that quaked through him as he let the door fall closed behind him with a quiet thunk owed considerably more to the feeling of relief that swept through him than to the chill.

Finis hauled in a deep, rattling breath, surprised when he actually managed it. It felt like it was the first real breath he’d managed since waking- chest tight and blood racing- in his bed moments ago.

He fell into a crouch, wrapping his arms around his knees as he forced himself to take another deep breath of the frigid night air.

It was late enough that he knew the moon must have been high in the sky, though it was nearly impossible to tell through the dense fog that lay thick in the air, muffling what light it might of cast, veiling the garden in a hazy glow.

He closed his eyes, fighting off the urge to scream his frustration into the night.

Such a sound would surely wake Cardia and the last thing he needed was to disturb his sister with his hysterics and summon her from her bed.

She wouldn’t mind, of course, she never did, but she would be kind and he was very certain he could not be kind in return.

He did not trust himself to be mindful of her feelings when he felt like this.

Caring about others was a wretched, horrible thing and he’d been so much better off before he’d felt the urge to attempt doing so.

Things had been so much simpler before when all he’d given a damn about was seeing Father’s will done.

In those halcyon days, he hadn’t had to worry about such petty things as nightmares or guilt or hurting his sister’s feelings and his sleep, such as it was, had been deep and untroubled and he'd always woken refreshed and ready to face each new day with purpose.

Intellectually, he knew that what he had been then had been nothing beyond the tool father had wished him to be, something far less than what caring for her had made him.

However, the time since had taught him the vitally important lesson that being less was a far simpler thing to be.

For being more was a seemingly endless string of complications.

It was nightmares and guilt and worry.

It was attempting to be something approaching a decent person and failing miserably time and again.

The entire affair was exhausting and he was quite sure the small measure of pleasure he received from basking in the light of Cardia's good will and company was meager compensation for any of it.

And yet still… he remained, he endured, he kept bloody trying.

It was colossally stupid. 

On nights like these, he almost wished he’d killed Cardia when he'd had the chance.

Or that he’d died properly when he’d fallen from that blasted airship.

Either would have sparred him all the messy complications that seemed to come with being….

Not human, no, never that, but... himself, he supposed. The imperfect individual he had become in the wake of being deemed defective, flawed, and unworthy.

Finis shivered violently as the cold settled into him, spreading gooseflesh over his bare legs and other more intimate and sensitive parts of him. Which was... awful and uncomfortable and vaguely mortifying in that way all bodily functions were. 

Which he knew was ridiculous.

He had been made to serve. What was the point of giving him a body that could feel heat and chill? That could function as a human’s did, but could never age? Never live as one in truth? What was the purpose?

He knew his current body was no different than any of the others he had known, had not changed when he had been forcibly ejected from the link and cast down to earth and yet… for all that he knew it was not true, he could not shake the feeling that everything he'd felt since that day was more immediate, more invasive, then what he had known before.

He could only assume it was because he had spent so little time in those other bodies, had so often spread himself thin across many to accomplish more than he would have been able to manage in one alone.

Or perhaps it was only his mind playing tricks on him.

Or perhaps it was Father’s last lingering curse for standing against him, for outliving his purpose. He certainly wouldn’t put it past him to leave him such a spiteful parting gift.

If he’d ever spared a thought for him at all.

Reasonable or not, however, the cold of the night numbed the aches and bruises on his knees and fingers and he knew, if he were to look, he'd be able to see the wounds on his hands standing out starkly against the pale of his chilly skin. However, if he did not look, numb as they were, he could almost fool himself into believing they were not there at all.

Once those bruises and rashes and cuts would have been barely worth remark. Now they were proof of his fragility, his imperfection, that he was a failure even in the simplicity of this new life, just as he’d been in every life that came before it.

That he was soft and weak and foolish.

Every time he allowed the horror of memory and dream to chase him from his bed. Allowed himself to be overwhelmed by directionless terror, the taste of bile rising in his throat as he fell to the floor of his bedroom and only to scramble to his feet, scrapping his knees and feet raw against the rugs as he bolted from the room was another failure to add to the pile. He had failed at being his father’s son, his father’s soldier, and now he failed even at being the brother his sister wished him to be.

He should be stronger than this, he should be better. Cardia slept peacefully through each night. Why could he not do the safe? He’d had months to adjust to this singular life, but still he allowed those memories to trouble him.

He might have been able to tolerate it if he were improving at least by some small measure, but he knew he was not.

The only thing he’d been able to improve was in his ability to mask his outbursts and escape the prison of his bedchamber. During those first days, he had only been able to lay in his bed, frozen in place, trying to relearn to breathe. After a few weeks, he’d summoned Cardia to his room each night with the way he’d carried on. Kept her awake or made her feel obligated to sleep beside him. At least now he could keep quiet and hold himself in check until he was outside though his journey from bedchamber to garden was still clumsy. 

Even after weeks of such nighttime excursions, the house was still an unfamiliar thing in the dark. His poor eyesight and the few dim lanterns they left burning through the night so often conspired to blind him, forcing him to cling to the bannister during his flight or risk accidentally pitching himself down the stairs.

Mortality was a wretched thing.

He had but one life left to him and Cardia would be devastated if he were to die simply because he’d done something so relentlessly stupid as to trip over his own feet in the dark and split his fool head open against the great, stupid grandfather clock in the entrance hall. 

Bloody thing didn’t even work properly. Barbicane kept threatening to fix it, but so far Cardia has managed put off all his suggestions for ways it might be improved.

“I could fix it so it actually chimed at least,” he’d commented, fingers twitching toward the seeming random assortment of tools he seemed to always have tucked around his person. 

“Don’t you dare,” she’d commented, laughter in her voice as she took Barbicane’s hand and towed him back into the kitchen like a recalcitrant child. 

Finis had not bothered to look at them as they’d come back into the room, instead ignoring them as he ignored the rest of Cardia’s band of merry misfits while they planned some mischief he had absolutely no interest in. 

"But Cardia...." He’d said, his tone turning disgustingly sing-song in that way it did when he had his heart set upon something.

“We’re still trying to decide what to do with everything,” she'd replied, a kind smile on her face though her tone was firm. 

It felt like Barbicane was staring at him.

Like they were all staring at him.

His face felt hot and he raised the newspaper to conceal the evidence of his embarrassment as he listened to her make excuses for his reluctance to be rid of Father’s possessions; all those artifacts of lives that had never been theirs.

He had little doubt that her cohorts saw right through her from the way Lupin quickly changed the subject, the tap of his cane echoing oddly in the high-ceiled room as he rapped it against the papers and maps scattered across the table to bring Barbicane’s attention back to the subject at hand.

He launched almost immediately into an explanation of the layout of the estate that held their next target and Finis forced himself to focus on the article he’d been reading about some improvement to the transit system in London.

He despised that casual, undeserved kindness and refused to be grateful for it, deliberately ignoring them all until they’d left to return to their base of operations in London.

He took a shuddering breath, putting thoughts of Cardia’s ridiculous friends aside, and pushed himself to his feet. Somewhat surprised to find that the distraction of thinking of them had helped. The distorted memories that had chased him from his room still clung stubbornly to his mind, but they were... distant, like the cobwebs that built up in the eaves, something he was aware of but could ignore. The panic that had driven him from his bed was subsiding at last, leaving him shaken and exhausted in its wake, but able to breathe, to think, to focus on how bloody cold it was. 

So different from the memories that haunted him.

In his dreams, he floated suspended in warm amber liquid, his hands pressed to glass, sometimes drumming his fists against it, his flailing limbs dragging through the fluid painfully slow. He remembered choking on that liquid, the way it had filled his mouth, his throat, tasteless yet thick and sticky as honey as instincts he couldn’t control tried to breathe it down. How it burned his eyes, his nose. And in moments like these, freshly woken and still trembling from the frantic rush from his bed, he felt as if he were still choking on it, as if he were still a thousand lifetimes away from breaking the surface and dragging air into his lungs. 

In his dreams he was incomplete.

Lifetimes away from becoming something more than just another disappointment sealed away in the amber-lit darkness, waiting for the day he would be called upon to put his body to use for Father’s cause. The distant, far off day when he would finally, finally be given a reason to exist was a vague unapproachable dream and he had been left to drown again and again in all that he was not and could never be. 

And even now, with the cold breaking gooseflesh across his limbs, he felt as if he were drowning still. He....

“Finis?”

The word was said softly, barely a whisper on the wind, but the suddenness of it still startled him badly enough that he fell back, bashing an elbow as he tripped back into the closed door. Pain burst through him, sharp and bright, and all the more terrible for how unexpected it was. He clenched his teeth and breathed out in a sharp hiss like a kettle’s whistle in an attempt not to scream as he slapped a hand over the injury, which only succeeded in making it more painful.

“Ah,” the same voice commented, louder now, unmistakably not a remnant of the past or a trick of the mind. “Apologies.”

Familiar.  

The soft crunch of gravel under a booted foot and the painfully distinct clatter of metal links clacking together like the rattle of dice in a jar eliminated any doubt he might have had about the identity of the intruder that had dared trespass in their garden at such an hour.

Though, truly, who else would it have been but him?

Sister’s irritating visitors at least had the decency to turn up with some degree of warning or, at the very least, at a more reasonable hour of the day.

Mortification made his skin feel hot and tight, made the chill of the night seem to evaporate around him.

Why was he always there to stand witness to his most painful and embarrassing moments? 

Why was he even there at all?

He turned the full force of his glare out across the garden to find the dark shape of Hansel Hexenhaus sitting upon their garden bench as if he belonged there.

Then, to add insult to injury, the absurd boy opened his mouth once more and, in a tone that struck across his fraying nerves like a child bounding across an open field, commented, apropos of nothing, “That looked rather painful.”

It made him want to murder the boy before him as he'd not wanted to murder anyone in days, possibly weeks.

Or at the very least throw things at him.

“Hexenhaus,” he hissed, shoving to his feet and taking a furious, shaky step toward the indolent immortal trespassing in their garden. 

As he lacked anything to throw aside from the clothes on his back, he slipped down the stairs onto the rough hewn stone of the garden path, hissing and wincing as sharp bits of rock dug into the soft flesh of his soles as he trudged down the path, not completely certain what he intended to do when he reached him.

Cardia would likely be cross if he actually murdered the boy.

“There had better be some extraordinarily compelling reason why you’re trespassing on my property or so help me I will flay the skin from yo-“

He had managed to almost reach him when the moon finally saw fit to emerge from behind the clouds to more clearly illuminate the target of his irritation.

Upon seeing his face, all his words dried up and died upon his tongue and his jaw snapped shut and he finally was able to truly take in the state of their garden and it’s only other living occupant.

His garden was littered with bodies. 

Sprawled in his flowerbeds, slumped against trees, littering the garden paths, and sticking half out of the shrubbery. 

And in the middle of all this devastation sat Hansel Hexenhaus, slumped on the garden bench, huddled around that bloody great fork of his like it was all that was holding him up, absolutely covered in... filth. Be it mud or blood, Hexenhaus' pale face was smeared with dark streaks, leaving his cheeks grimy, his atrocious curls alternately plastered to his head or sticking up at odd, improbable angles, struck through with flecks of black and gray.

“Is there something wrong with my face?” Hansel inquired, with that rude little hint of a smile that usually made him feel positively murderous, but which just now made him feel only vaguely queasy.

“Plenty. Not the least of which is that your face and has no place in my garden at any time of day, much less such a late hour of the night,” Finis sniped half-heartedly, rubbing his palm briskly over his throbbing elbow as if the pain were a stubborn tea stain he could scrub away with a vigorous enough application of force.

Rubbing it, of course, only made the wretched thing ache more keenly, but it did help keep his mind off the chaos that surrounded him.

Hansel nodded with all the solemnity of a well-mannered child, his gaze as dark and unreadable as ever, “Ah, yes, you mentioned last time we met that I was unwelcome here.”

“I did,” Finis confirmed easily, “Not that you’ve ever let being unwelcome in my home stop you from popping by as you please. However, since you are here, you might as well tell me what happened to put you in such a state. Did you take a tumble in the mud? If you tell me you tripped over that ridiculous chain while strolling through the woods, I will take great pleasure in laughing at your entirely predictable misfortune.”

He made a point of not asking about the broken bodies spread around them, their woolen jackets and white shirts splattered dark with blood and scattered earth, but now that he was closer, he could smell the familiar cloying burnt wood and oil scent of guttering torches beneath the heavy, damp winter chill.

Discarded sticks wrapped in tattered strips of kerosene-soaked cloth and pitchforks littered the ground around them, half-hidden by the dead leaves and dark earth that had been kicked up by the fight that had obviously ranged through the garden and made an absolute mess of the bed of winter aconite he’d planted just a few weeks ago.

Which was just as well, he’d likely have killed it eventually. 

"I thought you a spirit when you first appeared," Hansel commented, ignoring his question entirely. "What brought you here?"

"I live here," he replied sourly, because two could play at the game of deliberately ignoring questions. "Is there a particular reason you chose to replant my garden with this weak crop of inebriated daisies?"

Hansel glanced down, nose wrinkling as if he were noticing the bodies scattered around him for the first time, “The villagers in this area are very rude."

“Do you think they're likely to be less rude now that you've dispatched a great many of them?” 

Hansel's smile was slim and vaguely sheepish, "Perhaps not."

Clearly he was going to have to find a way to put an end to Hansel Hexenhaus.

His sister wouldn’t approve, of course, but she never need know he’d done so. Hansel was but an occasional visitor, it would be astonishingly easy to kill him, hide his body, and simply pretend ignorance of his fate. 

‘I haven’t seen Hansel in a while,’ she might comment when he hadn’t shown his face for a few weeks or months on end.

‘You know, you’re quite right,’ he might say in reply, with just the very faintest note of disapproval in his tone for how thoughtless Hexenhaus was to make her worry so. ‘Perhaps he simply lost interest in us. We are dreadfully dull and utterly ordinary now.”

He couldn’t imagine she’d pursue the issue. She had her hobbies and her friends to divert her attention and he could always lie and say he’d seen him whenever she was away if it truly seemed to bother her.

And how wonderful would it be not to have him popping up at odd moments? Certainly the peace of mind of knowing he wouldn’t ever have to worry about Hexenhaus catching him vulnerable or unawares would be worth the effort of a lie or two? Certainly Cardia would forgive him this? 

And even if he didn’t play a role in eliminating him, he would eventually lose interest in them and wander off in search of something else to amuse himself with, would he not? It wasn’t as if their lives were particularly enthralling, after all. 

What would it matter if he simply sped the inevitable? 

He’d just been thinking the other day that he could do with a diversion. Gardening was far more trouble than it was worth, cleaning was more infuriating than satisfying, and he’d given up fairly quickly on the idea of tinkering with the small inventions Father had left behind at the estate when that idiot Barbicane kept trying to bloody talk to him about them.

It wasn’t as if he’d actually been interested in any of those things or that he truly needed activities with which to fill his hours, it was simply that whenever Cardia saw he was idle her wretched friends suddenly started trying to include him in things. Inviting him on outings, offering to teach him their tricks and trades, as if he were a child in need of a diversion. 

It was absolutely intolerable.

He wasn’t the least bit interested in their pity or their painfully transparent overtures of half-hearted good will. He’d rather swallow nails or watch paint dry or light the entire bloody forest on fire than accept their offers to go to the pub or help them plan some sort of ridiculous caper or fix whatever was wrong with the bloody stove. So he had been trying to make a point of at least appearing busy and what could possibly be more diverting than puzzling out how to kill the unkillable? Perhaps he could set traps or some such. He wasn’t terrible with machines even if they’d never been his passion and he was exceptionally adept at killing things.

Truly, it would be a worthwhile pursuit and Cardia might even appreciate it if Hansel planned to make a habit of killing their invading villagers. 

She was always so cross when he threatened to do so.

As if their lives were worthwhile when all they seemed to do was show up and cause trouble. 

They were really little more than garden pests.

Still….

While he might certainly need to kill him eventually, he couldn’t fault the job he’d done. After all, he did rather appreciate not having to deal with being carried off to be tied to a stake in the town square or whatever horrible end they had in store for him this night. His dreams still felt close at hand and he would have found it… inconvenient to be stuffed in a sack or flung over some idiot’s shoulder and hauled off through the woods on such a night as this had been.

And, really, he’d have only had himself to blame.

It had been weeks since the villagers’ last attempted incursion, far longer than was typical, and thus more than enough time for them to lick their wounds and forget their fear if they were deep enough in their cups. Tavern spirits and the company of their fellows often made poor decisions seem sound enough. At least, that was the conclusion he had arrived at during the months since they’d decided to make this house their home.

He had known all this. He should have been on his guard.

Instead Hansel Hexenhaus had had to show up and clear out their garden on his behalf.

Though he didn’t pretend to have the slightest idea why he would.

“Do you truly have nothing better to do with your time then to loiter about in our garden waiting for mobs of drunkards to appear?”

“I did intend to clear away the mess,” Hansel commented, his voice soft, almost apologetic, his gaze roaming over the sprawl of a dozen corpses.

“Did you,” he replied evenly, stepping over one and silently congratulating himself on resisting the urge to kick it. He was clearly growing as a person, finding new depths of moral fortitude, Cardia would be ever so proud. If he had any intention of telling her about any of this, which he did not. “I am more curious as to what brought you to my garden, dressed in ashes.”

He reached out and pulled a dark flake free of Hansel’s messy curls, smearing it between pinched fingers and staring down at the greasy remains. “Why are there ashes in your hair, Hansel Hexenhaus? Wherever did your wretched mother’s errands take you this time?”

When Hansel did not immediately answer, he huffed a frustrated sigh.

He had never liked not knowing things, not having his questions answered. Certainly it was enjoyable to be on the other side of the equation, to be the one who held the key to mysteries and secrets, to be the one doling out smug smiles and knowing glances, but to be the victim of such was utterly infuriating. 

He hated it.

Always had.

He was no stranger to fire. 

It was, after all, what prompted his creation.

“Do you remember the fire?” His father had asked him, once, twice, a dozen times, a hundred. It was another test. And as with all his tests, he had failed it miserably and been destroyed.

Again and again.

Until fire he remembered.

Until he could recall with exquisite clarity the feel of acrid smoke in lungs, the heat of it on his skin, the all-consuming pain of flames licking his fingertips.

Since then he’d died in its embrace a dozen times, a hundred times, maybe more, it was difficult to keep track of all the ways he had died over his many lifetimes, much less how often he had been done in by any particular method. 

It had hardly seemed important at the time, death being something that barely slowed him down aside from the inconvenience of travel time. 

Arson had been a method frequently employed by Twilight to run out dissidents and others the crown found undesirable. Efficient, if somewhat messy, fires were commonplace enough that they provided the crown with deniability even if someone should suspect foul play. It didn’t truly surprise him to find that similar tactics were employed by IDEA.

“Well?” He snapped, feeling disconcertingly self-conscious as he stood there in his thin night clothes, his hands balled into fists at his sides. 

Hansel looked up at him at last, his expression carefully blank, “I... wasn’t certain where to stand.”

Ah.

That, at least, was a problem with which he was intimately familiar.

The wind could be so fickle, casting ash this way and that, stoking the flames hotter and higher, spreading them to nearby brush, to whole neighborhoods, cities. 

It was a challenge to control such forces.

But while he’d never thought too deeply about it at the time, he was quite certain that was quite often the point of its employ.

“Upwind is usually your best bet,” he offered softly. ”First time?"

“These assignments were more often given to others," Hansel confessed, a wry smile lifting his lips. "But if I am grown enough to make decisions about how I save, I am more than ready to take on greater tasks. I thank you for the tip, and shall endeavor to remember that for next time.”

As if a next time were inevitable.

“Did you enjoy it?”

He wasn’t quite certain why he asked.

It wasn’t as if he cared about such things or was fit to judge anyone’s actions or motives given his history, but the question hung in the air between them anyway like an unwelcome guest.

“No,” Hansel answered eventually, the word and those that followed quiet and his tone as unruffled as ever, as if he’d asked him about the weather. “The bread had gone stale and the fruit rotted upon the vine, a good many corpses were stacked high in the blighted fields near the river. Those that were left had not the strength to rid the village of the rest. Children so rarely do. I could hear their cries from the road, aching and hungry and begging for relief though there was no one left to give it. No one to remind them to put out the cook fire before they fell asleep. They had all breathed their last by the time the embers caught and the village was lost to the flames. Only ash and char remained in the end and history will be all the safer for it.”

He sounded as if he were reciting lines.

Finis had gone with Cardia to the theater weeks ago and they had watched the actors play their parts far more skillfully.

Hansel was a poor player, ill-suited to his role.

And he knew something of that feeling.

Hansel’s clothes, usually so immaculate were thick with soot and ash and dust and he was possessed of a sudden certainty that if he were to touch him, his hands might never come clean.

It was a silly thought.

The stains of the things they had done never lingered so obviously.

And he had never aspired to be free of the marks they left behind.

“Budge over,” he grumbled, waving an impatient hand, a little surprised when Hansel immediately did as he was bid, shuffling down to the far edge of the bench to allow him space to sit beside him.

Even still there wasn’t enough space for two to sit comfortably. The bench was a small thing, fashioned of old marble, chipped and worn by time, and clearly designed with solitary contemplation in mind. He’d made rather a point of not thinking about how often their father must have sat there, alone, as he mourned all he’d lost and all his many failures. As he dreamed of reclaiming some of what he’d lost through his experiments.

Some day, Cardia had commented as they’d worked together to sort through the mess, disposing of the dusty debris of other lives. Someday we will have claimed the whole of the house as their own and thoughts of him will be worn away by time and all the memories they had made for themselves of which he was not a part.

And while this might well be true one day, for the present moment the bench was still something undeniably his. It was chill and unwelcoming as he settled upon it, his side pressed into the wind-chilled cloth of Hansel’s heavy coat. Being so close to anyone, even Cardia, remained an odd novelty, neither pleasant nor repulsive, for all that it always left him feeling vaguely flustered with an inescapable certainty that he was doing it wrong.

He hadn’t been made for such intimacies after all.

Perhaps he would always be more comfortable with poison than people, with death than life. 

Perhaps being a person would always be just beyond his reach.

Leaves rustled softly and the chain that adorned Hansel’s fork chimed beneath the stirring force of the night breeze.

A dozen questions lay dormant upon his tongue, but though he’d intended to ask them all in turn, he found himself reluctant to give them voice.

The ash that dusted Hansel’s coat smeared unpleasantly across his bare skin and the cloth of his shirt, stained the pristine white of his nightclothes dark.

“I aided in the slaughter of an entire race of people once,” Finis offered finally, tone carefully even. “Poison gas, terribly efficient.”

“Yes,” Hansel murmured, features obscured by the fall of his hair, “In war there are few ways better-suited to assure those destined to die have met their end.”

Silence stretched between them, unexpectedly comfortable.

Just two mass murderers sitting on a bench taking in the brisk night air. 

“Why come here?" He asked finally. "I can’t imagine your dear mother thought the trespassers in our garden were an evil that merited smiting. Nor can I imagine she encourages stopovers when you’ve been about her business.”

Hansel nodded solemnly, leaning more heavily against the fork set into the ground before him, the clink of the chain loud in the quiet of the midnight garden, “The Forest was quiet as I tread upon the path towards home, the trees barren as they dreamt of spring and the starving children who once foraged the well-worn paths in search of sustenance. I retraced my steps as I always do, but my thoughts did wander and my feet brought me to you.”

The warmth those words inspired in his chest was vaguely horrifying. 

Being a person was… messy. 

Messy and ridiculous and he hated every moment of it.

“Lucky me. What would you have done if there hadn’t been evil fellow trespassers to slay? Or if I had not decided to take in the night air, eh? Just sat out here by yourself? Lurked in amongst the roses?”

Hansel wrinkled his nose, casting a baleful look in the direction of the flowering bushes, “They reek of broken promises and stagnant dreams as all roses do.”

The bark of laughter that escaped him was disgustingly loud in the fog-dulled silence of the garden, sounding deeper than it should and surprise at the sudden burst of sound startled the irritation from Hansel’s face, drawing it carefully blank once more as if he were uncertain what face to make or what emotion that laughter inspired in him.

Which only made Finis laugh harder.

It was… nice to see someone else confounded by emotion for a change. To feel as if he wasn't the only one at a loss for how to deal with it.

Eventually the laughter subsided and the silence between them became something easier and less tense or perhaps it only seemed that way as the giddy rush of that inescapable laughter had left him feeling… different. Made the dreams that had chased him from his bed seem distant and unimportant beneath the immediacy of this unexpected encounter.

Hansel’s leg was warm where the cloth that covered it pressed against his bare skin, smearing him with ash and soot, coloring his leg in shades of grey to match the rest.

It seemed a rather dull metaphor and one he chose not to think on too deeply.

“Not fond of flowers, I take it?” He said instead.

Hansel contemplated that a moment before shrugging, “Father used to braid flowers into my sister’s hair, yellow as sunshine. Roses did not grow wild in our village, they were the providence of rich men who always ate their fill. Kept and locked behind high walls, neatly trimmed, a badge of prosperity. Beautiful and precise.”

“And yet you do not care for them,” Finis commented idly as he kicked his feet back and forth, dragging narrow furrows in the dirt with his bare toes.

“No,” Hansel replied easily, “I do not.”

There was a story there, but he did not ask after it.

“And I do not know what I would have done as I did not have chance to do it nor did I intend to come here at all.”

Finis hummed a response, neither argument nor agreement. Not sure what he had expected or if he had truly expected anything at all. 

“Do you have you any sweets?” Hansel inquired suddenly, dragging him from the spiral of his thoughts. “I saved you the trouble of disposing of this lot.”

“For services already rendered? And of your own volition? That sounds shockingly like extortion. How very mercenary of you,” Finis commented dryly. “We’ve no sweets to pay for your efforts, I'm afraid. I suppose being immortal you don’t have to have a care for your health, but the number of sweets you consume is still absolutely nauseating."

Hansel did not seem bothered by his pronouncement, not that he’d expected him to be, and his gaze had already drifted away as if looking at something in the far distance, his cheeks still streaked with blood and ash. 

He truly was a sight.

Finis sighed heavily, “No sweets, but I suppose you could make use of our home to wash and change, if you wished.”

“Oh, no, I…” Hansel trailed off, glancing down at his clothes as if noticing them for the first time. “I should be getting home. Mother will be wondering what has kept me.”

“Then the wretched woman should have told you better where to stand,” he snapped, inexplicably irritated by the refusal.

Hansel’s gaze returned to him, focusing on his face once more, head tilting to the side ever so slightly in a way that put him in mind of birds. “Are you angry, Finis?”

It was an awful question.

He shouldn’t be. 

He had nothing to be angry about, after all. 

What did it matter to him how IDEA was run or what errands that evil crone sent her henchmen on? Hansel was no concern of his. Was an unwanted, uninvited guest at the best of times, and yet….

And yet.

“Yes,” he ground the bitter taste of the word beneath his teeth. “Go or stay, it matters not to me. If I sit here much longer I’m liable to freeze to death. We mere mortals do not thrive in the cold.”

He shoved to his feet, pebbles and bits of shattered wood painful beneath the soles of his feet as he stomped back up the walk to the house.

“Finis,” Hansel’s voice was so soft he barely heard the word and yet it still rooted him to the ground as surely as a shout might have. “Thank you for your concern.”

He whirled back around, a litany of rage on his tongue, a torrent of denial, ready to fling a stream of irritation across the distance between them only to find the target of his fury a breath away.

It seemed impossible that he should have been able to cross the yard and close the distance between them so quickly, but he was suddenly simply there beside him, close enough to touch, if he should wish it.

And he did.

He reached out and curled his fingers into the lapels of Hansel’s jacket, heedless of the damp and the dirt, and leaned up on his tip toes, raising himself up even as he used his hold on his coat to drag Hansel down close enough that he could feel his warm breath against his face. “It is not concern I feel for you, Hexenhaus, only contempt.”

Which was true even if it was not the whole of it.

Instead of doing something he might immediately regret, he took a shuddering breath and forced himself to step back, to release him, to whirl about to continue forward into the house.

“And yet you invite me in,” Hansel commented, falling into step behind him once more.

Infuriating boy.

“Yes, well, I am hardly known for my exemplary life choices,” he grouched, pushing the kitchen door open.

Hansel followed him obediently and, for once, silently, as they slipped through the kitchen door, down the darkened halls, and up the stairs. Hansel trailed behind him the whole way, the faint clink of his chain and soft scuff of his boots against the rugs that peppered the halls the only indication he was still there as they make their way to his rooms. 

His bedroom was as he had left it, slippers and housecoat discarded on a chair near the window, covers flung nearly off the bed in his rush to be free of it. He turned back to face Hansel, who was lingering just outside the door like he was awaiting invitation, and gestured vaguely towards the room Father had converted to hold a bath and water closet, one of several strewn about the house, “Go on and be quick about it. I’ll... find some of Father’s old things for you, they should fit you well enough. You’re entirely too tall to wear anything of mine.”

Hansel nodded, but made no move to go where he was bid, instead choosing to linger, uncertain, near the door, leaning heavily against his fork, chewing his lip as if uncertain. 

Ridiculous.

Finis heaved a long-suffering sigh and stomped over to thrust the closed door open, stepping through onto the cool tiles and flipping the series of switches that lined the interior door frame, illuminating the room with a soft, faltering orange glow as electric lamps flickered to life, the steam engine that powered them starting up in its little cupboard near the back of the room with a sputter and a grumble of protest.

It was nothing like the facilities at the bases Twilight had kept throughout the city or the large public-style bath Nemo had insisted on constructing abroad the Nautilus, but it suited his needs well enough.

This room was small and cozy, if a little cold, as the heating unit in the corner rattled to protesting life. A white tub stood sentinel in the center of the room as pipes groaned and water spluttered from the tap, spilling out to fill the deep basin with water that steamed in the cool air. He gestured to the soaps lined up along the edge, “I assume you know how to use those?”

“I have bathed before, Finis,” Hansel murmured and that wry smile had returned to his lips when he turned back to face him.

It wasn’t the least bit charming.

“Well, in that case, stop staring at it like an idiot and hurry up about it. I want you clean and out of my home within the hour,” he snapped, gathering his tattered dignity around himself and whirling towards the door. “And do not even consider putting those clothes back on after. They smell like a charnel house on burning day.”

He stormed out, pulling the door shut behind him a bit harder than necessary, letting his irritation carry him out of the room and down the length of one hall and then another all the way to the thick oak door at the end of it.

Only there did he falter, the door looming over him, immense and foreboding. 

It was just a room, he reminded himself, glaring at the doorknob fiercely.

Just a door.

Just a room.

No different from any other.

He forced the door open and stepped inside, closing it behind him before he had a chance to change his mind, to think better of it.

There was a thick layer of dust upon everything it seemed, clearly visible in the moonlight streaming in the tall windows on the far side of the the room. Not so thick as to speak of true neglect, but obvious enough to make it clear this was a room rarely entered.

It was the one room that had not changed since they’d returned. It had been untouched by the fires the house had seen and given only a brisk cleaning during the first weeks following their return. Since then he knew Cardia had been in to clean it at least once, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to enter. Which was, of course, ridiculous. 

There was nothing to fear from an empty room. 

And yet.

And yet they could not seem to bring themselves to renovate it, to change a single thing about it. Couldn’t even bring themselves to allow Cardia’s little band of hooligans to clear it out, though they had certainly offered. He wasn’t even altogether certain there would be clothes to be found there, the idea that Father had ever even imagined living in this poor replica, this shrine to the life he’d once lived, to all he had lost, seemed an impossibility. It wasn’t as if he’d ever seemed to care for…

He cut his drifting thoughts off with the vicious precision of long habit.

It was just a room.

Just an empty room.

It was just a wardrobe in an empty room and there was nothing sacred or frightful about a dusty, old wardrobe.

There was no reason to hesitant.

Before he could think better of it, he reached out and grasped the heavy cooper handles and flung the doors open to reveal… an almost disappointingly bland collection of clothing.

Lines of neatly pressed and folded shirts, well-polished and quite dusty shoes, a series of expensive ties. He took a step back and pressed a hand to his face as he was hit by the cloying, sickeningly sweet scent of whatever preservative had been used to keep the wardrobe’s contents reasonably untouched by time.

It was… disappointing, somehow.

Not surprising, certainly, he had long suspected father had created this space like a living dollhouse, made for display more than practical use, but… it was still… disappointing to find there had never truly been anything of him in this place for them to find.

The simple, ordinary collection of white shirts, dark pants could have when a shop display, arranged to be visually pleasing rather than functional. The clothing was covered in a fine layer of dust, but otherwise in reasonably good shape given the age and time they’d spent sitting there, untouched. They were all years out of fashion, but serviceable enough for his purposes. He pulled out one of each as quick as he could and tucked them against his chest, before he flung the doors shut once more, coughing weakly against the rising cloud of disturbed dust as he turned and walked briskly back the way he had come.

He did not run from the room.

But he could admit, if only to himself, that it was a close thing.

When he arrived back in his own room, he wasn’t expecting to find Hansel standing at the window, gazing out into the night, a towel draped loosely around his waist, his skin pale beneath the bright moonlight as he stared out into the night.

It didn’t seem like he could have possibly been gone so long that Hansel would have had time to bath and return, but Hansel’s hair looked soft and damp, glistening in the light streaming in the window, rinsed clean of muck and ash.

He had seen naked men before, of course.

Nemo had had much to say on the subject of the exquisite form of the human machine being a magnificent sight worth sharing and had repeatedly pointed out that the baths were meant to be communal.

The second time Nemo had made such excuses for attempting to join him in the bath, he had made it clear that he would have Nemo tossed overboard if he should disrespect his desire for privacy again. Fortunately, that threat had been enough that he’d never been subjected to the sight of that particular example again and he’d been glad of it.

Still.

Seeing Nemo in the nude had not made his face warm the way Hansel standing at the window, palms pressed against the glass did. There was a mark on Hansel’s lower back just above the drape of the towel, a delicate tracery of black lines in the shape of an apple and his fingers itched to touch those ink dark curves, to know what they felt like beneath his fingertips… which was a simply absurd thought.

The last thing he wanted was to delay Hansel’s departure by even a moment.

He wasn’t altogether certain what he had been thinking inviting him in in the first place. 

They weren’t… anything. Not enemies, nor friends nor anything in between and the sooner Hansel was clothed and gone the sooner he would be able to forget that this entire odd interlude had been anything more than a long strange dream brought on by too much of the entirely too salty stew Cardia had prepared for dinner that evening.

Hansel glanced at him over his shoulder, his gaze bright in the dimly lit bedchamber, “Is the water always so warm?”

“Yes,” he answered shortly, very determinedly staring up into Hansel’s flushed face. “There’s a machine in the basement that heats the water. Keeps it from being too cold.”

“Are those for me?” Hansel inquired, turning fully to face him, his gaze dropping to the bundle of clothing Finis held clutched tight against his chest. Hansel’s arms and stomach are very well defined, muscles built from waving that great bloody fork around all day, no doubt. 

He forced his gaze back up to Hansel’s face, pushing the bundle of clothing against his chest, “You’re fortunate you’re immortal or you’d be in danger of catching a chill. Put them on immediately.”

Hansel’s queer little smile and the brush of his warm palms against the back of his hands did horrifying things to his insides, filling his belly with a slow liquid warmth that reminded him too much of amber lit tubes and drowning. He ground his teeth together, barely managing to restrain himself from jerking away from the touch which felt strange and invasive in a way the brush of their limbs in the garden had not. “Thank you, Finis.”

“Do not thank me. This is simply payment for services rendered. Nothing more,” he managed releasing the clothing to Hansel’s grasping fingers and stepping back too fast, crossing his arms so tight over his chest they ached.

“Yes, of course,” Hansel murmured, that ghost of a smile still tugging at his lips, pulling his expression into something vexing and horrifyingly human. 

It turned his stomach, made his face feel hot and his skin feel as if it were stretched painfully tight over his bones. 

“Enough,” he snapped, “Dress and be on your way. I am going back to bed. I assume you can see yourself out?” 

He turned on his heel and stomped back to the bed and flopped down upon the too soft mattress, snatching hold of the pile of discarded blankets and dragging them violently up over his head.

In the dark, he listened for the sound of booted steps and the clank of heavy chain, but there was nothing, just the rustle of cloth and a soft hum like distant music to fill the silence.

He was unsure how long he lay there in the warm darkness beneath his coverlet, listening to those soft noises, waiting to hear Hansel retreat from the room. Ages, it seemed, eons, until he could bear it no more and threw back the blankets with a huff intent on telling him off for taking too long… only to find his room quiet and empty. 

To find himself alone once more.

He pushed the blankets away and clamored from the bed, stumbling across the rug to the window, relieved at the feel of the damp fibers beneath the soles of his feet. 

He could not see the garden from his window, only the dark of the forest and the moonlit night above. 

Wherever Hansel might have gone, it was somewhere out there, beyond his sight.