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Magnus had been pushing that he was alright for a while. And he was fine, for a little bit. After Story and Song, he had a lot to do. Fixing up cities and towns, helping people recover, getting ready to open his dog school- there wasn’t a day that past in the first few months where he wasn’t busy. And it was great! He was great! He had so much to do, people needed him to help with stuff, he had no time to waste anymore.
Except… nighttime. Nighttime was a bit of an issue. Nighttime was when he would lay down in bed, exhausted from a day’s work, and try to sleep. Pray for sleep. Beg for sleep. It rarely came. He’d spend most nights tossing and turning in bed, mind riddled with thoughts of the Hunger, of Raven’s Roost, of Wonderland, of his family and friends being hurt and killed-
But he was great . Things were great nowadays. Nothing to complain about here!
His family called often. Usually, it was Merle, who would talk for hours nonstop about his kids and being appointed as an Earl and his brand new estate. The others called, too. Barry would, when he got a chance, and Taako would call him up just to chat about how Angus was doing from time to time. When Cap’t’port was on land, he’d call in just to check-up. Lup called between reaper missions and hours of boredom. Lucretia checked up on him frequently as well, especially after she got invited to their family dinner.
The family dinner. The first real-time they’d all be together after Story and Song. No half-ass excuses of “I can’t come, there’s so much work to do” or “Sorry, I’ve already got plans.” They’d be together. Magnus was looking forward to it!
Maybe he was a little more anxious than he let on.
Magnus woke up the morning of the dinner after one and a half hours of sleep. The dull throb of his head wasn’t the greatest and he didn’t know why it was there. His body felt… weird. Fuzzy. Spacy. It wasn’t a concern. This had happened before, loads of times, especially since Story and Song. So he just got up and made his way to the kitchen for a bowl of cereal.
It got soggy with the amount of time he spent sitting there and dozing off. There was milk spilled all over the table. When had that happened?
Breakfast might not be worth this.
He had a shower but didn’t realize that he had spent nearly an hour “bathing” himself, versus his usual five. The water did feel nice against his almost staticky skin.
Magnus couldn’t really recall what he was supposed to do today. Surely the Captain wanted him to help move something- no, he wasn’t on the Starblaster.
Maybe Barry wanted help researching the Light- There wasn’t a Light anymore, Barry wasn’t even near him.
Magnus found himself halfway to a common room that wasn’t even in his house before stopping himself.
Maybe Fisher would want a duck?
So now he was carving. Knife steadily scraping off pieces of wood from the block, gently shaping it into something recognizable. Something was buzzing off in the distance. Sort of sounded like the thrum of the ship’s engine, so he ignored it because he wasn’t on the Starblaster. He was at home , in his house he shared with Julia and-
The knife slipped. He didn’t care to notice.
Sometimes, memories were finicky with Magnus. He figured today might be a day like that. Julia was dead, wasn’t she? He hadn’t been there to see it, he hadn’t been there to protect her, but damn if he hadn’t been digging through the ruins of his old house to find any evidence of her body.
Buzz, buzz, buzz. There it was again. And he recognized it this time, as a ringer on his stone of farspeech, but who would be calling him, because Julia was dead and he didn’t have anyone else-
The smell of smoke still lingered in the air. Was that normal? Was it normal to imagine finding your dead wife’s wedding ring as the only thing left of her? Was it normal to die dozens of times? Was it normal to forget your friends and family? Was it normal to expect to hear people screaming as you dozed off the sleep? Was it normal to imagine yourself covered with blood, huddled over the body of a friend, wishing that you could have been there earlier-
“ Magnus! ”
Magnus jumped with a start, standing up to swing a punch in the direction of the voice. He saw someone duck and followed them down to attack because who the fuck thought they could come into his home and kill him?
“Magnus, b- bud! Stop! It’s me!”
Magnus paused his fist. Below him was a man, a bit gray and frazzled under his glasses. Magnus knew him from somewhere. He knew him from somewhere, but where -
“Oh,” is all Magnus ended up saying, rolling off the man and sitting on the floor next to him. “Who?”
“Oh,” the man said, a bit startled. “That’s why- oh, okay. It’s Barry. Bluejeans. Barry Bluejeans.”
Oh yeah. Barry.
“Oh shit,” Magnus said. “I- shit, sorry, dude.” He held out a hand to help Barry up. Barry took it, standing, and then retrieving something he had dropped. A stone of farspeech. A stone of farspeech with someone on the other end, talking a bit frantically.
“It’s fine, bud,” Barry said to him, and then talked into the stone. “He’s, uh, responding now. Yeah, knocked me over real good- no, we’ll be there soon. Give us a bit.”
Barry hung up. Magnus sat heavily back on the couch. There was blood on his hand. Glancing over to Barry, it didn’t seem like Magnus had hurt him that bad, but-
“Oh shit, you’re bleeding,” Barry said. “Uh, how did? What did you do?”
“I’m bleeding?” Magnus asked and then said, “oh, I’m bleeding.”
“Carving,” Barry noted, kicking the knife on the floor. Magnus nodded. “You have any first aid stuff?”
“Where we usually keep it,” Magnus replied.
“I don’t know shit about your house.”
“Under the sink,” Magnus said. “Where it always is.”
“Ah,” Barry said. “Of course. I’ll be righ- actually, no, come with me. We need to wash that out.”
“Sure.”
The water stung, which made Magnus feel better, if anything. Made him feel a bit more human. He still felt like the world was moving too slow. Barry seemed to take notice. While he was applying pressure to Magnus’s hand-cut, he made conversation.
“You know what day it is, Mags?”
“Sunday,” Magnus answered.
“That’s right,” Barry said. “Sunday the twenty-fourth, to be exact.”
“Mhm,” Magnus agreed. Then, “Oh. Fuck , we had dinner today , didn’t we!?”
“Yeah,” Barry said. “You said you’d be there by four, but you weren’t.” He applied some antibiotic ointment since the wound had stopped bleeding. Magnus tensed. “Sorry, it stings a bit, doesn’t it? I’ll be quick.”
When he started to bandage it up, Barry started to speak again.
“You said you’d be there by four, but you weren’t,” Barry repeated. “And then Dav got there and you still weren’t there. And then Lucretia and Merle. Taako and Lup were already there since they live in the house, and I was with Lup, and you still weren’t there. So we called you. That should be good, it isn’t too tight?”
“It’s fine,” Magnus said, flexing his hand experimentally.
“Great,” Barry said. “We called, but you didn’t pick up, so I sorta just came over here to check on you-”
“How’d you get here so fast?”
“Oh geez, we haven’t seen each other in a while,” Barry said, rubbing his neck. “It’s part of the Reaper thing, yeah? Can cut portals to wherever I wanna go.”
“Neat,” Magnus said. “Sorry for being la- for uh, not showing up. I didn’t realize the time or the day-”
“It’s cool, Mags,” Barry said. “You weren’t feeling your best.”
“Was feeling fuzzy,” Magnus confessed, leaning against the bathroom counter. “Still am, but talking helps, I think. I don’t know.”
“Fuzzy?” Barry asked.
“Like… out of it,” Magnus said, sort of awkwardly. “Like I’m not here. Like I’m in some other part of my life.”
“Like on the Starblaster,” Barry said.
“Yeah,” Magnus said. “How’d you know?”
“The first-aid kit is under the sink,” Barry said. “Like it always is? Like it was on the Starblaster.”
“Mhm,” Magnus said. “So I don’t forget.”
“No shame in that, bud,” Barry said easily. “I feel like that too, a lot.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah, it’s the trauma,” Barry said with a laugh, and Magnus recoiled slightly. He didn’t have trauma . There was no shame in having some! But it- he couldn’t. He hadn’t been affected that much. It didn’t qualify as-
“You okay?” Barry asked.
“Fine,” Magnus slipped out a little too quickly. “I’m fine.”
“If you say so,” Barry said, still sounding concerned. “You wanna go to dinner or should we just call a raincheck on you.”
“I can go,” Magnus said. “Please. It’ll help, maybe.”
“Alright,” Barry said. “But if you- if you’re feeling spacy or something, just- just uh. Say you need me to show you where the bathroom is? And we’ll split off and talk.”
“What if I actually do need you to show me where the bathroom is?”
“No harm done, then,” Barry laughed. “We should get going, then, I’m sure Taako’s already complaining that the food is gonna get cold.”