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It is more Remy’s idea than Kez’s own. That itself isn’t unusual. Kez has had his own ideas selfishly indulged in blazing flames, and once the smouldering ashes those flames left behind finally died, there were no more ideas necessary.
Ideas are like the start of a path. You notice them for too long and before long you’re following them. And once you’re on a path, you’ll be somewhere new.
Kez wants new, it’s true. He craves something other than time escaping him in fluctuating bursts he cannot conceive except ‘too fast’ and ‘too slow’. Something other than the emptiness staved off by weak attempts at a normal teenager’s life when he can stand to leave the house, or the overwhelming fullness of those times Luci bursts in the apartment with the expectation of a captivated audience. Often he wonders what would happen, if Luci were to burst in to find the apartment empty — and often he voices this wonder to Remy, who looks at him with a pity so deeply pronounced it led to this. The idea that Kez Cooper, who sold his soul for fratricide, could be so successfully redeemed it would erase his debt with Luci.
The idea creates a path Kez can’t turn away from. With it came the slow acceptance of Remy’s other ideas; that Luci wasn’t a poor victim doing his best, he was vile and twisting any victimisation he felt to approximate things Kez had thought of as ‘relatable’, not ‘things I literally said’. Then came the slow dawning that Luci must be manipulating him, must have some plan in motion, and Kez doesn’t trust himself to be able to tell when Luci is manipulating him when Luci is the closest thing to a father or friend he’s ever had, rolled into one, and even that is a lie Luci wants him to believe, because Remy is right there and it’s not that Kez’s dad was never around, it’s that Kez’s dad never cared, but these thoughts clash together, like sand and water, until Kez’s mind is mud and he can’t pull them apart and everything just feels — new.
You know, the kind of inconceivable ‘new’ that you kind of laugh along with but then it gets under your skin and itches, itches, itches, until you’ve gone to school in a frantic rush with your mind in a haze and you’ve found the princess Remy told you to find (because asking Crow directly would be too much, too obvious, Crow doesn’t have contact with that many mortals, and Remy isn’t one of them any more, and Kez was never meant to be one of them), and you’re saying whatever it takes to convince him to believe you and stop gate-keeping his angel brother because the slow realisation that this is really happening is starting to replace that itch with the scent of burnt flesh and the distant sound of Luci cooing ‘Stop being pathetic, sweetie, I expect better from my sons.’
New is terrifying when you’ve finally become numb to the devil you know.
Hotfire draws a mockery of Luci captioned “You willingly worked for Luci, Cooper?” and it’s hard to look away. Michael may be as much of a prick as Luci always said (needling and guilt-tripping and spinelessly without moral conviction, too, how can he stand there trying to guilt Kez into staying with Luci when he himself ruined Luci so badly Luci had to take it out on Kez and Remy?), and nobody in the room may actually give a fuck about Kez, but seeing his life choices summarised in a badly drawn cartoon with that caption — it’s a wake-up call, isn’t it?
Kez usually only messaged Crow about Remy. But Crow would ask about him, too. Never in the jealous ‘who are you and why do you know this person I’m in love with so well?’ way he’d expected. A way that made Kez sometimes (very rarely, but sometimes, when his mind was mud and he was alone but couldn’t contain everything) send messages admitting the kind of life he was living. Always calling Luci his dad. Always getting responses about what a dick his dad was.
Right when Kez was starting to feel less on-edge about the whole thing, the princess had to give an overwhelmingly irritated sigh of, “What’s the worst that can happen?”
Kez knows what will happen to him. It’s not part of Remy’s plan, but it’s part of his. But he looks at this so-called princess, eyes bright despite a face bearing a scar that screams of suffering, and feels dread.
Lao’s earnest need to help reminds him of Remy. Before, of course. Remy was never quite the same since Luci burned the hope out of him.
Hope for himself, is more accurate. Remy never gave up on Kez. He pushed all his ambitions on this broken little politician’s son, who’d peaked by murdering his brother and never found anything else to want since then.
It was a heavy burden to carry, especially now Kez was once again following a path. And Kez was aware, well aware, he would be expected to be sorry for murdering Sean. He couldn’t do that. So maybe he was doomed to fail. Maybe Remy was hoping for nothing. Kez didn’t care what happened to himself, but Remy…
Remy always spoke of Hotfire with a smile. Not always the same smile; it could be mocking, it could be snide, it could even be cruel, but more often than not, it was warm and amused and soft like when they were kids and Remy was just an older kid who was weirdly nice to Kez and played Pokémon with him.
As he looked at Hotfire, Kez couldn’t stop remembering the tight smile on his face as Remy laughed off his tears while explaining he was going to be working for an old friend for a while and he'd never speak to Hotfire again, so please keep an eye on him, make sure he's safe. How he’d been too scared to ask, Are you actually working for a friend? Or Luci?
As he watched Hotfire try to get the princess to take this seriously, always stepping between the princess and Michael’s greedy look, Kez remembered. Well. The entire time he’d lived with Remy and Luci. Remy taking hit after hit after hit to protect him. Kez never being good enough to do more than comfort him through the aftermath. Kez being too scared to admit that sometimes, when he looked at Luci, he felt the same things he did when he looked at Sean.
It was so easy to give up on a mud-minded murderer, so Kez had given up on himself a long time ago. But he couldn’t stop thinking, if he followed this path, maybe he’d find a way to save Remy too.
That wasn’t part of Remy’s plan. But it made something stir in Kez’s dead heart, and his eyes lock on the path ahead with decisiveness.