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The cold mist that lingered around the Motherlobe danced and wrapped around Razputin like ghosts, grasping at his shoulders and skin with icy fingers, seeking warmth and purchase. He pulled his jacket closer, ducking his chin and dragging his goggles over his eyes to muffle the sensory input. Still, the water persisted.
That was the issue, after all. Water.
Even with the truth about Maligula - Nona - Lucrecia revealed, even with the truth about the curse—the Hand of Galochio—brought to light, even after all he had been through, he was afraid.
Like the mist clawing at his gloves and his hair and his lips, he was terrified the water would rise up to snatch him off his perch, and drag him deep down to drown.
Still, exposure therapy was supposed to help and he did his best thinking at early hours, when the world was still waking up. Thinking with his legs dangling over a large source of water was just...it was exposure. It was exposure.
(It didn't quell the violent way his elbows were quaking. It didn't still the war drum beating in his heart. It just put him on edge instead of over it, tethering him with a bungee cord to a cliff instead of pitching head-first into the depths of terror. But he was a Psychonaut. He could handle it. He saved the world three times in three days—give or take twelve hours. His fear of water should be child's play in comparison.)
The cold mist—and wasn't mist just very thin water vapor?—tried to work its claws under Raz's clothing but he pulled in on himself like a turtle, trying to shut out everything so he didn't have to think about liquids like—
Blood coursed down his chin as he dried himself off with pyrokinesis—
Gallons of water flooded his lungs—
Bodies, floating on the surface of a too-still lake—
His chest was caving under the pressure—
They left him they left him they left him they left him—
He could feel the waves beneath his feet, calling for him—
The snake slammed into his body, icy fangs plunging into his arm, sharper than any knife—
Hands pressed against a mucous-coated bubble of air, beckoning him like a siren song—
Dragged out by his ankle, he regurgitated enough liquid to fill a large drinking glass and sobbed—
Blue and green and a deep black where things he could not even begin to imagine lurk—
Inside of him lurks a monster that killed his sister he killed her he killed her he killed her—
"Raz?"
He was glad it was early and the only people up were the night shift, insomniacs, and early birds. Otherwise, more than just those happy few would have been privy to the shriek he let out.
It sounded like a distressed deer. Or a panicking rabbit.
(Or a person who had been so deep in thought that they genuinely thought they were going to be murdered and their body thrown into the water.)
Lili looked more concerned than amused, however, and sat down next to him. "Sorry."
"No, I'm sorry—" Raz started but she cut him off with a look.
He didn't need telepathy to know she wanted him to shut up. His teeth clicked as he shut his mouth.
He tried a different approach. "You're up early."
"Weather's going to take a dive and I wanted to check on my more sensitive plants." Lili jerked her head back in the direction of her garden. "Most of them are fine except one, who's complaining about the dip in temperature. I told it that it's welcome to be transplanted and brought to the greenhouse in the Motherlobe but it complained that its roots wouldn't get enough spread or depth so it would simply 'suffer the wilting'." Even with his helmet dampening his hearing, Raz could pick up on the audible eye rolling Lili was doing.
"Any issues with the clippings?" His voice was a little creaky—he hadn't had his morning hot drink and the screaming hadn't helped—but he made sure to project properly. The vibrations in his chest helped him gauge the volume.
He apparently got it right because Lili didn't say—or think—anything to the contrary. "So the fruits seem to be doing fine, but the tubers are being really picky. Nitrogen levels aren't right nor is the oxygen, too much light, too hot, too little light, blah blah blah." She leaned back on her hands and hissed. The mist around her head parted, evaporating quickly as it came in contact with her frustration, framing her in a halo of refracted light. The subsonic warbling of her ambient pyrokinesis rattled something loose in Raz's chest and he nodded.
"Moving can be hard. New places are scary." He wasn't talking about the plants. Not entirely.
"Yeah, they are. That's why I'm being gentle with them." Neither was she.
That was something he liked about Lili. Even though he still was having a hard time wrapping his head around the whole dating thing—Gisu and Dion dated like they were never going to see each other again, always kissing and so on, while Norma and Frazie dated like they hated each other, so it's not like he had much in the realm of examples—she just got him. Even if she couldn't read his thoughts as easily as he could hers, she understood him better than anyone. They worked together like Sasha and Milla. Seamless and without a second thought.
(Maybe that's who he should look to for relationship goals instead of his older siblings. Maybe then he wouldn't worry that he wasn't doing things right. Maybe then he would be friends with her first and then more than friends.)
"Any luck getting your brother to stop being a butthead?" Lili idly levitated a rock and skipped it across the water with telekinesis.
"Queepie's doing fine working with Morris." He didn't want to say 'working for' because everyone knew Morris wasn't paying him, but also, Queepie took his position as DJ for K-L.O.B. seriously. He needed to respect that.
"Not the brother I meant," she pegged him on the back of his head with a small stone and he laughed.
"Nah, he's fine. Nothing going regarding the whole psychic-phobia thing but...I mean, he tolerates me." Raz shrugged. Some of the fuzzy sensation of overstimulation and panic was leaving the tips of his fingers so he pulled up his goggles and blinked as the sharp air stung slightly.
"Tolerates," Lili hissed. He could finally feel the warmth she was letting off, like a small heater, and as she got more frustrated, the temperature peaked.
"I mean, he and Gisu seem to be doing fine enough."
"He and Gisu don't stop sucking face long enough to see everyone else placing bets on how long it takes Gisu to realize he's she actually likes him." Lili snickered and skipped another rock on the water. The noise it made as it connected with one of the psy-activated stepping stones was satisfying.
Raz giggled too. He had almost forgotten about the betting pool.
He had a week's worth of chores and a limited variant cover True Psychic Tales Issue #7 on Dion calling her his girlfriend before she figured it out.
Frazie had a single hand-tailored outfit on Gisu calling him her boyfriend accidentally and then skateboarding away in the ensuing panic.
(Neither of them had a lot of money on hand but the informal Junior Agent Betting Pool allowed for trades of goods and services in lieu of cold hard cash. That didn't stop Adam from placing five pound six on Gisu lasting two more weeks before it hit her like a freighter, nor did it stop Morris from putting seven dollars and an hour airtime on K-L.O.B. towards Gisu having to be told by outside forces that she and Dion were capital-D Dating.)
"Do you know if she always goes for the type with one brain cell or is Dion special?"
"According to the plants near the intern dorms, she is what the kids call a 'morosexual'." Lili snickered and TKed another rock. Four skips then it sank with a plunk.
"Consistency is nice, I guess...," Raz hummed. He didn't know what else to say. His tongue was lead in his mouth, too big to move. Too heavy to care about.
The sun was slowly rising, casting the Motherlobe in glittering golds and pinks, warm hues scattering into the robin's egg sky. Heat from Lili and the warming earth scattered the mist and Raz found his breath coming easier than before. A soft tendril of worry snaked across the nape of his neck. He poked Lili in the arm with mellow reassurance.
He could still feel her worry, cicadas and rattlesnakes, the buzz lingering even after she drew her thoughts closer around her.
(He wished he didn't need special accommodations like that. He hated that people had to rein their thoughts in all the time when he was nearby. He wanted to let people into his head like he could enter theirs but...ten years of learned habits were hard to undo. Especially ones forged as a coping mechanism.)
He pushed a single thought her way. How's Bob?
Good, she responded, her telepathic voice echoing between them. Blue and tacky, the residual worry stuck to the edges of her thoughts. He's...him and dad are talking at least. They argued again.
The mission to Grulovia? The end of that thought was spiked with yellow burrs of worry and the pain of biting your tongue. Lili winced, the emotion overpowering. The gunmetal guilt that followed made her frown.
Papa wants to make sure he's ship-shape before he leaves. Doesn't want them to get hurt on the retrieval. She wrapped her response in red-brick stubbornness and 'don't you dare apologize'. She wanted it to make a lasting impact. But Uncle Bob wants his husband back. I get it though...he's having a hard time.
Bob is— Raz cut himself off from her as the memory of what he encountered inside of Bob's head pushed itself to the forefront of his brain. That wasn't his to share. She didn't need to see that.
Letting off a wave of denim sorrow, Lili drew back as well. She flopped back on the grass and stared up at the sky. Raz mimicked her, the crisp sunlight blinding but refreshing.
They laid there, side by side for a few moments of blissful, agonizing silence.
(It was interesting how many things could be contradictory and yet not mutually exclusive. Sensations. Emotions. People.)
Speaking of...
"Have you talked to him at all?" Raz grimaced when Lili broke the quiet. When she didn't receive an answer after a few moments, she rolled over to glare at him and he could feel his skin warming. "Raz."
"No," he admitted. Shame choked his voice but he didn't go back to telepathy. He didn't want her to be privy to his thoughts and emotions. If he opened up psychically, he wouldn't be able to dam the flow. She would feel everything. See everything.
"Raz." Pity, or, no, wait, perhaps something closer to worry. Negative emotions like that tended to blur together, like the grey and white in clouds. "Raz," she urged, sharp but not angry. Concerned, maybe.
"He said 'mission first, mad later'. It's later." I can be mad. He kept the thought to himself but he did think it.
It felt like a little secret. A victory against his own forgiving nature.
Lili wordlessly hissed but didn't insist he needed to apologize. Instead she skootched closer to him and sat up, legs crossed, looking down at him.
The heat she was giving off was soothing. It was a balm to the itching of repressed tears. His lip wobbled but he didn't cry.
(There was nothing wrong with crying. His mom and dad cried all the time. Crying was a healthy way to express emotions. He just...didn't want to do it now. Not when he was having a think. Not around Lili.)
Lili let him think—and it was her letting him think because she was pulling all her thoughts close to her head, keeping them from disturbing his own—until he was ready.
"He was my hero."
Lili didn't respond. She just let him talk, her ambient warmth shifting from uncomfortably hot to comforting, like a blanket.
"And I know...he didn't mean to hurt anyone. He just wanted his friend back but...my family...I was..." The frustration choked his voice but he didn't trust his mind. He didn't trust the rush of water that would slam into her mind. His own mind was backed up. Dams in Grulovia weren't the most...structurally sound. "The curse wasn't real but I still can't go into water. He didn't mean to do anything bad but I'm still dealing with the fallout."
I want to hate him like Frazie does, but I still want his praise. I can't have both. The thought was small and snuck out without his consent. He plugged the hole with a finger, cheeks flushing with frustration, and sat up again to look out at the lake and the mist skating on its surface. Maybe if he didn't make eye contact with Lili, she wouldn't realize he hadn't meant for that to happen.
Beside him, she shifted and sighed. "When I thought Nick - Gristol was my dad, I was terrified I had done something awful. My last words to him were so mean and he was so sick and then...he wasn't responding to my probing or psychic herb therapy or even my voice and...I was sick with worry. I put on a tough face and all but...that's my only dad. My only parent." Even with his back to her, Raz could feel the bitter wine-dark of her regret and frustration in waves, the tide tearing at his own conflict.
"So when it turned out that, like, that wasn't my dad? I felt relieved but also...sick. Because whoever was pretending to be my dad, they let me worry. They let me believe it was all my fault. So I got mad, like I always do but, yanno..." She rolled the thought around, eyes narrowing as she tried to find the right way to word it. Eventually, she settled on, "You were more angry on my behalf than I would have thought and that helped."
Raz turned to make eye contact with her, confused. Her soft smile bordered worry but she nodded at him.
"Even when it came down to it, you were mad at Gristol on my behalf and on the behalf of the Grulovians who suffered under his father's corrupt rule and on the behalf of your dad and Lucrecia and the Psychic Si-Seven. You had every right to be mad because he hurt you, but you were only ever angry because he hurt other people." Lili gestured with a hand in the direction of the Gulch. "So it's okay to be mad at Ford and all, coz you have every right, but maybe the disconnect here is you're actually mad on your own behalf."
That...made some degree of sense. Still, it was hard for Raz to wrap his mind around why being mad at Ford was so hard.
Lili continued. "Anger is exhausting. It's hard to keep being mad all the time." Raz looked shocked and worried, afraid he had accidentally projected his thoughts out and she'd picked up on them, but she just laughed and punched him on the arm. "Don't be like that. I just could tell coz it was all over your face. But, like I was saying, being mad is exhausting. Sometimes it's easier to just be resigned to it. Sometimes it's better to forgive but not forget." The way she spoke, even and careful, made him think it was something she struggled with as well.
He apologized but I— Raz let that thought out, unable to vocalize it without choking. Snakelike, it whipped from his mind to hers but she didn't flinch. Even with the biting frustration coating the edges, she was calm. That helped alleviate some of Raz's concerns.
He can apologize and you aren't obligated to accept it. You can understand what he did and why he did it, but still be hurt. Lili responded telepathically. Her own thoughts snapped like a Venus fly trap, painted in the colors of her father and Bob.
Raz frowned, pivoting the conversation away from his issues. So Bob? What's it like having him back?
Lili laughed, pushing the air through her nose in a surprised little huff. "Believe it or not? It's...weird. I thought having another herbophanist around would be nice? Sometimes my plants don't respond well to my method of gardening and he has, I dunno, decades of experience? But he's...he doesn't know how to act around me?"
"He spent the better part of two decades alone, Lil." Raz tried to cushion the blow to her ego but she soldiered on.
"He looks...terrified sometimes. Like he thinks he's going to wake up and it's all going to have been a dream. Or that he'll say the wrong thing and I'll hate him forever but...I've talked to his plants." Again, her ambient temperature began rising and Raz shifted as it started to get uncomfortably warm. "Every last one of them cares about him. Even the maneaters and the explosive ones. There's not a single piece of flora in the Gulch that doesn't have something nice to say about him. Even that weird purple flower near my garden?" She jerked her head backward to indicate it in its grotto behind them.
Raz remembered how odd the plant was. A solitary purple flower growing in a beam of sunlight in a cave glittering with residual psitanium, its face turned upward to drink the water dripping from purple stalactites, its petals the same color as the psychic ore. It hummed, as if alive and aware, psychically audible even to someone like him, who couldn't talk to a squirrel, let alone a plant.
"That was his. It was a cutting from a plant he kept a long time ago. Took really well to psitanium-rich soil and, when the Motherlobe was built, he planted it there so he had someone to talk to." Lili continued. "And even after not seeing him for about ten years, it has high praise for him. I just don't get why he can't talk to me..."
"He's out of practice, Lil." Raz didn't want to talk about the version of Lili Bob had constructed in his mind, the voice uncannily wrong but the image pitch-perfect, an echo chamber of his own self-loathing. Wasn't his place. "Give him time. I promise it'll get better."
"Mmm.” She opted to say nothing about the hypocrisy of him saying that now, after his whole issue with Ford.
"Maybe...ask him for help with one of your troublemakers? You said that there was a really stubborn one?" Raz offered.
Lili jumped on that thought. "Yeah! Maybe I could get advice about the zinnia that's been bothering me. Damn thing won't listen to me and won't talk about what's bothering it and I'm at my wits end."
Content he had helped, Raz looked back out at the water. Now that the morning was in full swing, the sun had chased away the mist and the cerulean and aquamarine of the lake reflected the golden sun above in scattered flickering waves. Fear wrapped its grimy hands around Raz's throat but he fought it away, staring down the sight of what should be beautiful.
It was beautiful.
(So are poison dart frogs. Beauty does not remove the deadly aspect of a thing.)
"Raz?" Raz startled. Lili had scooted over so that she was sitting next to him, her own feet dangling over the lip of the wall and brushing the water like his were. Her brows pinched but she nodded at the lake in front of them. "It's gonna get better, you know that, right?"
He didn't know how to answer. On the one hand, he did know that things would get better. On the other, sometimes the loudest thoughts were the ones that said nothing was going to change.
He opted to remain silent, though he picked up on a ripple of an emotion from Lili that he couldn't...quite...identify.
"You have your family and the Psychonauts and the whole Psychic Seven have pretty much adopted you. And also there's me," she caught his eye and smiled. He smiled back. "You're not alone and, even if you have bad days, you're moving forward. Besides...if things were really dire, I'm certain there are five people at the minimum who would break the laws of nature regarding life and death to make sure you were home safe and sound, and one of them is Sasha."
The idea of Sasha Nein, outspoken about his distaste of necromancy and other pseudosciences that mixed folklore and psychic abilities, resorting to necromancy to help him was comical. It was also heartwarming.
"Besides," she continued nonchalantly, "it's not like you're powerless either. Youngest intern, youngest junior agent, saved the world three times in three days, and you have more versatile psychic skills than any average agent does. If anyone can do it, it's you."
Suddenly and without warning, a thought occurred to him, linking the compliment of how powerful he was with his familial relation to Maligula. He could barely stop the wave of icy fear that ripped out of him.
Lili looked at him with concern as he clenched his teeth so hard his jaw ached. "Hey?" She asked, hand hovering near but not on his shoulder.
He wanted to bury this concern deep, deep down but she'd already felt it. She knew something was wrong.
Lili didn't let go of things if they caught her attention. He liked that about her but in this situation it was...bad.
"What's wrong?" She pressed. He could feel her worry waver, tacky honey clinging for support against his shield for comfort or confirmation.
"Just...thinking."
"Talk to me about it," she pushed. Then, as an afterthought, she added, "You don't have to use your voice if you can't. Either way works but you - you need to talk about it."
He got a quick memory from Lili about something she found in Otto's lab once. Bottles of some sort of plasma, the energy different based on the label. Emotions, corked and capped and put on a shelf until later, when they could be dealt with.
Only later never really came and Otto just accumulated a collection that seemed almost threatening, each emotion negative, each bottle bigger than the last. Each emotion a thought or breakdown trapped in a glass prison. Lili had dropped one and screamed as fury overwhelmed her. Thankfully, Otto had a good fire suppression system in his lab.
Dad made him promise to never do that again. Lili thought. Raz assumed he wasn't supposed to have heard that. Guilt pressed down on him and she took his grimace as relating to the shock of emotion he had let off.
"It's just..." Raz tried to find the right words for how he was feeling, sorting through his vocabulary until he could grab ahold of the proper ones. Eventually he gave up and opted to coat some of his words in emotions so he could be understood. "Nona said hydrokinesis is hereditary, right?" Fear, dripping black and purple with yellow slit eyes soaked the word for psychic control of water.
Lili nodded her eyes on his. When he broke eye-contact, she didn't continue to pursue it. She was letting him be as comfortable as he could be.
"And everyone says I'm so strong. I learn fast, I use psychic skills in ways most don't think about, and I know variant skills that are decades old at the least and haven't been taught to anyone in years." Worry. A silhouette against the sky. Snakes made of water with fangs bared. A drowned sibling. "Everyone has a Maligula. Everyone has the potential to be something awful if they let themselves but..."
The Aquatos are more afraid of that possibility than anyone else. Maligula was one of their own.
Lili was struck with an image drenched in fear and horror. Raz, skin the same sickly shade as Maligula's, yellow eyes and teeth bared, water surrounding him in a spout as he shrieked in fury. No one could stop him. There was no way to reach what had been Razputin in the depths of this monster's head. And the world drowned because he was too clever, too strong, too eager.
He was afraid of himself.
It's why his hydrokinesis worked the way it did. Partially because he was hydrophobic—the many near-death experiences he had in water had finally taken their toll and, even knowing that there was no curse, Raz was scared of drowning in a mundane way because he'd almost done so many many times before—the rest of his issues with his powers were because he was scared of letting himself be powerful because what if he repeated history? What if he became a problem? What if he hurt someone?
Thinking about that possibility—that nightmare Raz must have had with some frequency—Lili idly kicked the water at his feet, surprised when her shoe passed beneath the surface when his were resting atop it.
"Raz." The tone she took was, surprisingly, almost bored. Just a few degrees off her normal cadence. The consistency was comforting but it did draw his attention and he looked away from the water and back to her.
"Huh?"
"You're a dummy." With that said, she shoved him off the ledge and onto the water.
Raz shrieked in fear before his back hit the hard surface beneath him, shocking him into silence.
He didn't sink into it, instead laying on top of it like it was solid ground.
Lili poked her head over the ledge where they had been sitting and grinned at him, though it was somewhat apologetic. Her hair dangled down just enough for it to brush his face and the sensation told him he wasn't dead or dreaming. "Sorry about that but you needed a reminder."
"Of?" His voice came out choked, the wind having been knocked clean out of him on impact.
"You're too protective to become some kind of evil psychic monster villain thing." Raz was taken aback at how easily she made what she was saying seem like the obvious truth. "And you have too good a support system."
"What do you mean?" He sat up on the water's surface, surprised at how it was acting and more than a little scared it would suddenly stop.
"You're hydrokinetic, hydrophobic or not. Your powers always manifested that as the Hand thingy, right? But now that you know it's not a curse, all that means is that you don't want to go into water. So it doesn't let you go into it." Lili gestured with her hand at the water holding him up. "Even if you're not consciously deciding to, your power and your subconscious are protective. Between this and your rock hard head, I think there's a zero percent chance you'll ever go full Maligula. No one would be able to crack your noggin enough to manipulate you and you care too much about others to hurt them. You can't even be mad at someone for hurting you."
Raz shakily stood up and marveled at how the water was exactly like ground. How it pressed against his feet without him having to fight the waves caused by the wind. He bent his knees and bounced in place a couple times, then tried a front flip. Despite the smacking sound of his feet when he landed, it was the same as if he did one on land.
Interesting.
"And besides," Lili added, "Even if you did flip your lid and decide to flood the world, there's a bunch of people who, as super powerful you might be, would kick your ass until you got the message to cut it out. You're not alone, like I said earlier."
Raz looked up at her, then back at the water. "How did you know I wouldn't fall in?"
"Your feet. My shoes are a little wet but yours? Dry as a bone. Where you had been dangling your legs, the water in the lake was still and flat. Figured it out from there." She looked so proud of herself.
Raz pulled her into the lake with telekinesis.
When she finally resurfaced, looking somewhat like a drowned cat, Raz was nearly incapacitated by laughter, tears coursing down his cheeks. She steamed and simmered but couldn't be too mad.
She could, however, be indignant. "Har har har, very funny."
He couldn't answer her through his laughter but that was fine. Things were looking up.
And she was right. Even if things looked bad, they could only get better. He had so many people who cared about him and just as many people he cared about.
He wasn't alone—not anymore—and that made all the difference.