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Scythe Constantine was a man very familiar with hospitals.
He had a vain streak, born out of his dedication to aesthetic, meaning he had turned the corner many more times than the average person — to the extent that in old photos he looked near-unrecognisable. So he was just as at-ease in a hospital as he was in his own home. When the nurse had informed him the acid had burned off a significant amount of his face, enough that he needed to stay overnight, and apologised profusely for the inconvenience, he waived off any concerns. The bandages that covered his head were like a second skin, the mattress beneath him could have been his own, he might as well have been in his own home, he was so relaxed. He had the utmost faith in the ability of the hospital to restore everything to normal, if not improve upon it.
Maybe if he hadn’t placed so much faith in the abilities of fallible doctors the words wouldn’t have left him so stunned.
“I’m afraid, Your Honour, that we won’t be able to replace your eyes.”
He’d learned a long time ago to never ask a pointless question, but he couldn’t think of anything to say besides, “...What?”
“Well, you see, we can reconstruct your eyes but the problem is with…” His brain muffled the rest of their explanation. How bizarre to have his brain do things against the will of his mind, it had been so long since he’d been so undisciplined.
What a lousy investigator he was, the way the nurse had spoken alone, dancing around the point, stuttering and 'sorry'ing incessantly, should’ve made it obvious to him that they had bad news. He’d simply chalked it up to him being such an imposing figure, even among other scythes. How foolish of him. If it was good news the nurse would have been eager to tell him and possibly get immunity while he was in good spirits, not nervous about being gleaned. The familiarity of the environment had lured him into a false sense of comfort and let him be caught off guard.
No, that wasn’t right. He had let the familiarity of the hospital comfort him and he had elected to drop his guard. He had no one to blame but himself and his own childish attachments to shallow comforts for rendering him oblivious to the obvious truth.
“Scythe Constantine?”
He snapped his head back up out of habit, as if to mimic the act of looking the nurse in the eye, not realising his head had tipped down at all, and asked coldly, “Will that be all?”
“Oh! Umm… yes well if you need anything else there’s a button just there- um... on the left-hand side of your bed that will call for a nurse’s attention. I hope the rest of your visit is... good,” it sounded like they had ended with a grimace.
“Goodbye.”
At least he was a competent-enough scythe to be able to hear them scamper away, and his deductive skills did not fail him so much that he couldn’t decipher how desperately they wanted to leave the room.
***
Scythe Armstrong was the first to visit him after he’d been given the news and had been keen enough to ask the staff about his status before coming in to speak with him from the chair at his bedside,
“What are you going to do?”
The audacity of the question made Constantine forget all his internal melodramatics, “Well, once the High Blade has approved our request to revive the unsavories it’s just a matter of interrogating them about their plan. I doubt they were working alone, the Thunderhead would never allow regular people to have access to such corrosive acid.”
“And what of their escaped accomplice?”
The Armstrong he knew would’ve asked if he was implying that a scythe had been involved in the plot. He frowned, “Well obviously we’ll need to search harder for a record of him, but more to the point, ask the unsavories what’s so important about him in particular that his record vanished while the rest of theirs have remained. He’s been there since the beginning, it’s possible that his initial public record was faked. If it’s possible for one to be destroyed it’s possible for one to be counterfeit. Maybe that’s true for the others’ records as well so we’ll see if we can find anything that hints toward that being the case. Also-”
“-Scythe Constantine. With all due respect, and a lot is due believe me, do you think it is wise for you to continue work on this investigation?”
He waited a beat before responding, “Why don’t you say what you mean, Armstrong?”
There was a long pause before any noise was made at all. For a moment Constantine feared his subordinate had just left him there to prove his point, but he carefully kept his face still just in case, and his gamble paid off when he heard Armstrong’s voice from the same place as before,
“Scythe Constantine, I’m afraid that your blindness has made me question whether or not you will be able to continue in your role as Head of the Scythedom’s Bureau of Investigation, especially as you may now harbor a personal vendetta against a primary suspect. I have also become unsure,” another pause, a deep breath in, then out again, “if you will be able to continue to carry out your duties as a scythe.”
As much as he was growing to hate long, tense pauses (which he typically loved dearly), Constantine had to take another in order to control his instinctual, emotional response to such a claim, it would only make him seem unstable. He then needed to take a second moment to piece together what he was going to say in response,
“Scythe Armstrong, if you have any questions or concerns about my ability to perform any of my myriad of duties you should inform High Blade Xenocrates or present them at Conclave where I will tell you what I tell you now: I remain perfectly able to do all that the Scythedom requires or asks of me and any suggestion to the contrary is the height of disrespect. If you have no other information in regards to the status of the investigation then leave my room.”
A sigh sounded from the doorway, and Scythe Armstrong left the door to swing shut as he left.
***
Scythe Anastasia’s decision to not ask the hospital staff about his condition (not that Constantine believed she could even think of the idea to decide against it) meant her visit walked a torturous tightrope between comforting, since she treated him the same way she always had — with mild suspicion and a baseline level of cordiality — and tense, since it meant she constantly said things that reminded him that he was blind and he kept feeling that he needed to inform her of that fact. Now he understood what a poor hand that nurse had been dealt.
“I assure you, Anastasia, that I will personally interrogate the unsavories we captured, before we reglean them, and we will apprehend Greyson Tolliver,” he told her, trying his best to enunciate and not allow the painkillers, which seemed to affect him more as time went on, to slur his words. “He will pay for his actions in every way allowable under Scythe law.”
“Still, he saved everyone in that theater by breaking that pipe,” she reminded him.
“He murdered BladeGuard Custofer by breaking that pipe, and!-” he managed to cut himself off before he said something he was sure to regret, no thanks to the potent painkillers in his system, but Anastasia caught his mistake regardless. It was foolish to hope for anything less.
“And what?” she asked.
“Nothing.” She tried to ask again but he was quicker, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he could extract the emotion from them, damn painkillers, “Of course Tolliver managed to save all of the civilians but he was involved in this plot regardless, likely since the very beginning when he first jumped in front of your car. Just because he might regret his prior decisions — and we don’t even know for certain that he does! — doesn’t make him exempt from the consequences. Not to mention the questions raised by the complications with his public record. Something stinks in this scheme and I’m going to get to the bottom of it and dole out due punishment,” he punctuated the final four words with his hand and tried to ignore how hot he’d suddenly gotten and the sound of his own belabored breathing.
“And what?”
Was she still on that? “Four of the assailants were from the Lone Star Region,” he threw out, just for something to say, just as a distraction, for her or himself he wasn’t sure.
“What did you mean before when you said ‘and’? And what?”
He sighed, it was time to bite the bullet. He tried to think of a way to phrase it in a professional manner that said ‘I am still physically, mentally, and emotionally stable enough to do my duties. Also no I am not just seeking revenge against an innocent man.’
“While Greyson Tolliver’s decision to break the pipe in the Orpheum Theater helped to save the lives of many innocent people, it also had the impact of killing BladeGuard Custofer and,” he’d promised himself he wouldn’t dramatically pause before the reveal but he supposed it was second nature, “permanently blinding myself.”
There was a stretch of silence before she eloquently responded, “What?”
“Use your words Scythe Anastasia.”
“That’s- I’m-” she was silent for a moment, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say.”
He laughed, “It’s funny. I imagined you’d be apologising for putting me in that position, not for your poor conversational skills.”
“Scythe Constantine I-”
“Don’t say anything.” He sighed, “I don’t blame you, I don’t want an apology from you, I don’t even want you to thank me for my sacrifice.” This was hell. This was what those from the Mortal Age meant when they spoke of hell, a world where the people around you wept for your tragedy and simultaneously doubted your competence. This was unbearable. “All I want, is to discuss this investigation without facing questions about my future or my eyes or my competency.”
When he heard Anastasia take a breath to speak he tensed, but was pleasantly surprised to hear her ask, “So, do you think the plan was masterminded by somebody from the Lone Star Region?”