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“Again, Edward?” It’s Robert's voice, and Edward, from where he’s sat staring at the overcast sky of late August, can’t help but wither inside a little more. He sighs, long and breathy, and tries to keep his voice upbeat, no matter how much his hands ache .
“The Doctor’s sick. Sorry, Robin.” Is all he murmurs, not turning to look at the man- his partner- stood at the door. Henry’s receded, to the deeper recesses of his mind, and has taken the half-complete sensation of his Magic with him. Edward is left with nothing, disobedient and red and hurting , even refusing to spiral out of his skin and tear open his scarred hands and scarred arms as it had done in the past. He’s had to take the Honer matching Robert’s off. It hurts to be touching his skin now. Everything hurts.
“So are you.” He hears Robert say, as he steps into the room a little more, drawing the door near-closed behind him. He doesn’t come further, and the bitter part of Edward (which feels like all of him, now) thinks he must be afraid of getting hurt. Of risking Edward’s not-Magic spilling forward in the surge of energy that barely slips out of Henry’s hands when Edward is too upset. When he is poisonous, and poisoning himself, and poisoning others.
He wonders if he’s human anymore, at that. He’s not a Mage. Certainly. That would mean he had Magic, control over his Magic, but he’s lost it now, and there’s a huge gap deep down where it used to glow and rise with the shaking of his hurting hands. He clenches them in his trousers, over the knees he’d pulled up to his chest. He wants to scream every time he ventures- or is forced- far enough to graze the empty space.
“I’m not.” He tells Robert, teeth clenched, voice lower this time as the faux-lightheartedness falls away to exhaustion and pain and all the bitterness that doesn’t seem to leave Edward at all. “He just couldn’t stand to see another child weeping or dying in its mother’s arms. And neither could I.”
“Really? Could you not? Or have you run away to hide up here and go back to your self-pitying brooding by the windowsill?” Where Robert had sounded skeptical and tired before, there is now a tone of annoyance that matches the one rising in Edward. He turns to glare at his partner for the first time since he entered the room, pouting at the man petulantly. His sleeves are pulled to his elbows, blazer abandoned, no apron. Just Robert’s bronze skinned hands, scarred with delicate spider webs, and his silver ring. His fingers are narrow, clenched. Surgeon’s hands, Edward muses. Hands that know Magic now, healed and capable.
Both thoughts rush up to him and he bites his lip as he turns away, to keep the anger swallowed down. He could actually hurt him. If he was afraid, then Robert’s fear was not unreasonable. Edward had felt like a ticking time bomb since the moment Henry had poisoned him, even as he agreed to do something with Robert to change the circumstances.
Even as he agreed and tried his best to keep it all together, as they opened the Society into a safe-haven when the riots swelled far too badly after Lucy’s death. When an MP had been shot, the scene framed to look like Magic. They had employed the help of the Lodgers, and anything left of the Forty Elephants after Patrin’s recovery, to keep the case closed and secret, Robert providing the estates, any place they could hide people, help people and not be found. The Society’s basement had been turned to an urgent care ward, for victims of the violence and Magical maladies that could not be helped. The increase in Magic Poisonings- intentional and unintentional alike- had dampened Edward’s spark, barely burning as it at last set in what they were doing, to nothing. He could not be on the ward- thanked God many times that he wasn’t expected there often- and left most of the work to Henry lest he become the danger.
It was difficult, even then, with half a core of Magic to cast reversal and protection spells. But it was better than what Edward would ever have again. There wasn’t a day when he didn’t know it.
He deflates as he goes back to staring out the window. It had been a long, horrible summer. The violence had not dimmed, but at least they were helping people now. Carrying forward Lucy’s legacy. Saviour. At least some of them. Edward’s not- he can’t- and he wants to be angry about it.
All that comes out is: “Leave me alone, Robert. I’m no use to you like this. Not to them, either.” He’s back to speaking in that sickening, quiet voice, that commands nothing of the certainty he thought he’d found after Lucy’s death. He hates it, and he hates himself, and he’s not a human or a Mage anymore. He can’t help it.
He hears Robert huff, the door closing behind him as he chances a reckless step towards Edward. If he closes his eyes tight enough, he could almost imagine the hum of Robert’s glistening, contained Magic. All is silent.
“I don’t believe that.” Until. “Because Henry made a remarkable doctor, Magic or not. There’s more than just what you don’t-”
“Save your philosophies, Hastie.” The knife drop. That anger resurfaces, pushes its head through to gasp a breath as Edward moves, pushes himself off the windowsill and barges past Robert. He turns to face him three quarters of the way to the door.
“Let’s face what we’ve both been avoiding, why don’t we?” He bites out. “Since the day I-” If he stops, or falters, more than just those words will fail him as well. He hesitated before, thought he got better. He’s hesitating now, and he knows he’s not better. “Since the day I accepted this. We both accepted this. Hell! Even before! You seem to misunderstand me, Robert Lanyon. You don’t seem to get what Henry has tried to tell you. And I can tell you're angry- about the lying, the endangerment, the running away. You didn’t say anything the night of the Exhibition because- I don’t know! Maybe you were too self-righteous! Maybe you had too much belief in me! Bury it! It’s undeserved.”
Anger. At himself? At being incapable?
Robert furrows his brows in bewilderment, wants to say something, but the set of his lips tell Edward all he needs to know. He’s hit the mark. “Sorry to disappoint, Robin, darling.” He’s almost surprised at his own outburst, but he’s taken the full brunt of one person’s emotion (ha! at last, Henry succeeded!) channeled through one half of a broken thing. He’s surprised everything that isn’t there hasn’t lashed out, and poisoned the air already. “But I’m not your Dr Jekyll. Never was and never will be and this time, you can’t brush it off!! I haven’t been, for a long while, the man you fell in love with. I haven’t been the Mage who wanted to save London. I am not your doctor and his knowledge and his steadfast hope. I am everything undesirable, flushed away into this.” He gestures grandly towards himself, cheeks red, voice scratching, hands searing . “I am the stupid, unworthy, arrogant parts that Henry Jekyll couldn’t stand of himself- I am the fire that burnt you, and him. I’m the cause and the conflict and for Christ’s sake, I speak far more than what I seem!”
“I am nothing.” The anger dwindles, if slightly. Robert’s eyes on him burn, and it’s like they’re in Henry’s laboratory all over again, and Robert looks like he’s about to cry, and Henry can hear his mother laugh. Except it’s Edward now, and the only thing laughing is himself. Truth.
“Didn’t feel it before, that’s all it was.” He is resigned, wants to be, as he brushes it off. He can’t. “But now I’m a ‘Mage’ with no Magic, and I feel it everyday.” When all is said and done, all that Edward gets is a harsh glare, shallow at the edges, if he looks- because Robert loved him, once. Then, a deep, settling weight in his chest. He turns away, gets to the door before he bites out.
“Go downstairs, Dr. Lanyon. I’m sure there’s a patient in need of you.”
And then thinks, as he slams the door behind him, how desperately he needs a drink. Somewhere, his mother’s ghost is laughing.