Archive of Our Own

Anaxa is three weeks out of the hospital and not yet used to being half blind when Aglaea shows up at his door for the first time since the divorce.

“Fuck,” he hisses as the doorbell rings. His hands are covered in parmesan crumbs and there’s flour dusted periodically along the front of his shirt. He’s halfway through making himself dinner—spaghetti alfredo, which is apparently way more complicated than he’s been led to believe. Admittedly it’s probably harder with one eye than it would have been with two. He bangs his hip into the kitchen counter and curses at the resulting pain that spirals through his leg, but pushes on like a soldier on the battlefield until he finally reaches his door.

Aglaea is standing there in her gorgeous white midi dress looking like a lawyer about to win her thousandth case. She looks him up and down briefly. “There’s flour in your hair,” she says, instead of saying something like, Hello, or, I know it’s been three years but how have you been?

Anaxa glares at her and runs one hand through his hair, which probably only makes it worse. “No apologies?” he says coldly. “No begging my forgiveness? No ‘fuck you’ even?”

Aglaea doesn’t rise to the bait. She never does. It’s one of the things Anaxa hates most about her. She wasn’t even angry when he suggested getting a divorce. Now she looks at him with that half-critical, half-pitying expression and says, “You look terrible.”

“I’m fine, Aglaea.”

“Missing an eye doesn’t seem fine to me.”

“I,” says Anaxa loudly, “am fine. I was discharged weeks ago, Aglaea. You’re nearly a month late to bring flowers to my bedside and wish me declining health.”

“That’s not it, and you know it. Let me in.”

“No,” Anaxa decides, because for some reason her neutrality is making him irrationally angry. “Whatever it is, you can say it on my doorstep.”

Aglaea sighs through her nose. “One of my clients’ homes burned down.”

“Oh, boo-hoo,” Anaxa drawls, rolling his now-singular eye. “Which one? The Paris vacation home, or the Madrid?”

“Don’t be cruel,” Aglaea says quietly. “It was Audata and Hieronymus.”

Abruptly, guilt crashes into him. Anaxa remembers them—they were some of Aglaea’s first clients, back when she was still in college barely scraping together enough money for tuition, let alone enough for sewing supplies. Audata was her roommate and went with her to every warehouse looking for discount fabrics. “Are they having trouble finding a place to stay?”

“Anaxagoras, they died.”

Anaxa stares at her. She’s still so perfectly composed. Every hair in place. Not a speck of dirt on her white clothes. Not a single smudge in her makeup. Not a trace of grief in her eyes. She really hasn’t changed. He pulls the door further open. “Come in.”

Aglaea takes off her shoes at the entrance. There’s nowhere for her to put them on the shoe rack, so she leaves them by the wall. He pours her a too-full glass of wine and then realizes he never set a timer on the noodles, which he boiled maybe fifteen minutes ago. He hastily dumps them into the colander in the sink. They’re probably overdone. The steam billows up into his face and makes the bandages over his eye sting.

“None for you?” she asks, as she takes the wine glass from him. “You used to drink like you didn’t want to wake up in the morning.”

Anaxa shakes his head. “Doctor’s orders. I’m not dumb enough to drink on codeine.”

“Right.” Aglaea looks at his bandaged eye, then back down into the wine glass. “I don’t know how I forgot.” She downs nearly half of it in one long sip.

“I’m sorry,” he says eventually. “They seemed like good people.”

Aglaea looks straight ahead at him. At his bandaged eye, or maybe at his one remaining good one. At the flour in his hair. At the mess his life has become.

“They had children,” she says finally. “Their daughter perished in the fire, but their son, Phainon, survived. He’s going to enter the foster system, unless—well, I was his godparent.”

“He’s been dealt a shitty hand either way,” Anaxa says drily. “The foster system, or being adopted by you. That’s one hell of a lose-lose situation.”

“There’s a third possibility.”

Anaxa tries to raise his eyebrows and is met with a world of medication-dulled pain in his left eye. “Shit,” he hisses, leaning over forward. “What third possibility?” he asks through gritted teeth. “You mean you give the poor kid to some rich foreign couple?”

“The third possibility,” Aglaea says, “is that you take him.”

Anaxa barks out a laugh.

“I’m serious.”

The laughter suddenly tastes bitter in his mouth. “You’re never fucking joking,” Anaxa mutters. “Maybe I wouldn’t have divorced you if you’d joked more.”

“I’m here out of goodwill, Anaxagoras,” says Aglaea coldly. “You could at least respect my intentions.”

“The goodwill of shunting a kid off onto me?” Anaxa asks, incredulous. “Have you seen me? I’m as good as insane, Aglaea. I can’t even take care of myself. How could I possibly take on someone else in addition?”

“You’re not insane,” Aglaea says quietly. “I’ve always thought you’re brilliant.”

Maybe it’s the fucked-up vision talking, but she looks a little different. Sadder. Less infallible. A few years older than she used to.

Aglaea finishes off the wine. She sets down the glass. She looks at him expectantly.

“What the hell,” Anaxa says, apropos of nothing. “Sure. Why the fuck not.”

Aglaea smiles, just a little.

“What are you looking at me like that for?”

Aglaea looks as though she’s going to say something heavy, something important, but then the corner of her mouth twitches upwards. “Your sauce is burning.”

Anaxa turns around. The sauce is indeed burning on the stove. Fuck. He used to be better at this. At cooking. At taking care of himself. He used to know how to function.

“I brought you this,” Aglaea says, and pulls something out of her bag. It’s a single-serving salad kit, just like he used to always eat in college. “Just in case.”

The salad is the last straw. It’s so presumptuous, so conceited, so… so accurate. She even got the one with the dressing he likes. “Fuck you,” Anaxa says, snatching back his wine glass. “Get out of my house.”

Aglaea fixes the strap of her purse and slips her shoes back on. “I’ll send over your half of the paperwork tonight. Tomorrow, at noon, I’ll be back.”

“Good night,” Anaxa says, and slams the door behind her.

As soon as she’s gone, the room feels too quiet. Anaxa’s apartment isn’t even very large—no one would accuse it of being too big for one person. But somehow, the loneliness in the wake of her presence is worse than it was before. Now it’s just him and his burnt sauce and his overcooked pasta.

Anaxa carefully steps around the kitchen counter and looks closer at the sauce. It’s pretty damn burnt. And the pasta. It’s nearly falling apart.

Aglaea knows him too well. He gives up. He eats the fucking salad.

***

So Anaxa signs a bunch of convoluted paperwork and marks his marital status as ‘divorced’ and says that yes, he’s going to take the kid anyway even though he was written into the will as a guardian when he was still married, and then he’s got a kid.

Anaxa didn’t know Audata and Hieronymus very well, but he met them at the wedding, and several times afterwards. They were fiercely loyal people and loved with the type of strength that made them almost stubborn in their devotion. Thus he expects Phainon to be the same way, to some degree. He expects Phainon to be sad and scared and shocked and, ultimately, predisposed to hate him.

But when Aglaea brings him in, he isn’t like that at all.

“Hello,” the kid says, beaming up at him. “I’m Phainon! Miss Aglaea says I’m gonna live with you now! Is she lying to me?”

“Hello,” Anaxa parrots, feeling a little idiotic. Phainon is short, but fortunately not short enough that Anaxa needs to bend down to talk to him. “I’m Anaxagoras. And she isn’t lying. I’ll be taking care of you, now that your family is no longer able to.”

“Okay,” says Phainon. “Can I put my shoes here?”

He’s wearing spotless white sneakers that look suspiciously like something Aglaea would have chosen. It’s faintly annoying. “Yes, of course,” Anaxa says, and resolves to ignore the Aglaea-like overtones of the white shoes on his shoe rack.

Over Phainon’s head, he shoots Aglaea a quizzical glance. She doesn’t even bother responding.

He gives up and turns back to Phainon. “I’ll show you to your room. Would you like help carrying your things?”

“My things?” Phainon asks, tilting his head up.

“Yes,” Anaxa says slowly. “Your things.”

Aglaea clears her throat delicately. “The fire,” she says quietly. “All their possessions were…”

Oh. Oh. No wonder the shoes look like Aglaea chose them. No wonder they’re so spotlessly clean.

Something stings in Anaxa’s chest. He doesn’t think it has anything to do with his eye, but he’ll have to take the stronger pain meds tonight just in case. “Never mind. Just come with me.”

Phainon follows him into the little room he’s cleared out. It used to be Anaxa’s office, which meant it was mainly covered in research notes that he’d have to shred later on. Then Phainon came around, and he finally had a reason to shred everything. Beneath all of that there had, by some miracle, been a half-functioning guest room. Anaxa still doesn’t know how it happened.

“This is your bedroom,” he says, gesturing vaguely. “We’ll buy you some new furniture soon. Let me—” Let me know when is convenient for you, he almost says, but that sounds weird, so he changes tracks: “Let me give you a budget. You can decide for yourself what furniture you need.”

“I don’t think I need anything,” Phainon says. “It’s already got a bed.”

Anaxa frowns slightly. “You might want new covers. Or a desk and a new chair. A mirror. A rug.”

Phainon looks up at him with wide eyes.

Anaxa clears his throat, suddenly a little uncomfortable. “You can get whatever you like,” he says stiffly. “As long as the price isn’t ridiculous.”

“Mister Anaxa,” Phainon says, “what happened to your eye?”

“Anaxagoras,” he corrects unthinkingly. Then, a little miffed, “Who told you to call me that?”

“No one,” he says, too innocently to possibly be true.

Fucking Aglaea. This is why he divorced her. Always getting people to call him that damn nickname. Never mind that she never uses it to his face—she’s probably doing it all the time behind his back. Anaxa this, Anaxa that. Bastard.

“Your eye…”

Oh. Right. The question.

Anaxa knew he would ask. Kids are inquisitive like that. The previous night he had stayed up coming up with interesting lies to tell. He sacrificed it for an ancient ritual; he used it to make beautiful jewelry; he gave it to the moon to make it shine brighter. Yet when Phainon asks he just says, “I cut it out.”

“Oh,” says Phainon, looking up at him curiously. He studies Anaxa’s eye with none of the pity that everyone else seems to have these days. “Why?”

It’s sort of refreshing, the way Phainon doesn’t seem to feel bad for him. They’re both having a bad time right now. “I don’t know,” Anaxa says truthfully. “I just did.”

Phainon wanders over to the bed and sits down on it. He pulls at the curtains until the sunlight stops coming through. “If you were a pirate, you’d switch your eye patch over in the dark.”

“Yes, well,” says Anaxa drily. “I’m not a pirate. We’ve been over this.”

Phainon, to his surprise, laughs. A real laugh, with his eyes crinkled up and everything. “You’re funny, Mister Anaxa. Much funnier than Miss Aglaea.”

That’s a low fucking bar. Aglaea has never once been funny in her life. “You have to call me something else. I hate that name.”

“Like what?”

“Like… Like…” Fucking hell. He doesn’t know. “Anaxagoras. My name.”

“Anaxagoras.”

“No, no, it’s A-nax-a-go-ras, not A-nax-a-go-ras.”

Phainon looks at him helplessly.

“…Like ‘Professor,’” Anaxa says, giving up. “If you have to call me something, you can call me Professor.”

“A college teacher?” He looks at Anaxa suspiciously. “But you don’t look like a professor. I thought professors were supposed to be old.”

“Well, I’m already half blind. I’m probably close enough to the end of my days.”

Phainon looks at him oddly. Belatedly Anaxa realizes that his sense of humor is probably too morbid for this kid. He’s, what, eight? Nine? And his family just died. Wow, Anaxagoras. Way to go.

“But death can’t be predicted like that,” Phainon says suddenly, out of nowhere. “Maybe if you had both eyes you’d have an easier life, but that doesn’t mean you’re any less likely to die. Death isn’t avoidable. So you can’t say you’re close to death just because you’re missing an eye. That’s like if I said I’m close to death because I’m short.”

Anaxa is stunned into silence. He stares at Phainon for a full second. Two. Three.

“Sorry,” Phainon says, looking faintly embarrassed. “I know I’m going to get taller eventually. And your eye probably isn’t coming back. So I guess it’s not the same.”

“Who taught you that?” Anaxa asks, looking at him intensely. “Who—who taught you to philosophize about death? You’re, like, nine years old.”

“I dunno,” Phainon says. “I just thought it up. What’s philophosize?”

“What the hell,” Anaxa mumbles under his breath. Then, “Get up. Let’s have some lunch and say goodbye to Aglaea. I’ll tell you about philosophy if you want, but you have to promise to listen.”

Phainon puts on a solemn expression and smacks one little hand over his heart as he follows Anaxa back out of the room. “I promise.”

Holy shit. This kid is amazing.

Back by the doorway, Aglaea glances up from her phone. “I knew you’d like him.”

She’s looking at Phainon, but she glances briefly at Anaxa after she says it, and for a moment Anaxa wonders if she’s talking to the kid at all.

“Yeah,” Phainon says, grinning. “He said we’re gonna have lunch! Can Miss Aglaea have lunch with us too?”

Aglaea looks at him expectantly.

“…I’m sure Aglaea is busy,” he says stiffly. “She can go have lunch elsewhere.”

“Aw, okay,” Phainon says, pouting just a little. “Come back soon, Miss Aglaea! I wanna go to the studio again and look at all the fabric!”

“You brought him to the studio?” Anaxa asks, incredulous. She never used to let him into the studio. Her sacred workplace, she called it. Maybe she just never liked him enough to let him into her personal space.

“Some of us don’t have the luxury of a sabbatical,” Aglaea says loftily, like the sabbatical was his own choice instead of a medically necessary leave of absence. “Goodbye, Phainon. I’ll see you again soon.”

“Bye!” Phainon calls, waving at her as she walks back down the stairs. He turns to Anaxa as she leaves. “Come on, you have to wave at her.”

“What?” Anaxa asks, baffled.

“When she drives away,” Phainon says, like it’s obvious. “You have to wave when she drives away. That’s what my dad said. We have to wave at my mom when she drives off to work, so she knows we love her.”

Anaxa looks at Phainon’s hopeful eyes and tries to imagine explaining the ill-advised marriage and the messy divorce and the years of not speaking to each other. Then he shuts his mouth and waves.

Outside the door, Aglaea drives off in her beautiful gold sedan. Phainon waves until she’s out of sight, and then a few seconds more for good measure. Aglaea doesn’t once look back at them.

And then Anaxa is alone in his apartment with a kid. His kid.

“Well, come on,” Anaxa says, as he buttons up his coat. “The corner market makes good sandwiches.”

Phainon looks confused, but obediently begins lacing up his shoes by the door. “The… what?”

“The market on the corner.”

Phainon’s forehead creases a little. “Like a Walmart?”

“No,” says Anaxa, raising his one good eyebrow very carefully. “A regular market. A little grocery store. You know. With cookies and liquor and European chocolates. And good sandwiches.”

“Oh,” says Phainon. “Well, how far do we have to drive?”

“We walk,” Anaxa says flatly. “It’s on the corner of this block. The block that we live on.”

Phainon stares at him like he’s just invented gravity.

“…You didn’t have corner markets?”

“The Walmart had corners.”

Anaxa stares at him. His sun-bleached hair is so blond it’s nearly white. He’s got a tan face and a freckled nose and no knowledge of corner markets. “Fuck,” he mumbles under his breath. Aglaea gave him a goddamn country boy. Him of all people! Anaxa doesn’t even know what the country looks like. He’s never lived outside of this city a day in his life. Oh god. He doesn’t even own a car. He’s going to have to teach Phainon how to use public transit.

“Can we go now?” Phainon asks. “I’m a little hungry. Miss Aglaea only eats oatmeal for breakfast.”

Anaxa makes a mental note to get up early tomorrow morning to make this kid a full continental breakfast. Oatmeal. Fucking loser. Kids have to eat. “Yeah,” he says, grabbing his keys from the hanger on the back of the door. He’s got to get a second pair soon. “Let’s go.”

***

Phainon, Anaxa quickly learns, loves going shopping.

It doesn’t even matter what he’s shopping for. Just the act of browsing through an array of products seems to delight him to no end. Anaxa takes him to the corner market for their sandwiches and then to the produce market for more vegetables. While he’s examining the avocados, Phainon bounds up to him with four cartons of blueberries and a giant smile and says, “They’re on sale, two for four dollars!”

Anaxa takes two cartons of blueberries from him and puts them in the basket. It is, indeed, an excellent price. “We don’t need four.”

“But it’s such a good deal,” Phainon says, pouting a little. “We gotta get more.”

Anaxa doesn’t even like blueberries that much. But Phainon is looking at him with pitiful little eyes and two more cartons of blueberries, so he puts them in the damn basket. There’s probably something he can do with them. Muffins. He once managed to reconstruct an entire full-scale model of an ancient civilization’s deity in two weeks; blueberry muffins should be nothing.

Then, on the walk back to their apartment, Phainon insists on stopping at the window of every single shop they pass by. He stares at the bakery and the salon and the weird little antique store and the tiny cafe. He even stares at the empty, lightless bridal dress shop.

“They look like the things in Miss Aglaea’s studio,” he explains when Anaxa stops to stare next to him. “When I was there, she was making a giant wedding dress with a princess skirt and an empire waist.”

Anaxa huffs a half-laugh. No way does this kid actually know what an empire waist is. “She’s usually making those. Most people only buy Aglaea’s clothing for important events, like weddings.”

“Huh,” says Phainon, still looking at the dress in the window. It’s about twice as tall as he is. “Why not for something else? Like a graduation? Or a birthday?”

Anaxa is about to launch into a full explanation of quinceañera celebrations and commissioned dresses for birthdays and the like, but then he remembers that this kid isn’t one of his students, and swallows it down. Instead, he says, “Aglaea’s dresses are so expensive that most people avoid commissioning her for anything but the most important occasions.”

“What makes a wedding more important?”

Anaxa stands there in front of the bridal store window, staring at his own reflection with his one good eye. It stings to try to focus his vision. He was so busy setting up the guest room and filing paperwork that he forgot to take his pain medication this morning. “I don’t know,” he says quietly. “I don’t know what makes weddings so monumental.”

Phainon tears his eyes away from the dress and finally starts walking again. “I do,” he says, grinning. “It’s because you’re celebrating your new family.”

The groceries are starting to feel heavy on his shoulders. “I guess so.”

“Like us! We got to go to the city to celebrate new family, right?”

Anaxa looks at him sideways. “Phainon, I live here. We both live here. You live in Okhema now. Permanently.”

Phainon actually stops in his tracks.

Anaxa panics. “Is that okay?” he asks, a little stupidly. It’s not like he can move out of Okhema; he has to be able to commute to the university for work, and he never learned to drive. “It’ll take some getting used to, but it’s convenient and actually much safer than people think.”

“But there’s no Walmart.”

“Well,” says Anaxa, because he doesn’t actually know where the nearest Walmart is. “They have a website, if you need to order anything. We can just get it delivered.”

Phainon’s mouth drops open. “You can order things to your house?”

A grin slowly spreads across Anaxa’s face. He cannot wait to show this kid the furniture store website. “You know what,” he says. “Why don’t I show you?”

It turns out, Anaxa finds, that Phainon likes online shopping even more. By the time he’s finished putting away all their groceries, Phainon has already added five new desk chairs to his cart.

Anaxa looks blearily at the screen and sighs. “Phainon, you don’t need five desk chairs.”

“No, they’re for price comparison,” Phainon says, like this is a totally normal thing to say. “I put them in there so you can get notifications when anything gets cheaper. If any of these five go above the twenty percent sale, get it. Oh, except this one—it’s already on clearance, but I only want it if the pink one comes back in stock.”

Anaxa looks at the chairs again. They’re nice chairs—the kind of thing that will last a while—and yet they’re all somehow, miraculously, way cheaper than he would have expected. And all of them are pink.

“You’re allowed to spend the full budget,” Anaxa tells him. “I’ve got enough money to buy you whatever you want from this website.”

“But I want these ones,” Phainon says. “And I have to save the rest of it for commissioning Miss Aglaea.”

Anaxa blinks. “For… commissioning her?”

“I want her to make me something,” Phainon says, like it’s obvious. “You said her clothes are really expensive, so I have to save up. For my wedding.”

Anaxa feels something in his chest crack, just a hairline fracture. “Don’t wait for a wedding,” Anaxa says, a little sharply. “If you want something for yourself, don’t hesitate. Just buy it.”

“Really?”

Anaxa sighs out a long breath, suddenly exhausted. “Yes,” he says quietly. “Your life won’t wait for you; it’s already begun. So just live it.”

On the screen, one of the chairs quietly ticks down in price.

Phainon nearly jumps up from the couch. “Twenty-four percent!!”

Phainon’s eyes are so wide, so hopeful. Anaxa can’t help smiling, just a little. He buys it.

***

There’s more paperwork, and a visit from an official, and even more paperwork, and a court date, and then Anaxa is his legal guardian. They celebrate by eating blueberry cake with cream cheese frosting. The muffins were unsuccessful, but the cake—a foolproof recipe, explained very patiently by an IPC television celebrity chef—is alright. Phainon even eats another tiny slice when he thinks Anaxa isn’t looking.

Then, when the summer heat starts growing oppressive and Anaxa keeps throwing open the windows in the vain hope of tempting some wind, Aglaea emails him about schools.

Yes, emails him, from her business account. Psychopath. She sends it to his university email, too, which is not only appallingly impersonal but also potentially visible to his supervisors. The email contains detailed instructions on how to enroll Phainon in the city school district, which would have been insulting to his intellect except that the instructions are actually very helpful. Below them is Aglaea’s ranked list of every single public middle school, complete with explanations and citations.

Wait—middle schools? Anaxa has Phainon’s birth certificate now and he’s only nine. He frowns at his laptop, but no. All middle schools. Sixth grade and onward.

“Phainon,” he calls. “What grade are you in?”

Phainon looks up from his graphic novel. “Grade?”

“In school. I was under the impression you’d be going into fifth grade, but Aglaea sent me a list of middle schools.”

“Oh, right. School.” Phainon frowns. “Do I have to go?”

“No,” says Anaxa, because he’s not in the habit of lying, even to kids. “But if you choose to be homeschooled, rest assured you’ll be getting a much more intense curriculum than whatever they’d teach you in the public schools here. I’m a professor, remember.”

Phainon’s eyes light up. “You’d write my lessons for me?”

Anaxa sighs through his nose. It sounds like a lot of work when Phainon puts it that way. He already writes plenty of lessons. “If you truly wish to avoid school, I understand, and I’ll do my best to accommodate that. I preferred a quiet education as well.”

“It’s just that mom said the school was too far away.”

Ah. Country boy. Anaxa forgets that more than he should. He shuts the laptop. “The middle school Aglaea recommended is about a thirty minute walk away. And the bus ride is only fifteen.”

The book slips a little further in Phainon’s slack grip, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “You’d let me take the bus?”

“I’ll take you there a few times, and you can take the bus by yourself afterwards as a practice run. You can always walk if you don’t want to take it.”

“But don’t you need to drive me?”

Anaxa thought it might come to this. He sighs and admits, “I don’t have a car.”

Phainon looks appalled at this. “Well, we need to get one! You have enough money for one, right? I mean, you have a house, so you can probably get a car.”

Anaxa doesn’t actually own the house. It’s an apartment. That’s how apartments work. Phainon’s right that he could afford a car if he wanted one, but then there’s parking, and gasoline, and pollution, and also the fact that he doesn’t have a license. “We live in the middle of a walkable city. We don’t need a car.”

“…I guess everything is really close by here. And you get deliveries.”

“We’re not getting a car,” Anaxa says with finality. He’s never wanted one, and that won’t change, even with Phainon. His sister tried to teach him how to drive once, and look where that got her. Dead from internal bleeding before the doctors even realized what was wrong.

The thought makes him a little depressed. His eye doesn’t sting anymore, and he’s already off the codeine, so he’s got no excuses. He just sighs and opens his laptop again.

“Aglaea likes Chrysos High,” he says, gesturing at the screen. Phainon comes over and looks over his shoulder at the laptop, where the school website is already open. “It’s a charter school with both middle and high school students. Sixth through twelfth grade. She thinks this would be a good way to minimize your adjustment time from homeschooling. And—” Anaxa pulls up the profile of the faculty. “—I know one of the biology teachers. Hyacine Aquila. She was one of my teaching assistants a few years ago.”

Phainon frowns as he looks at the photo slideshow of the school. “How many students go here? It looks big.”

“Three hundred per grade. Around two thousand in total.”

“Two thousand?”

It’s not particularly impressive. Anaxa’s high school had three thousand students, and it was only a four-year school. Not to mention the size of their college. But then again, he supposes Phainon didn’t grow up knowing two thousand people could live that close to each other. “How big was the town you grew up in?” he asks, because he’s never actually thought about it.

Phainon shrugs. “Pretty small, I guess,” he says, sounding a little sad. “Smaller than here.”

Anaxa looks at him from the corner of his eye. His mouth is set in a flat line that looks too old for his face, too hardened for his usual cheerful demeanor. His eyes are strangely haunted. Aglaea told him that Phainon survived the fire; she never said he’d gotten out unscathed.

Anaxa thinks of watching the airbag blow up in his sister’s face, and suddenly he gets it.

“It’s alright if this city isn’t your home yet,” Anaxa says quietly, looking at the laptop instead of at Phainon’s face. “It’s alright if it never is.”

Phainon wraps his arms around his knees and says, “Yeah.”

They stare at the laptop screen for a few moments in silence. Phainon makes a little sniffling sound that might be tears, or might just be congestion. By the time Anaxa gathers the courage to look over again, Phainon is back to his little smile like nothing ever happened.

“If you and Miss Aglaea both like this place, I’ll go here,” he says, sitting up a little straighter. “I always wanted to meet lots of people, anyway.”

Maybe the kid is stronger than Anaxa gives him credit for. “Let’s visit,” he says. “We still have a few weeks before I have to enroll you. You still have time to change your mind.”

Phainon nods.

“Is there anything you want to eat for lunch?” Anaxa asks him, closing the school page. He always asks this; Phainon always says nothing. If he gives him a few options, sometimes he’ll pick, but if it’s open-ended, Phainon just brushes it off, without fault.

So he’s not expecting Phainon to hesitantly offer, “I kind of want a livermush sandwich.”

Anaxa misclicks on the laptop and nearly deletes Aglaea’s email. “A what?”

“…Livermush sandwich. Do you have those here?”

No. Anaxa has no idea what the hell that is. “I’ll make it,” he promises anyway, because Phainon never asks for anything except this.

Phainon beams and returns to his graphic novel on his beanbag.

Frantically, Anaxa pulls up a private window and searches it up. It’s apparently… pork liver? And cornmeal? On bread?? It sounds kind of odd, and he’s never cared for liver himself, but he’s already promised, so that’s that. He doesn’t have liver or ground cornmeal, so he finds a recipe and double-checks the brands it recommends, then goes out to buy them.

When he gets back, Phainon is still in the exact same spot, leaning over his graphic novel like it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen. “What novel are you reading now?” Anaxa asks, as he hangs up his keys on the door hook. Last he remembers, Phainon was on an action kick, checking out ten Merlin’s Claw comics at a time from the library and plowing through them all in a week.

Phainon holds up the book. It’s High-Cloud Quintet.

Anaxa raises one eyebrow. It’s still a graphic novel, albeit a very adult one. He’s read this book; he thought it fantastic, but extraordinarily depressing. “I thought you liked superheroes?”

“This is about superheroes. Only they’re all really sad, and then they die.”

“Why would you want them to die if you liked them?”

Phainon appears to actually consider this. Then he shrugs. “I guess it just makes them more real. Superheroes never seem like real people. But these ones do. They could be anyone. They could be you and me.”

Anaxa smiles to himself. “I think I’d know if you were a superhero,” he calls from the kitchen.

Phainon laughs. “Nope! I’d be so good at hiding it. You’d have no clue.”

“Hm.” Anaxa turns around, narrowing his one good eye at Phainon. “Are you off saving the world right now?”

Phainon makes his eyes comically wide in an approximation of innocence. “No way!”

“Hmmm.” Anaxa pretends to squint at him, as if making sure he’s really there. “Are you sure?”

Phainon laughs. “Come on, Professor. You know I’m not a superhero.”

“Yet,” Anaxa corrects. “There’s still time.”

“But superheroes aren’t real.”

Phainon’s face is so matter-of-fact when he says it, so soul-crushingly adult, that Anaxa can’t bring himself to agree, even though he knows it’s true. “We don’t know that,” Anaxa says, deathly serious. “Maybe they’re all as good at hiding it as you are. There could be superheroes everywhere.”

“Maybe,” Phainon says slowly, “all of their powers are invisibility.”

“They must be constantly stopping me from banging my hip into the counter.”

Phainon grins. “Yeah, with only one eye, they’ve gotta look out for you double hard! Or else you’d be running into everything.”

“Hey! I may only have one eye, but it’s still decent at its job.”

“They’ve already invented monocles, Prof,” Phainon says with his angelic little bastard face. “You don’t need to suffer.”

“You little shit,” Anaxa mutters under his breath. Then, louder, “Phainon, don’t be rude. I could file a discrimination complaint against you, and then we’d have to go to court again.”

“I’m nine. They can’t charge me with anything.”

“Yes, they can.”

“Nuh uh,” Phainon says proudly. “Not with this face.”

Anaxa makes the fatal mistake of looking at him, and then decides that yes, he’s too precious for this. “You’re lucky you’re smart,” he mutters. “If you were just a bit less bright, I’d have thrown you back into Aglaea’s studio by now.”

Phainon giggles and goes back to his depressing superhero book. Anaxa sighs. Then he opens the damn recipe on his laptop and gets to work.

***

The livermush is, shockingly, not that bad. They have sandwiches for dinner that night because it takes a while to set in the refrigerator. Then Phainon tells him it’s supposed to have American cheese on it too, and Anaxa briefly contemplates telling him to fuck off before going back to the store and buying that goddamn processed nightmare of a cheese. Phainon’s giant grin when he eats his livermush sandwich with American cheese the next day is worth it.

It’s when Anaxa is frying up the last two pieces that everything goes wrong.

Anaxa’s apartment is pretty small, so Phainon is almost always around when Anaxa is cooking. Usually he just reads his hero novels or browses online shopping catalogues. Sometimes he wants to be helpful, so Anaxa gives him a mundane task like stirring a pot or keeping track of all his timers.

Today is one of the latter days, so Anaxa has him stir the frying livermush in the pan to prevent it from sticking.

Phainon seems completely fine doing his task, so Anaxa turns around and starts toasting the bread. Then, while it’s going, he works on cutting some more carrot sticks. Phainon eats a lot of carrot sticks. He also makes Anaxa eat them—something about them being good for his eyes—and as Anaxa chops the large carrots into smaller pieces, he thinks on the irony of it, how the carrots will do nothing for his eyes but the knife would take out his last remaining one just as easily as it did the first.

And then, from behind him, there’s a strange clattering noise.

“Phainon?”

No response.

“Is everything alright?”

Could he have dropped the pan somehow? Anaxa sets down the knife and turns around to check on him, just in case.

The pan is completely fine. But the wooden spatula is on the ground, and Phainon is staring at the dropped utensil like it’s just killed his entire family. Anaxa frowns and picks up the spatula, taking it over to the sink.

“Sorry,” Phainon mumbles. “I didn’t mean to drop it.”

“It’s fine. See? Just a little dirty. I’ll wash it and—”

Then he sees the other side. The spatula is faintly charred black on one corner. Just a little bit; nothing too alarming. It probably got too close to the fire and caught for a moment. The impact with the floor seems to have put it out. There’s barely even any smoke.

“It’s fine,” Anaxa says, in case this is what Phainon feels guilty about. “I’ve burnt wooden spoons before, too. Don’t worry.”

“I dropped it,” Phainon says, staring at the spot on the floor. “It was… It was on fire and I dropped it.”

“I’d say that’s preferable to you burning yourself.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Phainon whispers.

His voice is so tiny that Anaxa finally looks closely at him. There are wet tracks down his cheeks, like he’s been silently crying.

Oh. Of course he wouldn’t like fire and smoke. Of course it would scare him.

“Everything’s alright,” Anaxa tells him, as gently as he can. He turns off the stove, then sits down on the floor so they’re closer to level. “You didn’t burn anything. No one’s hurt. The smoke alarm didn’t even go off.”

Phainon closes his eyes and sinks down to the floor next to him. “But last time,” he says, and then a tiny sob wracks through him. It makes its cruel way through his entire body until he’s sitting there on the floor in a little ball, looking smaller than he’s ever been before.

“It’s alright,” Anaxa says softly. “It’s alright, Phainon.”

“Last time I dropped something it all burned down,” Phainon chokes out, burying his face in his knees.

Anaxa curls his knees up to his chest, too, so that they match. Two people crunched up on his kitchen floor.

“I didn’t mean to do it!” Phainon cries desperately, like he’s defending his life. Then, so quiet that Anaxa can barely hear him, “Professor, you have to believe me.”

Anaxa sighs through his nose. He can’t cry. His eye hurts. He can’t even remember which one is his anymore. “I know you didn’t.”

“You have to believe me,” Phainon says again. His voice is hollow this time, like all the fight has abruptly bled out of him. He slumps back down onto the floor, exhausted.

Anaxa sits there for a long moment, watching Phainon lie there on the floor, staring at the ceiling like it has a profound truth to tell him if only he’ll wait for it. Then, when it becomes apparent that Phainon won’t get up, he picks him up in both arms. “Come on,” he murmurs. “You’re alright now. You’re alright.”

Phainon doesn’t protest. He lets Anaxa set him down on the couch and sits there curled up against the armrest.

Anaxa gives up on the sandwiches and makes them both big bowls of cereal. Phainon eats it like he’s been starving. He even drinks all the milk after he’s finished. He always does that.

When the bowl is empty, Phainon sets it down on the living room table and says in a tiny voice, “I miss my big sister.”

Anaxa sets down his spoon and sighs. “Me too, Phainon. Me too.”

When they’re done Anaxa brings his big dromas plush out to the living room and lays down on the floor. Phainon curls up next to him under a giant pile of blankets and cries until he’s so exhausted that he falls asleep there. Anaxa waits until he’s asleep to hug him close to his chest. Only then, when he’s pillowed both their heads on the dromas plush and made sure Phainon is warm enough under the blanket mountain, does he allow the tiredness to catch up to him.

That night he dreams he’s in the car with his sister again. He doesn’t remember anymore what he said that made her laugh. Most likely it wasn’t even funny. But she laughs anyway, and because she’s laughing she doesn’t notice the truck running the light. That’s how it always goes. Then comes the impact and the airbags and the scream and the hospital and the internal bleeding. Except that this time it’s not a truck approaching them, but a wall of fire, a blaze made entirely of wooden rafters set aflame, and he dropped the match, he dropped the match that started the fire, and the heat sears his hands and his sister breaks the window open with her shoulder and throws him out of the burning house and then he wakes up in a cold sweat.

Anaxa momentarily forgets that he’s half blind, and frantically tries to blink open the other eye. Only when he feels the bandages again does he remember to breathe.

Phainon is still curled under the blankets, fast asleep. The tear tracks have dried on his face, leaving him looking completely peaceful.

Aglaea said he could help him. But Anaxa can’t recall, suddenly, which one of them was supposed to be helping the other. Which of them needed fixing, and which of them was supposed to have been long fixed.

***

Chrysos High gives tours for prospective students, so Anaxa signs them up for a morning tour and makes both of them memorize the bus route to get there. It’s not hard—only one bus line, the 12—but still, he’s pretty sure Phainon has never taken a bus before, so he’s worried, obviously.

When their bus arrives, it’s clear that his worry was misplaced.

Phainon gets on and taps his new youth metro card like he’s done it a thousand times. Then he takes the exact seat Anaxa would have chosen, a double seat by the window, and waits with an eager little smile on his face.

Anaxa sits down next to him and nods.

Phainon looks up at him with wide, silent eyes.

“I’m not going to preemptively praise you,” Anaxa scoffs, looking resolutely forward. If he looks at Phainon now, he will undoubtedly give in. He’s learned that from experience. “Let’s see if you remember the stop to get off at. Then you’ll have done well.”

Phainon sighs. “Prof, you’re so mean to me. Are you this mean to your students, too?”

“I am not mean to you,” Anaxa says, appalled.

“So that’s a yes.”

“…I am considered a fairly strict professor.”

Phainon snickers. He looks out the window with his clear blue eyes and looks delighted to watch the city roll by. Anaxa watches him look and wonders, not for the first time, if he would have been happier in the country. For the first time, he thinks maybe the city suits him better.

“Hey, if you’re a teacher, why aren’t you teaching right now?”

“I’m on sabbatical.”

Phainon blinks, looking utterly lost.

“Paid leave,” Anaxa explains, which is mostly true. “Sabbatical is a type of leave given to professors to let them conduct research into their given area of expertise.”

“Oh,” says Phainon. “Did you take leave because of your eye?”

“No,” Anaxa scoffs. Then, after thinking about it, “Well, yes, but no.”

“Was the eye your research area?”

“Very astute,” Anaxa says, giving him a small nod. “It was an experiment of sorts, so I was given leave.”

It’s not the whole truth, of course. Even Anaxa himself isn’t entirely sure why he did it. Most people think it was the research that drove him insane; Anaxa thinks it was the grief. Either way, he’s down an eye now. It’s not so bad, he thinks. He can learn to live with it.

“This one!” Phainon declares, snapping Anaxa out of his trance. “Prof, the bus said we’re almost at Marmoreal Station!”

Oh. Right. The bus. Anaxa had completely forgotten to look out for their stop. He smiles as he stands up and finally says, “Good job, Phainon.”

The giant grin Phainon gives him could move mountains.

It’s only a two-minute walk from the station to the school. Anaxa lets Phainon figure out which direction to walk in, and then follows him. Chrysos High’s main entrance is an impressive building, a marble-white front gate complete with stairs leading up to the glass doors.

And at the top of the stairs is—

“What is she doing here?” Anaxa mutters, half to himself. He double-checks, just in case. Aglaea is still standing at the school entrance, looking down at her phone with her glasses perched in her hair. She’s in a white blouse and white linen pants with a white handbag. It pisses Anaxa off, how she always looks exactly the same. Like nothing ever changes her. Like nothing ever throws her off course.

“I told her we were coming!” Phainon says, still with that smile. “You said she recommended the school, so I asked her if she wanted to come on the tour with us.”

“You and what phone number?” Anaxa asks, bewildered. He hasn’t gotten Phainon a phone yet; he’s planning to, but until school starts, they’re rarely apart anyway.

“Your email.”

“You emailed her?”

“I just replied to the thread,” Phainon says, innocent to a fault.

“On my university work email?”

Phainon looks up at him with the eyes.

“Well, whatever,” Anaxa says, instantly forgiving him for everything he has ever done and everything he will ever do in the future. Stupid eyes. Phainon has got to stop doing that expression all the time. “I’ll just tell her to leave.”

“Don’t!” Phainon cries, grabbing onto his arm.

Anaxa freezes.

“I mean,” says Phainon, looking a little embarrassed. “I think we should let Miss Aglaea come with us. She came all the way here. Don’t you want to get her opinion?”

Anaxa wants nothing to do with her, and he’s sure the sentiment is mutual. But he looks at Phainon, his pleading grip on Anaxa’s sleeve, and he just sighs.

“Hello, Aglaea,” he says. “We’ve arrived.”

Aglaea finally glances up from her phone. Her expression as she looks at them both is unreadable, unchanged. “Good morning,” she says. “I’m glad to see you’re considering Chrysos High, Phainon. I found this school more than satisfactory when I attended.”

Phainon bounds over to her side instantly. “You went here?”

Aglaea’s mouth tilts up at one corner, just the faintest amount. “Yes. I made one of my lifetime best friends here, as well. Her name is Tribios; she and I knew your mother and father in college.”

Phainon’s smile turns a little sad, but he doesn’t falter. “You think I’ll make friends here?” he asks, quieter than usual. “How do I pick who to be friends with? I didn’t have very many people to choose from before.”

“I’d say befriend everyone, but of course that’s unrealistic,” Aglaea says, snapping her bag shut. “You’ll know when you meet them. True friends often share a special connection from their first interaction.”

“Mm.” Phainon looks up at her, then back at Anaxa, who’s been hanging a few steps behind them both. “So then how did you and Professor meet?”

“Professor?” Aglaea asks, raising one eyebrow. “You mean Anax—”

“He will not be calling me that.”

“—agoras. Anaxagoras.”

Anaxa glares at her. She was going to say it. He knows she was.

“Yeah,” Phainon says brightly, ignoring the death stares going on above him. “You guys are friends, right? So how did you know you’d be friends when you met?”

Anaxa scoffs. They were never friends at all. They were rivals, at best, and then somewhere along the line they decided to get married. God only knows what came over both of them. It was an awful decision. But when Aglaea asked if he wanted to get married, he said yes anyway.

They did terribly at the beginning, and terribly at the end, but somewhere in the middle they must have done alright. These days Anaxa can barely remember any good times. He only remembers the one-sided shouting and Aglaea’s blank expression and the wedding dress in her closet that he drunkenly took a knife to, only to accidentally slice his hand in half and splatter blood all over the beautiful white fabric. She’d made her wedding dress herself—it was the only remnant of their relationship that she cared about, in the end. The bloodstain was all it took. The next day Anaxa slammed divorce papers down on the kitchen table, and Aglaea calmly picked up a pen, and that was that.

“…Never mind,” Phainon says in between them.

Belatedly Anaxa realizes that Aglaea never answered him either. Huh.

“I can tell you how I met Tribios,” Aglaea offers.

Phainon brightens.

“I had forgotten to pack myself anything to eat, and it was around three in the afternoon. I was so hungry I could barely focus. Then Tribios gave me her thermos of oatmeal under the table…”

It’s nearly time for their tour, so Anaxa lets them walk over, following at a distance. From here, it looks so perfect. Phainon looks up at Aglaea like she has all the answers. They could have been happy, he thinks. Phainon could have had a well-respected role model to drive him to school every morning, instead of a half-blind professor who can’t even get behind the wheel without seizing up.

But then Phainon looks back at him.

“Professor?” he calls. “Aren’t you coming with us?”

He looks so hopeful. Some long-dead feeling tugs at the strings in Anaxa’s chest.

“Of course I am, Phainon,” he says. Then he takes his place on Phainon’s other side. Together, he and his ex-wife and his kid, they walk into the school.

***

To: Aglaea Mnestia
chrysos high wants two emergency contacts for phainon. im putting you as the other one

From: Aglaea Mnestia
Dear Anaxagoras,
I would not have it any other way. In the likely event that you are ill-equipped to handle any emergencies he may encounter, you may grovel appropriately as compensation for my services. Attached is my new phone number, new address, and all forms of approved contact for the school to receive.
Warmly,
Aglaea Mnestia
[This conversation may be documented on our official records. You may opt-out of recorded responses at any time. Please reach out with any questions. Thank you for choosing Goldweaving Studios. We appreciate your patronage.]

To: Aglaea Mnestia
fuck off

From: Aglaea Mnestia
Dear Anaxagoras,
Gladly.
Warmly,
Aglaea Mnestia
[This conversation may be documented on our official records. You may opt-out of recorded responses at any time. Please reach out with any questions. Thank you for choosing Goldweaving Studios. We appreciate your patronage.]

***

The first day of school isn’t remarkable at all. Anaxa takes the bus with him to school, takes photos of him standing there with his backpack on, and then spends the whole day pacing around the kitchen like an idiot. But all his worry is for nothing; Phainon gets home at quarter to four with a fresh spring in his step, and all is right in the world.

On the second day of school, Phainon comes home sporting a black eye, a streak of dried blood down his lip, and the biggest grin Anaxa has ever seen.

“Phainon!” Anaxa rushes over to him, already wiping at his face with a damp paper towel. The dried blood blooms to life underneath his hands. “Phainon, are you alright? How did you get hurt? Were you in a fight? Do I need to report anyone?”

“Prof,” Phainon says, beaming. “I made a friend!”

Anaxa blinks.

“Miss Aglaea said friends have a special connection,” Phainon says, like this explains everything.

“You mean to say your friend did this to you?”

“Uh huh. He said, Do you wanna fight? And then I said, Yeah, and then after school we went out to the park and had a fight.”

It was scheduled? Anaxa doesn’t think that’s how fights are supposed to go. Also, isn’t Phainon supposed to be more injured? Like, pretty badly injured? Unless… Oh god, what if the other kid is even worse? “Phainon, did you win or lose?”

Phainon sighs. “It was a draw,” he says dreamily.

Anaxa has no idea what the hell happened anymore. How could you have a draw in a schoolyard fight? “Aren’t you supposed to fight until one of you is unconscious?”

“Mydei said we should stop before we hurt each other too bad. So we did.”

“So you just… decided to fight? For fun?”

“Yeah.”

“And then you went elsewhere to fight.”

“Yeah.”

“And then you had a draw.”

“Yeah. And now we’re best friends forever.”

Anaxa stares at him. He wipes the last of the blood off his face and gives up. “You know what? Sure. You had the customary best friends duel and now your bond is unbreakable. What do I know?”

Phainon looks starry-eyed at this.

Well, starry-eyed and black-eyed. Anaxa sighs. This is his life now. “At least let me get you an ice pack.”

***

“Please?” Phainon asks, peering over the research paper on Anaxa’s laptop. “Pleeeease?”

Anaxa sighs and shuts the laptop. His sabbatical isn’t over until the end of the fall quarter, but he’s planning to incorporate new theories into his spiritual physics lecture and he has to get back in the teaching mindset. But the paper is dry and Phainon is right there. “It’s not that I don’t want you to have a party. I just don’t think the apartment is big enough.”

“It can be really small,” Phainon offers. “Just four people? Me and Mydei and Cas and Polyxia and Cipher.”

“That’s five people.”

“Well, Cas and Polyxia are twins. Oh, and all their parents need to be there, because you need friends too.”

Anaxa chokes on nothing. “I don’t need you meddling in my social affairs. I have friends already.”

“Like who?” Phainon asks, raising his eyebrows.

Little bastard. Anaxa doesn’t have friends and they both know it. “Miss Aquila,” he says eventually. “The biology teacher.”

“She does keep a signed photo of you on her wall,” Phainon concedes, nodding. “Okay. Miss Aquila counts. What about the rest?”

Hyacine has a signed photo of him on the classroom wall? Also, when did he ever sign a photo of himself for her? He has no recollection of doing that. Maybe she learned to forge his signature when she was his TA. “Tribios is my friend.”

“Tribios,” Phainon says, holding up one more finger. “That’s two.”

It’s kind of him not to argue that point. Tribios was more Aglaea’s friend than his, even when they were married. He doesn’t think he’s spoken to Tribios at all since the divorce. “My colleagues at the university,” he tries.

Phainon shakes his head. “Nope. They’re your coworkers. And you complain about them all the time anyway.”

Anaxa sighs. He’s right. Everyone at the university annoys him a little. “You,” he says. “You count.”

Phainon gives him a disappointed look, but puts up a third finger.

“I think three friends is plenty,” Anaxa sniffs. “Not all of us are as social as you.”

“You forgot Miss Aglaea.”

Anaxa stiffens, just barely. “Aglaea isn’t my friend.”

“But you text each other a lot. And you know each other really well. And she introduced me to you.”

“We were never friends,” Anaxa sneers. “And we certainly aren’t now. The wedding was a mistake; we’ve both agreed on that.”

Phainon stares at him like he’s never seen him before. “You got married?”

Shit.

He forgot he hadn’t told Phainon about that. In all honesty, he thought Aglaea had already said something, and that Phainon was just keeping quiet to preserve his dignity. But in retrospect…

“It was a long time ago,” Anaxa says hastily, which is true. “It doesn’t mean anything,” he tacks on, which is a lie.

“You said weddings are important. The most important.”

Anaxa’s mouth flattens out. “I said they’re considered important by society at large. I never said anything about my personal opinions.”

“But you’re not married anymore,” Phainon says. “You don’t live together. And Miss Aglaea has a car, but you don’t.”

What does the car have to do with anything, Anaxa wonders. “We got a divorce three and a half years ago,” he says, and it’s odd how final it feels, saying it out loud. “We haven’t talked much since then. We mostly communicate about you. She wants to make sure you’re doing alright, because she doesn’t trust me to take care of you.”

Phainon tilts his head. “But Miss Aglaea said you were the person she trusts the most.”

Anaxa’s brain grinds to an abrupt halt. “She did?”

Phainon waits in silence. He looks at Anaxa with his sun-tinged blue eyes and his little smattering of freckles.

Ah. Smart kid. Anaxa knows, suddenly, what his angle is. Why he brought this up.

“I’ll call her,” Anaxa says quietly. “To ask if we can have your birthday party at her place.”

Aglaea doesn’t say yes. Instead she says, “Do you think he’d prefer the penthouse or the rooftop studio lounge?”

“Fucking pretentious bitch,” Anaxa says to her over the phone, making sure it’s audible through the speakers. “The rooftop lounge, obviously. And make sure you put up a big banner. Gold and pink. And balloons. And get him a lemon meringue pie, but with a salted crust instead of—”

“Yes, yes, and get barbecue pork catered,” Aglaea interrupts, her voice just as calm as ever. “I know.”

“ …Thank you,” he says eventually. He doesn’t know what comes over him; he’s never been nice before. Maybe the stress is getting to him.

“Don’t worry, Anaxagoras. We’re going to do it right.”

Over the phone speakers, it almost sounds like she’s smiling. Must be the bad quality.

***

Anaxa had hoped, rather foolishly, that the fighting-each-other-for-friendship-reasons was a one-time thing. It becomes apparent by the time Phainon’s birthday rolls around in October that this is not the case.

“Mydei said for my birthday he’s going to try to break my nose,” Phainon tells him excitedly as they take the bus over to Aglaea’s penthouse to set up the party. “Do you think he’ll really do it?”

“He’d better not.”

“Yeah,” says Phainon, quite reasonably. Then, proceeding to dash all of Anaxa’s hopes: “If he actually manages to break my nose, that means I haven’t been practicing enough.”

“Practicing?” Anaxa repeats faintly. “Don’t tell me you’ve been fighting other kids.”

“Of course not!” Phainon crosses his arms. “I’d never fight someone else. Mydei and I made a pact to only duel each other, or else we’d be disloyal.”

What the hell, Anaxa thinks to himself. Mentally he throws up his hands in defeat. It’s not like he was the best role model for friendships anyway. Maybe it makes sense that Phainon has some weird unbreakable warrior bond with this kid.

“I can’t wait to see him,” Phainon says, staring out the window with vacant eyes and a little smile.

“You just saw him yesterday.”

“Yeah, but that was a whole day ago.”

Anaxa cannot believe this kid. He sighs.

“Don’t you get lonely if you don’t see Miss Aglaea for a while, too?”

“No,” Anaxa says, too quickly. It’s only a half-truth; those three years of no contact were long, but somehow the week or two between their visits now feels longer than those three years ever did. It’s not that he’s lonely, exactly. It’s something else entirely. Something he has yet to name.

Aglaea’s studio is on the top floor of an enormous high-rise made entirely of glass fronts and polished gold metal. She meets them in the lobby and nods at the doorman, who lets them into an elevator without buttons. Anaxa has never been here before, but Phainon clearly has; he waves at the doorman and knows exactly which elevator is going to open for them.

“Hello, Phainon,” says Aglaea, smiling just slightly as the elevator doors shut in front of them. “Happy birthday. I’m glad to see you’re well.”

Phainon beams at her. “Thanks! And I’m really glad you let us use the studio for the party.”

“It’s not the studio. It’s the rooftop lounge.”

Anaxa rolls his eyes.

“What? I receive guests up there,” Aglaea says, a little sharply. “I have some very high-profile customers, you know. They don’t want to be entertained inside my actual studio. The rooftop is well-suited for such purposes.”

“Oh, really? How ‘well-suited’ could a rooftop possibly—”

The elevator doors slide open. Anaxa falls silent.

In front of him is the most beautiful view of Okhema he’s ever seen. It seems to stretch on forever, shimmering silver and gold in the morning light. Eventually the city fades into the ocean coast, like it’s being swallowed. The whole thing is framed by an enormous pink and gold banner, two bundles of balloons, and two long tables of beverages and food, complete with the lemon meringue pie.

“Well?” says Aglaea. “Aren’t you coming?”

Anaxa realizes he’s been standing there motionless for a good thirty seconds. “Of course,” he says, and steps out into the sunlight.

Phainon eagerly examines everything on the tables, then proceeds to sit in every chair just to try them out, and then, when he’s finally exhausted his running-around energy, stares out over the railing at the ocean with shimmering eyes.

And then—

“They’re on their way up,” Aglaea says neutrally, looking at her phone. “I just waved them through.”

Phainon leaps up and runs to the elevator like he’s being raced. He stands there in front of the door. When it opens, he barely even looks before he’s barreling in and tackling its occupants into a hug.

Literally tackling. The boy he crashes into falls to the elevator floor like a domino.

Anaxa looks up from him and slowly makes eye contact with the woman in the back of the elevator, prepared to apologize profusely. But to his surprise, she’s grinning ear to ear as she looks at them.

“Heard a lot about this one,” she says, nodding her head vaguely in Phainon’s direction. “I’m glad to see he lives up to the reputation.”

“He’s not a delinquent,” Anaxa says hurriedly. “He told me he doesn’t fight anyone else.”

“Hah! Good,” says the woman, holding out her worn hand. “I’m Gorgo Nikador. Mydei’s mother. And you must be the Professor?”

“Anaxagoras Cerces,” he says, a little awkwardly. He shakes her hand; her grip looks almost alarmingly strong, but she doesn’t use full force on him. In fact, it’s a pretty normal handshake, all things considered. “Professor of spiritual sciences at Grove University.”

“Oh! I’ve heard of you. Anaxa, right?”

Anaxa wilts a little. “…Yes,” he says through gritted teeth.

Behind him, he hears Aglaea cough delicately.

He turns around to glare at her. “Don’t laugh.”

“I’m not laughing at you,” Aglaea says lightly, the picture of innocence. Maybe this is where Phainon learned it from. “I’m laughing at them. Kids, will you please get out of the elevator? I need to send it down again for Castorice and Polyxia. And I have to get something from the studio.”

Phainon and Mydei have somehow managed to roll across the entire length of the elevator. They’ve ended up in the opposite corner from where they started. Anaxa can’t even tell what they’re doing. Some kind of leg-wrestling challenge, perhaps.

“Sorry,” Phainon calls, not sounding sorry at all. He clambers up from the floor, then offers Mydei a hand. He begrudgingly takes it, and they leave the elevator together. Aglaea leaves as they arrive.

Mydei is a short kid with dark blond hair and an expression like a wet cat. “Hello, Professor,” he says. “I’m Mydeimos Nikador. I’m ten years old. I like baking. And…”

“Color,” Phainon stage-whispers to him.

“And my favorite color is pink,” Mydei says quickly, sounding a little nervous.

And then he waits in stony, round-cheeked silence.

“…Okay,” says Anaxa, because what the hell else is he supposed to say? “Thanks for the introduction. I’m Professor Anaxagoras.”

Mydei stares at him with his weirdly intense eyes.

“You said you’d ask,” Gorgo tells him, smiling slightly. “Are you going to back out now, little warrior?”

For some reason this seems to give him great courage. Mydei shakes his head. Then he says, “Can I be Phainon’s best friend forever?”

He looks so sincere. Anaxa nearly bursts out laughing. Instead he says, “That’s up to Phainon. He can choose his own friends. If he’d like to, then of course you can.”

Phainon grins like he’s trying to outshine the entirety of Okhema. “I told you!”

“Thank you,” Mydei says very seriously to Anaxa. Then the elevator dings and both of them rush over again. Phainon pounces for more hugs, albeit much more gently; first on Castorice, then on Polyxia once she’s carefully stood up from her wheelchair. Mydei stands there like a little shadow, but gives both of them hugs too once they smile at him.

The twins arrive with… a teenage girl? She leans against the back of the elevator and watches the kids with a big grin on her face. Bizarrely, once Phainon is done hugging the twins, he runs over to her, too, and she picks him up for a shoulder hug, rolling her eyes fondly.

“Hey,” she calls, as she finally shepherds them all out of the elevator, setting Phainon down carefully on both feet. “Aunty Amunet was busy, so it’s just me today. I’m Cipher.”

Anaxa narrows his eye. “You’re Cipher?” He thought Cipher was a school friend. Phainon had certainly implied that much when she was invited.

“Yeah,” Cipher says, bringing Polyxia’s chair to a stop so she can sit back down. “I’m the princesses’ babysitter. But I go to Chrysos High too—I’m in tenth grade.”

“Are you not in the upper school, then?”

“Ehh,” says Cipher, waving one hand. “I just sneak out. These kids are more fun anyway.” She jerks one thumb towards Mydei and Phainon. “They let me commentate on their fights sometimes. Like, ‘ Wow! Amazing punch there, straight to the shoulder. Knocked Phainon right off his feet. But look at that kick! Incredible footwork from these kids. Maybe the next generation is gonna be alright.’ That kind of stuff.”

Gorgo nods. “Every good fight needs a commentator. You’re doing a great service.” She holds up her hand. Cipher high-fives her without hesitation. It’s the cleanest, crispest high-five Anaxa has ever seen. Like magic.

“Alright,” Aglaea calls, emerging from the inside of her studio back out onto the roof. “You may have noticed the arena here.”

This instantly gets all the kids’ attention. Even Cipher’s, however much she tries to hide it.

Aglaea motions toward the concrete roof of the building beneath their feet. Right where she’s standing is an enormous empty circle. “Your contest,” she declares, dramatically unraveling the fabric in her hands, “is to decorate as much of this space as possible.”

A set of five outdoor permanent paint pens rolls out onto the ground. Purple, red, gold, green, and blue.

“Each of you will have a starting point on the outside of the circle,” Aglaea explains, walking around the circle and marking out five points. “With your single color, you will draw inwards. Whoever reaches the center first is the victor, and will earn the first slice of lemon meringue pie.”

“I call gold!” Phainon cries, and grabs the pen.

“Red!” Mydei says almost simultaneously, crashing into the ground to get it.

“Green,” Polyxia says.

Castorice says nothing, but takes the green and purple pens.

“I get to draw, too?” Cipher asks, her eyes wide.

“Of course,” Aglaea says. “All of Phainon’s guests get one color to draw with. You are no exception.”

Cipher takes the blue pen with a smile she’s clearly trying and failing to bite down on.

All five of the kids take their starting place—Polyxia directing Castorice on what to draw, while Castorice holds the green pen in her left hand and the purple in her right—and on Aglaea’s signal, they begin.

Despite the premise of a competition, it’s fairly peaceful. While Phainon and Mydei are both scrambling to draw towards the middle, they’re both clearly putting effort into making something beautiful. Castorice and Polyxia are making a green vine of purple flowers that fills both their spaces, and Cipher is doodling a series of cat paw prints through a beach, sticking out her tongue in concentration.

Like this, they look so happy. They look like kids, Anaxa thinks, a strange delight welling up in his chest. Like kids having fun.

Aglaea stands next to him and hands him a glass.

“I don’t drink anymore,” he admits. “I’ve been sober since that night with the wedding dress.”

Aglaea just smiles. “I know,” she says. “It’s a non-alcoholic mojito lemonade.”

“You knew?” he says, a little baffled. “I never told you.”

“I know you. I can tell.”

Anaxa takes the drink. He takes a sip. It’s sweet and sour and doesn’t bite at him like alcohol always does. He likes it.

“You seem better now,” Aglaea says eventually.

Anaxa huffs a dry laugh. “When you first saw me, I was one more injury away from dropping dead.”

“Not just that. You seem happier.”

Anaxa sighs softly. “Yeah,” he says. In front of him, Phainon is drawing a superhero with a monocle and a giant textbook in hand. Over the rim of his glass, he smiles a little. “I am happier.”

Aglaea holds up her glass and gently clinks it into his, a little imitation of a toast. They both drink slowly.

“—cheating,” Mydei hisses from the circular arena.

“Nuh uh,” says Phainon, like this is the most convincing argument he can think of. “I’m drawing something I like.”

“You can’t draw me,” Mydei says, looking appalled. “I’m your opponent.”

“Actually,” says Cipher, grinning at them both. “There were never any rules about the content of the drawings. Whoever draws the most and reaches the middle wins.”

Phainon grins at him.

“Then I’m drawing you,” Mydei declares. He promptly begins drawing Phainon right along the border between their two sides, next to the gold Mydei on the other side.

Phainon gets back to work on the drawing of Mydei. “I’m giving you gauntlets,” he says. “And a braid.”

“I’m giving you a sword,” Mydei says, like this is a comeback somehow. “And armor. Shining armor. And a necklace.”

“Well, then you get a better necklace.”

“Then you get a superhero title.”

“You get a superhero title too!”

Mydei huffs in defeat. Then he begins drawing again with renewed vigor.

Gorgo shakes her head fondly as she takes a long sip of her iced tea. “Fifty bucks they get married,” she says in an undertone.

“I’m not taking that bet,” Anaxa says drily. He knows what it looks like when two people aren’t going to be separated anytime soon. “I don’t feel like losing fifty dollars.”

Gorgo cackles.

“Hey, Prof!” Phainon yells. “What’s your superhero name?”

“What?” Anaxa asks.

“Your superhero name,” Gorgo says, grinning. “Keep up, Prof.”

“You can’t—”

“Just pick one,” Phainon calls. “Please?”

Anaxa draws a mental blank. He stands there staring at the swirling pen drawings on the ground and can’t remember for the life of him what any superheroes are called.

“The Performer,” Aglaea says from next to him. “That’s his title.”

“And mine is the Queen of Strife,” Gorgo adds, posing dramatically with her iced tea like she’s holding a coronation scepter.

“The Goldweaver,” Anaxa says finally. “You’ll be Aglaea the Goldweaver.”

Aglaea looks pleased.

In the end, the center of the circle is a tie. Instead of one color winning out over the others, the center is filled with a gathering of little superheroes: the Deliverer and the Guardian and the Princesses and the Kitty Phantom Thief, the Queen of Strife and the Goldweaver and the Performer. Surrounding them are tendrils of green and purple ivy and the soft blue waves of a beach.

“It’s beautiful,” Aglaea says, as she looks upon their final handiwork. “Excellent job, all of you. A wonderful addition to my rooftop.”

Phainon beams as the lemon meringue pie with salted crust is served to everyone. He takes a seat next to Anaxa. Then, looking at their makeshift mural on the ground, he says, “Cyrene would have liked this.”

Anaxa quietly takes his hand. “My sister would have liked it too,” he whispers, barely even audible.

“But she’s not coming back,” Phainon says softly. “Cyrene isn’t coming back. And your sister isn’t coming back either.”

Anaxa sighs through a smile. She isn’t; he knows that for sure now. He had seen her one last time when he took out his eye, and he knew, as he looked upon her smile, that he would never see her again. That single moment just before the pain set in was the last moment they’d ever have together. There was nothing he could do now but live his life. Nowhere to go but forward.

“You’re right,” he says, squeezing Phainon’s hand. “Who let you be so smart?”

“You did, Prof,” Phainon says, squeezing back. He takes a bite of his lemon meringue pie one-handed. Then, very quietly, “I’m glad you’re the one taking care of me.”

Anaxa lets himself smile with his whole face. “I’m glad too, Phainon,” he says. “Happy birthday.”

***

Four years later Anaxa stands in front of his noon lecture and says, “We’ll have a few guests today in class. Please be mean to them to discourage them from coming back on their lunch breaks, which they’re supposed to remain on campus for, instead of leaving to attend my lecture instead.”

“Sorry, Prof,” Phainon calls from the front row, through a mouthful of his half-sandwich.

Mydei, sitting next to him and eating the other half of the sandwich, says nothing. At least one of them knows not to lie to him.

To their credit, both of them are very attentive and quiet throughout his lecture. He’d expected them to stop paying attention eventually—this lecture is just an hour and change of spiritual physics, and they’re both just teenagers—but they prove him wrong. Mydei even takes notes with a sparkly red gel pen. If there’s a doodle or two of Phainon in there, Anaxa pretends not to see it.

And then, when Anaxa opens to the floor for questions, Phainon raises his hand.

He’s the only person brave enough to want to question him, so Anaxa sighs and says, “Yes, Phainon?”

“I know you said that souls rely on the premise of equivalent exchange, and that you’ve conducted experiments on what this ‘exchange’ constitutes. But what about exchanging memories or experiences? What if, instead of giving something up, you could instead offer something positive? Like giving a good experience to bargain with, instead of sacrificing something of your own?”

“You can’t just do that,” Mydei interrupts, before Anaxa even has a chance to answer. “There’s no single entity to bargain with for glimpses into the soul. It’s not like you can go up to the soul dealer and say, ‘Hey, I’ll give you the time of your life if you let me have someone’s soul—’”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Phainon says, even louder. “What I’m saying is, what if you could give someone’s soul a positive experience without it ever actually leaving the realm of—”

“But then you’d have to go into the realm of souls, wouldn’t you? How do you plan to—”

“Obviously I don’t know, I’m just suggesting a potential experimental angle to—”

Mydei actually stands up from his lecture chair at this. “If you haven’t thought it out, you shouldn’t go suggesting things you don’t intend to follow through on—”

“I’ll follow through on it, just you wait—”

“You better—”

“I will—”

“Let’s see you try—”

Just when Anaxa thinks it can’t get any worse, the chandelier crashes onto the classroom floor.

“Oops,” says Cipher from the ceiling. She grins at him. “Hey, Prof.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be in an English lecture? On the other side of campus?”

“Thought I’d drop in on ya.”

Anaxa drops his head into his and groans. “Oh my fucking god.”

***

“Interesting day?” Aglaea says, when she pulls up at the university only to see him looking battered to high hell and back.

“That’s one way to put it,” Anaxa grumbles. “I can’t take these kids anywhere.”

“Hm,” says Aglaea, which seems to be her way of sounding amused. “How is the eye patch holding up?”

She’s referring, of course, to the one he’s wearing—the green and gold silk eye patch she’d sewn for him herself. A custom design, she called it. Exclusive. There’s a single small diamond embroidered right where his eye used to be. It looks suspiciously like the diamond from his engagement ring, which he’d left on the kitchen table along with the divorce papers all those years ago. But Anaxa has never pointed it out, and neither has she, so he wears it every day and pretends it doesn’t feel like he’s wearing that same piece of jewelry all over again.

“Look for yourself,” Anaxa scoffs, crossing his arms. “If it weren’t holding up well, I wouldn’t be wearing it, would I?”

Aglaea just shakes her head. “You,” she says, “are impossible.”

They haven’t talked about getting the documents again. Maybe they never will. But Anaxa likes wearing the eye patch, likes arguing with her every day and knowing they have each other’s backs. This is enough, he thinks. This is enough for him.

“So?” Aglaea says, holding out her hand. “Do you feel up for today’s practice?”

She’s holding the keys to her car. Anaxa looks down at them and takes in a measured inhale, then a slow exhale.

“Yes,” he says. “I’m ready.”

He gets into the driver’s seat and puts the keys in the ignition. Aglaea looks over at him and smiles, just a little. “Shall we, Anaxagoras?”

Anaxa starts the engine. Beneath them, the car roars to life.