Work Text:
The air of the morgue was stale and cold. Wafts of smoke viably rose from his lungs as he exhaled, tumbling up towards the ceiling before it dissipated, dissolving into the air. Invisible, even to eyes that could see invisible things.
Funny, that. Edwin wasn’t much for metaphors, but comparisons rose to his mind, his train of thought skittering, chaotic. Usually, he thought in careful straight lines, but ever since the mission, he’d found himself a bit scattered. Unnerved. He’d lost a lot of his work, and there were gaps in his perfect recollection. It bothered him, tugging and pulling, making it difficult to focus as he acclimated to his new role, down here with the cadavers.
Well. It’d been purely cadavers until now, that is.
There was a boy lain on the table before him, a white sheet spread across his body, only his face and shoulders visible. Gooseflesh had risen on his skin and his breath made small puffs of smoke, drifting from his still-living lips.
Gerde had left them here, some twenty minutes ago. The boy was unconscious, and would remain so for hours still. She’d brought him in here, not hesitating even for a moment as she told him to ‘use his creativity’ to silence him.
Proof that she barely knew Edwin at all—creativity was not his drive for art. And this…violence she was requesting—absolutely not what he was well-suited to.
She knew her words would be obeyed, though, and so she had left. Scarlet eyes gleaming at him from the dark, right before she left without a further word.
She was looking forward to his work, he realized, and the notion made him feel unpleasant.
Letting out a sigh, Edwin pulled the sheet further up the boy’s body, covering his shoulders, carefully smoothing the sheet down beside the stumps, securing it so that it wasn’t restrictive, but wouldn’t slip. Regardless of what action he took here, they’d be here for hours, and the boy was not currently wearing sleeves.
That left only his head and neck exposed. The neck, which Gerde wanted him to ‘be creative’ with.
Edwin turned away. He couldn’t do nothing—this was an order from Gerde. She’d make his life hell if he didn’t oblige. He just had to figure out…what.
It was quiet without Hermes’ voice berating him for his indecision. Edwin almost missed it, adrift without the solidity of words echoing around him. Hermes had often spoken to him, and he back. For all his self-thinking, Edwin had never been the type to speak to himself.
Though, as terrible as he was at conversation, he did often speak. He’d converse all day with anyone who’d listen, his thoughts spilling out of his lips, out into the world. Even as he thought and double-thought each word, struggled to say what was demanded of him, attempting to fulfill whatever desires his conversation partner had—it was always such a futile and challenging thing.
For them, more than for Edwin himself. He could only try, knowing that he’d never fully understand.
The boy before him was, somehow, one of the easiest people to talk to. He never seemed displeased with him, and his muteness meant that Edwin didn’t have to split his attention between someone’s words and actions—for the boy, all there was was action. Shifts in his expression, his body language, the steadiness of his gaze.
He would listen to Edwin, play chess with him, and all around hadn’t lashed out against him in ways others often did. Not only family, as they all were under the House of Slaughter, but… a friend.
Bait was his friend.
The thought felt strange in his mind, lingering oddly on his tongue. “Friend…” he whispered, quietly, considering, debating. Turning back to the boy, he asked, “Bait—are we friends?”
Bait, unconscious on the mortuary table, was still.
---
Edwin sat down with his new sketchbook, settling his new brush between his fingers. The texture was off, the wood too smooth, not worn the way he was used to. He would have a lot to get used to as he rebuilt his body of work. But, he supposed, he had time to wear this down into something new. Something that fit him better than Hermes ever had.
Calmly, he dipped the bristles of the brush into the bloody ink, and set to work.
Time drifted past, minutes into hours. He’d lost track, a rarity for him, though a welcome one, as he got lost in the pages.
He was in the middle of drawing the torso of an obscuratype, preparing to extend his lines out to form the limbs, when movement suddenly caught his eye. Usually, in the morgue, such a thing precluded a new person coming into the room. That, or something far more unfortunate—though the House hadn’t been personally invaded by monsters since well before Edwin’s time here. Still, his gaze rose to find Bait, sitting up on the table, sheet crumpled around his waist.
“You’re awake,” Edwin greeted, placing his brush down before turning to face him.
He didn’t show any signs of being cold, at least, despite how long the two of them had been in here. Perhaps his body got used to the feeling of it, even while unconscious. That, or maybe Bait was used to the cold—Edwin didn’t actually know where precisely he was from, now that he thought about it. Unlike himself, brought to the Order too young to know such things, Bait would recall more of his past.
(Edwin, so used to perfect memory, still felt the strange tug on the pathways of his brain, each time he tried to think that far back.)
Bait was looking around them, cataloging where they were. He probably hadn’t been in this room before—most members of the House didn’t need to be, not unless they died in the field. The Silvers, sometimes investigated here, Azures too, but this was mostly Scarlet territory.
The boy’s eyes landed on the scalpels, spread out on the tray beside Edwin’s elbow. Blue eyes impossibly wide, brow furrowing upwards, the cord of his neck shifting with a swallow as Bait rose his chin, trying to—
Ah.
If he had hands, his fingers would surely be exploring the planes of his neck. Searching for injury, the scar.
“Bait—nothing has been done to you.”
Bait blinked. Then, swift, so quick Edwin could only see a blur of movement, he swung his legs up, throwing himself onto his feet, knees bent, torso low, now standing on the table, steel ringing under the force of his heels. He towered over Edwin, who sat motionless, watching as Bait’s eyes swung across the room.
“I’m the only one here,” Edwin clarified, “Other than yourself, of course.”
Bait’s lips tightened into a thin frown. Edwin only realized now that perhaps he should be concerned that his head was easily kickable from this range. Bait’s shoulders were tight, whole body tense and ready, but he hadn’t acted yet.
What are you going to do to me?
Edwin could almost hear the hiss, though he’d never heard Bait’s voice. Breathing or a sigh, being the most he’d ever heard from the boy.
“Gerde,” he began holding up his palms to lessen whatever threat he represented in Bait’s mind, “Seems to dislike you about as much as she does me.”
Bait blinked.
“As you seem to already suspect—she wanted you silenced. Asked me to ‘be creative'. I…well. You’re silent already, so my ‘creativity’ so to say, isn’t strictly needed. If all she wants is silence then… she already has it. Right?”
Edwin watched Bait exhale. Slowly, he sank down from where he stood, sitting on rumpled sheet, his feet swinging, not even tall enough to reach the floor.
“For both our sakes, do you mind if I wrap some bandages around your neck? Then she may think as she will, and neither of us need worry about invasive questions.” Reaching back to the table, Edwin delicately lifted a roll of gauze from the tray, waving it in the air so Bait could clearly see.
Bait was silent for a moment, eyes flitting between the gauze and Edwin. And as much as Edwin struggled to read others, it suddenly felt easy, a sudden insight. It reminded him of watching Bait’s teeth close around a pawn, sliding it forward with dexterity no one else would have with their mouth. And, while Bait’s mindset behind the chess game was obscure to Edwin, his movement was not. This felt like that, like playing a game. A mutual experience.
“We both would rather live without Gerde hounding us, no?”
Bait’s lips twitched. He nodded.
“Then, allow me. Come closer?”
Dutifully, Bait approached, and Edwin got to work with the gauze. A few wraps of that, some medical tape, and a bandage over the whole thing, wrapped carefully around his neck to maintain the verisimilitude, and… done. Work complete.
“We’ll have to change the bandages a few times over the next few weeks. They’ll get looser, and there will be less of them. To pantomime the healing.”
Bait stared back, but Edwin knew he understood.
“Off you go, then,” he smiled, swiveling the chair back to his sketches, “See me tomorrow so we can re-wrap it.”
He listened for the padding of Bait’s socked feet, but heard none. Tilting his head, he glanced back, twisting his brush in his hand. Bait was still looking at him in a sort of sullen way. Disbelief, perhaps? Or…
“You don’t owe me anything,” Edwin clarified. “I’m not even disobeying, technically. And,” he lightly tapped the wooden end of his brush to his desk, “We’re friends, aren’t we?”
Slowly, Bait nodded, the barest hint of a smile tugging at his lips.