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Casey wonders how it can be that the world exists, in such a way that, someone like her boyfriend has chosen terrorism as his only mode of freedom.
It’s absurd. It’s not even in the I want the power to hurt the way that I’ve been hurt way—she wouldn’t be dating him, if that was it. Instead it’s him smiling and looking at his phantom-bloody hands and saying, “How else can I prove to myself that I left that place behind?”
His dead name is emboldened on a missing persons file no one bothered to investigate. The Cold Steel Knights wrote it off as a case of an orphan boy running off into the woods and succumbing to the elements—nevermind the insistence of everyone who knew him that he was an ice climber—around the same time a young mage of eleven years entered the selling pool, and the noble Sotos family, counted among Eileen’s supporters, gained a new magic tutor for their children.
“But aren’t I soooo nice and personable because of that experience?” John Doe asks after giving her this file. “I’m going to regret giving you this, later. But I want to tell you—because I want to tell someone, and you’re supposed to be honest with your girlfriend, right? I’m bad at that. If I don’t tell you now, I probably won’t find that want in me again for a while, even though logically I do believe I should.”
He’s shaking when he says this, speaking so fast she can’t get a word in, and Casey doesn’t want to make any psychiatric assertions, but it is weird that he has four different handwritings, several different voices, and contradicts himself every other hour.
But whatever he was before, now he carries himself with the weightlessness he proclaimed his life of crime gave him.
She can’t say she’s fond of his job, but she can stomach it for now, because at least while he’s playing the part of Ludger Cherish, his class remains remarkably Black-Dawn-proof.
When the werewolf incident hit, his class had just so happened to have been taught the week before how to put up defensive barriers and fire distress signals into the air. Every student who attended the Kunst auction had also, unrelatedly, received a prior lesson on how to best evacuate, how to avoid crowd crush, and how to defend yourself from collapsing buildings.
He was a terrorist, and he’d saved Katrina Lumos from an abduction, walked her home, and advised her to ask her sister for advice if she ever needed help with her magic.
Casey told him once: “I can help you leave Black Dawn.”
And his response had been to tip his head. “Ah? Detective, I’m not being held hostage or anything. The only thing keeping me there is myself.”
“I know. I said: I can help you leave Black Dawn.”
If John Doe could spend two decades being patient with humanity before he took up a life of crime, the least Casey could do was this. She can save people from him, and wait for him to save himself.
That, and it’s lonely being her.
If Casey’s being honest with herself, she still feels out of sorts with people. She’s awkward, unfitting. It comes out in conversation when her words clash with theirs—never fully understanding how to toe the line of what’s socially acceptable and what’s not.
Compared to her, John knows this dance like the back of his hand. It’s been whipped into him—literally. She doesn’t know how to talk to the living so she talks to their corpses instead. And even then it’s not talking—not in the verbal sense—it’s a conversation with her eyes as she scans over the wounds on their bodies and the tears on their clothes, the fabric type and the wear on the seams, the cleanliness, and puts together the story of their lives and deaths.
She mentioned this to John Doe once, and he smiled, well I’m basically a corpse! So maybe that’s why we get along so well.
They’re sitting at a cafe, chatting over coffee about John’s latest obsession—a leading figure of the ongoing Eutar revolution named Machievelli—concealed by their various disguises. Apparently, John Doe can make minor modifications to the structure of his face by pushing the bones and skin around like clay. Casey settled for putting her hair down and wearing a hat and glasses.
“You talk about him like he’s a pop idol,” Casey comments, shaking her head. “Does he even know you exist?”
“Nope!”
He appears to be halfway onto his next sentence, only to stop himself when he processes the dead silence around him.
A man enters the establishment, identified as Kamal Lumos by his deep blue hair, golden eyes, and unfettered arrogance. Two nobles of lower rank flank his sides.
He approaches the table beside them, and the girl sitting there across from her study partner shrinks.
“Sherryl,” he sneers, “I didn’t expect to run into you, much less here of all places.
“Young Lord,” she replies with practice. Casey sees her hands shake, though. Her knuckles whiten around her pencil. “May I help you with anything?”
“Oh don’t be so stiff, I just wanted to stop by for a chat,” the heir said. “You know, see how my dear little sister’s friend is doing.”
“I see.” Her voice comes out stiff.
“You know, if your family needs more money,” he taunts, “you can always ask.”
“I appreciate your concern, but we’re doing fine, thank you.”
“Yes, but it’s not just about you. It’s about your family, Sherryl. About the Lumos name. A family we associate with so closely can’t have its heiress running around in clothing repeats.”
Sherryl withers. Her gaze drops and Kamal accepts his victory with a grin. “I just—like this outfit,” she says, very quietly, as if Kamal has an ounce of empathy to appeal to.
“Yes, it looks good,” Kamal agrees, too patronizingly to be of any comfort to the girl he’s antagonizing. “One of the few things that can make you look presentable, I’m sure.”
It’s as Casey thinks of jumping in that John turns to look over his shoulder and says, like it’s so funny and personable and fond a statement, “Oh you know Kamal, you say that and then wear the same face out in public every day. It’s so unfortunate for the rest of us.”
Casey chokes.
Kamal whips around, face heated. One of his lackeys tries and fails to stifle his laughter, and Kamal shoots him a glare, too.
“Well I’m sorry, sir,” John says without a hint of earnestly, “but I think your personality just oozes out of the pores of your face and it makes you rather unsightly. I think it’s because it’s so slimey. Has no one taught you how to be slightly redeemable a person?”
He looks at Casey then, and smiles, like he’s trying to give her permission. For what, she doesn’t know, but it makes her finally start laughing.
Kamal’s face burns red. “Do you realize who you’re talking to?”
“Yes.” John’s eyes glitter. “Do you?”
“Huh?”
“Do you even know my name? My face? I mean, I have such a common appearance.”
John Doe presses that last word beneath a sneer, but something about it feels weighty. Casey snaps herself briefly out of her satisfaction towards Kamal’s embarrassment and realizes there was magic behind that line.
Kamal must sense it too, being a Lumos, because he flinches back.
When she looks at him, she finds that though she can see him, she can’t identify his features. She can’t remember his features. He has teal eyes, probably. Or they could be blue, or maybe it was the lighting and they were green. She’s staring right at him and can’t decide if his nose is broad or narrow and pointed.
“Well, go on then,” he says, threading his fingers together and setting his chin on his hands. “Run off to your father and tattle. Though, honestly, what are you, twenty-three or so? Haven’t you outgrown a habit like that?”
“Your cockiness exceeds reason,” Kamal hisses.
Casey chips in, with a grin, “The duration of your stay exceeds your own dignity. Maybe leave and cut your losses?”
The children at the table don’t snicker out loud, but the faces of Sherryl and her friend twist into the shape of smiles and almost-laughter.
Kamal storms out fuming and cursing out a warning, which John Doe shrugs off. Sherryl thanks them and he waves his hand at the air as if to physically smack the word away, and goes back to telling her the story of how he stalks the poor subject of his admiration, and thanks her lucky stars that he at least tries to be somewhat normal to her.
Though, by the way he describes him, he sure sounds an awful lot like Moriarty.
—
“See? Wasn’t that fun?” John laughs when they’re out of the cafe and taken to the privacy of a quiet street. He’s clinging to her arm like an overgrown cat, and if they weren’t actively walking she thinks he’d have laid his head on her shoulder. “That’s why I became a terrorist, you know, so I could pull off stuff like that!”
“How’s that?”
“Well, if they haven’t caught me for the murders, they won’t catch me for this!” John chirps. “I don’t keep a singular identity, I don’t keep connections which someone can target. I can finally breathe, you know?”
He slides his hands down to her wrist, spins forward, and pulls her along.
“Though, I suppose, looking at you, there was another route, huh?”
Casey blinks. “Huh?”
“If I had made myself as skilled as you, as famous—that’d be something like power, right? You have a decent sum of it.” John shuts his eyes. “But ah, that’s all hypothetical. I don’t have it in me to be as brilliant as you, I’m afraid.”
Casey cracks a grin.
“Well duh. No one can be me,” she chirps. “But I’m sure you could’ve been something too.”
His smile wavers. It’s enough of an objection.
—
“Well, Ludger? Care to explain the audaciousness of your student, here?”
John turns his head over his shoulder, and finds Renei and Flora standing before the lather’s father and two siblings.
Ceoren’s festival is in full swing, thus the gathering of nobles. He spots Elisa and Duke Kadatushan sitting down at a table that has another chair drawn out, presumably intended for Duke Lumos, if he could be bothered to go up and be there.
Renei has her shoulder pushed protectively in front of Flora, her arm reached out as if to physically protect her from Kamal. John Doe had only just arrived upon the scene—caught up in conversation with Celena on the way there—and had no context for their argument, but he could see that Flora’s cheeks were red in humiliation, her head bowed, and Renei’s expressions were twisted with protective anger.
“Audacious?!” Renei parroted. “The only one acting beyond their station is Kamal.”
Flora’s tugging on her shoulder, as if trying to physically get her to back down. “It’s really alright, Renei.”
“I believe the situation speaks for itself,” Kayden says, glaring at Renei, “that these children were acting out of line. I don’t suppose you’ll care to give me that girl’s name?”
Renei flinches.
John Doe weighs his options.
Most of his students were nobility, or at least had some decent sum of wealth to their name—the children of mages, knights, priests, and the like. They’d be protected by that. John could probably stand up to him here and protect Renei directly, and they’d be fine. Elisa Willows would protect his job. He might have to deal with some harassment from the noble’s faction—but Hugo was already doing that anyway, so that wouldn’t change anything.
But, this situation isn’t like the one in the cafe; when he was entirely disconnected from an identity.
Now, he thinks of Casey, and how this identity will likely be traced back as her friend, and how though a color mage she may be, the Lumos’s are right beneath the emperor in status and power. There could be smear campaigns, or hired people to harass her on cases. They could pay law officers to sabotage her work, or entire agencies to refuse to work with her.
The best thing he can think to do, then, to spare Renei from danger and Flora from worse abuse at home, is to guide the consequence upon himself.
“I can be a bit casual with my students at times,” he says. “No, I’ve directly encouraged behavior such as this.”He takes Flora by the shoulder and tucks her behind himself, then steps in front of Renei; the one in real danger right now. “I’m sure you would never undermine the esteem of your daughter, either.”
If only for political reasons.
“You must be upset that I’ve seemingly interfered with Flora’s etiquette.” He means to reshape the narrative with his words, from a rude commoner student accosting a noble to a father worried for his daughter, and so says them loud enough for the crowd to hear. If Kayden notices what he’s doing, he does nothing to stop it. “The fault lies with me.”
To begin with, it was odd for Duke Lumos to call him out into a fight in which he wasn’t involved, so Doe shouldn’t have been surprised when he took the offer of blame shift as eagerly as he did.
“Indeed,” the Duke agrees easily, “it is not the fault of the children, but their instructor for failing to educate them properly.”
It’s strange, because he honestly isn’t sure when, how, or where he offended Duke Lumos. It can’t be that thing with Kamal—Kamal clearly doesn’t recognize him. He did participate in that festival tournament, but he made sure not to win, so he shouldn’t have stood out for that.
“You seem to have a particular issue with me. Have I wronged you somehow?” John asks, after concluding that it wouldn’t be strange for someone in his position to ask. Duke Lumos is being awfully antagonistic to him.
“The behavior of your students has. Is that not the same?” Kayden crosses his arms. “I’m hardly the only nobleman who has come to hear of how your students walk from your classroom with a newfound lack of manners.”
If John could’ve, he’d have laughed. He offended the Duke by raising the self esteem of children. He’s threatened by the mere idea that a professor would teach his students to stand up for themselves, like they’ve done here.
Well, they aren’t children by definition—nineteen, twenty, most of them—, but they’re children to him.
“I see,” John elects to say out loud. “Then, if I may apologize.”
“Since it’s gone this far, I’d rather like to see you do that from your knees.”
Ah. So it’s like that.
John could laugh.
“Father!” Flora shouts, “that’s going too—far.”
All the strength in her voice drops off the moment she receives a warning glare from Kamal.
Katrina watches him with equal parts guilt and inability to defy her father. She can’t face him, so she doesn’t. She looks away, and half-hides behind her brother’s arm.
John swallows any pride he’s ever managed to dredge up, and falls back into familiar habits.
“Of course, Your Grace.”
Without fanfare, he lowers himself to one knee with all the composed slowness he can muster—if only so as to deny Duke Lumos the satisfaction of knowing he’s humiliated him.
He ducks his head, and his hair curtains his eyes, so he only has to see the floor, his own shoes, and the Duke’s.
Kayden clicks his tongue. “This is why we can’t have ruined nobility, much less commoners, educating our children. They don’t know how to discipline. Our children learn to disrespect authority, to shake off their refined mannerisms, when it becomes clear that the one teaching them is beneath them.”
There was a pause, and Kayden’s legs pivoted slightly, as if he were turning in the direction of Renei and Flora.
“Then they take that unruly behavior out of their classrooms, and this happens.”
“I beg your forgiveness. If, in your esteem, you could find grace for a foolish commoner such as myself, I would be in your debt,” he says, like reading off a script. The words scrape his throat. He hates them. “I fear an education has evaded me in my youth.”
Renei and Flora are most likely watching him with pity in their eyes. John Doe smiles, and doubts he’ll be able to regain their respect after this. Rumors of this will spread. His children—students will be disappointed in him not practicing what he preaches.
“It shows,” Kayden clicks his tongue, and John stifles the urge to remind him that money doesn’t buy immortality, and his blood is still red.
“My disposition is unruly compared to yours,” John agrees. “I cannot help it. It’s in my blood to lack.”
The burn of humiliation fades as he lingers there on the floor; a sense of calm to replace it. When did he ever care about pride, anyway? If he did, he wouldn’t have let that Sotos boy kiss him the way he did.
And at the end of the day, it’s only a job. Ludger Cherish isn’t him. He’s a Black Dawn first order playing a role. Playing well.
Duke Lumos takes his time. Noblemen snicker.
“You may stand, Professor,” Kayden says. His tongue curls over John’s title with mockery, as if to highlight how little it could do for him in this situation.
John Doe begins to stand, debating what expression to show him as he straightens up. He decides to just give him what he wants. That’s what you should do for people in power, so that they don’t take it from you by force.
“Is this how far the nobility of the Lumoses has fallen?” Casey’s voice cuts in loudly. He recognizes it in an instant and whips his head around as she emerges from the gathering crowd. “I wasn’t aware your dignity was so fragile the mere words of a student could send you careening off your high horse.”
“Selmore,” Kayden says slowly, “I don’t believe this matter has any relationship to you.”
Stay out, he means. For once, John Doe agrees.
“Neither does Professor Ludger, yet you seem to have no qualms against involving him.” She steps beside him, and he realizes how stiff he feels. Her gaze shifts up to the table on the balcony, where Elisa and Kadatushan are. Elisa’s half out of her seat, but even so her eyes narrow and she says, “It evades me why the chancellor would allow the dignity of her institution to be besmirched, too.”
Oh Lumen they’re roping everyone into this. Or more specifically, Casey’s turning it into a conflict between Duke Lumos and the entire institution of Ceoren. It has its intended effect of having Kayden begin to wind down, and glance at Elisa, to see which stance she’ll affirm.
“Detective Selmore is correct,” Elisa elects to say. She’s too far away for him to see her expression. “Duke Lumos, your words are a bit undue, don’t you think? I’m sure Professor Cherish has repented enough.”
Kayden shuts his eyes. “You scold me in excess. I was about to drop the topic, before you all jumped in.”
John looks behind himself to check on Renei and Flora, who are staring back in wide eyed worry.
“An apology,” Casey demands suddenly, and John sends her a look that pleads her to stop. She glares back. He withers. “And one from Lord Kamal as well.”
The heir snarls, “I have said nothing worth apologizing for.”
“It sounds like this mess only happened because Young Lord Kamal was harassing Lady Flora. I believe an apology is owed.”
Kayden looks over her, and unsurprisingly, she fails to bend in any way.
Gritting his teeth, he says, “I will look over this incident, and that is all the grace I will give you.”
He turns away, then, his exuberance clearly dimmed. It’s a kind of victory in itself—that she killed any satisfaction he might’ve otherwise gained here.
“I’m sorry,” he says to the two girls, because he feels like he should.
“No,” Flora says immediately. “I—I’m sorry that my father is. That way.”
He shakes his head. “The fact that he’s so hard to stand is his own personal failing.”
The insult startles Flora out of her attempts to blame herself for this, and she sputters instead, “Y-you can’t say something like that.”
He smiles, and winks.
Renei just surges forward and hugs him and sobs her apologies into his shoulder. People are watching—laughing. It’s a spectacle. Elisa steps upon the scene and calls them all to attention with an announcement about the festival, and John Doe sort of listens. He’s more focused on stroking Renei’s hair and patting her back.
Casey watches him, waiting. He’s pretty sure she has a lecture on her tongue that she’s restraining until the students are calm.
Once Renei’s distress has diminished into sniffling, he pushes her back by her shoulders and tells her to rejoin the festival with Flora, and to maybe find another friend if they can. Earlier he spotted Leo exploring the shops left of them, and tells them as much.
He sends them off, watches their backs as they disappear into the crowd, and returns his attention to Casey.
“Ah… hi?”
“Hey,” she replies blandly. He thinks she’s mad. She’s definitely not happy. He doesn’t know why. Throwing himself down at the feet of authority is supposed to make people not mad.
“Are you mad at me?” John asks. His voice shakes like a broken window in a blizzard. It’s going to crack.
She frowns, and John has another apology on his lips that she silences by putting her hand up. “Stop. I’m not—mad persay, but, let’s talk elsewhere.”
“Ah, okay.”
She’s definitely mad. They’re breaking up. They’re totally breaking up. It’s all over. Haha. Fuck.
—
Casey leads him into a secluded area behind the stadium, and thinks of what to say as she walks, how to tell him he’s a fool, and an idiot.
It comes out like: “I could’ve helped you. You didn’t have to do that.”
You didn’t have to lower yourself like that. You didn’t have to be that again.
Publicly speaking, the figures Casey Selmore and Ludger Cherish weren’t associated with one another, but she still stood staunchly for justice, and that would be enough of an excuse for her to stand up for him.
“You have an example to set to your students too, don’t you?” She adds. John flinches like he’s been struck. “I’m sure you know there were better ways to handle this, so I’m trying to understand, why?”
He could’ve appealed to Elisa’s authority. He could’ve implied that the Duke’s words went against Ceoren’s principles as a whole. He could’ve dragged the Duke down to his level by implying his grudge against mere teenagers was immature and beneath his station. He could’ve done a hundred and some things to even the playing fields, and he should’ve been smart and socially-versed enough to know how to do it.
If what she saw at the cafe was any indication, he shouldn’t have any fear of the Lumoses, and the direct involvement of his students should’ve made him more inclined to grow a spine, not less.
John Doe watches her; as if searching for ulterior motives behind her eyes. She waits. His expression withers, and he ducks his head.
“Ah, I was—“ He tries, falls quiet. “I.” Fails again. “I was scared.”
The confession is barely a whisper.
Casey’s gaze softens.
“I couldn’t think,” he says again, like he’s in a hurry to explain himself. “I’m sorry,” covering up all empty space with new interjections, “I just thought, he’s a man with more power than me, and I have things to protect—” like he’s afraid to be misunderstood, “a life. Students. A—girlfriend,” to be seen for something he isn’t by someone who should know, “I don’t know how to stop people who are like that, except to act like that.”
The way he says it alarms her. How to stop people like that, like everything in his life is about keeping the nearest authority figure from acting on him.
He hasn’t told her everything, but she tried to offer him a spoon once and he pleaded no, then two times more, as if convinced the first wouldn’t be listened to. Then he realized what he’d said, and tried to distract her from it with a joke.
She doesn’t know if he’s ever heard him say no less than three times when refusing something.
“I can back you on anything,” she says. “So appeal to my name if you have to. I worked hard to make it worth this much, you know.”
“You’re going to back me publicly?” John asks. “No, wait, you already have.”
“I’m just saying, I’m not going to bother shutting down any rumors that fester after this incident.”
“Oh.” A faint dusting of red hits his cheeks. “Oh. Uh.”
She smiles, and he breaks eye contact.
“I—already have merch of you on my desk at work so, everyone is probably going to think—” he covers his face with his hand, as if that does anything to hide the redness on his cheeks. “Yeah.”
“Then let them. I’m tired of having to work out a disguise every time I see you anyway.”
They can bring up this discussion again later, she decides, when the incident is less fresh. For now, she drops it here, and extends her hand.
“Now, back to the festival?”