Archive of Our Own

- 4 days

They lie together under the starless sky and watch the florid moon creep toward the horizon.

“How does this end?” Owen asks, his voice so soft it couldn’t disturb the wing of a katydid.

Legundo replies nearly a minute later. “I wish I knew.”

Owen laughs, but there’s no humor to it. “We are diametrically opposed. Shouldn’t the answer be obvious? One of us will give in, or we’ll destroy each other.”

“A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life; whose misadventured piteous overthrows doth with their death bury their parents’ strife,” Legundo recites.

“What the hell is that?” Owen asks with a bemused smile.

“It’s from a play by a man named William Shakespeare. The play is called Romeo and Juliet, and it’s about two kids from warring families who fall into a forbidden romance. In the end, they both take their own lives because their families’ conflict makes it impossible for them to be together.”

“Oh, I see. You think we’ll end up killing ourselves to avoid having to kill each other.”

“No,” Legundo replies, giving Owen’s hand a soft squeeze. “We’re not children. We’ve both survived far worse than social disapproval over our choice of partner.”

Owen considers this for a long while. When he speaks again, it’s in a raw, shaking tone that speaks to the depths of the vulnerability he expresses. “My partner didn’t survive that disapproval.”

“…I’m sorry. I should have thought of that. My comment was insensitive.”

“No. It’s okay; you… You didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.”

“Still.”

“…Still, I killed thousands of people for what they did to him. And you’re afraid I’ll do it again.”

“I’m not afraid of that.”

“Maybe you should be.”

“I don’t think so.” Legundo tilts his head toward Owen to meet his eyes. “It didn’t make the pain go away last time, did it?”

Owen gazes steadily back. “It felt good.”

“In the moment. But then it was over, and you still felt every ounce of that grief.”

The silence doesn’t settle for long.

“You don’t have to be defined by what you did when you had no good choices.”

“Didn’t I? I could have walked away. I could have taken what remained of him and left this wretched place.”

“Could you have? Do you really think you were capable of choosing to do that at that moment?”

“…I guess not.”

“But if it happens again, you know more now,” Legundo says, turning to lie on his side and face Owen. He brings their clasped hands up and places his other hand around the back of Owen’s to encase him in steady warmth. “You could make a different choice, because you understand that revenge can only offer a hollow illusion of catharsis.”

Owen tries to imagine it. Legundo, covered in his own blood, eyes glassy and lifeless and heart still in his chest, never to beat again. No more warmth. No more laughter. No more of the brilliant, compassionate man who looks at Owen and sees someone worth fighting for.

“I’d do it again,” Owen murmurs. “If it was for you.”

Legundo breaks eye contact to turn his gaze down. He sighs.

“I know.”

+ 0 days

In the end, it’s Scott who manages to corner Legundo.

Pyro destroyed the garlic patch and Apo threw the town’s stockpile into the river. Legundo had his own meager supply squirreled away but it couldn’t last forever, and Scott goes straight for him the second that final clove fades from his breath.

Abolish and Martyn are quickly dispatched with Pyro’s help, leaving Legundo undefended in his lab when Scott drops in and clears his throat.

Only two beacons remain holy. Scott was smart enough to send Owen and Shelby on a dummy mission on the opposite side of the woods. Legundo doesn’t stand a chance.

It’s over in seconds.

By the time Owen reaches Legundo, he’s curled into himself beneath his desk, digging his fingers into the stone floor with enough force to crack and split the earth.

Owen sits with Legundo and holds him while he weeps.

+ 8 days

The barrier shatters under a midnight sky in early November.

Legs sits at a cliff’s edge with both feet hanging over the abyss below and his hands clasped tight in his lap.

How many times has he been here?

It was an easy instinct to indulge when his horror was fresh and he never seemed able to fully wash the scent of blood from his hands. Then, he stood gripping the metal guardrails of the old industrial bridge on the edge of town and staring into the torrent of rapids far, far below. The cold iron bit into his palms and he yearned with such suffocating intensity to give in, to let go, to become another name on a row of uniform headstones.

But he couldn’t.

A creature so vile deserved no relief.

For years, his work kept him too busy to contemplate endings. It almost felt like living again— traveling from place to place, giving care to those who most needed it, asking nothing in return but a place to rest his head and whatever food could be spared, if any. The work gave him purpose. The purpose gave him meaning. The meaning quieted the voices of agony buried deep in his heart.

What meaning does he have now?

All that remains of what he once was is a cautionary tale. A failed hero, cursed forever to bear witness to his own inadequacy.

There is one step left in his arc.

One final fall.

“I thought I might find you out here.”

He does nothing to acknowledge the words, but it isn’t a surprise when Owen comes to stand beside him.

Legs can’t bring himself to lift his gaze. “Thought you would have moved on by now.”

“I don’t much care for loose ends.”

“…I see.” Legs shuts his eyes. “Well, I’ll make it easy for you.”

“Somehow, I doubt that.” Owen drops to sit at his side, leaning his head on Legs’s shoulder. “I found a copy of that play. It’s dreadful, Doctor.”

Legs huffs, and the corners of his lips make an attempt to twitch into a faint smile. “Honestly, it’s one of his weaker works.”

“You’ll just have to make it up to me by showing me something decent.”

The smile fades.

“…It doesn’t have to be over,” Owen says, with such gentle softness he could be mistaken as coaxing a stray animal from its hiding spot. “Some of us are happy with our lot, but there are still some who want the cure.”

“It’s impossible.”

“Why?”

“Because…”

He’s slightly taken aback by the question.

“Because there’s no more beacons. We need a consecrated beacon for the cure to work.”

“Well, who’s to say we can’t come back later and restart the cycle?”

…Could that work?

All of the beacons were neutral when they first arrived, but they must have gotten that way somehow. Perhaps another human could consecrate one and begin the game anew. If it was someone they could trust, then all of the vampires who wanted curing would need only consecrate all of the beacons once they reclaimed their humanity, and the barrier would fall once more. They’d be free. They’d all be free.

Except…

“Scott took off the second the barriers came down.”

“So? We have all the time in the world to hunt him down.”

Finally, Legs manages to turn his head and meet Owen’s gaze.

“Are you… What are you saying, Owen?”

Owen smiles. “I’m saying I’d like to wipe the smug grin off that frilly bastard’s face, and I want you to help me do it.”

+ 9 days

They gather in the smoldering ruins of what was once a town to take stock and formulate a loose plan.

“Let’s start simple,” Pearl calls, and the chattering ceases at once. “Who wants the cure?”

Legs raises his hand high to join hers.

Around the circle, more hands hesitantly rise: Apo, Abolish, Ren, and Martyn. Some spare Owen nervous glances, but he keeps his eyes fixed on Pearl.

“Good. Was anyone here sired by someone other than Scott or Pyro?”

Avid’s shaky hand raises. “Shelby turned me.”

Pearl’s eyes crease with a brief flicker of pain, but it’s rapidly burned away by hard resolve. “I see. In that case, we need all three of them.”

“And they’ve conveniently left town the second the barrier dissipated,” Cleo says, crossing her arms.

Martyn bares his teeth and growls, “Because they knew damn well what would happen, the cowards.”

“Don’t talk about Shelby that way,” Avid snaps. “She probably only ran because she was scared.”

“Which makes her a coward!”

“Shut up, Martyn,” Apo sighs, elbowing him in the ribs.

He whirls on her with a fierce hiss, but it cuts abruptly when Owen growls with a resonant force that has every last head turning in his direction— Legs’s very much included.

“Stop. None of this in-fighting. We have one collective goal: slay Scott Goldsmith. Nothing else matters.”

“Scott may not be enough for all of us,” Abolish says. “Avid doesn’t want the cure, so Shelby is fine— she’s never even had human blood as far as I know. But we might need to kill Pyro as well.”

Apo flicks a strand of hair over her shoulder. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s already dead.”

“Then we hunt them both down,” says Pearl.

Martyn huffs. “And how are we meant to do that? They could go literally anywhere now that the barrier is out of commission.”

Drift raises her hand.

“…Drift?” Pearl says.

She drops her hand with a sheepish look, then rubs at the back of her neck as she says, “Well, when you need to track someone without any good leads, it’s best to start by thinking of everything you know about that person’s usual behavior. They might cover their tracks for a bit, but eventually they’ll start slipping back into their habits, and that’s what we can be on the lookout for.”

“Great. Owen, you were around him the longest out of any of us here; what should we be looking out for?”

Owen stiffens, jaw set and eyes narrow. “I spent as little time around him as possible. I’m not a good source of information.”

Pearl moves right along, completely unperturbed. “Right, then. Does anyone have any ideas?”

“He’ll eventually want to settle somewhere with a lot of resources,” Martyn says. “Noble types like him get used to a certain level of luxury. He might go without for a while to throw us off the scent, but he’ll try to claw it all back sooner or later.”

“Scott likes castles with views,” Avid blurts. He shuts his mouth and covers it with his hand, but a bit of soft coaxing from Drift gets him to quietly add, “He… Mentioned that, once. Said he would never pick a place that didn’t have a decent vista.”

“Good,” Pearl nods. “This is all excellent. What else?”

As a group, they collect every minute observation of Scott’s behavior they can muster. Legs has nothing substantive to contribute; he clocked the manipulative mask very early on and largely avoided conversation with Scott when he could, and he puts no stock in anything Scott said in those few times they did end up speaking. Owen also remains silent. Legs has no idea what transpired between them— if anything— but he’s well aware that Owen doesn’t like Scott, never has, and likely would have killed him weeks ago if Scott weren’t so much stronger than the rest of them.

He spoke of it only once, during a tryst beneath a half moon when they convened at a rough shelter constructed near the lakeside beacon.

(“I hate him,” Owen said. “He’s so sure he knows everything about us— that he can perfectly predict exactly what we’ll do, so he never needs to be worried. But he doesn’t know me. He doesn’t understand me at all.”

Legs took Owen’s hand and enclosed it within both of his own.

Owen gave a small, broken laugh. “He can’t understand. He’s never felt real love for anything but himself.”)

The moon dips low on the horizon when Pearl claps her hands together and grins, baring her fangs to the shadows.

“I’m going to see if I can’t scrounge up any direct leads. If one or two of you want to join me, we can form a mobile force to track him down.”

Martyn immediately steps forward. Pearl nods her approval.

“I’ll pass his description around to my colleagues as well,” Abolish says. “I can’t directly involve any of you with operations, but I’ll keep in touch.”

“Everyone else, keep your eyes out for any of the signs we discussed, and if you see something, write to my post box in the Citadel. My contacts will make sure I get the message.”

The group falls back into chattering amongst themselves. Legs brushes his shoulder against Owen’s.

“Shall we?”

“If you have any last rallying speeches for them, now’s the time,” Owen murmurs.

“…I think they’ve heard plenty from me,” Legs replies. “There comes a point when words aren’t enough anymore. Now is the time for action.”

A ghost of a smile crosses Owen’s lips.

+ 13 days

“I didn’t think you were the domestic type.”

They’re at an inn a few day’s journey north of Oakhurst by carriage— or by silken wing, if one is graced with the good fortune of being capable of turning into a bat. Owen sits with his bare legs sprawled across the bed watching Legs work their clothes over a washing board.

Owen’s modest collection of coins are all defunct after centuries in the ground, and Legs never kept much while he traveled— he wasn’t exactly seeking out people who could afford to pay him for his services— so he negotiated with the innkeeper to earn this room for himself, alongside use of their washing tub and board and even the luxury of laundry soap. In exchange, he spent half the day giving standard physicals to every member of the innkeeper’s family.

It didn’t bother him. This is reminiscent of what he was doing before Oakhurst, and he was happy to be able to deliver some good news for once when he determined the innkeeper’s daughter is pregnant with what will be the first grandchild.

He isn’t sure what Owen did while he worked. They decided before entering this little town that it would be best for Owen to remain invisible and out of sight until Legs secured a private room; Owen doesn’t exactly look human at the moment, and for as much as Legs is unbothered by that, a town full of uninitiated strangers might not react well to his shock-white hair and crimson eyes. But he appeared while Legs hauled in the washing tub, and now he watches over the whole affair with soft amusement.

“I don’t usually have money to spare to pay someone else to do my washing,” Legs says. “If I want clean clothes to wear, I have to clean them myself.”

“Did they teach you that in the army?”

He laughs. “Not really, no.”

“Right. I’m sure they had someone around who was too useless to do any fighting and got stuck washing everyone else’s clothes.”

Legs smiles again, somber now. “No.”

With the turnover he saw during his service, soldiers wore their fatigues until they were buried in them. The very lucky few to survive long enough to be rotated to reserve or rest would hand off their filthy uniforms to the quartermasters, get thoroughly deloused and treated for any other number of pests or rashes, and receive freshly laundered uniforms to wear once deemed clean enough for common spaces.

“I don’t mind it, though,” he adds a moment later. “My mother taught me when I was little. Doing this reminds me of her.”

Now it’s Owen’s turn to look distant and somber. He’d said before that his family weren’t good people, and though that was following a lie about his history with the town back before he was outed as a vampire, there were enough grains of truth in what he said for Legs to believe that he wasn’t making that part up.

“Would you like to help me?”

Owen looks sharply up, startled from whatever world of sadness he’d drifted into. “With washing your clothes?”

Legs quirks a brow. “Am I supposed to pretend I haven’t noticed that you aren’t wearing any pants?”

“That’s a coincidence.”

“And the garment that looks suspiciously similar to said pants suddenly appearing in my basket after you lost yours is also a coincidence, I’m sure.”

Owen smiles demurely. “What else would it be?”

“Get over here, you useless thing,” Legs says with a laugh. “I’ll wash, you rinse and hang up.”

Working as a pair makes the task much faster, and Legs certainly doesn’t mind the proximity, nor the ease of the quiet between them. They’ve had many meaningful conversations over the course of their ill-advised connection, but these moments are meaningful, too— the ones where they’re working together without words, not because they couldn’t accomplish the task alone, but because they both want to do so together.

They gradually strip off their remaining clothing and put each article to the board, scouring the dirt and blood and sweat until only pristine fabric remains. The water’s gone cold by the end, and in another world, Legs’s fingers would be numb and his arms would ache from the effort. Now, he dries his hands on a threadbare towel, then uses it to scrub away those same lines of grime from his bare skin without flinching from the chill.

Owen watches him with overt interest. When Legs is done with the cloth, he rinses it and holds it up in offering, though Owen managed to keep far neater than Legs did in those final weeks and there’s nothing really to clean on his body.

Owen pushes the cloth aside and instead draws Legs into a deep kiss, backing him up toward the bed and following him down when his knees hit the edge and he drops to sit.

It’s a single bed, meant for one occupant, but they make it work.

And when they’re done, Owen rolls his eyes but indulgently helps Legs strip the sheets and scrub them down, too.

+ 46 days

When they arrive at the seedy tavern beneath the alleys in the rough part of the city, Owen shoots Legundo a dubious look.

“Really? Here?”

Legundo purses his lips and nods. “Yep.”

He’d been warned that the tavern was a dive frequented by rougher types, but this is well beyond anything Owen would have expected from someone Legundo knows from his army days. He’d thought soldiers were taken care of for life in exchange for their service. How did one end up working in a place like this?

Several grubby men in various states of intoxication stare at them with brazen distrust as they push through the throng of bodies to reach the bar nestled in the back of the room. The ceiling is low enough Owen could reach it just by jumping, exacerbating the thick cloud of unwashed stink that permeates the place. It’s disgusting, and Owen wants desperately to turn right around and exit to the cool night air outside, but a lead is a lead, and he wants Scott dead more than he wants to leave.

At the bar, a woman with thin, graying hair pulled into a tight bun and a prominent burn scar warping one of her ears peers at them for several long seconds.

“Well, well,” she says in a gruff voice. “Finally had enough of the ‘savior of the helpless’ schtick?”

“Not quite,” Legundo sighs. “Hello, Nins. How have you been?”

“Cut the shit. You didn’t come all the way out here to make smalltalk.”

“Perhaps we could talk in private.”

Nins squints at him, then tosses the towel she’d been using to dry a glass down onto the counter. “Fine. Reg, I’m taking five.”

The other person behind the bar waves her off.

Nins strips off her apron and slips out from behind the bar using a small gate that locks behind her. She gestures for them to follow with a jerk of her head and Legundo does so immediately, so Owen sticks to his side and glowers at anyone who moves into their path while trying to reach the bar.

Against one wall sits a narrow door so plastered with rotting posters and graffiti that it’s barely visible. Nins unlocks it with a key on a chain around her neck and leads them down a set of cramped wooden stairs to a small room with a chest of drawers, a cracked mirror covered in dust, and a rickety table ringed with wobbly-looking stools.

She plants herself on one of the stools and looks pointedly at the others until Legundo carefully lowers himself to join her.

Then she turns to squint at Owen.

“I’ll stand, thank you.”

Nins scoffs and looks back to Legundo. “Who’s the jailbait?”

Owen narrows his eyes, and Legundo breaks into a choking, wheezing laugh. Why? He doesn’t know that term— it must be something that came about in the last couple of centuries. Has she insulted Owen? Is Legundo laughing at him?

“He’s older than me, Nins,” Legundo replies, wiping a tear from his cheek. “And he’s my partner.”

Oh.

The ruffling indignation trying to build within Owen sputters at the word. His partner. What does that mean? Legundo said it so easily. He must have meant it as a simple descriptor; they’re working together toward a common goal, so… Partners. But there was also something warm in the way he said it. Wasn’t there? Or is Owen mistaking the warmth in his own chest as coming from Legundo? And Legundo has just as good as outed him as a vampire to this random woman, which probably isn’t ideal, but Owen honestly doesn’t care whether or not humanity knows about vampirism. This Nins woman doesn’t seem perturbed by what he said, either.

“You trust him?” Is all she asks.

“With my life,” Legundo replies without a hint of hesitation.

“Right. I assume you’re here to call in your favor.”

“I am.” Legundo withdraws a small slip of parchment paper from his jacket. Owen watched him carefully pen notes on everything they know about Scott the night before— his physical description, habits, speaking mannerisms, and what he’s likely to do next. He slides the paper across the tabletop to Nins. “I’m looking for someone who doesn’t want to be found.”

Nins takes the paper and reads it over.

After a minute, she sets it back on the table and gives Legundo a hard look. “The Goldsmith lineage died out centuries ago.”

“They weren’t as dead as previously advertised.”

Nins snorts and looks over the paper again. “So I put out some feelers, make some inquiries, and… What? We’re just even?”

“Yes. I would also ask that you keep a watch for him going forward, but I know that’s more than you owe me, and I don’t have any collateral.”

She sighs. “All these years later and you’re still a pain in my ass.”

Legundo grins, but it wavers after a moment. “Nins… If you do find him, just… Don’t approach him, okay? Don’t try to make contact or detain him in any way. He’s dangerous.”

“I think I can handle a lost little nobleman,” she drily replies.

But Legundo doesn’t back down. “I mean it. He may look soft, but he is a threat. For him, there’s no such thing as ‘too much’ collateral.”

“Noted. Come back in a week for your info.”

Her eyes flick back up to Owen.

“You be careful, boy,” she says. “Legs might’ve put his heart-eating days behind him, but if he turns up dead, you better spend the rest of your days with one eye open.”

“Nins,” Legundo groans.

Owen bristles. “If anything tries to hurt him, rest assured I will rip it to pieces before it ever comes close.”

She studies him a moment longer, then gives him a look approaching approval and nods once.

Leaving the little room is even more of an ordeal than entering it, and trying to escape from the bar gets Owen jostled into by five different men, one of whom makes an uncoordinated attempt to grab onto his arm and slur something unintelligible. Owen nearly snaps his wrist shoving his hand away.

Legundo takes the lead then, forming a wedge shape with his arms and pushing through the crowd with Owen clinging to the back of his jacket to keep from getting separated. By the time they make it outside, the mix of indignation, disgust, and overstimulation have Owen about ready to grab an axe and start swinging if only to quiet the incessant noise.

Owen grabs Legundo’s hand the second the coast is clear and drags him into the shadowed depths of the nearest alley without any bindlestiffs or drunkards hanging about.

“Out,” he hisses. “I need out, I can’t— the city is so loud. I can’t hear myself think.”

“Okay— okay! No problem. Come on. Let’s—”

He squeezes Owen’s hand three times— a nonverbal signal for let’s fly.

It’s easier to stomach the city from high above, but Owen is still relieved to be free of its smothering stink and bustling streets, and he can’t restrain the pleased squeak that spills out at the sight of the scraggly woods outside the city walls. Legundo undoubtedly heard it and would be telling him how cute it was if they weren’t trying to keep a low profile. The odds of someone overhearing at this height are low, but it’s still a risk.

They land in a clearing a good few miles from the border wall, and Owen has to spend several minutes filling and emptying the clean air from his lungs before the cloying city odor stops clinging to his throat. Then he lunges for a deer resting a handful of meters away and drains it on his hands and knees.

Legundo approaches with his hands in his pockets and a carefully neutral expression. “Doing okay?”

“Better now,” Owen replies, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “Are all cities like that?”

“To a degree, yes. But the Citadel is worse than most, and we were in a very active part of town.”

Owen settles a bit more as the blood soaks into his tissues, sating the burning in his throat and lending strength to his muscles. He pulls a strand of hair from his bangs down into view. Still brown. Good.

“You should drink, too,” he says. “I know you haven’t been.”

Legundo shakes his head. “I have the bottled crimson. I need to make sure I still look right when we go to meet her next week; it took almost a month for your hair and eyes to change back.”

“…Am I red again?”

Legundo comes to sit on his knees beside Owen. “Yeah.”

“Thought so. It felt like I tipped over the line.”

“We can get you some glasses with colored lenses,” Legundo says. “I need to replace the broken lens on my monocle anyway.”

“They make those? The colored glasses?”

Legundo nods. “They help people who suffer constant headaches. Sometimes specific colors of light can be a trigger, so wearing colored lenses can filter out the bad light.”

“…I’m going to look stupid, aren’t I?”

“Not at all. They’re very serious medical devices.”

Legundo’s tone doesn’t waver, but he’s clearly working hard to suppress a smile.

“Oh, whatever. We can just tell people I’m albino.”

“Your skin is much darker than mine, and I’m not particularly pale.”

“I’m a different type of albino, then. It only affects my eyes.”

“With how many medical institutions are based in the Citadel, you might end up getting mobbed by students begging to study you.”

Owen makes a face, and this time, Legundo does smile.

“We’ll get you dark glasses and say you’re sensitive to too much light. That’s a relatively common condition.”

Appeased, Owen sits properly and offers his hand, which Legundo takes, threading their fingers together.

“Legs,” he says. “What the hell does jailbait mean?”

Legundo bursts into another round of laughter, and Owen is helpless to resist the tide pulling him to laugh too.

+ 53 days

Legundo returns to their temporary campsite with a grim cloud hanging over him.

Owen closes his book and rises to meet him.

“What’d she say?”

Legundo opens his mouth, then shuts it. He won’t meet Owen’s eyes.

“Legs.”

“She… Found him.”

Oh.

What?

The words replay in his mind on loop. She found him? Nins actually tracked him down? How is that possible? How could Scott have been so careless that he’d end up caught in a matter of weeks?

A creeping bitter dread burns the back of Owen’s throat.

“…Where?”

“An inn a day’s journey northeast,” Legundo replies.

“Okay. Right then.” Owen picks up his book and deposits it carefully into his bag. He has nothing else to carry. “Guess we should head that way.”

“Guess so.”

+ 54 days

Well… Maybe it’ll take a while for everyone to reconvene in Oakhurst. They’ve had long enough to spread far and wide, and Legundo only has the one bottle of holy water squirreled away in a chest buried beneath his lab. That means anyone getting cured will have to be there at the same time. Legundo wouldn’t leave anyone behind, so Owen might have more time with him yet.

More time to change his mind.

And if he doesn’t?

Owen ignores the creeping voice of his anxiety. He’ll think of something— find some way to show Legundo that staying like this is the best option for him. It shouldn’t be that hard. Legundo’s a man of logic, and Owen is objectively correct; vampirism will extend Legundo’s ability to help people infinitely into the future and enable him to save so many more lives than if he were bound to mortality.

Maybe he didn’t find that argument compelling back in Oakhurst, but it’s different now. He’s actually lived it. He knows the burdens are manageable.

He knows Owen will stay by his side.

Maybe that’s enough.

Please, let it be enough.

The world owes him that much.

Despite his strict refusal to let the doubt take over, Owen’s chest squeezes with anxiety by the time they land outside the town where Scott is hiding. He forces himself to focus, digging his nails into his bicep until pinpricks of blood appear. This part won’t be easy. They need to be ready.

“Got your stake?” Owen asks.

Legundo holds it up in answer. Owen retrieves his own, slipping it up his sleeve and taking a long, slow breath to recenter. The harsh chill of the January air brings everything into sharp focus— the animals skittering over the frozen dirt, the distant scent of woodsmoke from hundreds of hearths burning away to stave off the cold, the glinting refraction of moonlight in the frost crystal clinging to the foliage. It all soaks into Owen and connects him with his body, with the land, and with his task.

He meets Legundo’s eyes, then they vanish together.

There are only a handful of humans out at this hour. Most are guards dancing about in place to try and stave off the chill, and the rest are hurrying toward the warmth of their destination. Owen keeps a hand on Legundo’s shoulder to prevent their accidental separation; they’ll have to take care not to make any noise with their steps once they near the inn, and that means they won’t be able to hear each other, either. Owen refrains from breathing as well. Legundo has gotten by with so little blood that he’s about as cold as the rest of the air, but Owen’s body has enough heat stored up that any air he inhales will come out as fog. They don’t need the humans seeing a stray puff of breath and crying out over ghosts or will-o-wisps.

The inn is a stout brick building with only a worn sign hanging over the door to differentiate it from the lines of residences on either side. It’s good fortune that inns are counted as public spaces; otherwise, Owen wouldn’t be able to silently slide a window on the back wall open and slip inside, waving his arm around until he finds Legundo and taking his hand. They’ve entered into a dark hallway with several doors bearing numbers with chipped paint. Owen counts each of them.

Eight.

He shuts his eyes and lets his other senses take over. Scott’s cloying floral scent is nowhere to be found, but that’s hardly a surprise when the air is so stale and choked with humanity. Likewise, there are a dozen hearts beating and pairs of lungs drawing breath.

Without a better grasp of how the rooms are laid out, it’s impossible to determine which ones are silent and which contain humans. Owen is halfway to giving up the element of surprise and just ripping doors open at random when Legundo squeezes his hand urgently and tugs him down the hall toward the front of the building.

The entry is unoccupied. It’s a dusty little makeshift lobby with a desk and a few mismatched chairs shoved against the opposite wall. Legundo beelines for the desk and silently opens the old parchment book sitting to the side. Owen squints at the tiny script hand-penned within, trying to resolve the curling shapes into words.

Legundo uses his other hand to gently pull Owen’s forefinger out so he’s pointing, then guides his finger to a specific entry in the book.

That’s an ‘S,’ right? Fuck, he hates cursive. Learning to read print was hard enough when he was an energetic little boy more interested in climbing trees than doing his letters, but this is just…

…Oh. It says Scott Goldsmith. And it says he’s staying in room five.

Owen squeezes Legundo’s hand to indicate he understands. Legundo closes the book, and they creep back down the hall, pausing this time outside of the room marked with the number five.

They could look for a skeleton key or pick the lock.

Owen kicks the door open instead.

They’re on the man in the bed in under a second, but Owen freezes with his stake raised and stares.

That isn’t Scott.

A human with sloppily bleached hair lies trembling beneath the covers, eyes fixed on his now-broken door. Owen growls, and the man jumps and whimpers in fear.

He lets the invisibility fall from his form.

“Wh— wh— what—”

“Silence,” Owen says, low and dangerous. “Or I’ll cut out your tongue.”

He shuts his mouth and nods furiously.

Legundo remains hidden while Owen drags the man by the collar to his window, opens it, and tosses him out into the alley between the inn and the neighboring house. Owen neatly leaps out after him.

He waits for the window to close, indicating Legundo has joined them, then crosses his arms and regards the quivering, sniveling thing at his feet.

“Who are you?”

It takes the man several attempts to get intelligible speech out. “I’m— I’m S-Scott Goldsmith.”

Owen drops to crouch at the man’s eye level and stares him down.

He cracks immediately. “Okay, okay, I— he— he offered me so much money, I couldn’t say no—”

“Tell me everything,” Owen growls.

“I— some man approached me a week or so ago and offered me money. He said all I had to do was come stay at this inn for a month, dye my hair, and— and use the name Scott Goldsmith. He gave me way more than enough to pay for the room and food. I figured, you know, it’s suspicious, but what’s the harm? It’s not like I actually am the guy, so if anyone came sniffing around, I could just split.”

“Who paid you?”

“I— I don’t know, I didn’t get his name—”

“What did he look like?”

“He— he had white hair, but he looked young? And kind of scary.”

Owen’s eyes narrow. “What accent did he speak with?”

“Uh— I— I don’t know, I didn’t recognize it— I—I’m sorry.”

Pyro.

“Was he alone?” Owen demands.

“Yes! Yes, I swear it.”

Of course. That dirty, conniving, cowardly son of a bitch would send his pet fledgling in to take all the risks.

Below him, the man has gone so pale and stiff he more resembles a sheet of parchment than a human. His entire body quakes with violent shivers and the tears streaming down his cheeks are forming ice crystals at the ends.

Right on cue, Legundo’s invisible hand falls on Owen’s shoulder.

…He’s half tempted to kill this little rat for leading them astray and wasting their time, but Owen resists the impulse for now. Maybe he’ll come back later. But Legundo would smell the human blood on his breath, and he might not say anything, but he’ll give Owen such a despondent, disappointed look, and— and Owen’s trying to convince Legundo to stick around, not to drive him away.

So he crosses his arms, takes a step back, and says, “If you ever breathe a word of what you saw tonight, I will rip your intestines out and strangle you with them. Now get out of my sight.”

The man flips onto his stomach and desperately scrambles against the cobblestone for several seconds. He scrapes his bare palms and feet in the process of getting to his feet, and Owen’s resolve nearly breaks from the scent of fresh blood so near, but he roots himself in place and stares until the human rounds the corner of the building and disappears.

+ 63 days

“…Though it would seem Scott Goldsmith has suddenly become a very popular name indeed, we will continue to investigate any use of it on the off chance he’s attempting to camouflage by introducing many false positives. Do not hesitate to reach out should you desire support in your own search. Best regards, Pearl.”

Legs keeps his face frozen in a neutral mask and nods slowly.

Owen sets the letter down on the table and reaches across it to take one of Legs’s hands.

“You okay?”

“Of course,” he replies.

Owen frowns. “You don’t have to lie to me, Legs.”

“I… I know. I’m just— processing.”

“…Okay.”

Owen doesn’t push the issue, but Legs feels his watchful gaze keeping a careful eye on him for the rest of the evening.

+ 89 days

A minor setback is still a setback.

Any effort toward progress will have its share of failures. Legs reminds himself of this over and over while he crosses out yet another circled town from the map Pearl sent.

“Where to next, Doctor?”

Owen’s voice revives some of the optimism struggling to survive in Legs’s heart. When Owen places one hand on Legs’s shoulder and the other on the desk so he can lean down to study the map, Legs leans into him, wrapping an arm around his hips and taking a moment to appreciate the heat beneath his skin.

“Well… I was thinking we could keep heading north. Pearl and Martyn seem to have a handle on the greater Citadel area, so we should spread our search; there are a lot of castle ruins up near the stone coast.”

“And he does love a castle.”

Legs cracks a smile.

“I’ve never seen the ocean. That should be interesting.”

“Wait— really?”

Owen glances at Legs and quirks a brow. “Before this, I’d never even left Oakhurst.”

It’s easy to forget that Legs is far more traveled than the average person. But Owen is far from average in just about every regard. With the weight he carries in the slump of his shoulders and the darkness sunken into his eyes, he could easily pass for someone who has lived a full life— several of them, even.

But he’s barely lived twenty-four years.

Never mind the two hundred he spent in fitful sleep. Those don’t count. Despite his wisdom and weariness, Owen is young and inexperienced in this world.

“…In that case,” Legs says, redirecting his focus to the left edge of the map. “We should go west. The beaches there are sandy, and you should walk on a sandy beach for your first ocean experience.”

Owen smiles with fond indulgence.

+ 94 days

It gets a little easier to shake off the cloying film of dread when he can watch Owen’s face light up with joy and wonder.

Legs insisted they make the last several miles of the journey on foot for just this reason, and it was well worth the teasing he received for being a sap. As they crest the last hill and come into a glorious and full view of the moon sitting over the ocean, Owen actually gasps and sits frozen in place for several seconds, only able to sweep his head from side to side and take in the expanse of sea stretching out across the horizon.

“…Oh,” he eventually murmurs, barely audible over the roaring waves below, even to Legs’s superior hearing. “I… I’ve seen paintings and illustrations in books, but I didn’t think… I didn’t know… It would be like this.”

Legs grins. “Bigger than you were expecting?”

“Yeah! It’s massive!” Owen glances at him briefly, but his eyes are quickly drawn back out to the sea. “And those waves! They’re huge!”

“The swells further out can grow to be dozens of feet.”

“And people sail on that?”

Legs laughs. “They don’t usually aim to sail on those waves, but it does happen, yes.”

Owen shakes his head and grins. “Sounds thrilling.”

“Maybe we’ll get the chance to experience it. If Scott is off-continent, we’ll have to sail.”

The options for such a voyage are extremely limited by their lack of funds. They would either have to stow away on a cargo ship, which would mean weeks spent sitting in the darkness below deck, or they would pay their way onto a cramped passenger vessel where they’d be surrounded by people and given no privacy for the duration of the trip. Which would mean they couldn’t drink and they would have to pretend to be human the entire time.

…Scott had better still be on the continent.

“Come on. You should try standing in the waves.”

Owen lets Legs take his hand and lead him down the hill, descending through scrubby shrubs and windswept bushes. The dirt beneath their feet gradually yields to sand, and when a section gives way unexpectedly beneath Legs’s left foot, they end up scrambling the last several feet together, still linked by their hands. Owen bursts into delighted laughter and pulls Legs on until they’re both running for the surf.

Legs makes him stop so they can strip off their shoes and socks and leave them in the safely dry section of the beach, then he rolls up Owen’s pantlegs for him. Owen seems a bit flustered by that but he doesn’t protest, and he’s quick to return the favor.

They walk over the transition from soft, silky sand to the hard, dense stuff soaked with ocean water. Owen’s lips part slightly as he tastes the air, and Legs wishes his hair was down from its usual tied style so he could see how it whips about in the breeze. Then he remembers how much Owen likes it when Legs removes the hair tie while they’re— uh, enjoying each others’ company— and he takes a risk.

The look he gets from Owen when he slips the hair tie out of his hair and onto his own wrist is soft in the sea’s reflection of the moonlight. He is somehow impossibly more beautiful in this cold and gentle glow, and Legs remains fixated on him long after Owen’s gaze returns to the horizon.

Loose hair frames his face and flows out behind him in silky waves. He looks younger, less sharp and less exhausted, and when the surf rises to meet them and submerges them up to the ankles, his entire face lights up with a broad, unbridled grin.

“It’s so cold!” he cries, shouting to be heard above the purr of the waves.

“I love you,” Legs says.

Oh. That’s… That’s what he said. He hadn’t planned on saying it— hadn’t thought to say anything at all— but the words bubbled up from somewhere primal, somewhere shielded from rational thought, and he knows instantly and irrevocably that they are true. He loves Owen. He is in love with Owen.

Owen, who lied and manipulated, who slaughtered thousands, who pledged to do the same to everyone in Oakhurst. Owen, who admitted the truth readily once confronted with evidence, who stopped hiding and stated his intent plainly and even explained why. Owen, who was betrayed by his community over and over again, who suffered horrifically for his entire life, who met precisely one person who proved himself worthy of his love, and who saw that person burn for it.

Owen, who said if the same thing happened to Legs, he would repeat the apocalyptic, grief-mad destruction that followed the flames. Who found a copy of the play Legs quoted and read it cover to cover. Who held his hand while he fed from Legs, and held Legs in his arms and let him scream and cry into his chest after his mortality was stolen. Who indulges his rambling about interesting medical cases with active curiosity. Who never questions his choice to feed as little as possible and only from animals clearly on the way out already. Who smiles at him like he’s something worth holding onto.

For a perpetual moment, Legs waits for Owen’s reaction.

But there is none. Of course not— he barely spoke above the whisper, and his words were concealed by the roar of the ocean.

He considers repeating them, louder, unmistakable this time, but the ease with which Owen leaps from foot to foot and splashes through the water stays his tongue.

Owen has spoken only rarely of Louis, but Legs has heard enough to know that there was love between them— that when Louis offered Owen immortality, he also offered a promise that Owen would never be alone again. The echoes of that loss sometimes ripple over him in idle moments and leave Owen seized, hunched over with an agony he cannot articulate, and nothing Legs can do will soothe the pain. Grief demands to be felt. To deny it is to deny the love from which it came, and Owen would never willingly do that. Legs wouldn’t ask him to.

So he doesn’t ask now. He doesn’t lay bare his heart and force Owen to take the burden of Legs’s feelings when his own already weigh so heavily upon his shoulders. Perhaps there will come a time when the pain has lessened and Owen’s heart isn’t so guarded. If Legs is truly lucky, perhaps that time will arrive before he reclaims his humanity and immutably turns his back on an eternity spent at Owen’s side.

For as much as he may love Owen, the facts have not changed. Legs is wholly and completely unworthy of infinity, and he cannot bear the idea that the sins of his past could be rewarded with endless time to inevitably repeat them. He will serve as many people as he can, and then he will die. That’s the mantra that keeps him from letting go of the iron railing and plummeting into the water below. That’s the promise he will not fail to keep.

He watches Owen skip through the surf, helps him scour the shallows for shells, and teaches him how to dig for clams. And the simple joy he is privileged to witness is more than enough to fill his heart and banish any darkness looming on the horizon.

- 73,423 days

Learning to trust is painful.

Everything is painful, but this, more than most, leaves him shaking and exhausted, staring at his sallow, sunken face in the grimy mirror he uses to make sure every boil and sore is covered before he leaves each morning.

He looks half-dead.

He looks more alive than he’s ever seen himself.

There’s warmth in his cheeks, light in his eyes— even as his lungs struggle to draw full, as his heart stammers in its beating, he is alive and he is human in a way he has never been before. Because for the first time…

For the first time.

Someone has looked upon him and judged him not as a sinner paying a karmic debt through agonies of the flesh, and not as an object of pity to be propped up and used for appearances. Someone has seen him. Him! The person beneath the linens, with a mind to think and a heart to feel and a soul to ache with loneliness.

But no longer. Because they are going to meet again tomorrow.

The creature in the mirror grins, and he grins with it.

- 73,217 days

Four… Five… Six… Seven…

- 73,201 days

Eight hundred seventy-two… Eight hundred seventy-three… Eight hundred seventy-four…

…Eight hundred seventy-five, six, seven, eight, and nine…

- 73,186 days

Two thousand seven hundred ninety-seven… Two thousand seven hundred ninety-eight… Two thousand seven hundred ninety-nine…

…

…

No more beating hearts.

- 73,185 days

It’s quiet.

And he is alone.

+ 99 days

On nights like these, Owen wishes desperately that vampires truly were the unfeeling, brutal creatures Avid always ranted about in the early days.

It would all be so much easier if he didn’t have to feel.

But Avid was wrong, and Owen does, in fact, have to feel. He has to feel all of it.

The rage. The grief. The pain that robs him of breath and licks tongues of burning flame up his insides while the scent of ash chokes him.

Those… He doesn’t mind.

They’re unbearable, of course, but they’re also right. Familiar. Deafening echoes of the reality he lived every single day, before Louis.

Louis.

Just the thought of him sends powerful pangs through Owen’s chest. After the blood congealed and the last bodies began gathering black flies, Owen buried himself beneath the earth and waited for death to take him. He’d spent a month slaughtering every man, woman, and child, sparing no one, relishing their suffering and fear— making them pay for what they had all collectively allowed to happen to a good and moral man— and all he wanted was the end.

Instead, he slept.

Roots grew and curled around his frozen body. Seasons passed. The darkness swallowed him completely, refusing to release him from its hollow grip and instead carving out a space inside of his shattered heart and making a home there, promising that he would live ever on with this unyielding emptiness within.

Then the mycelium whispered of trespassers crossing his resting grounds, and Owen rose, still furious, still grieving, and still hollow.

He hadn’t planned for much.

Kill everyone who dared to disturb the ashes— to stand where he once stood— and then find out what it took to end a vampire.

The newcomers did not flinch away or stare at his ghastly body like people had before, but they didn’t see him, either. They saw what they wanted to— an empty copy of an equally empty man, easily shaped into an enemy once his true nature was revealed.

Except…

Legundo.

This could all have been so, so simple if it weren’t for Legundo.

How was Owen to know that there could ever be another person willing to look at him— the real him— and not only tolerate him, but actually like him? To see value in his personhood? To risk his life over and over for the slimmest chance that he might be allowed close enough to help? How could he have predicted that this lovely, stubborn, compassionate, relentless man would come to love him?

When he heard those words uttered barely audibly against the backdrop of the ocean’s roar, it was immediately obvious that Legundo had not meant to say them aloud.

So Owen didn’t let his eyes linger. He didn’t let anything show on his face or hold power over his body. He pushed the words away and sunk himself completely into the moment and it’s only now, five days later, that he’s finally allowing himself to process them.

Legundo loves him.

Why?

In the totality of his life, what the fuck has Owen done to deserve that?

Louis loved you, he reminds himself.

And Louis paid dearly for that love, didn’t he?

No. No, Louis paid because Owen tried to take more. Because he accepted all of Louis’s kindness and warmth and offered nothing in return. He was meant to be alone, and Louis had the misfortune of meeting him, and now he’s dead and gone and scattered into pieces so small even vampiric eyes can’t see them. He’s gone.

The men who burned him are gone. The people who gathered to watch him burn are gone. The people who sat by and let him burn are gone.

Who’s left to carry the blame?

Just him. Alone. Always and always and always.

Maybe Legundo loves him now, but he’s still searching hard for Scott— for the cure. Because the idea of being what Owen is and staying with him is so untenable that Legundo would rather wither and die a mortal death. Owen is a temporary convenience. A means to an end. Legundo loves him because he’s here, and the moment he has better options, he’ll leave Owen.

…But the idea is sour in his mouth.

No. Legundo wouldn’t do that. He isn’t shallow, and he isn’t cruel. No matter what Owen fears, he can’t help but trust that Legundo would not do any of those things to him. It isn’t who he is in character, nor deed.

And it isn’t fair to deny Legundo his pain. He’s suffered too— horribly, unspeakably, in ways that woke him from thrashing nightmares drenched in sweat and gasping before he was turned, and leave him staring blank and haunted into the sky more recently. How could Owen possibly blame him for yearning to escape that agony? Isn’t that exactly what he wanted when he buried himself in the cold earth?

Owen doesn’t want him to die. He can’t even bear the mere thought of it. So what will he do when Legundo throws away the gift for good?

…Too complicated. He can’t untangle that now— maybe not ever. Not even when it actually happens. The more pressing issue remains those accidental words that ripped Owen’s chest open and laid bare his most closely guarded fears.

It’s too soon. Not for Legundo— they’ve been entangled for months, and he has a big heart— too soon for the glowing depths of the embers still smoldering within Owen. He tries to think of what he feels for Legundo, to analyze and assess the depths of the emotion, and all he can sense is Louis’s gaze peering through hundreds of years to watch him move on as if nothing ever happened.

Despicable. That’s what Owen is.

Legundo loves him, and if he knows what’s good for himself, he will take the first opportunity to run as far and as fast as he can.

And if he doesn’t…

I’d do it again, if it was for you.

If he doesn’t, and Owen ends up alone again, he’s going to make two thousand seven hundred ninety-nine look like a very small number.

+ 118 days

The sandy shores of the west gave way to craggy cliffs and pebble beaches as they traced the northern curve of the continent.

Now, Owen sits perched at the top of a crumbling turret, surveying the stretch of what used to be structure flowing down the cliffside. Legundo assures him these buildings were grand and beautiful once— says there are books with copies of old drawings and paintings made during the height of this place’s success.

Owen doubts seeing those images would change the way he views it. Once he sees the bones of a thing, he’s unable to see anything else, no matter how dressed up it may be.

Sea birds call and glide lazily in the wind blowing in from the water. Owen could join them if he wanted, but bat wings aren’t much suited for gliding, and he isn’t in the mood to fight against nature; he’s content to lounge in his perch with one leg dangling into the void below and the other splayed casually across Legundo’s lap.

He sits with his back to the wall perpendicular to Owen and a book resting against Owen’s knee.

Owen could reach out and touch him if he wanted— could take his cheek in one hand, lean over, and kiss him. Tug at his collar, spread soft kisses over skin chilled by the ocean air.

But he’s content to let the moment hold and appreciate the simple pleasure of proximity. They are bound by no urgency, pushed by no crisis, and beholden to no deadline; the only thing Owen needs to do is watch his partner turn the next page.

+ 129 days

Much as Legs yearns to give Owen the strongest possible first impression of live theatre, he ultimately decides against Shakespeare’s best works and instead tows him into a town showing Much Ado About Nothing.

That’s no shame to his tragedies, of course; Legs can’t exactly fault a tragic hero, can he? But he fears the likes of Hamlet or Macbeth or even The Tempest might further fuel Owen’s misanthropy, which is kind of the opposite of his goal at this point. A Midsummer Night’s Dream hosts too high a risk that Owen will be annoyed with the fantastical elements, and Twelfth Night and As You Like It aren’t especially grounded, either.

So, Much Ado About Nothing is the safest bet.

The penny groundling tickets won’t cut it. Legs spends a good chunk of their modest wallet on proper cushioned seats in the balconies with a good view of the stage.

It’s worth it to see Owen relax.

Some of the turns of phrase confuse him, but Owen smiles through the show and never seems bored even as the antics escalate, and Legs feels something close to drunk on the relief of it. He relaxes too, though he doesn’t spend much time watching the stage; his focus is all for how Owen lights up when he laughs.

After, as they’re walking back, Owen threads their fingers together and leans into Legs’s side. “Thank you for this. I had fun.”

“I’m glad.”

“I guess that Shakespeare guy can write a half decent play after all. Good for him.”

“Don’t let the theatre crowd overhear you saying that. You’ll start a riot.”

Owen gives him a sidelong grin.

“...That wasn’t an invitation.”

“Boo. You never let me have any fun.”

The words lose their edge when they’re curled around a smile. Even more so when Owen caps them off by pulling Legs into a kiss.

+ 142 days

The Spring Equinox Festival brings crowds of merchants, performers, and tourists alike to the streets of every major city on the continent. The Citadel is bound to have the largest celebration, but even the small coastal city of Capebrine manages to pull in an extra fifteen thousand or so from neighboring towns and villages.

Extra people getting drunk and rubbing elbows means extra demand for doctors when the escapades and fights get out of hand, so Legs volunteers his services at one of the clinics and even accepts payment for his work. Money has little appeal to him, but he has something in mind for the main festival night, and he’s going to make sure he can execute it to his exact vision.

While Legs works cleaning and stitching wounds and repairing broken bones, Owen makes his way through the taverns and inns, using the natural charm that comes so easily to him to fish for information about Scott. Each night, they reconvene at the inn near the edge of town where they’re staying and Owen reports his findings. Or, really, his lack thereof.

“We should move on,” Owen sighs. “There aren’t even any fake Scott Goldsmiths this far north.”

“Alright. But— tomorrow. I want to go into town tonight.”

Owen quirks a brow. “What for?”

“Did you celebrate the spring equinox in Oakhurst?”

“No. Well— yes, but I never did personally. I wasn’t welcome.”

Legs drops to sit beside him on the foot of the bed and takes one of his hands between both of his own. “I’d love to go with you, if you’d have me.”

Owen gives him a funny look for a moment too brief for Legs to identify it. Then he nods slowly.

“I guess I wouldn’t be opposed. But aren’t festivals usually for getting drunk and eating street food?”

Neither of which are activities they can enjoy, but Owen doesn’t need to say that part.

“That’s certainly a big part of it. But there’s also performances.”

Owen smiles indulgently. “Another play?”

“Something like that,” Legs replies, standing and pulling Owen up with him. Owen allows it, particularly when Legs uses the momentum to pull him in for a kiss. “Don’t wear anything you’re super attached to, though.”

Owen laughs and puts on an air of mock horror. “Just what kind of performance will we be seeing, Doctor?”

“It’s not the performance I’m worried about. I’ve had eight drinks spilled on me in the last two days, and drinks aren’t even allowed in the clinic.”

“Ah.”

They both change— Legs out of his medical garb, and Owen out of the modest but nicer quality clothes he picked up shortly after they left Oakhurst. Owen pulls his hair up and ties it, and Legs immediately misses the sight of it flowing down around his shoulders. It’s not the end of the world. If all goes well, he’ll have the opportunity to let it down himself soon enough.

The streets this far out from the main square are sparsely populated. Legs takes Owen’s hand and guides him through alleys to an empty spot away from any prying eyes, then squeezes his hand three times.

Owen blinks and shoots him a confused look. Legs leans in to nearly press his lips against Owen’s ear.

“Trust me?”

Owen nods.

They bat out and Owen sticks close. As they draw closer to the main square, the thrumming music and rumbling crowds vibrate the air and make it actively difficult to navigate. Legs is glad he took the time to scope this place out early, or he might have gotten lost in the noise. He manages, steering them to one of the tall stone buildings.

The roof is flat and high enough up that when they land in the center, even the highest windows on adjacent buildings don’t have a view of them changing back into their normal forms and straightening. Owen glances around and turns to Legs, waiting for the explanation of why he’s brought them to a random rooftop.

Legs checks his watch. “Almost…”

Right on cue, the band set to perform on the top floor of the building strikes up and begins to play a bouncing, energetic tune. Cries of delight filter through the open windows but they’re barely audible over the music, which shakes the very stone beneath their feet.

Owen breaks into a broad grin and laughs.

Legs grins back and leans in close to make sure he can be heard as he calls, “I had to drop a small fortune just to get access to this place to make sure it would be safe for us to fly in.”

“Can anyone else get up here?” Owen calls back.

Legs grins and shakes his head, pulling a small key from his jacket pocket. “Locked the hatch.”

They’re alone together beneath the sparse stars with the glow of colored festival lights from below and the hum of music all around.

Legs offers his hand. “Dance with me?”

Enough warmth gathers in Owen’s face to tint his cheeks, which is a rare sight against his natural skin tone. Normally, he has to be much better fed for the blush to show.

“I’ve not— I don’t really know how,” he says.

“Then we’ll take it slow,” Legs replies. “I think you’ll pick it up quickly.”

Owen hesitates a moment longer, then places his hand in Legs’s, meets his gaze, and nods.

Legs is right. Owen follows his lead to sway across the surface of the roof in tempo with the lively beat below, and when Legs introduces simple stepwork while counting quietly aloud, Owen’s gaze sharpens and he copies the sequence perfectly on his first try.

Perhaps it’s the counting. Perhaps it’s some aspect of vampirism lending additional agility. Perhaps it’s just Owen’s own untapped natural talent. It could be anything, but what’s clear by the end of the third song is that Owen is very skilled at moving his body with graceful precision.

They pause so Legs can teach him the steps to every dance he knows, and Owen watches each demonstration with rapt focus then replicates them flawlessly. Then the next song starts, and Owen launches them into a tango. Legs stumbles to match his pace, which is double what the tempo requires, and he nearly trips at first as he briefly forgets he taught Owen the leading steps, but they fall into synchronization within a few bars.

Every spin and turn lights up Owen’s smile with the flashing colors from the street, and when he dips Legs so low Legs lets out a reflexive yelp, Owen laughs, utterly unselfconscious and with irresistible joy. It’s wonderful and thrilling; his lover’s touch lights up his skin and his laugh swells Legs’s heart, and for the first time in a long time, he loses that ever-present awareness of the lack.

Who cares if his body is the same temperature as the air? If his heart sits still and dormant in his chest, if his lungs don’t pump air in and out to oxygenate his blood? Why should he be sorry his knees don’t burn and his hips don’t ache as they fly across the roof in a flurry of intricate steps? What exactly is so bad about feeling lighter than air with the man he loves gripping him tighter, pulling him closer, closing as much distance between them as he possibly can?

A few blocks down, a firework explodes into a dazzling burst of screaming color.

But it isn’t a firework.

It’s—

- 7,972 days

A mortar shell bursts overhead, spraying a halo of shrapnel that rips through soft flesh and tears bones like they’re paper.

The screams cannot pierce the ringing in his ears, but he knows they’re present all the same— what else is there to do in the face of such agony? Hot, thick blood sprays into his face and he turns away, holds his hands up feebly against the onslaught, hiding from what he knows he will find when he’s eventually forced to look.

It is as he expects.

Of his group, fifteen came to the front, and only six were lucky enough to die instantly. Four lay broken and weeping tears and blood alike into the unforgiving mud. Three are visibly injured but still mobile, still struggling to come to the aid of those who might still be saved. He alone stands uninjured.

But… No, wait. Six dead, four on their way, three injured, and him. That makes… Fourteen?

He turns to the source of the blood dripping down his face and finds a young man with gaunt features and dark eyes. Colors dance over his face and his mouth moves, but the sounds are still swallowed by the ringing. His lips are forming a word.

What is it? Is… Is he saying—

“Doctor?”

His knees give out, but Legs only makes it a few inches before Owen catches him. They’re still pressed tightly together from the dance, and Owen sinks down with him, lowering them to their knees on the stone rooftop.

Right— the— the festival. The Spring Equinox Festival, and— and his plan. His plan with Owen, who is no longer laughing and having fun dancing, because…

“Oh, shit,” Legs mumbles, brows knitting. “The…”

“Fireworks,” Owen rushes. “They’re just fireworks, Legundo. You’re okay. This isn’t— we aren’t in any danger.”

“No, I… I know. I’m fine. It just— it surprised me.”

Another shell detonates, spraying them in technicolor light. Legs grits his teeth and hunches in on himself.

“We’re getting you out of here,” Owen says.

Legs opens his mouth to protest, but yet another firework goes off, closer this time, and he thinks he might actually throw up if they stay up here. He doesn’t know if vampires are even physically capable of vomiting, but he isn’t eager to find out— not this way, at least.

“Can you fly?”

Legs shakes his head.

“That’s okay. I have… Here. I brought along some bottles of crimson, just in case we wanted some. If you drink these, will you gain enough energy to go invisible?”

That… Yes. He can manage that. Legs nods.

“Okay. You’ll drink these, then we’ll both go invisible, and I’ll carry you back to the inn. Does that sound alright?”

“Further,” Legs grunts, finding himself unable to string together more complex communication.

“The cliffs?”

“Please.”

“Sure. No problem. Here, let me—”

Owen uncorks one of the bottles and holds it to Legs’s lips. Legs parts them and lets Owen tip the bottle’s contents down his throat.

As always, he refuses to permit himself to enjoy the experience of drinking blood. It is a utilitarian necessity— a means to an end, and nothing more. But unlike always, this blood did not come from an animal staggered by sickness or age. This is pure and sweet with potential, and it chases out the cloying thirst that has hung perpetually over Legs for more than four months now. When the first bottle runs out, the second replaces it near-instantly, but that fraction of a second of downtime has him itching to search out more.

He gets a grip on himself by the time he finishes the second bottle, and with it, Legs shudders at the waves of tingling warmth traveling through his body.

“Think you can go invisible now?” Owen asks.

Legs considers the question while he searches himself, taking stock, and quickly he finds what he’s looking for: the place in his mind where the power lives like a new muscle just waiting to be engaged. He does so, and his skin prickles in a sweeping ripple of shadow.

Owen stands and scoops Legs up into his arms. It should feel a little ridiculous to be carried by someone several inches shorter and significantly lighter than him, but the embarrassment burns away under the intensity of the relief and security of Owen’s lithe frame supporting him.

Legs closes his eyes.

The air rushes around them as Owen leaps from rooftop to rooftop, keeping Legs tucked securely against his chest even as he lands without a sound. Gradually, the noise of the festival muffles and tapers off until the wind is all he can hear.

It lingers even after they come to a standstill. Owen lowers them to the ground, keeping Legs sitting sideways in his lap with one arm wrapped around his back and the other resting over his thighs. Legs peers through his lashes and vaguely recognizes the form of the coastal cliffs sprawling out into the dark.

“Hey,” Owen murmurs, brushing the back of his hand against Legs’s cheek. “Doing better?”

Legs nods and leans into him.

“...Do you want to talk about it?”

He shakes his head.

“That’s alright. I’m here with you regardless.”

Legs draws the sea brine air through his lips, letting it pass over his tongue and banish the ghost of bitter mud and gunpowder. When he opens his eyes fully, he’s brittle, but he’s present.

“Sorry,” he murmurs. “I’ve never been to one where they did fireworks. It’s not usually part of the festival.”

“Nothing to be sorry about, Doctor.”

Still, Legs burns with the indignity of it— of being rendered so helpless by a simple sound that he had to be literally carried away in his partner’s arms. He’s a grown man. This is ridiculous.

But finding it ridiculous won’t stop it from being true. It’ll only make him angry with himself as well as the situation, and that doesn’t help anyone.

And Legs does not make a habit of permitting himself to do things that don’t help anyone.

“We can still…” He struggles for the words, then casts them aside, clambors to his feet, and offers Owen his hand. Owen takes it and lets Legs pull him upright. Legs keeps hold of his hand and places the other on Owen’s shoulder, and Owen picks up quickly, sliding his own free hand to Legs’s waist.

Legs is not a musician, but he’s decent enough at matching pitch. He hums the first song he can think of— some old folksong he’s heard one thousand times from as many musicians through open windows, muffled from outside of concert hall doors, or sung, whistled, and even tapped against whatever flat surface was available to hold a beat. Owen listens at first, then seems to decide this particular tune calls for less of a coordinated series of steps and more of a gentle swaying. That suits Legs fine; less to think about while he’s trying to keep his place in the song.

When he reaches the end of the song, there’s a lull, and then… Owen begins humming. The tune is wholly unfamiliar to Legs. It’s something slow and despondent, but with lilting flickers of light where Owen pauses to spin Legs or dip him while his voice rises to the top of his natural range. He wavers on those highs at first, but by the end of the song, he holds through them easily, and Legs privately determines he won’t let Owen leave his life until he’s heard him truly sing.

Legs picks another song. Then Owen picks one. Then Legs picks one they both know, and Owen joins in.

They dance until the predawn sky blushes orange and gold.

+ 145 days

Owen sticks close for the next few days.

He tells himself it’s just out of an abundance of caution, and that works at first, but then he holds the front door of the inn open for Legundo and Legundo gives him this heart-meltingly tender look. Owen spends the next several hours doing anything he can think of to put that look back on Legundo’s face.

And that’s a bit too much to deal with, so he hooks an arm around Legundo’s waist and suggests they go out into the woods so Owen can teach him to throw axes.

That goes well. Owen’s focus turns to instruction and performance of a skill he honed through over a decade of practice, and Legundo is a diligent and attentive student. After a few demonstrations, he steps aside to let Legundo try to hit the wood round targets.

He isn’t too bad. After some adjustments to his throwing stance and form, he starts hitting the targets. A few dozen more throws and he’s able to consistently hit the same spot.

“Now you just have to learn how to adjust your aim.”

It’s obvious, but Legundo still nods like Owen just gave him a hint toward the secret of the universe.

They fall into a rhythm. Legundo throws the axes— thud, thud, thud. Owen goes to retrieve them and gives feedback. Legundo throws again. Owen retrieves.

Legundo throws the axe with perfect form and releases at just the right time, and it completes one beautiful spin before lodging directly in the bullseye. He stares in disbelief, then turns to Owen with a massive grin and a bubbling, excited laugh, and—

Fuck, Owen loves him.

Owen loves him.

He loves Legundo.

How could he let this happen?

Owen grins back, laughs with him, meets him with a kiss when he returns from retrieving the axe, and internally, the unstoppable force of his feelings slams into the immovable object of the reality of their situation over and over and over, ending the world, putting it back together, and ending it again.

It does not matter if Owen loves Legundo.

Legundo is still going to leave him.

Louis is still dead and burned.

Owen is still alone.

But he doesn’t feel alone. Not when Legundo holds him close, tucks the stray hair loose from the tie behind his ear, and studies him like a masterwork painting. Not when Legundo eggs him on until he shows off a little and sinks three axes dead center into the wood rounds they’ve propped up in the trees, one right after the other. Not when Legundo cheers and claps and kisses him in congratulations that escalate until they’re both half-bare to the woods with hands wandering to every intimate place and lips forming perfect sounds of pleasure.

That night, while Legundo lies resting in bed, Owen excuses himself to “hunt” and spends several hours punching trees until his fists leave bloody streaks across the bark. The pain can’t hold a candle to the fear. How is he supposed to do this? How is he supposed to do any of this?

“I wish I could talk to you,” he whispers, clutching at a tree trunk stained with his terror while the scrapes across his knuckles knit themselves back together. “I wish you could tell me what you want me to do.”

Owen knows Louis was a kind and devoted man. He knows that, in all likelihood, Louis would not fault him for finding safety in the arms of another.

But if he can accept that he knows this, then he must also accept that he knows how Louis would feel about what Owen did to Oakhurst when his pyre burned out.

That’s a pain too searing to face.

So… He’s stuck. In love, furious with himself for it, and pretending he isn’t acutely aware of what Louis would think of him now.

Who could blame him for pulling away?

+ 146 days

“The weather is beautiful. Do you want to go for a walk?”

“…No, but thank you. I’m right in the middle of this.”

“Oh— right, of course. We can always go later.”

“Maybe another day? You should go enjoy it while it lasts, though. Goodness knows you spend enough time holed up in the clinics.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“…Okay. I’ll… Be back in a bit.”

“I’ll be here.”

+ 148 days

It’s a special kind of agonizing to lie beside Legundo with every desperate, screaming impulse within chanting and begging and pleading with Owen to just tell him, tell him, tell him.

It would be so easy.

Owen opens his mouth and no sound escapes into the darkness between them.

What a wretched, greedy thing he is. Unforgivable.

When Legundo’s eyes went wide and reflected the dazzling colors bursting in the sky above, he went somewhere far away, and it took Owen calling his name nine times to bring him back. Three, four, five firework shells burst, and the danger was imagined, but the panic was real.

Owen tasted the edges of those memories when Legundo offered his blood. The colors and sounds made little sense, but the pervading stench of death and rot mixed with a soul-deep horror that claimed every square centimeter of his body lingered in Owen like a bad hangover for hours. Only the strongest memories seep through with feeding, and people are hard-wired to remember fear best, so he supposes it makes a poetic sort of sense that this moment of acute suffering would be the only one they ever shared. What right would Owen have to Legundo’s joy? To his triumphs, his victories, his contentment and peace?

No. It had to be the worst day of his life, or it would be nothing at all.

That’s what he saw reflected on Legundo’s face when the fireworks went off. Things improved once they were out of the city and into the peace and stillness beyond, but Legundo has been walking heavier since then. It’s in the subtle things— the way his shoulders hunch ever so slightly inward, and how he takes an extra quarter of a second to look when Owen tries to get his attention.

It worries him.

And that worry just makes everything worse.

Tell him, the traitor voice whispers.

But tell him what?

That Owen loves him? That Owen knows Legundo loves him, too? That Owen’s thoughts still drift to Louis the moment he’s left alone? That he still loves Louis? Still aches for him?

Anything. Tell him anything.

Owen’s shaking fingers find the familiar divots in the side of his neck.

He slips out of bed, and Legundo does not stir.

Things are easier by himself. No one tries to push their expectations onto him.

No one is disappointed when he fails to live up to them.

Louis would hate him for what he’s become. Owen took his gift and used it to destroy everything he built, then tried to escape into the nothingness of death, only to reawaken and help a true monster do it all again.

He’s just like the romantic fools in the books Louis let him borrow— lovesick and useless, begging for scraps of meaning from the cold, uncaring universe.

Legundo cares.

And…

You care.

But not about everyone. Not about the community he decimated, certainly, nor the one he betrayed when he awoke anew. Not about the millions of strangers that would jump at the opportunity to hate him and shut him out.

Louis and Legundo are different; they both cared first. Reciprocity is easier than blind faith.

And yes, Louis would probably hate him for what he did to Oakhurst, but… Legundo doesn’t. He knows what Owen did and yet he still treats him with such gentle kindness.

But not himself.

He told Owen once that he doesn’t deserve immortality. That his only path to atonement for what he did in his youth is to serve the world and eventually be removed from it, leaving it better off in his absence. Owen wouldn’t be better for his absence.

If he tells Legundo that he needs him— that he loves him— it might be enough to convince Legundo to stay.

And it might not.

He walks several miles into the sprawling woods and turns his face toward the stars, breath coming in ragged, panting lungfuls.

“I don’t know what to do,” he rasps. “Please. Please, just tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

The night air gives no reply.

+ 150 days

Legs keeps silent and still while Owen slips soundlessly back into bed beside him.

Vampires don’t truly sleep, but they can enter a state of dissociation from their surroundings akin to a deep meditative trance with enough focus, and Legs keeps this as part of his routine in one of many bids to retain as much normalcy as possible.

Tonight, he did not enter the trance.

He waited up in the stillness and the quiet until Owen returned from whatever calls him to desert their bed each night, and the moment Owen settles beneath the blanket, Legs steels himself and speaks.

“Did I do something wrong?”

Owen does not flinch or stiffen. He doesn’t react at all.

Several seconds pass before he replies, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Owen.”

Silence from the other side of the bed.

“If… I understand if seeing me break down was too much,” he says, fighting to keep the words level and stable. “I’m usually better about avoiding triggers, but I didn’t know—”

“No, Legs, what are you— What in the world are you talking about?”

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

“…I haven’t.”

Legs shuts his eyes and sighs. “Owen. Please. Just tell me what’s wrong so I can fix it.”

“There’s nothing… This isn’t…”

His mouth goes dry and his heart sinks. It’s distantly mesmerizing— how is his body mimicking these physiological responses? Are they just echoes of sensation, like pain in a phantom limb?

It’s a fascinating question, but he doesn’t indulge his desire to run away from the present by retreating into the theoretical.

“Was it the festival?”

“No.”

The force and immediacy of Owen’s reply offers at least some relief, but it’s tempered by the knowledge that he still does not yet understand what’s driving Owen away.

“Then… Can you tell me what it is?”

He turns his head to face Owen, who lies on his back staring up at the ceiling. A war plays out on his face. He struggles for a long while, then tilts his own head so he can meet Legs’s gaze.

“Why are you okay with it?”

The confusion must show on his face.

Owen clarifies, “What I did. After… After I woke up the first time.”

After Louis.

Two thousand seven hundred ninety-nine.

“I’m not… Okay with it, exactly,” Legs says. “But I accept that it happened, and there’s no way to change that.”

“But surely it must bother you,” Owen insists.

“I mean… Yes? I’m not happy with it. But trauma makes us do things we wouldn’t normally even consider, and new vampirism only exacerbates the emotional pain.”

Owen makes a sound of frustration and plants the heel of his palm over one eye. “I don’t get you.”

Legs’s lips part, but he makes himself wait for Owen to continue.

“You’re so— burdened, by whatever you did in the war. You say you don’t deserve immortality, even though it means having the chance to save countless lives. But when you hear about how I slaughtered thousands of people, you just forgive me and tell me to do better in the future. What’s different about us? How am I supposed to accept that you really don’t hold it against me when you clearly still hold it against yourself?”

Legs swallows past the burning in his throat. He reaches for Owen with a delicate touch, giving him plentiful time to brush his hand away— but he doesn’t. He lets Legs take his cheek and guide him to turn fully onto his side, to slip the hand over his eye to thread with Legs’s and rest on the mattress between them.

“It’s different because you actually had a personal stake in what happened,” Legs murmurs. “It wasn’t right. I don’t think it was a proportionate response, and I don’t think you do, either. Not completely.”

Owen purses his lips but says nothing.

“You were deeply and personally wronged by your community. When they pushed you over the edge, you pushed back. Hard. It makes sense. It was awful and tragic, but at least… At least it makes sense.”

He draws a breath. Steadies himself.

“What I did… It had nothing to do with me. I wasn’t an active agent in a conflict; I was a weapon used to slaughter thousands of innocents for a war to make wealthy men even wealthier. And I was good at it. I took pride in it. I followed orders like a good little soldier and I destroyed entire communities without ever once knowing why. I poisoned water supplies. I destroyed food stockpiles. I held the line keeping everyone locked in and watched them turn on each other because they were starving and I—”

His voice catches.

“I… I didn’t even know them. They never did anything to me. They died slowly and painfully without any dignity because they had the misfortune of being born in the wrong place. We… I just followed orders. So yes— I accept what you did. I would have no goddamn business judging you. Not when I’m guilty of far worse, and without even a hint of actual justification.”

Owen gazes at him for a long time.

“Legundo,” he says. “You don’t have to be defined by what you did when you had no good choices.”

He sighs. “But I still have to take responsibility.”

“Then what do I have to do?” Owen asks. “Do I have to spend the rest of my existence punishing myself over and over for a past I’m helpless to change?”

“No. Of course not.”

“So… You can hurt as many people as you like so long as you’re sufficiently mad at them.”

Legs shakes his head. “You know that’s not what I’m saying.”

Owen purses his lips.

“It’s just… It’s different. I don’t want to argue about this. I want to know why you’ve been avoiding me these past couple of days.”

“I haven’t been—”

“Owen. Please.”

Owen shuts his eyes. He takes a long, slow breath, holds it, then exhales for even longer.

“…I think we’re both stressed from constantly being on the move these last months. Why don’t we take a break from chasing Scott? We can find some remote hamlet where you can still do your doctoring while we decompress away from the cities and the people.”

He should say no.

He should demand a real answer. He should seriously consider what it means for them that Owen is refusing to give him one.

“Okay,” Legs says instead.

+ 153 days

They catch a ride on a freight train heading south.

The coastal mountains give way to sprawling plains and rolling hills. It’s easy to forget about the world from within the confines of their empty car, and they pass the hours in quiet, lying pressed together or sitting side by side watching the world smear into a dizzying blur.

“How does it work?” Owen asks as they chug across miles in a matter of minutes.

“The engine burns coal to heat water. The water becomes steam. The steam pushes and pulls the mechanisms that rotate the wheels.”

“The steam does? How?”

Legs shrugs with one shoulder, careful not to jostle Owen’s head which rests on the other.

“I’m not an expert.”

Owen hums and exhales long and slow, adjusting the grip he has wrapped around Legs’s middle and nestling further into his collarbone. “Technology changed a lot while I was asleep,” he mumbles into Legs’s shirt.

“It has.”

Quiet settles.

Or… Quiet isn’t the right word. The train is loud, and the wind whistling and whipping across the open side of their car only adds to the noise. It’s a wonder Legs even heard Owen with how softly he’d spoken— and something about that nags at Legs, but he lets the thread slip from his fingers for now and keeps his eyes on the distant horizon.

+ 157 days

Being a doctor opens a lot of doors. This is excellent news, because if that door is residential, they can’t exactly break it down.

But the need doesn’t arise. Legundo stays charming and kind and he gives his services freely, and in return, they come to possess the keys and an open invitation to stay in a vacant home a few miles into the countryside. He explains the story to Owen— some shopkeeper in the tiny town has a kid suffering from one ailment or another, and Legundo fixed it with surgery, which was far past the means and expertise of the next closest medical provider: an herbalist in another town nearly thirty miles southeast. She’d apparently written the kid off, but Legundo brought him back from the brink while Owen stayed very far away from the entire ordeal. Then Owen mostly tuned out the details Legundo relayed.

He isn’t heartless. It isn’t that he doesn’t care about Legundo’s work or the good he does. It’s just— medical stuff isn’t easy for him, even now, and for as much as Owen loves to see Legundo’s face light up with excitement as he recounts harrowing moments on the sterile battlefield, some of the finer details still leave him queasy.

The boy lives on, and the grateful father loaned them the house his son will someday move into to start his own family when he grows up and marries some blandly pretty girl in town.

If that man only knew he was letting a pair of vampiric lovers stay in the home he built by hand. Owen wonders what he might say— what he might do. Maybe try to drive them out with crosses and pitchforks. Maybe torch the place with them inside.

“How are you feeling?” Legundo asks.

Owen decides he would rather be on fire than answer that question.

“Thirsty,” he replies.

The wrinkle between Legundo’s brows tells him the sidestep has very much been noticed, but Legundo doesn’t press him on it.

He makes a conscious effort not to vanish on Legundo, staying tethered near his side at home and accompanying him for walks and trips into town to trade out his books at the little library. They’re both quieter than usual— Legundo because he’s focused on failing to be subtle in how he watches Owen, and Owen because he’s focused on presenting business as usual. It’s a very silly waste of both their time and effort but Owen can’t bring himself to stop.

If he gives Legundo a reason to keep prying, everything will fall apart. The shoe will drop. The mirror will shatter. The pyre will burn.

So he smiles and nods and laughs and listens. He hunts quickly and drinks quicker and is back in bed by midnight. He lets Legundo read aloud to him from his horrible historical novellas and holds his hand while they sit on the porch and watch the moonrise.

And every time they lie together in bed, the only thing he can think about is how badly it will hurt when all of this is ripped away.

+ 164 days

“May I come in?”

Owen stares down the man at the door and quietly considers whether he can reach the stake in his bag before Abolish can take him to the floor.

…Probably not. Abolish was the last one turned for a damn good reason, and Owen is not eager to square off with him again. It took long enough for his bones to knit themselves back together the first time.

“No.”

Abolish sighs and crosses his arms. “This is a private matter. I’d prefer to discuss it with y’all in a place we can be sure we won’t be overheard.”

“Uh huh.”

“Owen. Please don’t make this difficult. I really only came here to talk.”

Owen shuts the door in Abolish’s face.

“Solicitors,” he says in explanation when he returns upstairs to the main room and drapes himself across Legs on the sofa.

“Was it those pest control people again? I keep telling them there’s no bat infestation, but they won’t believe me.”

Owen grins and noses up along the column of Legs’s throat. “I can’t imagine why.”

“All those swarms of bats that appear around the attic are all respectable members of the local community.”

“The bat community?”

“Yes. They have bat jobs and pay bat taxes to support the bat infrastructure.”

“Oh, good. I don’t know what I would do with myself if they weren’t paying tax.”

Legundo’s reply is cut off by the sharp tapping of fingers on glass.

Owen’s face pinches with displeasure. He glances toward the window to confirm what he already knows to be on the other side— and sure enough, there’s Abolish, perched on a tree limb stretched beside the window sill with a scrap of paper pressed into the glass, onto which he has scrawled the words “MAY I ENTER?”

“…Soliciters, huh?” Legundo says, slipping out from under Owen and going to unlock and open the window.

“Sorry,” Owen replies, making no attempt to sound it.

“Come in, Abolish.”

“Thank you.”

Abolish swings in and lands on both feet, then straightens in one smooth motion, pats his legs as if to brush away dust, and take a short, sharp breath.

“Hello. It’s good to see you, Doctor.”

“You as well,” Legundo replies, returning to the couch. He doesn’t curl back up, but he still sits beside Owen, so Owen decides he must not be too mad and risks scooting a few inches closer until their shoulders brush. “How have you been?”

“Busy. I’m sorry to say, but this isn’t a social call.”

The ease drains from Legundo, and Owen grits his teeth. This is exactly why he didn’t want to let Abolish in here; whatever he has to say will put Legundo on edge for days or even weeks, and they’re meant to be taking a break from their worldly troubles. 

“We found Shelby.”

Owen’s brows twitch. He schools his expression and braces himself.

“Is she okay?” Legundo asks.

“She’s fine.”

They both let out a breath. Owen is briefly surprised by his own relief, but he supposes it makes sense. He did come to like Shelby in their days together, and she accepted the gift almost immediately after receiving it. There was never any need to soothe her wounded feelings or reassure her that she could live how she wanted; Shelby took stock of the situation and decided for her damn self how she would live, and she never wavered from that. He can respect it, even if he doesn’t always agree with her conclusions.

“Avid and Drift tracked her down,” Abolish continues. “I guess she was pretty deep in the woods between Harpmire and Silaspoint looking for werewolves.”

Owen snorts. “Naturally.”

“Yeah. Well, the point is, they found her, and she was very open with what she knew about Scott and Pyro. They didn’t tell her everything but she knew enough to give me some solid leads, and I’ve been independently verifying some other stuff she knew, and… They’re almost certainly off-continent.”

Legundo tenses, then deflates. Owen bites his inner cheek to keep from growling at Abolish.

“I was able to get in touch with some people within my organization operating overseas, and they’re doing the best they can to check things out, but I figured y’all should know about this since you’ve also been looking.”

“…Thank you,” Legundo eventually says.

Abolish nods.

There’s an awkward silence that hangs for several seconds, then Legundo breaks it to ask, “Do you, uh, want to stay a while? We have some crimson downstairs if you’re thirsty, or…”

But Abolish is already shaking his head, bless the man. “No. I’ll need to be on my way. It was hard enough finding you two, and you aren’t even properly off the grid.”

“Who’s left on your list?” Owen asks.

“Apo and Renhardt. Apo has to be using a new identity, since she technically deserted the military when she left Oakhurst. And Ren…” Abolish gives his head a slow shake. “I don’t even know where to start.”

Legundo sighs. “Martyn knew him the best. If you can get in touch with him, he’s probably the best bet for finding Ren.”

Abolish shrugs and purses his lips. “I have other obligations, unfortunately. I’ll do what I can to track them down, but ultimately it’s up to them if they want to be in the loop when we do finally take Scott down and go back for the cure.”

Legundo looks troubled, but doesn’t comment.

“Anyway, that’s all I needed to tell you. Thanks for hearing me out.” He gives Owen a pointed look, then bows and exits the way he came, vanishing into the evening air beyond the window.

After a minute, Legundo rises to shut the window. He lingers there with his back to Owen, tracing the shape of the lock over and over.

“Why lock him out? I mean, you must have known he wouldn’t leave without talking to us.”

“A man can hope.”

Legundo turns and leans back against the window frame with a deep frown. “What’s going on? Something has clearly been bothering you, and I don’t want to push you, but this is getting… I was hoping you’d be more open to talking once we came out here, but…”

Owen gives an involuntary bristle and consciously forces himself to stop and let the indignation pass. This isn’t an attack. Legundo isn’t looking for a justification to hate him, no matter how much he may deserve it. But the anger acted as a shield for the dread, and without it, he’s off-kilter and defenseless.

“This is the first time I’ve ever left Oakhurst, let alone traveled for months on end,” he eventually says. “It’s a lot for me. I’m… Having trouble with it.”

It’s a poor lie, and they both know it. The pad of Legundo’s index finger taps against the window sill in an anxious rhythm as he mulls the words over, visibly working out whether or not to call Owen out.

“Please,” Owen whispers, against his better judgement— but the fear is eating him alive. “Please, Legs. Just leave it.”

Legundo’s lips part. Then they close.

“…Okay, Owen.”

Tense silence suffocates the room.

“I think I’m gonna go lie down.”

Owen sits statue still. “Alright.”

Legundo doesn’t look at him as he leaves.

+ 166 days

It would be so much easier if Legs was angry.

He isn’t angry.

Owen moves through the house like a ghost, haunting whatever room Legs settles in, going through the motions of presence without surrendering an ounce of himself in the process. Their conversation stays superficial and though they touch frequently, it doesn’t lead to anything.

Legs goes into town by himself to return his latest batch of books and finds he somehow feels less lonely when he’s literally alone than he does in that house.

Which is so fucking ridiculous he wants to turn right around and sprint the whole way back.

But what would that do?

He lets it play out in his mind. Rushing home, bursting in, finding Owen wherever he’s settled for the day. Please talk to me, he might say. Please tell me what’s wrong.

Owen would give him that carefully blank look and reply, Nothing is wrong. Everything is fine.

Legs would start to argue— to retrace the familiar steps of this conflict, moving and countering, keeping rhythm in a dance that always leads right back where it started— but he stops short.

What do you do when you can’t diagnose the problem?

You don’t keep running the same tests over and over. The symptoms remain static. Interrogating them won’t yield new information.

When the source is unclear, you have to think broader. What’s wrong with the system as a whole? What discontinuity might result in these particular effects?

…Timeline. Start with a timeline.

Owen started acting distant shortly after the festival. That evening hadn’t exactly gone to plan, but it ended on a good note. Didn’t it? They danced together, humming and singing, and when they went home, things felt as natural and easy as always. A few days later, it was like there was a solid wall between them. Owen was physically present, sure, but he spent so much time lost in his own head that Legs started to wonder if Owen would even notice if he stopped talking mid-sentence.

So he tried it. Owen didn’t notice.

And now this thing with Abolish… What the hell was that about?

It did cross his mind that Owen could have been trying to keep him out just in case he’d come to tell them Scott was dead. Legs might be overly optimistic, but he isn’t a fool; he knows Owen has a vested interest in Legs remaining a vampire, and that conflict will inevitably tear them apart sooner or later.

But he also hasn’t gotten the impression that Owen is making any attempt to mislead Legs or waste his time while they search. When they return to the taverns and inns Owen checks, the staff there recognize Owen and openly apologize for not having seen the man he’s looking for. His suggestions for where to look are thoughtful and well-reasoned, and this is the only time he’s ever asked for a break in the five months they’ve spent searching. Even knowing it works against his own interests, Owen is clearly devoted to seeing this through— or, at least, to helping Legs see it through.

Did something change? Did he realize something that could lead to Scott and has now chosen to keep it secret, and the distance is born of guilt?

Maybe. But a hypothetical seems unlikely to warp his behavior to this extreme. Either he has something concrete, or there’s something else he feels guilty about.

Could it be for what he did to Oakhurst?

He brought it up before. Asked why Legs doesn’t hold it against him— how he can accept it. Legs gave him an honest answer, and though Owen pushed at him, it seemed more driven toward trying to make Legs okay with his own transgressions, not with Owen’s. Maybe he’s somehow tied his ability to accept what he did to Legs’s ability to make peace with his past.

But that just seems too speculative and overly complicated. There’s an obvious answer glaring at him, he can feel it. He just needs to think.

What do you know about Owen?

Owen was born sick. His illness made him weak and frail as a child, but he pushed himself to keep up with the other kids. His parents both died at some point in his childhood, but he has never spoken about it in detail, and Legs won’t ask him to. In his early teens, he developed skin lesions and boils that resulted in ostracization. Despite his frailty, he took to working as a lumberjack, because people were at least willing to buy wood from him.

He met Louis—

Louis.

“Oh my god,” Legs breathes. “I’m an idiot.”

He sits down right in the middle of the footpath and buries his face in his hands.

Owen met Louis. They connected immediately and spoke daily for months. Love bloomed between them, and Louis offered Owen an escape from his life of pain and loneliness. Then the town ripped Louis away. Owen spent a month wiping them out and buried himself for two hundred years of restless, fitful sleep.

From Owen’s perspective, he lost the love of his life only seven or eight months ago. And here Legs is demanding he open up and give his entire heart over, like there couldn't possibly be a reason for him to hesitate. Pushing him. Demanding more than he’s ready to give.

Legs drops one hand into his lap and stares at the ground. 

No self-flagellation, he firmly reminds himself. You don’t get to throw yourself a pity party over the problem you caused.

So he scrapes himself out of the gravel and trudges to the tiny library to trade out his books.

When he returns, it’s nearly sunset. Legs enters quietly and busies himself putting his bag down, shedding the coat he doesn’t need, and unlacing the boots he was finally forced to buy when his old pair literally fell apart. Owen’s shoes are still by the door. He must be home, but wherever he is, he isn’t making any sound.

Legs eventually finds him sitting on the floor in front of the empty hearth, staring into the ashes with a completely blank expression.

“Owen,” he says, soft and careful.

Owen only reacts after a solid second of delay. He turns his head slowly, like the movement takes a monumental effort.

“I…” Legs drops to sit beside him. “I, uh, I realized I’ve been… I haven’t…”

He exhales the remainder of the air in his lungs and starts over.

“I’m sorry.”

Owen’s expression flickers for just a moment— a tiny wrinkle between his brows, a twitch of his lips— and then he’s back to careful neutral. “For what?”

“For being an insensitive ass,” he replies. “I know you don’t like to talk about this, and I promise I’m not trying to make you, but— I realized that I haven’t been considering… What you lost. I just— I care about you a lot, and I… I was being selfish. I don’t want you to think I expect you to be completely open and tell me everything you’re thinking and feeling. Anything you give me is a gift. You deserve as much time as you need to process things and get through them, and… I’ll be here, whenever you’re ready.”

The quiet that falls isn’t stilted and awkward like it has been these past weeks. Owen’s face remains a frozen mask but he doesn’t look away, and he doesn’t waver.

When he speaks, it’s with a raw, trembling edge to his voice. “How does this end?”

This time, Legs has an immediate answer. “We’ll decide together.”

He offers his hand.

Owen takes it.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Owen murmurs.

“Well… I don’t really know, either,” Legs says, rubbing his thumb over Owen’s knuckles. “But there’s no one I’d rather figure it out with.”

They don’t talk for a long while, but Owen leans to rest against Legs’s side and lets Legs run a hand through his hair. Whatever war wages in Owen’s mind, he seems determined to fight it alone— but Legs won’t let him forget that he has backup.

He just has to trust Owen to call for it if the need ever arises.

And he needs to learn to see the moments when Owen does.

That night, Owen comes to bed with Legs and curls up in his arms, and though Legs isn’t consciously trying to, he stays awake in a silent vigil over Owen’s resting form until the sun rises.

It’s the first time in weeks Owen hasn’t slipped away to disappear into the dark.

Legs tucks Owen more securely against his chest and presses his lips into Owen’s hair.

+ 173 days

Owen stays in bed through the night every day that week.

They still don’t talk about what’s bothering him, but he’s clearly making a concerted effort to be more present, and Legs shows his appreciation in every way he knows how.

+ 181 days

“Doctor.”

Legundo blinks a few times before turning his heavy gaze to Owen.

“Come with me for a walk,” he says. “I want to get your opinion on something.”

Legundo nods and rises from the armchair to don his coat and boots.

The stream flows a couple of miles east of their temporary home. Most of the plantlife around its banks has been hacked and cleared away by farmers drawing water for their crops, but as they walk further upstream, more tall grasses, bushes, and trees sprout up.

Owen leads Legundo by the hand to a smear of mud with reddish-orange streaks.

“I think this is a clay deposit. I want to try to harvest some and make vases so we can bring flowers in.”

Legundo gives one of the soft, genuine smiles that means Owen has done something good.

“That sounds like a wonderful idea.”

They return later with buckets and trowels to dig out the clay from the streambed. The earth stains Owen’s hands and forearms a light russet shade. Legundo’s are much the same.

“You’re probably used to your arms looking like this.”

Legundo inspects his hands and laughs. “This smells a lot nicer.”

Owen lifts a brow. “Dirty stream muck smells better to you than blood?”

“Yes.”

“We are very different men, Legundo.”

“It would be pretty weird if we weren’t.”

They haul the clay buckets back to the house and set about breaking up the clumps and filtering out the twigs, leaves, and stones. It feels good to do something with his hands after so many days spent idle.

“What’s next?”

Owen raises his eyebrows. “Oh. I don’t know. I figured you would know how to do this.”

“Why?” Legundo asks with a half-grin. “That doesn’t exactly come up in medical school.”

“Well— I don’t know. It just seems like the kind of thing you would have done at some point. You spent a lot of years roughing it with us common folk, so surely you would have been in a situation where you needed to make a bowl or something.”

“…Poor people still have bowls, Owen.”

Owen rolls his eyes. “Would the library in town have any books that could help?”

“If they don’t, someone will definitely be able to tell us how to do this. Come on— let’s go get cleaned up.”

Legundo fills a basin with water heated over the hearth and they take turns scrubbing the red from their skin. The color comes off of Owen’s arms easily, but his linens stubbornly refuse to give up their suspicious red stains. He sighs and retrieves one of his backup sets to cover his arms.

Sensing Legundo’s eyes on him, Owen turns and holds his arms out for inspection. “Did I miss any spots?”

“No— but I was wondering something.”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t need to answer if you don’t want to,” Legundo says. “But I’m curious why you still cover your arms.”

Owen frowns. “…You can see the scars, Doctor.”

“I can now. But before I was turned, it took you pointing them out for me to notice.”

“Wait— really?”

“Really. They look very subtle to human eyes.”

“I didn’t realize.”

He studies the linens covering his skin and wonders if he may someday be able to go without them— if he can ever reach a point of comfort with himself that he would be willing to take that risk.

Maybe. It’s… Feeling a lot more likely these days that he’ll make it that far.

Their trip into town goes well enough. The library has a book on primitive clay sculpting, which is great, but then the librarian turns her warm smile to Owen and says, “And who’s this, Doctor? Your son?”

Owen bursts into raucous laughter while Legundo makes a lot of flustered sputtering noises.

“He— no. God, no. This is my partner.”

“Oh! I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize!” The librarian flushes pink and covers her mouth with her hand. “Gosh— of course he is! I don’t know how I missed that, considering how much you talk about him!”

Owen turns on Legundo with a sharp grin. “You talk about me?”

“Oh my god,” Legundo mumbles.

“All good things, I’m sure,” he says, turning back to the librarian.

She nods and goes even pinker. “Yes. Well. Um— can I help you two with anything else?”

“No, that’s quite alright. Thank you very much for your assistance.”

Owen hooks his arm through Legundo’s and tows him out into the early evening sun.

Legundo doesn’t look at him, but he does wrap their hands together as they walk.

“…What do you tell her about me?”

He scrubs his free hand over his face. “...That you’re wonderful. And I like you a lot, and… You make me feel… Alive, again.”

“Oh. That’s…”

Owen takes a while to decide how to put the feelings swimming around his chest into words.

“You… Make me feel that way, too.”

Still without looking, Legundo raises their linked hands to his lips and kisses Owen’s knuckles.

+ 189 days

The first several attempts shatter or explode in the rudimentary pit kiln they build, but eventually, Owen manages to produce a single lumpy vase out of the clay they extracted from the streambed.

Legundo comes home from a shift at the clinic with an array of spring flowers and sets them out in the vase on the entryway table.

“So I can see them as soon as I get home to you,” he says.

And Owen drags him down into a kiss.

+ 199 days

They deep clean the house, pack their things, and use Legs’s savings to purchase actual tickets on a passenger rail heading southwest.

“Do you have a surname?”

Owen glances up from carefully wrapping the vase in a couple of their spare shirts. “No? I didn’t come from wealth.”

“Ah. I guess that’s a recent development. These days, commoners usually have a family name in addition to a given name. There are exceptions for people who come from very small remote communities, but people typically require two names to get official travel documents.”

Owen hums contemplatively. “What’s yours?”

Legs blinks. “Uh… Legundo.”

Owen freezes, then looks back at him with tightly knit brows. “What?”

“Legundo is my surname. My first name is Clifton.”

“…You’re messing with me.”

“I promise I’m not.”

“You’re… So you’re telling me that your name is Doctor Clifton Legundo.”

“Yep.”

Owen shakes his head. “No. Nuh-uh. I’m not having that. I will not accept that your name is Clifton.”

“Well, regardless, we need to come up with one for you so I can get you some official documentation.”

“How did they assign them when they started using them?”

“I think you would technically be Owen van Oakhurst if we went strictly traditional.”

His nose wrinkles. “Absolutely not.”

Legs considers for a moment. “How about Holzer? On the eastern continent, that name is used for someone who works with and sells wood.”

“Owen Holzer.” He repeats the name a few times under his breath, as if to taste the form of the syllables on his tongue. “Sure.”

“I like it. It suits you.”

Owen shoots him a sidelong glance. “Whatever you say, Clifton.”

A second passes, then Owen sticks his tongue out and makes a loud retching sound.

“Nope. Can’t do it. Not even as a joke. You’re getting that changed.”

“To what?”

“To Legs Legundo.”

Legs laughs, half afraid that Owen isn’t joking.

+ 235 days

Summer begins with a storm.

They’re exploring the far southern edges of the continent where the people are few and the hiding places are abundant. Hot air blown in from the east mixes with the chill winds of the gulf and whips up the kind of hurricane that made humans believe in gods and deities for millenia.

For two vampires, it makes for a thrillingly interactive show.

They’ve been scouring the uninhabited lands long enough to necessitate staying at level two for the sake of night vision and superior movement options. This also means they’re strong enough to take a few big hits.

Owen stares out the salt-warped glass of their crumbling shelter at the whipping wind beyond with genuine excitement reflecting in his wide eyes.

“I want to fly in that.”

Legs chokes on a laugh and wheezes, “Are you crazy?”

Owen grins.

So they fly.

The storm sends their tiny bodies hurtling through the air at speeds too dizzying to comprehend. Legs feels the air squeeze out of his lungs as his bat form is pressed and condensed by the pure force of the wind, but it can do no lasting harm to him; even in this form, his organs are set dressing. There is no real need for the performance.

Legs tries to straighten his wings and catch the current but can’t move a millimeter by his own volition. He is a helpless passenger to the whims of the storm.

It’s terrifying.

It’s exhilarating.

His body gives up the bat form eventually and the greater mass of his humanoid form can’t be kept aloft by the wind alone. Legs hurtles downward toward the whipping, choppy sea and gets his wits about him exactly in time to lunge, redirecting his momentum with bone-cracking force and skipping himself across the surface of the water all the way back to shore. His body carves a deep wake in the sand and he lies motionless under the pounding rain for several seconds while he fights to make sense of the last minute or so.

“Doctor!”

Owen’s voice cuts through the maelstrom. Legs peels himself out of his crater, pops his shoulder back into socket with a slight wince, and stumbles to his feet. He spots Owen about a hundred yards down the beach, bleeding from a massive gash on the side of his head and grinning from ear to ear.

The gash is already closed by the time they meet in the middle. Legs still drags Owen to an alcove formed by an outcropping of rocks jutting from the hills behind them and fusses over him.

“That was incredible,” Owen raves while Legs tilts his head and lets the pouring rain rinse away the blood. “I’ve never gone so fast in my life. How could the storm possibly be this powerful? I mean, we had thunder back in Oakhurst, but this is like— wrath. It really feels like something is trying to crush us. Don’t you think?”

“I certainly understand the feeling,” Legs replies, deciding that the wound is indeed healed and Owen isn’t about to collapse on him. Were he human, Legs would be fretting about concussions or traumatic brain injuries. But the experiments he’s conducted on his own body on days when no patients needed his help have taught Legs a good deal about vampiric healing, and he knows there isn’t any meaningful limit to what their bodies can repair and regenerate.

“I want to go again.”

Owen won’t be able to change back into a bat for several more minutes, but Legs grabs his arm anyway. “How much blood do you have left in your system?”

His eyes go hazy for a moment. “…Enough,” Owen decides.

Legs gives him a skeptical look, and Owen laughs.

“I’ll be fine.”

“You’re freezing.”

“Only because I’m soaked.”

At Legs’s continued suspicion, Owen smiles, leans up on his toes, and draws Legs into a long, open-mouthed kiss.

After, he says, “There. The inside of my mouth is warm.”

Legs blinks a few times to get his stuttering brain to kick back into gear. “I, uh— I wasn’t paying attention. I need another demonstration.”

“Oh, I’m sure.”

But he indulges Legs. This one is even longer, with Owen wrapping one leg around Legs’s until Legs takes the hint and hikes him up into his arms with a hand on the underside of each of Owen’s thighs so he can pin him up against the rock with Owen’s calves crossed behind his back, locking them together. They kiss fiercely, pointedly— working in tandem to match the chaotic rhythm of the hurricane, tasting each other, breathing each other, and finding all the familiar planes of one another’s skin.

They break with a clapping peal of thunder and Legs turns his lips to Owen’s throat, carefully minding his fangs but still biting with the pressure Owen likes. It’s pressure enough to leave angry red marks on a human. On Owen’s skin, there’s only a faint divot barely visible even to Legs’s eyes.

The lightning is really picking up. It strikes a tree somewhere near enough to charge the air around them with pent up energy, and for a brief moment, the fear swells up so forcefully it drowns out the obstinate block in his head that constantly reminds him he’s near-immune to death. Being struck by lightning still wouldn’t kill him. But it would hurt an awful fucking lot.

“We should get back inside,” he says, but another clap of thunder roars overtop the words, drowning them in noise.

To Legs’s surprise, Owen nods. “Much as I’d like to have you right here, I don’t think ten thousand volts will really help the mood.”

“It’s… Closer to one hundred million volts,” Legs says, lowering Owen down and steadying him unnecessarily. “At least. We haven’t been able to measure it yet. It could be even more.”

Owen snorts and fixes his gaze on their crumbling house up in the hills overlooking the sea. “Race you.”

He lunges, and Legs tears off after him.

They reach the door at the exact same moment. It’s an old and rusted thing cast from some kind of steel alloy that’s only just managed to hold onto enough structural integrity not to snap as they force it into motion. It loudly protests the demand, but yields, admitting them dripping and grinning into the dingy concrete and stone interior of what might have been called a cabin, once.

The layers of tarps tied securely to the roof whip and crackle in the wind. The windows groan, threatening to burst in on them at any moment. They track wet sand and sea water onto the rock tile floor. 

Owen pulls him into another kiss, clasping the side of Legs’s face with both hands and backing himself into the wall. Legs lifts him up again to resume what they’d been doing before just as another boom of thunder rolls over them.

The answer is so obvious it practically smacks him across the face.

Owen heard him.

Speaking at normal volume with a raging storm, the roaring sea, and the crack of thunder, Owen heard him say they should get to shelter.

Of course he did. When has Legs ever had to ask Owen to repeat himself since he was turned? When has he ever strained to pick Owen’s voice from a crowd or struggled to parse the particulars of a song hummed under someone’s breath across the street?

When else has he spoken and assumed the crashing waves drowned him out?

Shit.

He breaks the kiss and gently lowers Owen until he drops his legs to take his own weight.

“Legs?”

Owen turns his face up so their eyes meet and Legs is instantly certain that he will never be capable of hiding this revelation.

“Is something wrong?”

“No— no, I just… Realized something.”

Another crack of thunder makes the windows shudder in their frames.

“You heard me,” Legs says. “On the beach.”

Owen doesn’t reply.

“I just— I don’t want you to feel pressured to respond. I didn’t mean to say it then, and I don’t want you to think—”

“You didn’t mean to say it,” Owen cuts in, “or you didn’t mean it?”

Legs swallows past the burning lump in his throat. “I meant it.”

Owen’s eyes become intense and focused, and the effect is made even more stark by the vibrant crimson hue that marks him as being at level two.

“Say it again.”

“...I meant it,” Legs repeats.

“No— I mean, say… What you said. Before.”

Legs looks for any uncertainty in Owen’s eyes, and finds only that burning intensity briefly cast in stark white light by a flash of lightning outside.

“I love you.”

The thunder breaks.

“It doesn’t bother me.”

Oh.

“...It doesn’t?”

Owen shakes his head. “I can’t… I don’t know exactly how I feel, but hearing you say that just feels… Good.”

Not for the first time, Legs desperately wishes he could peer through Owen’s eyes and see inside his mind, or perform some type of procedure that would give him a glimpse of insight toward the tangled mess in his heart.

He can’t. But he can trust what Owen is telling him.

“So… Are you okay with it if I say it?”

Owen’s expression softens and he nods. “As long as you’re okay that I can’t.”

In answer, Legs reconnects their lips, affirming his grip on Owen’s waist and forming the shape of the words against his mouth in a silent prayer.

Each reiteration has Owen pulling him closer, pressing back harder, and grasping tighter.

Together, they ride out the storm.

+ 289 days

The words sit heavy on Owen’s tongue for months.

Sometimes it’s obvious what prompts the impulse. Legundo will sweep him into a dramatic kiss, or welcome him home with a hot bath already drawn, or bring him a new bouquet of wildflowers to put in his vase. Other times, it’s the subtle, everyday things. A hand on his shoulder as Legundo walks behind him. A soft smile caught just as Owen turns around. A book picked out for him because it’s something Legundo thinks he might like.

Those second type of things are what erode the plausible deniability until Owen is left alone with the feelings he can’t look in the face.

So he picks a day when Legundo will be out working a shift at whatever passes for a medical clinic in the dozenth small town they’ve visited in as many weeks, and he takes a long walk.

Owen digs rocks and stones loose from the sun-baked earth and creates a pit, then fells a tree, neatly parts the trunk, and spends an hour slowly coaxing tinder into a roaring pyre fed by thick wood rounds. It spits embers and sparks and vomits an ugly column of grey-black smoke into the cloudless sky, so thick that Owen feels it prickling his lungs even standing a few meters back. No doubt, were his biology less decorative, Owen would be coughing up a lung and fighting to clear tears from stinging eyes.

The gift drapes over his shoulders and guards him from all of it— the frailty, the pain, and the impermanence.

Things were so simple when he first awoke and discovered what had been stolen from him. They burned his world, so Owen burned them back. He sought an ending but found himself unable to drive the stake into his own heart, so he buried himself and waited for another escape. Then he was roused again, and it took little time to convince him that other vampires had nothing to offer him, either. He would complete his vengeance anew and return to the dark and the waiting.

But the doctor snuck up on him.

And the desire to submit to the void waned.

Weeks turned into months turned into seasons, and Owen keeps finding himself with more and more worth living for.

Maybe he can’t truly belong anywhere, but Legundo can’t, either. Nowhere but with each other.

So Owen lets the pyre burn. He stares into the flames and finds the contours of agony in their flickering depths. He feels the heat on his skin and the embers in his lungs and reaches for the well of old rage at his center.

And finds it dry and empty.

There is no anger left for the people who killed Louis. There’s grief for his absence, and…

Shame.

Deep, burning shame.

Because they burned Louis, and Owen burned them back, and he made damn sure nothing was left of Louis’s legacy but the ashes.

The ones who planted the evidence and struck the match deserved exactly what they got. He hasn’t wavered from that cardinal truth. But the rest? Those who stood by, watching with wide, conflicted eyes? The ones who refused to leave their homes for the grisly event? The children? The infants?

Did they really deserve to be hunted down and slaughtered by something they had no hope of defending against?

Of course not.

Owen sinks to the ground and sits in the dirt.

“I’m sorry,” he says, keeping his eyes fixed on the flames. “I was so blinded by my own hatred that I couldn’t see your love.”

The gift Louis gave Owen shrouds him from most every harm. The gifts he gave the town should have done the same. But Owen knew exactly how to rend and tear the foundations of stability and welfare Louis meticulously installed, and he didn’t stop until it was all gone.

That isn’t love.

His chest stabs with piercing pain and his throat contracts and spasms, following the script of a sob without the tears to match it.

Owen thought he was acting on his love for Louis when he destroyed everything, but he wasn’t. He was acting on his hatred for everyone else. How has he managed to fool himself for so long? How has gone along for months believing that this is what Louis would want for him? That he would expect Owen to relentlessly obsess over his own suffering?

If his choices are to live on with someone who makes him feel complete again or to die miserable and alone, how could he have ever fucking convinced himself that Louis would prefer Owen opt for the latter?

No more of this.

No more of any of it.

Owen suffocates the flames under pile after pile of dirt, then flies home stinking of wood smoke and ashes. He was out longer than he realized; the last of the twilight is fading when he shoulders open the door to the cottage they’re renting and marches right up to where Legundo sits with a book in his lap and a wide-eyed expression.

“I’m done hiding from this,” Owen says. “I’m in love with you.”

Legundo blinks. His lips part and his brows raise.

“I’m not leaving you. Not ever. Whatever happens, it’s you and me until the end. Okay?”

“...Yeah. Of course,” Legundo replies, slightly breathless.

“Good.” And because he can, he adds, “I love you.”

“I— I love you, too.”

Owen plucks the book from Legundo’s hands, tosses it aside, and climbs into his lap.

+ 315 days

“We met a year ago today.”

Owen pauses in his whittling to meet Legundo’s eyes. “Yeah?”

“I wonder what I would have thought if I had known then how important you were going to be in my life.”

“If I had known, I probably would have killed you.”

Legundo cracks a smile. “Knowing you? Probably. And I would’ve let you.”

“...And now?”

“Now… I would politely request that you not kill me,” Legundo says. “There’s someone I’d like to come home for.”

Owen is so ridiculously happy he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

+ 365 days

On the really bad nights, Legs used to gamble with himself.

He’d flip a coin. Heads five times in a row, and he could rest. But every tails was another year he had to keep going. He kept careful track of them, ticking them off on his fingers as he came to pass that same date again until he was allowed to give it another go. As the years wore on, it took longer and longer for him to end up playing again.

That night, lying shaking in a pool of his own blood, Legs grasped for the coin always kept safe in his breast pocket and flipped it.

Heads.

Heads.

Heads... Could it really be…

…Heads. He was so close. He could just…

Tails.

One year. 

One year, and he could try again.

It’s October 29th, and Legs takes the coin from his breast pocket and studies it.

Silver, with a perfectly centered stamp bearing the number of his squad. Each of the surviving members have one just like it, and they’re the only ones in existence. It weighs Legs down and forces him to remember every day what he did to get to where he is now. The ritual of transferring it from his shirt to his nightstand to his shirt again is as much a cage as it is a crutch.

Legs tucks it back into his pocket.

He won’t be flipping again today.

+ 491 days

If Owen is completely honest, neither of them have been trying all that hard for a long time.

They move around, sure, but they also drift from place to place without any real reason for their destinations, and they spend weeks at a time in rural villages even after they know definitively that Scott isn’t hiding out there.

Evidently, none of them gave Scott enough credit. The bastard’s vanished completely.

There are still periodic updates from Pearl and Abolish waiting when they return to the Citadel every few months to check in. It’s always more of the same— there’s no sign of Scott, and no one has heard from Apo or Renhardt.

Their last check in was a few weeks ago. They’ve once again returned to the coast, though at this point they’ve scoured just about every town and ruin with a view of the sea. But they’re both partial to the salt on the breeze, so they ignored any contradicting logic and set out for Capebrine.

And that’s where they find him.

Owen catches a hint of something in the air that sets his hackles raising before he even identifies it. A growl rips through his throat and he leaps down from the raised walkway to the stony shore below, darting from rock to rock in the shallow surf with his nose turned to the wind and Legundo hot on his heels.

They find him sitting curled in on himself beneath a rarely used dock adjacent to a sewer outlet.

Not Scott.

Pyro.

Owen growls again, and though Pyro must have heard him, he doesn’t react. His eyes remain fixed on the water while his hands work over something clasped between his palms—

A stake.

“Pyro,” Legundo says, low and careful.

Pyro’s brows twitch. Slow and sluggish, he turns, taking in the sight of them— Legundo with his palms out and a measured look, and Owen curled into a fighting stance.

“Oh,” he says. “Hello, Doctor. Owen. Good to see you again.”

There’s something wrong with him. That much is immediately evident in the flat delivery of those words, but it’s undeniable when coupled with the emptiness in his gaze. He’s looking right at Owen, but there’s no focus; it’s like he’s seeing right through him.

“...Is Scott with you?” Legundo asks.

Pyro smiles humorlessly. “No.”

“Do you know where he is?”

He laughs. It’s sharp, loud, and loaded with bitterness that tells Owen everything he needs to know.

“I’m afraid not. Sire decided he was better off traveling light.”

“When?” Owen spits.

“...What’s the date?”

“The fourth of March,” Legundo replies.

“Then… That would have been… November eleventh. The sun has set one hundred thirteen times since he left.”

“And where have you been all that time?” Owen asks, eyes narrowing.

Pyro blinks owlishly. “Here.”

Legundo’s jaw clenches. Owen catches the motion from the corner of his eye and takes a moment to look Pyro over more carefully.

And he quickly realizes that Pyro isn’t speaking metaphorically when he says here.

His clothes hang rotting and pitted from his wiry frame. One shoe is entirely missing, and the other is barely holding on, with the front of the sole dangling by a few threads. His hair is a dark and matted nest hanging from his head and his skin is streaked with a spectrum of stains from grime, sewage, and god knows what else.

It’s… Possible. His spot is tucked back behind an outcropping of rocks such that he’s only visible to someone standing pretty much exactly where Owen and Legundo are, and there’s no real reason to come down here unless you’re looking for something.

“...You haven’t moved in four months?” Legundo asks.

“I guess not.”

“What have you been drinking?”

Pyro shrugs. “Sometimes the rats come within reach.”

Owen and Legundo exchange a glance.

He couldn’t be faking this. Not all of it. And with so little blood, he won’t be able to put up any kind of fight. Owen could easily hold him down and shove his own stake through his heart.

“...Right then,” Owen sighs. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

It takes the better part of an hour just to break him from the shell of salt and barnacles encrusting him to the rocks.

Pyro is either unable or uninterested in helping. Legundo takes the stake from his hands without resistance, then they set about trying to extract him without breaking his body. Eventually, Owen accepts that there will be no salvaging Pyro’s clothing and starts hacking at the petrified fabric with a utility knife.

What remained of his underclothes sloughs away once he’s free. Pyro is bare to the world, but Owen is too busy being aggravated by the situation to find that embarrassing, and as a doctor, Legundo is beyond accustomed to dealing with nudity in a professional manner. Pyro is equally unbothered. He keeps his eyes on the horizon while they lead him into the water and dunk him until the worst of the stains dissipate along with the vile stench of decay and waste.

Now they’re in a predicament. They obviously can’t leave Pyro here, but they can’t exactly take him anywhere like this, either.

“Go buy him some shorts and a cloak,” Owen says. “I’ll stay with him.”

“You’re sure?”

Owen nods. “You have the stake. Not like I could kill him.”

Legundo half-smiles. “Not really what I was worried about. I’ll be quick.”

Pyro is silent for the first several minutes, and Owen settles in for a very long and quiet wait.

“So… You and the doc, huh?”

Owen’s eyes narrow. “Not exactly news, is it? We weren’t subtle about it, back in Oakhurst.”

“No. But it lasted.”

“And?”

Pyro shrugs. “Just making an observation.”

He is. It’s harmless, and yet the surface level scrutiny makes Owen squirm. Not because he’s insecure about any of it, but…

“What happened with your sire, Pyro?”

Pyro flinches. Owen smothers a pang of guilt.

“He, uh… We hid together for a while, and then… He determined it was safe enough to move on, but… Not together. We’re more conspicuous as a pair.”

“Hm.”

After a second, Pyro continues. “It was good for a while. At least— I thought so? I thought… He seemed happy with me, so I must have been… I thought…”

Owen waits, but Pyro doesn’t speak again.

Legundo returns a while later with clothes for Pyro. He dresses silently, then stands stiffly with his head bowed and his fists clenched at his sides.

“…He’ll need crimson,” Owen says. “Let’s bring him back to the room.”

“Come on, Pyro.”

They walk back on either side of Pyro, but he makes no attempt to run. His stride is unsteady at first but in short order he regains his balance and some of the natural grace returns to his movement. Owen keeps half an eye on him, but Pyro doesn’t once twitch, hesitate, or even take his eyes off the ground. He takes one step, then the next, letting Owen and Legundo herd him on.

They get a few bottles of crimson into Pyro and give him a few minutes while the blood soaks into his petrifying tissues.

“…Thank you,” he murmurs. “I’d forgotten… What it felt like not to burn.”

When Owen rose from his two hundred years in the dirt, he could barely think for the searing pain in his throat. Pyro’s had incidental meals at least but there’s no telling how long he’s been running on empty. After a certain point, the mind ceases to process greater agony; if every synapse is dedicated to screaming the alarm, nothing can make that worse. It just is.

“Tell us what happened,” Legundo gently prompts.

Pyro draws the cloak around himself and casts his eyes toward an unoccupied corner of the room.

“The barrier shattered. Sire knew the others would be coming for him, so we ran— him, me, and Shelby. We traveled together for a few weeks but Shelby broke off once we were close to a city. She, uh… She really let us have it. I didn’t even know she was capable of getting that angry. She called Sire an irredeemable monster and said I was just like the people who bullied me all my life because I was following him. Then she left.”

Pyro pauses for a long moment.

“What’s funny is that Sire seemed genuinely bothered afterward. I assumed he’d heard it all before, but for some reason, he really didn’t take it well coming from Shelby. I don’t know. It’s not that important. Um… After that, we stayed on the move for a long time. Between you two, Martyn and Pearl, and Abolish’s group, we were basically forced to live completely off-grid and constantly change locations. Sire still had some money buried in the outskirts, so we used that to leave false trails and secure safe passage around the continent, but it was too risky to leave. Abolish had people watching for us at every major port, and Sire wasn’t about to debase himself by taking a fishing boat or hiding out in a shipping crate or anything ridiculous like that, so…”

He rubs at his jaw and frowns. “I don’t really even know the details of what he did, but I guess he made some new friends who were willing to smuggle him out on a luxury vessel. The writing was kind of on the wall at that point, but I just—”

Pyro laughs, empty and without humor. Without hope.

“He didn’t even care enough to bother lying. He told me to my face that I meant nothing to him, and that it didn’t matter what I did after he was gone, because he planned to forget about me the second he left.”

Legundo breaks the quiet that falls. “…That must have been very painful.”

“Yeah,” Pyro breathes. “Yeah, I… I just sat there and watched his boat disappear. I couldn’t look away. Not even after it was gone. I’m just… Waiting. In case he changes his mind.”

“Pyro,” Legundo says, soft and pitying.

“Do you—” Pyro turns, whipping into a manic, wide-eyed intensity that animates his stiff body and gives life to his flat face. He grasps Legundo’s shoulders and leans in close. “Doctor, do you think he’ll come back for me? He will, right? He must. Surely he—”

Owen growls and shoves Pyro forcefully away from Legundo. Pyro shrinks back into the corner with a cowed whimper and tips his head back, baring the pallid skin of his throat.

His next growl is born of frustration. “Quit it.”

Pyro whimpers again, and Owen snarls.

“Stop! Stop acting like a wet, pathetic rat and open your goddamn eyes, Pyro!”

“Owen—”

He barrels over Legundo. “Yeah, he abandoned you. That’s terribly unfair. How awful. How cruel. But he’s gone, and he’s not coming back, so what are you going to do?”

Pyro drops his chin and gives Owen a watery, uncertain look.

“What do you want, Pyro?”

“I… I don’t know,” he mumbles.

“Are you going to keep sitting here like a kicked dog waiting for your master to return? Are you really that in love with being mistreated?”

A flicker of anger flares in Pyro’s eyes. “That’s not fair.”

“And? Life’s not fair. Get the hell over it.”

“You’re one to talk,” he snaps. “You killed thousands to settle a grudge with a dozen or less, then paraded around prostheletizing about making the whole world feel the same rejection you were made to endure.”

“Yes. I did. Am I doing that now?”

Pyro blinks. His lips flatten and he looks Owen up and down, then glances briefly at Legundo. “I don’t… Know.”

“Then let me inform you.” Owen draws closer, crowding into Pyro’s limited space, but Pyro is mad enough or confused enough not to flinch back. He holds his ground as Owen continues in a low, even voice. “I shaped my entire existence around my own suffering for twenty-two decades, and it never made me feel anything but emptiness and rage. I spread my misery in the hopes that it might lighten the load. It didn’t. I turned my back on countless opportunities to stop. I kept fighting long after I knew the war was over. And it just made me worse. The only way to stop the pain is to let yourself feel it and move on. I’ve tasted your blood, Pyro; I know you lived with your own demons. But they’re gone now. So what. The hell. Are you going to do?”

“You don’t know what it’s like to be his fledgling. He made me into a monster like him, and I did— I did such awful, unforgivable things for him. And then he threw me away like trash.”

“So?”

“So what am I?” Pyro growls, pushing to his feet. Owen rises right with him, craning his neck to maintain eye contact despite their substantial height difference. “What good is a discarded toy? What right do I have to go on existing when I’m heavy with the sins I committed for a man who never fucking loved me?”

“Exactly.”

Pyro stops short. “What?”

“Exactly,” Owen repeats. “It wasn’t love. So let it be pain. Let it be agony. Feel it rip you apart and burn you alive from the inside, and then sit in your ashes and realize the only thing left is you.”

“What— I don’t understand.”

“Scott isn’t coming back, Pyro. Your old life isn’t coming back. This is all you have. So will you give up and die an unmourned scoundrel, or will you do something worthy of the gift you’ve been given?”

Pyro sinks back into his chair.

Owen looks to Legundo and takes in his thoughtful frown.

They need to speak.

Pyro’s looking more vital with the blood in his system, but Owen would still bet on his ability to hunt him down if he makes a run for it.

“Think on it,” Owen says. “Legundo, we should  discuss this outside. Pyro— stay where you are. Don’t try to leave.”

Pyro pulls his knees up to his chest and swaddles himself in his cloak. “Sure. I’ve had plenty of practice with that.”

Owen picks a spot across the cobblestone road where they have a clear view of the entrance to the inn and the window of the room they’re renting. Unless he makes a hole in one of the brick walls, Pyro won’t be leaving without crossing their line of sight.

“I’m leaving this up to you,” Owen says.

Legundo frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not… I don’t like him. I never did. He really grates on me, so I can’t be objective. But someone has to decide if we’re turning him over to Pearl and Abolish.”

Legundo’s frown deepens. He glances back toward the window, then scrubs a hand over one eye. “He’s the one who turned almost everyone who wants the cure.”

“Pearl, Martyn, Abolish, and Ren.”

“Right. So if he were gone, they could all… They could be cured.”

“He’s done a lot of harm,” Owen says. “But… To be entirely fair to him, he didn’t really have a lot of good options.”

Legundo meets Owen’s gaze.

“What was it like for him as Scott’s fledgling?”

Owen shrugs. “Not great. Scott was very demanding of him. He already liked Shelby before she turned, so he was soft on her, but Pyro… I dunno. He was careful not to do anything when I was around, but Pyro was clearly terrified of him.”

“Were there signs of physical abuse?”

“None that I saw, but that doesn’t mean much for a vampire.”

Legundo’s jaw clenches and works as he thinks it through. “I don’t… Think… I should be the one to make this decision.”

“We could let them make it,” Owen says. “Send a summons out. Have them decide.”

“That’s as good as choosing to kill him.”

“…True. But what’s the alternative? We just let him go?”

“No. We can’t do that, either. That would mean lying to the others and being complicit in forcing them to stay… Like this.”

It stings a bit to hear Legundo refer to the gift with such grim implication, but Owen brushes the mild hurt aside for now. “Then we let Pyro decide.”

“What are you thinking?”

“He’s at a crossroads right now. Much as I dislike him, I have seen enough of his memories to know that he isn’t fundamentally a cruel person. I think… If he’s given the same chances we were, he would try to do better. To be better.”

Legundo’s eyes soften and he takes Owen’s hand.

“We tell him that if he turns himself over to the others, we’ll advocate for keeping him alive just in case curing him is enough to free the others, and they’ll keep looking for Scott. If he refuses to risk himself, then okay. We help him get off-continent. Maybe he’ll be a terror wherever he ends up, but I think if he’s away from all of this, he’ll at least try to make up for some of the damage he’s done.”

“…Okay. I think I can live with that.”

Owen squeezes his hand.

Pyro is right where they left him, which is mildly surprising, but Owen doesn’t let it show on his face.

“So, what’ll it be, Doctor?” Pyro asks, back to the flat, expressionless monotone he used when they first found him. “Will you be staking me in the chest or through the back?”

“We’re not staking you,” Owen mutters.

“You know the others want a cure,” Legundo says. “But there’s still a chance that curing you would be enough to set them free.”

Pyro shakes his head. “They won’t wait. They’ll just kill me and get cured.”

“Not necessarily. If you turn yourself over willingly, they’ll be much more open to holding off until we take out Scott.”

Pyro winces, but Legundo pushes on.

“Owen and I will advocate for you. I’m confident that we can at least get them to listen.”

“And then what? You’ll never catch him.”

“Probably not us,” Legundo agrees. “But Pearl and Abolish will.”

Pyro’s expression contorts at the mention of Abolish. Turning him was a necessity, so it really ought to have been Scott who risked himself to get the job done, but of course, he sent Pyro in his place. Pyro recruited most of the coven to help— Shelby, Drift, Sausage, Avid, and a begrudging Apo. Owen came along as well, but only to make sure Abolish didn’t stake Shelby or Drift.

Abolish did not go down easily.

He’d already knocked Sausage and Avid out by the time Owen intervened, and he shattered half the bones in Owen’s left arm and nearly cut him in half before Pyro finally managed to sink his fangs in so deep Abolish couldn’t get back up.

Pyro drained him, but it still wasn’t enough to fully regenerate his broken body. They had to carry him back to the castle so he could recover with help from the beacon.

“You know Abolish is… Persistent,” Legundo says. “But he’s also level-headed. He won’t let the others rush into a decision, and he won’t argue for killing you if it isn’t necessary.”

“But it might be.”

Legundo falls quiet, so Owen fills in the silence. “Yeah. It might be. But you’re still accountable for what you did, even if you felt like you didn’t have a choice. Are you going to take responsibility, or are you going to keep running from blame?”

He sees the moment Pyro shuts off. All the challenge fades from his eyes and his shoulders slump.

“I can’t,” he says in a small, defeated voice. “I can’t. I can’t— I’m not strong enough to bear this.”

Owen sighs. “Fine. Then go work on getting strong enough until you can.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Go finish your thesis. Volunteer. Feed the hungry. Do whatever you think will help the most people.”

“Will it…” He turns to Legundo. “Does the guilt stop?”

“…No. Not completely. But it reminds you that there’s still work to be done.”

“And when the time comes,” Owen says, “we’ll call for you.”

+ 492 days

“Owen?”

He takes Legundo’s hand and kisses him to silence the words he knows are bubbling in Legundo’s throat.

“You don’t want to lie to them.”

Legundo huffs a laugh and gives a strained smile. “How’d you know?”

Owen shrugs. “I know you.”

“I don’t feel it would be fair for me to keep this from them. But you’re right about Pyro. We have to give him a chance.”

“Then we won’t keep it from them.”

“They’ll demand to know where he went.”

“Yeah. And you’ll honestly say that you have no idea.”

Legundo tilts his head.

“I’ll arrange everything,” Owen says. “I’ll get him papers, I’ll buy his tickets, and I’ll check in with him periodically. You won’t know a thing about where he went or what identity he’s using.”

“But they’ll still try to get the information out of you.”

“They’ll try, yeah. But I ask you this: have you ever seen me give in to peer pressure?”

Legundo smiles again, more genuine this time. “I guess not.”

“They can pry all they like. I won’t tell them anything unless Pyro gives me a damn good reason to.”

“And you think Pyro will keep his word?”

Maybe. “I do.”

But it doesn’t matter to Owen, and it doesn’t matter to Legundo. Scott is Legundo’s sire, not Pyro. If Pyro’s fledglings want the cure, they can track him down for themselves. Owen will gladly hand over everything he has once Scott is dead and Pyro fails to come back to the mainland.

Legundo studies Owen, then nods. “Okay. And… Thank you. This means a lot to me.”

“Sure. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

+ 505 days

Nins stares him down with icy intensity.

“So… Let me make sure I’ve got this right. Legs wants me to source forged documents for some guy I’ve never met without any explanation or follow-up, and he doesn’t even bother to come in person. Is that correct?”

“Yeah. Pretty much.”

She rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “He’s damn lucky I’m so nice. I ought to turn you both in.”

“I appreciate your restraint. It would be a shame if they raided this place and discovered all of the illegal gambling and drug trafficking.”

Nins snorts while she digs around in one of the drawers against the far wall, eventually producing a scrap of parchment and an ink pen. “We have gambling here? Shit, you should have told me sooner. I coulda played my way out of the slums ages ago.”

“I’m not a snitch.”

Nins shoots him what might be approaching an approving smile and settles back into her stool.

“Right. Give me the details for the papers.”

Owen lists off Pyro’s physical attributes while Nins makes notes in script so tiny and slanted it’s barely legible. He resists the urge to comment; his own letters are shaky after his barebones education, and he’s had little reason to practice since. Legundo’s are even worse.

“And the name?”

“Jack Clifton.”

She raises one slitted eyebrow.

Owen says nothing, and Nins lets it drop. “Come pick the papers up in three days. I live above the bar; take the stairs around back of the building up to the second landing and knock seven times on the red door.”

“What do I owe you?”

“Less than you should. But you keep Legs from offing himself and we’ll call it even.”

Owen nods.

+ 508 days

Up the stairs, up the stairs, twenty-two in all. Up again to the second landing, and past grimy bricks and chipping paint to the door on the end with its faint red staining.

Owen counts the knocks under his breath and tucks his fist behind his back to keep from continuing.

The door opens.

There stands Nins, her greying hair loose around her shoulders and a knowing glint in her eyes.

“I have your package,” she says, holding up an unassuming envelope.

Owen waits. She does not hold it out in offering.

Quite the opposite; she takes two large steps back into the room and crosses her arms.

“Well?”

Owen narrows his eyes. “Are you going to give them to me?”

“I’d better rest my feet,” she replies. “Long days standing on concrete are hell on the arches.”

“Sure. May I come in, then?”

“What’s stopping you?”

“…I would not enter the home of a lady outside of my family without permission,” Owen says.

Nins snorts. “No one’s called me a lady in a long time, kid. I wouldn’t worry about formalities.”

Their standoff holds. Nins shakes the envelope.

“Do you want it or not?”

“What is this?”

She crosses her arms. “You tell me.”

Owen sighs. “I won’t be going in there unless you tell me I’m allowed.”

“You won’t be, or you can’t?”

“I shan’t.”

That earns a laugh, barking and harsh. “Just where the hell did he find you?”

“May I please have the envelope?”

“Of course. It’s yours.”

Owen clenches his fists at his side— a gesture which does not escape Nins’s notice.

“Look. You know what I’m after. I’m not moving, so you’ll just have to tell me why it is you can’t pass that threshold.”

His nostrils flare. Owen forces himself to calm down and relax his hands at his sides. He straightens and says, “I expect you already know the answer.”

“How old are you?”

“Fifty-three.”

“Try again.”

“Twenty-six.”

She shakes her head.

Owen clenches his jaw and counts to ten.

“…Two hundred twenty-six.”

“There we go.”

She smiles and tosses the envelope toward him. Owen catches it just before it hits the ground and briefly checks the contents, then tucks it under his jacket and starts for the stairs.

“How’d you convince him?” Nins calls.

Owen pauses, then looks over his shoulder at her.

“It wasn’t me.”

“Maybe you didn’t change him,” she says, “but you convinced him to stay.”

Owen turns and leaves without another word.

+ 631 days

Legs passes the shirt over to Owen for inspection.

He examines the rows of even stitches with intent focus. “This is perfect. Thank you.”

“Of course.”

Owen hugs the shirt to his chest for a moment, then carefully folds it and sets it aside. It’s one of Louis’s— a finely made vermillion button-up that Owen still wears on occasion when he needs something to hold onto. The last time he did so, one of the sleeves caught on the corner of a table and ripped. Though he tried to conceal it, Owen’s distress was immediate and obvious. Legs promised to find a perfect color match thread and repair it as soon as possible.

He talks about Louis sometimes.

Legs never brings him up, but he listens attentively when Owen does. In another universe, he might have felt jealousy for the warmth in Owen’s voice when he speaks of him. In this one, he’s just glad to hear Owen opening up, even if only to comment on the artistic style of a painting being to Louis’s taste.

It feels like the first flowers of spring emerging after a long, cold winter.

+ 727 days

“Come on, Owen. Please?”

“No.”

“I’ll buy you a dog,” Martyn says.

“I don’t want a dog.”

“A horse, then.”

“I don’t want one of those, either.”

“A house.”

“Already have one.”

“A mansion.”

“Not my style.”

“Just one syllable,” he pleads. “I’ll buy you a whole forest. No— I’ll buy you a country.”

Owen rolls his eyes. “You don’t actually have any money, Martyn.”

“You don’t know that. I could have been scamming left right and center while I was off globetrotting with Pearl.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Were you?”

“...Maybe.”

“Okay. I’ll tell you again, since you clearly haven’t internalized this yet: I’m not telling you anything no matter how annoying you are.”

“Don’t be so sure. This isn’t even five percent of my true power. I could annoy the blue off your socks from a mile away.”

Legundo chokes on a laugh from the other room.

“What the hell does that even mean?”

“Trust me, you don’t want to find out!”

Owen shakes his head. “Remind me how we ended up stuck babysitting you while Pearl’s on vacation with Cleo.”

Martyn ticks the reasons off on his fingers. “Ren’s still AWOL, Apo threatened to set me on fire, Shelby’s still mad from that time I set her on fire— which was totally self defense, by the way— so I can’t go with her and Avid and Drift, and Abolish is overseas.”

“What about Sausage?”

“Mister M?” Martyn snorts. “I’d be babysitting him if anything.”

“Didn’t you form a militia with him?”

“Well, yeah. Dude’s hench as hell. I dunno what use a writer has for muscles like those, but damn.”

Martyn gives an appreciative whistle, then laughs at Owen’s grimace.

“Alright, alright. Pearl genuinely is visiting Cleo back in town. She offered to let me come along, but I wasn’t exactly thrilled by the prospect of third wheeling the whole time.”

Owen raises his eyebrows.

“Let me correct,” Martyn says. “I wasn’t interested in third wheeling for a hot mess of unresolved sexual tension. You two have very much sorted your business.”

“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?” Legundo asks as he bumps the door open with his hip and carries in a basket full of clean clothes ready to be folded.

Owen grins. “Would you care to join me in sorting our business this evening, Doctor?”

“Maybe if you help me fold this laundry.”

“Extortion,” Owen cries, clutching at his chest. “By my own partner, no less.”

“You should have seen it coming.”

He makes a show of grumbling, then grabs a few bundles of fabric from the basket and gets to work helping Legundo fold.

Martyn shakes his head. “I should have stuck with Pearl. This is actually worse than the pining.”

Owen flips him off, and Martyn laughs.

+ 966 days

Legs gave up on finding Scott a long time ago.

They tried. They really, truly tried. But if Scott wasn’t lying about leaving the continent, then there’s little Legs and Owen could do that Abolish’s people couldn’t.

So they stopped looking.

They stopped a long time ago.

Now, they have a small house built from lumber Owen felled that Sausage whipped into a cozy home. Legs has a job rotating between the cluster of small villages in their vicinity providing care and medicine to any who need it. Owen whittles and sculpts from clay they harvest themselves and reads anything he can get his hands on. Making up for lost time, he says when Legs questions his choice to read farmer’s almanac from fifty years ago. I’ve got to get caught up on what I missed.

He also spends a lot of time doting on the small tabby cat they adopted after it followed them home from town. Owen was annoyed by it at first, then tried to scare it off by hissing, only for it to hiss right back— and instantly, his annoyance turned to delight and he scooped it up into his arms with a broad grin. Legs sighed fondly and treated the poor thing’s fleas and worms, and now they have the world’s most pampered housecat. Owen gives her rides around the house on his shoulders and carved an extra chair for their dining room table for her to use so she won’t feel left out when they play card games.

They have a small flower garden that they share labor weeding and watering, and the best blooms get a place of honor in Owen’s first vase.

Some days are still difficult. They both have nights where they need to sit alone for hours and nights where they need to hold one another in white-knuckled grips. Sometimes there aren’t words for the pain, and they feel the full, remorseless weight of their demons.

But those days are getting fewer and further between.

On the first day of summer, Legs looks at the coin on his nightstand and doesn’t place it in his shirt pocket. He leaves it where it sits beside the case study he’d been reading and seeks Owen out.

He’s in the garden, tending the rosebushes before the sun can really start to beat down.

“I think I want to stay,” Legs says.

Owen looks up at him and pushes to his feet. “Here?”

“Anywhere. As long as it’s with you.”

Owen smiles. “Me, too.”