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Today was supposed to be a normal day.
A normal day in the routine Nox and Violet had fallen into, which included following the “book humans”, as Violet would call them, and siphoning their narratonin so they could make their own wish — Nox twinged with guilt at the reminder of that.
Except Chase, Deacon, and Prunella were decidedly not doing a book today (or, at least Chase wasn’t, due to the fact Silver’s symbol on the spell page remained dark), straying from their usual pattern, which tended to upset Violet. They had hovered around the spell page for an hour longer than usual, before the villainess key decided that it was an offensive waste of her time to be so “unfashionably late” and that she would spend the day doing far better things than “lazing around”, and if the book humans decided to do a story after all, then they would just be doing it without Nox.
The humans would be absent from books once a week, the two keys had noticed and built into their routine, but today was far earlier in the week than usual. Nox tried to not to let his mind focus on that; hopefully everything was fine with Chase — surely he had a good reason for skipping a day, he himself had done it once before — but he still worried that something was amiss.
His thoughts were broken by his sister’s tirade, which he was, apparently, supposed to be paying attention to. “Honestly, the least these deplorable humans could do is give us a heads-up when they decide not to do a book for the day. It is an utter waste of my precious time, and only shows how little you can trust a human to do things right. Certainly, they should have taken me into account before messing with my schedule.”
“Uh…right, Vi.” Obviously that was absurd, but with Violet, you just kind of had to let her rant about whatever was setting her off until she got it out of her system.
She paused her pacing, stopping to observe and preen herself in a makeup mirror, before, thankfully, changing the subject. “Well then, I think I shall go observe the humans above, to better study our foe. Would you like to join, Noxy?”
The villain key rolled his eyes — it was ironic, as the only thing she seemed to love more than insulting humans was “observing” them, which meant using them as her own personal entertainment, which he had no desire getting roped into. “Yeah, I’m good.”
She flicked her hand, striking a dainty pose for some invisible audience, Nox could only guess. “Suit yourself. Stay out of trouble, now, dear.”
She trekked to the vent and disappeared through it, leaving him alone on their shelf. Frankly, he didn’t do much of anything when Chase and the others weren’t doing a story, whereas Violet had found plenty of things to busy herself with. His “busying himself” consisted mainly of eating chocolate, sleeping, and thinking of Chase. A lot of that last one.
Unfortunately, thinking of Chase was only going to make him worry more about why he wasn’t doing a story right now, so he made his way into his and Violet’s home (which was really Chase’s bag they had neglected to return) to distract himself with the first two.
Once he had thoroughly gorged himself on his stash of chocolate (which he had kept for emergency situations, which apparently this counted as), he crawled into his bed, hoping he could sleep through most of the day until Violet got back. Until he could see Chase again.
He closed his eyes and let his body relax, until tiredness overtook him and he drifted off to sleep.
He was awoken by the sound of unfamiliar voices, far too close for comfort. Throwing himself out of his bed, he rushed to the opening of the bag and peeked out — surely it was just some library patrons who needed to search through the lost-and-found box for some missing personal item.
There were two of them — a large, oafish-looking man, and a smaller one that appeared more petite. They were in the center of the room, scanning the shelves and certainly not combing through the lost-and-found box.
“Do you really think they’ll be here?” The shorter one — Nox was fairly certain she was a woman — held a hand to her mouth as she yawned, seemingly unenthused about why they were there.
The taller one harrumphed at his associate, continuing to inspect the shelves. “We already checked all the other libraries in the neighboring counties, and we didn’t find anything. Surely they must be here.”
“Alright, but what makes you so sure they’ll be at a library?” She lazily lifted a book as if a key would be hiding under it, then let it fall back onto the shelf with a light thud. “There’s a billion other places they could be hiding out at instead.”
“Because,” the oaf responded gruffly, seemingly having little patience for the woman, “these things spent their whole lives in a library; why wouldn’t they return to one? It’s the only thing they’ve ever known. They’re creatures of habit.”
Well, that was certainly not true. He and Violet were hiding out in the library only out of necessity; had the opportunity presented itself, they would have much rather stationed themselves anywhere else. Unfortunately, the lackeys’ flawed logic still led them to the correct conclusion.
The woman groaned in a whiny tone, apparently sick of their search for the keys. They were slowly working their way higher and higher on the shelves, and it was only a matter of time before they found his and Violet’s hideout at the very top. He felt his metaphorical heartbeat racing — he needed to leave, right now.
He glanced at the only vent in the room, at the far end of the bookshelf he was on. If he stuck to the shadows and hid behind the books, he should be safe, and he quickly noted how grateful he was that he would easily blend into them. He snuck out of the bag and quietly retreated into the dark; unfortunately, he had to traverse slowly, as otherwise he would risk his footsteps clanking loudly against the metal bookshelf.
Unfortunately for him, the man’s eye had apparently landed on their hideout, and he suddenly became very serious once he made the connection. “Watch the vent.”
Unquestioningly, the woman dragged a chair over to where the vent was and stepped onto it, then rested her forearms on the shelf and propped her head up with her hands. “Way ahead of you.”
Shit. The vent was the only safe way to leave the room — now he’d have to use the door. And even if he was able to stay put and remain hidden, Violet would eventually come back through the vent, unaware of the danger lurking in the storage room. He had to get out and warn her, but how was he supposed to?
He tried inching closer to the vent, trying to reformulate his escape plan. Fate, unfortunately, as it always had been, was against him, and his nerves got the better of him — he miscalculated a step and ended up tripping, catching himself with the loud clank of metal hitting metal.
He cringed at the sound and, knowing his location was already given away from his blunder, broke into a run, trying to blindly make for the door. He stuck to the back of the bookshelf, hoping the bigger lackey wouldn’t be able to reach him from this height — he could hear loud footsteps chasing the sound of his own, and the man was most certainly right beneath him.
However, he made his second blunder — he was too busy trying to determine where the male lackey was, and unknowingly got within the range of the female one’s reach. She had kept her eyes transfixed on the vent, seemingly ignoring him, but suddenly shot her hand out, grabbing him as if it was the simplest thing in the world.
She side-eyed Nox, not fully turning her head to look at him. “I got one.”
His arms were pinned to his sides, and he felt panic start to swell inside him — his attempts to squirm were ineffective, and he felt utterly trapped. The woman barely paid him any notice, instead reaching her arm behind her to hand him off to her associate. “Take care of it, will you?”
Much rougher hands suddenly grasped him, and he could barely breathe against the tighter grip. The man chuckled — such an ugly, offensive sound — and raised Nox to look at him directly, like a fisherman relishing in his catch. “It’s a good thing we brought this.”
It was only then that Nox noticed the faint glow emanating from the man’s waist, an all too familiar one. He reached down and grabbed the light source: a cicada-shaped jar, the very same one he had been trapped within for so long.
The key began thrashing around harder, but it was useless. The man seemed to get some sick enjoyment from his struggling, and he casually removed the lid of the jar with a flick from his thumb. Nox felt his nonexistent heart drop, realizing that he had no way out of this. He could only hope that Violet wouldn’t get caught, too.
“All right, little pest. You won’t be causing trouble for us anymore.”
Unceremoniously, he was dropped into the confines of the jar, and the tendrils of fog seemed to reach out to grab him, wrapping him in their cold, careless embrace.
And everything went to black.
Only a moment later, he felt his body sliding onto some sort of surface, one that was decidedly not the cool metal of the jar that had previously held him. Without hesitation, he popped into his person form in a fit of coughs, desperate to get any lingering remnants of fog away from him as he scrambled backwards, adrenaline still running high.
Almost immediately, though, he felt panic seize his body; the brief moment of relief he felt from no longer being trapped in the jar was immediately swept away by a whirlwind of frenzied thoughts.
Where am I?
Where is Violet? Is she okay?
HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN?
The last thought clutched his heart and clamped down hard, and though it felt like it should be impossible to gasp for air, he felt his breathing pick up in speed until it became uncontrollable. The last time he had emerged from the jar, more than a hundred years had passed. What if it had happened again? He had no way of knowing — it felt like he had been forced into the jar only a second ago. For all he knew, he was in a completely different time period once again.
For all he knew, it could have been another hundred years.
For all he knew, Chase was dead.
Suddenly everything felt minuscule in comparison; he didn’t even care that he had no idea where he or Violet were, because why would that even matter now? If the one person who had brought meaning into his pathetic life was gone, where did that leave him?
He curled onto his side, trying to steady his thoughts, but it felt like a beaver dam trying to hold back the force of a tidal wave. He couldn’t think clearly, and all he could imagine was a world where Chase was no longer in it; which felt like a paradox, as he couldn’t picture how such a world could possibly exist.
He knew there was a human there, of course there was. How else would the jar have been opened? But he refused to face them — surely it had to have been some member of Ex Libris, who would most certainly start interrogating him any second, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Why should he?
And suddenly, no matter how much he hated that wretched jar, the same jar that had thrusted upon him this form he hated so, that had imprisoned him for more than a century, that had taken away any form of his autonomy — he wanted nothing more than to be contained within it once more, blissfully unaware of the world around him, wrapped within the cold tendrils of fog to find any semblance of comfort.
He hugged himself in a futile attempt to steady his breathing, searching for the solace that he delusionally believed the jar would give him.
He could hear the human shifting their body behind him — was the interrogation about to start? His eyes clenched shut, as if that could somehow keep him from hearing what the human was about to say, but it was in vain.
“Hey, hey, it’s all right. You’re not in danger. Your name is Nox, right? Silver told me a little bit—“
Nox only heard about the first few words of the sentence, the rest of the words failing to register in his brain as his rapid breaths suddenly paused.
Because he knew that voice. He knew that voice. It was the same voice that had comforted him when he had been trapped, alone and terrified; it was the same voice that had asked him to stay as the world fell apart at the seams; it was the same voice he had heard every single day since they had lost Silver.
It was Chase’s voice.
The instant he recognized the voice, he rolled onto his other side to look at the boy directly. And there it was: the oh-so familiar honey-colored eyes that stared back into his own, except now they were so much larger than he thought he could imagine.
Relief instantly flooded through his body, all the fears of his one and only being gone alleviated by the fact he was crouching right there in front of him. The corners of his eyes pricked with something akin to pain; a phantom ache that he knew was a replacement for tears he could not cry.
It was Chase.
It was Chase.
Oh my god, it was Chase.
Oh my god, it was Chase.
A new panic gripped him and he felt his breathing pick up again as the blond slapped a hand over his mouth with an ohmygod. Apparently he had figured out that the key was “Buddy” at the same time he had realized that the human was Chase. Suddenly, Nox became very aware of the fact he was a key, and this wasn’t— he didn’t— it wasn’t supposed to go like this. He could practically see the gears in Chase’s brain moving as he put the pieces together, and he was filled with the overwhelming urge of needing to get away, to hide who he was. As if on instinct, he felt his legs pushing him back, away from the human in a pitiful attempt to flee.
“W-wait!” The blond threw a hand behind Nox, thwarting whatever irrational escape he was fruitlessly attempting, which caused him to flinch at the movement. He knew Chase wouldn’t hurt him, of course; but when everything is so much larger than yourself, it’s hard not to be wary of, well, everything.
The boy noticed his jump and moved his hand further back, but he had succeeded in making Nox stop retreating. He sat there, breaths still uncontrollable, as he waited to see what Chase would do next.
He lifted his free hand up against the table in front of Nox, and his voice sounded almost heartbreakingly pleading. “Just…just wait. Please.”
Is he…inviting me closer?
“It’s…it’s alright, Buddy.” His tone was so soft and gentle, as though he was coaxing a hurt animal closer to help. “You know that, right? It’s okay. You’re okay.”
He felt his hyperventilating slightly slow at the sound of Chase’s voice, so familiar and soothing. However, Nox didn’t move, instead continuing to stare into those honey-colored eyes, trying to decipher his intentions. He wasn’t who Chase thought he was — he was something different entirely. Did he…not care? Despite the deception? Was this his way of showing that he accepted him, key and all?
As he tried to digest this, he felt something warm lightly press against his back — Chase’s hand, if he had to guess, which had been placed behind him just a minute ago. As if a reflex, his body curled into the boy’s palm, pressing his cold, metal back into the warmth he so desperately craved.
And then he was moving, Chase using his hand to gently slide him towards the open palm at the edge of the table. The boy was pushing him slowly enough that he could have left if he wanted to, but the impulse to run and hide was quickly dissipating. He didn’t seem mad, or betrayed, or upset with him, just…concerned. Patient. Like he wanted to help.
As that realization dawned on him, he was plopped onto the open hand, and he could feel his body trembling all over. He was safe, he was cared for, he was loved — despite everything — and it all felt so overwhelming; if he was still human, he would certainly be crying right now. He wrapped his arms around Chase’s thumb, desperate to cling onto the warmth, afraid he would lose it if he let go.
A moment later, he felt something lightly rest upon his back, like a blanket had been draped over him. Chase’s hand was soft and gentle, despite his size, and Nox could tell he was being careful not to press down on him too hard.
He was enveloped in Chase’s hands, yet he was not struck with the fear of walls closing in on him as his fingers were tenderly holding him. It felt so, so different than the jar had: the jar was cold and uncaring, indifferent to the fear it inflicted; Chase was warm and kind, eager to make the key feel as comfortable as possible.
Nox buried his face in Chase’s palm as he began to slowly stroke the key’s shoulder and head with his thumb, wanting to be as close to the warmth he could be, to melt into it. Chase was still talking, but his words did not reach Nox’s ears; he could hear them, but he was barely listening to what he was actually saying. The tone and rhythm of his voice were calming, though; it reminded him that this was real, that he was safe, that this was Chase.
He didn’t know how long they stayed like that — Nox would be content if it never ended. But slowly, slowly, he felt his shaking stop, his grip on Chase’s thumb loosened, and his breathing began to even out. He felt exhausted; the stress and rush of emotions had overwhelmed his little body, and it was too tiring to keep clinging on.
Chase must have noticed, because he removed the hand from Nox’s back and began to move him up towards his shoulder, resting the key next to his cheek. He snuggled into the nook between Chase’s cheek and neck, automatically curling against the warmth like it was the most natural thing in the world.
He wanted to return the favor, to thank Chase for his love and kindness, but it felt almost embarrassing at this size. Still, he reached out his arms in a laughable effort to hug his cheek, pressing his forehead against the blond’s skin.
The claws of exhaustion were closing around his throat, and it felt nearly impossible for him to find words to say. Yet, he managed to weakly make out:
“Th…thank you.”
It was pathetic, and the simple words could never convey how grateful, how relieved, how loved he truly felt. But it was all he was able to muster, for now.
It must have been enough for Chase, though, as he heard the blond let out a quiet sigh of relief as a finger gently ruffled his metal hair. He felt fingers tenderly curl around him, softly pressing him further against the boy’s neck. There was still so much to worry about, but right now, all he wanted was to remain like this, with his Chase.
“Of course, Buddy. I’ll always be here for you.”