Chapter Text
Hugin smiled at his sister. It was gentle, as per the norm, despite the fact she looked upon him with a frown.
“You’ve been injuring yourself more and more,” she said; an observation, rather than the question it should’ve been. She pressed the disinfectant against his needle wounds a bit harder, letting him wince and tense under it. Munin was angry. And she had a right to be, he’d admit.
He’s gotten a little reckless because he’d rushed to finish off the embroidery meant for her gift. A few sleepless nights and misjudged needles had resulted in scratches and stabs he usually wouldn’t have suffered. That was what happens, he reflected, when you grew far too excited about a project involving needles and late nights.
Thus, he was now here, sat on his bed with Munin while she tended to his hands. She meticulously wrapped bandages around each and every wound, no matter how small, bending the knobs of his fingers to check his dexterity. It was a surprise, considering he was typically the diligent one. Munin tended to focus more on the big picture.
Perhaps he couldn’t claim that title after this, though.
“Are you going to tell me what caused this?” She asked, expression unimpressed.
Hugin kept his smile on his face, glowing with a smug attitude he knew displeased her greatly. “Guess,” he challenged instead, and watched as her gaze focused onto something over his shoulder to think. Her hand was still holding onto his wrist. Neither of them bothered to move, even if they really should be cleaning up the emergency kit.
“The wounds are very clearly made from a needle,” Munin begins. Her hand moves from his wrist to play with his fingers. “Thus, you’ve been doing a project involving needlework. It’s something so important to you that you’ve been pulling all nighters for it.” She prods at his cheek with her free hand, and he playfully attempts to bite at it. He misses, of course, but it gets her hand off. “It’s likely something for an important event for you. That only leaves a few things.” She ends her deduction with a single concluding sentence: “The only thing that lines up is our upcoming birthday.”
Hugin let his expression melt into something fonder, something more sincere. Something more for Munin, his family, rather than outsiders. He squeezes their fingers together before digging into his pillowcase, where he’d knew she’d never search because he usually did the laundry, to fetch his project. “You’ve got it in one, as always,” he tells her, dropping a piece of fabric into her hand.
It was a handkerchief. The fabric itself was luxurious, made of some soft, expensive weave Hugin had managed to thrift after spending years trying to find the perfect material. He was particularly stubborn about things like that. The edges were trimmed in arched lace, floral motifs at each corner. In the middle was a raven in flight, thread stitched in a way to simulate feathers. Along a single feather was their initials: M + H.
Hugin was particularly pleased with the end result. How could he not be, after spending so much time looking at lace and fabric and counting how many threads each stitch should take up? “We match now,” he said, holding up an identical handkerchief.
Munin stared at the piece of cloth he held, countenance carefully blank. Hugin would be more concerned about whether she liked it or not if she wasn’t clutching onto it possessively.
Hugin let his eyes crinkle into crescents and let his cheeks pull taut until it hurt, openly transparent just for her. “Happy birthday, Munin.”
Munin carefully put their curated emergency box on the floor to throw herself onto him. Her warmth and weight was reassuring in ways nothing else ever was.
(And then her body grew cold, far too cold for the amount of fire around them. Tongues of flame licked at their clothes and cackled to the sound of something dripping. His face was wet.
He held onto Munin a little tighter as if it would protect them against the world. His hand was bare and he touched his own face.
It was sticky with blood.
Munin’s blood.
The cracked-open door revealed the culprit. The one who stole Munin away from him.
He burned that figure into his retinas as his mind raced. Should he go after them? Should he stay with Munin?
…He had to go. Munin would’ve done that.
He set her down gently. He’d come back for her. Just as he pushed off the ground, Hugin—
—Fell out of his dream.)
His eyes jolt open. He’s woken in a cold sweat, and as he pushes himself off the bed, he finds it’s simply too early in the morning to care about anything. He pulls himself out of bed mechanically anyways because he can’t stand himself at the moment.
He keeps the lights off as he preps himself for the day. His teeth are brushed, his face is rinsed, and he’s changed into his usual outfit, albeit without most of his accessories. He tucks two handkerchiefs into his pocket.
It’s only when he gets to his hair that he hesitates and turns out the bathroom light. He examines his reflection with extreme prejudice. The bags under his eyes have grown. His face hasn’t gone back to the healthy flush it used to be. His eyes look far too like Munin’s, and he can’t stand the sight of his long hair in the mirror because he looks too much like her.
He never did like his own reflection. He only tolerated it because he looked like Munin, like his family. He hated it even more now that Munin was gone. Instinctively, he put on a polite smile, the type nobles used when cozying up with others and saying words they never really meant. There. He looked less like her, like that.
To really sell it, he pulled his hair back into a loose braid. It’s odd, to do such a thing for yourself when you’ve only done it for others, but Hugin manages to make it work. He laments the struggles of long hair, still. He doesn’t get rid of it because Munin liked that they matched.
He walks himself down to the kitchen, setting a kettle on the stove and waiting for the water to boil. He has to stop himself from getting out two cups instead of one, stop himself from getting the Assam tea leaves instead of his preferred Darjeeling. The Assam box was long empty anyways. He’d told Alf not to touch it despite that.
He almost gets out milk and sugar. He has to remind himself Darjeeling was better without.
The kettle wheezed. The water was ready. Hugin dumped the hot water into his teacup of tea leaves. He didn’t bother to use a teapot. He took the teacup, saucer, and a spoon to his usual chair and sat, waiting.
The world was far too quiet like this. It was far too empty like this. Hugin took a sip of his tea after swirling around the leaves with the spoon. He nearly burned his tongue. It was still under-steeped. He waited a bit longer. Looked over his already-read letters. He took another sip. The tea was bitter from being over-steeped and lukewarm. He drank it all anyways.
He didn’t know how long he sat, staring aimlessly at the paper in his hand. It’s not until Ashley and Alf are shaking him that he snaps out of it. “Apologies,” he said with a smile not reaching his eyes. He couldn’t muster up the energy to bother. “Was there anything you needed?”
Ashley looked on at him in concern. “You seem to be troubled. Is there anything we could do to help with that?”
“Maybe a walk?” Alf suggested.
“Perhaps,” Hugin allowed. It gave him something simple to do. “It certainly does wonders for clearing a mind.” Not his, certainly, but he appreciated their efforts.
Ashley pursed her lips together to fend off a frown, Alf tilting her head. Then, mind made up, Alf scooped up the teacup and spoon placed neatly upon the saucer. “Alf will go wash the dishes! Master should go out!”
“Ah, wait!” Ashley blustered, running on after the maid, knowing of her clumsiness. Hopefully they wouldn’t break that set. It wasn’t one of his favorites, but it was one of the last pairs he and Munin had bought together.
His actual favorites were waiting quietly in a room somewhere else, wrapped with care alongside Munin’s things. A set of two cups and two saucers, alongside a simple teapot. It wasn’t anything special, but it was the one full set they’d had because Hugin had insisted they use it for special occasions like the end of a case.
He didn’t want to look at it without her. He didn’t want to use it without her. It felt like a betrayal to only use one when there should’ve been two of them. “A walk,” he repeats to himself, getting up. “If nothing else, you should keep walking.”
He gets up. He fastens his belts and cape, pressing his hat down to cover his face. Alf and Ashley meet him at the door to see him off, both looking ruffled.
“I’m off,” he tells them, instead of the ingrained, Let’s go, to Munin.
It seems that today was not a good day for him.
Hugin walks aimlessly, at first. He follows the flow of the crowd, watching this and that. There is nothing he wants to do today but wander, so wander he does. When he finally gets tired, he settles himself on a bench to witness the blindingly bright streets ebb and flow. He looks at young children playing happily amongst each other, groups of teens pulled close and laughing at a joke. Adults drift among the crowd, couples and families staying close.
Family. The thought itself makes Hugin want to wrench his heart out and stomp it into pieces if only to make it stop hurting. Three years, and still, it aches like an open wound. He watches from the sidelines, only to turn away to look at the fountain. He taps his cane against the ground. A hand goes to his pocket, rubbing at the lace edge of the handkerchiefs by habit. He paused.
He pulled one out, tucking it into his other pocket. He checked again. There was no second handkerchief.
Panic struck him far harder than any enemy could, nearly bowling him over. Hugin stumbled to his feet. No matter how many times he checked, it wasn’t there. It wasn’t on the ground, either. He’d lost it. One of the last things of his and Munin’s and he’d lost it.
He retraced his steps. He hadn’t walked amongst the crowd proper, but the handkerchief was thin enough it could’ve been swept over into it. He nearly runs into Chief Inspector Lorin.
“You look troubled,” the man says, and Hugin would laugh at the repeated sentence if he wasn’t looking for his handkerchief.
“Have you seen a handkerchief on the road?” He asks urgently instead. He lifts the one he has on hand to show. “One that looks like this.”
Lorin raises a brow, but doesn’t ask further. “Haven’t seen anything like it before,” he says instead. Hugin clicks his tongue. “I could help look for it if you’d like.”
Hugin waves him off, grinding his heel into the street. “Forget it. I shouldn’t bother you over something like this.” He tips his hat and starts speedily walking off. He wouldn’t usually be so impatient if it wasn’t about this. “Good day, Chief Inspector.”
He doesn’t stick around to hear the reply, too busy thinking of where he could’ve dropped that handkerchief. He’s meticulous enough to remember he hadn’t taken it out aside from where’s he searched near the fountain. It had to have fallen sometime on his walk. The question was when.
Additionally, there was no guarantee he’d be able to find it either. The embroidery was fine and the textile itself was high quality, meaning anyone could’ve snatched it up. He gnawed at the inside of his cheek as his eyes darted around uneasily.
He’d stopped to take a short break at one building, he remembered, and had hooked a hand into his pocket to roll the lace as habit dictated. It likely fell around there. He spotted the building he’d briefly stopped at. He surveyed the surroundings, once, twice, thrice. Nothing. Nothing.
Hugin was going to start screaming and it wasn’t going to be pretty. He ground the tip of his cane into the stone walkway a bit harder, gritting his molars as he assessed his location. If it fell around here—
He turned around to face the narrow alleyway, face to face with Superintendent Rex and his two hounds, hands holding something delicate and lacy. Hugin plastered on a mild smile, shoulders pulling back, demeanor falling into something practiced to protect himself.
“Fancy meeting you here, Superintendent,” Hugin said instead of give me my handkerchief back. Amber eyes narrowed at him. It could’ve been the backlit lighting, or it could’ve been something else. Either way, like it was scripted, both Radar and Chalky started rumbling at him.
“Detective,” Rex returned in an even tone. “I don’t suppose you’re looking for something, are you?”
“Oh, but in fact I am!” Hugin let his lips split just a smidge wider, teeth showing. “That handkerchief you’re holding, do you mind handing it over?”
Rex looked him over with a distinct expression of distain. “Why should I?” He asked.
Hugin’s expression didn’t budge. “Because it’s mine.”
“Really?” Beneath his cap, Rex scrutinized him. Hugin didn’t hide away from it. In this matter, he didn’t have anything to hide. “Then tell me, what exactly is embroidered on this?”
“A raven,” Hugin said, steady. “On the longest feather are the letters ‘M’ and ‘H’.”
Rex unfolded the cloth. He looked it over, checking each detail. When he was finished, he met Hugin’s eyes, searching for something. Both his hounds pressed themselves against his legs, seemingly content to stop growling at Hugin. “That proves you know this handkerchief,” he stated. “It does not mean you own it.”
Truly. Hugin couldn’t stand this man. Any other day, he would’ve complied and shot back a witty retort, twisting words until the man started snarling at him for playing dumb.
Today was not that day. Hugin settled himself by thinning his lips. “Is the superintendent so idle that he’d accuse civilians of stealing their own lost items?” He stopped himself from tacking on a curse like Munin would, or even slipping in an insult like he usually would. Verbal sparring with Rex could be fun, but he simply wasn’t in the mood. “For your information, Superintendent, it’s part of a matching set.” He slipped out the other cloth from his other pocket, waving it. He would’ve shoved it toward his face had they been any closer.
The superintendent’s shoulders dropped in a silent sigh, and he tossed the handkerchief over.
“Many thanks.” Hugin folded both neatly and put it in his empty pocket.
“The design is unlike most of what’s on the market,” Rex noted. “It’s unique.”
“I’d hope so,” Hugin replied, genial. “I made it myself.”
Rex paused. “Did you, now?” He looked slightly vexed at him, as if unable to comprehend Hugin had embroidered and sewed and hemmed that piece of cloth.
Hugin gave a soft chuckle, almost surprised at the sound. Then, almost uncontrollably, his lips moved, saying, “My sister would’ve appreciated you.” Munin would’ve. She disliked word games, preferring to get straight to the point. Hugin himself found fun in strangling people with their own words, talking them into knots.
Rex stilled, as did his dogs. It’s impressive how attuned they were to each other. “A fine thing to know that she would’ve liked me,” he finally said.
“Oh, no, no,” Hugin corrected. “She would’ve hated you. But she would’ve appreciated your bluntness.” Rex was far too split into black and white for Munin to like him. They used to debate such morality deep into the night when neither of them could sleep. To cling onto objective reality while refusing the subject reality was something neither of them could agree with. He glanced at the superintendent, assessing. “Keep looking at me like that,” he said, lighthearted, meeting his eyes, “And I’ll get flustered.”
Rex stared him down the way a hunting dog does their prey. He was never the type to bite unless he was sure his prey could take it. Unfortunately for Hugin, the man had decided for him that he would be able to take it. “I fail to understand how a detective could possibly get flustered over a look,” he returned coolly.
Hugin gave a soft chuckle, eyes shutting to slits with a mocking smile. “Perhaps you should stop staring at law-abiding civilians like a dog with a bone, then,” he suggested, almost jovial. Hugin shook his head as if to clear it, tipping his hat to cover his face. “Good day, Superintendent Rex. Many thanks for your help.” He turned and walked away, not paying any more heed to the man behind him. Rex would never call out after him anyways.
Perhaps he was far too nostalgic today. That was okay though. He was allowed at least this day to do so.
It was the day before his birthday, after all.
…He should talk to Firtho about the stabilizers again. Soon. Later.
How do you live without the other half of your soul? How do you cope with the empty space of one where there was once two, fill that void that someone used to take up? How do you live with yourself knowing there was once a hand where there is now not, that there was once someone you could rely on where there is none?
Like a puzzle without an answer, a problem without a solution, a mystery without a conclusion, you don’t. You live with that void, live with that empty space, hoping it grows numb, grows a little less painful to poke and prod at. Like flowers around a grave, a hospital that handles both passings and births, you keep living, keep walking. Find a reason, keep going.
Often, Hugin thinks about stopping. About turning back, looking into the maws of death and seeing Munin again. Because he’s always been that sort of a scaredy-cat, that sort of cautiousness verging into cowardice. He thinks and plans because he cannot bear the consequences of action on his own anymore, not without Munin.
But he thinks of Munin, thinks of his sister and what she would’ve wanted, and so he keeps walking, even if only to fall into that eternal night once he’d solved her mystery. He wants nothing else but to sink himself into her arms just as they’d done since they were young, attached to the hip, her very presence a stabilizer.
The bouquet of flowers in his arms is far too heavy for how light the flowers are. It’s filled with violet hued blooms and holy white blossoms, wrapped in papers and ribbons Hugin discards the moment he stands in front of their portrait.
Both their faces stare back at him. Munin still looks beautifully alive like that, unstained by time or blood, chiaroscuro shading lovingly rendering every part of her. Framed in gilded wood, it’s but another reminder of what Hugin had lost.
It’s almost sickening to stand here alone. They’d always been a pair. Always together. Working as a single body. He dunks the flowers into the prepared vase on the table without any of the grace he usually musters up, making himself burn Munin’s face into his brain. When he lowers his eyes to blink, he has to catch himself on the table when the world sways. Pathetic. But then again, he’d always been this pathetic without Munin.
He opens his mouth to speak, but he finds he can’t say anything. “I’m sorry”? “I miss you”? Should he talk about what’s happened since he returned, or any of his recent cases? None of them felt quite right because Munin should’ve been there to witness it with him. Words sit in his throat the way a clog does in a pipe, and he finds himself closing his mouth in shame. He checks his pocket watch, listening to the rhythmic ticking of its inner machinations, counting down the time until both hands aligned with the topmost number. Hugin closed his eyes.
“Happy birthday, Munin,” he finally says instead, the words, love you, not coming out of his mouth even when it is written so desperately in every cell in his body, stuck in his dry throat. Three years, and yet he can’t even talk to her properly anymore. “I don’t have a gift this year. It’s been busy, running around for these cases.”
Munin’s painting stares at him. He huffs, sitting on the ground with the bouquet’s wrapping paper and ribbons, leaning on the wall. “Yeah. I should’ve found the time to get you one anyways.” He tucks his face into his palm. “I always did. Didn’t I?”
Munin does not answer. Hugin didn’t look for one.
It was yet another day of growing older without her.
(Munin shoved her handkerchief at him. “Wash it when you’re done,” she ordered.
Hugin laughed, his own handkerchief still in his hand and wiping at her skin. A case gone awry had resulted in a tea-stained face by an escaping culprit. They’d had them apprehended, of course, but Munin had gotten the worst of the spill. It wouldn’t be nice to wash out, later. He took the offered cloth to help soak up the drink. It was his turn to do laundry at the end of the week.
“I’ll keep it safe for you until the awards ceremony,” he assured her.
He hung onto it even after the ceremony. It had been sparkling clean for a long while. She wasn’t there to keep it safe herself, now.)