Chapter 36: You’ve Got a Nightmare

First of the Year (Equinox), Skrillex

---

Previous | Chapter Listing | Next

“I swear I’ve said it before,” Morgyn grumbled, “but I am not glass.”

“I know you’re not,” Ezio answered, opening Morgyn’s hand and putting a bottle of spring water in it. “But you might just be dehydrated, which isn’t a good thing. You know you can only live for about three days without water, idiot.”

The look on Morgyn’s face implied that Morgyn neither knew that before, nor cared much. The blond thankfully didn’t argue any more, and unscrewed the cap, taking a drink instead. Sometimes, Morgyn was like an overgrown child. It’d sure be nice to be that naive, wouldn’t it?

Of course, Ezio never said that, not to the blond. In his head, sure, but Ezio tried not to be knowingly hurtful to Morgyn anyway. Ezio crossed his arms, leaning against the couch and watching Morgyn drink the water.

Ezio still had no idea what was wrong with the blond. Since Ezio didn’t know, and Morgyn had no idea there was anything truly wrong, it was hard to make it go away. The protection spells Ezio had woven into the sage’s hair seemed to be dimming the effects of whatever it was, at least for the most part. Occasionally, the effectiveness seemed to wane and cause episodes like Morgyn passing out suddenly.

Upon thinking of it, however, Ezio had the dawning realisation this could be bigger than just randomly fainting. If Ezio was prone to syncope because of a heart issue, and these things tended to be genetic…

“I want you to make an appointment with Dr. Williams,” Ezio said.

Morgyn looked up at him in slight confusion. “Why?” the blond asked.

“Heart conditions like mine can be made more likely to occur by genetic factors,” he explained. “Basically, we’re related, and it’s possible that I have something in my genetics that gives me a predisposition toward developing it. You may have something like it, too.”

Morgyn looked a bit concerned, glancing toward the wall.

“I don’t know if yours would be as advanced as mine,” Ezio said. “And you’re in a better position to live a longer and easier life than I am, if we’ve caught it early enough. It may be something unrelated, even. It’s just better to catch things like this early, that’s all, and I wouldn’t trust anyone with your life but Troi.”

Morgyn smiled slightly. “You really trust her,” Morgyn said, like it was an observation rather than a question.

Ezio nodded. “I do,” he said. “She’s probably saved my sorry ass more times than I can count.” She had a habit of pulling him down when he wouldn’t do the fucking smart thing and hit the deck amid gunfire. Ezio tended to try being the hero and freezing the bullets, or raising ice shields. Sometimes it worked. Most of the time he just got himself shot.

On the bright side, if there was to be a bright side, he’d eventually figured out how to stop bullets with magic. Nothing had an upperhand over him, not anymore.

Morgyn’s head tilted to one side. “You never told me how you two met, come to think of it.”

Yeah, and Ezio had no intention of changing that. “She was friends with some of my other friends,” he said, trying to sound like it wasn’t a big deal.

Morgyn either bought it, or seemed to come to the understanding that was as much as Ezio intended to say, because the blond smiled slightly and let the subject go. It was for the best. Ezio would probably die never having told Morgyn the full extent of what had happened between magic realm and here. There were some things that Morgyn simply didn’t need to know.

“Hey,” Ezio said, reaching down and gently resting his hand on one of Morgyn’s wrists. “Try not to worry about it too much. It could be nothing, but I want to make sure.”

“I know,” Morgyn replied quietly.

“Did you eat recently?” Ezio asked. He’d been gone that morning, he had an early class, and Morgyn was awake when he’d gotten back.

“Yeah,” Morgyn said. “Caleb came over and made me eat this morning.”

“Well it’s afternoon now,” Ezio said, straightening up and shuffling into the kitchen to see about getting Morgyn something else to eat.

“I don’t really feel hungry,” Morgyn said.

“Just because you don’t feel it,” Ezio answered, “doesn’t mean you’re not. It just means you don’t feel it.”

“Now you sound like Caleb,” Morgyn said, green eyes rolling.

Ezio smirked, turning around, one hand leaning on the counter and the other propping against his hip. “Where do you think Caleb first heard that?”

Morgyn’s eyes rolled again, and Ezio just laughed, shaking his head. If Morgyn did have a heart problem anything remotely like Ezio’s, then they’d have to have a long talk about the blond’s diet. It was terrible, and Morgyn ate too sparsely, often making very bad decisions for meal options. Ezio could understand the temptation of something quick and relatively easy, but often these quick and easy meals were terrible unhealthy.

He decided to save the lecture for later, however, and simply went to making something that could better qualify as a snack than a meal. Morgyn would probably thank him for that much later.

Ezio did think he understood how they felt about his heart condition, though. There was a strong urge to fix it, and no idea how to.

* * *

He was running.

Over the marble floors, past the columns, the candles in frosted glass wall sconces against blue wallpaper. There was a light at the end, to the side, the pathway that led out into the garden, but he knew that he wouldn’t make it that far. Not again… Not again, not again…

“You can’t run from me,” a voice said, and his heart threatened to leap into his throat.

Ezio set his jaw, turning towards the sound. Jean barely looked human in these dreams, but he was getting used to it all. “I know,” Ezio answered.

And though so much of him screamed at him to turn away when the shadowy being that was Jean reached out and took hold of his neck, told him to run as quickly as he could, Ezio stayed right where he was. He’d wake up, soon, either because he started screaming in reality, or because Drake woke him up, that was how this always went. He just had to tolerate it for right now. He could make it through this.

“Oh, it’s almost cute that you think you can get away from me,” Jean said, his grip around Ezio’s neck tightening. “You forgot. If you ever do…”

Ezio frowned. The air shifted, a chill filtering in the breeze, and then a piercing scream echoed down the hallway. It sounded like…

He turned towards the sound. “Morgyn?”

“Ezio!” came the frantic response. It was definitely Morgyn’s voice. “Ezio, please!”

“MORGYN!” Jean held him back, and then there was pain, but Ezio didn’t even care what it was from as he frantically scrambled to get loose of the shadow, desperate to find Morgyn, still screaming out there somewhere. But the more he struggled, the easier it became, and then in one great screech, he freed himself from the blanket and slammed into the coffee table.

Ezio loosed a whimper, and then fell onto the table.

I will always live right here in your head…

“Ezio…?” a voice came, behind him, and Ezio sat up, breathing rapidly and hard, crying as he always was after dreaming of Jean. Why were they haunting him now? No, maybe that was a stupid question, because he’d never dealt with it before, because now, he was safe, and it was okay to deal with it.

He didn’t want to deal with it. He wanted to forget Jean Dussault had ever existed.

Don’t lie to yourself, a voice whispered. You liked the attention.

Ezio scrambled across the space between them, instantly attaching to Drake and not letting go. Ezio would say that it didn’t hurt as much, by now. This was the fifth nightmare in as many nights, and it was always the same one. That… was a little bit of a twist to the usual way that ended, but he supposed the dreams may get progressively worse over time, or perhaps they were meant to be getting better. He didn’t know, he wasn’t a psychologist.

Either way, maybe Jean never really would leave him, not really, and not for long.

Drake didn’t say anything of any consequence, as he usually didn’t, simply sitting there, rocking slightly, and letting Ezio cry and freak out as he needed. Ezio appreciated his patience with this shit, more than words could express, and Ezio didn’t understand, why Drake kept exposing himself to this, why he kept tolerating it. Why he stayed, even as things never really got better, either this or his heart.

And Ezio wondered, if it would really be so bad, to be a vampire, if it meant that he never had to let Drake go.

“This is the fifth one in a row,” Drake said quietly, as Ezio began to calm down.

Ezio snorted, and then nodded. So it was.

“It just seems like it’s suddenly a very common occurrence,” Drake said. “Did something happen to drag it up?”

Ezio sighed. No, not as far as he could remember, but then it was possible that something had happened, and he’d blocked the memories of it out. Talking with Morgyn and Drake about past events managed to teach him that it was rather common for him to do that, but usually it blocked completely random things out. Just stray memories that weren’t terrible or traumatic somehow, shoved out of his head, because his mind had decided it couldn’t handle that memory. Ezio always wondered about the mechanics of something like that, but he supposed he needn’t understand it, either.

As Ezio shook his head, his hands raised up, brushing his tears away. He sat up, trying not to spend too long leaning that heavily on Drake, not that Drake seemed to mind it, but Ezio did.

“I don’t think so,” he answered quietly. “But I forget things from time to time.” It’d happened for most of his life by now, and it was something he was used to. Once, he used to find it alarming, to look back on the years and barely remember anything about them, but now, he’d gotten adjusted to the idea that he’d retain very little of the life he lived. Just enough for it to be painful, he supposed. But what was life without pain, anyway? Unnatural, maybe.

“You know,” Drake started, sounding thoughtful, “the last time this happened, it was a long time ago, but you had a malevolent spirit hanging around then. The ill intent gave you nightmares, if I remember right.”

Yes, Ezio remembered that, miraculously. But this wasn’t much like that incident. The nightmares were different, less distinct, more nondescript. Like it was just the manifestation of hatred and rage and pain, not some part of his subconscious mind trying to torment him for some inexplicable reason. He didn’t want to tell Drake that. He didn’t want to tell him that maybe some part of him wanted to think about it, and that’s why these dreams, nightmares, were so common. He didn’t honestly know what to think of them anyway.

Ezio smiled slightly, sniffling. “So maybe I have another one?” he asked, though he knew the implication and also knew it was incorrect.

“Yeah, exactly that,” Drake answered.

If only it was that easy. “Maybe,” Ezio said. “I’ll find out.”

* * *

It was another slow day, but neither of them really minded it. The air was cool and crisp, but it was the nice kind. Cassandra didn’t seem to mind the slight chill, either, and Ezio never minded the cold anyway. The two sat side by side at a table outside the Casbah Gallery, watching the crowd shuffle around, like converging dots that separated again shortly after, several of Cassandra’s paintings hanging on the display board. Ezio hadn’t bought one this time, but he had been tempted.

It was somehow easier to think around her. If he had to guess, it was just in her blood. She was a Goth, of course, and though he hadn’t sensed it at any point, he would be surprised if she didn’t have a lot of magic in her. Her parents’ binding on it hadn’t come undone, even a little, but it was for the best. With the mess in magic realm, it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to think one of the last of the five families would be in notable danger. And of course, Ezio was terrible at protecting Morgyn, he couldn’t imagine he’d be any better at protecting her. Truth be told, he didn’t want to find out he was correct in that assumption the hard way.

“You didn’t have to come,” Cassandra mentioned quietly.

Ezio smiled. “I know,” he said. “But I like spending time with you, and sitting around talking while you’re here isn’t a bad way of spending that time.”

Cassandra turned a little pink over the bridge of her nose, and ducked her head.

He thought it was cute when she did that. Of course, he usually didn’t push his luck too far past this point, either. He’d rather not say anything more than that and upset her with his weird flattery. It was a little difficult not to shower her in compliments, though.

“I haven’t been sleeping real well, though,” he said, glancing to one side. “I may not make complete sense, but I’m trying at least.”

Cassandra glanced over at him, and looked a bit concerned. Her eyes were so dark, as if they were pools of water that ran so deep it was impossible to see the bottom. Well, no, more like, freshly turned earth. Hers weren’t a dark blue, there were no flecks of blue in them. They were just dark, brown, if her eyes caught the light just right, but they looked black in the shade.

They didn’t brighten to a fiery gold in the sunlight, or have flecks of green in them. But, all the same, he wondered how far they went wherever it was they led to.

“Morgyn again?” Cassandra asked.

Ezio shook his head. “Nightmares,” he answered. “It happens sometimes, they come, they wreak havoc for a bit, and then they go again, like they were never there at all. Strangely though, it’s notably easier to think around you. And breathe, it’s a little easier to breathe.”

Cassandra looked surprised, glancing up at the awning they were under. “That’s strange,” she said.

Ezio smiled. “Not as strange as you think,” he answered.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Do you remember what you said, about your grandmother? You said you hadn’t seen her do it, but figured she could do magic?” Ezio asked in return.

Cassandra nodded mutely.

“It’s genetic,” Ezio said. “If she could do magic, and at least one of your parents can, then maybe you’ve got the trait.”

Cassandra blinked, looking surprised, as if this had never crossed her mind before, and maybe it never had. “So… I’m a…?”

Ezio nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Well, theoretically. I think both your parents are spellcasters,” he knew they were, “but it’s hard to say.”

“I can’t do magic,” Cassandra said. “I’ve never done anything like it in my life, and my parents are kind of boring. I doubt I’m a spellcaster.”

“Well, that’s the fun thing about magic,” he said. “Some people, they’re too powerful, or it’s dangerous to use it for some reason, so other people, usually their parents or other relatives, bind their magic. This makes it so that they can’t use it, purposefully or otherwise.”

Cassandra considered that, for a moment, her gaze falling to the table as she thought. Then, her dark eyes met Ezio’s pale ones. “How do I undo it?” she asked. “Could you?”

Ezio blinked. He honestly hadn’t considered the possibility of it being undone. Of course, it would unravel over time, once whichever of the Goths had set that binding in place passed away, if ever they did, but he hadn’t thought about undoing it before then. Cassandra was a Goth, for fuck’s sake, and right now the magical world’s societal and political status were ‘fucking unsafe.’ The more he thought about that possibility, even, the less he liked it. He didn’t know if she was ready for that.

He didn’t know if he was ready for that, as stupid as that sounded.

“I can’t,” he said, shaking his head. “It has to be undone by whoever cast it. Or it will unravel and undo itself when the one that cast it passes away, whichever happens first.”

“So it wasn’t my grandmother,” Cassandra said, more to herself it seemed like.

That was debatable. Cornelia Goth was a very powerful spellcaster, and so were Mortimer and Bella for that matter. He imagined, if any of the three cast a binding, they may be strong enough that it would linger for years after they were gone. Ezio decided not to explain that. It was unnecessary complication, and if Cassandra had no idea how powerful her line was, maybe that was for the best. Not that she seemed to have any ambition in her at all.

She seemed to almost have no will at all, sometimes, he’d go so far as to say. But it only made him wonder all the more what went on in those eyes of fresh earth.

“What do you want?” he asked. “More than anything in the world, right now.”

Cassandra blinked, and then pulled into herself, thinking for a moment. Then, she tilted her head, and shrugged. “I don’t really know,” she said.

“If you ever figure it out, then,” Ezio said, “I think I’d like to hear it, if you’re willing to tell.”

* * *

No leads, Morgyn wasn’t getting better, and in fact was in some ways getting worse. The chances of this being something physically wrong seemed exponentially high, and as much as Ezio didn’t want to think about that possibility, he knew it was a possibility all the same. He almost wondered if things could get any worse from here, but Ezio didn’t want to tempt fate. Instead, he thought about it, tried to imagine what it might be, design contingency plans and ideas for how to help Morgyn adjust to living differently than the blond was accustomed to. Ezio would likely have to nudge the idiot into taking on an apprentice. As of now, Morgyn didn’t have one, and seemed to have zero interest in choosing one, either.

In some sense, one could consider Drake to be Morgyn’s apprentice, because Drake had learnt untamed magic from a combination of the Embers, but that wasn’t quite the same. Ezio sighed, his hands dropping and then sitting down onto the bed, the fitted sheet he was getting onto his mattress falling into his lap. This was stupid, and if Morgyn turned out to just have the same thing Ezio did, then it would inevitably feel like Ezio had failed somehow.

Everything Ezio had ever done was to keep Morgyn safe. Granted, a disease wasn’t something he could really protect Morgyn from anyway, it wasn’t something he could take onto himself. He had theories, ideas, ways that he thought he could get it to work if he just tried hard enough, but he hadn’t ever reached the point where he was willing to try. Magic could be finicky when you didn’t really know what you were doing, and Ezio had some scientific understanding, but he didn’t think it was enough for something of this level.

And if he messed it up, it backfired, he made it worse, what then? Ezio didn’t think he could live with that.

Ezio rested his head in his hands for a moment, and then stood back up, going back to getting this sheet back on his mattress. The apartment was oddly quiet now that Morgyn was no longer staying with them, but he’d readjust to the quiet again later. As he worked, he could sense something staring at him, and he heard the melodic singing. It came, as it always did, from everywhere and nowhere. A world beyond this one that Ezio didn’t know where was or how to reach. It always felt like it was calling him.

He turned around. It wasn’t there, not visibly, but he could sense… Ezio walked over to the window, but as he did so, the signature that he was sensing drew away from the window. He looked a bit disappointed, but then walked away again, back to his bed. The sensation came back. Ezio squinted at the window, stepped closer. The star creature moved away again.

Maybe it wanted him to follow it.

Ezio set the sheet down on the mattress and then made his way out into the apartment entry, into the elevator, down to the ground floor. He rushed outside into the cool, slightly dampened air, and then sensed around until he found where it had gone. It needed a name, he figured, but he had no idea what to call it, either. He stepped forward, towards where he sensed it the strongest, and as he suspected, it moved away. Ezio followed it through the streets, dimly and poorly lit by the street lamps.

Ezio remembered San Myshuno being a little more terrifying than this at night, but hindsight tended to have a way of making bad things seem worse than they were, and he knew that. He tried not to dwell on it all too much. As they walked, the star creature nudged his side slightly. Ezio could feel a slight spark where it touched him, the spark of magic. Not only was this thing borne of magic, it could cast it, too. That was interesting. He did have to wonder what it was, and where it’d come from, but he didn’t think it would answer even if he asked the question that was there on his tongue.

As he drew closer, he could tell there was someone lying on the ground, just outside the light of the street lamps. And then he realised it was Morgyn.

He took off at a sudden dead run, bolting across the sidewalk and falling hard onto his knees beside the blond. Ezio leaned over, listening. Soft little breaths came and went. Ezio breathed a sigh of relief, and then carefully got the blond up off the concrete and into his arms. He almost instinctively turned to the star creature and asked it how long Morgyn had been here, but he supposed the star creature had no answer to give him in a way he could understand. It wasn’t even corporeal in this world. It was strange Ezio could barely see it, as well. He had a tendency to see things others couldn’t.

“Thank you,” he said instead, facing where he sensed it the strongest. “Thank you so much.”

He could sense something that seemed almost like pleasure, joy? He wasn’t quite certain what it was, but he got Morgyn more steady in his grasp, and headed back for the apartment. Morgyn would have to stay with him tonight, but like hell was Ezio leaving the idiot here on the concrete. He wondered how the star creature knew that Morgyn had fallen. He wondered how it knew that Ezio didn’t know.

He wondered why it even cared.

* * *

Ezio didn’t question it all too hard. He got Morgyn into bed, and then went right to pacing holes into the carpet. There had to be something he could do that he was missing, but it was difficult to know what you were missing when your current perspective was the only one you were aware of. Ezio went from one end of the bed to the other, back and forth, trying to think. He had so limited few options, and Ezio hated that healing magic hadn’t started at least with him. It would’ve been much easier to figure out what to do from here if he had healing magic at his disposal.

But, alas, this was a very imperfect world they lived in, and that world currently had no healing magic to speak of. Which meant he had to do this in other ways. He could theoretically go into forbidden magic, but it was forbidden for a reason and Morgyn could have to strip his magic if he even tried it, and there was no guarantee as to whether it would help or not. No, more prudent would be discerning what it was he was dealing with in the first place.

That in mind, Ezio stopped pacing, leaned down slightly, and held a hand hovering over Morgyn. Magic jolted from one twin to the other chaotically, and it was giving him a weird idea of what was going on, but he could tell, he thought, where the spontaneous inability to stay conscious had come from. The issue was, he was having a hard time telling what that was exactly. Whatever it was, it was powerful, that was for certain, and it was also external. Ezio dug around a little more, following the thread trying to figure out what it was coming from and how to sever it.

But as he got closer to what he thought was the origin source, it became harder for him to make any sense of the magical pulses he was getting back. And then finally, a sudden ZAP went off, and Ezio was thrown backward into the wall, slamming his head into it. Ezio cursed colourfully, holding his head for a moment, and then stood back up.

“Alright,” he said in quiet French. “You want to play dirty, let’s fucking play dirty. No one gets to Morgyn without going through me first, and you won’t be any different.”

Ezio focused his energies, pulling at the twists and knots of magic; but no matter how he pulled at it, the magic refused to unravel. Pieces of it would begin to fray, and then it would come right back together again. After several more attempts, Ezio snarled in frustration, throwing ice at the opposite wall, and then he went back to prowling around the room, this time in a semi-circle around the bed.

Okay, that wasn’t working. That was some kind of impressive, given Ezio was one of the strongest spellcasters alive, so if he couldn’t do it, whatever this was had to be fairly impressive. It did beg the question even more, what it was and what it was for. But of course, it was a threat to Morgyn, and that meant he had to deal with it, not study it, as much as he may want to. The magic felt old, but only in some places. In others, it seemed newer. Not recent, just newer. In which case, it was a great thing, woven together over centuries by multiple spellcasters, and he wasn’t 100% sure what it was. It didn’t feel familiar, and he would imagine something like that would be.

Ezio stopped, his face lighting up. No, he knew what to do. He turned around, and went back to working his magic, linking bits and pieces of magical thread together, rewiring it as you would. The cords and twine of the magic moved around as Ezio willed it, one side over the other, disconnecting from this and reconnecting to this instead. Ezio heard, many times, usually from Morgyn, as it happened, that he was a prodigal master of magic, but he never believed it before. Anyone else could do something like this, too, if they had the will to bother trying to. He wasn’t entirely sure what it was he was attempting with this mess, but he let the magic guide him, changing his plans and altering his course slightly as he went.

And then, a sudden burst of pain lit up behind his eyes, at the base of his skull, in all of his joints at once. At first, he thought it to be another defence mechanism the magic was using to protect itself from being tampered with, but then he realised this was the unhindered pain that Morgyn would’ve been dealing with if he hadn’t cast those protective spells on the idiot earlier. It was so intense it was almost blinding, and there was a strange urge to do something that he couldn’t quite make out what was.

One last thread of magic clicked into place, and he heard the screeching, louder than he’d ever heard it before. He unleashed a screech of his own, from the shock of it and the pain that was building together, and then, everything slipped into darkness.

Previous | Chapter Listing | Next