Chapter 69: The One Who Cared After All
Summit; Skrillex, Ellie Goulding
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“I thought my heart was going to quit with his.”
Drake snorted. “Yeah, mine tried, too,” he said.
So far, though, Ezio had gone stable again, and remained that way. Ethren hadn’t gone back to wherever he’d come from, but Morgyn wasn’t quite ready to talk to him just yet and had been ignoring he was there. He seemed to understand, so Morgyn didn’t try to explain anything to him.
Instead, the brunet was sitting in one of the waiting areas, talking to Drake. Cassandra had gone to make cocoa. Liberty had to go to work, unfortunately, but Morgyn wouldn’t ask her to miss more time on the sage’s account. Caleb had gone, too. He’d needed a break from the large number of people and the tension, and probably the smells.
It was a wonder what the hell he’d done exactly, but Morgyn wasn’t stupid. If Ethren was here, it was something necromancy-related that Ezio couldn’t do alone. Somewhere in the blur of activity and feelings, Morgyn remembered Ezio’s ghost saying something about how Morgyn was a necromancer.
The brunet would like to say that wasn’t possible, but it did tend to run in family lines. Seemed like maybe their looks weren’t all the Ember twins had gotten from mommy dearest. Apparently, mother’s necromancy was on the list for both of them, too. Morgyn still wasn’t sure what to do with that.
Somewhere amid all the chaos and the tension, Morgyn had lost the ability to eat anything again. Liberty had suggested something with a rice base and maybe chicken or something, but Morgyn had no interest in eating anyway. The brunet intended to just stick to drinking cocoa and tea, and leaving it at that. If that was the best Morgyn could get, then so be it.
“You know he died,” Morgyn said.
Drake made a face. “I know,” he said. “I felt it.”
Morgyn paused in the brunet’s pacing, glancing over a shoulder at him. And then what that meant sunk in, and Morgyn looked a little upset. “I’m sorry, I didn’t-“
“It’s fine,” Drake said. “No one thinks about it. It’s not like he’s a vampire and it’s obvious he should have vampire offspring that can feel it when he dies.”
No, Morgyn supposed not. Ezio wasn’t a vampire, and spellcasters didn’t generally have vampiric offspring. Ezio was a strange case, because somehow he’d managed to tap into the original way vampires had been made on accident in a panic.
Truthfully, Morgyn didn’t know if it said more about Ezio or about his bond with Drake that he’d managed to do that. All the same, Morgyn supposed being Ezio’s offspring gave Drake something of an inside view of this that they all didn’t have.
Morgyn was glad for that. Morgyn was quite sure if the brunet had any more insider information than the sage already did, insanity might be on the list somewhere.
Cassandra shuffled back, handing Morgyn a cup of something steaming. Morgyn took it, barely paying any mind to, or noticing, the heat the cup gave off. Cassandra made a face, but she simply sat down next to Drake with her own cup. Drake hadn’t wanted any. She’d asked before leaving.
“Dr. Williams hasn’t been by or anything right?” Cassandra asked.
“No,” Drake answered. “It’s just been us.”
Cassandra’s leg shook, and then she took a drink of her cocoa, and set it on the table. “I hate this waiting thing,” she said.
“We all do,” Drake said.
Cassandra looked over at him, and then took his hand in hers. They could both use the support anyway, and Morgyn was far too busy pacing around.
“He was dead for at least a few minutes,” Morgyn said. “That can’t possibly have not caused some complications.” Maybe especially in a body as old as his was. It was hard to imagine that he’d come out of that completely unscathed. It seemed like Ezio never came out of anything unscathed, and Morgyn hated it.
“We won’t know until he wakes up, maybe,” Drake said. “Troi did all the standard checks and scans. She’d probably have to do some deeper digging to find anything else at this point. Just seems more efficient to wait until he wakes up for that.”
If he woke up, but Troi said he was starting to become more responsive over the first few hours even, and he’d almost woken up a few times. At least, he’d been awake and moving, but not quite conscious yet. He wasn’t aware of anything any of the times he’d done that.
Morgyn didn’t know what they called that. Just, awake?
In any case, Morgyn paused, setting the cocoa down on the table next to Cassandra’s. This was a mess, and what was worse was, Morgyn was very sure the hospital bills were going to be bleeding insane. Of course, Morgyn could just skip on over to the Desert Rose and start making money again, but… there was Caleb to consider.
They hadn’t talked about it since the last time it’d come up. Morgyn wasn’t going to broach the subject, it seemed in poor taste and the brunet didn’t want to hurt his feelings or anything incidentally. Morgyn wasn’t sure what to do with that, except, pretend it wasn’t a concern right now and leave it for future-Morgyn to be worried about. It wasn’t like there weren’t a dozen other things to be concerned with.
Morgyn’s head shook. “I guess,” the brunet said. “I have to agree with Cassandra, I hate this waiting thing.”
Drake snorted. “And what else is new?” he asked.
“Excuse you,” Morgyn said, looking over at him. “I mean yeah I have precisely no patience, but jeez.”
Drake shook his head, then turned to look out the window. When he wasn’t writing, he was watching the outside world go by.
The three of them went quiet. Morgyn returned to pacing around, and pausing at everything that came over the loudspeaker system. Cassandra took a drink of her hot cocoa, and set it back down on the table.
“Ah,” Drake said softly. “It’s raining.”
===
He was always in one of two places. Either Drake was with Ezio, in his room, or he was in the waiting area just outside it, and either place he was, he generally had his notebook with him. The stress and the tension made it seem like he shouldn’t be able to write this way, but there were interesting flickers of his time with Ezio over the years, flickers that were strangely inspiring.
Besides, it was better to remember good things right now, than worry about the bad things, despite how much his paranoid mind liked to do the latter.
It was good that he was getting things done and writing more. If Morgyn was right, and there were more complications from this mess than were immediately apparent, that was likely to cause them some problems going forward. And if anyone would know there was something they weren’t seeing wrong with Ezio, Drake always figured it would be Morgyn.
Drake sat in the waiting area this time, sifting through papers, rearranging the story he was working on right now. He was determined to put all this nervous energy into something constructive and useful, and apparently it was writing. But he hadn’t published anything notable in a while now, anyway. It was just as well.
As he shuffled through papers, someone came over, and sat down next to him. Drake looked over to find Kassander sitting there, people watching.
“I didn’t know you were coming,” Drake said. Somehow, Kassander always managed to slip in and out completely unnoticed.
Kassander smiled. “I didn’t want you to,” he said. “Nothing special needs to be done when I’m around.”
He always said that. “What brings you by here, then?” Drake asked.
“I had a moment,” Kassander said, “and figured I should stop by and make sure you’re doing okay. The answer seems to be yes-no.”
Drake would argue with that, but there was legitimately no point. “Something like that, yeah,” Drake answered, instead.
Kassander snorted softly. “Mostly no, I see, if you’re not fighting with me,” he said. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Drake shook his head. “You’re a busy person, Kassander,” Drake answered.
“I’ve never been too busy for you,” Kassander said. “And you know I’ll keep pestering…”
Drake released a sigh, setting the papers back down on the table. “I just, don’t know what to say,” he said.
“That does sound more accurate, yes,” Kassander said, legs crossing, hands resting in his lap. Drake never understood how he could be so graceful, and simultaneously occasionally move like a predator. “What happened? Start there.”
“Like you don’t know,” Drake said, smirking.
“The point isn’t me knowing, Drake,” Kassander said. “It’s you talking.”
Drake sighed. He always said that. One might perhaps think there was something to it if he was so consistent about it, but something in Drake always questioned it all the same. But then, Ezio always had time for him. It wasn’t like it was impossible for someone to. It just seemed that way, because Kassander had a thousand other things to do than listen to him whine aimlessly.
“Sarnai threw a lightning bolt at Morgyn,” Drake said. “And Ezio dove in the way of it. And I know why he did. I just… wish, that he didn’t have to. I wish that it didn’t happen. Because now we’re here. Ezio’s still in a coma. I don’t know if he’ll ever come back to me.”
Drake looked down at the floor. Kassander reached over and took one of his hands. “You felt it, didn’t you,” Kassander said. “When he died.”
Yeah, so he did. And it felt like a little piece of him died, too. It wasn’t a good thing, to be sure, that so much of Drake’s life revolved around Ezio. It shouldn’t be that way, and he recognised that it wasn’t technically a very healthy thing, and could very easily go wrong.
But somehow, they managed to love each other this much, and depend on one another this much, without hurting each other in doing it. And if it worked for them, Drake had a hard time believing that it was a bad thing. Neither of them felt like it was a problem. It didn’t hurt either of them, or take anything away from them. If anything, Drake thought it kind of made their relationship stronger. Because when one of them needed something, or had fears and insecurities, they could talk about it, and very much openly.
It wasn’t like Drake didn’t interact with people that weren’t Ezio. He and Cassandra got along. Drake was friends with Morgyn, had even incidentally joined a vampire coven to learn how to be a vampire, because it wasn’t like Ezio had answers for that, through no fault of his. Drake had made friends in the Drago di Napoli, attached to Kassander as something of a surrogate sire, if one could imagine such a thing.
These years, just like this, were some of the happiest years of Drake’s life. He would never regret them. He would never regret Ezio, staying with him, or loving him.
Instead of answering, as he intended to, Drake’s vision blurred, and he bowed his head.
Kassander didn’t say anything, simply scooted across the couch, gently, but firmly, pulling Drake into a hug, softly petting his hair. Drake rested against Kassander’s shoulder, watching the way the coffee table swirled around and mutated through the tears.
“You never quite forget it,” Kassander said. “The loss. It’s a feeling that stays with you.”
Drake was quiet for a moment, and then raised his head slightly. “Does it ever stop hurting so much?” he asked, in a small voice.
There was a pause, as Kassander considered it for a few beats. “It is like a window,” he said, “opened in the winter and frozen that way. It takes time. It takes chipping away at it bit by bit, but a little more every day, the window closes, until one day, it’s shut, and the freezing winds are sealed away. But the glass will always be cold, if you reach up and rest your hand against it.”
===
Not a day went by anymore where Morgyn wasn’t high, or getting there. With Caleb and Liberty not present at the moment, it felt like Morgyn was going crazy and a little quicker than the brunet would like to be.
Sometimes, Morgyn felt like the sage could sense it, somehow, when Ezio tried to wake up again, and then slipped back into his coma. Maybe their bond as twins was strong enough that Morgyn could sense that, somehow. It wasn’t like they’d ever tested the confines of their bond or pushed its limits.
As often Morgyn did, the brunet sat on the back steps of the hospital, smoking a joint. And it wasn’t surprising when, as often happened, someone came out, and then sat down beside Morgyn on the steps.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” Ethren’s voice said.
Morgyn glanced over at him, and shrugged. “Been doing weed a long time,” Morgyn said. “Just usually not this consistently.”
“Is it helping?” Ethren asked.
“I haven’t completely lost it and set everything on fire,” Morgyn said. “I consider that something of a win.” Maybe it was a strange thing to consider a win, who knew.
Ethren was quiet a moment, and Morgyn almost started to worry that he hadn’t taken that knowledge well, but then Ethren sighed and looked out at the fence. “Life’s not been being too kind to you, I see.”
Morgyn shrugged. “I got used to it,” the brunet said. “I imagine Ezio did too.”
Ethren released a breath. “That isn’t something you get used to,” he said.
“Sure it is,” Morgyn answered. “No sense in being upset about it anyway. Resistance is futile, or whatever that saying is. Everyone goes through bad things, Ethren.”
Ethren seemed to have decided, at some point amid that discussion, that arguing the point was moot. Instead, he fell quiet, staring at the fence.
“You should probably have left him dead,” Morgyn said quietly.
Ethren snorted. “I should’ve,” he said. “But there were some extenuating circumstances, if you would, that changed my mind.”
Morgyn looked over at him, took a drag off the joint, and raised an eyebrow. “Ezio’s good at arguing,” Morgyn said. “Like god-level, comes with the territory of training to be a lawyer I guess, but what exactly could possibly be so convincing?”
Ethren looked over at Morgyn. “Do you know anything about why there’d be a chain tying Ezio’s soul to you?” he asked.
Morgyn looked perplexed. “Why would there be a chain tying Ezio’s soul to me?” Morgyn asked.
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Ethren answered. “He called the chain an astral chain. Ezio’s astral chain shouldn’t be going to you, and it certainly shouldn’t be preventing him from going into the light, either.”
“Ezio couldn’t move on?” Morgyn asked.
Ethren nodded. “If he got too close to the light, the chain pulled him back,” he explained.
Morgyn looked down at the grass. That explained why Ezio needed Morgyn’s help. And of course, Morgyn was too upset to do anything other than brush him off. Sometimes, it was honestly a wonder Ezio tolerated the brunet. It was a wonder anyone did.
It wasn’t like Morgyn tried to be selfish. It was probably a leftover mindset from all those years working the streets, because out there, nobody would take care of you but you, and sometimes the only thing left to do was take care of yourself.
It was too late for regrets like this now. They didn’t serve a purpose.
“He seems to be making it on his own now, at least,” Ethren said, pulling his legs closer under himself. “We can be glad for that. I stayed just to make sure he was going to make it. No idea what I would’ve done if he hadn’t.”
“What would it mean, if he’d died again?” Morgyn asked.
Ethren turned to look at the brunet like Morgyn had lost it. “You know what,” Ethren said. “That it was his time to go, and there was no stopping it. I suppose, then, we’d have been preparing for the fallout of a very powerful, crazy dead necromancer hanging around.”
“Or trying to figure out why his astral chain leads to me, huh?” Morgyn asked.
“Precisely,” Ethren answered with a short nod.
They both went quiet a moment, Morgyn taking a drag off the joint, watching the smoke swirl into the sky and disappear. Then, Morgyn took a breath in and turned towards Ethren.
“Am I really a necromancer?” the brunet asked.
Ethren spent a long moment watching the sage, and then nodded. “I think so, yes,” he said. “I had the feeling you were for a long time, but you never displayed the ability, only Ezio did.”
“Ezio says I shoved it down,” Morgyn answered. “Because a ghost scared me. I don’t remember that.”
“Of course not,” Ethren said. “It was probably traumatic to you, and your young mind failed to store it in long-term memory to protect you from that trauma. But it doesn’t change that you can never be anything other than who and what you are.”
Morgyn drew in a breath, and then released it in a sigh, looking up at the clouds. “Ezio was always the cool one, not me,” Morgyn said. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this knowledge.”
Ethren shrugged. “Maybe nothing,” he said, turning to look at the clouds, too. “At least, nothing for right now. There’s time, to think about it, and decide what to do with it.”
===
Very dimly, he could hear voices. And if he focused on those voices, they sounded quite familiar. Ah, come to think, he recognised one of them as Drake. The other, he thought, was Caleb. Interesting they were having a conversation right there. Then again, maybe that should be expected, because something told Ezio that Drake didn’t want to go too far from him, anyway.
Certainly, they always felt a little better when they were near one another, even if they weren’t actively talking or doing anything together. Ezio had never come to understand it, but he supposed he didn’t need to, either.
He stayed where he was, letting consciousness filter back to him. His breathing messed up after a few moments, as the pain started to filter in, too.
Drake and Caleb stopped talking.
“You heard that, right?” Caleb asked.
“I think so,” Drake answered. “Ezio? Are you actually awake?”
Ezio’s eyes opened, glancing over at them, and then one eye squeezed shut in pain, he had a migraine it seemed, and he raised a hand towards Drake. “Drake,” he said, “come here, Caleb, please.”
Drake made a strangled noise, instantly jumping up and going over to him, taking his hand. Caleb followed a bit slower, moving around to Ezio’s other side. Ezio very gracelessly pulled Drake down to him, reaching up to take hold of his face and kiss him. He was a bit off, at first, but he managed to reorient after a moment.
“M’sorry,” Ezio spluttered, “m’sorry, I didn’t think about it, I should’ve thought about it, that was a stupid idea, I could’ve probably cast a decent barrier a bit faster than it took me to get in the way of it, but I don’t have no sense when it comes to Morgyn, m’sorry, I never meant to hurt you-“
“Hey, it’s okay,” Drake said, taking his hand again. “You have nothing to apologise for.”
“Are you kiddin’, I got a lotta stuff to apologise for,” Ezio said, looking at him like he’d done lost his mind. Then, his grey eyes flicked over to Caleb, and he smiled. “Caleb, you look notably more fluffy today, lookit your hair it’s so much longer, that is so weird…”
Caleb snorted. “I haven’t had time to cut it,” he said.
“You should leave it for a few days, it looks nice on you,” Ezio said.
“I’ll go get Morgyn,” Drake decided, shuffling around the bed to the door.
Ezio pouted slightly, but let his hand go. “Gimme yours instead,” Ezio said, reaching over and taking Caleb’s hand in absence of Drake’s. “What’s your hair so long for? What’d you get busy doing? That seems weird, there’s a lotta time in the day, unless you get busy doing something that’s only marginally important. Then there’s no time in the day at all. You know what we needa do, we gotta petition the sun god not to fly his chariot across the friggin sky so fast, that’s what we ought to does. Do you think the sun god even takes petitions? Maybe he doesn’t. Oh but the earth is round, right, his chariot’s always moving, does he even have the space to get petitions, maybe not…”
Caleb had a very interesting look on his face, by somewhere around the middle of Ezio’s rambling, but he didn’t comment on that directly. “Um, he probably doesn’t,” Caleb said. “But I got busy helping Lilith with Forgotten Hollow.”
“Oh, yeah,” Ezio said, sounding kind of dazed. “She was doing stuff in Forgotten Hollow. What stuff? Did it ever resolve itself? Hey, has anyone ever told Vlad his ears are a little too big for him? I could fix that. I’m pretty good at magic if I try to be.” Ezio’s voice dropped to a stage whisper. “Caleb, are you still being mean to yourself and doing super-villain drugs?”
Caleb arched an eyebrow. “Super-villain drugs?” he asked. “Oh, synthetics? I quit. Mostly by chance while helping Lilith. But you were right anyway.”
Ezio smiled, reaching over with his other hand and patting Caleb’s with it. “That’s good,” he said. “The world is mean, Caleb, the whole world is terrible and cruel enough, they’ll give you plenty of things to feel bad about just fine. You don’t need to go helping them.”
“I guess so,” Caleb said quietly.
“It’s okay,” Ezio said. “You live and make mistakes and learn right? Hey, if you never makes mistakes, then yous not trying hard enough, in’at right?” Ezio thought that was right. It sounded good enough for his purposes at least. “What Lilith need help with? Musta been somethin’ really messy if she got you involved in it. You’re not really big on the vampire things. Not that I blame you. I guess vampire things aren’t usually good things to get involved with. And you’ve never been too proud of bein’ a vampire anyway.”
Caleb looked somewhere between befuddled and amused. If Ezio was less high, he might’ve noticed. But he was. So he didn’t.
“Vladislaus disappeared,” Caleb said. “And Sarnai attacked Lilith. Hurt her pretty bad, I had to keep her on a diet of plasma packs for a week or two before she started to really function again. It was kind of scary. You should tell her not to do that again. It was scary.”
Oh. Ezio looked up at him, and for a moment, his eyes focused a lot better than they had been only seconds before. “She got hurt that bad?” he asked. And then he frowned, and sort of started to reach for something but it was hard to tell what. The motion ended shortly after it’d begun. “Caleb, are you okay?” If Lilith had gotten hurt that badly, then it had to have been difficult for him to deal with. Caleb didn’t take things like that very well, and if it was Ezio and Morgyn, foo, he probably would be internally losing his shit and he was supposed to be the strong one here.
Currently he was the high one, but who was paying attention?
Caleb didn’t answer, for a long moment. Ezio almost wondered if he’d said it instead of merely thinking that he should, but then Caleb lowered his head, and Ezio could hear him start crying.
Oh no! Wait! That wasn’t what that was supposed to do! “Shit, did I said somethin’ else?” he asked. “I’m sorry-” and one hand smacked into Caleb’s arm reaching for him.
Caleb took his hand, and shook his head. “No, it wasn’t-it was something you said, but it wasn’t bad-“
“Commere,” Ezio said, holding the arm not attached to Caleb’s hand and waving it in the air.
Caleb loosed a shaky breath, and then moved around to rest against Ezio’s shoulder, gently. Ezio reached up and loosely wrapped his arms around him. And they stayed that way, for a while, Ezio just holding him, and Caleb crying against his shoulder, and were he not high, maybe Ezio would be asking some more questions about now. As it was, Ezio was very high, and rapidly devolved into internal debating about how fast a uni-llama could fly.
And then the door opened, and Drake shuffled in, followed by Morgyn, who wasted no time in rushing around the bed and clinging to the arm Caleb wasn’t lying on. Ezio smiled. “Morgyn,” he said, “you’re okay. You are okay right? You’ve been eating? Eating is a good thing. Living on needs potions is a bad thing, and if you’re doing it you’re an idiot. Oh you smell like weed. Oooh, that would make sense, stress levels and all of that, hey, your hair is brown, why is it brown? No it was brown when I was a ghost and talking to you, too, I remember now. Did you get bored of being blond? I guess blond would be tiring by now, considering you’ve been blond for literally a hundred years or something, maybe it is about overdue for a change by now. When I get out of here, I want ice cream. I know I’m not supposed to eat ice cream, but just once, and we can even get fat free ice cream, they make that now. I think. Not that I don’t fully intend to dump a bunch of flavoured syrup onto it-“
Ezio stopped talking, abruptly, looking down at his leg. At some point, Cassandra had come in, and laid down halfway on his leg. Ezio hadn’t noticed. Then, as he was looking at it and frowning, he tried to move it. It didn’t even twitch.
“Cassie,” he said, “push on that leg for me.”
Cassandra looked confused, but she moved, and shoved against his leg.
He couldn’t feel that. Ezio frowned deeper. “I can’t feel that,” he said softly.
Caleb sat up, looking at him. “Can you move it?” he asked.
Ezio shook his head.
“I’ll go find Dr. Williams,” Drake decided, standing up and shuffling back out of the room.
===
“The loss of circulation caused a small stroke,” Troi said, looking over the charts and papers in her hand. “You seem to be paralysed in both legs. I did some tests on it earlier, and one of your legs kind of responds to stimuli, but it’s kind of variant and unreliable.”
“What’s that mean exactly?” Morgyn asked. “He won’t walk anymore?”
“He should be able to walk, still,” Troi answered. “Just not unassisted. He’ll likely need something to help make up for the leg that isn’t responding at all, and there’ll be times when he needs a wheelchair I’m sure. You’ll need to make some changes and adjustments, also to your house.”
“We live in an apartment,” Drake said.
“There’s time,” Troi said. “We can definitely work something out, figure things out in response to this, it’s not the end of the world. There are also some other options with his mobility assistance, we could look into getting him a mobility-trained service dog. It’d help him do things on his own, without needing one of you, like opening doors and cabinets, and retrieving things he’s dropped, things like that.”
Ezio was quiet, while they discussed it. Eventually, his gaze moved to look out the window, watching the trees sway in the breeze he couldn’t feel. It was… strange, being alive now, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it. He truly didn’t have much of a choice, though, and Ezio knew that, both now and at the time.
If he could do it all over again, knowing what he knew now, would he still take that lightning bolt? Strangely, even to his own surprise, he heard the voice inside his head answer, “Yes.” Morgyn had always been, and still was now, far more important than he was. And in thinking of it, Ezio couldn’t say why. But he believed, felt like, Morgyn had to live, even if it meant that Ezio didn’t.
He felt someone take his hand. Someone else told him it’d be okay. He knew that. Morgyn was alive. As long as Morgyn was alive, of course everything would be okay. He believed that.
“Spire may not work anymore,” Drake said, holding Ezio’s hand in both of his. “We may need to think about moving somewhere else, buying a house if we can. An apartment complex isn’t going to let us install things like stair lifts and ramps.”
“I don’t know if we can buy a house,” Cassandra said. “My savings are running low, it may not be enough for a down payment on a house.”
He was the one that took the lightning bolt. He knew what it was going to do to him, and he did it anyway. He was the one that got Ethren to resurrect him. He definitely knew what that was going to do, and he knew the risks of reanimating a body after it’d been dead for any amount of time.
Ezio had no one to be angry with for this, but himself. He knew the risks. He took them anyway. And now he was paying for it.
He looked down at the floor. And he realised, right then, that this meant he was never going to dance again. His vision blurred.
It didn’t really matter. Morgyn was alive. Just like he’d wanted.
