[ainmhianverse] i sang in my chains like the sea

[stilljustandrew]

He's been here a couple of days now; his room adjoining to Max's has been arranged (and, he found on the first day, his tome has been moved there). He's starting to believe, with both relief and trepidation, that this is all real.

And Max has suggested, in that gentle persistent way that to Andrew's mind is as good as a direct order, that he might want to get out and start meeting more people.

So here's Andrew, stepping out of the castle and into the sunlit afternoon, blinking under the color-shifting sky.

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[stilljustandrew]

Andrew takes a startled step back as Lucas delivers the complaint, apparently directly at him. He takes a better grip on the little stack of comics that he's brought back, to keep them from sliding out of his arms.

"A-are you ... is everything okay?"

[woocas]

"Gah!?" Andrew's voice startles Lu as right out of his thoughts and nearly out of his skin. He clutches his chest, lungs heaving, wide eyes latching onto the other man's presence. It takes a good minute for the Medium to sort himself out.

"Yes?" It's not a convincing answer. Lucas throws his hands up in the air and begins to pace again. "Maybe! Not really!?"

At this rate he might cut a path in the floor.

[stilljustandrew]

"I'm sorry --"

He's torn between offering to leave and offering to help, and ends up hovering in miserable uncertainty.

[woocas]

"Dude, I'm not mad at you, I'm just--!"

The pacing increases. Powered by general aggravation with no real outlet he turns and stomps out another lap, close enough to Andrew to reach out and grab him. Which, after a long pause, Lucas actually does without thinking. Whipped up emotions cloud the usually strong mental barriers that keep out unwanted memories, leaving the Medium unwittingly defenseless.

"Sorry, I'm just...worked..." The apology slows down as a memory sweeps over him like a wave.

[stilljustandrew]

"So, look," Nita Callahan is saying, "we thought you must be getting pretty bored in there --"

You look up then, through the translucent cell wall, still rubbing the sleep out of your eyes, and see her straightening up from the stack of books she's just set down on the floor. Books, familiar ones, yours, and the sight of them is like a blow that knocks the air from your lungs, and something bound and buried deep inside you struggles awake trying desperately to scream.

No. No, you can't, you can't -- you smother it up, shove it back down --

"We got them from your room," Nita's saying, with a kind of hopeful attempt to smile. "It seemed we'd have better luck there finding stuff you liked? I mean, I could've raided my shelves, but books are so -- individual, you know?"

"Oh." You can barely hear yourself. You can't look away from the stack of books, you can't see the titles at this angle but you barely need to: that's a volume of Lord of the Rings (just one?), and a Heinlein juvenile, and the scuffed and taped-up spine of The Last Unicorn, and two Star Trek novels, and --

"Is this," and the dread is almost choking you, this is wrong, you shouldn't ask, but "Do I ... do I have to do something?"

(And if she says yes,) murmurs the memory of Lucifer's voice, your master's voice, and the sound of it makes you want to weep with dread and fear and longing, (if she names a price, Andrew, will you pay it? Do you still want these toys so badly as that?)

"No! No," Nita says in alarm and swift reassurance, too swift to tell whether you would be able to answer with that same no.

She's still talking as the understanding settles on you slowly, softly, like falling snow, like despair: you don't get to take the books back. Not ever again. Not ever --

Andrew's blinking at Lucas, waiting for him to finish the sentence.