A sudden burst of pain on my arm broke through my brain fog, as though I'd been abruptly smacked - because I had - followed by a hissed question: "You alright?"
The world slowly came back into focus, like waking up with my eyes already open. I blinked twice to reorient myself, and turned to the source of my most recent injury - my sister.
"I'm fine," I lied, muted enough to not capture my parents' attention across the dining table where they remained immersed in their own discussion regarding Super politics.
I loathed Super politics - all that talk followed by so limited action - though Lily had kept herself knee-deep in it, following every new scheme, every new bill that discussed the morality of our existence after the Guild's previous crimes were exposed. Little had I known or cared at the time for the veritable Pandora's Box we were unsealing in my quest to unthrone the man who'd avariciously destroyed my life.
Oh, Lily. I-
I forced my thoughts off the tracks they raced down, knowing their inevitable destination. Nothing good ever came from going along that path.
Leigh twisted her fork perpendicular to her plate to reel in her white sauce-coated noodles. "You don't look fine."
An accurate enough assessment, and she had plenty of reason to worry.
Reaching for my water, I examined my hand carefully. No shaking. I couldn't be doing so poorly, yet. I had months to waste before drastic action needed to be taken.
"I'm fine," I reaffirmed, and before she had the opportunity to broach further argument, I pushed out my heavy polished-oak chair to leave. I'd humored my parents' desire for routine family dinners, despite never having had them prior to my lapse into villainy, because I knew they sought to make up for lost time, and I in turn felt guilty for having stolen that time from them. Enough, however, was enough. "I have a busy morning ahead of me," I explained to my mom and dad's startled faces. "As always, dinner was lovely."
"Leaving already?" Evangeline Courten started, her manicured hands gripping tight at the lace tablecloth, as though prepared to rise herself. "Surely you can stay a little longer..."
"Sorry," I said, offering no further discussion for her to latch onto and argue against.
My father laid down his cutlery with a grunt. "I don't like that place you're staying at."
"Trust me, we know," Leigh replied drolly.
"I'll see you next week," I said, smiling faintly.
Only if I couldn't avoid it.
Leigh made to follow. "I'll walk him out. I actually have to get going as well."
Technically, I was capable of slipping into the shadows from almost anywhere, but I avoided using my powers in front of my parents whenever possible to maintain their glittering facade of denial. If I didn't use my powers, surely I didn't have them, and all the scandalous misfortune I brought to their doorstep never occurred.
"You needn't bother," I told her when we were alone, crossing around the bar into the unlit foyer. "I know where the door is."
"You're full of shit, Atty."
"Which private tutor taught you to speak like that?"
She fisted a hand on her hip, unamused. These last months had seen her harden into someone almost unrecognizable. Gone was the irreverence, the implacable core-held belief that things would always work out for daddy's little princess. Nearly dying had left her shaken and riddled with invisible mental scars, but it was what happened on that day two years later that stole her easy smile
"Where are you going this time?" she pressed. "To hound Ren? To collapse another Guild that doesn't meet your standards for transparency? Or are you still harassing poor Fate? He's been through enough, and you're only making it harder to move on."
From the coat-closet, I withdrew my thigh-length coat and slipped my arms through one after another. It granted an excuse to avoid what I was sure had to be a severe expression of haughty disapproval. "Good night, Leigh. Study hard. You know - for all those classes you supposedly take?"
She ignored the barb, not one to be side-tracked and ignored. Under other circumstances, I admired that about her. "You need to move on, too. You need to stop using your powers so wastefully and start looking into other ways to get better."
"There are no other ways," I sighed. It was a tired argument, one of great familiarity.
"Maybe you'd be more open to finding them if you just moved-"
"Like you moved on?" I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth, and wished I could swallow them back.
Leigh remained unabashed. "Yeah. One of us had to keep their head on straight, and it's still astonishing that that unenviable task fell on me, but someone had to keep an eye on you, since obviously you don't care and our parents are choosing to ignore that any problem exists. I wish I could have been the one allowed to spiral - yet you're not even doing that. You're just - going through the motions, pretending everything is fine to our faces and doing who knows what at night." Uncertain what to do with her hands, one drifted to grip the opposing forearm, nails digging deep crescents into her bare skin. "She was my friend first, you know."
How could I forget?
I stepped into the awaiting dark without another wasted word. Nothing remained to say, for no response could make things right.
*~*~*~*
"Not you again," Ren grumbled sourly. Far too tech-savvy to muddle through physical paperwork, the new Guildmaster nonetheless sat in front of the sterilizing light of a screen to deal with the less glamorous side of his duties. "You see this?" Disheveling his neatly slicked back hair, he ran his hand through and picked out a prominent gray strand, pinching it in place. "I've named it after you."
"I'm sure you already have an appointment scheduled to dye it over," I said, emerging from a darkened corner of Ren's office. While I couldn't directly shadow in and out of the Guildhall, once entered, I could essentially transport myself wherever I pleased. "You're too vain to allow it to remain for long."
"You're one to talk about vanity," Ren grunted, and leaned back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. "I'm not the one with pictures of my alter-ego plastered across the front page of every newspaper in the country."
"You don't have an alter-ego."
"Besides the point," he said. "So, kid, what do you want this time? I don't know anything more than I've ever known. I'm trying to run a respectable organization now, so I can't keep slipping you the locations of where the former Elders ran off to, either. Eventually it'll be traced back to me-"
"I know," I interrupted. "It's not about that. I need someone's location, and I need Fate."
"I already told you, no more Elders."
"I don't care about them anymore." True enough. After devoting the last two years to systematically hunting them down to the various Guilds across the country that offered them sanctuary, I found myself unfulfilled. Finding them had been Lily's idea anyway. What a penchant for seeking out trouble that girl had. "Where did Pendulum retire?"
Ren's tapping on his upper arm paused, and he finally looked at me, picking through the current of my thoughts for my plan. He muttered a low curse, tearing his eyes away. "That has got to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard. A fool's errand, Atticus. For fools. Like you. If you actually did your research, you know that would never work. His power doesn't work like that. It's too limited in scope. He can buy you seconds - minutes, maybe - but certainly not months."
"He is not me."
Ren snorted. "Cocky little bugger you are to think you can learn something he failed at for a hundred and fifty years."
"You cannot afford to absorb another power, Shade."
Ah. Finally. I half turned to watch Fate, Lily's not-quite deceased brother, stroll through the door. "With a little more luck," I said meaningfully, "perhaps I can."
At the best of times, Fate was unreadable, even without the majority of his face masked by white swaths of fabric. Now, however, he was simply a wall, his tone equally indecipherable. If he blamed me for what happened to his sister - like he should - he hid his ill-regard well.
He blinked slowly out of his single visible eye in response to my unsubtle suggestion, then shook his head just as slow. "I have poured more luck into you - for the sake of everyone around you - than even the Constable, who I worked on for the better part of a decade. There is a limit to what even luck can achieve, and I have gifted all I have just to prevent you from slipping into madness. I have nothing more to give."
I swallowed. That was a blow, but I'd manage. Somehow.
Back to Ren, I said, "Surely someone as nosy as you has heard something about Pendulum's location."
"He mislikes visitors," Ren replied flatly. "And people in general. Hence, why he retired."
"All I need is a few moments. If he won't give me them, I'll take them by force." I meant every word. By touching him for mere seconds, I could duplicate his influence over time, and with that ability maybe, just maybe-
Ren's hard glower indicated he read the direction of my thoughts and found it lacking. "You are a hopeless case, you know that? Stubborn as all hell. But!" He stretched his hands up and behind his head, careening his chair dangerously far back with a shiny leather shoe kicked onto his desk. "Letting you go storming into Pendulum's home might prove to be suicide, depending on his mood. Might not be a bad idea to get rid of you before you self-destruct, which we all know is only a matter of time without access to another healer, so I'm almost inclined to give you the information outright."
Ren was not a cruel man, just a pragmatist. He would not delight in my return to insanity - far from it, given that his Supers would be tasked with hunting me down - but he always set aside his personal feelings to do what needed to be done.
"Almost?" I prompted.
"I have conditions, of course. First of all, when he is beating you to a pulp while you are frozen in time, I did not send you. You do not know me. You do not, nor have you ever, worked for this Guild. Second, I need you to do something for me in return, preferably first, so I know it gets done. Something suited to your particular talents."
Odds were, I'd have followed through with his request anyway, so I nodded, but he wasn't done. "And third, if we do not find another healer for you to copy by the end of the year, I want you to enter the Underground of your own volition to await the end."
Such a simple way of referring to my lucidity. He wasn't wrong, though. It would be the end for me, before I returned to being an instinct driven beast, an animal blinded by pain and backed in a corner lashing out at any outstretched hands because of my own overwhelming fear. I would remember nothing of my experiences, and if I never encountered a healer for the rest of my life, it would be as though I never experienced anything ever again. I was once an empty vessel for pain, and so I was meant to be again.
My chest felt tight at the mention of the underground prison, once destroyed by the Guild itself, becoming a tomb for countless villains, now rebuilt. Nonetheless, I agreed. "What would you have me do?"
Ren smiled grimly. "Pull up a chair. Both of you."
****Author's note:****
The future chapters will NOT be from atticus's POV. I'm still a long ways away from finishing this one especially since I'm working on other things but I finally have enough direction to for the final concept to confidently post this and be sure it won't need to be changed as I progress. I've toyed around with doing dual POV but although I like writing it, as a reader i generally dislike reading it and i imagine I'm not the only one who feels that way, so unless there's an uproar I'll most likely stick to single POV. Hope anyone lovely enough to still be interested in this story enjoyed~
As always, cover subject to change bc I always hate them.