Aury first became aware of the sounds of cars going by. A siren in the distance. Birds chirping. The sound of his own breathing, unlabored and deep. Slowly he opened his eyes.
For a moment he was confused. He hadn't pictured heaven to look like the interior of his bedroom, and he felt too good to be in hell. So...
He sat up. He sat up easily, without having to make an ordeal of it, without a wave of nausea crashing over him, without feeling every bone in his body cry for relief. It was bright; daylight streamed in through the windows with the curtains thrown back.
Gus stood at the open window directly opposite Aury's bed, gazing out with an unsettling serenity. As he heard Aury moving, he turned and broke into a wide smile.
"How are you feeling?"
Aury frowned. "I feel... fine."
Gus came over, crouched and put his hands on his brother's shoulders. "It worked. Look, even your hair's coming back."
Reflexively Aury reached up and felt his bald head. Sure enough, his scalp bristled with hair a shade longer than peach fuzz. Numbly, he maneuvered to sit on the edge of the bed. He still felt weak, but it was the weakness of having been too long sedentary, not from years wracked by disease. "What-- what did you do?"
Gus's grin widened. "I saved you. It was-- it was the only thing left--"
"Gus, tell me what you did!"
"I healed you!" Gus practically leapt across the room and plucked a book from the floor, the same strange book he'd been holding the night before. "It's magic!"
Aury held up a hand and got out of bed. "Magic? Wait. What are you talking about?"
"Magic, it's real magic," Gus gushed, brandishing the book like a weapon. "And it worked, look, you're standing--"
Aury mentally flailed for words. "Have you gone 'round the bend? There's no such thing!"
"No no no, you've been a little out of the loop, there's capes who use magic all the time." Gus was almost chuckling, disconcertingly happy. "It was a cape who told me about this--" he thrust the book out again.
Aury grabbed the book and twisted it out of Gus's hands. "Cape? You're not making any sense. You mean a superhero gave you this? Who?"
"I didn't get her name, said she was new in town. But-but that's not the point, Aury, you're cured. You're going to live!"
"Augustus. Calm down. You're scaring me." Hope had become a dishonest thing to Aury. At first every new treatment had been the one that would save him. Even after Gus, his only living relative, had proven incompatible to be a donor, he had clung to every small hope, only to have each fail. Eventually, he learned it was easier not to trust. It made dying with grace possible, in his opinion.
But he could feel his body, and it felt unmistakably hale and whole. This new hope was very tempting. Aury studied the book. It was dark red, leather-bound, with yellowed pages and an emblem on the cover displaying a wheel with daggers for spokes.
"Is it... dangerous?"
"Well, look at you!"
That wasn't an answer, Aury almost said out loud. "It's gone."
"Yes!"
"I'm--" Hope was winning over his suspicion-- "not going to die."
Gus was practically giggling. "Yes! I mean no, you're--
It was infectious. Aury gave in, and, discarding the book on the bed, let his own laughter bubble up, and the two brothers collided in a wild, exuberant hug.
-------------------------------
Once the initial hysteria died down, Aury's caution returned and he insisted on making a trip to the hospital. His appetite had come back in full force, and with a big meal in his belly he felt like a million dollars. At first he was still a little unsteady on his feet but that was quickly fading. Yet he still had to make sure this wasn't another false hope. No matter how real it felt, he wanted to hear it from the doctors themselves.
The doctors were justifiably flabbergasted, to say the least. Scans and blood tests later, the long-awaited words were spoken:
"...how the hell it happened, but you're in complete remission."
Neither Gus nor Aury made any mention of magic, and Aury was in too high spirits to listen to the nagging voice of cynicism right now.
He made appointments for some follow-up visits, but he barely registered the details. Finally, he was free of hospitals and doctors and medications-- he was cured. Even better, he was healed; he didn't say anything, but even his appendectomy scar from years ago was gone, as was the faint pock-mark on his left temple, the remnant of his childhood chicken pox. He felt better than healthy.
He was alive!
------------------------------
"But how? You can't be serious that some random cape walked up to you, handed you a book of spells and told you to wave it at me."
"There was no waving involved, thanks," Gus replied, pausing to savor a bite of his steak. He had insisted on the splurge in celebration, and Aury offered no resistance, halfway through his own juicy porterhouse. "She said it's all in the voice."
"Who is she? How did she know you wanted a way to save me?"
"She didn't, at first. I met her a couple times in the library when I was looking at medical journals and research. She noticed me going through all this stuff and we got to talking, and..." Gus shrugged. "Then last night she found me, gave me the book. She told me I had some latent magical ability and it might be enough to save you. And you know, she never did give me her name. I ought to go over to PPD and ask around."
"A good idea," Aury agreed, "I'd like to know who to thank." His wariness was back in full force. Who was this woman, a supposed superhero, who apparently didn't want to perform her good deed in person but through his brother instead?
"For pete's sake, Aury, are you trying to make suspicion your superpower? We should get you some tights and call you The Inconvincible Doubting Thomas."
Despite himself, he let out a laugh, and glanced around to make sure none of their fellow restaurant patrons were eavesdropping. "I'm just worried. I mean, you're tampering with forces you know nothing about. There could be consequences."
"Tampered. Past tense. Soon as we find that cape and express our gratitude, I'm giving the book back to her. When I was casting..." Gus pensively prodded his baked potato with his fork. "It felt strange. I'm not sure I'd want to do that again, latent magic talent or not."
"What, you're not going cape?" Aury teased. "No tights for you, though. Big swirling robes with stars and moons all over them and a giant pointy hat. Oh, and a magic wand."
"The Astounding Wizard Gus wouldn't want Doubting Thomas as a sidekick. There's no theme there."
"No, no, you'd be my sidekick. I'm the eldest. Those ten minutes count."
"Got to be some clerical error there--"
Just then a waitress swept by, and swung an empty tray under her arm as she passed. The tray caught the bottle of steak sauce on the brothers' table, pitching it right into Aury's lap. She gasped as the dark red sauce splattered across his shirt and jeans.
"Ohmy-- I'm so sorry, sir! Oh, no, I didn't see--" She hastily righted the bottle and reached for the napkin dispenser.
"No, no, it's okay," Aury stood up, feeling sympathy as he saw the utter terror in the young woman's eyes. She probably expected an explosion. "Just an accident, no big deal."
"Give him your number and we'll call it even," Gus put in. The waitress blushed, giggling nervously. Aury rolled his eyes and walked to the restroom.
As he was scraping the sauce from his jeans with a paper towel, the mirrors caught his eye. It had been some time since he'd bothered to look at his own reflection. The only thing he had seen had been a bald, pale, sickly shadow.
Now...
He was still pale, but he'd lost the waxy cast of someone on the tail end of a long and slow death. He was no longer gaunt and hollow-eyed, but he couldn't recall his face looking quite so... defined... before.
But what really brought him up short was his hair. It was... longer. At least an inch more than it had been earlier in the day.
And it was white.
Not the dark brown he'd been born with. Not even a natural platinum blonde. Pure snow white.
He marched back to the table, loomed over his brother, and jabbed a finger at his head. "Did this somehow happen to escape you?"
"What, your hair?" Gus was the picture of confusion.
"No, my tan." Aury leaned in and lowered his voice so as not to cause a scene. "Augustus, why is my hair white?"
"Maybe it's from the chemo...?"
"Chemo doesn't do this." Aury sat down, trying to pick his words carefully. "I'm not ungrateful. Believe me. Just... tell me what this spell was supposed to do. Exactly."
Gus frowned, took a breath. "It calls a guardian spirit of some kind. It's supposed to restore and protect. And it did! This is just... a side effect."
Aury managed to wrestle the knot of worry building in his stomach to a mere gnaw. Gus had only been trying to save his life. Aury was sure he'd have done something equally as desperate if their positions had been reversed. He couldn't be angry over a minor cosmetic change.
"It makes you look mysterious. Women like that." Gus slid a folded slip of paper across the table and waggled his eyebrows. "Our waitress sure did."
Aury chuckled and shook his head. "I got all the shame genes. I just know it."
--------------------------------
Aury found himself sleepless all through the night, and still keyed up by the time morning arrived and Gus shuffled out of his bedroom bleary-eyed and fumbling with his bathrobe. He didn't think anything of it, figuring he'd done enough sleeping of late, and used the time to comb through the help wanted ads in the paper.
"You're up early," Gus remarked, squinting suspiciously into a carton of milk.
"Didn't go to bed." Aury circled a promising ad. "Hey, do you know where my driver's license is? I need to use the car."
"Where are you going?"
"Job hunting," he said, folding the paper and giving his brother a salute with it. "Can I borrow that brown jacket of yours? Makes me look respectable."
"Sure, but... geez, you've been off your deathbed barely twenty-four hours, Aury, maybe you should take it slow."
"I've been taking it slow. Really tired of slow. Now that I have a life, I'd like to go live it."
"Income sounds nice," Gus said. "Wait up, I'll come with you. Maybe land a twofer."
Aury wandered fitfully around the apartment while his brother got dressed. When Gus emerged once more with the requested jacket in hand, Aury turned to go to the door, when suddenly a sharp white-hot pain stabbed him right between the eyes and shot down through his head and down his spine. He yelled, grabbed his head and fell to his knees.
"Aury!" He heard Gus run to his side and crouch next to him. "Oh... oh my god."
He blinked past the fading spots in his vision as the pain faded to a dull ache. "Holy crap. Owwww."
"Aury, your-- your--" Gus's eyes were wide, and he gestured vaguely at his forehead.
"My what?" Aury reached up and felt his own forehead, and was shocked when his fingers encountered horns. Two short pointed horns, one above each eyebrow.
With an inarticulate noise he shoved Gus aside and stumbled over to the kitchen. His reflection in the dark glass of the microwave confirmed what his hands told him, and an experimental tug proved that they were indeed attached.
"Gus!" And his ears--! They were larger, stuck out to the sides, and were slightly pointed. "Gus! What the hell did you do?!"
Gus looked like a beached fish, mouth opening and closing. Aury's skin crawled, a strange itch travelling across his chest and shoulders, and he yanked his shirt up and saw, to his horror, a coat of white hair growing in thick as a pelt. He glared back up at his brother and held up a hand, struggling to keep his anger in check.
"Just-- not one word about side effects-- where's that book?" he demanded, glancing around. He spotted the tome sitting on the couch and snatched it up, still feeling an unnerving churning sensation in his body. He flipped through the pages, only to find them filled with unintelligible scrawlings that didn't resemble letters at all. "What the... Gus, can you read this? It's chickenscratch!"
"Aury, calm down, let me see the book," Gus pleaded. "It's not that bad, I can--"
"Not that ba-aaugh!" The book tumbled out of Aury's hands as they convulsed. It lasted only a moment, but left in its wake claws, short but sharp claws on each of his fingers. He stared, then held them up for Gus to see. "Not that bad?"
He picked the book back up while Gus floundered, and made for the door. Forget PPD, he needed to go straight to Atlas Park and find someone-- Gus's nameless cape friend, some other magic-wielding expert, anyone-- who could straighten this out while he still had opposable thumbs. He was all the way out onto the sidewalk when he realised he was out in broad daylight like this, and he had a breif flash of self-consciousness. He considered going back inside to get a hoodie or something, but the sound of Gus's voice dashed that train of thought.
"Aury, Aury, wait, just-- wait! I'm sorry!"
"Sorry?" Aury spun around. "Look at me! I told you to stop! I was ready to go, I told you to let me! Yes, you saved my life but did my humanity have to be the price?"
"Aury--"
"Aurelius. No more childish nicknames. That's for people who are on good terms." Aurelius could see people stopping and staring at the spectacle but he no longer cared. Let them gawk and wonder. "What were you thinking? Were you thinking at all?"
"You were going to die!" Gus shouted back. "What was I supposed to do?!"
"You were supposed to respect my wishes and let me have my diginity!" He turned and stalked down the sidewalk. Yellow Line station wasn't far. His pride left out the option of going back to wheedle the car keys out of Augustus.
Who wasn't following him.
Aurelius wasn't sure how he felt about that. But he marched on, his righteous indignation interrupted every few steps because his legs were spasming. He was garnering a few curious looks from passers-by but no one approached him. Perhaps they thought they'd caught a cape on his casual Friday and a bad mood.
A few blocks later he stumbled against the side of a building. His feet and legs were burning as if he had strained every muscle in them at once. Gritting his teeth, he inched around the corner, into an alley so he could agonize and metamorphose in private.
His feet were cramping painfully. He slid down against the wall and reached for his shoe, fumbling with his unwieldy claws and ending up cutting the lace by accident. He pulled the shoe off to reveal a lengthened foot, uncurling three large clawed toes. Quickly he wrenched the other shoe off, and the other foot was the same.
"Oh god," he muttered, slumping. Hair fell into his face, his own white hair grown several more inches. "You've got to be kidding me."
"Funny, I was about to say the same thing," said a voice.
Aurelius looked up into the white-masked faces of half a dozen Skulls.
"He a mask?" one of the Skulls wondered. "He don't dress like one."
"Spandex must be in the wash," said another, grinning and hefting a stained bat.
"I don't want any trouble." Aurelius tucked the book under one arm and tried to stand up. With his huge clawed feet, the maneuver only made him look clumsy.
"Aw, he don't want trouble, you hear that, boys?" Bat Skull snickered. "Guess we better mosey on outta here."
"But not before we collect our taxes," another Skull put in. "Whatcha got there, hero?"
"I'm not a--" Aurelius held the book tighter. If he lost the book, his chances at becoming human again would be gone, if not drastically reduced. He tried to back out of the alley, but the Skulls were quicker than his unfamiliar knock-kneed legs. Two of them circled around and cut off his escape.
Aurelius tensed, looking around for some way to possibly shove past them and run (this was assuming he could get this body to cooperate) when he saw the man.
A paunchy businessman, held at gunpoint by one of the Skulls, a briefcase nearby open and papers scattered on the pavement. Aurelius froze as their eyes met, the fear in the businessman's face begging him to do something. Aurelius tried to shrug helplessly, tried to give him an apologetic look that he was just a fellow victim--
But a switch flipped somewhere inside his head.
Bat Skull hauled back a fist and brought it hard across Aurelius's face.
Aurelius turned his head back to face him, and growled. Bat Skull hefted the slugger and swung. Aurelius caught it without flinching, and squeezed. His claws bit deep into the wood, splintering and cracking the bat. He wrenched it out of the surprised gangster's hands and whipped it around into one of the Skulls flanking him.
Their startled exclamations barely reached his ears. A surreal focus had overcome him. He heard a noise behind him and whirled, dodging a fist on collision course with his head. With a snarl, he fell into a half-crouch, dropping the book and splaying his fingers as his claws abruptly lengthened by several inches. With two vicious swipes, he slashed across the chest of the Skull who had just taken a swing. He grabbed another by the denim jacket and hurled him headlong into the Skull holding the businessman hostage.
One of the Skulls took off. The slashed gangster staggered back and clutched at his wounds. One of the two standing Skulls drew a gun and leveled it at Aurelius, who merely swatted it out of his hands and seized him by the shoulders to slam him against the wall with another guttural growl, claws poking holes through the leather vest and drawing more blood.
The businessman, who had been backing slowly away, turned and ran for it. Aurelius caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, and saw the man vanish around a corner.
The switch flipped again. Aurelius blinked, let go of the would-be mugger and stumbled backwards.
What... what did I just do? He stared at his claws, their tips stained with blood, as they slowly shrank to their original length. A groan drew his attention, and he saw the one who'd been mugging the businessman trying to get out from underneath his much larger compatriot, who had been knocked unconscious. And the other, with bleeding gashes across his chest and a purpling lump beginning to bloom on his mohawked head.
"What have I done?"
"Fricking cape!" yelled Bat Skull from behind him, just before plunging a knife into Aurelius's back.
He sucked in a shocked breath and crumpled to his hands and knees. Pain wasn't unfamiliar to him, but he was used to pain that was much more dull and sluggish. He'd never been stabbed. This, this was sudden and brutal. A bubbling noise from in his chest told him that the knife had hit a lung. Aurelius could only think that this was death's way of claiming him in a more direct fashion, having been cheated from the disease route.
He had just begun to regret leaving Gus on such a bad note when he heard a meaty thud and saw Bat Skull go flying [censored]-over-teakettle down the alleyway.
"Geez, I'm starting to actually recognise you guys!" said a high-pitched female voice from the alleyway entrance. "Didn't we already have this discussion?"
The one remaining Skull swore and started running. A small shape shot past Aurelius and after the fleeing gangster, and what looked like a little girl hopped up in mid-stride to give the Skull a good pop in the back of his head. The thug dropped like a stone.
The tiny figure stood over the fallen Skull with arms akimbo. "I hate repeating myself," she said, turning around to face Aurelius. "Hey, are you okay?"
"I've been stabbed," he replied blankly, wincing as he shifted and the knife, still in his back, moved. The little girl dashed to his side. No, not a little girl, a fully-grown woman, perfectly proportioned (Aurelius wasn't so close to death that he couldn't notice that) and four feet tall, at a generous estimate. She was clad in a form-fitting leather jumpsuit of burgundy and gold, and a pair of copper-rimmed goggles perched atop her head, holding back her auburn hair. She was, of course, a cape-- who else that small would have been capable of tossing grown men twenty feet?
"Oh boy." She put a hand on his back to steady him.
"I think it punctured a lung," he continued, and hissed as she grabbed the hilt. "I need to get to the hospital."
"Hold still, I'm gonna--"
"GYAH!"
"--pull it out."
The pain made him collapse the rest of the way. He felt her tearing his shirt off from the stab-hole and further ripping it into strips. "Sorry. It's better if you don't know when it's coming and tense up." She wadded up one strip and pressed it against the wound.
Aurelius looked at the knife as she dropped it beside him and nearly fainted at the size of it. Military-style, likely, a good seven or eight inches long, with a wide blade and a serrated segment to boot. How it had missed his heart was beyond him. He coughed, but curiously could no longer feel the rattling of blood in his lung.
"Thank you," he said, remembering his manners at last. It was one thing to look like a beast, he thought, but he damned sure wasn't going to talk like one.
"No problem. Sorry I butted in, but I saw that knife come out and you were kinda spacing. You new around here?"
Did she think...? "No. Yes-- I mean, I've lived here for months but I'm not a cape, if that's what you're thinking." He pushed himself into a sitting position. The throbbing of the wound was fading by the second.
"You're not?" She leaned around and gave him a curious look. "You coulda fooled me. That was some choice thrashing there. Hey!" she suddenly barked at the Skull who had been pinned by the one Aurelius had thrown. He was trying to worm out and sneak away. "You stay down!"
The Skull shrank back down and muttered a meek "Yes, ma'am."
"You were watching? Why didn't you do anything?" he demanded, trying to turn to face her without dislodging her hand on his wound.
"Came 'round the corner when you threw the bat. It looked like you had things under control," she retorted, with a well-ex-cuuuuuse-me tone. She held another strip of shirt up against his chest. "Hold this."
He did so, letting her wind the strip around his torso. "I... lost control," he said. "Listen, I know what I must look like to you, but believe me, this morning I was human."
"Just this morning? How'd that happen?" she asked, as if inquiring about a bad haircut.
"My brother used a--" Aurelius had a sudden sickening lurch in his stomach when he realized he wasn't holding the book, but then he saw it lying on the ground near the wall where it had fallen. With a relieved cry he leapt for it, right out of the improvised bandage the diminutive heroine was trying to tie around him.
"Whoa, hold still!"
"Sorry! Sorry." He crouched there, cradling the book. "It's what made me like this. Magic. I can't lose it. I was trying to get to Atlas Park to find the hero who gave it to my brother."
"Okay, take it easy." She came over to him, poised to use another wad of shirt, but she paused. "It closed up."
"What?"
"Your wound. You're healing up."
Dumfounded, Aurelius reached around. He couldn't reach the spot he'd been stabbed in, but experimental flexing of his shoulders told him the injury... was gone.
"Just this morning, huh?" She looked him up and down. "I know just the person you need to see. I'm LittleBig." She stuck out her hand.
"Aurelius Cae," he replied, almost taking it before he saw the blood still on his claws. He withdrew, reminded uncomfortably of his inexplicable fit of violence. If LittleBig noticed his hesitation she made nothing of it.
-----------------------------------------
It wasn't even lunchtime on the most awkward day of his life when he walked into Atlas Park City Hall on his tiptoes, bare-chested, covered in fur, and trying to ignore the latest addition to his anatomy-- a tail, which had kinked up partway down a pant leg, unnoticed until he sat on it in the monorail tram. He left the new appendage there, feeling that fishing it out in public would be beyond gauche, no matter how uncomfortable it was.
He was also trying not to gawp like a tourist.
He'd seen superheroes before, of course. Even cooped up in the hospital it was hard to avoid seeing them on the news or in the papers. But it had always seemed to him as if he were reading about events and people that were removed from his reality, like a comic book with far too many characters.
A chrome-skinned android. A pixieish lady who seemed to be part plant. A blue-skinned, purple-haired man dressed in a hot-pink leisure suit. An extraordinarily tall woman in a leopard-print leotard who was having a heated argument with a humanoid dragon. What at first seemed to be an enormous granite sculpture until it got up and plodded down a hallway. Seeing them up close and in such numbers was so strange, and even stranger were the looks he was getting in return; cordial nods, casual glances, the mild interest of seeing a new face. As if he were one of them, and not at all out of place. Aurelius began to feel a little overwhelmed, like the pull of an undertow threatening to carry him out to sea if he dared to wade out any further.
He balked when LittleBig led him to a hall marked 'NEW HERO REGISTRATION'. "Wait. I'm not signing up. I just need to find the cape who gave this book to my brother."
She turned and folded her arms. "And the lady who deals with magic is down there," she replied, raising a brow. "Don't worry, we're not going to ask for your fingerprints and firstborn."
Aurelius sighed. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean anything by it. I... well, I don't think I'm exactly hero material."
"It's okay," she said, grinning and shrugging as she continued down a flight of stairs. "Was worried for a second you were the type who hates capes."
"I find it hard to imagine anyone who would dislike you," he said, out loud.
Aurelius Daniel Cae, did you just flirt with the tiny woman who can throw you through a wall? Are your hormones trying to compensate for the lengthy downtime? Shut up before you make an [censored] of yourself.
But she looked up at him over her shoulder, and smiled again. Returning the flirt? Hardly. What woman would be attracted to him like this?
LittleBig strolled in through a set of open doors under a sign that said 'MAGI: Modern Arcane Guild of Information.' "Hello? Ms. Azuria here?"
Aurelius followed, heartened by the fact that there was an entire department devoted to the study of magic, it seemed. If there was a cure to be found, certainly it would be here. His hope deflated slightly, though, once he saw it was only a small room with two desks and crowded with shelves upon shelves of papers and odd artifacts. A tall dark-haired woman came into view from behind a massive rune-carved stone. She looked... normal.
"...LittleBit, right?" she asked, adjusting her glasses.
"LittleBig. Got something maybe you can help with. Aurelius, this is Azuria, head of MAGI in Atlas Park. Azuria, Aurelius Cae."
"Oh, a new cape?" Azuria said, smiling at Aurelius. "When was your origin event?"
He almost protested again, but instead held out the book. "I think I'm still having it. My brother was given this by a cape sometime last night. He cast some spell on me and, well..." He flicked a claw across one of his horns.
Azuria frowned and took the book. "A Daggerwheel grimoire."
"You know what this is? Can the spell be reversed?"
"Yes, and perhaps," Azuria said. "But you said a cape gave this to your brother? Who?"
"She--" Aurelius stopped, then groaned. "I don't know. I was too furious with him to even ask what she looked like."
"I'll need to check with my counterpart in Galaxy City, but I don't know of any mage in Paragon who has posession of a Daggerwheel text. There are only a few confirmed grimoires in existence, and not many people know about them." She opened the book and studied the first few pages. "It seems genuine. Hard to be sure at first glance. You say your brother actually successfully cast a spell from this book?"
"He said it was to call a guardian spirit to heal me or something." He glanced at LittleBig, though he wasn't sure why. "I was-- sick."
"I'll need to study the book to see exactly what we're dealing with. Frankly, Mr. Cae, with the kinds of forces the Daggerwheel Order was reputed to unleash, you're lucky to be alive."
He said nothing to that.
"Maybe you should call your brother," LittleBig put in, "Ask him about this cape of his. Something's hinky about this, if you ask me."
----------------------------------------------
The phone rang in the Cae brothers' apartment. Augustus looked at it from the corner of his eyes but otherwise didn't move. The gun at his back discouraged it.
The woman holding it had come out of nowhere as Augustus was pacing fitfully in the living room, trying to think of something to do. He'd heard a soft electric hum, a light ozone scent, and suddenly felt a hard object digging into his shoulder, directly behind his heart. A low, husky female voice had informed him it was a gun, and he had better not move.
Another woman stepped into view, clad in a dark purple robe, her face shadowed by a peaked hood. She had been about to speak when the phone began to ring. She put her hands on her hips and glared at it, as if deeply offended, and picked up the reciever only to simply hang it up again.
"Now," she purred, advancing on Augustus. "We have business to discuss, you and I."
Aurelius looked at the phone in confusion, hung it up, then dialed again.
-------------------------------------
"My, aren't we popular?" the hooded woman said, and snapped her fingers at the ringing phone. Someone behind Augustus moved-- not the woman with the gun, but someone new-- and went over to the phone. A short-statured man so bulging with muscles that it made him look almost distorted promptly brought down a ham-sized fist on the phone. Naturally, it stopped ringing.
"Who are you people?" Augustus demanded. "Go rob someone else. I don't have anything of value."
"Oh, I think you do, Augustus. So how is your dear brother?" She drew back her hood to reveal a familiar face; the same black hair, dark eyes of the superhero who had given him the magic book.
"You--" Augustus started to step towards her, but the gun-toting woman sharply dug the barrel under his shoulder blade. "That spell did something to my brother, he's--"
"But you did successfully cast the spell, no?" She moved closer and smiled at him, a cold, almost predatory smile. "Your brother's up and about, healthy and whole. Most impressive."
"But he's changed," Augustus said. "You've got to tell me how to fix this, and-- what's with the gun? Just who are you?"
"You may call me Ligeia. And the gun La Hibou has at your back is just to make sure you don't raise any undue fuss and attract any capes that might be lurking about. Oh my," she laughed, seeing the dawning comprehension on his face, "you poor simple fool. Didn't have one single nagging suspicion, did you? Give you a magic book out of the goodness of my heart. Sorry to step on your rose-colored glasses, my friend, but I'm only here to collect what's mine."
Augustus felt all the blood drain from his face. Aury's transformation, he thought. I made him a monster, and now they want him for god-knows-what! "If you touch my brother, I'll--"
"Your brother?" Ligeia barked out another laugh. "Please. Your brother was only the test. And you passed with flying colors. Congratulations... you work for me now, sorcerer."
"No," he spat. "I'm never touching that book again, not for anything. Not after what I did to my own brother. So you can just find someone else."
She grabbed him by the collar and sneered, nose-to-nose with him. "Do you know how long it took me to find someone who was able to read that book, let alone use it? Do you have any idea how rare a commodity you are? You are coming with me."
"Go to hell, [censored]."
She let go of him, her face a mask of mock surprise and hurt. "What a mouth on you!" She gave a curt nod to the woman with the gun, who gave the back of his knees a sharp kick, forcing him down to kneel.
"Let's fix that," Ligeia said, and extended a hand towards his face. She clenched her hand into a fist, and--
Augustus's throat clenched, and he was momentarily blinded by a burst of red light that erupted around his head. It felt as if something were wrenching out his windpipe and throttling him at the same time. There was a strange metallic rattle, and he felt something cold twist and wind its way around his neck, and tighten with a final clank!
Coughing and wheezing, he fell forward on his hands. He reached up to feel the strange heaviness on his neck.
Chains.
--------------------------------------------
"Maybe he's on his way here..." Aurelius tried to think if he'd told Augustus where he'd been going. He wasn't picking up the phone.
"What sort of training has your brother had in magic?" Azuria asked, flipping slowly through the book.
"None," Aurelius replied, shrugging. "He didn't even know he had the ability until that cape told him he had some latent talent."
"I'd hardly call this latent," the MAGI official said, gesturing up and down at him. "but what I find significant is that he was able to use this book. You see, the Daggerwheel Order was an obscure cabal of sorcerers known for being exceptionally paranoid and secretive. They eventually faded out, but not before making sure that their magic and knowledge would die with them-- they enchanted their texts so that no one would ever be able to even read them. It worked, but as your brother has so aptly demonstrated, there are some cracks. Every once in a while someone will be able to read one, but even then you have to have some magical aptitude to use it."
"Can you read it?" LittleBig asked.
"Only just," Azuria replied, scrutinizing a page carefully. "I've had training to see past glamours, but this one's a doozy. But... I think I've found the spell that was used on you, Mr. Cae."
"Does it say how to reverse it?" he asked eagerly, but she held up a please-shush-now finger without looking from the book.
"It's not a spell to call a guardian beast," she said after a moment, "but to create one. 'The creature is able to restore the most grievous of injury and ill, and is possessed of great will to protect and defend'. Or near as I can make out."
"There's your healing factor," LittleBig cheerily piped up, but Aurelius barely heard her.
"Create? A beast? Is that what I am, some kind of beast?" How like Augustus, to read the first few lines and skip to the juicy parts. It was how he approached any book, why not a book of sorcery? Details, details! "I'm going to kill him!" He dialed the phone again.
LittleBig tugged on his wrist. "Before we resort to fratricide, maybe she can find a counterspell."
"Well, without knowing exactly how your brother cast the original spell it'd be a bad idea for anyone but him to try undoing it," Azuria said. "No luck on the phone?"
"Nothing." Aurelius had a small, formless bad feeling, but chalked it up to having left an argument hanging. "I'd better just go back and get him."
"I'll keep the book here, if you don't mind," Azuria told him. "We have special facilities for the... inexperienced in magic that might be safer to do this in."
Aurelius nodded. "I'll bring him in. Kicking and screaming, and I don't know which one of us."
"Will you be okay for the walk back?" LittleBig asked him, pausing in the doorway. "I promised my family I'd be there for lunch today."
"As long as I don't wander into any more alleys," he replied with a small smile, unconsciously rubbing his claws together.
------------------------------------------
"Get up."
Augustus looked up, the chains clinking with the movement. He opened his mouth to say What did you do?! but no sound came out. He couldn't even make his mouth form the words.
"I said get up," Ligeia snapped again. "You're mute, not deaf."
The woman with the gun-- La Hibou, she had been called-- grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet. Augustus frantically pried his fingers into the chains, trying to make some noise, scream, swear, even whisper, to no avail.
"Stop it," La Hibou murmured in his ear, in a rich Haitian accent. "You will only choke yourself."
"Unless it's an incantation, you won't utter a single sound." Ligeia strutted a few steps away, looking boredly around. "Should have been more respectful, shouldn't we? Now get the book. We're leaving."
Had his voice not been so arrested, he would have, like an idiot, immediately blurted out that his brother had the book. For a very short moment he panicked, trying to think how to convey this, but it hit him: Without the book I'm useless to her. And she shut me up so I can't even tell her where it is.
He started laughing, a stuttering hiss of air. Ligeia narrowed her eyes at him.
"What's so funny? Where's the book?"
Augustus smirked nastily, still laughing, semi-hysterically. Ligeia responded with a sharp slap across his face.
"Where is the book?!"
He put a hand on his stinging cheek and pointed insolently at the trash can in the kitchen, only a few feet away. Ligeia turned and looked, and actually flipped the lid up, only to be greeted with the stench of food waste that was a few days past pickup. She made a delicate gagging noise and slammed the lid back down.
"Find it!" she screeched at the muscular man. "Hibou, watch him." And she stalked off into one of the bedrooms as the man started pawing through Aurelius's bookshelves, dumping the books row by row to the floor.
La Hibou steered him to sit on the couch and stood in front of him. She was a tall dark-skinned woman dressed in a tight black keyhole top and tight pants tucked into knee-high combat boots. She kept trained on him both a dispassionate gaze and a pistol of some sort, fitted with (and Augustus rather darkly thought it was appropriate) a silencer.
As the villains ransacked the apartment, he could only hope Aurelius didn't return, either with or without the book.
------------------------------------------
Aurelius had never been a bold man by nature, preferring to be inconspicuous and out of the way. This transformation made him anything but. On the walk home he felt fortunate that this was Paragon City, a place that gave whole worlds of new meaning to the term 'differently abled'-- if this had happened in any other town, he'd be getting a lot more than slightly curious looks. More like mobs with proverbial torches and pitchforks. His discomfort at this small amount of attention was offset by his anger, down to a simmer by the time he made the turn to his street.
He'd haul Augustus back to MAGI, get him to fix this under strict supervision, and then they could go on with the business of living. Unless reversing the spell meant reverting back to a body eaten away by cancer... life as a monster or death as a man?
He could just hear Augustus's take on that: "Only you, Aury, could turn one personal decision into a philosophical quagmire."
Well, it was his quagmire, and he would rather be human. His tail (liberated from the pant leg during a discreet trip to the mens room at City Hall) twitched with annoyance. The tufted appendage twitched with just about anything, he'd discovered, only staying still with sheer force of will; he just let it swing and lash for now, opting to concentrate instead on not tripping over his own feet.
One block away from the apartment building, it happened again.
A woman's frightened cry drew his attention directly ahead, where thirty feet away a pair of hoodlums had accosted a lady, one playing tug-of-purse with her while the other solicitously asked her to think of it as charity.
Aurelius felt his hands open and claws lengthen, and then snap. His body sprang unbidden at the purse-snatcher, long, powerful legs propelling him down the sidewalk at a fearsome speed. He was upon them in an instant, claws slashing down directly at the snatcher's head. The thug turned, just enough so that Aurelius's open palm caught him square in the face, instead of the deadly claws. Without missing a beat, he wrapped his hand around the mugger's head and swept him backwards, down hard to the pavement.
"Aw, geez, come on!" the other thug whined as Aurelius turned a glare and a growl in his direction. He spun and made a run for it, and Aurelius could feel his body coiling to give chase. He would have if the woman hadn't touched his arm.
"Thank you so much," she gushed. Aurelius shook his head, looked down the see the groaning would-be mugger flat on his back underneath him.
"Thank you, I don't know what I would've done," the woman was saying, tearfully clutching her purse. "My son needs this medicine I just got..."
Aurelius backed away, mentally reeling. What is going on here? Why am I doing this? Is it when--
The woman in danger. The businessman at gunpoint. '... and is possessed of great will to protect and defend...'
"I've got to get out of here," he said aloud, shaken to his core.
------------------------------------------
La Hibou put a hand to her ear, touching some sort of earpiece. "Ligeia," she called over her shoulder, without taking her eyes off Augustus. "Kregan says there's a cape outside headed this way."
Ligeia stormed back into the living room, flipping her hood back up. "Feo! We're leaving now."
"But señora, the book?" the short muscular man looked up from emptying out the kitchen cabinets.
"We'll have to get it later," Ligeia snapped, pinning Augustus with a narrow look. "Wherever he squirreled it away."
La Hibou urged Augustus to his feet and had him crawl out onto the fire escape after Ligeia. He tried to look around for the incoming cape, but La Hibou gave him a smart tap on the back of his head with the barrel of her silencer.
------------------------------------------
Aurelius looked up as he approached his building and stopped short.
There was something on the roof. A large, dark metallic lump. A helicopter? No rotors. He frowned, approaching the front. As he crossed in front of the alley between his building and the neighboring building, movement on the fire escape caught his eye.
------------------------------------------
"You should have let me stay and cloak the craft," La Hibou said as they climbed the steps to the top level.
"And let Kregan give our new recruit a concussion." Ligeia paused. "The cape! Move it!"
Augustus grabbed the railing and leaned out. A tall, pale figure stood out on the street, looking right at them-- with a face Augustus would know no matter how much the body around it changed. He tried to yell, to warn his brother, but nothing came out. La Hibou grabbed his arm and yanked him around, flashing her gun meaningfully, and thus propelled him to the roof.
Their vehicle was a squat vtol that looked in dire need of a new paint job. A tattooed man leaning against the hull saw them approach tossed aside a lit cigarette and opened a hatch.
"This the fresh meat?" he asked, eyeing Augustus the way a snake might a rabbit.
"Get us airborne, Kregan." Ligeia clearly was in no mood to banter. La Hibou pushed Augustus into the craft, roughly depositing him into a threadbare seat next to Feo. Kregan got into the cockpit and started the engines.
"Hibou, cloak us!" Ligeia barked, as the white-haired figure appeared at the edge of the roof.
Augustus couldn't even wonder how Aurelius had gotten up there so fast before La Hibou aimed her pistol at the swiftly approaching man. He lunged, grabbing her arm just as she squeezed a shot off. He saw Aurelius twist out of harm's way, barely missing a beat. The craft started to rise, and La Hibou withdrew her gun, adopting an expression of intense concentration. There was a faint electric hum that Augustus felt rather than heard, and outside Aurelius paused, squinting as if he couldn't see the big ugly vtol right in front of him.
She said cloak, Augustus thought. She's got some kind of stealth field. Good, maybe Aury will give up. They need me, but they'd have no qualms about killing--
A clawed hand latched onto the lip of the open hatch. Snarling, the thing that was his brother pulled himself up into the opening as the vtol angled up and away, moving still higher.
Augustus felt his jaw drop. Aurelius's normally gentle face was twisted into a expression of pure rage, his teeth-- fangs-- bared, a bestial growl audible above the whine of the engines. His claws left shallow silver furrows in the metal.
Feo, closest to the hatch, balled up a fist and rammed it into Aurelius's chest. The impact sent him hurtling, falling, and Augustus couldn't even scream, because at the height they were at, the impact would certainly be fatal.
Feo closed the hatch, the sound like a resounding final clap of thunder in his stunned ears.
The shattering of bones and taste of blood was the first thing Aurelius felt when he came back to himself, and the last for several unconscious moments. When he awoke, it was to the sounds of grinding and snapping within his own body. He came fully alert when his arm popped back into its socket with a jolt of pain.
"Gyeuuughh!" Hissing through clenched teeth (some of which were in the process of growing back), he pushed himself over and tried to sit up. He heard the sound of feet swiftly approaching. Instinctively he tensed, his claws, still extended, digging into the asphalt. Perfect, just perfect, all I need right now--
"Holy crap, man, you okay?" said a voice. "That was a hell of a gravity check!"
"G...Gus, they took h--" Aurelius coughed, nearly gagging on a tooth that had been broken completely off. He spat it out and let out another pained groan as his right femur re-aligned itself and his furred skin closed over the mended break.
"Nice healing factor," the voice said appreciatively. He felt a hand on his shoulder. "All right, just give it a minute, take it easy..."
"No, no, they took him!" Aurelius latched onto the other for support and tried to stand.
"Whoa, watch the claws, buddy." It was an man with pointed ears and long black hair tied back into a ponytail, wearing black-and-blue camo pants and a black leather jacket adorned with spiked shoulderplates.
"They took him!" Aurelius repeated, frantically scanning the skies, which were empty even of clouds. "How long was I out? They can't have gotten far."
"Slow down." The elf-eared man steadied him. "Who took who now?"
"My brother! It was-- a woman in a hood, and another had a gun, they got into a helicopter or something, it turned invisible--" Aurelius became aware that he was babbling and took a couple breaths. "I need to get to the police, or find some cape who can fly, before they get away."
"Invisible choppers," the other muttered. "cloaking device, probably. Lovely, a kidnapping on my watch. Let me guess, you jumped out? Looked like you came out of nowhere."
"I was pushed," Aurelius replied, rubbing the spot on his chest where the bulging-with-muscles man had hit him. He could clearly recall the sensation of his ribcage snapping like an eggshell. "Trying to-- to get him out." More like trying to eviscerate the kidnappers, he thought, horrified. Whatever force was hijacking his body seemed keener on punishing the offenders than paying much attention to the offended.
The cape fished a device out of a pocket and thumbed a switch. "This is Driscoll-- PPD and any airborne capes in the lower west side of Kings Row, got a kidnapping in progress. Cloaked aircraft, one victim--" he paused. "How many, and can you describe them?"
"Three. And a pilot. And yes." Aurelius looked at his hands. His claws weren't retracting as they had before.
"--Four perps, got a witness." Driscoll re-pocketed the radio and steered Aurelius to a curb, away from the blood-soaked parking space where he'd landed. "Thought you could take 'em on your own? Why didn't you call for backup?"
Aurelius sputtered wordlessly for a few seconds, trying to clear the maelstrom of shock, fear and anger swirling in his head. "I'm not a damned cape! I had no choice! It's this curse, I can't control it, and-- why won't these things retract?!" he snarled at his claws, and was taken aback at the harsh literal snarl in his voice. He had to calm down or someone might suspect he was some kind of rabid animal. They wouldn't be too far off.
"Don't get your breifs in a bunch, kid, it's an honest mistake in this town." Driscoll actually took a step back, glancing warily at the flashing claws. "This damned cape is just trying to help."
Aurelius sat down on the curb, taking a deep breath. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean... Augustus is the only one who can fix me. Lost my humanity and my brother all in one day. I'd be a lousy hero."
"Humanity's overrated," Driscoll muttered. "Cops are here. Don't worry, we'll get this sorted out."
Two squad cars and four more capes, three of which dropped out of the sky with considerably more grace than Aurelius had. Driscoll pointed out the spot in the sky where Aurelius had appeared to fall, and the flighted heroes were off again, sweeping through the air in search of the shielded craft. The cops started in on Aurelius immediately, and he answered as much as he could.
Could he describe the craft? Did it have any insignias? Could he describe the kidnappers? Were they armed? Yes on all counts, Aurelius was surprised to discover. It seemed that during these fits of his, his perception narrowed to a razor-sharp focus on whatever the threat was, and he could remember more details than he would have thought possible in such a crisis. He mechanically recited what the kidnappers had been wearing, what they looked like, in the back of his mind trying to recall if his brother had been hurt. The recollection of the victim was only a marginal awareness... fuzzy at best.
The on-foot cape, a dusky-skinned, red-haired beauty in a day-glo rainbow-hued leotard, was meanwhile talking animatedly with Driscoll, intermittently staring off into space and shaking her head. When the police paused in their questioning, she approached and leaned over.
"I'm Nytingale. With a Y," she said. "I'm soooo sorry about your brother, I wish I could do more... I've got some minor empathic abilities but it's not enough. It's almost impossible to sense someone if I can't see them..."
"It's okay." Aurelius was trying to listen to the cops as they talked to one of the flying capes. He heard snippets of no sign anywhere and probably already out of the city and not registering on scans.
"Sir," said one of the cops. "We'd like you to come down to the station to look at some--"
"No."
Driscoll raised a brow. "What?"
Aurelius turned and started back towards his apartment building. "I can't leave the apartment. It's too dangerous."
"We'd be happy to go with you--" Nytingale piped up.
Aurelius held up his still-extended claws. "Not for me. For everybody else."
He made it inside without incident and, unwieldy seven-inch claws notwithstanding, locked the door behind him and surveyed the damage.
Augustus's abductors had left the apartment in as much shambles as possible, given how little there actually was in it. Books littered the floor. Closets and drawers had been emptied, their contents strewn across overturned mattresses. Even the couch cushions had been unzipped and the foam padding pulled out.
Aurelius expected to react to this, fly into a fit of rage, but he found he couldn't. The energy just wasn't there. A sensation in his hands made him look down, only to see his claws finally withdrawing to what passed as normal, a more manageable half-inch length. He sighed, and immediately got to work, knowing that if he let himself stand still for one moment more that he'd scream.
-----------------------------
His brother yelled in pain as his body twisted, changed into something hideous and wild that barely resembled Aurelius. The monster wrapped its hands around his neck, choking him, snarling with anger: "You did this to me! This is all your fault!"
With a start, Augustus jerked awake, only to open his eyes to the real nightmare, the cold grip around his throat merely the muting chains. The craft had landed. La Hibou was staring directly at him from her seat across from him, her face impassive.
"Have a nice nap?" inquired Ligeia in a syrupy voice. Augustus felt bile rise in the back of his throat. He scowled at her.
"Oh, don't look so sour. You'll be earning your keep soon enough." She gestured for Feo to open the hatch.
La Hibou and Kregan manhandled him out into an open-air hangar. The air was thick, hot and muggy, smelling of salt; the faint, crisp early autumn chill was conspicuously absent, which meant he was far away from Paragon City.
He didn't care. Aurelius was dead.
He caught sight of Feo, the squat muscular brute who had--
Augustus wrenched out of his captors' grasps and lunged at Feo, and managed to land a blow right across Feo's jaw.
It was like hitting a boulder. Augustus didn't even have time to register the pain in his hand before Kregan grabbed him by the shoulders and yanked him clean off his feet, slamming him to the oily concrete floor and knocking the breath out of him. Then he felt Kregan's fist go across his face, felt blood well up in his nose.
"Stupid punk," Kregan said, laughing, standing over him. "Ought to teach you some manners."
"Kregan!" Ligeia snapped. "Just get him inside. We need to locate that book."
Kregan made to haul Augustus to his feet, but La Hibou stepped between them and, with surprising gentleness, helped him up.
"Feo is a mutant," she told him in an undertone as they walked towards a door. "Made of stone, he is. You cannot hurt him like that. It would be best for you not to fight us."
"Sure would be fun, though." Kregan chuckled. "Look at 'im. Too skinny. Could use a good thrashing. Toughen him up."
They led him into a building that looked as if it would flatten with the first strong wind that came along. The interior was only marginally better-- the main room held a central table, a fireplace and some battered furnishings. Ligeia ordered him put into a small room off the main one. There was no window, a thin mattress on the floor in one corner, and a rickety table and chair in another. A single incandescent bulb was the only source of light.
"You had better hope we find that book, little wizard. Without it, you are useless to me. And I dispose of useless things." And with that, Ligeia closed and locked the door.
Without the book I'm useless to her, he thought.
Without my brother, I'm useless to me.
-----------------------------
There was a knock on the door.
Aurelius dumped a double handful of pieces of dishes in the trash and tried to look through the peephole, only to scrape a horn on the door. He sighed. "Who is it?"
"Me. LittleBig."
He blinked and opened the door. There the tiny superhero stood, fiddling with her goggles. "I heard what happened."
"How did you find me?"
LittleBig gave him a half-grin. "Um, you're in the phone book. With an unusual last name."
"...oh." Aurelius felt like an idiot. "Sorry. Come in."
She looked around as he shut the door behind her. "Wow. They really did a number in here."
"You should have seen it before I started cleaning up," he said. "I'm kind of in shock here. I mean two days ago I was-- I was human and now all this?"
"Yeah, crazy things happen in this city but most civvies don't expect it to happen to them." LittleBig casually righted the overturned recliner and looked back at him over her shoulder. "Don't worry. We'll find a way to get your brother back."
"I take it you've been assigned to my case," he said.
"Assigned?" She folded her arms and gave him an odd look. "You have some weird ideas about how capes operate. We kind of assign ourselves to do things."
"I've been a little out of the loop the last few years," he replied. "Being stuck in the hospital tends to isolate you."
"You said you were sick. Was it serious?"
Aurelius paused.
LittleBig held up her hands. "Sorry, it's none of my business."
"It was cancer." Aurelius shrugged and busied himself picking up pans. "That's why my brother was so desperate."
"I'm sorry."
Another uncomfortable shrug. "It's okay. I just don't like to seem like I'm going for the sympathy vote."
"I understand." LittleBig took a step, her boots crunching on something. "Whoops. I, uh, found your phone."
"It was already like that," he assured her. "At least I know why he wasn't answering. I'm going to have to ask one of my neighbors if I can use theirs to order a new phone from someplace."
"I'm pretty sure there's a Radio Shack or something a few blocks over," she said.
"It's not safe for me to go outside." He stacked the pans in the cupboard and stood to face her. "I'm a danger to myself and others."
"...how do you mean?"
"This thing my brother turned me into-- I may not be a cape but this beast certainly thinks I am. If I happen to see someone in danger, it takes over. It goes diving claws-first into the fray and doesn't even bother asking me if I like getting stabbed or falling five stories." He was grumbling now, his tail thrashing to echo his mood. "It happened twice again on the way back home. I have no control over this monster in me. It's a miracle I didn't kill anyone."
LittleBig put her hands on her hips. "So... what, you're just going to hole up in your apartment feeling sorry for yourself, and hope the supervillains just let your brother go?"
"What other choice do I have?"
"Plenty." She marched over to him and frowned up at him. "I know someone who can help you get your powers under control. Believe me, this city has no shortage of people who'd be willing to help you if you'd think to ask. I know what it's like to feel like you're totally on your own, but I got over it, and so will you. Am I making myself clear, Aurelius Cae?"
He stepped back. "Yes, ma'am."
"There's nothing more we can do. The best thing right now is to make him comfortable."
Aurelius would always remember the look on his fraternal twin brother's face when the doctor at Crowne Memorial said those words. Blank, stark shock, a brief flash of denial, Gus's tanned complexion going pale. Aury himself had no reaction. He'd known it was coming. Tried so many times to tell Gus, too.
The trouble with Augustus, though, was that he wasn't a quitter. Aury was just... tired... and was ready for it all to be over. To have his last days be calm and quiet and as peaceful as possible. He was tired of the chemo, the false alarms that a donor had been found, the machines and wires and IVs and the smell, that thin, sour hospital smell. Gus wouldn't have any of it-- Aury was just giving up too easy, he'd say, and march off to look for some option they hadn't tried yet.
Which was exactly what he was going to do if Aury couldn't convince him to park his overeager behind for just a minute.
"I'll go back to the library," Gus said when the doctor had left. "New medical journals come in all the time, we could--"
"Augustus." Aury dredged up enough strength to put a hard edge to his voice. "Take me home. I want to die in my own bed with my nose in a book, and I want you to stop throwing money into this bottomless pit. It's not getting any shallower, trust me. I'd like for you to be able to afford to buy food after I'm gone."
"Aury, don't talk like--"
"Just. Take. Me. Home."
He felt bad later for snapping. Gus had given so much since their father had passed on, and he knew for a fact that the trust fund was shrinking faster than puddles in the Sahara. Gus was supposed to go to college on that money. The condo in Founders' Falls was a distant memory. Now the brothers shared an apartment in one of the rougher sections of Kings Row, a cramped two-room affair that was clean enough for a couple of bachelors, likely because neither of them had spent much time in it. Gus had endured this drastic downsize in lifestyle without a single complaint. Aury was phrasing an apology in his head on the ride home, but Gus cut him off as he helped him into the apartment.
"I know what you're about to say, but don't."
"I was testy. It was uncalled for."
"You're sick. I think you'd have been well within your rights to chuck a bedpan at me."
"Only if I hadn't used it yet."
Gus snorted and helped Aury ease into a plush leather recliner-- the sole reminder of the posh penthouse of their pre-leukemia days. Everything else had been sold once the medical bills started rolling in. Their new furnishings could only be called spartan at best, dormitory at worst. There was a new couch, though-- and Aury suspected Gus himself had had to assemble the thing partly due to the offputting slant the legs had.
Old habit kicked in and Aury reached for the remote, only to discover that the TV displayed only static. Gus cringed when Aury turned a questioning glance on his brother.
"Had to drop the cable. Nobody was watching it anyway," Gus said.
"Had enough of it in the hospital," Aury replied, and sank further into the chair, still weary from the trip. Wearier, rather. He was in a constant state of exhaustion to begin with. The walk from the elevator might well have been a marathon. He switched the set off and discarded the remote. "Good riddance anyhow, nothing but bad news and worse soaps."
They were silent for a few moments. Gus sat on the couch, fidgeted, then got back up again. "Want something to eat?"
"Not right now. Maybe later." Eating was an adventure in nausea and upredictability, when he felt like eating at all. If he could keep something down, though, he'd use it as something to take his meds with. Anything more was pushing it.
"Right. Well... I'm going to go get some dinner, I'll... I'll save you some in the fridge." Gus ambled towards the door, keys still in hand. Aury could hear him hesitate behind him, shoes scuffing on the hardwood floor. A heavy pause stretched out.
Aury didn't turn around. Gus finally left.
Neither brother could say who was having the worse time.
-----------------------------
Dying was an exercise in ennui for Aury. He spent most of the next three days reading, sleeping, and waiting for his brother to put in an occasional appearance so that they could talk. He knew Gus was still running around trying to dig up a miracle, no matter how fiercely he denied it. He was home so rarely that no excuse of grocery shopping or laundry would cover it. Aury was, in fact, insulted that he thought he could lie to his own twin, but he could let it go. The infliction of helplessness was just as bad as leukemia.
It was getting old, however, and Aury wasn't of a mind to be patient much longer. It was going to be over very soon, he could feel it. He wanted Gus to be there, not discover his cold body hours after the fact.
It was about two in the morning when he heard the door open. Aury shook himself out of the light doze he'd sunk into and fought to wrench his eyes open.
"Gus." His voice came out as a dry croak. He slowly muscled himself into a sitting position in his bed. "Gus, you there?"
"Aury."
It was Gus, his figure in the bedroom doorway outlined by the dim lamp at Aury's bedside. He was holding something and staring at Aury with an oddly wide-eyed, desperate expression.
"What's wrong?" Aury was having trouble sitting upright.
"I found a way."
Aury frowned, squinting in the low light. His body complained stridently, begging for rest. He wouldn't be able to fight it much longer. "What are you talking about?"
"I found a way to save you." Gus's voice was just above a whisper.
"No, no..." Aury's frustration warred with his exhaustion and he struggled just to form words.
"Just relax, you're going to be all right now." The thing Gus was holding was a book. He opened it, and Aury could swear he felt the temperature in the room drop a few degrees. A sudden surge of inexplicable fear lent him a moment of strength.
"No, Gus, listen to me, I just want you to be--"
Gus turned a few pages with a papery crackling. "You're going to live." And he began to speak, strange words, strange rhythms. Aury's strength at last failed, and a darkness that wasn't sleep overcame him.
He was sure it was death, for what else could make his soul feel as if it were twisting in on itself?