That was a new perspective on the nature of being a shifter. Riordan could practically feel himself whirling about internally to reorient to that new thought. His badger as part of himself, unalienable and always connected.

Sure, he’d always considered his badger to be that to some degree. No one was going to be able to steal his badger and he could always find it, but Riordan had also had that part of him inaccessible before, such as when he’d first travelled to the spirit realm and again now that his magic was fucked up. He was used to reaching for his badger, pulling it forward as his human side stepped back, to initiate the shift.

If Riordan thought of himself as the badger though, as always being able to be the badger, to think and feel from the perspective of one, regardless of shape, then he didn’t need to pull. He just needed to step forward and back at the same time. That would be one hell of a mental trick, but it would also eliminate that sensation of needing to know exactly where inside himself his badger lived. Because, yes, he reached for a specific spot when calling it, but did he need to? If his badger was really himself, it was everywhere inside him.

This realization wasn’t some instant fix for Riordan, of course. It wasn’t like he had an epiphany and suddenly he could shift again. It still felt like progress after butting his head against his current magical and emotional mess for the last few days. If nothing else, retraining his whole way of thinking about how he shifted seemed like it would be easier than trying to subtly alter his current progress to make up for the changes. Doing something radically different than his habit came more easily than something just a bit different. He had six decades of experience fighting that small change.

He raised a hand and scrubbed it through his hair roughly, chasing off the muddled thoughts. “Ugh. I get what you mean about being the same as my badger, I think, but did you really have to give me yet another thing to think about, Mark?”

Mark threw his head back and laughed out loud. The contrast between the laughing young man and his previous haunted expression made Riordan’s heart hurt, but he respected Mark too much to call attention to it. Mark knew he had trauma to work through. He just needed to get through those early emotions, to just sit with his feelings for a bit, before trying to fix it all.

“I’m starting to understand what Frankie means when she says that there is no one truth when it comes to magic,” Mark answered. “So many of the rules of magic seem to be ones we made up and enforced just to make magic more predictable. So, sorry, but being a shaman seems to come with a bunch of thought exercises.”

“Great,” Riordan grumbled with exaggerated grumpiness. “Thinking has never been my strong suit.”

“You sell yourself short,” Mark countered. “I mean, I don’t really know you that well yet. It feels like I should, with all the drama we just went through, but there’s a lot I don’t really know. But I do know that you think about things a lot. And what you learn when you are thinking on things supports your instincts afterwards.”

Riordan could only grunt at that, a bit flustered by the strange compliment. “You mean I think myself in circles and then run off half-cocked and have to brute force my way through trouble.”

“That too. You seem to have a gift for coming through impossible situations just by tackling each issue in order, no matter how unsolvable.”

That was an uncomfortable truth, both because it made Riordan sound way more special than he was and because Riordan really should have been dead right now. He might hate being a special snowflake death mage, but he should have ended up a bog-standard death mage after grabbing control of the ritual to keep it from blowing up. He’d known that at the time and made peace with the fact that he was going to end up corrupted and insane. If the process itself hadn’t killed him, his friends would have had to put him down after he came out of it.

And then spirits meddled and Riordan was still alive and as sane as he ever was.

Maybe that was his problem. He hadn’t meant to survive any of the shit he’d done.

Complaining about it now was petty and ungrateful. Riordan couldn’t honestly say he’d have preferred death over this current situation, but it certainly would have been a hell of a lot more simple. Dying was easy. Living with consequences was hard.

Something of Riordan’s thoughts must have shown on his face because Mark changed the subject. “So, is Daniel around?”

The young shaman tried to sound nonchalant as he asked after the ghost, but really didn’t manage it. Riordan snorted, amused, and shot a glance to his invisible friend, who had been hovering nearby the whole time. Riordan didn’t mean to exclude Daniel from conversations, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped when Riordan really needed to talk to someone who couldn’t sense Daniel.

The fact that Mark asked after Daniel was a sign of his empathy and inclusivity. Once Mark had learned Daniel was around, he tried to include the ghost, and that was even before he’d met Daniel in the spirit realm. And kissed him to try and shock Daniel out of being overwhelmed. Riordan wasn’t at all astute about sexuality, but even he took that as a sign that the shaman wasn’t entirely straight.

“Yeah, Daniel’s here. He’s been keeping an eye on me while I mope about,” Riordan answered Mark. “He’s a good friend.”

Mark looked around them by habit, even if they both knew he couldn’t see Daniel. Riordan made a nod towards the place where Daniel sat mid-air watching them and Mark focused on that particular patch of nothing.

“Hi, Daniel,” Mark said, just as sociable with his invisible guest as his visible one, “I didn’t mean to ignore you. I’ve just been a bit tired and spacey lately.”

Daniel smiled at Mark unseen. “Tell him I said ‘hi’ back. I’ve seen him crying from nightmares, so yeah, I imagine he’s tired.”

Riordan dutifully relayed the greeting but left off the bit about watching Mark sleep, though he noted it himself. Daniel had taken on the task of worrying about others as his way of dealing with his own situation. Nothing would fix being dead, but Daniel could potentially help Riordan or Mark and that would be worthwhile.

Mark looked grateful at the greeting, more of his cheerful self showing through his fatigue as he smiled. “I’m glad you decided to stay, Daniel. When Riordan told us that you were still around by choice, it was honestly a relief. You’ve been of great assistance in our investigations and deserve some closure before whatever time you choose to move on.”

“Well,” Daniel replied, even if Mark couldn’t hear him, “I’m not sure what to do with that. Thanks, I guess? I mostly didn’t want to leave because I’m not done existing and interacting with the world. Plus Riordan is hopeless without me.”

Riordan couldn’t stop his amused snort at that last bit, drawing a quizzical look from Mark. He paraphrased, “Daniel’s just saying that he’s grateful for your kind words. And also disparaging me.”

“As he should,” Mark agreed. He was finally starting to sound more like himself, though Riordan had no doubt the kid had a long road ahead of him in dealing with his trauma.

The thing that normal people didn’t get was how much of mental health was a process. You picked up a thought or memory and sat with it. Felt it. Processed what it meant to you. And then either set it down to be looked at again later or dealt with fixing what could be fixed while acknowledging that sometimes those thoughts or memories would pop up again anyway. Negative memories left deep impressions. It was a survival instinct, designed to help identify threats and stay away from them.

Too bad that survival instinct didn’t translate well to civilized trauma.

Riordan would have loved to be able to forget singular events that didn’t have meaningful survival lessons to be gained from searing them into his memory, but unless he was going to let a mental mage or a spirit muck around in his head, he hardly had a choice. And if he was honest with himself, Riordan could admit that he liked his mental scars. They were deep parts of his current self-identity. Even if he could have gone back to being an idealistic wannabe hero like he’d once been, Riordan wouldn’t. He’d earned those bad memories.

Plus, if Riordan forgot those who had died, who would remember them? There was something to be said for being a memory keeper, holding on to those who no longer existed in this world, taking lessons from their lives.

That thought reminded Riordan of Quinn’s offer of death magic training. The governmentally approved death mage had brought it up as an option in the middle of their investigation, wanting to use Riordan as a tradition keeper of sorts. Someone to preserve all the tricks and knowledge Quinn had gathered through his work and sacrifice, even if Riordan wouldn’t have been able to use most of it directly, aside from the more abstract knowledge and techniques.

Riordan wondered if the offer still stood now that he was potentially able to use death magic. Would Quinn think that the temptation to use some of the nastier aspects of death magic would be too much for Riordan? Hell, would Riordan actually be tempted? He was hardly known for being the most picky about his methods, especially in emergencies, though he liked to think that after all the shit he’d done and learned from, he wouldn’t go as far as murdering people specifically for power.

Ugh. Riordan was letting his thoughts go back to well-worn and unproductive circles. He had enough concrete shit to process without adding in too many theoreticals. He flopped back in the sun-baked sun, closing his eyes as he let the warm wash over him.

“Do either of you ever just wish your brain would shut up?” Riordan asked, the words slipping out without really meaning it.

Daniel started to answer, but paused when Mark spoke up instead. “I would have said no,” Mark stated sadly, “but the last few days have taught me why someone might want that.”

“Gods, he’s so well-adjusted,” Daniel sighed dramatically. “I was going to say, ‘all the damn time.’ Even as a normal college student, I catastrophized constantly. I wasn’t a complete neurotic mess, but I was certainly edging that way, along with so many other overwhelmed and overworked students.”

“Ah,” Riordan replied with a smile. “So trauma and existential anxiety. Yeah, I’d say you guys get it. Or I get you. I don’t know. I guess there’s something to the whole ‘misery loves company’ thing when it comes to this shit.”

Mark stared out towards the creek and the dunes and lake beyond. His voice took on that contemplative shaman tone again. “When you are working through tangled emotions and difficult thoughts, it can be incredibly lonely and overwhelming. How does anyone get through this, you wonder. What’s wrong with me that it is so difficult. Everyone else makes it look so easy. Except then you meet those people who get it because no matter how they look on the surface, they are just as tangled inside. They are struggling too. And they share the journey, walking beside you as you all stumble forward in life, hoping you don’t fall and fail in a way that you can’t recover from.”

He turned his gaze back towards Riordan and the empty air where Daniel hovered. “Knowing you aren’t alone is such a huge relief on its own. Knowing that someone understands your experience and acknowledges it is valid to feel the way you do. But it’s also painful, because it means that someone else is suffering, just as you are suffering, all tangled up inside. A very bittersweet feeling.”

Riordan nodded. Those words flowed through him as truth. He repeated, “Yes, a bittersweet feeling.”