Episode: 2.5

--- Molly ---

“So… you plan to teach me… magic?” she asked, the giddiness refusing to fade even long after the stars had burned themselves out, a feeling strengthened by the fact she could still feel the cool-warmth beneath her skin whenever she reached for it.

“That’s what I said.” The boy nodded, going through a pile of her clothes.

On the one hand she felt mildly embarrassed that a boy she’d known for less than a day was going through her things, on the other she had to agree his clothes weren’t exactly ‘modern fashion,’ even if she herself knew little to nothing about fashion.

Honestly, she was lucky he was small enough to wear her clothes despite being older than her. Especially after he walked out of the shower completely unbothered by the fact that he was naked save a towel wrapped around his waist, at least until she threw her baggiest jeans at him, and told him to get dressed, all with a blush on her face.

Besides, regardless of decency, getting him something other than his faded and worn clothes to wear was more than a fair payment for saving her life, unlocking her magic, and helping her with her… other issues.

She paused before mentally reaching into herself and grinning like a loon, as she heard a faint tune in the back of her head.

(Nope, magic ‘s still there.)

“You do know if you keep doing that, you’re going to tire yourself out, right?” the boy asked not even looking at her.

“Huh?” she blinked.

“Right.” the boy pinched the bridge of his nose, before grabbing a random black shirt and putting it on, “second lesson: conservation of magic, and self-sustainment.”

The boy turned to her, “What do you think that means?”

Her eyes drifted to the purple and pink flower pattern on the right side of the shirt, something the boy definitely noticed given the way he was posing in front of her closet mirror, “Is that like the law of conservation of energy?”

“Mm, for our versions of spell craft… No.” the boy corrected, as he slipped his white button up on over the shirt, while being sure to leave it open, before striking a pose, and saying, “Fabulous.”

“Then what is it?” she prodded, after the boy spent a moment too long admiring his own reflection.

“Ah, yes.” The boy turned on his heels, literally, “First off, and you’re going to want to remember this, you know how you killed yourself?”

Her good mood died, viciously.

(Cold… numb… alone… voices.)

“Y-yes.” Her voice cracked.

“Well,” The boy began as he started sorting through her clothes again, “when I patched you up, I had to use magic to fill in a few of the gaps, you know blood loss, spiritual trauma, brain damage, things like that, standard affair all in all.”

“Okay…” She’d already managed to piece that together.

“Now, normally magic just causes a… mental fatigue in those who use it, but since your body has been infused with magic to the point of resurrection it works a little differently.”

“Differently how?” she asked cautiously.

“Your magic is what’s keeping you alive.”

“But… I…” a cold feeling replaced the warmth in her chest, “Was I… Was I better off with my magic locked?”

“No, like I said magic is the only thing keeping you alive,” The boy explained a little too clinically, “with it locked you’d have just broken down into a rotting corpse.”

She ran a hand through her hair, “But I’ve only had my magic for like an hour! How, how was I alive if my magic was sealed until your little… show?!”

“First, don’t call it a ‘little’ show.” the boy frowned, “Trust me, you’ve no idea how much was going on in the background of that performance.”

The boy shook his head before sighing.

“And second, I was able to unlock your magic so easily because I’d been supplying my own for the last twelve hours. Unlocking it lets you live independently of me.” The boy calmly met her panicked gaze, “Unless you wanted to be enslaved?”

“Wh-what?” she gasped, “No!”

“You sure, because I don’t kink shame.”

Her face scrunched up in confusion, “What?”

The boy glanced off to the side, before looking at her with narrowed eyes, “How old are you exactly?”

She met his gaze for a moment before answering, “Sixteen.”

“Never mind then.”

The boy said that a little too quickly, but she had enough worries without digging into whatever subject he was trying to drop.

Her mind ran over the boy’s words.

(My magic is the only thing keeping me alive… And I can run out of magic…)

“So… should I avoid using magic then.”

The boy rolled his eyes, before groaning for an obnoxious minute that left her eye twitching.

“Why would I be teaching you to use magic, if it were better you don’t use magic?”

“Um…” she couldn’t come up with an answer, especially with the way he glared at her.

“Your magic is a pool of energy, that grows larger the more you use it.” The boy explained, before sitting on her bed and crossing his legs, “The closer to empty you get, the faster your growth, the downside being for someone like you…”

The way he was eyeing her as he trailed off, told her he wanted her to answer.

“If, if I hit empty, I die?”

The boy watched her for a moment before sighing again. “Correct.”

She winced, knowing she did something wrong, just not entirely sure what it was.

“Thanks to your situation… you’re already dancing to the masquerade’s tune, meaning even if you keep your head down there are a number of radars you’re going to ping off of, such as this ‘Sanctuary’ you mentioned earlier.” The boy explained, his serious demeanor contrasting heavily with what she’d seen of him in the last couple of hours.

“I’ll respect whatever choice you make, and try to support you through it, but in the end, your options are be content with the light buffer you have while trying to hide from danger, or to build that buffer up and learn how to use it when danger comes looking for you.”

That… that was something she actually had to take a moment and think about.

(He’s right… whether I like it or not I am a Deviant… and if even half of what he’s insinuated he’s been through is true, let alone what I know is true about Deviant treatment…)

(Pain… Fear… Imprisonment… Death.)

She shook her head.

“I’ll… I’ll keep learning… for now.” She hastily added, not wanting to commit herself so thoroughly she couldn’t back out if these lessons went somewhere, she couldn’t follow.

The boy watched her for another moment and nodded, before clapping his hands together.

“Alright then, back to the original lesson, the Conservation of magic isn’t the concept of indestructible magic, like energy or mass, so much as it is understanding where the line between the magic you can play with, and the magic that keeps you alive is.”

“Okay…” she nodded following along.

“Alright, this is a lesson you need to learn, it will be unpleasant, but long-term you need to understand this, otherwise it will bite us both in the ass at some point.” The boy warned her before pointing into the air and forming a small orb of swirling violet and green light. “Reach for your magic and try forming another light.”

She was nervous, knowing that pushing her magic too hard could kill her…

A part of her wasn’t sure she actually wanted to learn magic if meant risking her life.

Another larger part remembered how she felt after casting that first spell, the cool-warmth in her veins, the sheer joy at knowing… at knowing there was something special about her…

She closed her eyes, before clasping her hands together and pushing the energy towards them as she tried to recreate the spell she performed earlier. It took her a few tries, each one detonating a little too early, and not creating anywhere near enough stars.

(Maybe, he was doing something with that little song and dance… or at least the end bit.)

Half-way through her fourth attempt, she felt a cold creeping wrongness across her skin, one that had her instinctively reaching to pull the power back into her.

“Don’t.” The boy stopped her with a stern voice.

For a moment she considered stopping, despite his order. After all anything that felt so, so wrong couldn’t be right. She also remembered he warned her this would be unpleasant, but that there was something she needed to understand.

(And I understand, this is wrong!)

“Sorry, just a little more, and it’ll be alright.” He encouraged with a gentle smile.

Nodding, she let loose a shaky breath before pushing her magic once more, and once more- (Wrong, wrong, WRONG!)

“That’s enough.”

She didn’t need to be told twice, as every drop of magic she could get a hold of poured back into her. Only…

It wasn’t enough.

The wrongness was still there clinging to her skin. It may not have been as bad as it was when she was actively pushing against it, but it was still there. (And it is wrong!)

“What you’re feeling is… a lack of life, for a lack of better phrasing.” The boy explained, his voice anchoring her as she tried with all her will not to think about the wrongness.

“Hold on, you’re having trouble focusing.” He placed a hand on her cheek, and slowly the wrongness began to fade as the (wonderful) cool-warmth took its place.

She almost whimpered when he pulled away, scared the wrongness would return.

“As I was saying, our existences are something of a grey area, we are people who died, and did not stay dead.” The boy paused waiting for her reaction.

She hugged her legs, because she really needed a hug a right now.

“We’re, we’re Deadmen?”

The boy grimaced, “Yes, and no. We’re more like… the line between Deadmen and the living, than anything else.”

“W-what do you mean?”

“Think of us as…” the boy looked around the room, “Do you know Schrodinger’s cat?”

“The, the thought experiment?”

The boy watched her for a moment.

“Right.” The boy nodded with a slight smile, before continuing, “It’s not entirely accurate, but like the cat we can be considered hypothetically, both alive and dead.”

“H-how so?” she latched on, trying to distract herself from the… unpleasantness from a few minutes ago. And while she may have trouble accepting magic as ‘magic’, she could get behind the actual science and hypotheticals.

“Well, in Schrodinger’s cat, the variables for the cat’s life are two true or false statements: the poison, and whether the cat is observed. In our case the decisive variable is more of a percentage, giving us a little more wiggle room.”

“A… percentage?”

“Alright, thanks to the way magic is stitching you together, you need a minimal amount of magic to live. That magic is not being spent to hold you together, so much as it is passively pulling you together.”

“Like… a ‘magical’ gravity?”

The boy thought it over for a second, before nodding, “Not entirely correct, but close enough for now.”

“Unlike other… Arcane, (That’s your word, yes?) when we hit a certain point, we don’t feel the telltale mental exhaustion others do when they’re reaching their limits, instead we feel…” He trailed off, but she knew exactly what he was referencing, and it sent a shudder through her, just thinking about the, the… wrongness.

“We feel death’s embrace.” The boy finished with a forlorn sigh.

It took her a moment, but she eventually realized the boy was lost in his own thoughts. So, she took the time to try and piece together what he’d said, before drawing his attention back.

“So, what you’re saying is, after we start feeling the, the…” she swallowed, “embrace… the closer to empty we get, the less… alive, we are?”

It was both a horrifying and comforting thought.

Horrifying because she was essentially trading her life for power, something that made her feel distinctly inhuman.

Comforting because she still had some… ‘wiggle room’ to use her new-found magic, meaning she didn’t have to give up what made her special.

“Close.” the boy nodded, “Above the threshold we are alive, even if touched by death. Below it however we more closely resemble something that is dead, but with just enough life to keep it moving. In both cases we can be considered both alive and dead.”

“Schrodinger’s cat… sort of.” She got what he meant about it not being entirely accurate, but there wasn’t much else she could think of that was considered both alive and dead.

“My point exactly.” The boy smiled.

She couldn’t help but frown, now that her excitement had been dampened and her fears assuaged by the boy.

There was something bugging her, and she couldn’t quite place it.

It had something to do with the boy, she knew that much, but…

(What is it?)

(He’s been fairly upfront with me about everything…)

(I don’t think he’s trying to pull a fast one, he doesn’t have that same… edge the kids at school do…)

Her face scrunched up in thought.

(Alright, let’s look at this objectively…)

(What do I know about-)

She blinked for a moment, as she finally realized… she didn’t know the boy’s name. And if he was going to help her, or had helped her… (That won’t do…)

“If you’re going to be teaching me?” she couldn’t help but phrase that part as a question, “Then shouldn’t I know your name?” she tried, not wanting to point out the fact she hadn’t really asked him for it yet.

The boy’s eyes widened, as he seemed to take on that manic grin of his, “Oh, oh, you’re right!”

“Ooh… But I’ve had many names, so many I’ve forgotten half of them!” the boy laughed, before tapping his chin in thought, “One of my titles, perhaps? No, that’s too formal for a friend. So, one of my aliases proper? How about, Memoriam Mortuorum? No, no, too aspect-y and a bit of a mouthful. How about a joke alias? I always loved those.”

Her face scrunched up as she tried to process the boy’s… word vomit, until she eventually pieced together, something important. “Y-you’re not going to tell me your real name?”

The thought hurt her, especially when she took into account what little she’d realized about him and his life, and what he claimed about it.

The boy paused his rambling, before staring at her with those eyes that seemed to shift between a ghastly violet and venomous green.

“What is a name?” the boy eventually asked.

She blinked, not expecting that question.

“A name is…”

(I feel like there’s something else to this…)

“A name is what people call you?” she tried, despite being sure that wasn’t the answer he was looking for.

The strange boy chuckled before giving her a grin that was just a little too wide.

“Exactly.”

Once more her face scrunched up in confusion.

“What?”

“A name is what people call you.” The boy grinned as he crossed his arms behind his head and leaned back, “And if a name identifies you and only you, then isn’t that name as much your real name as your first?”

(Sort of like how people change their names when they get married.)

(I guess that makes sense…)

The boy watched her for a moment, and she guessed her acceptance of his answer must have shown, because he gave her a nod and a smile before going back to her clothes.

An example she decided to follow, as she searched for something at least semi-masculine.

It was nearly ten minutes later she realized he still hadn’t given her his name.