Elias says nothing as they navigate through the Cabinet, oddly quiet even by his own standards. Normally, he and Nemesis can spend hours in silence without either of them feeling strange, but now, Nemesis feels as though something is horribly wrong. The tension is building, and something is about to snap.

They sneak through the back of the main hall and into an empty gallery, which surely used to house a fascinating exhibit, but currently houses only dust and a few display cabinets covered with white cloths. Elias stops, pressing both of his hands to the wall, as if feeling for something. Nemesis can’t help but stare, because Elias’s hands really are quite distinctive, long and thin and distinctly spider-like. He’d know those hands anywhere.

Finally, Elias finds what he’s looking for, and the shadows around him churn as he presses his fingers down. A section of the wall slides away, revealing what looks like a hidden and incredibly large broom closet.

Elias gestures towards it. “After you.”

“Are we really doing this again, Elias?” Nemesis laughs. “What is it with you and broom closets?”

“Maybe I like them.” He raises an eyebrow. “Or maybe someone really stupid, I forget what his name was, told me that they’re a good place to hide in when you want to have a secret conversation?”

“Elias, I was eleven. You can’t expect me to have been a competent spy at eleven.”

“Excuses, excuses.” Elias pats him on the shoulder. “Get in the closet.”

“Yes, sir.” He gets in the closet. He could never resist such a politely worded request.

Elias follows him in, closing the door behind them with the same method. As always, when he’s forced to use artifice for anything whatsoever, he looks grim afterwards.

The closet is roughly five by ten feet, mostly empty except for a few brooms in the corner, remarkably empty of dust and stains considering what it is. The Cabinet even keeps its closets in immaculate condition, it seems. Elias sighs and sits cross-legged on the floor, gesturing for Nemesis to join him - which he does.

“There a reason we’re crowding into a closet?” He asks.

“I mean, we can just talk out in the open, if you insist.” Elias rolls his eyes. “I just thought it might be harder for her to find me this way.”

Nemesis frowns. Elias is behaving his usual self, which is alarming considering that he’s completely alone with Nemesis. Normally, he’s not half this grumpy, and there’s a genuine sting to his comments.

“Elias…” He sighs, trailing off. Surely there’s something he could say here, anything, but his mind fails to come up with the words. Instead, he deflates, unable to look his companion in the eyes. Something is very wrong, and it can’t not be his fault. “...I’m sorry.”

He feels Elias’s hand on his arm, pulling him towards him, encouraging him to lean on his shoulder. Elias’s hair has gotten long enough that it curls around his face, obscuring his vision. He’d let it grow out like this before, when he was at school, but he had always cut it when it was time to return home. It was easier to keep it neat that way, he said, and Fitzroy would get angry if he looked too unkempt. Now, it seems like Elias has given up.

Not that that upsets Nemesis at all. A neat and tidy Elias is barely Elias at all.

Nemesis feels Elias’s hand idly running through his own hair, long fingers finally resting just above his ear. “I’m not sure what you’re apologizing about.”

“A lot of things.” So many things he can’t think of where to begin. “I haven’t been a good friend.”

“I haven’t given you a chance to be.” The response is more immediate than he’d expected it to be. “I know what you’re here to say, and the fault in my recent distance rests squarely on my own shoulders.”

Nemesis can’t resist cracking a smile. “Actually, the only thing resting on your shoulders right now is me.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Is Nemesis imagining it, or does Elias’s hand shift when he says that? “It always used to be the other way around, didn’t it?”

“I’m not the one who initiated this, first off. This was your choice.”

Through Elias’s hair, he can just barely see him start to smile. “I guess it was. I mean, it makes more sense this way, since I’m taller than you now.”

Nemesis chuckles. Throughout their childhoods, Nemesis had always been taller by an inch or so - until, at seventeen, Elias finally overtook him by a similarly negligible margin. Normally, Nemesis hates it when people are taller than him, but after years of making fun of Elias for it, it seems only fair that the jokes now be at his expense. “Have fun tripping over your absurdly long legs.”

“Right. Tell me if you need anything from the higher-up shelves.” Elias grins, pulling Nemesis’s head farther into his neck. Now he can’t see anything but hair and the faint light shining through it.

“Elias, I swear this is your attempt to asphyxiate me against your neck. And I’d like to let you know that it’s not working. I can still breathe.”

“Oh, my mistake.” Elias laughs. “Really, though, are you okay? Have I been accidentally choking you?”

“You’ve not, no.” Nemesis sighs. “Apologies. I’ve gotten us on a tangent, it seems.”

“Oh.” Elias sounds disappointed. “And here I was, hoping you wouldn’t notice. I do so hate talking about my feelings.”

“I know, Elias. But we’ve got to.” He pauses, trying to think of a sensitive way to word what he’s about to say, before foregoing that entirely and simply saying: “You’re miserable, aren’t you?”

For a moment, there’s silence. And in that silence Nemesis is terribly aware - aware of how small both of them are, how the people outside this closet couldn’t care less about either of them, how cold it is here in this closet, how scratchy the embroidery on Elias’s jacket is. He feels utterly powerless, because he knows he is utterly powerless.

And then, Elias inhales sharply. He’s never been one to express his emotions in visible ways - even this is a lot for him. “L...Nemesis, I...yeah. Yeah, I am.”

“That’s what I’m sorry for. For letting that happen.”

“But it isn’t your responsibility to protect me, Nemesis.”

“It might not be, not in any sort of...objective way. No one’s forcing me to. But the last thing I want is to ever see people hurt you. I…” He sighs. “...knowing you’re miserable makes me miserable, you know. You don’t have to worry about me feeling responsible, because I’m a selfish person, and that extends to my feelings about you.”

Elias laughs humorlessly. “Ah. I had thought you might say something like that. You idiot. You complete and total fool. That’s not being selfish. It’s called caring about people, and I think some people in my life could strive to do it more often.”

“But...but Elias, I…”

“No. Shh. Don’t ‘but, Elias’ me.” Elias pushes Nemesis off himself, putting a hand on each of his shoulders and staring directly into his eyes. “Nemesis, you care what people say about you.”

“Well, obviously.”

He weakly shakes him. “Then care what I say about you. You’re not selfish. Stop insulting my best friend.”

He doesn’t know that he has a response for that. Instead, he bites his tongue, turning away. He can’t look Elias in the eye, not when he looks so earnest.

Instead, he elects to change the subject. “You don’t want to marry Lusitania Renwick.”

“Obviously not.” Nemesis feels a rush of relief. Why is he relieved? His friend is suffering, and he’s relieved? “I hate her. She doesn’t even like me, either. It’s an arrangement - I get to marry into high society, not tarnish my reputation - not tarnish Fitzroy’s reputation, rather. Lusitania gets status, gets an inheritance, gets to move up in the Guild. Only person it doesn’t benefit is me.”

He takes a deep breath. Nemesis can hear the shakiness to it, and he puts a hand on Elias’s. He hopes it’s comforting.

“See, Nemesis...even though she doesn’t love me, even though she’s never pretended to love me where it counts, she’s...she’s so clingy and insecure. I can’t have a moment away from her, and it’s like she just wants to wring all the energy out of me like I’m a hand towel. I think she likes having the power over me, if anything...because she really doesn’t have any over Fitzroy.”

Nemesis feels his teeth clenching with rage. “I bloody hate her, you know. I just...I didn’t want to say anything, in case you…”

“In case I actually liked her?” He laughs ruefully. “Well, I don't.”

“Then...then don’t marry her.” Nemesis knows his voice sounds urgent. He feels urgent. “Find a way out of it.”

He sighs. “I wish it were so easy. You’ve offered me ways out before, haven’t you? Told me to run away with you, just to run away in general. I wish I could, Nemesis. I can’t describe how...jealous I am of you.”

There were many things Nemesis had expected to hear. That Elias was jealous of him did not number among them. He looks up, but this time, it’s Elias who has averted his gaze.

“Jealous? I’m...I’m wretched, Elias.”

“I know. But you’re living your own life. You got a way out, and you took it, and you ran with it. Now you’re living the life you want, and I…I’m still just letting Fitzroy ruin mine. Every time I think it can’t get worse, it does. And I just let it happen.”

His hands twitch, before squeezing tighter, painfully tight. Elias’s fingers are thin and sharp, and they feel like sticks against Nemesis’s shoulder. He spasms once, and Nemesis can tell that he’s holding in tears.

“I just let it happen,” he repeats, “and why? It’s not because I’m okay with it, and it’s not because I think there’s no way out, or because I like Fitzroy or Renwick. I keep thinking to myself, ‘I’m sure Nemesis would help hide me. I could get away from this. It would be so easy’. And then I don’t. I’m scared, Nemesis, I’m scared of what would happen if I leave.”

“I wouldn’t let him hurt you,” Nemesis says seriously. “I’d kill him if he so much as came near you.”

“I know. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m not scared of dying. I’m scared...because I don’t know who I am, if I’m not Fitzroy’s son. He...in a way, he…”

“He what, Elias?”

“He…” Elias sighs. “I saw, what your childhood did to you. How miserable you were. If...if he hadn’t taken me in after my parents died, I…”

Realization sinks in. “You would have been like me.”

Elias nods. “And it’s...it’s a horrible thought, isn’t it? To think something like that, about someone I care about? But you were always so miserable. So angry. Honestly, I was jealous of that. Of the ability to be angry at the people who hurt you, instead of saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and minding your manners and marrying a woman you hate just to make him happy-”

Nemesis hugs him, pulling him into his chest with perhaps a little too much force. Elias gasps but doesn’t protest, clinging to Nemesis’s chest and burying his face in his neck.

It’s hard to know how long they stay there, silent except for the faint sound of Elias’s breathing. He’s trying not to cry, Nemesis can tell. He can also tell that he’s failing. Nemesis’s grip loosens from the vice it was, until he’s got his arms gently wrapped around Elias, draped over the formal clothing he’s so clearly uncomfortable in.

“I’m jealous,” Elias says again, finally. It’s muffled by Nemesis’s neck, but just audible enough. “I’ve always been jealous of you. Of your anger. Of your ability to stand up for yourself, even when it was a bad idea. Of your intelligence. And of the fact that you got to leave. You got to go out into the world. And now, look at you. Things might not be perfect, but you’re…”

“I’m a lot better off than I was. I’m happier. I’m living a better life,” Nemesis agrees. Even though he isn’t the one who’s been crying, his voice feels hoarse.

“And I...want that too. I want someone to do what Jones did for you. I want someone to show up and offer me a better life. But that’s not...going to happen, is it?”

Elias suddenly clings to Nemesis and sobs. It’s alarming to see someone normally so reserved openly sobbing, and Nemesis has no idea what he’s meant to do. For the time, he hugs Elias tighter, leans down his forehead to rest on his head, and thinks about how horrible it is that Elias is crying and all Nemesis can feel is empty, dull, like he’s just had the wind knocked out of him.

“It can still happen,” he says, finally. His voice is quiet, and Elias doesn’t give any indication that he heard it.

“It can still happen,” he repeats, more force behind it this time. Elias still doesn’t respond. “I feel bloody horrid, leaving you behind like I did. I’m not going to make that same mistake again. If you need someone to offer you a better life, that might as well be me.”

Finally, Elias shifts. “How?” is all he says, sounding breathless and exhausted and miserable.

“Get up,” Nemesis says, before he can think better of it.

“What?” There’s notes of alarm in his voice as he flinches away from Nemesis.

“I said stand up.”

“Why?!”

“Just do it! Trust me!”

“Alright, alright! Don’t shout!” Elias stands up, uncertain and shaky, his legs clearly not doing a very good job of keeping him upright.

“Okay. Excellent. Just-just stay like that.”

Nemesis moves, getting on one knee, staring up at Elias. The eyes that stare back are wide, betraying a lost and scared expression.

He takes his hand. “Sorry, this is really impromptu. Probably not the sort of thing you’d ever want. I mean, er...it’s just a bloody closet, I’ve not got a ring or anything. But if you don’t want to marry Lusitania Renwick, marry me instead.”

Elias’s entire face twitches, the emotion not registering. “Wh-what?”

“What I mean is...if you don’t want to marry Lusitania Renwick, just marry me. You’ve known me for years, you like me enough to at least file your taxes with me, right?”

Elias visibly struggles to process, staring unblinkingly at Nemesis with a look halfway between bewilderment and disbelief. Finally, he says: “N-neither of us pay taxes, Nemesis.”

“It’s not about the taxes. It’s about you not having to spend the rest of your life with someone you can’t stand. Unlike her, I care about your feelings, and I’m not even remotely obnoxious - okay, no, can’t claim that last one, but you’ll be free to divorce me absolutely whenever you want and I shan’t have any complaints.”

“I’m not going to divorce you!” He looks a little more alarmed, as though processing all of it at once, and flinches away. “I just...this is the solution you thought of? Asking someone you’re not even in a relationship with to marry you?”

“Well, it’s not like I was going to ask you to marry someone else.” He sighs. “It’s actually a bad and impulsive idea, so maybe disregard it. If you want something more straightforward, I’ll pay Theory Hayes to hide you in her attic.”

“I have no idea who that is, but living in an attic doesn’t really sound like what I want for the rest of my life. Alright, I’ll marry you.”

“I’m sorry-” Nemesis’s brain lags behind his ears, taking a moment to realize what it was Elias said. “I mean, you - you will?"

Elias laughs. The initial shock having worn off, he seems to be in a state of mild confusion, but not horror. It’s a better reaction than Nemesis would have expected if he actually sat down to think this through. Unfortunately, he hadn’t done that, and now he has to deal with the consequences - that he’s proposed marriage to a person who has never thought of him as more than a friend.

“I will, yeah. It’s not any different from being roommates, right? Just more legally binding.”

“It’s...definitely different, actually. Though, like I said, you can divorce me whenever. Hell, you don’t even have to interact with me at all. We can just go our separate ways if that’s what you want.”

Elias shakes his head frantically, almost looking more horrified by that than he was by the proposal. “Nemesis, half of the reason I dragged you into this closet to begin with is that I missed you. I am not going to agree to go our separate ways after all of this. Marrying someone is a commitment. I’m not going to deprive myself of an actual spouse just for the sake of keeping Lusitania out of my life.”

“Ah...then why did you say yes?”

“I, uh…first off, panicked. I don’t think either of us are really in a place to actually get married right now. You’re too busy, and Fitzroy is still alive. Not really ideal circumstances to start a life, is it?”

“I...I mean, I reckon you’re right. Sorry. It was a stupid idea.”

“I didn’t say that.” Elias drops to his knees beside Nemesis, looping a single arm around his shoulder in a weak attempt at a hug. “I think, logically, it’s a good idea. It’s easier to force someone to marry someone they hate than it is to force them to divorce their existing spouse. But I also think we’re eighteen and nineteen respectively, and you didn’t even buy me dinner first.”

“Right. I’m sorry. The offer of living in Theory Hayes’s attic still stands.”

“Again, who the stars is Theory Hayes?”

“Oh.” Nemesis realizes that Elias genuinely wouldn’t know, and that he doesn’t actually know much about what’s been happening in Nemesis’s life at all. Nemesis simply hasn’t had time or opportunity to tell him about any of it, about Salem Riddle, or Aleister Burke, or Lavinia Graves, or even really Callie.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Theory Hayes is my landlady.”

Elias raises an eyebrow in mock surprise. “You mean you didn’t just sleep in the alleys like you said you would?”

“I don’t fancy the idea of having to wash grime off my clothes, no. Theory’s nice.” He frowns, reconsidering his statement. “Upon reflection, Theory is mean, but she’s my friend regardless. And she owns a bookstore, which is a massive bonus in any living arrangement.”

“You live in a bookstore?” Elias looks surprised, though not upset. “Really are living the dream, aren’t you?”

“I reckon so. Couple things missing from it, though.” He gestures to Elias.

Elias glances at his hand. “...oh. Am I the things?”

“You’re one of the things.”

“And Jones is the other one?” He asks, though Nemesis knows he knows the answer already.

“He is, yes.” It stings less to talk about him than it used to, but there’s still that dull feeling in Nemesis’s chest when he remembers that the man who gave him his life isn’t here to see it.

“I...I’m sorry.” Elias looks at the ground, subdued again. “I know these months have been unimaginably hard for you. I should be here for you, but instead I’m just worried about Fitzroy.”

“He’s a well worrying individual, Elias. I’m worried about him, too. I’m pretty bleeding sure he’s killed the victim in the case I’m working on right now, you know.”

“He does seem the most plausible suspect,” Elias agrees. “He doesn’t tell me anything, not since I refused to...to help him...but I know the Guild has been killing people for years. I’m shocked it took this long for something like this to happen. It’s just like him, parading a corpse in front of his whole theater like that.”

“It really does seem very theatrical, doesn’t it? No subtlety present.” Nemesis scoffs. “Not that I’m eager to make a career as a murderer, mind, but I think if I’d gone in a slightly different direction in life I’d be quite a good one.”

“A murderer-for-hire instead of a private investigator?” Elias thinks for a moment. “I could see it. But I’m glad you’re not. It would really be horrible to have to explain to someone I care about greatly why I can’t continue to associate with a murderer.”

“And I’m glad,” Nemesis agrees, “that you’re such a good person that I would never have needed to explain that to you.”

Elias tenses. “I wish I weren’t, sometimes. You know, I think my life would be significantly easier if I just did what Fitzroy wanted.”

“But then you wouldn’t be you. You’d be a miserable shell of the person I know.” Nemesis’s breath catches in his throat. “You know, the parts of you I like the most are the parts he finds disappointing.”

Elias smiles. “Those are the parts of me I like most, too. It’s mostly thanks to you, you know. You and Jing. I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have people around me who actually care. At some point, when it’s just you telling yourself that you don’t deserve what’s happening, you stop believing it.”

“I felt the same, you know. I was about to give up before I knew you.”

“Were you?” Elias looks skeptical. “I can’t imagine you ever giving up on anything, least of all yourself.”

“Not really, but I knew it’d happen eventually. I’d give up or die.”

“But you didn’t.”

When Nemesis replies, it’s quiet. “Thanks to you, mostly. Well...and Mr. Jones, but you were there first. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“I don’t know what I would have done without you, either.” Elias hugs him again, and recoils. “Since when do you wear cologne?”

Nemesis laughs, hugging him back. Elias is so skeletal and cold, but it’s not an unpleasant feeling. The shadows that surround him envelop Nemesis, almost like a second hug. They feel pleasantly cool, like an early spring morning. He doesn’t resist it, clinging back to Nemesis, cologne or no.

“Since I could afford it. What, do you hate it?”

“No,” Elias says. On top of his voice being noticeably muffled by his proximity to Nemesis’s coat, he’s speaking quietly. “It’s nice. It’s fine. Unobtrusive and not unpleasant.”

Nemesis laughs again. “Is that your way of saying you don’t mind it?”

“Might be.”

“High praise, coming from you.”

“It’s fine. I’m not really concerned with cologne.” Elias pushes himself away from Nemesis’s chest. For a moment, Nemesis is shocked by how handsome Elias looks, hair disheveled and curling softly over his face, the darkness behind him muting his colors, the tear streaks and slight red tinge to his eyes, a grim reminder of the reality of the world outside this closet, making his features look all the more striking. He has the look to him of an old painting - the sort an artist considers their magnum opus.

“So if I started wearing the most obnoxious scent ever, just to spite you, you’d be fine with it?” Nemesis asks, pretending he isn’t currently busy staring at Elias, unable to pull his eyes away.

“You wouldn’t do that. You’re too concerned with your appearance.” Elias reaches out a single hand, brushing it through Nemesis’s hair, curling a strand around your pointer finger. “I was right, by the way. This color does suit you.”

“I didn’t question it.” Nemesis smiles. “I’m beginning to like it more than the brown, actually. I do...genuinely appreciate you doing that for me.”

“It wasn’t any problem.”

“But it was. You had to do something you hate doing.”

Elias sighs. “I don’t hate artifice in general. Just...the sorts Fitzroy wants from me. When it’s harmless, or even...helps someone, I don’t mind.”

“Well, it helped me.” He finally pulls his eyes away from Elias, far too aware of how close his hand is to his face, almost brushing against his cheek. “I think I’m a bit more handsome now. Striking, even.”

“You always were handsome,” Elias says. “I mean, I know what you’re about to say, and I don’t think being covered in scars all the time really disqualifies you from being handsome.”

“I guess-” Nemesis starts, but Elias cuts him off, pulling his hand out of his hair and moving it to touch his tie, before immediately pulling it back away.

“This is silk, isn’t it? You’ve really been spending your money left and right.”

“Well, I had to look nice tonight, didn’t I?” Nemesis grins. “You should see what the other people wore.”

“Hmm, yes. I hate all of it. It’s tacky.” Despite his words, Elias smiles. “But you look good tacky. I mean. Charming. You’re naturally good-looking, so you pull it off.”

Nemesis rolls his eyes. “Oh, come on. I think you’re just saying that because you like me.”

“I do like you, but I also mean it.” Elias stares him in the eyes, uncomfortably intense. “Just because I said I’m not going to marry you right now, doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re handsome.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Oh, you mean you weren’t asking me to marry you because you’re in love with me?”

Nemesis is sure he’s turned bright red. He turns away from Elias, stammering incoherently. Yes, I was, he thinks, but he can’t possibly say that aloud, not here, not in these circumstances, not when he hasn’t even fully admitted it to himself yet.

He hears him chuckle. It’s a soft, wonderful sound. Nemesis wonders how he never managed to register how he felt. Looking back, it seems clear. Elias is the sort of person who’s difficult not to fall in love with.

“It’s okay if you are,” Elias adds. “To be clear, I’m not interrogating you. I’m just curious.”

He takes a deep breath, feeling himself tense. Of course, he can’t lie here. Does he even want to lie?

“I might...fancy you a little, yeah.” Towards the end, his voice gives out. “Thought it’d make things a little awkward, if I said anything. It always felt...natural to me, I reckon. Enough that I never even admitted it to myself. You don’t need to worry about it. You can forget this happened. I won’t make it weird - promise.”

Elias laughs again. “Oh, thank goodness. That’s what I thought. If I’d been wrong, that would have been awkward.”

“Ah-” Nemesis chuckles nervously. “You thought what?”

“That being said, you know, I think I will marry you. Later. On the condition that you take me out for dinner first, of course.”

“I, er-” There’s no way he’s heard him correctly. Nemesis looks at Elias in the same way as a fish looks at the fisherman who has cruelly ripped it out of the water. “...come again?”

Elias, damnably direct as always, looks directly back at him. “Like I said, I respect myself. You’ll have to at least take me out for dinner before I commit the rest of my life to you. Don’t be unreasonable, Nemesis.”

“I don’t follow.”

Elias laughs. There’s a rare look of genuine joy on his face that Nemesis so rarely gets to see, and a faint blush is visible against his dark skin. That’s something he’s never seen before. Having admitted his feelings only makes him more aware of how infuriatingly cute Elias is.

Perhaps he should have found a way to play it off. If things weren’t awkward before, certainly they will be now.

“You look like you’re dying.” Elias laughs again. “I just wanted to check, you know. On the off chance I was wrong, that’d make accepting your proposal a little bit uncomfortable. I think I deserve better than marrying someone who doesn’t even have romantic feelings for me.”

“Y-You deserve better than marrying me in general,” he stammers. “I don’t know what I was even thinking.”

“I might deserve better, yeah.” He smiles. It’s the sort of smile that Nemesis would call ‘punchable’ when on his own face - Elias, of course, is among the least punchable people he knows, but it’s still infuriating, reminiscent of all the times he’d managed to beat Nemesis at some small thing, like cards or winning a bet.

Nemesis has always hated losing in any context to a violent degree, unable to tolerate the humiliation of ever coming in second. The reminder that he isn’t good enough and never will be burns, boiling over into ill-thought-out decisions made in the spur of the moment and always, inevitably, pain.

But when he loses to Elias, it’s a different sort of frustration entirely. Instead of a rapid explosion of rage and loathing, there’s a soft burn of indignation, mixed with a sort of affection. Seeing Elias happy is almost enough to override the immediate rage Nemesis feels towards himself. For once, he’s fine with letting someone else win.

But this isn’t a competition, and he hasn’t lost, has he? Elias continues, with no regard for Nemesis’s internal turmoil. “I don’t really want better, though. I think you’re more than enough for me. Can’t imagine being with anyone else, as it were.”

“What’s that supposed to mean, Elias?!”

The smile fades a little, replaced with just a hint of concern. He puts a hand on Nemesis’s shoulder. “What it means is that we’re both idiots.”

“Okay, speak for yourself, but I’m a genius, actually.”

The look on Elias’s face is so painfully soft that Nemesis doesn’t know if he can take it. “Maybe. But you didn’t realize I’ve been madly in love with you for years now, so I don’t think any amount of well-established intelligence changes the fact that you are, in fact, an idiot.”

Nemesis isn’t sure how to describe what he’s feeling. If anything, it’s not unlike being in an emotional state of suspended animation, in complete shock, unable to process anything around him.

And Elias is still there, existing in the same space as him, as though he hadn’t just said what he’d said. Nemesis manages an incoherent “What?”, but he can barely even hear himself saying it.

There’s that laugh again, so hauntingly beautiful Nemesis wishes he could listen to it forever. “See, you’re the genius between the two of us, allegedly. And I’m not about to argue that most of the time - but you’re frustratingly dense.” He flicks Nemesis in the forehead. “I can’t believe you didn’t realize it. I was pretty open about it.”

Nemesis inhales sharply. “I thought - I thought you just thought I was a very good friend."

Elias frowns. “Nemesis, I told you I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you on multiple occasions.”

“Friends do that!”

He rolls his eyes. “Sure, I guess, but what about all the letters I wrote you? I thought those would be flowery enough to make my point clear.”

“I thought you were mocking the way I write!”

“But-what about all the time I spent teaching you to dance? Does that mean nothing to you?”

Nemesis feels himself tense. “I asked you to do that!”

“Yes, well, I agreed, didn’t I?” Elias moves his hand to the back of Nemesis’s head, pulls him closer, forehead to forehead. Up close, his eyes are even more stunning, beautiful and deep brown. “Honestly, I made it about as clear as I could without saying anything outright. I couldn’t have been...public about it. I knew that, logically. I knew Fitzroy would never let it happen, but I wanted it so badly. I wanted to leave society and never come back. All I wanted was you.”

Nemesis shakes his head. “But I thought…”

“You thought what?”

“I used to think, sometimes.”

“I’d like to hope you think a little more often than sometimes, Nemesis.”

“I think all the time, yes.”

Elias smiles. “And I love it when you think. But what did you think, in this specific instance?”

“I thought…” Nemesis tries to steady himself, breathing in. “I realized my feelings for you after coming to Omen. They were there before, they always have been, but I somehow didn’t comprehend it. I don’t think I knew what love was, and I was happy enough being your friend. It wasn’t until you weren’t in my life anymore that I realized just how much I needed you.”

Elias nods, realization visibly dawning. “When you called me-”

“When I called you I was seconds away from telling you that I’m in love with you, and I only stopped myself because I thought for sure you’d be repulsed by the very thought.”

Elias shakes his head, putting his hand on the side of Nemesis’s face, unbearably gentle. “Far from it. As far from it as possible.” For a moment, he looks unsure, glancing down at the floor with a look of nervous insecurity. Then, he turns back to Nemesis, meeting eyes with him. “Would you mind if I kissed you?”

Nemesis can feel blood rush to his face. He can’t imagine how red he is - thankfully, Elias doesn’t comment on it. “I - please. No. I wouldn’t mind.”

Elias waits for a moment, that same tense anxiety overcoming him. His hand twitches against Nemesis’s face. And then, as if jumping from a high place, lightning-fast, he kisses him, and despite the abruptness of it there’s no force, as gentle as anything else Elias has ever done. For someone so terrified of hurting people around him, Elias seems, to Nemesis, entirely unable to cause harm. It’s tender, a little bit unsure, a little bit scared, but entirely perfect.

It’s Elias who breaks the kiss, as well, immediately slumping over against Nemesis’s chest. “Well, fuck,” he mutters breathlessly. “So that’s what it’s like.”

“It’s, er…” Nemesis touches at his mouth, wishing he could savor the feeling a little longer, but it’s already fading away like water slipping through his fingers. “I...that happened?”

Elias chuckles. “It happened, yeah. I...that was your first time kissing anyone, wasn’t it?”

“Aye, it was. When would I have had the opportunity?”

“No idea.” Elias shrugs. “At some point in your many adventures with the illustrious Mr. Jones? But then again, I suppose you would have written about that.”

“I reckon I just didn’t want to kiss anyone who wasn’t you,” Nemesis admits. “Not that I was aware of it, of course. Nor like I had any opportunities to speak of.”

“Sort of happy you did. And that I’ve never kissed anyone either - not that Lusitania’s not tried, for the spectacle, but I’ve always found a way to wiggle out of it. Not that it’s as important as people pretend it is, but there’s something...nice about being someone’s first, isn’t it?” Elias smiles, face still buried in Nemesis’s coat. “Oh, and by the way, you suck at kissing.”

“I-What? That’s not a thing, you can’t be bad at kissing,” he stammers, feeling himself turning red again.

Elias laughs. “You absolutely can be. And you are.”

“Says you.”

“What is that supposed to mean?!” he replies indignantly.

“Exactly what it sounds like.”

“That’s mean, Nemesis.”

“Oh, that’s mean? You should hear half of the things you say about me, you absolute menace.” He affectionately ruffles Elias’s hair, and hears him laugh in response.

He’s not sure how long they stay there, Elias leaned against him, with Nemesis’s hand carefully stroking his hair. In their years of knowing each other, this is the most direct content they’ve ever had, despite how forthcoming with physical affection both of them have been with each other. Somehow, nothing they’ve ever done has been quite like this. Nemesis thinks he must be the luckiest person alive.

Once or twice, he gets the urge to say something, whisper to Elias that he loves him, but that would ruin the pristine silence of it all, shatter the spell.

Finally, though, Elias stirs, looking up at Nemesis with a sickeningly tender expression. “This is real, isn’t it? It’s finally real?”

“Nah,” Nemesis replies, feeling almost dazed. “Nah, we’re both dreaming. And it’s a bloody amazing dream.”

“Don’t joke about that…” Elias slaps him gently, no force behind it, as if he’s brushing his face. “I don’t want this to be a dream. I don’t want this to have to end.”

“It doesn’t. You can stay here. We can hide. Fitzroy will never find you.” Nemesis knows he sounds alarmed, his voice pressured, speech not fully articulated.

“I wish.” Elias smiles ruefully, and in that moment Nemesis thinks he might actually kill Tobias Fitzroy. “I really do. I’ll find my way out. I’ll tell him off. But...not now. Not tonight. If I did it right now, at a time like this, I don’t think he’d hesitate to...to deal with me.”

Nemesis tenses, fingers instinctively reaching to Elias’s chest, where he knows, under the shirt, a horrible scar which seems to never fully heal has itself drawn across his skin. He’s only seen it once, but he could never forget it, the way the red stands out like an angry smear of paint splashed haphazardly over the canvas, the way it’s slightly raised against his otherwise smooth skin. And he remembers what he’s seen far more often - the way Elias winces, the way he seems constantly out of breath. He remembers what Elias told him - that he had desperately tried to exert his own artificial power on the scar, but no matter what he did, it wouldn’t heal.

Elias’s own hand closes around his wrist, as if he’s about to move his hand away, but he doesn’t. He just nods, with a miserable look painted across his face.

“I’ll wait for you. And if you ever need me, I’ll be there. I promise.”

Elias nods again, and Nemesis can see the strain in his eyes. “I should get going soon. Fitzroy will get on my case otherwise. But I’ll be making time to stop by, no matter what.”

“You’d...you’d better,” Nemesis agrees. “I’ll give you my address, and my telephone.”

“I will.” Elias’s face takes on a shadow of its former joy again as his face splits into a grin. “And you’d better be sober when you call me.”

“I will be, promise. I swear that’s the only time I haven’t been since I left Citrea Viridia.”

Elias nods, though his demeanor remains one of concern. “You’d better keep it that way. I still worry about you, you know. You’re absolutely horrible at taking care of yourself.”

“I am fine at taking care of myself. In fact, I’m taking care of another person and a cat on top of myself, so I’d reckon I’m actually doing alright for myself-”

“Wait-” Elias’s eyes widen. “Take a couple steps back. You have a cat?”

“Yes. Her name is Monty, which is short for Amontillado, and she’s small and entirely black. She’s very well-behaved.” Nemesis hates how affectionate his voice sounds already. Has it really taken him this little time to become attached to a cat he literally found dying in the street?

“You named your cat after wine?”

“I didn’t see why not.”

Elias laughs. “Well played. Now I have to visit you. Tell her hi for me, won’t you?”

“I will,” Nemesis agrees. “But soon enough, I won’t need to, because you two will be friends. She’s very friendly.”

“I never knew I needed a cat until I learned that I might end up with a cat,” Elias mutters. “Do you have any photographs?”

Conveniently, Nemesis does have one, which he’d taken on a whim a couple of days ago. He fishes it out of his bag, and Elias takes it, holding it in both hands and staring at it with wide-eyed adoration. “She’s beautiful.”

Nemesis thinks that Elias is the beautiful one, and that the fond, adoring look on his face makes Nemesis’s heart jump. “She’s just a cat.”

“Well, maybe all cats are beautiful.”

“I’m pretty sure cats are capable of being ugly. I mean, even the ugly ones are charming, so this isn’t me saying they’re bad, but objectively-”

Elias puts a hand on his shoulder. “Sorry. This is an irreconcilable difference of opinion and I have to break up with you now.”

“Ah-” The use of the word ‘break up’ implies that they’re dating. Of course, that does retrospectively seem like a somewhat foregone conclusion from the rest of the conversation, but it wasn’t something that had fully set in for Nemesis until now. “Please don’t joke about that.”

For a moment, he thinks Elias will say he wasn’t joking. Instead, though, he hugs him one-handedly and nods. “Sorry. I won’t.”

“No, er, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to ruin anything-” Nemesis feels himself start to panic, but Elias hugs him tighter and shakes his head.

“You aren’t ruining anything. Trust me when I say that if occasional spikes of paranoia were something I couldn’t deal with, I wouldn’t have been friends for you with close to ten years now.”

Nemesis nods, partially but not entirely reassured. Elias sighs. “I know you’re worried that I’m lying to you. I can tell. When you get really quiet that means you don’t trust me.”

He nods again, the most tentative confirmation he’s capable of. Elias’s face is tinged with pain, and Nemesis feels so horribly guilty.

Elias seems to pick up on that. It’s almost scary how good he is at reading Nemesis. He looks at him sympathetically, speaking in a quiet, gentle voice.

“I’m not angry at you for not trusting me. I know you don’t really trust anyone. I just wish you didn’t have to deal with that.”

“You...aren’t?” he asks, terrified of the answer. Terrified that, at any second now, Elias will change his mind, as he should have years ago.

“No. I know it doesn’t mean anything. I remember you used to write in your letters, sometimes, about how you thought Jones was going to abandon you, or change his mind and decide you don’t have potential after all.”

Nemesis frowns. “That’s different.”

“Not really. It’s the same thing, isn’t it? You have a person who thinks highly of you, who you like - because I know you liked him, a bit too much, even, in my opinion - and you’re unable to take it at face value because you can’t process someone having a different view of yourself than you do. So you get scared, and you don’t trust the things they say, even when they’re the things you want to hear. Especially when they’re what you want to hear. Am I right?” By the end, Elias is speaking uncharacteristically fast - almost a convincing imitation of Nemesis’s speech.

“Mostly, I reckon,” Nemesis reluctantly concedes. “It’s not just that. Taking these things at face value seems dangerous. What if you kill me? What if you sell me out to Fitzroy? I don’t really think you’d do that, but look what happens to people who trust people. Look what happened to Mr. Jones.”

“I have no idea what happened to Jones,” Elias admits. “I don’t know very much about your life with him at all, remember? Or what happened afterwards. I don’t even know who your new friend is.”

“My new friend?”

“Yeah, you know. The, uhh…” he struggles to find the proper words, “...the girl, the one with the long hair who was trying to keep Jing from ripping you limb from limb the night of the performance.”

“I’m pretty sure I told you.”

“You might have.” Elias smiles sheepishly. “I had a lot on my mind that day, sorry. I’m kind of horrible with names in general, you know that.”

Nemesis can’t help but smile back. Something about Elias’s smiles is so irresistibly infectious. “Right, well...her name is Callie and she’s my assistant.”

“Oh. She’s really your assistant. I thought you were joking about that.”

“Well, she’s not precisely an assistant in the traditional sense,” Nemesis admits. “She insisted on doing something to repay me for the fact that I’m not letting her die on the street, so I let her call herself there, but she really doesn’t do much except take notes for me and occasionally fetch things. Still, she’s nice to have around sometimes.”

“Sounds like it. That’s sort of how I feel about Jing, too. I’ve been calling them my assistant to get Fitzroy off my back, but they’re really just my friend.”

“Jing really cares about you, you know.”

A conflicted, slightly downcast look passes over Elias for a moment, before vanishing. “Yes, I’m aware. They actually...well, apparently, they’ve had feelings for me for a while. It hurt to turn them down, even though we’re still friends. They’re pretty much the only person at the Obscura who’s ever on my side.”

“Is it because of Fitzroy? Is that why you turned them down, I mean?”

Though he asks, Nemesis knows what Elias is going to say before he says it, and his stomach sinks with the weight of an emotion he’d never expected to feel because of Liu Jing: guilt. “No, I mean, not entirely. Mostly, it was because I already knew I loved someone else. But that was part of it, too, knowing they’d be an easy target for him.”

“Elias...do you not think you’d be happier with them than with me?”

“Of course not.” He shakes his head. “Jing will always be my friend, I hope, but I just...I have my reasons for not wanting to commit to a relationship with them. Not least that I’m just not attracted to them.”

Nemesis nods, though he can’t shake the unsure feeling permeating deep through him. “But...if you ever think you’d rather be with someone else…”

“I’ll tell you.” Elias smiles, and Nemesis can tell he’s attempting to reassure him. “Don’t worry. Even if you don’t trust me all the time, I trust you. I know that you, at least, aren’t out to hurt me.”

“Good, because I’m not. I’m out to do the opposite of hurt you.”

Elias laughs quietly. For such a generally graceless person, Elias has an incredibly elegant laugh, light and inarguably cute. “I should hope so. Speaking of hurting me, though, I really need to get going. As much as I would love to spend the rest of the night in this closet-”

“-you can do that-”

“-as much as I would love to,” Elias continues, “I should really be going.”

“Right.” Nemesis searches through his pockets for a scrap of paper and a pen, writing down his address and telephone number with shakier hands than normal.

Elias watches, frowning just barely. “You know, I always wonder how you manage to function with those gloves on. That looks completely unbearable.”

“Oh, it’s not so bad when you get used to it. I wouldn’t say unbearable. Just extremely inconvenient.”

He passes the paper to Elias, who takes it and stares at it, though perhaps, Nemesis realizes, he’s actually staring at his own hands. “I can’t really wear gloves at all. My hands are too weirdly proportioned. They seem uncomfortable, though. Like shoes for your hands.”

Nemesis chuckles. “See, I don’t understand why you find shoes uncomfortable.”

“They’re prisons for your feet, Nemesis.”

“Your experiences in this regard are not universal. Also, how do you deal with the winter without gloves?”

“I don’t think my experiences are universal in just about any regard. And I just keep my hands in my pockets and hope for the best, or, better yet, don’t go outside to begin with.” Elias abruptly takes Nemesis’s hand, carefully staring at the glove.

The gloves, to Nemesis, might as well be a second skin. They’re made of black, worn leather, remarkably soft and nearly paper-thin. They had been custom-made for the purpose of being worn near-constantly, as had served that purpose excellently. But Elias isn’t as acclimated to them as Nemesis is, and it shows in his concerned look as he releases the hand at last.

“Not that I’m questioning your decision or saying you’re wrong for doing this to yourself,” Elias says, “but I kind of miss being able to see your hands.”

“Can’t imagine why. Unfortunate business aside, they’re just hands. Completely unremarkable hands.”

“Yes, but they’re your hands.” Elias pauses, then chuckles quietly to himself. “What is it with the two of us and having unusually strong feelings about our hands? Of all the things to have in common…”

It’s not Nemesis has ever thought about before, but he supposes Elias is right. “Not that I believe in fate, but-”

“I don’t believe in fate either,” Elias interjects, “but it feels like things are meant to be sometimes, doesn’t it? A series of fortunate events coincidentally happening in tandem.”

“It does feel like that,” Nemesis agrees.

They pause, standing for a moment in silence, before Elias nods brusquely. “...I’ll be leaving, then. Um. A kiss for luck, before I go?”

“Of course.”

This time, the kiss only lasts half a second before Elias pulls away, a strange look on his face as he reaches for the wall, ready to open the door again.

“I’ll find my way back to you, so don’t piss off Fitzroy and get yourself killed in the meantime.” He smiles, but it’s pained. “I love you, Nemesis.”

“Er-” Nemesis sighs. “Are you okay with...with that?”

“With what?”

“With...with saying that. My name. You hated it, right?”

He smiles. “It’s grown on me a little. It’s a charming sort of stupid.”

“A charming sort of stupid...I can live with that.”

Elias laughs and kisses him again.

By the time Nemesis makes it back to the main crowds, Elias has vanished into them, not even a hint of shadow to find him by. Perhaps that’s for the best - Nemesis knows he wouldn’t be able to stop glancing at him if he was in eyesight. As is, he can’t stop stop touching at his lips, trying to process what happened in that closet.

Of course, it had all been so quick, ill-thought-out, not particularly how he had expected his first romantic confession to go in the least, but, in retrospect, there are less exciting places for it than a closet off the side of a museum exhibition gala. He hopes no one who sees him thinks anything of the goofy smile he knows is plastered across his face.

It doesn’t take him long to stumble upon a familiar set of faces. Theory and Evie are by the bar, talking over glasses of an expensive-looking champagne, tinted lilac and exceptionally fizzy. Theory has an uncharacteristic smile on her face, leaning over the table. Evie doesn’t seem to react to Nemesis’s arrival, but Theory at least looks up at him, that smile promptly fading. Nemesis supposes, friend or no friend, he isn’t a pretty girl, so this is about what he can expect.

“Good evening, you two.” He hovers by their table. Yes, there’s two free chairs at their table, but he wouldn’t want to be rude and interrupt them without permission. “Mind if I join you?”

The two look each other in the eyes. Theory nods. Evie shrugs. “Sure, we don’t mind.”

He pulls out a chair, sitting down. After the night’s events, he feels exhausted out of nowhere - he has no idea when it set in, but all of his bones feel like rocks, dragging him down. He wishes he had a glass of champagne, but tragically he hadn’t had the foresight to get one. Maybe he should ask Theory where they got it.

He remembers what Elias said. ‘And you’d better be sober when you call me’. Perhaps the champagne is a bad idea, he decides.

“You look like you died,” Theory observes with no hint of emotion. “Like...you’re alright, but you definitely died.”

“That’s how I feel,” Nemesis agrees.

“What happened?” Evie asks. There’s a hint of concern to her voice. As always, Nemesis is shocked to hear anything from her that implies she wouldn’t be alright with the idea of him dying. By this point, he feels as though he should have revised his expectations. It’s pretty clear that whatever traits of hers he assumed were malicious were, in fact, good-hearted efforts to keep her brother from harm by any means necessary.

That’s right, he thinks to himself with no lack of bite. Be less judgmental. You’re a terrible person.

“Not much,” he says to answer her question, hoping that his pause beforehand wasn’t too alarmingly - or, worse, suspiciously - long. “I was just...socializing.”

“Sounds fun,” Evie says. He’s not sure if he’s supposed to glean any specific meaning from that. The word fun, especially in a context like this, can mean many things.

“I don’t think that’s the right word for it, but it was…”

He trails off, because what word could he possibly use to describe the things that have happened since they last saw each other? His mind struggles, but nothing in his lexicon seems sufficient - instead, he merely shrugs.

“It was, yes.”

Evie blinks slowly. “It...was. Okay.”

“You can’t say that and make me think you aren’t hiding something important,” Theory remarks.

“Well, I am hiding something important.”

“Oh.” Evie frowns. “You’re just admitting to it outright? No weird mind games about it?”

“I think you’re both already onto me, so there’s no point in lying.”

Theory nods. “Good attitude to have about it. So what happened?”

“Just because I’ll admit something happened, doesn’t mean I’ll describe it to you in detail.”

“Aww, but what if it was interesting? Was it at least interesting?” Evie asks.

“I guess it was interesting. Interesting to me as it happened, for sure.”

Theory nods. “So you either killed someone, got in a fight, went on an impromptu romantic excursion, committed a crime, solved a crime, saw someone committing a crime which you’ve now resolved to solve, helped someone get away with a crime, became an accessory to a crime-”

“I get it,” he interjects, but she continues as if uninterrupted.

“-stumbled upon a society plot, foiled a society plot, ran into that guy you keep saying you’re looking for, ran into Salem Riddle, met a really weird person you’re pretty sure is involved in a society plot, or had some sort of interactions with the people from the Theatre Obscura.”

“That’s a rather comprehensive list,” Nemesis says with a sigh. “It was...er...three of those, I think? I’ll leave it up to you to guess which three.”

“That’s no fun,” she says, with a frown. “Okay. I guess: committed a crime, helped someone get away with a crime, met a really weird person you’re pretty sure is involved in a society plot.”

“Oh, my turn,” Evie says. “I’m going to guess got in a fight, committed a crime, stumbled upon a society plot.”

“Come on, I’m not that criminally-inclined, am I?”

Evie shrugs. “From what I heard, you trespass on a regular enough basis that I’d be shocked if you didn’t now.”

“Ah. Make that four, then.” He shakes his head. “But enough of this. You’ll not get answers out of me, save that both of you have missed the mark so far. How have you two been doing, conversely? Committed any crimes?”

“Not really,” Theory says.

“I hope not?” Evie adds.

“Well, if we have, they’re not laws I care about breaking,” Theory says.

“If we have, they’re not laws I even know exist,” Evie says, “and if I don’t know they exist, how important can they possibly be?”

“I’m sure that defense would hold up in court.” Nemesis chuckles.

“Really, though, we’ve done nothing criminal. Just conversation and champagne,” Evie says. “A decent amount of champagne, admittedly. But it’s very good champagne.”

“Aye, it looks it.”

Theory holds out her flute to him. “Would you like some?”

“Wouldn’t mind.”

He reaches his hand out for it, and she snatches it away. “Get your own, then.”

“Aww, Theers.” He chuckles again, getting to his feet. “I can’t say I didn’t totally expect that, but I had hoped for better from you. Alright. Back in a moment, then.”

It’s halfway to the bar when he hears it - the sound of screaming, coming from the galleries. His heart jumps, then begins to race.

He’s the first in the room to react, immediately spriting in the direction of the noise’s source. He dashes through crowds, not bothering to weave through them, simply displacing everyone in front of him with his sheer velocity. The terrified crowds seem to recognize that he has some sort of authority, or perhaps they’re just scared of the rapidly sprinting teenager, because they let him through with little resistance.

Nemesis’s mind works as fast as his legs. After the first scream, his brain runs through all the potential scenarios which could be at play - an assault? A murder? A corpse, hidden cleverly in a display case? A fight? Something else entirely? Whatever it is, he needs to know about it. Nothing is insignificant, especially not here, not now.

Of course, it might be a coincidence that something has happened here, at the site of Elizabeth Calloway’s final installation, with Obscura agents milling around. It could not even be a big deal at all. People scream for stupid and inconsequential reasons all the time. Perhaps some rich and obnoxious gentleperson spilled champagne on their lapels. Perhaps someone said something particularly rude and gossipy, and great offense was taken to it. It could be any number of reasons not worth giving the time of day.

But Nemesis, in that moment, isn’t willing to so much as entertain that possibility. When things like this happen, it means something.

Thankfully, he’s fast. Perhaps faster than someone who looks like him should be, really. Nemesis has often been told he looks like he’d pass out after fifteen minutes of semi-vigorous exercise, but the burning frustration he feels whenever people comment on his appearance doesn’t compare to the spiteful satisfaction of knowing that they’re wrong, and proving it.

He’s halfway across the museum almost immediately, crowds parting for him like he’s a ship’s hull and they’re particularly unruly waves on a windy day. The most commotion seems to be coming from Callahan’s exhibition, so that’s where he goes, and immediately, he knows he’s right, because some people are rushing out and others are rushing in in a glorious maelstrom of pure chaos.

He knocks aside a tall man in a top hat, rushing through the crowds. Just when he’s about to declare his presence and ask what’s happening, the thing happening makes itself apparent.

Callahan’s exhibit is pitch black, not even the emergency lights on. Thankfully, Nemesis has just the thing for this - he wouldn’t leave home without his handy collapsible lantern. He gets it out and open and on, and not a moment too soon, because the culprit already has one leg on the windowsill.

The culprit in question is an individual in a black overcoat, tall black leather boots, and a black scarf which doesn’t expose so much as an inch of their neck. An ornate black-and-red mask covers their face in its entirety, making it impossible to discern any of their features, and a wide-brimmed hat casts even that in shadow.

It’s a bit much, honestly, even for someone trying to hide their identity. All so overdone, in Nemesis’s opinion. If one’s to be a phantom thief, one might as well do it in style. Sure, this conceals the individual’s identity beyond recognition, but there’s no style to it whatsoever - except for the mask, which he’ll admit has a bit of flair.

More concerning than this intruder’s lack of fashion sense, however, is what’s tucked under their arm - Nemesis recognizes, with alarm, that familiar blue shape. Shadows Over Catacumba, in all of its glory.

“Stop them!” screams the man in the top hat who Nemesis knocked over, as the thief kicks the window open in a fluid motion, vaulting out. The painting, as goes without saying, goes with him, out into the nearly black night sky. The thief strikes an imposing figure, illuminated briefly by the light shining from the window before dropping into the shadows.

Nemesis, ever the man of action, follows him, shoving his lantern back into his bag and jumping through after him. Behind him, guests scream. Lucky them. They get a show. They get to watch the heroic private investigator catch the thief.

Or the thief un-heroically tosses the private investigator off the roof to his death, perhaps, but the thought only just barely registers through the haze of adrenaline.

His feet slam into the roof. Thankfully, his ankle doesn’t cave, and he carries the momentum over, rolling diagonally over his shoulder. In a flash, he’s on his feet again, sprinting after the thief as his hand rushes to his pistol.

“Stop!” He yells. “Don’t make me shoot you!” In retrospect, it’s not the most eloquent or creative threat he’s ever made, but one-liners are significantly harder to formulate when one is under actual pressure.

The thief, to his shock, turns around, and Nemesis points the gun at them. The fact that he’s not fond of the idea of actually shooting is one best kept to himself. This thief doesn’t need to know that Nemesis has only ever shot three people, all of them non-fatally, all of them in self defense. That’s not what’s important right now.

The thief stares him down. Or, at least, that’s what Nemesis imagines them to be doing - their face isn’t visible through their mask, but Nemesis can only imagine a smug smirk, a single raised eyebrow. Come and get me, Jones. If you can.

Quick as a flash, with no clear cause, Nemesis’s pistol flies out of his hand, clattering down onto the roof a foot or so away from him.

He doesn’t waste any time worrying about how that happened. Overthinking in a fight is a good way to get knocked out fast. Instead, he rushes at the thief, who seems surprised enough at the lack of hesitation that they’re caught off-guard by a cross to the cheek. Nemesis is pretty sure he came out worse in that engagement in terms of sheer damage - the mask is far harder than his gloved hand - but the thief is staggered, and Nemesis feels unstoppable.

The thief stumbles, but only for a moment. Just as fast, they’re back on their feet, swinging back at Nemesis. But everything Nemesis lacks in brute force, he makes up for in speed and finesse, dodging under their arm and aiming a jab to the stomach.

The lack of gun is unfortunate, but it’s not the end of the world. He loses intimidation, a convenient bludgeoning weapon, and the trump card of being able to put a bullet in his opponent. Definitely, it’s a loss. But he’s still got options. He’s still scrappy, he’s still got years of experience winning fights he had no business winning.

The punch lands, forcing the thief back, and Nemesis capitalizes, tripping them. They fall, hard, and Nemesis gets down on one knee, reaching for their mask. He gets his hand on it, and he feels a tap on his shoulder.

An accomplice? He whirls around, and he sees nothing but night sky behind him. Somehow, he’s been double-crossed, but he doesn’t have time to think about how it might have been carried out, or even fully register it, before the thief is on their feet again, aiming a kick at Nemesis.

Immediately, Nemesis can tell this individual isn’t precisely comfortable in fistfights. Their movement is crude, graceless and telegraphed, their balance off, their technique shabby. If Nemesis hadn’t been caught completely off-guard by whatever it was they were doing, he surely would have dodged it easily, and probably followed up in a devastating way.

Unfortunately, he has no time to react before the kick slams into the side of his face, knocking him uneasily close to the side of the building. Below him, the street-lamps of Omen look like constellations, just like the stars flashing through his vision. For a moment, his heart leaps.

He’s stood at the edge of a roof before, looked down at the night city. Somehow, the streetlamps make it seem far more welcoming, kind, almost. It’s easy to forget that if he were to move a few inches to the side, he would hurtle into the night, nothing to break his fall.

Inexplicably, the thief gives him time enough to jump to his feet, move to the center of the roof. They seem more intent on running than fighting. Nemesis runs after them, feeling blood flowing down the side of his face, where his forehead had hit the concrete roof.

“Come back!” He yells. “Coward!”

The thief looks back, and for a moment, it feels as if they just might actually stop and wait for him. But then they redouble their efforts, speeding up. Nemesis is fast, but so are they.

The thrill of the chase becomes mixed with desperation. Nemesis wants to catch this thief, needs to catch them, but his head throbs, and he can feel his vision going blurry. He should be lying down, doing anything but exerting himself, but he has a job to do.

Even determination has its limits, though. He feels his energy give out, just as the thief reaches the end of the wing.

For a brief moment, they turn to look at Nemesis. He imagines the look to be solemn, but he can’t tell through the mask. Then, they turn away from him, and jump from the roof to the next building.

The distance must be fifty feet across, but the thief sails over the dark sky, faintly outlined by the light of the streetlamps. They seem ethereal, floating in a neat arc past and landing lightly on the next building over, showing no sign of their earlier clumsiness.

And then they run off into the distance, and all Nemesis can do is watch, because there’s no way a normal human could ever clear that distance, even if they were the strongest person alive. He’s not sure if he should cry or scream, so he watches, wide-eyed and bleeding, staring at their figure as it vanishes into the distance.

It isn’t until they’re gone completely from his vision that Nemesis processes what’s happened. Rapidly, the adrenaline subsides, and he’s aware of how cold he is out here on the roof, how small he is compared to the infinite black sky, how far the fall from here is. He wants to shiver, cry, curl up on the roof and bemoan his failure, or otherwise to yell curses at his own ineptitude until his throat goes hoarse.

He doesn’t do either of those. He merely stands, stone-still, for far too long, mind empty. After a bit, his capacity for thought returns, bit by bit. The thief is an artificer, obviously, and an adept one. Whatever they did to distract him had to be artifice. The jumping, that somehow had to be artifice as well. Perhaps the boots? Nemesis can’t know for sure, nor even make an educated guess. Frustrating as it is, artifice is one thing he knows very little about.

Finally, Nemesis turns around. Salem Riddle is standing before him, holding his gun out to him handle-first.

Their half-moon glasses somehow obscure the entirety of their face, and reflect light despite there being none. They’re dressed in a floor-length silver gown with a slit up to the knee, held up by thin straps. Despite the fact that their shoulders are entirely uncovered, they don’t shiver. Their hair is mid-length, choppy, and brown. They have freckles, but Nemesis can’t keep track of where they are. All the skin he can see is unnervingly smooth, like a porcelain doll. Obnoxiously, they seem just barely taller than him.

The fog which always accompanies them pools around their feet, faint tendrils curling around Nemesis’s ankles like shackles.

“You dropped this,” they say unhelpfully.

“I’m...well aware.” He takes it gratefully, though, turning it over in his hands. It seems completely unharmed. “Thanks, though.”

“No problem, no problem. Really. It takes nothing out of me whatsoever.” Riddle giggles, and reaches out a hand. “Hey, you know there’s a popular trope in detective fiction where the thief and the detective compare their rooftop fights to a dance. Popularized by one B. Sinclair - ah, you would know that, wouldn’t you, wouldn’t you?”

“I would,” Nemesis agrees. Sinclair had been an associate of Jones’s, not a completely unfamiliar face around the office. Nemesis had found him a bit odd, but not unpleasant. “Why are you bringing this up?”

“Don’t you wish you could have been dancing with that thief?” They ask.

“Nah. Not really. Not an especially graceful sort, were they? Besides, I’d rather not dance with someone else, now that I’m devoted to someone.”

Salem reaches their hand out. “Dance with me.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Fair enough.” They withdraw the hand, shrugging. “You truly do love, love Elias, don’t you?”

“I do. Of course I do.”

“More than you love, love the idea of dancing with a mysterious foe on a roof at night, even. I’m impressed. I’m impressed.” Salem smiles, looking intently at Nemesis. “Are you sure you’re actually, actually human, Jones?”

“What sort of question is that?”

They giggle. “Just asking, just asking. I know almost everything, so I know you’re completely human.”

“That’s...reassuring. Was there doubt?”

There’s that infernal giggle again. “You know, when you believe in the inherent monstrousness of humanity as I do, you tend to...you tend to wonder. But keep on convincing me. It’s good to remember there’s always exceptions.”

“The inherent monstrousness of humanity…” It’s a funny statement coming from Salem Riddle of all people, but Nemesis smiles. “I used to think that way too, but there’s good people out there.”

“But are they an exception? Should one’s opinion of humanity be colored by their existence? Food for thought. Food for thought. Oh, but we’ve gotten so, so off-track.”

Nemesis nods. “I had a feeling you weren’t just here to discuss philosophy with me, but I felt as though it would have been rude to say in that wording.”

“Look at you, worrying about being rude. Don’t worry about that. What I’ve come here to say is...well, I think you’ve figured it out already, but this isn’t a separate mystery, at least not entirely. Everything that happens with Omen’s organized crime is actually related, and there’s a reason it’s accelerating the way it is.”

“They’re after something,” Nemesis agrees. “Actually, I reckon I know what. I’ve had a hunch for a time now.”

Salem raises an eyebrow, though no emotion is registered on their face. “Oh? Do tell, do

“What does Omen have that people might want to control? Why is the Institute spoken of in the same breath as the societies, more often than not? They’re after Catacumba, aren’t they?”

Salem grins. It’s, as always, unsettlingly large, almost like a gash splitting their face in two. Those teeth are still so, so sharp. “Oh, you’re smart. I was going to spell it all out for you, but you don’t seem to even need that. How impressive!”

“Right. Real bloody clever of me.”

“It is.” The grin fades to a more earnest smile. “So you’ll keep doing what you have been, right, right? I believe in you. Oh, and by the way, by the way, your head should be fine in a day or so.”

“Er...nice to know?”

The wind picks up. The fog is blown up and away, but more of it seems to be generated until it envelopes Salem completely. Nemesis watches as it blows away.

A punch hits him in the already-injured cheek, sending him reeling back. He immediately gets his hands up, ready to fight. Is the thief back? Have they realized that they were enjoying this ‘dance’, and come back for more?

No, it isn’t the thief. He recognizes a familiar face, just before that face points a gun directly at his forehead.

Nemesis has pointed guns at many people in his time, as much as it isn’t something he generally likes to brag about. And standing here, at the edge of the roof, mere steps away from a final plummet, the cold barrel pressed squarely against the center of his forehead, he feels even less inclined to brag about it.

Being in a fight is one thing. There’s a certain thrill to it, and even if someone is at a disadvantage they can still win. Being in a fight is exciting, with the pain serving as a reminder that he’s alive and he hasn’t lost yet.

Being held at gunpoint is a miserable, cold feeling. Immediately, every bone in his body tenses and freezes, and he can think of nothing but the fact that, if he so much as twitches, a bullet might find itself passing through his skull, and there’s nothing he can do about it. Sure, he’s alive, but that could change at a moment’s notice. And it’s when Nemesis is about to die that he’s most aware of just how much he wants to live.

Nemesis has seen corpses of people shot through the head before. They were varied, in precise angle and location of the wound, in range from which they were shot, and in the caliber of the weapon that did them in, but one thing always remained consistent - they were gruesome. One wouldn’t assume a simple gunshot to be so destructive, but the skull has a curious tendency to shatter in spectacularly horrifying ways. It’s not a clean death, nor a graceful one. It’s a person’s brain mixed in with a pool of their own blood, horrible outcroppings of bone, a mess which takes hours to clean off a wall. At any moment, his handsome face could become that. There’s no dignity in that.

When one is about to die, Nemesis has learned, often, they can’t help but be reminded precisely how much they don’t want to die. Why they can’t die. Elias. Mr. Jones. Callie. He thinks about how young he is - a single year into his adulthood, and already about to meet his end at the hands of a standard-issue police revolver atop a building, having failed to capture a thief who wasn’t even that impressive.

The officer he’d met at the station the day after Elizabeth Calloway died wears a face of indifference, but he can see something completely different in her eyes - something eerily familiar. After all this time, he’s forgotten what it’s like to be looked at with that sort of disdain. He’s forgotten what it’s like to know that the person looking at you would be delighted to hurt you.

After all this time, it’s shocking to see this sort of bloodlust directed at him again. Part of him wants to break down crying, but the rest of him realizes that won’t save him. If anything it’ll make things worse. He’ll just die a more humiliating death.

“Put your hands in the air,” she demands. “Slowly. No sudden movements.”

He obeys, not able to look her in the eye. This sort of surrender is among the most humiliating things possible, and he feels his face burn - or maybe that’s the injuries. She lowers the gun and handcuffs him, not at all gentle about it, not bothering to so much as allow him to step away from the precipice.

It’s not until she’s done that she speaks again. “Where’s the painting?”

Oh. That’s what this is about. She’s somehow convinced he’s the thief, despite not even remotely looking like them. If he was the thief, wouldn’t he have just left, instead of hanging out on the roof for however long it took the constables to show up? She sure took her time.

He can’t say any of that aloud, because he’s not trying to die. Instead, he simply says: “I don’t know.”

The officer scoffs. What’s her name again? Nemesis swears he remembers - it was on her name-tag, wasn’t it? What was it? Cadogan? Corbin? It began with a C, he remembers that much. “You realize that you’ve been caught, right? There’s no point in playing stupid.”

“I’m not.”

He feels the barrel of the gun against the back of his head. “Shut up and get back inside.”

He’s not about to argue. She walks him back to directly below the window and shoves the gun into his back hard enough that he thinks he’s about to trip and fall flat on his face again, but manages to steady himself. Is this how the horses in the Llygredish countryside where the carriages aren’t enchanted feel? Nemesis thinks the next time he goes to the country he just might need to bring a sack of sugar cubes to feed every horse he sees, as thanks for putting up with this.

Of course, he supposes, there probably won’t be a next time he goes to the country, because he’ll be dead. Sobering thought, that.

“Well, come on,” she says, shoving him again. “Don’t waste my time.” What the stars is this woman’s name? Crowley, it must be Crowley, surely it’s Crowley.

“I don’t see how you expect me to get up there,” he says, realizing the moment the words leave his mouth that by her standards this is likely horrifically rude. He squeezes his eyes shut, hoping she takes some sort of uncharacteristic mercy and doesn’t shoot him on the spot.

There’s a moment of horrible, uneasy silence, where he feels the revolver leave his back. Then his neck snaps sharply to the side as he experiences the familiar sensation of having a metal object slam into his face at great velocity.

He can’t help but stumble back and fall to his knees as his face explodes in pain. His eyes are still closed, but he can feel the blood rushing down his face, alarming amounts of it - not to mention the blood flooding his mouth. Based on the parts of his face which feel like they’ve been frozen over with cryogenic fluid and then thawed with a flamethrower, the hit was primarily to his nose and left cheek. He can feel the swelling beginning. How unsightly. To think he almost made it through the night with his face intact.

Whatever will Elias think, he wonders, before realizing that Elias might never see him alive again. Well, what will Elias think of that? He’ll be sad, I reckon, he responds to himself.

He opens his eyes, and his vision is half-obscured by what he can only assume is a horribly swollen face. Bloody great. Bet I’m hideous now.

He stands up shakily. It’s easy to never realize how difficult it is to get up without use of one’s arms. Nemesis has certainly never realized how hard it is before, but it is, and by the time he finally makes it upright he’s surely made an absolute fool of himself. The effort is made even more unwieldy by the lightheadedness rapidly setting in on him. His vision feels blurry, and he struggles to keep his eyes fully open.

He feels the urge to dust off his coat, but his hands remain tragically handcuffed behind his back and out of use. So this is the sort of thing he worries about when he’s just had a pistol slammed into his face, is it?

More concerningly, the shirt which had been crisp and almost blinding white just this morning is now horribly red. That’s not going to get out, even with dry-cleaning. It’s not as if it was his favorite, but it’s still a perfectly good shirt, completely ruined now. Even more concerningly, he supposes, that’s a lot of blood. It would be tragic for him to die from, of all things, exsanguination from a wound that isn’t even that bad.

The taste of iron is heavy in his mouth. It’s not that unpleasant a taste, really. He could almost get used to it. Warm blood isn’t too different from tea, to a person who doesn’t have taste buds. He runs his tongue over his teeth. Thankfully, none of them seem to have become dislodged. He’s ridiculously lucky, now that he thinks about it. A person who’s been in as many fights as him, and lost a good half of them, has absolutely no right to have all of his teeth intact, but he’s very grateful that he does. Having a mouth full of silver teeth wouldn’t really suit him, he thinks.

“Can’t believe you’re on your feet,” Crowley remarks. Wait, no, Crowley can’t be her name, can it? But it must be, or is his memory really that bad? His head throbs.

He coughs in response. It’s not like he can manage much else.

She rolls her eyes, and turns to the window, yelling: “Can I get a ladder down here?!”

Someone obediently sets one down. Thankfully, it’s a step-ladder, not a rope ladder. Nemesis doesn’t think he’d be able to climb one of those handcuffed on a good day, never mind now, but he’s sure Crowley wouldn’t take no for an answer.

She shoves him with the muzzle of her gun, and he obediently climbs, fully aware of all the eyes on him as he steps through the window. A nice dose of public humiliation just to finish off the night, just what he needed.

People are talking. He can’t make out what any of them are saying. That’s concerning. Normally he can’t stop himself from eavesdropping if he wants to. Right now, all the words blend together into a horrible mess.

A figure cuts purposefully through the crowd. “What the fuck,” Lucian Vigenere sputters inelegantly.

“I’ve caught the thief,” Crawford says. Crawford! That’s her name! Yes, he’s remembered it! He would jump for joy, but he’s in far too much pain, and his delight is immediately spoiled by the revelation that it took him this long to remember. Goodness, he feels downright stupid now.

“Caught the thief?” Vigenere puts a hand on Nemesis’s shoulder, and he flinches instinctively. He’s been hit several times too much tonight to be touched out of the blue, and Vigenere seems to understand this, immediately retracting his arm with a look of disgust - not at Nemesis, but at his injuries. The look he wears is unfamiliar - sympathy. “Stars. Sorry, but stars. Uh, anyway - Jones, did you steal?”

He shakes his head as response.

“Good enough for me. Uncuff him before I have you written up,” he snaps at Crawford.

“But-” she begins, and Nemesis has to laugh, now that he knows it won’t get him killed on the spot. He just got pistol-whipped for something far less rude, and here she is talking back to the baron himself! She glares at him, but he can see the fear forming underneath the indignance.

Good, he thinks, you should be scared. It’s an alarming, vindictive, horrible thought, and for a moment he feels ashamed of it, but then he remembers that she’s the reason he’s bleeding rivulets all over the floor.

“No buts. That’s an employee of the Semper barony you’ve…” he looks at Nemesis, trying to assess his injuries.

“Pistol-whipped,” Nemesis supplies, all too aware of the blood spilling into his mouth.

“...pistol-whipped,” Vigenere repeats incredulously.

“It’s fine,” Nemesis speaks up. “Really. I’ve had worse.”

“If you insist.” Vigenere looks thoroughly unconvinced, then glares at Crawford. “I’ll assume you found nothing of actual use, so you’d best uncuff this gentleman and get out of my sight before I have you written up.”

To her credit, she does so, with no lack of indignation on her face. Nemesis can tell it’s an impressive show of restraint on her part to not just shoot him and Vigenere both, but she doesn’t. Unfortunately, any respect he could have afforded her is overridden by the ever-regrettable pistol-whipping.

And by the time she’s gone, other people have arrived. Mustafa Dagher, both of the Chases, and Theory are all gathered around Nemesis, in various degrees of alarm and concern. Elias isn’t present, but then again, neither is Jing, or anyone else from the Obscura. When he scans the crowd, he can’t locate any of them. Have they left early? Are they in league with the thief? Or are they scared of being targeted?

It’s Vigenere who speaks first. “I’m so sorry, Jones.”

“It’s no problem, really.”

“You look hideous,” Theory remarks, though her face is showing an uncharacteristic amount of concern. Nemesis supposes everyone has their ways of coping with the disfigurement of a friend.

“Ah, I’m aware. Nothing’s changed on that front, then. Maybe I’ll have a cool scar to show off at parties now.”

“Oh, Nemesis!” Percy is actually crying, which Nemesis thinks is a bit of an overblown reaction. “Are you okay? No, sorry, sorry, stupid stupid stupid question no you aren’t okay obviously I’m so sorry-”

Nemesis puts one hand on his shoulder. Boy, does it feel good to be uncuffed. He can thank the stars for that, at least. “Cool your jets, Chase. It’s just a broken nose.”

“Just a broken nose?” Mustafa Dagher looks like he might have a heart attack. “But-but you look like you should be dead, honestly! I can’t imagine how you aren’t!”

“Thanks. Really inspires some bleeding confidence, that.”

“I didn’t mean it like that-”

Evie puts a hand on his shoulder. “Relax. I think he’s coping just fine.”

“Thank you!” Nemesis throws his hands in the air. “Finally, someone here is approaching this calmly! I’ll be fine people, I’ll be fine. I’m a private investigator, getting grievously wounded in the pursuit of some or other villain is what I do!”

The crowd is still murmuring. Always, with the damned murmuring.

Percy wipes tears away from his eyes. “You’re so cool, Nemesis. I’m sorry I can’t be as cool as you. I just...that looks like it hurts so much, I can’t even imagine how much it hurts!”

“It’s fine, mate. I’m not offended, you’re fine. I’m just-” he starts to pinch the bridge of his nose, before realizing that it’s currently physically impossible to do so.

Vigenere puts a hand on Nemesis’s shoulder. “Are you alright? What happened?”

“Just a misunderstanding, I reckon. I didn’t manage to catch the thief, and she saw me out on the roof. And, er, has really bad work practices.”

“Do you need urgent medical attention?”

“I know a guy. I’ll be fine to come back here and work on the case tomorrow, don’t worry.”

Vigenere looks horrified. “But...you’re injured.”

“And?”

He sighs. Nemesis feels like this might have been a little too much excitement for one night. So young and the baron of Acerbis’s most politically prominent region, and now he gets to watch the man he just hired get the tar beaten out of him by one of his own officers. It must be stressful for him.

“I insist on seeing you tomorrow, then. For...contract discussions. For the time being-” he looks at Percy. “Are you his...what is your relationship to Mr. Jones?”

“I’m just his friend,” Percy says through his tears.

“Well, make sure he gets himself medical treatment. Not the ineffective kind, either. The artificial kind. I’ll reimburse you for all costs, tell the doctor the baron sent you.”

“No problem. I’m not going to not get treated.” Nemesis hadn’t even briefly considered the idea that artifice could be used to heal people, but he supposes it makes sense.

“You’d best keep your word. I don’t like liars.” Vigenere gives him a solemn look. “Now get to the doctor, Jones. We’ll leave the crime scene pristine and untouched for you to look over tomorrow, I swear it on my honor as a Vigenere.”

“I appreciate it, your lordship.” He tips his cap - remarkably still on his head after the harrowing night - and bows.

Mustafa Dagher waves at him, though he looks like he’s still processing the night’s happenings himself. “Take care, Jones! I’m so sorry this had to happen!”

He leaves, Theory and the Chases flank him. Percy has grabbed his hand, and doesn’t seem eager to let go, which Theory and Evie both look remarkably tense. On his way out, he notices Phineas Sterling sobbing into Gilbert Banks’s lapels. It’s been not a particularly great night for anyone, he supposes.

Nemesis has seen a lot of alarmed looks in his life, but the one on Lavinia Graves’s face when she sees his horrible, swollen form is pretty impressive.

She rushes over to the door immediately, roughly grabbing Nemesis’s face. He winces in pain as she turns it over in her hands, staring intently at his nose. “What bleeding happened to you, boy?!” She exclaims, agitated.

“Pistol-whipped,” Nemesis provides, swollen features making it difficult to enunciate properly.

“Pistol-whipped!” She repeats, then sighs. “And I don’t suppose you’ll tell me how this came to happen? Actually, forget it, I don’t bloody care, just get in my office.” She gestures to the Chases and Theory, who wait awkwardly by the door. “And who are these people?!”

“My friends,” Nemesis mutters.

“Well, your friends can wait outside.” She gestures him in, and he looks back at the three of them.

“It’ll be alright, you three.” He smiles in a way he hopes is charming and reassuring, but given the state of his face is probably more horrifying and alarming. “I’ll be fine.”

“I sure hope so,” Theory agrees. “I’ll be hailing a cab. I trust you can do the same, even in your current state. What should I tell Callie?”

“Tell Callie I’ve been injured but I’m fine. I’ll be home soon enough, I hope.” He realizes, to his utter horror, that he’s just referred to Beaumort’s as ‘home’, but if Theory catches it, she doesn’t comment.

“Fair enough, fair enough.”

“Call me tomorrow,” Percy insists. “I need to know you’re okay. Please make sure you call me as soon as you can.”

Nemesis smiles. Percy’s genuine concern is one of his best features, even if he is overreacting. Then again, he remembers how he was about the corpses at Burke’s, too. It’s pretty clear to Nemesis that, for whatever reason, Percy doesn’t do well with gore in the least - strange as it is to think of a broken nose and swollen cheek as ‘gore’.

“It’s alright, mate,” he says, as clearly as he can muster with the state of his face. “I’ll be fine. I’m getting medical attention. Don’t worry about it.”

“You can’t stop me from worrying,” he insists, but he and Evie leave as well with one final concerned glance back, and Nemesis watches the door shut behind them before he finally follows Graves to her office.

When she sees him, she raises her eyebrow and gestures to her operating table. Fortunately, it seems to be scrubbed clean of blood. Unfortunately, Nemesis thinks he and his still-bleeding face might be about to change that.

“Sit,” she says. “Pistol-whipped. Bloody stars. Is this what you got up to with Arthur?”

“No!” He says, immediately, with a sort of violent intensity to it. Immediately after, he takes a deep breath, steadying his breathing. “That is to say...I never got hurt while he was around. I’m an idiot. He’s not a bad guardian, so don’t…”

“Don’t worry. I believe you.” She pats him on the shoulder. “Sit down, before I just knock you out.”

He sits down. “I’ve had a good amount of laudanum, by the way, in case you’re curious. Maybe a bad amount, actually, on account of being kind of a lot, but I reckon in this circumstance it’s a little justified.” The bottle Aharon Apollinaire had given him had finally come in handy, even if he wasn’t about to waste good laudanum on the poor excuse for a wrist injury it had been prescribed for.

“That was about to be my first step, so thank you for sparing me the effort. Care to tell me why you’ve just got laudanum with you, then?”

“I had it for medical reasons,” he insists. “Aharon Apollinaire prescribed it to me for a wrist injury.”

“A wrist injury…” She hums, then holds out her hand. “I’d like to see this wrist of yours.”

He provides it, and she looks over it with a frown. “You’re aware that around half the bones in your hand have been broken and healed horribly, correct?”

“I’m aware, yes.”

“And that the position in which you hold your wrist is incredibly strange because you’ve clearly suffered multiple injuries which, again, have failed to heal even remotely well?”

He smiles ruefully. “I’ve punched a lot of walls.”

“That’s terrible.” She sighs. “Arthur just let you live like this?”

“No. He was very concerned by almost everything I did, and he kept me out of trouble.”

“Then why-”

“I didn’t always have him.”

She nods tensely, and he can practically sense her going over all the letters Arthur Jones had sent her in her mind, trying to put together a better image of who Nemesis had been when Jones had met him. “He told me. About your hands. But I didn’t imagine the bones themselves would be-”

“Well, they are.”

She frowns, gingerly looking over his hands. “That’s why the gloves, right?”

He nods.

“Bloody awful. Ashamed of your own hands at such a young age...and through no fault of your own.”

“That’s not exactly true. No one told me to mess up my own hands. It’s my own responsibility.”

She clicks her tongue. “You were what, thirteen, when you met him? Not a child’s fault he was forced to those extremes. Shame on your parents.”

“What parents?”

She winces. “Right. Well, it’s the less concerning injury at the moment. I could probably set your bones properly later, though it would be...hard. Old habits die hard, for both people and their bones. For the time being, lie down.”

He does, and she puts a hand on his face, frowning. “I’m going to assume you’d like me to keep your face looking as normal as possible. Can’t just put gloves over that, can you?”

“Aye, but I’m sure it’ll be fine once the swelling goes down.”

“This is the second time your nose has been broken,” she observes. “The first time healed rather well, considering the circumstances. You needed to look closely to be able to tell that anything was up. This time, there’s a good chance you might not be as lucky. I normally only bother with mundane medicine, because if someone wants artifice they can go to the bloody Domus Vitae, but I think it would probably be more efficient and effective to heal you using more aggressive means.”

“Aggressive healing…” he mutters, not entirely following anything he’s saying. Beyond basic first aid, medicine is another of those subjects he never excelled at.

“Sure, think of it that way.” She turns away from him, beginning to rifle through her cabinets. When she comes back, she has a beaker of blood in her hand and long white gloves on.

“Do try to relax while I do this. You wouldn’t want my hand to slip. Oh, and, since I’m obligated to say it - this won’t hurt a bit.”