The Delegation passes that one hundred member milestone uninterrupted.

Evan gets his claws around Harper.

All of my dreams are filled with the scent of hair set on fire even though I saved her this time, ending with the ringing of his fingers clicking together into a red plume.

(When I wake up in the morning, I can feel the pain receding out at Anthem's whim--my grief is no longer an asset to the team. Every bit of hurt I steal back from her is a victory. I'll take it. I'll take it.)

---

252 Dunahan Avenue.

I open the phone again, squint at the mediocre JPEG, try to convince myself I'm reading Evan's atrocious chickenscratch correctly. The 'house' address I got this afternoon is not for a house at all, it leads to an abandoned store deep into the town, close to Evan's apartment. The windows are broken and the scabbed over writing in the windows reveals that it's been up for retail for years. I may not have recognized the address when it was given to me, but I recognize the place- it's a popular place for the shadier part of our school, practically an empire of weed and less notorious drugs.

Immediately, I regret coming, but I try to relax my tense shoulders into feigned indifference, reaching for the blank absence that would at least keep me safe from suspicion. My heart continues to pace out of my chest unhelpfully.

In my time as a "superhero", I've done many, many questionable things, and

sneaking into a den of stoners was probably the third worst. I shed the vestigial concern of the Adam Rosenbloom who entered this school year. I'm not him anymore- I'm the thing born of him commingled with Diosite, which crawled into his skin, almost kissed two people (of opposite genders), ruined his reputation, and now I'm going to smash whatever dignity he had into the ground.

I'll say one thing for my recent emotional turmoil: this is nothing now. Entering the house is like getting a shot at the doctor's office. You're not eagerly anticipating it, but it's not something worth dreading.

That's a lie. I'm excited to hear from Evan again, in spite of myself, maybe even Evan as I once knew him... excitement doesn't even cover it. I have fantasies about it, late at night, of the three of us back in the Veins again laughing about the ridiculous Diosite-fueled nightmares. Sometimes I think seeing his smile again would be enough, touching bare flesh...

Megan's old chapstick tosses in my pocket. I clench it between two fingers as I navigate the maze of the building. It's devoid of furniture, save for a singular moth-eaten sofa, and light fixtures hang out of their sockets like protruding eyeballs. The air smells like weed, equal parts mint and sewage and altogether revolting. I squint around in the darkness, averting my gaze from questionable behavior of several varieties. I move fast as I can without drawing attention, heart pumping blood and my body utterly rejecting every breath I take, but I freeze up when I see a lifeless shape hunched up against the wall in another room.

Bingo.

Someone approaches me and offers a joint, and I raise a hand, unwilling to speak for fear of revealing myself. The person before me mutters something like, "Damn, whatever," and disappears back into the fray of people.

I move briskly into the messy backroom, likely once a bathroom or something similar, and slide down to sit next to Evan Drake, who turns beneath his dark and unkempt hair, wild. Somehow he looks even more dangerous than he does as Onyx, when they have a grip on him. His retinas are red enough to give away that he's had something but his movements are lucid enough, and hell, the whole place smells too much like smoke for me to tell if it's him. A half-visible thing, still burning, confirms that yes, he's been killing himself a little more than usual, and as he holds himself up with one hand, I hope desperately that he's not about to deck me like he threatened at the funeral.

Evan's voice comes out as a smoky whisper. "Took you long enough."

It's him. My head and heart are buzzing. "We're not going to leave you."

"You really, really should have." Evan takes the thing in his hands and turns it a few times until I feel like retching. "You should've taken one of these. They really take the edge off."

The silence continues. Both of us suck in a shuddering breath, almost in unison.

"Not that there aren't other benefits." continues Evan, "For one thing, I can almost look at you without wanting to smash your face in." He lifts a hand to my face and I let him run a hand across the side of my face, a gesture familiar as everything out of my dreams.

I wrest his hand open and snap the lithe, cylindrical item within in two. He jolts back from me at once, eyes wide as Anthem's. "What did they do to you?" I ask.

His eyes haze over and he brings one hand to his temple. "It's like noise. When they put me in there, I could... I could hear this pitch in my head... The pain kept getting worse and the sound just kept going up, and up, and up... at first, it's just pain. You think, 'Yeah. I can get through this.' But they always get you. They always do. It just keeps going up and up and all I could think was I will do anything if you stop I promise I'll do whatever you want and I meant it. I meant it even as I tore through her fucking ribcage, Adam. I still mean it."

I don't notice my fist is twitching until I look down.

"It's never over. I hear it all day. When I'm asleep, when I'm awake... I don't dream anymore, Adam. There's nothing but noise and light and pain."

I need to run.

"God, I love that face. I love that expression." he whispers. His hand is shaking. "They'll be back for me soon. They'll be back soon, I'll be back at your throat, I can't live like this and I can't die unless they let me. Damn. Damnit!" He looks more like a dragon than ever before, alight with rage. "You had to come screw me up, didn't you?"

"You bought the invitation!"

"I was trying to-" I can almost see his teeth into sharpened, awful fangs, the dark hair like the mess of scales and horns that crown the head of beasts, and then, slowly, the dragon pulls back from his face, and all that remains is a feeble shell of a human. "I wanted to say goodbye. I needed to see you again."

"We can-"

He shakes his head.

"Evan. You have to keep fighting. We're going to get to you-- we could--"

"They're having a meeting in two days. The higher-ups. Probably expecting you. You don't have enough firepower to get through, but that's when they'll have the least grunts around. They'll be using me as a guard dog all night." He twitches. "They're..." I can see him heaving for air. He places his hands around his ears, the motion almost inhuman, and gulps something down. He's hyperventilating.

I can't do anything. "Thank you." I'm still thinking about the Veins. Us. I see it in his eyes, the twisting foray of emotion and things left to say.

"Sometimes," he whispers, eyes red, "I wish she'd been thrown in instead of me, because then she would have killed me instead and all of this would be over. That's when I know I've really betrayed her." I catch the glint of his yellowing teeth, caught between a grimace and a smile.

I can't say anything. My throat is dead, I'm choking on the smoke in the air and every word he says. I manage to reach out for him, and he smacks me away.

"I'll becoming off this any second now. Get as far as you can." His hands are trembling as they clench the wall, pulling himself up. Whatever has a grip on him is pulling the strings again, rectifying his back and drawing him upwards into something resembling a weapon.

"Evan." I'm back against the wall, fight-or-flight taking over, the situation caving in on me like the terrible infrastructure of the building.

He stands, assuming a posture like the Delegation member shell of a person I've fought lately, over and over, but there's a flicker of him in the eyes, dangerous and defiant- that's him, that's Evan. It's Evan who whispers: "Don't look back for us, Adam. We're both dead." 

(A/N:  as usual chronalilly does not condone drugs or hitting your boyfriend. do not hit your traumatized boyfriend. even if you are high and on mind control. he will cry

also I did very little research on this subject so feel free to call me out for inaccuracies on... everything?)