It's not everyday you wake up with a mind numbing, stomach emptying, sweat inducing headache, and indescribable feeling as though you've turned your own world upside down with no recollection of how you've done it. I rose, checked the time to see it was too early, and noticed I wasn't in my bed. I was in Con's bed--well, Gus's bed. I froze, and squinted into confusion... I can't imagine even a completely plastered me would... no... Then another headache settled in and I put it off.

I was delighted to discover that both of my parents and Sheryl were out of the house which means I could retch into the loo as loudly as I wanted. Although I don't know how we got home last night without them knowing, I guess I had to hand that to Gus. Speak of the devil, there was a sharp knock on the door about half an hour into my intestinal escapade.

"If you've come to rub my nose in it I'm going to have to tell you to bugger off." I said, clutching my forehead.

There was a chuckle from the other side. "Actually, I've brought you some breakfast."

"I don't want it."

"I've also got some painkillers."

I opened the door and Gus was standing there, right as rain, holding a plate of eggs and a glass of water respectively. He set the plate down on the sink counter before taking a seat himself, I took the glass of water and the pills.

"You're looking pretty rough." He noted.

"Mm." I replied.

"Understandable. I mean, you were totally legless last night. On the piss. Off your trolley."

I rolled my eyes. "Oh that's clever. I see somebody's spent five minutes on the wiki page for British slang."

He laughed and I felt my mood soften ever so slightly. I even started picking at the nice meal he had made me. It... it was a nice gesture.

"I don't even remember most of last night. Anything wild happen?" I admitted, a secret tactic of my own, hoping he'd talk about it.
Something twinkled in his eyes.

"Oh uh... not much. Your horse friend ditched us and we got kicked out. You started telling me about Conway."

I choked on my mouthful of food, forcing it down. "I... I what?"

Gus stared pointedly at me. "Your... brother right? The dead kid?"

"He's not dead." I said through gritted teeth.

"Right." Gus corrected himself. "Missing."

There an uncomfortable silence following that statement.

"Are you...alright?" Gus asked.

"I'm fine." I sighed. "He..."

I trailed off and glanced up at his face. That look was back. I hate it when he does that. It's like I'm a shoal of fish and he's the shark. It's terrifying.

"What?"

"You're just going to tell Sheryl all of this, aren't you?"

Gus frowned. "That's my... job."

I scoffed "So what? This is all just a job to you?"

Gus raised an eyebrow. "Uh... I would like to plead the fifth."

"You would like to what?"

He sighed. "Never mind, just... okay fine. I won't tell Sheryl... yet. I have to tell her though. I'm not going to lie to Sheryl. I'm not going to lie to you."

Well that's comforting.

He looks at his eggs with a surprisingly genuine smile. "I try not to lie. It makes things unnecessarily complicated, y'know?"

"Hmf."

His gaze trails up to me, and my heart accelerates as his blue eyes hit me like a summer breeze straight to the face. "You can tell me about your brother if you want, Asher. I'm sure not everything about him is incriminating evidence."

I stared at him for a bit and silently weighed everything I could and might say about Conway Northcott. It felt like I held a leatherbound novel of facts, but I knew if I tried to talk about any of them I might just have enough information for a tourist's pamphlet of my brother's personality.

"I don't know. We're twins. We share a room. You've got his bed. He... was a nerd. He likes animals and faraway places and... always talked about getting away from here... and me." It sounded a lot more depressing out loud.

Gus shot me a somewhat concerned look. "Do you wanna--"

"No just, that was stupid forget I said anything. I don't want to talk about my brother, okay?" I silently begged for the painkillers to kick in as I stared at my feet.

"Geez. Sorry." Gus muttered.

"It's fine."

"You... say that a lot." Gus pointed out, flashing me something between that hungry Sheryl stare and genuine concern.

My stupid heart skipped a beat. "What.. what's that supposed to mean?"

Gus shrugged. "Nothing."

"Oh yeah well, you say that a lot."

Gus laughed, the sound just as bright and breezy as ever, and I died a little bit on the inside. Stupid. He pulled out his phone and started fumbling around. Then pointed it towards me.

"Here. Look, I don't know the guy, and I'm still half convinced he's a convict, but I bet he wasn't that bad, right?"
He had a picture of one of our family pictures. Long enough ago so that I didn't remember what the occasion was, but it looked like Con and me were preteens at most. We looked varying happy in this image. I think I remember when this was taken... that was a while ago. Almost... before everything? Maybe I didn't know what everything was.

"What?" I frowned, pulling his phone towards my face.

"Well, he's a delinquent at least, maybe. I can go for scoundrel-"

"Where did you get this?" I demanded.

"I found it," he explained. "It was just lying around, Asher."

"You're going through my stuff? Our stuff?"

"Asher, calm down," he said, gently.

My eyes widened in realization. "Wait, did you get me drunk just I would loosen up and talk about Conway? Were you... what that just a huge manipulation stunt?"

Gus stood up. "Hold on."

I pointed an accusatory finger at him. "Tell the truth."

Gus let out a long sigh. "None of that was deliberate. We were in the bar, I was bored, you weren't talking to me, and so I thought I'd liven up the place a little. C'mon, Asher. You know I wouldn't... ."

"I don't." I look straight up at him.

"What?"

"I don't know that you wouldn't do it deliberately." I uncurled my fingers from around my wrist and took a deep breath. "I'm going out."

"You sure?"

"I'm fine. I'm going out."

"Oh. Rad." Gus perks up. "Let me just grab my shoes-"

"Without you."

Gus's eyes widened and for second I thought I almost had him speechless. "Okay."

I was surprised he gave up that easily. Part of me almost wanted to stay and keep fighting him, but I knew that wasn't fair. I was too worked up to keep looking at his face so I grabbed my keychain and jacket and promptly closed the door behind me. With the brisk England air in my lungs and sound of silence at my back I stalked away to go cool off. I don't think I was angry at Gus Washington. I think I was just angry.

Conway got angry sometimes. He would storm out. Mum and Dad always let him. I followed him one time and watched as he would wrap up his fists and punch the trees. Con had a pair of earrings that he never learned how to activate into a weapon. It always made him angry... or irritable I guess. Con's anger and mine were different.

I came into the woods to the same spot he did that one night. I didn't want to hit anything. I kinda just wanted to cry. I had lots of reasons too, probably wouldn't though. I would probably just sit here and mull for a few hours while twirling my thumbs together pathetically.

Instead of that, however, every single tree in the area had dark gouges in their sides, causing sap to trickle down their sides like blood, forming letters:. I'M STILL HERE. It was the same message from the dead cat.

"Conway?" I called out. "I know you're still out there."

It was almost like the trees themselves has their bone to pick with me, because I was met with only the sound of silence and rustling of leaves. Books were made out of trees. Libraries had books. I'm not going to the library, not yet.

"Why won't you talk to me?" I begged, into the air.

My only reply was a few raindrops and I flipped my hood over my head as more water started to fall from the sky. Rude. I took that as my cue and stood up, staring off into the trees.

Then all of a sudden they caught fire.

I jumped back from the tree I had been leaning against as the smoke started to curl out of the chinks in the bark. There were smolder marks on my hands. One by one each tree caught flame. It was coordinated. There was a malicious, intelligent intent behind every snap of the fire.

"C-Con?" I stammered, backing away slowly. "Please! You're scaring me! Just come out and talk to me!"

The flames shook and started moving. Twisting through the air, not a doubt steered by magical force. I recognized two white eyes of the hottest, fiercest flame, as the fire began to manifest into a column, which curved into something resembling the body of a woman. I recognized the ginger locks, even though they were now nothing but blistering heat, even the dark cropping of ashen markings that almost resembled freckles... With a voice of hatred and hissing flame, she whispered, "I'm not him."

My eyes widened in surprise, no. The face let out a shrill scream and then the whole scene disappeared entirely with a loud snap. My hands flew up to my ears as the world swam momentarily. I glanced at my palm to see there were a few drops of blood there and I cringed, feeling queasy. After my vision cleared I squinted at the forest. The trees were completely unscathed. My knees were shaking slightly but... that was probably the residual black magic hanging around. I leaned against a tree and took a moment to catch my breath.

Danu's Grace, I was in trouble. I was in so much trouble. If it was really her, if she was really that... Danu's Grace wouldn't be enough.
The next most unexpected thing that happened to me that day came next when I was wandering through town, soaking wet and shivering. I was too stubborn to go back and had been banned from entering most of these stores. I wonder how much more time had to pass before people started to talk about the desperate lack of taller, significantly nerdier, Northcott menaces. Who am I kidding, it was probably all going on behind my back. What kind of jerk would flaunt that in my face?

My thought was answered as two shoes stepped in front of me: dark blue, dirty, frankly disgusting running shoes. My eyes trailed up and all of a sudden I was looking into two blue eyes. The same color of the sky when the clouds finally cleared away, an extremely rare occurrence. Gus Washington smiled softly and held out an umbrella.

"It was uh... raining, and you're out here without one of these bad boys."

"Yeah it does that--wait how did you know I was here?" I blinked, and slowly took the umbrella.

"Call it a lucky guess." Gus replied.

I stared and noticed he was also drenched to the skin. It was heartwarming, but also Gus Washington is a fool. You can use the bloody umbrella while you search the town for me, you stupid, idiotic, lovable fool.

"I'm sorry about setting you off earlier. I would like to also like to genuinely ask you if you're okay because you do look a little shaken right now."

I glanced up at him. "Oh yeah, I'm doing great."

After my fire-in-forest scare, I had completely forgotten about today's beef with Gus.

Gus tilted his head, probably already suspicious about my lie. "Would you care to hear about more slang I looked up this morning?"

I flicked open the umbrella and held it up over the two of us, which meant Gus had to bend over. "You know it."

"So in Britain they sometimes call umbrellas-"

"Brollys." I answered for him. "You forget I live here."

"Kinda hard to forget that, buddy. But did you know, in America, they used to call them..." He makes a frankly theatrical hand movement, "bumbershoots."

I couldn't help but smile.