Chapter Text
Bren’s mind was blank and his body was numb.
He just kept putting one foot in front of the other, walking down the middle of the road, focusing on the rhythm of the movement and the roiling, spiraling emotions fueling him underneath the numbness. Cars passed by him, sometimes through him, but he paid them no mind. Not even a semi-truck rolling through him, encompassing him entirely and blacking out his vision for a second, phased him. It came and it went, and all Bren did was keep walking. To care, he’d have to be able to feel something.
Essek wanted him gone? Fine. He’d make sure he never bothered him, or anyone else for that matter, again. None of them would ever even have to see him at a distance.
The moon was a beautiful crescent shape above his head, and the stars were bright and shimmering, no light pollution to speak of on this lonely two-lane highway, but Bren didn’t notice. He stared ahead, focused on the road, and walked.
He walked for two and a half hours. 7 miles. It would have taken 6 minutes in a car on this high-speed highway, but Bren didn’t have one. Not that it mattered. His feet never tired and he had as much time as he could ever want or need. Enough time that it felt like a fitting sanction for everything he’d ever done. An eternity spent separated from the one place he wanted to be, with the two people and cat he wanted to be with.
He thought back to the picture frame in his bedside table. His heart ached dully in his chest at the reminder of it. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t have to concentrate on it like every other object. It was probably because it was his key, but he didn’t know what made a key different from any other object besides being something that just… showed up in his hands. Maybe, like Essek said, it’s connected to him, so it’s just as much in this weird separate reality as he was? Who knows. He certainly didn’t. And he probably will never know, since finding out would mean going back to the Grove.
A part of him wanted to go back to the funeral home and get it, but the rest of him squashed that voice down. He didn’t deserve to have it. He deserved to miss that picture and the people in it for the rest of time.
Guilt surged through his body as he thought about all the work they’d put into his room just for him to leave.
The others were going to miss him. They’d probably even get mad at Essek. Bren didn’t mind admitting that the idea of that was appealing, after everything.
He hated that he’d be hurting the others, but this was for their own good. He wasn’t someone worth fighting for, he was damaged and broken and unfixable, and if they weren’t going to realize it for themselves Bren would just have to make the decision for them.
His mind drifted, coaxed into a memory by his rhythmic footfalls.
Coming home after his second attempt had been rough, but the transition from staffed institution to apartment had been easier. Unlike his first attempt, they had put him in the group home for some months before allowing him to leave, and it did help ease him into self-sustaining daily life. And Astrid was living on her own, no longer rooming with their - or rather her - friends.
They used to be Bren’s friends, but Bren discovered they cared less about him and more about how much fun he could be, and didn’t take kindly to Bren’s PTSD episode at his Welcome Home party that had him hiding away and crying in Astrid’s closet.
Even though it was just them, now, Bren could tell Astrid was losing patience with every passing day he was there. And he completely understood. He was not an easy man to love. Not anymore.
He tried to make up for his failures in other ways. Since his PTSD was too severe to let him work, he took care of the apartment and of her. He cleaned, he cooked, he prepared her lunches, he bought her flowers and took her out once a week, using the settlement money to buy groceries, gifts, and pay his portion of rent. He did whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, and didn’t complain. It was the least he could do, after everything.
He tried so hard. But it seemed like, with every night terror that had him screaming, with every flashback that had him frozen in place, with every flare of irritability and every argument he had to apologize for later, even when he hadn’t been the one to raise his voice first, she let him go bit by bit.
It was the day after their worst argument yet.
“Hallo, schatzi.” Astrid greeted as she entered the apartment.
Bren called out from the kitchen nearby, loading laundry into the clothing washer, “Hallo, Engel. Perfect timing, I just finished dinner.”
Astrid’s heeled shoes clacked into the kitchen, but Bren paid it no attention, focusing on his task. He was tossing clothes in by the handful, having already sorted the fabrics and colors into separate laundry baskets, and nearly dropped the basket he was holding when Astrid spoke in a harsh, demanding tone.
“What are you doing?”
Bren furrowed his brows, confused. “Loading the washer?”
“This is a shirt!” Astrid grabbed a thin blouse from the washer and shook it at Bren. “Why are you loading it with my underwear?!”
“Because they are made from the same type of fabric?” Bren countered, still utterly confused. “And they’re both white?”
“But it’s underwear, Bren!” Astrid groaned like a tired parent. “It’s on my vagina for hours, and then you want to put it in with my work blouse?!”
“I suppose I can see your point, but all of the clothing is dirty when it goes in. And I make sure all of it is clean when it finishes, if that’s your worry. I’ve done this before, I promise it will-”
“You’ve put my nasty underwear in with my work blouse before?!” Astrid was livid. “What is wrong with you?!”
The shouting was making Bren’s anxiety spike. He could feel his heart start to race and the world blur at the edges.
“Astrid, please don’t yell.” Bren weakly protested.
“Oh don’t give me that!” Astrid rolled her eyes. “You can’t pull the PTSD card every time you do something wrong!”
“I am trying to explain my process.” Bren struggled, starting to shake. He could almost hear Ikithon laughing at him. “You don’t have to yell at me.”
“What process?! Everyone knows you don’t throw underwear in with work clothes! Did your mother not teach you how to sort laundry?!”
Bren stilled and stared. Her words were a dagger that dug deep under his ribs, ripping open old wounds and letting intrusive thoughts spill forth. Fond memories of his mother teaching him the basics of laundry were now forever tainted by the memory of this moment.
His thoughts were a whirlwind of emotion and self-hatred, and everything in him screamed to run away.
She seemed to realize what she said when Bren stopped fighting back, just staring with an empty gaze. Her eyes widened and horror crossed her face, and Bren dropped the basket on the kitchen floor and walked around her.
“W-Wait-!”
He could hear Astrid running after him as he left their apartment and stomped down the stairs in the hallway.
“Bren wait, I’m sorry!” Astrid pleaded, turning on the waterworks, and Bren scowled and kept walking, shoving the door to the apartment building open and storming out. She kept following him. “Bren please-”
“Leave me alone.” He growled. He kept walking. He didn’t know where he was going, and he didn’t care. He just wanted to be as far from her as possible.
“No!” Astrid tried to grab his arm and Bren yanked it free. “Not until we talk this out. Please schatzi, I love you, I’m sorry.”
“You have a funny way of showing it.” Bren snarled.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,” Astrid kept the tears up, kept following him, and Bren knew she wouldn’t give up until he forgave her, but he didn’t know if he could this time, “that was a horrible thing to say and I’m so sorry. I won’t ever say something like that again, I promise.”
Bren held out for several minutes. Eventually, tired of being begged for forgiveness, he told her he forgave her just to get her to shut up. She refused to leave his side still, so he reluctantly went back to the apartment with her, where she then ushered him to sit and eat as she finished up the laundry for him.
Bren wasn’t blind to the fact that she didn’t finish the laundry out of care for him, despite what she said about “making it up” to him by doing so. He knew she did it so she could take the underwear out and win their petty argument.
Bren spent the following day while Astrid was at work considering his next steps. He knew what he needed to do, and while he absolutely hated it, it needed to happen. This couldn’t keep going.
Bren sat her down after dinner. He hoped her favorite meal would help make this go smoother.
It didn’t.
“You can’t just break up with me!” Astrid shouted, tears in her eyes.
“We are fighting more and more each day. I can tell I’m weighing heavily on you.” Bren had tears in his eyes as well, his stomach in knots.
“You don’t get to decide that for me! You don’t get to decide if you’re a burden to me.” Astrid gripped his hands in hers, pleading, “Work has been stressful, that’s all, I promise it’s not you. I love you, mein rotes Kätzchen, you mean everything to me. You’re all I have left.”
“And it’s entirely my fault.” Bren tried to argue.
Astrid snapped, “Shut up! Stop saying that! It’s not your fault. You don’t get to decide for me if I should blame you or not, so stop saying it!”
“S-Sorry.” Bren looked down at their hands shamefully.
Astrid softened. She still wasn’t used to seeing her confident, charismatic Bren, the man that lit up every room he walked into, the man that was the life of the party of every event they used to go to, so small and broken.
“Bitte, don’t do this.” Astrid pleaded in a tearful whisper. “W-We can - I’ll do anything. I’ll go to therapy, too. We can work through this. Please. We promised we would be together forever.”
Bren felt tears welling in his eyes. He hated seeing Astrid so upset. He hated being the cause. But she was right. He couldn’t decide for her if he was too much for her to handle. That wasn’t fair to her. She had the right to make her own choices.
And he still loved her. So much. He loved the girl he walked to class. The one he took to the school dance. The girl who drew little doodles in his notebooks and wrote sweet things for him to find when he went to take notes. He loved that girl so much, and he didn’t want to believe she was gone for good.
“Okay.”
She didn’t go to therapy. She didn’t get better at controlling her temper. She let it fester into resentment and hatred, and she lashed out one time too many for Bren to take in the months after.
Shame filled Bren’s chest, remembering the moment he decided he no longer cared if she found him. Picturing what the moment must have looked like, her finding him covered in vomit on the bathroom floor, barely breathing.
According to the doctors, throwing up was the only reason he had lived. They called it a miracle. At the time, he called it fucking infuriating. Still did, to a degree. It would’ve saved them both a lot of pain if he’d succeeded on his third attempt and not… God, he didn’t even know how many times he tried. He lost count.
He never lived with her again after that. Both because he realized how absolutely fucked up and toxic he had gotten to spite her in such a horrific way, and because he never made it out of the group home without trying to die first.
Bren was not keen on making the same mistake again by overstaying his welcome even though his host wouldn’t tell him enough was enough. He was doing what he should have done years ago with Astrid, when she refused to let go.
No more fights. No more squabbles. No more attempts to get along. If Bren’s presence meant there couldn’t be peace at The Blooming Grove, then he would leave.
At the end of the two and a half hours, Bren arrived at the outskirts of northern Shadycreek. The moon was somewhat lower in the sky. He was maybe a couple more hours from sunrise? Plenty of time to find the bus station. If there was one. If not? Well… He could walk to Rexxentrum. It’d take several days, but maybe he deserved to walk for several days.
Heh, maybe. Like he didn’t already know.
Walking past homes and businesses, Bren sighed longingly. Everyone was asleep. No one was awake to see Bren walking down the road, and even if they were, they wouldn’t see him. Ironically, he finally felt like a ghost. A specter of a person moving through the world, invisible, imperceivable, a haunting shadow of what it had once been. The concept of being a ghost hadn’t made him lonely until that moment.
Maybe because he hadn’t been fully invisible before. At least at the Grove, he had the others.
Bren shook their memory from his head, feeling his eyes starting to well up against his will. Don’t think about it. You’ll change your mind and go back like a coward afraid to face punishment. Just keep walking. They don’t need you. They’d be better off without you, they just don’t realize it yet. But they will. They’ll wake up, be mad at Essek for a bit, then move on with their afterlives and forget you existed.
He bottled up that loneliness and set it aside for later, searching for something that could point him in the right direction. He could, in theory, search for the bus station manually, traversing every road until he stumbled upon it, but he could be searching until dawn and he had no idea when any buses out of Shadycreek would start running. Hell, he didn’t know if Shadycreek had any buses.
He searched for a sign, a city building, or a parking lot full of buses for a couple hours. It was purely by happenstance that he stumbled across an office building and saw a group discussing quietly among themselves, outside the front windows facing the parking lot. They had suitcases and backpacks on, and some were wearing headphones and staring at their phones, so it was obvious they were traveling somewhere as a group.
Bren approached and heard a few people excitedly talking about some sort of work trip they were taking to Rexxentrum from Molaesymr up north. He wasn’t sure what the trip was, it seemed like a day trip for fun, but he didn’t really care, either. They were headed to Rexxentrum. That was all he needed to know.
As the sun began to rise, the bus pulled up and everyone got on board. Bren walked through, not waiting for people to get out of the way, and took the furthest seat in the back. He wished he had a book or a phone and some earbuds.
You don’t deserve those things.
Heart heavy, Bren stared out the window as they pulled out of the parking lot. Eavesdropping would have to do.
He tried not to think about Essek. He really, really tried. But at least no one could hear him stifling his tears or see them trail down his face into his beard. They didn’t know he was wiping his eyes and nose with his sleeves. At least he could will the mess away.
Vibrant violet-blue eyes with rings of lavender around the pupils. A sweet scent of fresh clothes and Essek’s skin, face freckled with silver. The soft gust of air that grazed his face from Essek leaning close to look over his shoulder.
Bumping hands in the popcorn bowl. Laughing and joking that someone had to have done it on purpose.
The moment where Bren thought Essek was going to kiss him.
“I don’t want your apologies. I want you to leave and never come back.”
And I will, he told himself, scratching at his sleeve to itch at the urge bubbling under his skin, I’ll leave and never come back. I won’t be a burden to anyone anymore, I promise.
“Alright, so where do we think he went?” Beau demanded, plopping down onto the couch by Caduceus.
“I can think of one place.” Molly sighed, rubbing their face. “He mentioned growing up south of Rexxentrum. Off the interstate, on a farm.”
“Alright.” Beau nodded. “Anywhere else?”
Essek stood there awkwardly, watching everyone band together to try to find the man he ran off. He wondered if he was allowed to help, or if him offering his assistance would just rub salt in fresh wounds.
“He mentioned living in institutions?” Molly tried. “I’ve no idea what that means. Something mental health.”
“A mental hospital.”
Everyone snapped their eyes to Essek. The drow nervously swallowed.
“He confessed the same thing to me. From what I understand… he frequented the hospital many times, for… um…”
“For what? Drugs?” Beau cut in.
“N-No. At least… if there were drugs involved, I don’t think he took them for pleasure or self-medication.” Essek hated that he was confessing this on Bren’s behalf. He had no right after everything, but if it helped them find him, helped them think like him… “He told me he attempted suicide more than once.”
Everyone’s eyes widened... except for Caduceus.
Beau and Essek, the smartest spirits of the group, both clocked it immediately, but only Beau was able to realize why Caduceus knew. Essek was too upset and anxious to think it through.
Caduceus didn’t have access to the medical records, where it would say when and why Bren was hospitalized, but he did have to prepare and submit his death certificate. And if he learned Bren had attempted suicide at some point from putting together his death certificate, that had to mean-
“He finally succeeded, didn’t he?”
Caduceus stared blankly at Beau. The funeral director took great pride in protecting the information of the deceased, and always refused to discuss causes and details with the spirits. Despite the situation, this time was no exception.
He couldn’t give confirmation, but the blank stare and lack of a denial was confirmation enough.
“Oh Caleb…” Yasha exhaled, horrified and hurting for her friend.
“Jaysus…” Molly put a hand over their face, leaning back into the armchair he was occupying.
Essek couldn’t speak. He stared at Caduceus, waiting for the firbolg to correct them, and struggled to believe a correction didn’t need to be made.
Bren had…
That was why they got to meet him? Know him? Befriend him? The sweet, sensitive, submissive man that stuttered and slipped into Zemnian when he was nervous had committed suicide, and that was why they got to know him at all?
His death was why Essek got to meet someone that made him feel things he’d never felt before. And Bren had done it to himself?
I wonder if he regrets doing it now, because of me.
The idea of it made Essek’s stomach lurch.
“If you can decide on somewhere to go, I’ll take you there.” Caduceus sighed eventually.
“Then… let’s try the farm.” The tiefling suggested, blinking themself out of their head. “The lad’s more likely to go there.”
“A farm south of Rexxentrum is not a detailed enough place to start searching.” Beau argued. “I know the rest of you haven’t been that far south before, at least not in hundreds of years, but it’s all farmland south of Rexxentrum. For miles upon miles.”
Molly cursed under their breath.
“I…” Essek interjected again, standing at the edge of the group, still uncertain if he was welcome to help. “He also mentioned he had a psychiatrist. A, um, a mental health doctor.” Essek explained for Fjord, Yasha, and Molly. He then continued, “Something traumatic happened where his apparent negligence caused the death of his parents, and he broke. The psychiatrist they gave him… He liked to use him as entertainment. He was sadistic. And he said… Bren said the man had once told him ‘a well man remembers to turn off the stove’.”
Beau had been wondering where Essek was going with the anecdote until that last sentence.
“They died in a house fire.” She murmured. Essek shrugged half-heartedly.
“That is my guess, yes…”
“And they’re buried here, right?” Clarabelle interjected, suddenly excited. “So you have their records?”
Caduceus debated for a moment before standing up. “I suppose I can help you locate him. But, I will not force him to come back.”
“Deal.” Beauregard got up and everybody followed Caduceus out of the apartment, stopping at his office door. He pulled a ring of keys out of his pocket, slid one off the metal ring, and pinched another in his fingers as he held the ring and keys out to Clarabelle. The firbolg teenager took the keyring, holding it by the key Caduceus had pinched for her, and met his eyes.
“I have a meeting with a client in fifteen minutes. It should take an hour. Last name is Ermendrud, E-R-M-E-N is all you should need. Bren and his parents should be the only Ermendruds we have.”
“Thanks Cad!”
“Of course. Don’t let Dad see you.”
Clarabelle and the spirits rushed downstairs while Caduceus went into his office to prepare for his client. On the left side of the reception room, in a short hallway, was the storage room that held the interior entrance to Cornelius’ mortuary room down below.
Essek expected Clarabelle to take them there, but instead she crossed the foyer and went over to a room on the opposite side of the viewing room from the storage room, opening it up with the set of keys.
Entering the sizable room and flicking the lights on, they found several filing cabinets lined the wall with the door. A small desk with a computer and a desk chair sat in the dark near the cabinets, against the perpendicular wall, and along the back wall was one tall bookshelf, nearly twenty feet long and ten feet high. A folded up step stool was propped against the wall by the desk.
“Let me take a look at the computer.” Clarabelle closed the door and slipped into the cheap desk chair, booting the computer up.
Unlike Colton’s computer, it booted up fairly quickly, and she was searching for E-R-M-E-N within half a minute. In that time, Mollymauk and Beau went over to investigate the bookshelves full of binders labeled by year and Fjord was investigating the filing cabinets labeled similarly. Essek and Yasha leaned over Clarabelle’s shoulders, one shoulder each, looking at the screen.
A list of three Ermendruds was pulled up. One was buried this year, the other two were buried in, “1848!”
“I’ve got 1840 over here.” Beau called out, standing at the right side of the long bookshelf. “I think that’s the latest it goes.”
“Must be in the filing cabinets then.” Fjord muttered, stepping back to search the labels. After a moment he said, “Ah, here we go.”
Clarabelle jumped up and went to where Fjord was, who pointed out the cabinet drawer for her. She opened it and searched, mumbling the letters to herself until she pulled out two packets of paper with a grin of triumph.
“We should get Bren’s, too.” Fjord murmured to her, and she nodded, swiftly going to the cabinet for the current year and finding the packet easily.
Molly sighed to Clarabelle as she closed the cabinets and rushed back over to the desk, “I thought ye moved to computer records.”
“One virus and our records are gone.” Clarabelle explained, setting the packets of paper down. “We still make paper copies, just limit it to the important stuff. Copy of the will, Dad’s report and the medical examiner’s report, if there is one. Ya know, the stuff Cad needs to submit a death certificate. Plus anything they or their family signed with us.”
“I’ll take Leo’s.” Beau grabbed the packet on top and turned, putting her back to the wall. Yasha walked over to join her in searching through the packet.
Mollymauk and Clarabelle wordlessly started flipping through Una’s, which left Fjord and Essek to stand there awkwardly. With nothing else to do, Fjord grabbed Bren’s paperwork, and Essek hesitantly slid over to look alongside him.
Fjord raised an eyebrow but didn’t stop him.
The first page was identifying information. Legal name, race, ethnicity, address where the death occurred, next of kin - the things that someone wanting to match paperwork to a corpse would need to confirm the connection.
“I’ve got 3 Grange Spur. That’s got to be wrong, right?” Beau remarked.
“We’ve got 3 Grange Spur, too.” Clarabelle answered.
“3, though? Isn’t there supposed to be, like, at least two numbers?”
“Let me check.” Clarabelle typed the address into the search engine and hit enter, and Mollymauk watched it bring up an online map after a few seconds. “Nope, it’s a real address. There’s… Wow, this is really in the middle of nowhere, huh? There’s only two other houses on this road.”
“That explains the 3 then.” Beau hummed.
“We have a separate address,” Fjord called out, “if you could look it up, too.”
“Alright, what is it?”
“8172 Greenfield Way.”
Clarabelle searched the address and a sizable building, smaller than the manor, sat on its own at the end of a road, located among some residential lots in East Rexxentrum. “Huh. Does The Haven House mean anything to anyone?”
“Depends on what it is.” Mollymauk narrowed their eyes, reading the screen. They mumbled to themself until their eyes shot wide and they pointed at the monitor, excitedly saying, “Group home! Caleb said he lived in a group home before!”
“It says here on the autopsy report that Leofric died at 3 Grange Spur.”
“Um-” Clarabelle flipped a couple pages to Una’s report from the medical examiner and skimmed it. “Same for Una. Looks like cause of death was… Wow that’s a lot of medical terms.”
“The feck is a hemore-age?” Molly raised an eyebrow.
Essek blinked, and suddenly the room was gone.
Essek, just ten years old, watched his mother’s shallow breathing as she laid in her large bed stripped of its duvet, covered in nothing but sheets for now. She was pale as a spirit and reeking of a strong metallic scent from her lower half, which made Essek nauseous.
Father didn’t say it, but he didn’t need to. It was a miracle Mother was alive, but they were not out of danger just yet. She had lost a lot of blood, which Essek knew made it all the harder for her to keep fighting to survive.
Mother got to spend just a few hours with Verin before she grew weaker and weaker, and Father had to take him to care for him, ensuring nothing happened to the second son of Den Thelyss. Essek had heard horrible stories eavesdropping on the boys at school, tales of their brothers being killed after birth and their fathers punished for producing another son. He doubted his father knew he was aware of such things, and that he understood why his father refused to let the doula take his newborn son out of his sight.
Essek’s eyes migrated from the barely moving sheet over his mother’s chest to her slack face and closed eyes. It had been nearly an hour since she was last conscious. A little more than that since Essek had entered the room. She had greeted him with a scratchy voice and a weak smile.
“Hello, my star.”
She hadn’t been able to say much else after that. It was like it took all her energy just to say hello.
Essek wanted to hate Verin for what he’d done to their mother. He wanted to curse his name and shake him and - and he knew his mother would be appalled at his thoughts, so he tried to do away with them. Verin was an infant. He had no control over being a parasite on their mother. And once upon a time, Essek was one, too. Perhaps he weakened her. Perhaps Essek was the one to blame, and Verin was just the final nail in the coffin.
Tears trailed down Essek’s face. His strong, fierce mother was little more than a failing body sagging into the mattress. And he felt so useless.
Toeing off his shoes, Essek crawled onto the bed carefully. He wasn’t sure if she was asleep or just that sick, and he didn’t want to wake her if she was resting. She would need all the rest and food she could get to replenish what she lost. Hopefully Father would bring back something for her to eat when he returned.
Pausing a moment to assess, and satisfied that she was still asleep when she didn’t stir, Essek laid down next to her, wrapping his smaller arms around hers. He hugged it to his chest, leaning his wet face against her bare deltoid, and with a quivering lip rested the pads of two fingers against the inside of her wrist. It wasn’t enough pressure to feel a pulse, but he was afraid to press too hard. He was afraid he would find out just how weak it was.
“I love you, Mama.” Essek choked out, closing his eyes. “Don’t go. I need you.”
Memories of his mother’s love played in his head as he laid there with her, silently crying. She taught him things she could have gotten in horrible trouble for, simply because Essek wanted to learn so badly. She taught him the Undercommon alphabet and how to write, while Father taught him how to read, before the boys’ school was opened and it became legal to send young boys to school.
She was unafraid to talk to him at the dinner table, unafraid to cut up his food for him, unafraid to call him her star in front of others. She tucked him into bed, she comforted him when he was hurt, she cleaned him up when he was sick.
She kept him when any other den matriarch would have had him killed before he even gave his first scream.
There was a memory deep in his mind that tried to surface. It was blurry and flickered like a candle struggling to stay lit. He could remember a hallway, one of the hallways in the Thelyss Estate. He remembered being so scared, and seeing his mother so tall and proud in blue and lavender robes, towering like a lit beacon beckoning him to safety-
“Hemorrhage, and it’s, like, losing a lot of blood from somewhere.” Clarabelle explained, snapping Essek out of the surfacing memory. “I think.”
Essek blinked, momentarily stunned and disoriented. The sensation was akin to what he experienced last night, and was nearly as upsetting, but at the same time… it was so nice to remember. Not see an illusion of, or a manifestation of, but remember.
“And blast lung? The feck’s that?”
As he sat in the wake of his residual feelings, thinking about the memory that almost surfaced and watching Molly and Clarabelle discuss the report, he realized the feelings that surfaced with the memory had already been there. He felt as useless now as he did back then.
“That I dunno. One sec.”
The drow subtly turned his back to everyone and cleared his throat while the others discussed, wiping his eyes. The only one who seemed to notice was Fjord beside him, who looked at him with concern but kept quiet. After a short moment the sailor looked away, not wanting to draw attention to the upset drow.
Clarabelle searched the term online and muttered, “Blast lung injury is a severe form of primary blast trauma… It is the most common cause of death among initial explosion survivors.” She winced. “Oh.”
“So she died from an explosion?”
“Yep. Says right here, ‘external cause: exposure to liquefied petroleum gas explosion’.”
“Leofric’s report says smoke inhalation.”
“The house probably caught on fire after the explosion.” Clarabelle theorized with a frown.
Essek’s heart ached, remembering how hard it had been for Bren to tell him his negligence cost his parents their lives. He could only pretend to understand how awful it must have been, getting the news of what the cause of death was.
What would Essek have done, had he been in Bren’s shoes? He had no idea. His mother had simply just been ill, losing her mind quite literally, a disease eating it away. It was hard enough knowing he couldn’t prevent her execution. But Una wasn’t on the chopping block already, like his mother was. If his mother would have lived had Essek not done anything… The depths of his pain would have no words.
“Alright, so we know two places he very likely might go, and we know the addresses and how to get there.” Beau walked over to Clarabelle, setting the packet down.
She began to talk to Clarabelle about printing out the maps of the routes, but Essek wasn’t paying attention. His words caught on what Bren’s autopsy report stated, Fjord having flipped to it to read it himself.
Primary cause: mechanical asphyxia from leather belt ligature around the neck.
Manner of death: suicide by free hanging.
Cruelly, his mind pictured it. Bren, sweet Bren, with a belt around his throat. Dangling in the air. Damn his brain for knowing so much about anatomy, because it pictured the bulging eyes and swollen tongue, too.
The mental image made Essek ready to throw up, head going lightheaded and his body going uncomfortably, sickishly hot in a flash.
“Essek?” Fjord whispered. Essek blinked, finding tears in his eyes.
“S-Sorry.” He averted his eyes from the paper and went to step away, but Fjord grabbing his arm stopped him.
“Come here.” The sailor exhaled, so soft Essek wouldn’t have heard him if he hadn’t been inches away, and he pulled the drow into an embrace.
Just like with Bren, Essek stiffened, not used to being held. Fjord didn’t pull away or let go, having expected the mild resistance, and hugged the shorter man gently.
“We’ll find him.” He promised, so soft and kind and certain, and Essek leaned into Fjord’s hug just slightly. His heart was feeling a whole host of things it hadn’t felt before, or at the very least it had been long enough he’d forgotten what bone-deep regret and self-hatred felt like.
“Please.”
Fjord’s jaw clenched at the pitiful voice that begged him to make certain on his promise. He had never seen Essek so broken before. Not even after he moved into the tower and spent every moment staring out, tracking every person, every noise, every wagon. Not even after last night.
He’d looked scared back then. Now, he looked broken.
“Maybe you should write him something.” Fjord suggested, pulling back. “I’ve got no idea how far an object can go before it resets, or if you can stay concentrating on it the whole time, but… If he thinks you don’t want him back, if he thinks returning will make you uncomfortable, he won’t come back, no matter what we say.”
Essek, choked up, nodded shakily. That sounded very much like the Bren he’d been lucky enough to meet. Always trying to make everyone else comfortable, even at his own expense.
As Fjord, Beau, and Clarabelle took the maps up to Caduceus’ office to see if he was done with his client and available to look them over, Essek slinked off to the third floor.