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Seven months and three days.
The first two months were lost completely to the haze of cheap whiskey and cigarettes, the nausea of the morning’s sun burning white hot into his eyes, pounding his skull with Thor’s own hammer. Retching in a small, cramped bathroom at 4 in the morning, when none of the other basement dwellers were awake or aware of Lex and his quarter of a cent of existence. A month of avoiding all of them, staying out of sight. Did he even get paid that month? What work was there to pay for? Did Deus hand out paychecks to Hunters that slept at their desks, didn’t participate in meetings or duties? Perhaps they’d had pity, the kind reserved for the dirtiest looking homeless man’s mange addled mutt.
There was a vague memory of something important happening. An outbreak in Canada, a little town called Delta. Lex had been entirely sober on the mission, but had drunk it away, as was custom. There were vines, he remembered, and a civilian charged to him whose fate Lex was still unsure of.
Month three, November, Lex had shaved. A small insignificant action to most, a triumph for the urchin the prince of the strip had become. He’d thrown out the cigarettes, and lighters, but not the whiskey or bourbon. Lex would never throw his two truest friends to the wolves. Maebe had needed a revenge ********, and Lex had obliged. Work was being done in slow steps, a filed report here, a translated document there. Was Ami even reading what he submitted, or did she just pass them along to Stormy to read? He hadn’t seen the woman since that night - Lex didn’t want to know what their passing would do to the other. Claudia had been particularly worried about her brother, and he’d blown her off like the callous fool he always played. She’d forgive him, eventually.
It was also the month Lex was sent on a suicide mission to Gammelstad. Three days in the scenic little fishing village, and one night of absolute hell. Lex had thought things were bad before, but those were all just alternate realities - He was never a knight, never truly in danger. The few external missions the Lifer had gone on had been nothing compared to The Tower, to Grendel. Twelve hours in a baptism of brine and fears being dragged out and confronted, trampled, shot to death. Was two months and twelve hours all it took to get over three years?
December, the fourth month, was insignificant. Christmas had come and gone, briefly - very briefly - Lex had broken into his old home on the beach, taken all of this things from the drawers and closets, all the trinkets he'd left scattered in their home. Still, there was no trace of her on the island, and the Horseman hadn’t seen her. Stormy said she was on assignment somewhere, but of course the older woman hadn’t said anything more. A lingering cloud thundered in Lex’s mind, threatening rain.
January was good, in its own way. He drank less, worked harder now that the man was a full Hunter, started dedicating more time to the infirmary and less to the archives. He should have felt guilty about spending more time with Sunny and the team in the tents than with Ami’s books, but the less time he spent around words and literature, the more easily he ignored longing’s dagger agonizingly burying itself between his ribs. A hard reset came whenever he flirted with Nora, the pain supernovaed when he slept with her - twice.
Only in fleeting moments did Lex actually feel satisfied with the state of affairs he found himself in, only for brief moments did Lex think things were getting to be okay. The cycle of guilt and longing was a wheel he couldn’t escape for more than a day. ********, guilt, ********, repeat. It never felt right, no matter how good the sex was, no matter how smooth the alcohol, no matter how many times he got Horace and Dawson to laugh.
February was the roughest month, possibly worse than Sweden. The first week of it had been completely fine, save for the approaching dread of the day. It was easily ignored, put to the back of his mind by more long shifts in the tents, more deep reading, more harassing and acting fine on Twitter. The timesuck social media platform no longer held the hostility and foreboding self confidence crushers it once had. Lex had worked past those; Sweden had crushed all of that into a fine rubble that only stumbled the man when he wasn’t paying attention to the trail. But the day approached, and despite all the willpower Lex had poured into making it a good day, the man sat alone in his loft with a jar of moonshine he’d procured just for Valentine’s Day, drunkenly sobbing her name. Where was she? Did Ami live, or had she thrown herself off a bridge? Would Junpei not have saved her?
No, Amalie Raine was not so weak and attached that she’d kill herself over any man. She’d grown past that, and so much more. Lex was glad to have witnessed it.
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