He doesn't know how long he sits there. He's not even aware that he's still breathing.
Eventually he rises, pulls his cape a little more securely around himself, and starts to walk.
There's no specific destination in mind. He just lets his feet take him where they go, leaving behind footprints in the snow that are easily and quickly covered up as thick flakes drift down to smooth over the imperfections. The little golden coins, always so inconveniently chiming, clink gently as he walks, the sound a little muted to his ears.
At some point in time, he reaches a door, pulls it open, and heads inside. It leads to a back stairwell that is deserted, and he climbs up several flights of stairs that twist and turn until he reaches another door. His fingers tremble as he pulls it open, and it's a hallway, brightly lit, but no one is around or awake to see him as he reaches yet another door.
It's only when he's inside that he realizes he's walked back to the loft.
It used to belong to himself and Tolliver, when they first moved here from Leavesden, England, all those years ago. Six years feels like an entire lifetime, maybe because in the UK, he wasn't Celsus. In the UK, Tolliver wasn't suffering from permanent leg damage due to a motorcycle.
In the UK, Tolliver wasn't Cerussite.
Maybe he should just go back, Celsus thinks, as he gazes dully around at the too - large space. He was always a minimalist; the decorations are sparse, modern in taste and color. Leather couch, a wooden, glass-topped coffee table with a few books and newspapers on it, a few paintings hung on the walls, most of them from artists whom Celsus admires.
He's only half aware that he's still powered; that staying this way is dangerous, a shining, bright, obvious beacon for any of Chaos to find.
(Maybe that's what he wants, deep down.)
He makes his way to the kitchen, with all of its updated fixtures and chrome trim, marble counter top. He remembers Tolliver fetching a teacup from the pantry and asking about starting classes as he moves around, Fritz lounging on the couch with his glasses pushed up to rest atop his head and a pen and newspaper in hand, doing the crossword.
Celsus reaches up, pulls open a cabinet, and pulls down a teacup; white, with a willow pattern of pale green.
He remembers hearing sobbing noises in the middle of the night, getting up, and padding in his pajamas across the hall to where Tolliver's room is - was - and gently pushing the door open. Walking over to his brother, curled up in bed, wide awake and trembling from another nightmare. Reaching out and embracing him, an arm around his shoulders, until he falls asleep again.
(Tolliver only did that twice before the sobbing became muffled, distant, hidden.)
The tea is resting in a little box on top of the fridge. Celsus reaches for it, and a magnet clatters to the ground as his shoulder hits the refrigerator door. He glances down, slowly, as though moving underwater, and sees a little brown bear staring up at him, a silly expression on its face.
He remembers when he tried to give it to Tolliver after they first moved here. A gift from the museum, come on, he remembers telling him, as Tolliver had laughed and waved it off, eyes bright with amusement. We'll hang it on our fridge, we'll call him Dezzy, for Destiny City Museum.
It was silly. It was ridiculous.
Celsus's hands are trembling. The box of tea drops to the floor, spilling little multicolored packets everywhere, and he can't seem to move to reach to pick them everywhere. His hand remains outstretched, frozen in mid-hold, fingers still slightly curled where the box was gripped. His mouth opens and closes and a breath escapes him, ragged and pained.
("That's - is that supposed to be a ********' joke, man?"
"It's not funny. That's not ********' funny, Fritz."
"This is a new ********' low for you, y'know that?!")
The voices are coming now, blinding him, overwhelming him. Celsus stumbles where he stands, and bumps into the counter; the teacup falls this time, shattering with a crash on the floor, tiny porcelain fragments spilling everywhere.
"You can't - you can't just - say s**t like that! About your own damn brother!"
"I didn't choose you."
Trembling hands rise. He presses them to the sides of his head, covering his ears, trying to block out the suffocating, overwhelming rush of them, but they seep past his fingers into his thoughts, like sand to the floor, wrapping around his mind and buzzing through.
"No," he whispers, panic rising in his throat like bile. "No, no, no, stop - "
"We're gettin' married, Fritz."
"Stop - please - please stop it - "
"I regret that I have only you to fill the shoes of your ancestors."
"Don't ********' call me again unless it's to ********' apologize you piece of s**t!"
"Stop - "
"You are so...inadequate."
"STOP IT!"
The scream rips through his throat, raw and agonized, his fingers clenching in his hair by his ears. Celsus sweeps a hand blindly, violently across the counter top and sends all of the contents flying. He's dimly aware of crashes, of cracks and clattering, but he can't focus on that, on any of it.
Slowly, slowly, he sinks down to the floor in the small space between the center island and the counter. His legs are bent in front of him, feet pressing against the bottom of the lower cabinets, his back against the island, and Celsus is shaking all over, breathing heavily as though he's run a mile.
He feels something jabbing into his thigh. He looks down, reaches, and pulls up the little, silly magnet, the bear's brown eyes staring cheerfully out at him.
Celsus's trembling fingers curl around it so tightly the edges dig into his palm. The guise, the glamour, the protection slips, until it's gone entirely, until the man sitting on the floor in an empty, too big apartment, is Fritz St. James, clutching a stupid magnet, of all things.
He gives a heavy, shuddering, sob that chokes at his throat, almost a hiccup.
"Please," he whispers, and the desperation in his voice has settled into a hoarse, barely audible tremor. "Please. Don't. Leave me."
Another sob escapes him.
"I'll - I'll d-do better, p-please, don't - "
He can't think. It's dim and dark and silent in the loft.
"Don't - l-leave m-me alone."
He has nothing else. Everyone else is gone, even Eurydike, who hates him, and who was the last, singular hope of maybe trying to get Tolliver back. Tolliver is lost to the blackness of the Negaverse, and now everything is extinguished.
There is no more hope left.
(His phone gives a beep, a text message popping up on the screen, but he doesn't look at it, doesn't even see it or hear it, doesn't do anything except lower his forehead to his knees as he gasps out sobs that he chokes on, his arms wrapped around them, still clutching that magnet.)
frayedflower
