Coming back, there was no fanfare waiting for him; no one knew, yet, that he'd returned. He felt reluctant to tell anyone, though he couldn't say why.

He loved his boys. All of them. Kamacite, Taenite, Albite, Alkmene, Ashanite, Heliodor, even Wolframite. He loved spending time with them, learning about their myriad uniquenesses, making use of the time they had together. He knew that, if he kept to himself, he couldn't spend time with any of them. If he kept to himself, then any who knew he was missing would continue to look for him. They might even be distraught.

But Faustite couldn't bring himself to see anyone. He'd gone back into his office, shut the door gently behind him, locked it.

His office looked the same as he left it. Same files missing from the bookshelf. Same pen set in its holder, waiting for him to take it up again, to write another missive or file or letter. One chair was turned around, facing him, for that dumb as ******** way that Albite liked to use chairs. And his stool — he saw it through his desk's glass top, turned on its side, from when Lysithea had —

Left.

He swallowed hard, pressed his lips together. Told himself to approach his desk. Succeeded in putting one foot in front of the other, even as his thoughts railed at him for all the ways he'd failed.

He was no Jet. His missions were dubiously successful, for the ways that they lost a few people. His squid was gone, replaced by a ******** nightmare of fireflies that ostensibly hated him. He was head of a team that he didn't know how to manage, whose needs he wasn't aware of and didn't know how to meet. Lysithea was gone.

Lysithea was gone. With her went any dreams of having a family again.

He made it to the desk, and steadied himself with both hands on the smooth, chilled glass. Blinked away the black that clouded his vision. Tried to swallow the shrapnel in his throat, but it wouldn't move. He swallowed again. And again.

The first broken sobs had him curling inward on himself, until he could dig the heels of his hands into his eyes and rest his elbows on the desk. They convulsed down his back — quiet things, as if the room was listening. Tears, as ink, stained his cheeks, wrists, pooled in small droplets atop his desk.

He heard the soft rustle of fabric to his left, where he'd heard and seen no one there before. He straightened, attention piqued.

Lysithea. He knew the outfit, knew the horn on her tiara, the doleful look in her dark eyes. Saw it in her slumped shoulders, her collapsing posture.

His voice was a whisper: "Get. Out."

She walked, silent but for her footfalls, one after the other, until she reached the door. Then he saw it — the quickfire snap of a Rift portal, open then shut, and she was gone.

Whatever composure he had, it fled him. Left a wide, dark hole where it used to be, where she used to be, where his myriad losses collected and festered and ate through his resolve. He sunk down against the desk, clawed up fistfuls of hair, curled inward as a raw, lamentable sound left his throat. He kicked the leg of his desk, kicked it again, dragged his heels across the ground as if the feedback would abate the pain. He felt it under his skin — heavy, permeating, sour. Couldn't soothe it. Didn't know how.

He couldn't say how long he had been there. Didn't know when he finally pulled himself up. He stumbled around his desk with his hands braced against the top. One hand bumped a bottle of ink and he steadied it on instinct. Taking it up, he looked at it — heavy, stoppered glass, unrelentingly clear. He hesitated.

Opening a drawer, he sifted the contents carelessly; it didn't matter when pens spilled out or notebooks fell to the ground. Metal rattled around until he found it — a thin, long strip by feel. Fingers traveled blind over the top until they found cold and round, with a sharp tip. He pried it out of its socket and brought it into view.

The shape of the youth sunk down against his desk again, pressed his back to it. Once he'd popped the heavy glass stopper, he poured a few drops onto the floor. As he looked down at it, another wet sounds escaped him. Black tears joined the clear pool, and with a trembling hand, he used the pen nib to swirl them together.

A dark line crept up the middle of the nib. He looked at it, then looked at himself.

The pen nib was reverently set upon the stone next to him. He tugged down the zipper of his boot, threw it aside, and rolled up his pant leg to just below the knee, where he saw coal black become pallor. Then he took up the nib and began to write.

He cried as he wrote, but the pain of stippling his skin with the dark ink was distracting. Thin wells of black erupted up under the nib once it pierced the skin, then he moved a margin over, and dug in again. It was a long, slow, process, but a meditative one as well.

By the time he finished, he had ceased his wracking tears. Then he felt deeply foolish, and rolled his pant leg down over the word. Feeling stiff for the ways his body was broken time and again, he clawed himself up to standing and retrieved his boot.

He would wash his face, he told himself. Then he would see to the team.