Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Izuku is born with shining eyes and hair the color of the forest in the dead of night, and Inko swallows her dread as he grows.

She knows part of it is her own haze of mother’s love, but she sees the shining eyes and curly hair, the sunlight in his smile and the freckles like stars on his face, and she knows. His is the sort of beauty that the Fair Folk like, for all that he is not red-eyed and golden-haired like little Katsuki, who vanished from his bed when he was barely four. His parents found a mound of clay magicked to look like him in his place the next morning. They searched and searched, begged and bargained with every power they dared to call upon, but to no avail.

She has nothing and no one but her son, and hardly the means to protect him—her meager magic pales in comparison to the flames that Hisashi breathed. But her husband is gone now. He had debts of his own to pay, and pay them he did. A lifetime of service was what he promised them, and that is what they take. He is gone, perhaps even dead, and Inko is left alone to raise their child and hope that his absence is a great enough price.

Every day, she hopes and prays that her son’s magic will come soon, that maybe the drop of dragon’s blood in Hisashi’s veins will pass on to him, so that Izuku might protect himself better than Inko ever could. She watches for fire, for sparks, for little glowing balls of light or objects moving without being touched. When nothing comes, her hopes change. Maybe, if his magic never comes at all, then he might still protect himself by being utterly ordinary.

It is a foolish thought. To the Fair Folk, the Shining Ones, “ordinary” is a rare luxury that fascinates them.

And so, for all of Inko’s precautions, in spite of the nights spent in fitful sleep with her and her son’s bedroom doors open, and the windows shut tight and warded with the best spells she can pay for, Inko awakens one night as the witching hour fades, and knows.

She flies from her bed, hurries through the open doors, and the whisper of the breeze through the open window brings scalding tears to her eyes.

No,” she whispers. “No, no, no, please no.”

They did not leave an empty bed behind. But the child (a real child, flesh and blood instead of enchanted clay) that stares up at her from behind the guard rails on the bed is not her own. His hair is dark green, like her son’s, but whoever left him did not bother to change his face, or hide the violet in his eyes.

Inko weeps in the dead of night, and the changeling-child watches her with wary blankness until her tears run dry.

There is no more sleep to be had. Inko paces her apartment like a beast in a cage, carpet going flat beneath her feet. She wonders what she should do. Should she find a way to contact Hisashi? She has heard nothing from him in so long. Did something happen to him? Did he anger his creditors? Fail them? Die? Did they come for Izuku to claim him as further payment?

In the darkness of early morning, she checks and double-checks the wards, curses the weak threshold that let them into her home to steal her child from his bed.

Child. Bed.

Of course.

There is one matter that she must see to immediately. With a heavy heart, she returns to Izuku’s bedroom.

The changeling-child has not moved, but watches her as she enters. Her face is pale, eyes red-rimmed from weeping, and the changeling meets her gaze with unease.

She knows why. There are stories about this sort of thing, after all. There are many who say that the only way to regain your own child is to bring the fairies back to retrieve their own. Beat it, starve it, bind it in cold iron, burn its feet with hot coals, and its parents will run to its rescue and return what they stole.

Inko’s hands curl into fists, and she takes a deep breath.

“Are you hungry?” she asks.

The changeling blinks. The faces of faeries are hard to read, but this one is young still, and Inko sees the flash of surprise in its—his—eyes. She notices other things as well; he is thin, his cheekbones sharp and his shirt loose on his shoulders. The black and iridescent green in his hair is fading now—an illusion only, a temporary enchantment. The color it leaves behind is a vivid shade of blue-violet.

She tries again. “Can… can you speak?” she asks. The changeling stares, silent as ever, though she sees his brow furrow in the faintest frown. “Is there something I can call you? I'm not asking for your name, don't worry.”

Silence.

Inko gives up on talking. She leaves the room again, and her feet carry her to the kitchen. Her hands shake as she takes out pots and pans, as she starts up the rice cooker and turns on the stove. The more she works, the more the trembling stills, until the smell of rice and sauce and cooking pork fills the kitchen and filters into the rest of the apartment.

She hears nothing, but when she turns around, the changeling watches her from around the corner. His purple eyes are hollow and tired, far too tired for a child who looks to be her son’s age.

Izuku loves her katsudon. He is not here anymore, but the child before her has narrow shoulders and sharp cheekbones and hunger in his sunken eyes, and there is only one thing she can possibly do.

When she touches him, he doesn't struggle. He goes still, and then limp when she picks him up, as if resigning himself to an unknown fate. Inko sets him in a chair, on top of a book and a pillow so that he can reach the table, and places a full bowl and a pair of chopsticks in front of him. The moment he sees the food, he falls upon it ravenously. He eats two helpings before he finally stops.

Inko stands by the counter and picks at her own bowl. She must eat, after all. If she is to do what must be done, then she needs food in her belly.

When she returns to him, he has pushed the empty bowl toward the center of the table and now slumps over, nodding into the placemats. Inko lifts him out of the chair, and he falls asleep in her arms before she even reaches the hallway.

In the cold, empty living room of her apartment, with a strange fae child in her arms that is not heavy enough for his size, Inko breaks down into silent tears again. Her attempts to call Hisashi come to nothing. Her child is gone, his replacement mute and wary. She is alone.

She wishes with all the love in her heart that she could call upon the Summer Knight himself for her son’s sake. But he is a distant, nigh-godlike figure for all that he is every bit as mortal as she is. The Summer Knight does battle with monsters and dark wizards, rogue dragons and fiends from places that are only spoken of in whispers. Someone like that has no time for a mere changeling trade.

No. Inko is small, and her troubles are small.

She has only one card to play. One soul she can turn to for help. One being small enough to hear of her pain.

The alley tucked behind her building is small, quiet, and reasonably clean. It will have to do. As dawn slowly approaches, Inko ventures out into the fading dark with the faerie boy sleeping against her shoulder. On the ground she lays a bowl of katsudon, still hot. Her magic is no great well of power, but it is enough to keep an offering warm. Beside it she places a saucer of cream.

It is dangerous, what she is about to do. For Izuku’s sake she will take any risk, and pay any price.

Stepping back, she speaks a Name.

At first nothing happens, but Inko is a patient woman. She waits, and waits, until at last a voice answers her from the shadows.

“A frightened mortal who knows her manners. That's getting rare, these days.”

Help comes to her on silent cat paws, with eyes that shine red in the night. The creature is graceful and dark, jet black with a single spot of white on his chest. Inko takes a respectful step back as he pads forward to lap at the cream and taste the food.

“Cat Sith,” she says softly.

He makes a pleased noise. “Most people bring me fish. This is a refreshing change of pace.” He is larger than most cats, and the bowl empties in a few swift bites. He raises his head at her again, and she sees the fur on his back slowly rise. “Interesting. Care to tell me where you found that child?”

The changeling stirs in her arms, but does not wake. “He was left in my son’s bed,” she whispers.

“Hm.” The sound rumbles like a low growl. “A changeling trade, then. You wish to recover your child.” He blinks slowly. “It is an old prank in the Courts, steeped in tradition. There are rules. You know this?”

“I will do what I must, to rescue my son,” she answers. “Can you tell me which Court this child is from? I need to know where to find the ones who took him.”

“Neither,” the Cat Sith replies. “He is one of the solitary fae. A wanderer, like myself.”

Dread fills her from head to toe. “Then—can you help me find the wanderers who left him?” she asks. “What—what would you ask of me?”

He answers with another slow blink. “You misunderstand. The wanderers did not take your son. You asked me where the changeling was from, and I answered.”

“Then… then who…?”

“Your child is imprisoned in one of the Courts. They left a stolen wanderer in his place.” He gives her a considering look. “Go to the heart of the forest in the land of Winter. Present yourself before the Unseelie Court, and then you may issue a challenge for your son’s return.” He finishes the cream, licks the dregs from the saucer, and vanishes once more into the night.

Inko should sleep before taking up such a task. But she knows that she can never rest until her son is back in her arms.

Her magic is only just strong enough to open a way into the Nevernever, but she cannot spare a drop of it. But there are other places, thin places, gateways where one might slip through. Inko dresses warmly, piles a woolen wrap scarf around her shoulders, and steps into a different world.

The land of Winter is cold, as one would expect, but it is not barren or ugly. It has its own stark beauty, muffled and soft white, with a silver sky overhead and a landscape of pearl and diamonds all around. Inko looks back, and watches her footprints vanish in her wake.

The changeling in her arms awakens shivering. A whimper slips free from his mouth, the first sound she has heard from him since finding him in Izuku’s bed. She pauses to wrap him in her scarf, hushes him softly, and moves on.

Eventually, she reaches the heart of the forest, and presents herself before the Unseelie Court as instructed.

“Excuse me.” There are many eyes on her, all shapes and colors—red and silver and pitch-black and iridescent blue, with pupils shaped like slits or strings of pearls. The changeling shivers again, though not with cold, and hides his face in her shoulder. “I found this faerie child in my son’s bed. I’m—I’m afraid there may have been a mix-up. Has anyone seen my son? He’s only this high, with dark curly hair, and green eyes and freckles. He’s a sweet child. Has anyone seen him?” Every soul in the Court knows that this is an accusation, but of course she can’t come out and say it like one. That would be rude and insulting, and the Fair Folk answer insults with death, and worse.

There are growls and harsh whispers around her, and Inko’s heart sinks. Something is wrong. The Fae are supposed to be amused by mortal challenges. They should be smiling, laughing at her, eager to watch her fail, but these faeries glare at her balefully as if she has come out and wronged them.

“P-please forgive me.” She pretends that her teeth chatter because of the snow. “I only want my son. I was told to come here.”

“By who?” someone demands. “There were no children taken here.”

“Not this year, anyway,” someone else mutters.

“Insolent little human.”

One of them steps forward, a tall, gap-toothed faerie with silver hair who looks very nearly human, but his shining eyes remind her of a goat’s. “I’m afraid you were told wrong, my dear,” he says. “But let us lighten your burden—that child is not yours, is he? Leave him with us, and we will find the ones who misplaced him.”

Inko sees the eager, hungry glitter in his eyes, and feels the faerie child’s hands curl into fists in her sleeves. She steps back. “Th-that—that won’t be necessary,” she says. “I’m sure if I find my son, I’ll… thank you. Thank you, but no.” She looks around to the rest of the court, and lets herself feel small. “Are you sure none of you know where my son is?”

They mutter amongst themselves at this, disgruntled and irritated. Inko strains to hear them, wonders if she ought to leave while she still can, and then—

“Here he is! Sorry—here we are! I fetched him!” A faerie woman comes scampering out, her magic trailing iridescent bubbles through the air. Behind her strides a man—in every sense of the word. Unless there is some clever glamour cheating her vision, he is wholly and utterly human, though he is dressed far too simply and lightly for the weather.

“What is the meaning of this?” he asks. He catches sight of Inko quickly, and his eyes narrow behind polished eyeglasses. He has a pointed, pinched face, and his hair is dark green, shot through with yellow—

She knows his face. Everyone who has even the slightest involvement with the Fae knows his face.

“S-Sir Knight,” she says softly. “I-I-I’m so sorry to have bothered you.” She was not expecting this, to find herself face to face with the Winter Knight himself. “I’m looking for my son. I was told to come to the Unseelie Court to find him, but…”

“There have been no changeling-trades here in the past week,” Sir Nighteye informs her solemnly. “It seems you were tricked.”

“I-I-I see.” Tears well up in Inko’s eyes, chilling quickly in the wintry air, and she steps back. “I apologize. I meant no disrespect. I’ll just go and—”

“Wait a moment.” Nighteye continues walking until he has closed the rest of the distance. He is tall enough to tower above her, and his face is not a friendly one.

Inko holds her ground, trying not to tremble. The Knight of Winter does not have the blinding reputation of his Summer counterpart; he doesn’t really have any reputation, actually. She hardly knows what to expect.

“This is the changeling they left you?” he asks. Hesitantly, Inko nods. “I am a seer. If you will allow it, I can look into his past, and see the true thieves.”

“Will it hurt him?” she asks.

His eyebrows rise by a fraction. “It will not.” Inko nods then, and he lays his hand on the faerie child’s back. He closes his eyes for a moment, then takes his hand away. “You will find your son with the Summer Court. It was bold of them, to steal a wanderer child for such a prank.”

“Thank you,” Inko whispers.

The Winter Knight inclines his head. “I apologize. And if All-Might were here, he would say the same. The Knights cannot interfere with the theft of mortals by our Courts. If we could, then we would put a stop to it altogether.” Dark mutters from the crowd greet this, but Nighteye ignores them. “The least I can do—and I do mean the least—is escort you to the border.” He turns. “Kaoruko—”

“Sir Knight,” a new voice speaks up. “You don’t need to trouble yourself. I can take her to the border, and further still.” One of the winter faeries steps to the front, and the rest move to let her through. Inko blinks in surprise.

She is every inch a quintessential Faerie of Winter. Inko wonders if she is nobility—she must be, to dress so fine. Her hair is pure white, her eyes like burnished silver, and she has the strange otherworldly beauty of her kind. Inko feels even smaller, looking at her.

The Winter Knight dips his head to hide his surprise. “As you wish, my lady. If you’re certain.” To Inko he says, “I leave you in good hands. And again, I wish you luck.”

    Inko has to hurry to keep up with the faerie’s strides. It’s not just that her guide is taller than her; while Inko’s feet sink into the snow, the faerie woman walks on the surface, as light and graceful as if she weighs nothing at all. Her unbound white hair stirs in the cold wind, but she is unmoved by the chill.

The walk is mostly silent. The changeling in Inko’s arms is awake and alert now, watching the muted white world around them with curious eyes. Gradually, the silver sky lightens, and the air begins to lose some of its bite. The changeling watches the sky, and the snow, and the silent faerie lady guiding their way, and something warm slowly uncurls in Inko’s chest.

Eventually they reach the border, and the air turns from chilly to cool. It is a clear-cut line, where Winter ends and Summer begins, marked out with a border of green against white. The faerie’s feet leave shimmering patches of ice in the grass, but they are quick to melt when she steps away.

“Is this all right for you?” Inko asks without thinking.

The faerie turns to her with a face like the surface of a frozen pond, still and silent and cold.

“I just mean—I know there are rules between courts,” Inko stammers. “I don't want you to get into trouble on my account.” Her voice dies to a mumble on the last few words. Of course a lady of Winter would know the rules and customs better than she. She's gone and insulted her for sure.

The faerie does not smile, but her silver eyes soften. “You have a good heart,” she says as they walk.

Inko wonders if she should say thank you.

“It will not be enough,” the faerie tells her.

Inko knows. In the end she does not say thank you, but nods.

The heart of the forest here is everything that its twin in Winter is not. The sky is deep turquoise, the trees green with life, and the ground is soft beneath their feet with moss, not snow. It is the ideal of a summer day, lazy and warm, but without the stifling heat and humidity of the mortal realm.

Inko knows that it is every bit as dangerous here.

“This is where I leave you,” the Winter faerie tells her. “I can walk freely in either realm, but I dare not try Summer’s patience by entering the heart of their Court.”

“Thank you,” Inko says, again. It feels more useless every time.

She expects her guide to leave then, but the faerie lingers. “Take this,” she says, and presses something into Inko’s hand. It is small, round, and smooth as glass—a moonstone the size of a river pebble.

“It’s beautiful,” Inko says, because she knows her manners. “What is it?”

“A boon, nothing more,” the faerie replies. “It is not a wish. You cannot use it to regain what was taken from you. But perhaps, if you save it for when you truly need it, it may still help you.”

“I’m grateful,” Inko tells her. “But… I don't understand. Why are you helping me?”

The faerie does not answer immediately. Instead she meets Inko’s eyes. Inko is not nearly powerful enough to trigger a soulgaze, but for a split second she sees. Just for a moment, Inko glimpses a pain so like an old, festering wound: silent, desperate sadness, running far too deep for a foolish mortal to follow.

“Good luck, little mother,” the faerie tells her, and then she is gone.

This time, when Inko presents herself before the Summer Court, they greet her with sharp smiles. She hears scattered laughter at her stammering manners, at her entreaty, at the tears she tries to hold back. The changeling's wide-eyed curiosity is gone, and he hides his face in her shoulder again.

“Interesting.” The speaker is Fae nobility, a Lady with a queenly smile and serpents for hair. “Very interesting. Odd, though, that the changeling you bear is not one of our own.” She turns her head toward the gathered folk. “Which of you was it, who brought in this one’s child?”

The culprit presents himself readily, and Inko purses her lips to keep her mouth from twisting and giving away her anger.

“Me, my lady.” He looks youthful, but one can never tell with faeries. “I found a pretty child, and traded it with an uglier one.”

The changeling holds tight to Inko’s arms.

Something flashes in the lady’s eyes, and the snakes in her hair hiss. “There are consequences, for stealing from wanderers,” she tells him, and Inko cannot tell whether she hears a threat or a warning in that lovely voice.

“No wanderer could catch me,” the child-thief boasts. “Besides, that one makes for good fun, if you let it run among mortals. Pity she had to bring it back.”

“I only want my child back,” Inko tells them. “Please. Where is he? What do you ask of me?”

The snake woman shrugs, and even that pithy, dismissive action is graceful on her. “I am not without a heart,” she says. “I’m sure you would like to see him, wouldn't you? You must be worried.” At a motion from her, the crowd parts.

“Mom!” Inko catches her breath at the sight. There is her son, wide-eyed and shaking but alive and unhurt. He runs to her on wobbly toddler legs, and his captors let him. Kneeling, Inko places the changeling on his feet and takes her son in her arms. He sobs into her chest, while the changeling looks on impassively.

“Mom,” Izuku whispers. “I found Kacchan. He’s here. Kacchan’s here too.”

Inko looks beyond him, to the space where Izuku came running through, and sees another human child standing among their captors, fair-haired and red-eyed and familiar. Her heart twists in her chest. Sure enough, little Bakugou Katsuki is here, alive and well.

Inko gathers her courage, and points to him. “That boy, too. His parents are my friends. They’re worried about him—”

“No,” the lady says.

“Please, just name your price and I’ll—”

“You cannot,” another faerie tells her. “These children are ours now. The mortals we take can only be freed by lovers and family. That one is not yours.”

Inko fights back tears. “Then let me take my son home,” she says. She knows where Katsuki is now. She can tell Mitsuki and Masaru where to find him. All she has to do is win Izuku’s freedom.

“You cannot have him back for nothing,” the snake woman tells her, smiling still. “His freedom must be earned.”

Inko rises to her feet. “I know,” she says. “I’m ready.”

Izuku clutches at her hand. “Mom? What are you going to do?”

“Shh, hush.” She bends down to stroke his hair, blinking back her own frightened tears. “Stay back, Izuku. I’ll be back.” She looks to the silent changeling. “You, too. Don’t worry, dear. Once this is over, I’ll find a way to take you home, okay?”

The changeling nods, startles when Izuku takes his hand.

“I’ll be right back,” Inko tells them. “I promise.”

There are tales of mothers. Of the strength of the small, of the ordinary. Of mortal triumph, through cleverness and bravery and love and hope. Of men and women who free their lovers, parents who rescue their children, children who save their families. Of mortals who meet the power of the Fae with little more than love and courage, and win.

This is not one of those tales.

Because a good heart is not enough, and sometimes love and courage aren’t, either. Not all summer days are gentle, and not all things golden are good.

That is not to say that Inko does not fight for her child. She does; she fights until her hands grow bloody and her vision goes dark. She fights until she tastes copper on her tongue, until her face is dry because she has no more sweat or tears to give, until her dark hair is shot through with gray.

She fights with all the love and hope and mortal dreams she has, and she fails all the same.

The faeries’ voices are beautiful, like music even in her despair.

“The child is ours to keep—she has lost.”

“Such a pity.”

“I was almost rooting for her.”

“She has given all she has, and it is still not enough.”

But she has not given all she has. She has one thing left, given to her by luck, by the kind whim of a winter faerie. Her arms are like lead, but Inko lifts them all the same, and offers the stone.

Surprise flickers in the snake woman’s lovely eyes. “A boon from Winter,” she says. “A pretty token, but you cannot buy your son’s freedom with that alone.”

“I know,” Inko says. “I know. I only want to ask a favor.”

“Oh?” The lady smiles, as if she already knows what it will be.

Inko closes her eyes. “Let me take his place,” she says.

A favor, asked and granted.

Her sentence is struck on the spot. A lifetime of service, unless she is freed. She is no great mage or warrior, so she will cook and clean and keep house for them, a common servant, and Izuku will go free.

She cries when she sees her son again, great wrenching sobs as she rocks him gently back and forth. She whispers apologies into his curls, tries to memorize how he feels in her arms because she knows in her heart that she will not see him again for a long time, if she ever does at all.

She has freed him, as she promised herself she would, but the price is herself.

“Find Katsuki’s parents,” she tells him. “When you get back. Find them, tell them what happened, they’ll take care of you—”

He looks into her eyes and tells her, “No.”

“No,” he says in the face of her tears.

“I won’t leave you,” he says when she begs him to go.

“I’m staying,” he says, and her pleas will not move him.

He does not say I don’t want to leave you, or I want to stay. He says I’m not leaving, and I’m staying with you.

She tells herself that this is solace. Her son is still free, but if he stays then he risks being trapped again. But at least she can protect him, as best she can. At least she can still raise her son, even in a treacherous place like this.

Little Katsuki is still trapped. And even if she can’t free him, even if she can’t get word to his parents, at least she can care for him, as well.

And the little changeling…

“Do you have a home?” her Izuku asks.

Tired purple eyes blink slowly at him, blank and uncomprehending.

“It’s… it’s where you live?” Izuku says. “It’s where people love you, and… and take care of you?”

The changeling child blinks at him again, and Inko understands. He is one of the solitary fae, a wanderer like the Cat Sith. He has no home to go to.

She does not hear him speak, even after that. But he stays, slipping in silently as if waiting to be chased away. Inko fusses over her son, fusses over Katsuki, and after only a moment’s hesitation, she fusses over the faerie child, as well. She sees the thief from before, the one who stole Izuku and stole someone’s child to replace him. He still watches the silent faerie boy with a gleam in his eye. Pity she had to bring it back, he’d said. She keeps a close eye on him, and on the mute child.

Late at night, after her first day of service, sleep escapes her. She checks on the children—all three of them—and finds them asleep in their beds. The faeries have allowed her to keep them close and live under the same roof. It is not a kindness on their part; they are capricious folk, and have little patience for raising children not their own.

A draft reaches her, cooled by night, and Inko goes to shut the window.

She finds the Cat Sith perched on the sill, watching her. There is blood on his whiskers, on his paws, on the white spot on his chest—he has been out hunting.

“You,” she says. She ought to be angry with him, but she is not; he is not the cause of her misfortune. “You told me the Winter Court had taken my son.”

“I did not,” he replies. “I told you to present yourself before the Winter Court, and then you would be able to issue a challenge. I never named them as the thieves.”

“But why?”

The Cat Sith stretches slowly. “It would have been needless, had you won the challenge—so much the better if you had. But now that you haven’t, the Winter Knight knows your face and knows you are here. They would have laughed you off, had you asked for an audience with him, and would have sensed it if you tried to trick them. But you accused them in earnest, and were wrong, and so they trotted him out to prove their innocence. Proud things.” He grooms the blood from his chest until the spot shines pure white again. “A boon from one of the Winter Queen’s daughters was an unexpected bonus.”

“What does it matter, that the Winter Knight knows I’m here?” she asks.

He sighs, as if impatient. “The Knights are close comrades, surely you know that,” he informs her. “The Summer Knight is often busy, or away, but what one Knight knows, the other will soon find out. And if the Summer Knight knows about you, then you will be treated kindly. Well—kindly for the Fae, anyhow. Should anyone harm you, they will answer to him. They will not dare take the risk.”

“I… I see.” This is good news. She is luckier than she could have been.

The Cat Sith watches her face, and gives a slow blink. “I am sorry that I could not be more help to you.”

“It sounds as if you’ve been plenty of help,” she says softly. “Will… will you be taking him back? The faerie child?”

“He is a wanderer,” the Cat Sith says. “We go where we please. If he wants to leave you, then he will.” He pauses, then rises to his feet with liquid grace. “I must go now. You have done me a great service, helping with my hunt.”

“Your… your hunt? How did I help? What were you hunting?”

His paws leave dark, wet prints on the sill, and his red eyes gleam in the dark. “Did you not hear the lady Uwabami? There are consequences to stealing from wanderers.”

He vanishes, as his kind are wont to do.

The Cat Sith, as all the Fair Folk do, tells the truth. The faeries of the Summer Court are aloof and disdainful at worst, but they treat her well. They let her keep three children under her roof, and raise them with mortal love and warmth.

(The child-stealer vanishes that night. He is never found.)

Chapter Text

They call him Hitoshi.

At least, that's what Mother calls him. It's the name she picks for him, once she realizes the he isn't going anywhere, and that he isn't going to offer one up. Since the only one he has is his True Name, that isn't likely.

Katsuki doesn't call him that; he calls him Rock, and that sounds very impressive, but Hitoshi knows it's because he's lived for months under their roof and he still hasn't spoken a word to any of them. “It's like talking to a rock,” Katsuki says, and Mother tries to hush him as she sends a worried look Hitoshi’s way when she thinks he can't see.

He doesn’t blame her. Mother has plenty to fear from faeries, and for all that he makes her nervous, she is as kind to him as she is to her real son. She's been kind since the day she found him in Izuku’s bed, since she first fed him and carried him through two Faerie Courts in a single morning, and took him in when it all came to nothing. But no matter how kind she is, they are mortal and Hitoshi is not, and she knows, just a bit, how dangerous that makes him.

(Just a bit. She doesn't know all of it.)

That's all right. Hitoshi is used to being looked at like he’s dangerous. It’s better than being looked at like he’s something to be used.

Izuku doesn't call him Hitoshi, either. Izuku calls him Hicchan.

Izuku follows Katsuki the way kittens follow cats, and Hitoshi follows both of them just so he can watch. His human siblings are night and day. Katsuki is bold and loud; Izuku is meek and soft-spoken. Katsuki swaggers and boasts and uses language that amuses the fae and flusters Mother; Izuku creeps along in his shadow and wraps every word and every move in careful manners. Katsuki smirks, Izuku smiles. Katsuki runs, Izuku follows.

And then Katsuki’s magic awakens, and Izuku’s does not.

It is powerful, every bit as loud as its wielder, with bright bursts of color and light and flame, pure explosive force that darkens his hands and roughens his palms with thick calluses. It is crude, because Katsuki is young and mortal, but it is strong. It brings to mind stories of the Summer Knight, and his power and prowess in combat. The human children live and breathe these stories, because the Summer Knight is as human as they are, but commands respect and even fear among the fae. Katsuki challenges the young fae to fights if they try bully him or Izuku, or if they look at him funny, or for any excuse he can conjure up to throw a punch. It doesn’t take him very long to start winning.

Hitoshi hears the faeries talk. They so often forget he's there, or forget that he is mute, not deaf, so they speak freely around him.

The younger, cocksure ones crow their delight, and talk of how great a mortal servant Katsuki will be when he grows. The older ones shake their heads and say, that one will break his own shackles before he is even a man. They watch as Katsuki’s strength shines ever brighter, as Izuku shrinks further into his shadow.

Katsuki will be strong, they say. He will be dangerous, they say. It is our good fortune that he shares no blood with Inko, else we might lose our precious housekeeper! They laugh at this. Sometimes Katsuki hears them talk, and stands even taller.

And from the safety of his growing shadow, Izuku smiles meekly, speaks softly, and watches.

Izuku watches, and he waits, and he learns.

He watches the faces of faeries, learns to see what their beauty hides. He listens to their words, learns to hear half-truths and trickery. He gets his fingers broken when they catch him lying, so he lets Mother fret as she bandages his hands, and learns to lie better.

(The secret to it is, you do it by telling the truth.)

He can’t afford to scoff at their tricks, to hold himself above them the way Katsuki does. He has no magic, no power of his own to defend himself, so he has no choice but to do it on their terms. While Katsuki kicks the board and pieces aside, Izuku learns the rules of the game.

He learns to trade in small, unspoken favors. He learns the value of a story as currency, he learns what to trade and with whom, whose silence can be bought, whose tongues can be loosened. He learns to read the beautiful faces around him, to find the ones with rare soft hearts whose compassion is genuine. Better still, he learns to find those that would feign kindness, flatter and soothe their way past his guard, to steal his freedom and trap him all over again. And they are many.

He learns to speak as much as he learns to listen. The language of the Nevernever is old and beautiful and steeped in power. While Katsuki learns enough of it to understand, to curse, to issue and answer challenges, Izuku learns to make it sing.

He shields himself in Katsuki’s shadow, behind a pretty smile and a soft voice and wide, innocent eyes, and he learns all that they have to teach him, whether they mean to or not.

These Court faeries are fools, Hitoshi realizes. They must be, if they think that only one of these humans is dangerous.

If Katsuki’s shadow is a safe place to hide, then Izuku’s is even safer. It is there that Hitoshi finds his own refuge. He may as well be invisible here, and that is exactly how he likes it. Nothing good ever comes of being noticed.

Take now, for instance.

Izuku isn’t here right now. They’re going to go out into the woods, because Katsuki is stuck running errands for a Sidhe lord who took offense when Katsuki swore at one of his kids, so they have to occupy themselves without him today. Luckily, one of the friendlier sprites likes to make tea from dandelions, and she tells the best stories if you bring her the nicest blossoms you can find. Mother calls Izuku back for something before they leave, and Hitoshi decides to wait for him outside instead of follow.

It’s a mistake. By the time the faerie sneaks up on him, it’s too late to run to safety.

She’s as pretty as they come, for all that her left eye seems to be missing, and she smiles at him and twines a lock of his hair around her finger. Somehow he manages not to flinch, even when her fingertip brushes his ear in a way that could be an accident but definitely isn’t. “You’re such a pretty child,” she says, almost sings. “I don’t know why they called you ugly.” Hitoshi watches her face, sees the thoughtful smile that shows her teeth a bit. This is dangerous; she’s looking at him like he’s something that she can use. “I never got to ask, you know. About that joke.”

He shudders, because it’s been nearly a year since he last saw That One who stole him and Izuku, since That One vanished and no one even found him dead, they just shook their heads and said that’ll teach him to steal from wanderers. The look in this faerie’s single eye reminds him of That One’s eyes, and he doesn’t like the memories it brings.

“What sort of joke, do you make, little one?” the one-eyed lady asks. “Can you tell me?”

Hitoshi presses his lips together and tries not to remember—

It’s all in good fun. Don’t look so glum. Try to smile! I left you the rest of your mouth, did I not?

“Will you not answer me?”

You’re lucky I didn’t take your teeth, too, after what you did.

“Oh, don’t be like that! We’re friends, aren’t we? Or at least, we can be.”

Don’t be like that. It’ll grow back. Slowly, but it’ll grow back. Then you can have all the fun with mortals you like.

It’s a good joke, don’t you think?

The faerie in the present pouts, tugs his hair hard enough to hurt. “What fun is a little one who won’t speak?” she asks. “What use is a little one who won’t speak?”

Don’t try to call for help. It won’t work. No one will miss one little mongrel.

“I’ll find out, you know.” She touches his cheek, and her hand is warm but Hitoshi shudders still. “Whatever you’re hiding. And I’m going to squeeze every bit of fun from you I can. Why don’t you—”

“Hicchan! Hicchan, there you are—whoops!” Izuku trips, stumbles, and crashes into him, sending Hitoshi stumbling away from the one-eyed faerie while Izuku lands on his face at her feet. Hitoshi nearly panics then, sure that she’s going to punish him for interrupting so foolishly.

That’s when he sees two handfuls of dry rice grains spill out of Izuku’s pocket.

An instinct twitches in the back of his mind, but Izuku is already springing up and grabbing his hand, tugging him away before it can take hold. The one-eyed faerie glares after them, clearly longing to follow, but she can’t. She is already kneeling down, counting the grains one by one. She won’t be able to move from the spot until she’s finished.

(She’s lucky Izuku is so nice. He could have used sugar instead.)

“Sorry.” Izuku squeezes his hand extra-hard. “Sorry, Hicchan. I didn’t mean to take so long.”

Hitoshi shakes his head and shrugs, but when Izuku doesn’t stop frowning, he shakes his head harder. She was all talk, at least just then. He wasn’t—isn’t—in any danger. He is fine and there’s no reason to make a huge fuss and make Mother worry. And she will worry, because he might make her nervous sometimes but to Mother he’s still a child to care for and fret about. He doesn’t want Mother looking at him like that or Izuku looking at him like that, or worse, Katsuki finding out and using it as an excuse to pick another fight. He just wants to pick dandelions by the handful and trade them for a story.

Frowning, Hitoshi grips Izuku’s hand and pulls him into the forest, until the one-eyed faerie is out of sight and there is nothing around them but trees and flowers and dust motes drifting in the sunbeams.

“Hicchan?”

Hitoshi looks at Izuku again; finally he’s stopped looking so anxious. He’s still frowning, though, but it’s more thoughtful than worried.

“It’s okay, Hicchan. You know that, right?”

Now it’s Hitoshi’s turn to frown at him.

Izuku smiles brightly. It’s a real one, not one of the mask ones that he puts on around the older fae when he wants to look soft and foolish and innocent. “You’re smart, Hicchan. You’re hard to trap, not like me. I have to be careful all the time, with what I say. Because, if I’m not…”

That’s how they get you: your own careless tongue. But no words spoken means no words twisted, so Hitoshi is safer than most by keeping his mouth shut.

You’re plenty good, is what Izuku means. You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.

He’s got it wrong, of course. It’s not that Hitoshi doesn’t want to talk. He does, more than anything. But it’s dangerous, far more dangerous than Izuku could ever know, and even if it weren’t… well.

He’s been careful, these past months. Careful to keep his mouth closed around Izuku, around Mother and Katsuki and all the faeries in the Summer Court. But it’s not that he’s afraid they might hear something.

No, Hitoshi is more afraid of what they’ll see—or what they won’t see. He’s already alarmed them once, just a week ago, when he realized he could taste Mother’s food for the first time and couldn’t stop the tears.

He’s still young, after all. It’s taken so long for his tongue to grow back.

There’s a monster in Summer’s woods.

No one’s quite sure what it is. No one’s ever seen it. But everyone knows it’s there because one day, not quite three years after Izuku was stolen, a child of the Court disappears. And then another, and another. They don’t come back.

Of course, the children that vanish are the small, the unimportant, lowly children nowhere near the rungs of Summer’s nobility. So no one bothers making a fuss. The Nevernever is a treacherous place, after all. If you’re too weak to help yourself, then that’s your own fault.

That isn’t good enough for Izuku. It never has been. He couldn’t save himself from the faeries, Hitoshi couldn’t either, and Mom couldn’t save them in the end, but Izuku knows it’s still no one’s fault but the ones that took them in the first place. Perhaps one of these days some Sidhe lord will lose a child to the beast, and then the Court will mobilize to hunt it down, but the rest can’t afford to wait that long.

Suspicion falls briefly on Hitoshi, as it often does when anything goes wrong, anything from trinkets going missing to flowers wilting out of season. But then Katsuki picks a few fights, bloodies a few noses, and yells at the Court kids for being stupid, and the accusations stop.

The disappearances do not.

It isn’t a good week for them. Mom does her best over the years, minds her tongue, learns that “thank you” is worthless at the best of times and offensive at the worst, but the moods of the Fair Folk are capricious and odd, even in the warmth and light of Summer. A minor mistake, the result of bad luck and not stupidity, brings the ire of one of the Sidhe on their heads. It’s only minor ire, since all it gets them is spoiled food instead of something far worse. But spoiled food means less to eat. Mom would give them all the food if she could afford to, but she needs to eat if she’s going to take care of them and find her way back into the faeries’ good graces. She gives them the biggest portions, but the biggest portions of too little still leave them with empty bellies.

She won’t let Izuku help. He’s still free, he can still leave anytime, but he won’t, not ever, not while she’s still here and he has no hope of getting her out. Mom won’t risk him asking for help and getting himself trapped all over again. He can’t afford to ask anyone for help.

So when Katsuki gets an idea that doesn’t need any of them to make a deal with a faerie, Izuku latches on with all his might.

“We’ll catch it.” Katsuki shows all of his teeth in a grin. “Just us humans, nobody else, so we don’t owe anything to any of the faeries.” He pauses. “Well, I guess Rock can come along too, if he really wants.” Hitoshi blinks slowly at him. “But anyway, we’ll catch this stupid monster, and we’ll bring back its… something. Its fangs, or its horns maybe. And then they’ll owe us.”

“Do you think it has horns?” Izuku asks. “And fangs? Well, I bet it does have fangs, if it’s eating children. You need sharp teeth to eat meat—unless you’re a bird, I guess. Or some snakes, they just squeeze things to death and swallow them whole. Do you think it’s a snake? Or a bird? For a bird we could take back feathers, but I’m not sure what we could do with a snake—”

“Shut up, Deku,” Katsuki snaps.

Izuku shuts up, but privately he knows he’s right. The truth is, they don’t know anything about the thing that’s vanishing children. Nobody does; that’s the problem when the only ones who’ve seen it are the ones that are missing. Some say it’s a beast, some say it’s a demon, some say it’s an angry spirit, some say it’s solitary fae playing tricks.

So of course Katsuki’s the one that says “Let’s catch it.”

They don’t tell Mom. Word hasn’t gotten back to her about the disappearing children, and telling her will only worry her when she has enough on her mind already.

The problem is that they have no idea where to start looking. Katsuki is all for dashing blindly into the woods until they trip over the creature, but the woods are vast and they barely know their way beyond the Watermeadows. So they have no choice but to keep their ears open, listening for clues and rumors that might point them in the right direction.

When they find one, it’s quite by accident.

“You, boy.”

Izuku recognizes the woman that hails them—well, hails Katsuki, anyway. She’s not a faerie, not quite. She’s not from the Courts, but she’s not a solitary wanderer, either. She’s one of the elves, from another part of the Nevernever, beyond the reaches of the Faerie Realms. They call her the Lady of the Blue Mountains, and Lady Uwabami has been expecting her visit, but besides that he knows little about her.

“Yes?” Katsuki’s polite, or at least his version of polite. It’s not as good as “yes, my lady” but it’s better than “What.”

“Have you seen my son?” the elf lady asks. “He went off to explore the woods, and now he’s late.”

Izuku’s stomach turns all cold and twisty when she says this, but Katsuki stands taller. “Where’d he go?” he asks. “I can tell him you’re looking for him.”

“Firstdark Hollow.” Her reply is short, and with a flick of her hand she dismisses them (Katsuki, she dismisses Katsuki, because she doesn’t bother looking at Izuku or Hitoshi). “Be quick about it.”

“I know where that is,” Izuku whispers when the elf lady is out of earshot. Katsuki narrows his eyes like he doesn’t believe him. “No, really! It’s in the forest to the west, just past the Summer hunting grounds. Hicchan and I heard some of the hunters talking about it. They say it’s no good for hunting unless you feel like chasing after foxes.”

“All right, let’s go then.” Katsuki bares his teeth in a daring smile. “We gotta do this fast now, ‘cause that monster took an elf lady’s kid this time. Once she finds out he got eaten, she’ll have the whole Court hunting it down if we don’t get there first.”

“W-well, maybe he hasn’t been eaten?” Izuku says hopefully. He doesn’t like the thought of Court children being torn apart, even cruel, bullying Court children, but the elves have never done anything bad to him. “Maybe we can catch him before he gets there.”

“Well, either way.” Katsuki squares his shoulders. “We’re gonna find this thing and make it sorry it ever messed with us.”

Izuku shares a look with Hitoshi, and he can tell Hitoshi’s thinking the same thing: it hasn’t messed with them yet. If anything, they’re the ones going to mess with it.

They tell Mom that they’re running an errand for the Lady of the Blue Mountains, or at least that Katsuki’s running the errand and Izuku and Hitoshi are going with him. She gives them a worried smile, tells them to be careful and not to stay out too late, and they leave.

Katsuki marches at the head of them like a soldier going to war. Izuku walks with Hitoshi behind him, and together they watch their surroundings for danger while Katsuki puts on a strong front. He’s all for marching straight through the hunting grounds, but Izuku balks. The fae love to hunt, and the realm of Summer has plenty of good game for them. Of course, good game means dangerous creatures, and the hunters themselves don’t take kindly to unwary children intruding on their sport.

“If we interrupt a hunt, we’ll get in trouble,” Izuku tells him.

“I don’t give a shit,” Katsuki says smugly, and ignores Hitoshi’s eye-roll. “Going through the hunting grounds is the fastest way.”

Not if they get attacked by a wild beast or caught by a hunting party. “I… guess you’re right,” Izuku says cautiously. “Actually, it might be a good thing! Maybe, if we do find hunters, we can ask them about Firstdark, or if they’ve seen the elf lady’s son. They could help us find the beast, or even help us kill it—”

“Don’t be stupid!” Katsuki snaps at him. “We’re supposed to be finding it, remember? Just us! Ugh.” He scuffs his foot in annoyance. “Forget it, we’ll just go around. This better not take too long.”

Izuku feels Hitoshi looking at him, and shoots his silent friend a look of relief. He wasn’t sure that would work.

It doesn’t take them all that long in the end, especially if you think about how much a wild beast attack might have delayed them. The sun is still high when they reach Firstdark Hollow, nestled in the lowland woods to the west. They find themselves at the top of a gentle rise, leading down into the quiet hollow.

Katsuki sends up a burst of magic as bright and loud as firecrackers, and Izuku jumps.

“Kacchan!” he hisses. “Be careful!”

“We want to bring it out, stupid,” Katsuki retorts. He cups his hands around his mouth and yells, “Hey! Come on out, you big ugly—oof!” Hitoshi shuts him up with a hard shove to the back, sending him tumbling down the shallow slope, cursing but no longer shouting. Rolling his eyes, Hitoshi follows on foot. Izuku half runs, half skids to the bottom, where he offers a hand to Katsuki. With a venomous glare, his friend smacks it away, picks himself up, and runs to the front again.

They venture deeper into the Hollow, and Izuku understands its name. The sky seems farther away, and the thick treetops block much of the sunlight. It’s nearly as dark as dusk here, and Izuku reaches for Hitoshi’s hand without thinking. Some forests like to get you lost on purpose; it’s best to stick together.

At least it’s easy to follow Katsuki. He isn’t shouting anymore, but he walks with confidence, like a conquering hero on his way to battle. His magic sparks from time to time, driving back the gloom just a little.

They are nearly to the heart of the hollow, picking their way through thick trees, when Hitoshi goes still and squeezes his hand. Izuku catches the back of Katsuki’s shirt, stopping him from moving forward. Katsuki shrugs him off and turns around, ready to yell at Izuku for grabbing him, when Izuku hears it.

Rustling. Running footsteps. High, eerie shrieking in the distance.

“Finally,” Katsuki growls, and takes off further into the Hollow, straight for the source of the noise.

“Kacchan—!” Still gripping Hitoshi’s hand, Izuku runs after him.

Roots and bushes snag at him, threatening to trip him, but Izuku stays on his feet and keeps running. The harsh cries grow closer and closer, Katsuki’s magic crackles at his fingertips, and at last they burst from the underbrush.

Goblins. There are three of them, as big as men, dashing recklessly through the hollow, ragged and gap-toothed and armed with curved black knives. Katsuki yells defiantly at them, sparks turning to miniature thunderclaps as he turns his power on them.

“You two stay the hell out of my way!” he yells to Izuku and Hitoshi, and meets the goblins head-on.

They shriek at each other in a language that Izuku doesn’t know. Two of them attack Katsuki, and the third turns its sights on him and Hitoshi. Hitoshi squeezes his hand again and pulls, and the two of them run past while the third goblin gives chase.

They can’t get too far from Katsuki, or they might lose each other, so Izuku casts about for a place to hide. Like an answer to a wish, it appears: a massive, fat oak with a wide hollow at its base, the opening half hidden by underbrush. The two of them dash at it, heedless of clinging plants and nettles, and don’t stop until they’re inside.

Izuku looks back, and his stomach drops when he sees the goblin behind them. He’ll see them for sure—they’re done for, as good as cornered.

The goblin is looking straight at him when it stops. It watches him for a moment more, then turns and runs back the way they came.

A chill crawls up his spine. It has only a little bit to do with how cold it is inside the tree.

“Hicchan,” he whispers. “Hicchan, I think something’s wrong—”

The hand holding his tugs him downward. Hitoshi crouches near the ground, inspecting it with narrowed eyes. It takes a moment for Izuku to see what he’s looking at, but the ground is torn up, as if something or someone came through in a hurry. And there, speckling the disturbed ground—

Hitoshi wipes a bit off on his fingertip, rubs it against his thumb. It’s half-dried by now, but Izuku knows blood when he sees it.

“It must’ve been them,” Izuku whispers. “H-Hicchan, we need to get out of here, there’s probably more goblins—they must be the ones stealing children—” Hitoshi’s hard grip silences him, forces Izuku to think, and he remembers the goblin that chased them. How it stopped and turned back, instead of chasing them further in. How the three goblins were running, shrieking, almost as if… “They were running away from something,” Izuku whispers.

His eyes adjust, slowly. This isn’t just a hollow tree; it’s a hollow in the earth itself, and Izuku can see where it leads downward.

“Hicchan,” Izuku whispers. “The elf lady’s son just disappeared. What if… what if he’s still…?”

They venture downward. The hollow becomes a twisting passage, and by rights Izuku shouldn’t be able to see, but for some reason he can. It’s as if the soil itself is lit from within, guiding their way ever deeper.

Without warning, the passage opens up.The dimness gives way to a warm, welcoming light, and Izuku blinks as his eyes adjust again.

His mouth drops open.

It’s a dining room. It’s the biggest, richest, most beautiful dining room that Izuku has ever seen. The walls are painted beautifully, and the open doorway in the far wall is intricately carved and brushed with gold leaf. The table alone could seat dozens, though the chairs stand empty, and the spread—

It’s full. From end to end, the table is covered by a feast fit for a king. Fit for an emperor, even. Fruits of every kind he can think of, and more than a few he’s never seen before. Platters of meat still steaming from the roasting spit. Baked bread, vegetables, whole cooked fish bathed in sauce, steaming pots of—soup? Stew? He can only imagine. The sight of it is like heaven compressed into a single room, mouth-watering temptation to a child who has gone hungry for too long. His eyes follow the table from one end to the other, and

He was wrong. There is one seat that stands occupied.

It’s a man, Izuku thinks. Pale, hunched, and thin, but it’s certainly man-shaped. The figure sits at the head of the table, at the far end of the room. They appear elderly, at least eighty years old with a shaven head and plain robes. They’re hunched over the table as if asleep.

Izuku gathers his courage, and steps into the room.

This time, Hitoshi doesn’t follow. Izuku looks back, alarmed when Hitoshi’s hand nearly slips from his, and stumbles back into the passage. Hitoshi is wide eyed, milling a little at the entrance, but he doesn’t set one foot into the room.

He can’t, Izuku realizes.

It takes a strong or special sort of faerie to cross the threshold of someone else’s home uninvited, and Hitoshi is a child still. Whoever that man is at the table, this must be his home. His table. His feast, laid out and untouched.

Hitoshi leaves off trying to enter, and scans the room instead. Suddenly he goes stiff, jostles Izuku’s arm, and points.

With some difficulty, Izuku tears his eyes from the feast and looks to the wall, and his pulse takes a running jump and nearly reaches his throat. There, set into the left wall, not far from the entrance where they now stand, is a barred cage.

An elfin boy sits within, curled up into a ball with his face hidden in his arms.

Izuku hurries to the side of the entrance, as near as he can get without entering the room, and takes a deep breath.

“H-hello?” It’s thin and quiet, barely above a whisper. The elfin boy jumps and raises his head, and at the sight of them he freezes again.

“Go away,” he answers, but he speaks in the old language. In the warm light of the dining room, Izuku can see tears shining on his face.

“We’re here to help you.” Izuku looks to the figure at the table, but they haven’t moved. “We just came from the Summer Court. We can get you out!”

The boy’s damp face is mistrustful, and he presses his lips together and turns away. “I don’t need help from someone like you,” he says, though his voice trembles just a little.

When Izuku tries to speak next, his voice catches in his dry throat, and he chokes on the words. The old tongue is not to be spoken lightly, or with uncertainty. So he focuses, not on the food, or on the hunched figure at the table, but on the boy in the cage and Hitoshi’s hand in his, and tries again.

“You’re from the Blue Mountains,” he says, slowly and with purpose, letting the words fall like quicksilver from his lips. “Aren’t you? Your mother sent us. She’s worried about you.” He doesn’t know that for sure until he says it; the old tongue won’t let you speak anything but the truth.

The elfin boy’s shoulders are drawn up tight, but at the sound of Izuku’s voice, he lets them down just a little. His pointed ears twitch, so Izuku knows he can hear.

“Can you tell me what happened?” Izuku asks, soft and lilting. Faeries speaking the old tongue can make it soothing as a lullaby or harsh as a crackling fire, but for Izuku it takes practice and effort, and he knows he’ll always fall short of perfect. “Please. I just want to help you.”

At this, the elf turns his head and looks at Izuku again, thoughtfully. “You’re plain,” he says. “You’re just a human. But you talk nice, so I’ll tell you.” He takes a deep breath. “I gave my guard the slip, because he wouldn’t let me explore how I wanted. I found the tree. He caught up to me here, but…” His lip quivers. “The goblins were here already. They would have killed us, maybe, but… but then…” He shoots a glance toward the end of the table. “That woke up. And… and it…” he squeezes his eyes shut. “It grabbed me. W-with its… but my guard… H-he told me to run, but I couldn’t, and… and it… it ate him. I saw it. I heard it.”

There is no lying in the old tongue. Izuku shudders.

“It ate him, and it ate the goblins, and it was too full to eat me, so it put me here,” the elf goes on. “Can… are you really here to help me?”

“Yes,” Izuku answers.

“What do you want?” the elf asks.

“Just to help,” he says. Small favors for extra food or stories or information are one thing, but for this? It’s not wise to ask anything from the people of the Nevernever, even if it’s for something you’ve done. That means making Deals with them, and Deals mean binding, and that’s the last thing Izuku wants right now. So he’ll do things, and if they see fit to repay him, then they will. They’ll balance things on their own without binding him to his word, and that’s enough for him.

“The key is on the table,” the elf says. “It’s… it’s got it under its hand.”

Izuku suddenly feels the urge to swear.

“It won’t wake him!” the elf adds quickly. “It won’t wake unless you touch the food.” He pauses. “So don’t touch the food. Just take the key and let me out, and we can all leave this place. Please hurry!”

Izuku lets go of Hitoshi’s hand.

Hitoshi can’t cross into the room, after all. He’s not strong enough, not old enough to defy a threshold boundary. But Izuku is human.

And if there’s one thing humans are good at, it’s getting into places they shouldn’t.

He steps over the threshold, and enters the creature’s domain.

All at once, he is warm. It feels like stepping up to a hearth, walking in from the cold, safety in a storm. And the smells

He hadn’t been able to smell the feast from outside the room. But he smells it now.

Cooked, seasoned meat. Fresh bread still warm from the oven. Soup and rice and hot fish and vegetables, so thick in the air that he can almost taste it.

His eyes water, as does his mouth. Most of their food back in the Court is spoiled, and Mom is hungry and Katsuki’s hungry and Hitoshi’s hungry and Izuku is so, so very hungry. And this is such a feast—how would that creature notice, if he took only a bite? If he just…

No! The key. He needs the key.

Tears spill over, and he sniffles as he walks past all the beautiful food, past platters and pots and bowls overflowing with fresh fruit. He edges around the table, closer and closer to the hunched sleeping figure at the end.

It does look like an old man, frail and wrinkled, bald head bowed in sleep, eyes…

Eyes…

The old man has no eyes.

The shock of it jolts his thoughts away from food, toward the old man’s hands, and they are claws, darkening to red and black at the ends, the color of dried blood and old scabs.

Something else catches his eye, on the floor behind where the figure sits. It looks like a pile of old clothes, and it sort of is. But there's something else besides clothes, something lumpy and rumpled, like a pile of pale leather and…

Izuku's stomach lurches, and he’s nearly sick all over the floor, right then and there.

“It was awful,” the elf boy says in a hushed voice. “It—it made a sound, like a dog sucking on a bone, and it just…”

They were people. Goblins and elf-guards and Summer Court children, and now they're left on the floor like trash, limp and empty skin crumpled up like old laundry.

Izuku looks at the table in front of the monster, sees the handle of a key half hidden by its frail hand. He reaches out, ears roaring, and slides it free.

The monster doesn't stir.

He steps back, dizzy with fear and hunger, and the sweet smell of fruit reaches him, wafting from a bowl that overflows with dark, plump grapes. He can't think, can barely feel the cold metal key in his hand. Hunger roars within him, deep and bottomless until he can think of nothing else. Not of the elf, or of Hitoshi, or of Katsuki, or of Mom waiting for him to come back. His belly is empty, and there is food rich beyond measure laid out in front of him.

He blinks, and the grapes are within reach. Some voice in his head is telling him to turn away, to touch it means death, remember what the elfin boy said, but… just one? Just one or two? He's so hungry, and they won't be missed, right?

Don't, someone says as he reached for the plumpest grape he can see. Please, please, don’t, just take the key, free the boy, please, I want to go home. I want to go home! Don't do it, don’t do it—

Just one. That’s all he needs, just one.

“Don't.”

He doesn't.

He wants to, oh how he wants to, his mouth is watering and he has never wanted more than he does now. But there is a voice now telling him not to, and he doesn't recognize it, but he knows he has to listen.

“Don’t,” the voice says again, and the sound of it presses against the sides of his mind like a vice, locking him in place. “Unlock the cage and get out of there. Don’t touch the food.”

He wants—But he can't. He can't do anything but what the voice tells him.

The key scrapes as it turns in the lock, and the elf shoves the door open and flees, crashing into him as he runs for the passage. Izuku's teeth rattle, and all at once the fog in his head clears. Sights and sounds and smells come crashing in, the smell of the feast calls to him again—no. No. NO.

He runs before he has the chance to lose himself, covers his nose and mouth and turns his head away from the table. Half-blind, he dashes back to the entrance, straight into Hitoshi’s waiting hands.

When he looks up, Hitoshi is staring down at him with wide, fearful eyes, and the elf boy is staring at Hitoshi with artless, round-eyed shock.

“What did you do to him?” the elf boy asks. “Did you—how—”

“Hicchan?” Izuku’s voice trembles. His friend looks like he's about to cry. “N-no, it's okay! It's okay. Let's go. Let's go home. W-we'll find Kacchan, and—”

“Look out!” the elf warns, and Izuku turns.

A goblin emerges from the golden doorway, sniffing. It sees them, then sees the banquet table, and makes a pleased noise as it shambles across. It seizes an entire fish off a platter and tears into it with its teeth.

At the far end, the monster rises from its seat. It lifts its hands from the table, turns its palms outward—oh. It does have eyes after all.

The goblin’s screams are what send Izuku running again, gripping Hitoshi’s hand in one of his own and the elfin boy’s wrist with the other. Together they race up the narrow passage, and the goblin's screams stop.

Behind them, Izuku hears a sound like a dog sucking a bone.

They find Katsuki in the hollow, battered and exhausted but smug as he tosses one of those curved black knives to himself. The goblins are nowhere to be seen. “Where the hell were you two?” he asks, and then when he sees the elf, “Oh, so you're alive after all.”

The elfin boy looks startled to be addressed this way. “Which way to the Court?” he asks. “I have to find my mother.”

“Whatever.” Katsuki shrugs. “Come on, I ran off those stupid goblins. Let's go find more.”

“We shouldn't stay,” the elf says vehemently. “There's—owch!”

“No more goblins around,” Izuku finishes, while Hitoshi steps on the elf’s foot. “You probably scared them off.”

This seems to satisfy Katsuki, barely. He looks like he would very much like to stay and look for more goblins to fight, but he's tired and outnumbered and not foolish enough to wander around on his own, especially with his magic mostly spent.

Better to keep quiet about the monster beneath the tree for now. Katsuki would only want to fight it.

Back at the Court, of course, the story comes out when the elfin boy tells his mother, and Katsuki shows off the knife and regales anyone within earshot with a description of his battle with the goblins. Hunting parties are sent to the Hollow immediately. Izuku keeps an ear out, and hears some of the faeries whisper to each other about tenome and Eyes-on-Hands.

He takes Hitoshi by the hand again, and leads him out of the heart of the Court.

“You spoke to me,” he says, while Hitoshi avoids his eyes. “Your voice went all funny, and… and I couldn't not listen to you. Hicchan…” His friend flinches. “Is… was that the joke he talked about? The one who switched us?”

Hitoshi looks at the ground, not him. It takes a long time for him to move at all, much less answer. Izuku waits.

“He found out,” Hitoshi whispers, and his voice is normal now, not the heavy vice on his mind that it was before. “He took my tongue, so I couldn't use it on him, and it took a long time to heal.”

“Hicchan…” Izuku can't think of anything at all to say to that.

“I used it on you,” Hitoshi says. “I didn't know what else to do.”

“You saved me,” Izuku blurts, and that's an unwise thing to say to a faerie, that's the sort of thing that gets twisted into a life debt. But Hitoshi has already held Izuku's mind at his fingertips, and if he can trust Hitoshi not to mess with his head then maybe he can trust him not to mess with his words.

“You need looking after,” Hitoshi tells him. “Mother’s always busy, and Katsuki acts like an idiot. It might as well be me.”

Izuku laughs, and Hitoshi lets him pull him into a hug.

The Lady of the Blue Mountains repays them for her son’s life with a small bag of gemstones mined in her mountains, which Izuku splits with Hitoshi. Katsuki is satisfied with his new knife, and with impressing the young faeries with his story of how he drove off three goblins at once. The elfin boy repays his own debt with his silence, and Hitoshi’s secret is safe.

(The hunters find the tree in Firstdark Hollow, and the tunnels within. At the end of the passage they find a derelict dining room, dark and cobwebbed and abandoned, paint molded and peeling on the walls, its banquet table covered end to end in long-rotted food.)

Chapter Text

Momo is a difficult child when she is small.

She’s not difficult until her eyes finally open and she grows into her limbs enough to stand and walk, but as soon as she does, her family despairs of her. She is beautiful, of course, the pride of her parents, with a certain grace that promises strength and poise when she grows older. She is clever, as her kind ought to be, and she learns quickly how to read, how to seek, how to fill her hungry mind with the knowledge it craves. But when she isn’t reading or studying, she is irritable and unruly at worst, and aloof at best. Her family is wealthy and illustrious; that coupled with her prickly moods get her labeled as spoiled early on.

It would stand to reason, some say. Her kind is well known for being a proud people. Such a shame that their pretty, graceful child had to be so sullen.

Momo isn’t sullen. At least, she isn’t trying to be. Her parents travel in powerful circles, and she gets pulled away from her beloved books to join them more often than not. Momo is clever and smart, and absorbs what she reads like rainwater in desert sand, but when she tries to talk to strangers, the words and thoughts in her head get hopelessly snarled. It feels sometimes like she’s being paraded around, a pretty promise of future renown. It means hours of being either ignored or stared at by adults, and Momo can’t decide which is worse. She isn’t sullen; she’s just bored.

That changes when her parents take her with them to a celebration of famed battle mages. Momo uses the term “celebration” in the loosest sense, because the event they attend is neither exciting nor particularly lively. There are a lot more humans here than Momo is used to, though. And Momo likes humans.

Maybe not well enough to stand patiently like a statue while her parents make small talk with one of the families’ patriarchs, though.

“The blood of a human family can become steeped in magic over time,” her mother murmurs to her while her father discusses enchantment techniques with a stiff-looking human man, and Momo half-listens. “These days most humans possess at least some talent for it, but some families cultivate it for generations. Pay attention, Momo—the branches of this particular family tree have borne practitioners for at least a century now.”

Momo doesn’t think much of the ones she sees; the man seems as stuffy and rich as some of the elves she has met before. There’s a younger man with him, maybe his son, and his brown eyes look friendly but Momo has heard time and again that humans are unpredictable.

After a while, impatience wins out, and Momo quietly slips away from her mother’s side. In a few minutes, her parents will notice her absence and track her down again, but at least she can have a break. Besides, this soiree has enough attendees for Momo to hide among the forest of bipedal legs.

She is nearly a safe distance when someone seizes her by the tuft of her tail.

Momo freezes. She can feel her wing feathers bristling and the fur along her spine start to stand on end. Someone has her tail, and it’s not one of her parents, because it’s a hand holding her instead of gentle teeth. She’s not sure what to do. This has never happened to her before. Should she shout? Swipe at them? Pull free and run back to her family?

Slowly, Momo starts to turn around, and finds herself face to face with the human boy just as he lets her go and steps back.

“I apologize!” He nearly shouts it at her, for all that they’re standing one foot apart. “That must have been incredibly rude of me, to touch you without permission!” He lifts his hands again, but only to gesture forcefully at her. “But I couldn’t help but notice that someone was about to step on it—again, I apologize. It would have been better to warn them than harass you.”

Momo’s tail moves out of his reach with a flick, and she feels her fur and feathers start to lie flat again. She can spot a lie, and this boy seems truthful to her. “That’s all right,” she says, and finishes turning around to face him fully. He’s taller than her, of course; she’s on four legs and he’s on two, and her shoulder is not quite as high as his waist. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome!” He smiles, and it’s a big smile—way bigger than the polite little mouth-curves Momo has been seeing so far. She finds herself smiling back. “You’re Yaoyorozu, right? One of the sphinxes? It’s very nice to meet you! My brother says that our parents are friends! I hope that we can be friends, as well!”

That’s how she meets Iida Tenya. They’re just two bored kids surrounded by way too many grown-ups, glad to find someone their own age to talk to. It’s easier to sneak off with two of them to keep a lookout, and easier still to find interesting things to talk about away from their parents’ watchful eyes. Momo’s parents despair of their antics, but can’t begrudge the friendship.

Iida is Momo’s very first best friend, but she isn’t Iida’s; that honor belongs to his older brother. She likes the mage Ingenium a lot, because the kind smile she saw on his face wasn’t just for show. He really is that nice, and Iida loves him very much.

She knows this, because they tell each other everything. Iida admits to her, a little bashfully, that his magical talent is nothing to write home about. He knows a few simple spells by the time he starts elementary school, cubs’ tricks to the spellwork that Momo has been learning. But he’s less worried about that than Momo would be in his place, because his older brother with average talent, even by human standards. And recently Ingenium’s been shaping up to be the most widely-known Iida son yet.

(Momo is the first outside of Iida’s immediate family to find out when Ingenium nearly dies at age twenty-four, when he ends up in the hospital, when he first turns. That’s because Iida comes to her in a panic, and she tucks him under her wing and lets him cry out his fear.)

In turn, Momo tells him about her studies, about spells and enchantments she’s been learning, and about visits she and her parents have paid to the Nevernever. He’s never been to the Nevernever, and he presses her with question after question about elves and faeries and youkai and all the strange creatures that can be found beyond the veil.

And when her parents decide she’s finally old enough for a transformation pendant, Iida is the first person she shows—by staggering into him in her newly-gained human shape, demanding to know how on earth she’s supposed to walk with two legs and not even a tail for balance. Iida doesn’t even laugh at her.

Momo likes being friends with Iida. He introduces her to other kids he knows from school, and they’re all right for the most part (though if Takada-kun keeps pulling her tail, she’s bound to run out of patience eventually). She likes Iida’s older brother, and she finds that even his father isn’t as stuffy as she first thought. And since she’s now Tenya’s friend instead of simply the Yaoyorozu cub, they do things like welcome her for lunch and talk to her and ask her about things other than her family.

Ingenium is different now than he used to be, the first time she met him. His eyes are red now, not brown, and he even smells different—he smells colder, somehow. But the things that matter are still the same: he’s still kind, and his smile is still warm even if the rest of him isn’t.

The Iidas are her friends. So when Takada-kun runs his mouth too far and Iida punches him, Momo doesn’t stop him.

When it becomes a fight, Momo does think about joining in. Ideas and plans and possibilities run through her mind, lightning-fast and disorienting, and there are so many choices that they end up crowding together in her mind, and in the end she picks none of them.

“Tenya.”

Her friend stares down at his hands in his lap, unable to meet his brother’s eyes. It’s like he knows what he’ll see: not anger, but disappointment. Momo knows that the last thing Iida wants is for his brother to be disappointed in him, but he’s also stubborn enough to know he was right. Momo shoots a glance at his bruised, scraped knuckles, and tries to ignore the twinge of shame.

“Tenya, look at me.”

Ingenium doesn’t use his power to make him listen, though Momo knows he has at least one that could, but Iida looks up anyway and fidgets under his brother’s disapproval. Beside him, in human form, Momo angles her elbow in just such a way that she nudges him lightly, a silent reminder that she’s still there and still on his side. It’s the least she can do, since so far all she’s done is nothing at all.

“I’m not sorry,” Iida says, but his voice trembles, and Momo can see the lie. He is sorry, just a little, because he got in enough trouble to make his brother have to deal with it. His brother has been busy lately, helping investigate recent disappearances, and Iida is proud of his brother and proud of the work he does, and the last thing he wants to do is get in his way.

Ingenium sighs deeply. “I’m not mad. I’m honestly more worried than mad.” Iida jerks his head up at that. “You know… when the school called, I honestly couldn’t believe it.” Iida tries to make fists, but his bruises must pain him too much to curl his fingers. “I mean… you? Fighting after school?”

“They started it,” Iida says, and then winces like he knows it’s a terrible excuse.

“That’s not what your teacher told me,” Ingenium says gently. “And even worse—you nearly pulled Yaoyorozu into it as well. It’s a good thing she was sensible enough not to join in.”

Momo winces. It had nothing to do with being sensible. If she had been sensible, she might have stopped the fight, or prevented it from happening at all. “It’s not his fault,” she says, and in this moment she finds out she hates it when other people get in trouble while she doesn’t. “Did they tell you what they said?”

“It doesn’t matter what they said—”

“They called you a monster,” Iida says, and his brother goes quiet.

“Takada-kun has always been mean,” Momo says softly in the silence that follows.

“I see.” Ingenium’s shoulders rise and fall with another sigh. He looks thoughtful. “Did you convince them, then?”

Iida blinks. “What?”

“Whoever called me a monster. Did you change their minds?”

“I…” Iida’s face goes blank. “I don’t know. …Most likely not.”

“Were you trying to change their minds?” Ingenium asks.

Iida sits, mute as he struggles with the simple question. Momo winces again in sympathy for him. At least she’s used to her parents riddling her into learning a lesson, instead of telling her outright.

“Tenya,” his brother says, and Iida looks up again. “I will never, ever tell you not to fight. We live in a dangerous world filled with creatures and monsters and people who might want to hurt you, and sometimes the only way to stop them is to hurt them first. But that must be your reason, do you understand?”

Iida blinks rapidly. “But…”

“I’m a vampire, Tenya.” Ingenium smiles at him sadly. “And I’m a new one at that. People were bound to talk.”

“But they don’t even know you and they say terrible things—”

“What of it, Tenya? I know the truth, and so do you. So do many others.”

“But…” Iida’s voice trails off. “You always save people, and help people, but they still…”

“Then I guess I’ll just have to keep doing that,” Ingenium says with a smile. “That’s far more likely to convince them than a fist to the jaw, don’t you think?”

“I want to be one, too,” Iida says, and his brother’s red eyes widen. Momo feels the thin hairs on her human arms stand on end. “I’d help people, and save people from evil just like you, and we could show everyone that we weren’t monsters.”

Ingenium pulls a wry smile. “Maybe when you’re older, Tenya. Ten seems like a bad age to get stuck at.”

Iida thinks this over, then nods. “No one would listen to me if I was this small, even if I were a hundred years old.”

“I would,” Momo mutters.

“I know,” Iida replies. “But not everyone is as clever as you.” She blushes and pokes him, and Iida grins a little for the first time since this morning.

“I don’t want you getting into any more fights on my account,” Ingenium says. “I’m glad you’re on my side, Tenya, but you don’t have to protect me from a few harsh words. Unless you don’t think I’m strong enough to handle it?”

“Of course you’re strong!” Iida blurts out. “I didn’t mean to act like—to make you even think—”

“Good.” Ingenium smiles again. “Then let me worry about my own reputation, okay? Focus on your studies, and your growth.”

“I’ve been learning more spells,” Iida says. “Sasaki-sensei says my magic is coming along well.”

“That’s good to hear.” Ingenium grins, and his fangs show. “See? What’s it matter what other people say about me, when I have a mage as clever and hard-working as you looking up to me? That’s how I know I’m doing all right.”

“I’m sorry for fighting,” Iida says.

His brother ruffles his hair. “I guess I can forgive you, then.” Momo sighs with relief.

“Did you get in trouble with your parents?” Iida asks her later.

“Not… really?” Momo shrugs. “My parents are sort of disagreeing over it, I think. Mother’s glad I didn’t jump into the fight, but Father says I should have thought quicker and done something instead of just standing there. And he’s right.” Her shoulders slump. “They like your brother, you know. And sphinxes are proud. Or we’re supposed to be. We don’t take insults lightly.”

“Still…” Iida mutters. “My brother’s right.” He taps the side of his fist into his upturned palm. “I need to pick my battles from now on. I’m going to be a vampire like him someday, and I need to show everyone that we can be champions for good just like the Summer Knight and the other battle mages and… and everyone else.”

Momo watches his face for any sign of hesitance, and sees none. “You’re really gonna go for it, then?”

“You know I am,” he says. “I must! I have worked hard in my magic studies, but my potential is still… mediocre.”

“So what?” Momo snorts. “You don’t have to have a huge well of magic to be a good battle mage.”

“I don’t want to be just a good battle mage,” Iida says. “I want to be a great one. I want to join the United Alliance—on my own merit, and not just because of my family.”

Momo hums thoughtfully. That’s a pretty big vow, and she feels like she should reciprocate with one of her own.

“You’re already clever,” Iida tells her, as if he can hear her thoughts. “And you’re really strong, too. I think I have a longer way to go than you.”

“Maybe that’s the problem, though,” Momo answers. “I think… I think too much.”

“Sphinxes are supposed to be wise, aren’t they?” he points out. “That means thinking a lot.”

“Yeah, but sphinxes are supposed to do things, too!” she says. “Being wise doesn’t just mean sitting around thinking about everything—it means knowing what to do and when to do it.” She takes a deep breath. “There are a lot of things I want to be better at. Like knowing what to do. Deciding things. Making friends.”

Iida looks scandalized. “You’re a fantastic friend!”

“Maybe. Just not at making them.” Momo shrugs. “We’re friends because you talked to me first. I’m not good at talking first.”

“I guess that makes sense,” he says reluctantly. “I think you just need more chances to practice, but we’re always the only kids around when we accompany our families to events.”

“True.” Momo thinks it over, because if there’s one thing she doesn’t need to practice, it’s thinking. “Oh! Do you know about the Accords Banquet? I heard my father talking about it. They’re holding it in the Nevernever this year.”

Iida’s eyes light up. “The Nevernever? Really?”

“On neutral ground, too, so that the fae courts don’t squabble.” Momo lowers her voice like she’s telling a secret. “It’s this big vale protected on all sides by mountains. There’ll be loads of magical families there. They don’t always bring kids with them, but this is a pretty big event, so even if the families don’t, sometimes fae children sneak in anyway.”

“That sounds exciting!” Iida flaps his hands eagerly. “I’ll ask my brother about it. I’ll have to be on my best behavior, but I’ll bet they’ll let me go, especially if they know it’s to keep you company.”

It’s not long before Iida brings her the good news and the bad news. The Accords Banquet is a three-day event, and his family is only attending for the third day. It makes sense; the Nevernever isn’t a safe place for humans to stay long. It still means that Momo’s on her own for the first two.

That’s all right, though. The Nevernever is treacherous, but that also means it’s exciting. Even if there aren’t many people to talk to, there’s always something to see.

The Accords Banquet is an event that celebrates the truce among realms. The Accords themselves are a massive treaty that list rules and agreements that keep the signatories at peace with one another: fae courts, elven kingdoms, mortal governments, youkai and monsters and spirits and many more. The banquet is a time for celebration of the peace, but it’s also a time for brokering deals, forming and breaking alliances amongst themselves, and sharing news. Momo is willing to bet those recent disappearances will be the talk of the party, at least among the humans and their allies.

Prominent families from all over the realms are here. Fae nobles, elven royalty, powerful sorcerers and mages of all shapes and sizes. On the first day, stomach tied in knots, Momo goes in search of company her own age. By evening, she is thoroughly frustrated. The children of the fae courts smile at her, but with the kind of smiles that tell Momo she’ll be the butt of a joke if she isn’t careful, or if she isn’t one already. The elf children are coolly polite as they look down their noses at her—literally. In her natural shape, surrounded by bipeds, she’s the shortest one around.

If they don’t make her uneasy, then they make it clear that she makes them uneasy. Humans stare a little too long at her still-useless wings, at her tufted tail and tawny fur, at the thorn-sharp fangs in her mouth. Their smiles are nervous even though she keeps her claws sheathed, even though she smiles back with closed lips so she won’t show her teeth. Many of them have never seen sphinxes before, and it’s hard to make friends when she’s shaped like a predator. It isn’t long before Momo makes use of her pendant, and things improve a little from there.

Momo is drifting through the party by evening, taking a break from socializing to rest her mind on the outskirts, when a light hand lands on her shoulder.

“A moment of your time, dearie?” The wizened old woman smiles at her. Momo looks at her cautiously. She seems human enough, though there’s a touch of magic about her—a witch, maybe?

Before she can reply, she hears her mother calling her, and apologizes before running to answer. By the time her mother is finished with her, Momo looks around for the old woman again, but doesn’t see her.

On the second day, she makes use of her pendant from the start.

It’s a little easier this time. Most of the human kids who were here yesterday have gone home, and there are new faces. Momo slips into small talk with moderate success, and she’s pretty sure she doesn’t make a fool of herself.

It’s still a bit of a challenge, and she wishes Iida were here. She’s surrounded by hominids and she looks like one herself, but she isn’t one and it’s lonely. Momo drifts, smiling and nodding whenever someone draws her into a conversation, but quickly leaving again.

She can’t tell if this really isn’t fun, or if she’s just still bad at this. Why can’t she find someone easy to talk to, like she did with Iida?

By now, Momo knows to keep her distance from the faerie children—both the Court kids who are supposed to be here, and the wanderers who sneak in. And so, when one of them crosses paths with her near one of the refreshment tables (all of it safe to eat and free of enchantment, as per the rules) Momo gives a polite nod and moves out of the way, only to nearly crash into another attendee.

“Ah, there you are again!” It’s the old woman from the previous day, leaning on a knobbly stick. Momo smiles politely at her, still distracted by the faerie she nearly collided with.

He’s roughly her own age and his appearance is eye-catching, though he barely looks at her as he passes. An elf noble nearly cuts in front of him, and he dodges around smoothly and keeps going.

Something falls from his pocket, flashing in the sunlight as it hits the soft grass without a sound. The faerie boy doesn’t see it fall.

“Sorry, ma’am,” she says to the old woman. “Just a moment.” She makes her way over to the fallen object, though she doesn’t touch it right away. It’s not usually a good idea to take things that have fallen out of strangers’ pockets, but if she doesn’t, then someone else might.

She stoops, nearly falls when she forgets she doesn’t have a tail to balance, and gingerly picks up the object. It doesn’t burn her to ashes or hex her when she touches it, so that’s good. It’s a rock—a gemstone, rather, polished as smooth as glass. Momo turns it over in her fingers, almost mesmerized. The stone is bright orange, but other colors spark and flash within it, green and blue and shades of purple. There are a few enchantments in it that she can pick out, like luck and protection and even a spell to banish bad dreams, unless her senses mistake her.

Momo darts after the boy, zigzags through the crowd until it thins and she has a clear view of him again.

“Excuse me!” She has to repeat herself before he turns to look at her.

He’s definitely a Court faerie, though for the life of her Momo can’t tell which Court. She first thinks he’s Winter, because he’s dressed like a young Winter noble and the hair on the right side of his hair—right down to his eyebrow—is the color of fresh snow. And yet, on the left side his hair is bright scarlet, and what little magic she can sense in him has a trace of warmth to it than she’s never felt in a Winter faerie. His right eye is gray, nearly silver, and his left… she can’t see his left. Most of the left side of his face is masked, or bandaged. She’s not sure which.

He blinks at her, and his single visible eye flickers to the stone in her hand. Momo sees him tense.

“Sorry to bother you,” she says, and holds out the stone. “You dropped this back there.”

For a moment, the faerie boy’s gaze flickers from the stone to her face and back again, and there’s a wariness in that eye that edges steadily toward fear. Momo keeps holding the stone out, feeling foolish.

He reaches out hesitantly, like he thinks she’ll snatch it away at the last minute. But she doesn’t, and he plucks it from her hand and holds it in a tight fist.

“It’s nice to meet you,” she says. “Are you here with your parents?”

The look he gives her is cold and unreadable. “Just one of them.”

“Oh.” Momo isn’t sure what to say to that. “Well, um—”

“Don’t take anything from the drink table,” he says. “I saw some wanderer children spiking some of the refreshments.” And with that, he walks away again.

Momo checks the drink table, sniffs out a few minor charm enchantments that shouldn’t be there, and tells her parents. Word spreads before any mischief comes of it.

The third day of the banquet gets off to a good start, because Momo flounders far less when she isn’t by herself.

Iida’s awestruck face sends her into fits of laughter, when he takes his first good look at the Nevernever. This is only a meadow in neutral territory, nothing to the faerie forests or the elf kingdoms or even the deep caves where the goblins make their home. But Momo can tell that this meadow holds more beasts and beings of all realms than Iida has ever seen in one place, so maybe she can’t blame him for being so excited about everything.

She stays in human form, just to be safe, and it really is easier to talk to other kids—human kids—when she has a human friend with her. It doesn’t hurt that Iida’s so likable himself. He’s polite and well-mannered but he’s loud, and he has little habits that she hasn’t seen in other human kids, and others end up gravitating to him for his natural charm.

Emboldened, Momo explores the party on her own at times. She keeps an eye out for the strange faerie boy from the previous day, but she can’t find him. Maybe he’s gone home? But no, she’s fairly sure he’s Winter Court, and she sees plenty of them still here. The Winter Knight himself is making rounds; at one point Momo spots him conversing with Ingenium.

No sign of the Summer Knight anywhere, but that’s nothing new. He’s the strongest fighter in all the realms, and that makes him a busy man.

“What happened to your glasses?” Momo asks when she finds her way back to Iida. He blinks at her, confused, and she plucks them off his face for a closer look. Someone’s gone and sneaked an enchantment into them, probably one of the wandering fae that decided to crash the banquet. It’s nothing harmful—there are strict rules about Accords-related events, and breaking them is punishable by far worse things than death. As far as Momo can tell, the spell on Iida’s glasses would only cause him to start seeing people without their clothes. Rolling her eyes, Momo dispels the enchantment and hands them back, and assumes that’ll be the end of it. Iida rarely gets tricked the same way twice.

It’s getting on to late afternoon, near early evening, when Momo sets aside her cup of sparkling spring water and realizes she can no longer see Iida.

She’s not immediately alarmed. They haven’t stuck together the whole time, and even if they’ve been here for hours, there’s still so much to see. But between the big crowd and the faeries and the gatecrashers, Momo has made a point of checking in on him from time to time.

But then she looks, and she keeps looking, and she can’t find him anywhere.

Once, twice, thrice, Momo crosses the vale in which the banquet is taking place, but there’s no sign of him at all. She asks some of the children from before, but they shrug at her.

The closest she has to luck is when she goes to one of the drink tables and finds his glasses lying amid abandoned drinking vessels. And that’s… not too odd, by itself, because Iida’s forgetful enough to have entire shelves of spare glasses at home, and after they got spelled once already it wouldn’t surprise her if Iida cut his losses and abandoned the risk.

Momo takes the glasses, and finds them free of spellwork. They’re a good pair; Iida has worn these for nearly a year now without breaking or losing them. It’s long enough for the glasses to pick up traces of him. Momo has never tried tracking with magic before, but she’s read up on the theory of it, and in a place this terribly crowded, her nose isn’t nearly enough.

But Momo is clever, and she learns faster from reading than most her age can from careful instruction. Iida’s magic may be average, but it’s still unique to him, and she follows his trail through the party, back to the outskirts, and finally to the very edge of the vale.

There’s a path here, leading up into the mountains where there are rocks to climb and little caves to explore, still in neutral territory. Some of the more bored and adventurous children were talking about this, wondering wistfully if they could sneak off and explore while their parents weren’t looking. They must have done it, and Iida must have gone with them.

Except… Iida wouldn’t go off without telling her, would he? And Momo can’t smell any of the other children. Just Iida and… someone else. Someone familiar, though she can’t put her finger on it.

Momo glances back to the party. What to do now? Should she go back and tell Ingenium? Tell her parents? Tell anyone? Maybe Iida didn’t tell her because he found new friends. Maybe he was going ahead to check it out and see if it was worth showing her. She could always just go back to the party and wait for him to come back—but what if he got hurt? She didn’t want to tell on him and get him in trouble, but—

No. Momo shakes her head furiously. This is exactly what she wanted to stop doing—overthinking things.

Any way she looks at it, the most direct way to find out what Iida is doing, is to follow his trail until she finds him.

Forcing down her misgivings, Momo hurries up the path and leaves the banquet behind. Almost immediately she abandons her human guise. It’s easier to climb over rough terrain on four legs and padded paws, and a tail and wings for extra balance. She’s faster, too—at this rate, she’ll catch up to her friend in no time.

Momo is halfway up the base of the mountain when she realizes that someone is following her. She keeps going, claws scraping for purchase as she clambers around a thick boulder in her path, and tries to decide between carrying on as normal, calling out to them, or waiting for a good moment to attack. The latter probably isn’t best, because there’s always the possibility that they’re friendly. But if they were really friendly, they wouldn’t be sneaking after her.

Finally, fed up with indecision and getting increasingly worried by the second, Momo turns around and scrambles up the boulder for a better view of the path behind her.

“Come out,” she says. “Whoever you are, stop creeping after me and show yourself!”

For a moment, no one answers. Then—

“Where are you going?”

Momo twitches in surprise, fur and feathers bristling as she looks down to the side of the boulder, where her shadow has just appeared. She recognizes him instantly; it’s the faerie boy with the half-hidden face, and even though she knew he was there, he still managed to make her jump.

“I’m looking for my friend,” she says. “He’s human, and I think he’s wandered off, so I’m going to make sure he’s all right.”

“By yourself?”

“What of it?”

The young faerie blinks at her. “It’s dangerous here.”

“It’s neutral ground,” she points out.

“That just means anything can end up here,” he says. “Beyond the vale, it isn’t safe.”

Momo’s stomach drops. “All the more reason for me to find him, then. Yes, by myself. I don’t want to make a fuss unless I’m sure it’s something really bad. I’ll only get him in trouble, otherwise.”

The faerie nods, but he still looks doubtful. “Can you even fly?” he asks, eyeing her wings skeptically.

Self-consciously, Momo folds them tight against her back. They aren’t yet fully fledged, still too much down and not enough flight feathers. She can glide a bit, and slow her falls, but she’s not yet old enough to fly.

“Can you?” she retorts.

The faerie boy bridles at her. “I don’t need to.”

“That’s nice for you,” she says, and it’s a struggle to keep her tone civil but she manages it anyway. “I have to keep going. Good evening.”

She doesn’t see him again after she turns the next corner. He could still be following her, but now she’s too worried to care. She reminds herself that Iida is smart, and he’s been raised in a magic family, and he’s too sensible to get tricked into a deal with some nasty old faerie.

But his magic isn’t strong and he’s never been to the Nevernever and what if, what if, what if—

Momo’s eyes flash white. The mountain path before her vanishes.

She isn’t old enough to fly, but she’s very nearly old enough for visions.

Not good ones. Not clear ones. Not even helpful ones, really. She doesn’t see anything, but she comes out of it with a pounding heart and the phantom taste of blood and bile on her tongue and the echo of a voice that might be Iida’s.

Help help help—hurry help me HELP ME HURRY

Momo runs.

Her paws pound the earth, and her breath comes in short gasps, but she keeps running anyway. His trailer is getting clearer, fresher, until the mouth of a cave yawns before her, and she scrapes her paws skidding to a halt. Thoughts and instincts clash within her, and this is the most dangerous thing she’s ever done and she has no plan, no strategy, no idea what waits inside, nothing but the knowledge that her best friend is in trouble and she’s the only one close enough to help. Desperate, Momo throws her magic into the yawning dark, searching and probing through shadows for any sign of her friend.

From deep within the dark, a burst of familiar magic echoes like a thunderclap. One of Iida’s spells—the strongest one he knows.

Momo wastes no more time hesitating.

Her paws glow with magic, lighting her way as she plunges into the cave. Smells assault her from all sides—herbs and plants and wood smoke, incense and mold and dead things. The cave looks lived in, not by animals but by a person. There’s a table and chair, a rough hearth, shelves and furniture filled with moldering books and dusty jars and

bones.

Iida’s magic flashes again, and Momo hears him cry out. Something glints silver in the glow of magic, and Momo pours more of her power into light. Further into the cave, a hunched and wizened figure looks up at her approach, craggy face twisted into a snarl. It’s the old woman, standing over the crouching figure of her friend with a stained knife raised. That’s twice that Momo has felt her friend cast strong spells, but there isn’t a scratch on the hag.

“Yaoyorozu, run!” Iida’s eyes are wild with fear as he scrambles out of her reach. “Get my brother! She’s an onibaba!”

The hag moves faster than an old woman should. Iida tries to throw another spell, but the onibaba turns it aside with a flick of her hand. The knife comes down.

Momo screams.

She doesn’t remember moving, doesn’t remember her paws striking the stone floor, but she blinks and finds herself mid-pounce, teeth bared, claws unsheathed. The onibaba is small but strong when Momo lands against her. Her claws glow silver as they rake the hag’s frail form, and her enemy screeches in fury as she staggers back.

Momo lets go, lands on the floor with her wings flared. She crouches over Iida, and the scent of blood is strong and sharp but she can’t think about that, not yet, not when the demon-hag before her is full to bursting with toxic magic. It makes her feel sick just to sense it, and she takes a deep breath to stave off the nausea.

The hag lunges, and Momo bares her teeth and yowls.

It’s pitiful. It’s the puniest roar that Momo has ever heard, but it’s the best she can do when she’s small and scared and her best friend is hurt and bleeding on the floor. She throws her magic into a glowing white shield, and the onibaba strikes it in a fury. Momo has no idea how much time she’s bought herself, so she turns back to Iida—there’s blood, so much blood. Momo sets her teeth into Iida’s shirt and lifts, wriggles under him until he’s draped over her limply. She can feel his blood soaking against her back, trickling into her wing feathers, and she grits her teeth and runs for the mouth of the cave. The onibaba shrieks again and gives chase, and Momo is so much slower now with her friend on her back. The mouth of the cave is before her, the darkening sky so close, but the onibaba is nearly upon her as she burst back out into open air.

A blast of cold air hits her like a physical blow, nearly knocking her off her paws. The chill sinks into her very bones, until she shivers from head to toe and feels frost forming on her feathers. She turns around, wide-eyed, and finds a wall of ice between her and the onibaba, growing to trap the demon-hag in the cave.

“Run!”

The familiar voice galvanizes her into action, and Momo plunges back down the path.

She’s not alone.

It’s not the onibaba with her, but the half-masked faerie. Momo nearly trips over her own paws in shock.

“Follow me,” he tells her, and she does.

There are secret paths through the Nevernever, if you know where to look. Momo isn’t of this world, so she doesn’t know them. This boy does. It took Momo half an hour to reach the cave. Following the Winter Court boy, she makes it two-thirds of the way down in less than a minute. When they emerge from the shortcut, they nearly trip over Ingenium and her mother, and Momo screams out at the sight of them.

The look on Ingenium’s face is terrible when he snatches up his brother. Iida is still and silent—Momo hasn’t heard him speak this whole time, could barely feel him breathe. All he does is lie still and bleed as Momo sobs out her story. Her mother sweeps her under her wing, and Momo lets herself be borne back down to the safety of the vale.

The mood is turbulent, once word gets out. For a demon-hag to invade an Accords meeting is plenty of cause for alarm. For such a creature to steal a child out from under some of the most powerful beings in all the realms? More than one of them are eager for the onibaba’s blood.

With how many went up the mountain, Momo doubts they’ll be disappointed.

Momo stays close to her mother and tries in vain to stop trembling. A whisper of magic cleans the blood from her fur and feathers, and from the fine green silk of her halterneck shirt, but she can’t forget the smell of copper, or the feeling of blood drying in her down. She hasn’t seen Iida since Ingenium took him from her, hasn’t heard a whisper of where he is, whether or not he’s still alive after the onibaba stabbed him. She keeps her ears pricked and her nostrils flared, hoping and praying she’ll hear him or smell him.

She finds something else instead.

Momo turns her head and spies the boy from the Winter Court nearby, straight-backed and still as a statue. For once, he isn’t alone. There’s a man with him, with hair the same shade of red as the left side of his own. His father, most likely—he did say he was here with one of his parents. Momo rises to her paws, wings shifting as she prepares to call out to them. She stops.

The man does not look happy, or sound happy.

The boy’s half-hidden face is blank, staring straight ahead instead of at his father’s face. It looks like he’s being scolded, but… Momo’s been scolded before, and it’s unpleasant and embarrassing but it never makes her feel frightened.

The boy looks frightened when he catches Momo’s eye and looks away again.

“Mother?” she murmurs, pawing at her mother’s foreleg. “Mother, that’s him. That boy, with the red and white hair. He’s the one who saved us.”

Her mother looks at the boy, standing frozen blank in the face of his father’s strangled rage. She looks at Momo’s pleading eyes. She looks, and like all good sphinxes do, she sees.

“Hello,” her mother says to the faerie boy’s father, cool and regal and as serene as water without wind. All at once the man’s fury smooths over to mere haughtiness. “It has come to my knowledge that your son’s actions saved the lives of my daughter and her friend.” She draws the man into conversation, cooling his temper with solemn gratitude. At her side, Momo stands as tall as she can and wills her paws not to shake beneath her.

While her mother holds the man’s attention, his son slowly inches away. Momo catches his eye again, and can’t read his face when half of it is hidden from her.

The man comes away with his feathers smoothed and a satisfied look on his face. He doesn’t shout at his son again.

Iida is different when she sees him again. He looks different, smells different, feels different. He turns to her with a shaky smile when she creeps into his hospital room, and—

“Your eyes,” she says.

“I haven’t looked in a mirror yet,” he admits. “Do they look all right?”

“They’re red.” Momo hops up and places her front paws on the edge of his bed, tail whisking to keep her balance on her hind legs. “Did you—are you—?”

“I’m not a vampire,” Iida says. “Well… not really, yet.” He fidgets, playing with the bedsheet in his hands.

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m not human anymore,” Iida says with a touch of awkwardness. “But I’m not a full vampire. My brother just half-turned me, so I’d have the ability to heal and I wouldn’t… well.” His hands curl into fists. “I’m stronger now, and I can heal, but not as much as a full vampire. I don’t have to drink blood yet, either.” He pauses. “Also, I don’t think I need glasses anymore, and that’s a little strange.”

“What about, um…” Momo’s voice trails off as she searches for the least awkward way to ask. “Are you… is this you, forever? What you look like, I mean.”

“Wh—oh! No! Not at all!” Iida lets go of the bedsheet to wave his hands for emphasis. “I’m going to keep aging. That’s why my brother only put me through a partial turning, so I wouldn’t be stuck as a child forever. I’m a half-vampire for now, and I’ll complete the transformation when I’m older.”

“Oh.” Momo sighs with relief. “I’m glad you’re all right.” She huddles against his bedside, wings drawn up. “It really scared me, seeing you with that hag.”

“She put me under a spell.” Iida shudders. “It didn’t break until your magic disrupted hers. I-if… if you hadn’t gotten there…”

“It wasn’t just me,” she tells him. “There was another with me. A faerie from Winter, I think. He helped me escape her and reach your brother in time.”

Iida sits up straighter. “Really? Where—who is he?”

“I didn’t get his name,” Momo says guiltily. “He was at the party with his father, but I didn’t get the chance to ask.”

“That’s a shame.” Iida’s shoulders slump. “I would like to thank him.”

“Not a good idea,” Momo says with a shake of her head. “Faeries don’t like it when you tell them thank you. They value actions more than empty words. And you probably don’t want to get yourself into a life debt to one of them. The boy seemed all right, but his father…”

“Well, all the same,” Iida says, though he looks less certain. “It’d be nice to meet him.”

“We might get the chance,” Momo assures him with a smile. “If he was at this party then he’ll probably show up at another.”

Iida grins at her wearily. “I hope we can meet him again soon.”

(They don’t. Not for quite a long time.)

Chapter Text

Inko is under no illusions.

Her magical talent is small, has always been small. Before she traded her freedom for Izuku’s, her knowledge of fey things was small too, but there are things that all people know. The Fair Folk cannot be trusted in the same way that humans can be trusted. They have their rules, rigid and unyielding as stone, laws carved into their very bones, but they are fickle. Tempestuous, mercurial things who nonetheless hold by their laws, however harsh and peculiar and puzzling they may seem, the Fair Folk make fantastic allies but poor friends.

Of course, being creatures that live for thousands of years rather than a mere hundred, even a fickle faerie’s attention can hold for the length of a human lifetime. And exceptions are more common than many would fear. After all, when a faerie loves, the forces of creation tremble.

But that is rare. Faeries enjoy mortals rarely as anything more than passing amusements, and Inko knows this.

She knows this, and yet she continues to write.

It begins not so very long after she first arrives in the Summer Court, thanks to the guidance of the lady of Winter. On the second day she works late into the night, coming home long after the children have gone to sleep. She aches with weariness and hopes to sleep soon, to stave off the looming knowledge that this is now the rest of her life, when a flutter at the window makes her jump.

A bird sits on the sill, small but striking with black and white plumage. Inko will later know it as a snow bunting, but for now she is too tired to notice anything but the note tied to its leg with silver thread.

Inko’s tired eyes read the message by candlelight.

Word has reached me of your fate, it reads. My heart is heavy with the knowledge that I led you to it, and that my boon could not save you. It is unsigned, but there is only one who could have sent her this.

With your boon, I set my son free, she writes back in a note of her own. I just wasn’t strong enough to do win it without a price. She ties it to the bird’s leg and watches it fly off before retiring to her bed.

In a few days, the bird returns with a longer message. She answers it once more.

Back and forth it goes, against Inko’s better judgment. Brief notes and messages lengthen as the weeks pass and the season remains unchanged. By the end of the first few months, they are exchanging letters. The voice behind the words shifts as well—it becomes less clipped and distant as they trade their words back and forth. Inko feels like a girl again, passing notes in secret beneath classroom desks while the teacher’s back is turned. Day by day the Summer Court makes full use of her skills as a housekeeper, but no matter how sore and chapped her hands grow from cooking and cleaning, she still finds the strength in them to put pen to paper whenever a bird appears on her windowsill at night. It is not always the same bird; sometimes it is a snow bunting, sometimes a tern or a raven or a snowy owl, but they always bring her solace in the form of scrolls with familiar elegant script.

Inko is careful to never mention her son, at first. She talks of things she has seen during her days, of little moments from her childhood, and because faeries value stories the way humans treasure wealth, the Winter lady responds with stories of her own. Inko tells the lady about humans, and the lady tells her about the fae.

She cannot be sure if it really is a fair trade, because the things she learns from reading these letters save her life on more than one occasion. One evening, as she carries water in from the clearest stream in the woods, a pair of ghost lights nearly tempt her to wander deeper into the forest. But she recalls a recent letter, in which the Winter lady told her of a fey knight she once knew, who followed the lights into the night and was never heard from again. Inko makes it home safe that night, and silently thanks the lady for her knowledge.

And then, one day, the lady writes of her child.

It is only a passing thing, a few words to describe his smiling eyes, but it still strikes Inko to her core to read it. She does not know what to make of it, but then the next letter tells her more.

Her oldest daughter is a lady in her own right, and her older sons have all gone off on their own. But her youngest child is a boy who sounds to be Izuku’s age, and Inko can read the love between the lines.

She is far more cautious writing of Izuku than she is of herself. She has never offered her name, nor has the lady, and she does not write her son’s name, nor what he looks like. But she writes that the sound of his laughter banishes the weight from her heart, that seeing him smile makes her servitude worth every second, and as the tern carries that letter away, she sits down and trembles.

What she is doing is dangerous—if not for her safety and the children’s safety, then for her own tender mortal heart. A Winter lady makes a fine ally, but these are not the written correspondence of an alliance, but letters between friends. She has made a friend of the Winter Queen’s daughter, and Inko is frightened.

If she were just a bit smarter, just a bit braver, she would pull back. She would take this feeling of solace and pluck it from her heart like a splinter, keep it at arms length so it won’t catch in her flesh and burrow deep once more. She cannot know for certain that she isn’t being toyed with, that the Winter lady won’t do far worse than simply get bored.

And Inko knows that if this goes much further, even a mere loss of interest would be such a blow.

Stop this, she thinks, as she sits by the windowsill in the evening and watches the sky for familiar wings. Be smarter than this. Protect yourself. Set an example for your son.

But her heart lifts every time a winter bird appears, because she is lonely, so desperately lonely. Inko loves her son and has grown to love Katsuki and Hitoshi as well, but she must be strong for them. She cannot let them see her at night, when her work is done and she trembles at the thought of dawn.

On the nights when birds bring letters to the window, her worried heart eases and her tears dry up before they even have a chance to fall.

It isn’t always light-hearted pleasantries and stories of happy times. Years into her service to the Summer Court, Inko passes over a week without seeing a bird land on her windowsill. Her heart sinks low in her chest, and she thinks that this must be it, this is the extent of her attention. But then a ragged crow arrives late in the evening on the tenth day, and Inko nearly cries with relief that she hasn’t been abandoned quite yet.

Dear friend, the Winter lady writes. I long for the sight of a friendly face. It is selfish of me to ask anything of you, but if you would grant me a boon by replying with all the speed you can gather, then I would be in your debt.

Inko stares at the words, unable to trust her eyes. But the script is as elegant and neat as ever, impossible to misread.

I would be in your debt. Empty fluff when coming from a human. But when faeries say that, write it in their own hand, they mean it.

So little brings me joy, these days, her friend tells her. There was a time that a quiet morning and a smile on my son’s face did. Now they bring me dread, because I know that neither can last.

But you? Your words and your letters are all I have left that cannot be spoiled and drained of happiness.

I told you once that a kind heart would not be enough. I tell you now that I was wrong. What a pity it is that so many belittle such things, and only realize too late that their worth is too great to be measured.

Dear heart, your kindness is worth more to me than all the gold in the realms.

And Inko does not know what to say to any of this. She remembers seeing the sadness in the depths of the Winter lady’s eyes, years before. And she may be foolish, but she isn’t blind; she has read hints of that very sadness, hints of fear even, in her friend’s letters.

She knows not what her friend’s troubles are, much less how to fix them. And so, she does the only thing she knows to do. She puts pen to paper and writes of happy things. She tells stories, and with three children, one of them a courtless faerie, she doubts that she will ever run out of them.

The letters change again, after that. Before, Inko found it increasingly difficult to keep the Winter lady at an arm’s length. Now, it is all but impossible.

I wish that I could see you again, she writes one night, and gives the letter to the bird before she can change her mind. She regrets it as soon as it is gone, because this cannot, will not last.

(That is impossible, is the Winter lady’s reply. Wishes are powerful. Better to save them for the things you can have.)

Inko cannot even lie to herself, tell herself that it’s only for amusement and companionship, because this stopped being about her own comfort a while ago. It cannot be that, not when the Winter lady lets more of her fears leak into the letters.

I am afraid for my children, her friend writes her one evening.

Are they in danger? Inko asks, as if there’s a single thing she could possibly do to help. Could you ask for help, if they were being threatened?

I do not know, is the reply. Where do I turn when the worst threat is myself? Try as Inko might, she cannot compel her friend to say what she means by that.

It will be soon, she realizes one day. Her friend is a faerie, long-lived and powerful, and Inko is so very small to her. She is no match for the dangers that would haunt a faerie’s nightmares, and her friend will realize that so soon. She will remember that Inko is not a friend and confidant, but a mortal toy. An amusement. With such troubles, she will soon remember that she has neither the use nor the time for a pen pal.

Inko knows that it will come. She knows it with every piece of her foolish mortal heart.

It doesn’t make it hurt any less, when Inko realizes that she has gone over a month without seeing a bird land on her windowsill.

She allows herself another month to let hope fester in her heart, sickly-sweet and cloying. She labors through the day and waits at the window as she has always done, scanning the night sky and listening for beating wings, and each night she is disappointed. Each night, her heart sinks lower.

When at last she blinks in the light of the sunrise to the realization that she has not slept, that she has waited through the night for a bird and a letter that she knows will not come, she thinks, enough.

Inko is a foolish woman, but she is also a mother with three children who need her, and that is what gives her the strength to carve the hope from her heart. Every moment of it is wrenching pain. Inko wonders if this is how a trapped animal feels when it chews through its own limb, tearing off a piece of itself for the sake of freedom and survival.

It is not over quickly, Perhaps it will never truly be over.

Inko only ever wanted someone to talk to, someone who didn’t depend on her to be strong. A sympathetic ear to listen to her troubles without thinking less of her.

She never meant to give up so much of herself in the process.

She tries to do it quietly. She tries to hide her grief, from both her children and her masters. But if she is not with one then she is with the other, and the only time she has to herself is late at night after the children have gone to sleep. Nightfall used to be the happiest part of her day, when her friend’s letters allowed her to stop thinking about all her worry and pain and fear, just for an hour or so. And now her sorrow seeps into the night like poison, and her tears are never as silent as she wishes them to be.

She doesn’t hear Izuku until it’s far too late, and she is lucky that Izuku is the only one who awakens to hear her. So caught up in crying is she, that she only notices her son there when he climbs into her lap.

He’s getting big. He’s nearly nine, and it won’t be long before he doesn’t quite fit in her arms anymore.

“You’ve been sad,” Izuku says, as Inko tries in vain to hide her tears again. “Did something happen?” When she takes too long to answer, he asks, “Did you write to your friend about it?”

In the middle of drying her eyes, Inko succumbs to a fresh wave of tears. “No,” she whispers. “No, darling, I can’t. She—she stopped writing, that’s all.”

“Oh.” And there’s a wavering note of sadness in it. “Oh, Mom…”

“I knew it was coming.” Inko swallows painfully against the lump in her throat. “It couldn’t last, dear. It was nice while it lasted, but—but it wasn’t forever. I knew that.”

“But it still hurts,” Izuku says softly. “Mom, I can come with you tomorrow. I can keep you company—”

“No,” Inko rasps. “No, Izuku—thank you. But no.” Izuku has come with her before, when she goes to cook and clean and keep house like a common maid. It puts him in the sights of faeries who are far too old and powerful to be trusted. They aren’t—they aren’t bad, not the way humans would judge it, but they aren’t good either. They aren’t anything, and that frightens Inko even more than evil would.

“Okay.” To her relief, Izuku doesn’t fight her on that. “I’m going to free you one day. You know that, right?” He pulls back from hugging her so that she can look him in the eye.

Inko manages a wobbly smile. “Yes, Izuku. I know that. I know you will.”

He frowns at her, because he knows that’s the patient tone she always takes when she indulges him in a game, or a tale that she suspects is not quite true. But he doesn’t call her on it, or repeat his point. “Don’t worry about crying,” he says instead. “You can cry, Mom. You don’t have to lie to me, or to Kacchan or Hicchan. We know you’re sad. We’ll be okay anyway.”

Words come unbidden to her mind, about the pricelessness of a kind heart. She presses a kiss to her son’s cheek, and another to her forehead, and her tears slow to a mere trickle.

What she has lost was a crutch to her, to carry her through each day. But Inko still has two good legs. She can stand on her own, and weather this storm the same as any other.

(She writes one last letter. There is no bitterness in it, no accusation. She writes about her day, about the color of the sunrise, about her son’s kind heart, about a beach she remembers visiting as a girl, about many things she loved in the mortal world. She writes about missing things, and loving things, and hides it away with all the letters her friend has ever sent her.

Inko scatters her hope to the four winds, but gathers the happy memories left behind, and keeps them safe and warm, just in case.)

Chapter Text

Ochako can’t remember the day her magic came in. She was less than a year old at the time, and her mother came in to find her in her crib, giggling as she made her toys float about the room. She can’t remember that her mother danced for joy, and let her own magic mingle with Ochako’s in soft, floating eddies of light and color, and then took the laughing baby girl flying in celebration.

That’s all right, though. It’s not as if she has a shortage of happy memories. Home is filled with joy and light and color and laughter already; they are poor in gold but rich in love and happiness. Ochako grows up on simple meals and small gifts and nights spent falling asleep to her mother’s stories. She has so many good ones.

“Once upon a time,” her mother tells her one evening, “there was a beautiful sprite.”

“What’s a sprite?” Ochako asks.

Mom blinks at her and tilts her head, and the light of the bedside lamp glistens in her diaphanous wings. Her smile is soft and fond. “A faerie. A very special kind of faerie, born with lovely wings. That’s what I am, sweetheart.”

“Oh,” says Ochako. “Is this a story about you?”

This earns her a light tap to the end of her nose. “Hush, dear, and let me speak. It’s bad manners to interrupt a story before it’s finished.” Ochako hushes. “Right then, a beautiful sprite, who was bright and joyful because she thought she had all she ever wanted. She was a Spring faerie who loved flowers and little brooks and breezes, but most of all she loved to fly.” Ochako grins, her biggest and brightest, because she knows that flying is the most wonderful thing in the world. “And fly she did!” her mother continues. “All through the Court lands, over the stomping ground of wanderers and the mountains and valleys and lands beyond. But never did she fly from the Nevernever, into the mortal realm.

“One day, a man came to the Spring Court. He was human, and she had never seen one before. He liked to build things, and he discovered that a place in the human world, the very spot where he wished to build, was very close to a place that the Spring faeries held dear. And so, like any sensible creature, he went to ask for their leave to build so close to their territory. He brought humble gifts and humble praise, and the faeries were charmed and granted him permission.

“And that bright and joyful sprite saw his gentle kindness, and the warmth in him that was so like Spring itself, and she fell very much in love.”

This is about where Ochako falls asleep, which is much less rude than interrupting, but is still unfortunate because she misses the rest.

She doesn’t have to hear it as a fairy tale to understand, however. Her mother was the sprite, of course, and her father was the human who built things—he still is that, even today. Sometimes he goes to the Nevernever to make sure he isn’t building on anyone’s sacred space, and sometimes he takes his family with him. Sometimes he talks to Court faeries, and other times he talks to solitary faeries.

Ochako likes visiting the Court faeries least. She is cheerful, and she likes to look for the best in people, but she isn’t stupid. She knows what it looks like when people are determined not to like her, and that’s what being in the Courts feels like. The faeries always look cold and unfriendly (though Mom says Winter is always like that, at least) and it’s maybe a little unsafe, because Daddy keeps her close and doesn’t let her wander off.

Over time, she learns—either from her parents whispering when they think she can’t hear, or from the jeering of the younger faeries, especially in Autumn and Spring. It’s one thing for faeries to play with humans and have their fun. But her parents are married, and the Court faeries have never really forgiven her mother for stooping that low.

Ochako wants to lose her temper whenever she hears that kind of talk. She wants to shout and curse and throw rocks and kick out at them, but she doesn’t. She can’t. She’s young still, and even if she does have magic, making things float and fly about doesn’t do much for her in a fight.

At least the solitary faeries don’t seem to care. They’re the easiest to deal with.

After a while Daddy eases up, even when they’re visiting the Courts. Of the three of them, it turns out Ochako is in the least danger. They hate her mother for stooping to marry a human, and they hate her father for stealing away a sprite, but Ochako is a child, and they do not pass the blame to her. Court faeries may be snobbish at the best of times and brutally vindictive at the worst, but at least they are direct in aiming their hatred. Summer faeries aren’t that underhanded in their vengeance, and Winter faeries are too cool and logical to blame Ochako for what happened before she was born.

It’s all stupid anyway. It’s Mom’s life, not any of theirs, and just because they don’t hate her doesn’t mean Ochako forgives them.

She tells her mother so, and gets a sad smile in return. Iridescent wings buzz as she softly brushes Ochako’s hair. “You’re a brave girl, Ochako,” she says. “But you mustn’t let it make you a foolish one. You have no enemies among them—don’t go out of your way to make them.”

Ochako ducks her head and pouts. “Why can’t they see it?” she asks. “Why can’t they see how happy we are? Why can’t they just be happy for you?”

“Because it is fleeting,” Mom replies. “Because I was here long before you or your father were, and I will still be here long after you are gone. And I have tied my soul to his anyway. It is unlikely that I will ever marry again. Few faeries ever do it more than once.”

“Oh,” Ochako says softly, and falls silent as the brush is drawn through her hair. “Mom?”

“Yes, dearest.”

“If you’re a sprite,” she says. “And if dad’s a human… what does that make me?”

The brush pauses. “You are Ochako,” Mom replies. “You are my daughter.”

“I know, but—” Ochako frowns deeply. “Am—am I a human, or a sprite, or half-human-half-sprite, or—”

Mom’s musical laughter stops her from guessing further. “Dearest, is that what you think a person is? Two parents, squashed together into one?”

“Well no, but… but am I something?”

“I believe so,” Mom says with a smile. “Perhaps you’ll choose to be one, or the other, or perhaps you’ll choose to be something new.”

“Will I get wings like you?” Ochako asks.

“Oh yes, I think you will.” Mom pulls her close. “Not yet. But someday. A sprite must earn her wings, dearest.”

“How?” Ochako asks, and her brown eyes light up as if they have stars behind them. “What do I have to do? Do I have to be brave? Or just really really good?”

“Good?” Mom snorts. “What is good? Worry first about being true. What kind of wings do you want to win?”

Ochako thinks about it, and sleeps on it, and decides that she has no idea what any of it means or how one earns a pair of wings, and it doesn’t seem like Mom’s going to give her a straight answer. Her first instinct is to try being a little more well-behaved, even to the Court fairies, but that can’t be right. That would mean hiding how she feels about them, and Mom said to be true, didn’t she?

At least they know it’s safe, now. When Daddy takes her to the faeries, he doesn’t hold on to her quite as tightly as before, and it’s much easier to slip away and try to explore.

There are far more sprites in Summer and Spring than in Winter and Autumn. They’re the only faeries with wings like that, shimmering gossamer things that remind Ochako of insects. Dragonflies, honeybees, moths and butterflies, fanning and buzzing on the backs of beautiful faeries.

Ochako wonders if she ought to ask them, but decides not to. These are the very creatures that cast out her mother for following her heart. She doesn’t want to earn her wings the same way they did. So she’ll just have to be true, like her mother said, and hope she’ll find a way.

Here are things that are true about Ochako:

She likes sweets and treats just as much as any other little girl, especially mochi.

She doesn’t ask for them very often. Daddy builds things, but it’s hard to find work sometimes, so they don’t always have the money to spare.

She loves to fly. She can make things fly but not herself, not yet.

Magic comes to her like breathing. Floating things is what she does best, but she can do other things too, like summon light and fix her hair and unlock doors.

She likes to help. Her parents always tell her it’s all right, and she should be a child while she still can, but there’s no worse feeling than being useless. Ochako is happiest when she pulls her own weight, and happier still when she can help someone else pull theirs.

The last two seem useful, magic and helping. She’ll start there.

Ochako picks up trash whenever she finds it. She returns dropped wallets. She memorizes where things are, just in case anyone ever asks for directions. She spends twenty minutes one afternoon carefully freeing a magpie trapped in a wire fence. She doesn’t get any wings out of it, but at least it feels like she’s doing something.

And then, one Saturday, she goes with her parents to visit the Summer faeries. It’s a long visit—they’ll be here a couple days at least. Ochako brings a small backpack of books and snacks and a single iron nail, carefully wrapped in cloth. It doesn’t burn her like it does to full-blooded faeries, but if she holds it bare-handed for too long, her skin will turn red and irritated.

The storybooks and sweets are for just in case she needs payment. The nail is for just in case payment isn’t enough.

This is an important meeting for her father. Besides the fact that it’s their first time visiting the central Court at the heart of Summer’s territory, his business is a little different from usual. He isn’t here to ask permission to build; he’s here because one of the faerie nobles wants him to build. This could help their money troubles a lot, and it might even mean the faeries are starting to forgive her mother. The Summer ones, anyway. Mom doesn’t think the Spring ones will talk to her again for at least the rest of this century.

So, iron nail notwithstanding, Ochako is on her best behavior. She avoids the Summer Court children for this exact purpose, because Seelie children are passionate and emotional, and that makes them good at riling her up, too. She doesn’t want to get in a fight with the wrong fae lord’s child when Daddy needs this visit to go well.

Ochako spends the first day in the woods. She doesn’t stray too far from the Court clearing, but she finds a stream with colorful fish, and a den of fox cubs waiting for their mother to come back with food, and an empty bird’s nest with broken eggshells long abandoned. She looks and admires, but takes nothing.

She even finds a faerie boy whose company isn’t intolerable—and she’s pretty sure he’s a wanderer, not a Court faerie, so that makes a lot of sense. She finds him picking dandelions, and he tells her in a quiet voice that there’s a sprite who takes them as payment for good stories. Ochako gathers handfuls of the brightest and yellowest she can find, follows him back to the Court, and finds it to be true. The sprite woman tells a tale of a fallen star and a quest for true love as she brews the flowers into tea, and Ochako watches her damselfly wings fan and shimmer.

The Lady Uwabami throws a feast the following evening, because—well, they’re faeries, and faeries never need too much of a reason to have a party. It is a nice party, but the servants are being run ragged, and that sours it in Ochako’s eyes. There’s a little boy her own age, every bit as human as Daddy is, cursing up a storm as they make him wash dishes. He breaks a fine platter with a burst of magic, and gets cuffed for his trouble. There’s a woman serving food who looks tired even when the party is just beginning. Her dark hair is pulled back, her face is lined with worry, and her eyes are sunken. She looks exhausted and very, very sad.

Ochako doesn’t feel hungry for very long.

Here’s someone who needs help—several someones—but Ochako doesn’t know how to. They’re prisoners here, fated to serve the Court, and Ochako isn’t sure how or why they came to be here, or when. She’s only just turned eight, and how is she supposed to help them?

She cleans her plate and stays out of their way and buses her table when she’s done, but there isn’t much more she can do without risking offending someone, or accidentally tripping into servitude herself. Lost in thought, she almost runs into another boy.

It takes her a moment of alarm to realize that he’s a human, too. For all that she nearly crashed into him, it takes even longer for him to notice that she’s there. He’s wandering near the end of the table, where some of the nicer-looking desserts are, and appears to be studying them and muttering to himself. But oddest of all, he’s holding a stone in front of his eye, and peering through the round hole worn through the middle.

“What are you doing?” she asks, because she can’t imagine why a faerie would ask one of their human attendants to do this.

The boy startles and looks at her, still through the hole in the stone, before letting it drop. It hangs on a cord around his neck. “You shouldn’t eat anything on this end,” he says instead of answering her question.

“What?”

He offers the stone without removing it from his neck. Ochako takes it, confused. It’s a round, flat pebble, plain gray with a faint tinge of blue. If it weren’t for the hole in the middle, it would look like any other river pebble. Leaning closer to keep from choking him on the cord, Ochako shuts one eye and looks through it.

The end of this table was lined with pretty cakes, frosted and skillfully decorated in bright colors. But when Ochako looks through the hole in the stone, she sees plates piled with dark, wet dirt—or worse. There are things wriggling in it, too.

“It’s a good illusion,” the boy tells her when she gives the stone back. “It’s pretty mean—I can’t tell if one of the Court kids did it or a solitary faerie sneaked in and did it. Not Hicchan, though—if Hicchan wanted you to eat dirt, he wouldn’t use illusions.”

“Oh,” Ochako says, wondering who Hicchan is. “That’s a nice rock.”

“Thanks!” The boy polishes the stone on his shirt, and then looks at her through it. “You’ve got a lot of magic. Are you a faerie, too?”

“I’m—” Ochako starts, then stops. “Um.” The boy waits for her to answer, politely curious, until she finally shrugs. “I don’t know yet.”

“Now that’s an honest answer if I’ve ever heard one.”

The creaky voice behind her makes her jump. Even the boy looks startled, for all that he’s facing her and should have seen someone approach. Ochako spins around, hand straying to the pocket with the nail in it, only to relax when she sees that the speaker isn’t a faerie. What’s more, she isn’t a servant either; from the looks of it, she’s another guest.

Ochako has seen mages before, and this old lady looks every inch a proper witch. She’s old—which isn’t a requirement for being a witch but from what Ochako hears it certainly makes people take you seriously—and small, leaning on a knobbly stick. She’s dressed plainly, with a hood pulled back and her gray hair pulled into a neat bun. Her skin is wrinkled and delicate-looking, almost papery, but there’s something about her that feels strong to Ochako. In her other hand is a goblet, and every now and then she takes a sip.

“Not many can admit that,” the old lady says. “Not knowing what they are. Though I suppose you’re just the sort who might, aren’t you, dear?”

“I-I guess,” Ochako says uncertainly. “I asked my mom, and she said it wasn’t set in stone yet. My mom’s a sprite,” she says to the boy, deeming it safe. He seems nice, and even if he isn’t, he can’t use information against her when everyone in the faerie realms already knows. “My dad’s human.”

The boy’s eyes light up. “Oh! You’re half-fae then—I’ve never met someone like you before! Except, well, I’ve met elves, and lots of people suspect that elves might be descended from fae and human ancestors, but that doesn’t really count because it’s just a theory and they’d probably get really offended if you… suggested it…” His voice trails off, and he glances around as if to make sure there are no elves within hearing range, while the old woman cackles.

“Oh, let them fuss,” she says. “Proud things—it might do them good, hearing something so humbling.” She taps him lightly with the end of her cane. “Now—what’s a child like you doing here? You’re not bound to serve, I can see that much. If you aren’t careful, someone might try and ensnare you for their own.”

For a split second, the boy’s face darkens, before he remembers himself and smooths it out to blankness again. “They already have, ma’am,” he says. “Tried, I mean. But I can’t leave. My mom’s here, and so are my friends.”

Ochako’s heart sinks. “Your mom?”

The boy hesitates, and then points. Ochako follows the direction of his finger to the sad, weary woman she saw before. They do look alike; they have the same dark green hair and everything.

“She won’t let me help her,” he says. “Kacchan won’t either, he’s too proud.” He points this time to the angry boy scrubbing dishes, then plays with the stone around his neck. “Hicchan doesn’t have to stay, but I think he’ll follow wherever I go, and he wants to stay with Mom, too. She’s kind to him, and I don’t think he has anywhere else to go.”

“Mmm.” The old woman hums softly to herself, thoughtful. “That’s an interesting pickle, dear. I take it you’re planning on freeing her at some point?”

“Yes,” the boy says, as blunt and firm as a cold hard fact.

“It’ll be dangerous.”

“I’m growing up here,” the boy points out. “It’s always been dangerous.”

The old woman chuckles again. “Smart boy. You’ll go far, with that head on your shoulders.” With that she strides off, at least as much as an old woman with a cane can stride.

“Is there anything I can do?” Ochako asks, before she can help herself.

It’s the wrong thing to say; something about the boy’s demeanor slams shut. His carefully blank face goes stony, and she remembers that—for all that she doesn’t quite know what she is—she’s fae and she’s offering a favor, and those things always come with a price, don’t they?

“I-I’m sorry,” she stammers out. “I didn’t mean—I just—” She stops, chewing her lip. “I don’t know how to do this,” she admits. “I live in the mortal world, and I only visit the Courts and the solitary faeries with my parents. And I don’t talk to them very much. They… they don’t like my family.”

The boy considers her for a moment, then softens a little. “I… guess that seems true,” he says. “Most faeries don’t tend to say sorry or thank you.” He tilts his head, considering her. “Can I ask you something, though? Why do you want to help?”

“I’m—there’s—” Ochako pauses, then decides to keep this part for herself, at least for now. “There’s something I want to get. Something I have to earn. And I don’t know how yet. But if I can, I’d like to earn it by helping people.”

“Oh. That makes sense.” To Ochako’s surprise, he sounds like he really means it.

“It… does?”

“Yep! You must not be that bad at talking to faeries, because you danced around that pretty well.”

“…Thank? You?”

He crosses his arms, looking thoughtful. “You said you visit the Courts, right?” he asks. “Does that mean you’ve been to the Winter Court too? Do you know if you’re going soon?”

It only takes Ochako a moment to think about it. “Oh, oh yeah! My dad’s here because he’s building something for one of the Summer nobles, so he says we’re probably going to visit Winter and pay tribute. Just to be polite and keep things balanced.”

“That’s a good idea, Court faeries get testy if they think you’re favoring one side over the other. Your dad’s really smart.”

“I know, right?” Ochako smiles proudly. “So, um, yeah! We’ll visit the Winter Court soon.”

“Okay.” The boy’s green eyes are wide and bright and hopeful. “Okay, could you—just stay here for a moment? I’ll be right back.” He takes off without waiting for her to answer, running through the lively clearing toward the faeries’ houses and dwellings further into the trees.

Ochako inspects the fake desserts while she waits, poking them cautiously with a fork. It’s a very convincing illusion; the fruits and frosting feel like they ought too, and when she scrapes away a bit of fondant, there’s fluffy white cake beneath. She spears a strawberry, and wonders what she really has. A dirt clod? A big bug?

She puts the fork down carefully, and gives the desserts some distance.

The boy doesn’t keep her waiting long. He’s back in a few minutes, now wearing a jacket and palming a few rolled-up pages from beneath it. “Here,” he says. “I’m, um… okay, this might be really hard. There’s a faerie lady in the Winter Court—I don’t know her name. But four years ago, my mother met her—she was visiting the Winter Court, looking for me, carrying the wanderer changeling they left in my place. This faerie I need you to find, guided my mother from Winter to Summer and gave her a boon to help her free me. Until two and a half months ago, they wrote letters to each other.” The boy bites his lip, and the pages wrinkle beneath his fingers. “My mother hasn’t heard from her since, and she’s probably just lost interest, but… if you could find that faerie, and give her this letter…”

“Of course!” Ochako blurts out. “I’ll do it, I—yes. I can… I can try.”

The boy hesitates one moment longer, then presses the pages into her hands. “Good. Just try. And make sure nobody touches these pages except for that exact faerie, okay? If you aren’t sure, if there’s even the tiniest reason you think you’re being tricked, don’t give them up. And don’t let anyone take them and say they’ll pass them along—”

“I know that,” Ochako says a little impatiently, because she may not live here but it doesn’t mean she’s stupid.

Luckily, the boy doesn’t seem offended by her testy tone. “Just don’t give them up until you’re sure you’ve found the right faerie. And if you can’t, then take them back to the mortal world with you and burn them, okay?”

“A-are you sure that’s okay?” Ochako asks.

“Don’t worry, that’s not the original letter.” The boy grins. “My mom has that. I just copied it.”

“All right.” Ochako tucks it away, nice and safe. “I’ll try.”

“Good.” The grin widens. “Now, what can I do for you?”

“Huh?”

“It’s got to be balanced, doesn’t it?” he points out. “You can’t just do something for me for nothing.”

“You don’t have to,” Ochako tells him. “We aren’t faeries—at least, not full faeries.”

“You’re right, you’re not. This would be way too risky for me if you were.” The boy glances around quickly. “But it’s a bad habit to give too much, in places like this,” he says. “You may not talk to faeries a lot now, but I bet you will in the future. Think of this as practice.”

“Oh, right, that makes sense.” Ochako frowns thoughtfully, thinking of what she might ask as payment for this favor. She’s new to this, she’s only ever watched Daddy deal with them from afar, except for earlier when she got the dandelions for…

Ochako brightens.

“Do you know any good stories?” she asks.

The boy’s eyes light up with a bright smile that shows all his freckles and dimples, and just for a second he looks like a regular kid instead of a prisoner. “Loads.”

“Tell me the best one you know.”

Her family ends up staying the night in the Summer Court. When Ochako awakens the next morning, curled protectively around her backpack, the letter is still tucked safe inside, underneath the unwrapped iron nail.

To look at the Court clearing now, you could hardly tell there was a party last night. Food, drink, decoration, and all signs of merrymaking have been cleared away sometime in the night, leaving it as ethereal and serene as it was when they first arrived.

The boy who gave her the letter is nowhere to be found.

“Come along, Ochako, we’re about to leave for the Winter Court.” Daddy takes her hand and leads her off before she’s quite finished searching for him, and she tries not to pout. It’s not often that they end up at the very center of Summer’s territory, and she would have liked to say a proper goodbye before she left.

“Are we going back home first?” she asks.

“We were,” Mom tells her, joining them. Unlike Ochako, who’s still sleep-tousled and drowsy, her mother looks fresh and lively and ready to take off flying at any moment. “But a lucky chance just came up. There’s a witch here who’s a good friend of the faeries, and she’ll be making her way there on foot. She’s agreed to let us accompany her.”

“It’s less risky then popping in from the mortal world,” Daddy explains. “You can never quite be sure where you’ll end up when you do it that way. At least now we’ll have something of a guide.”

They reach the edge of the clearing, and Ochako’s eyes widen. There are two people standing there waiting for them: one is the old witch that she met just yesterday, and the other is the boy she saw. Not the green-eyed boy that gave her the letter, but the child she saw scowling as he washed dishes.

“Oh! Hello again, dear!” The old woman greets her cheerily, while the boy’s glower only deepens.

“Have you met my daughter?” Mom asks.

“Yes, just last night.” The witch gives a wrinkly smile. “A lovely girl. It’s a pleasure to walk with you. Call me Chiyo.” She nods to the disgruntled boy, who barely acknowledges the rest of them while he makes little bursts of magic in his hands like miniature firecrackers. “I asked Uwabami for a little extra help making the journey, and she was nice enough to lend me her changeling.”

“Can we go now?” the boy snaps. His voice sounds rough and raspy. “I don’t have all day.” Ochako glares at him, then remembers the faerie who hit him for breaking a dish, and looks away. He doesn’t seem to notice.

The witch Chiyo thumps her stick on the ground. “I don’t think any of us has all day,” she says. “And this one might have to get back by himself afterward.”

Daddy looks to the boy, instantly concerned. “All the way?” he says. “Will that be all right—”

“I can take care of myself,” the boy snaps. “So mind your own damn business.”

When they set out from the clearing, the boy trails several paces behind them. Ochako walks with her parents, who walk with Chiyo, who’s the only one who really knows the way. She glances back at the boy, but when he makes no move to catch up to them by choice, she goes back to listening to the grown-ups talk.

“Do you visit the Courts often?” Mom asks.

“Whenever I can,” Chiyo replies airily. “I like the scenery, and I have friends here. Old, old friends. It’s nice, seeing them. Visiting old haunts. It’s like a vacation.” She gives a gap-toothed smile.

“Vacation in the Nevernever,” Daddy muses. “Must be something.”

“It sounds dangerous,” Ochako says hesitantly.

“I have to agree,” Mom says. “Most humans don’t come except as a last resort.”

“When you get to be my age, dear, it affords you a few privileges,” Chiyo says cheerily. “You see, most look at me and see a doddery old lady, and they think ‘well, there’s no use for her.’ I look too old and rheumaticky to be a useful tool or an amusing plaything, and anyone who sees past that can know that I’m not to be trifled with. If they can’t, I can show them.”

There’s a quiet scoff from somewhere behind them, which Chiyo cheerily ignores.

“Are you a strong witch?” Ochako can’t help but ask.

“Very strong, dear. You might be too, with a lot of study and practice. And maybe a familiar, if you’re so inclined.”

Ochako thinks this over. She likes using her magic and would like to learn more about it. She’s never thought about taking on a familiar, though. “I’m not very good at studying,” she admits.

“Not true at all,” Chiyo says. “You just haven’t found your way to study, that’s all. It’s a skill like any other, and it takes practice. A bit of trial and error. Hard work, there’s no way around it.”

A louder scoff. “Of course there is!” Ochako turns her head to see the boy smirking. “You don’t have to study if you’re just good at it.” He has a rock in his hand; a quick flash of explosive magic turns it to gravel and dust. “See?”

He looks smug. He’s showing off, Ochako realizes, and she feels something deep within her burn with irritation. She wishes for the first time that her magic worked differently; someone who takes pride in breaking rocks probably wouldn’t be impressed to see them float.

“Well, everyone starts somewhere,” Chiyo says. “Why, when I was your age, I could… remove splinters. And that was about all I could do with my magic.”

“Sounds boring,” the boy says scornfully, and explodes another rock.

“I suppose it was,” Chiyo says. “Everyone starts somewhere, and most everyone starts small.” She knocks appreciatively on the trunk of an elm tree whose towering branches nearly block out the midmorning sun. “This one was a seedling first, and now look at it. He’s worked hard to get where he is now, I’ll bet.”

The boy rolls his eyes and picks up another rock. Ochako braces herself, ready for another crack as he bursts it apart, but a moment passes and nothing happens. The boy blinks, then grips the rock and tries again, but it won’t explode.

“And while it’s good to practice,” Chiyo continues lightly, “best not to do it by breaking things that don’t belong to you, hm?” With her fingertip, she draws very small but very deliberate patterns on the head of her cane. “That’s enough of that, dear. Leave the poor rocks alone.”

The boy glares daggers at her, straining over the rock until he’s red in the face, but he can’t seem to use his magic as long as she’s doing that thing with her cane. Finally, he gives up and drops the rock.

“That’s better. For goodness’ sake, you live here, don’t you? Flashy talent doesn’t give you leave to be a fool, dear.”

Ochako hears the boy mutter darkly to himself, but he stops trying to make rocks explode.

For the most part, Chiyo sticks to the paths, which is probably the sensible thing. The Nevernever’s rules are a lot more complicated than the rules back home, but in a lot of ways they’re a lot simpler, too. One of those rules is, never stray from the path. Do that back home, and maybe you’ll get a little turned around, or you’ll get in trouble for stepping on wildlife. Do that here, and maybe no one will ever find you again.

Ochako holds tight to her mother’s hand. Daddy walks in front of them, directly in the middle of the path. Even the boy doesn’t wander too close to the edge.

Before long, the sound of running water reaches Ochako’s ears, soft and musical in ways that water in the human world never is. They reach a small river, or a large stream, with crystal-blue water that sparkles invitingly in the sun. It’s just the sort of river that looks perfect for wading and splashing and playing in the water, until Ochako notes that, a few feet from shore, she can’t quite see the bottom anymore.

She keeps well back.

The path leads to the foot of a wooden bridge. “This way,” Chiyo tells them. “Be careful, now. They cleared out the troll when I was last here, but bridges have a way of attracting new ones.”

“Finally,” the boy mutters. “This is the most boring goddamn job they’ve ever made me do.”

Daddy frowns back at him but doesn’t comment. He steps back, closer to Ochako so that her parents are on either side of her. Up ahead, Chiyo takes one step onto the bridge, and a low growl ripples out from the darkness beneath.

Chiyo says a word that would have made Daddy cover Ochako’s ears, under different circumstances.

The wooden slats rattle. The troll that climbs out to meet them is about six feet tall and as shaggy as an ape, with beady little eyes and a snout that flares as it sniffs them. It doesn’t laugh or threaten to gobble them up. It lowers its head, opens its mouth to show its curved tusks, and growls again.

“Well,” Mom murmurs. “At least it’s a small one.”

The bridge shakes once more, and a second troll climbs out. This one stands behind the first, looming as big as a grizzly bear. As Ochako watches, wide-eyed, a third troll lumbers out, not even bothering to climb onto the bridge. This one walks on all fours like a gorilla, but it’s much bigger than a gorilla. It’s bigger than a grizzly bear, too.

The three of them look a bit hungry.

“Well,” Chiyo remarks. “This seems a bit backwards, doesn’t it?”

An arm wraps around Ochako’s middle, and she’s dragged backward and then up. The familiar hum of Mom’s wings fills her ears for a split second before the human boy shouts near her ear, drowning her out.

“Put me the fuck down!” the boy yells, and continues to curse, but Mom’s already taking to the air. Ignoring the boy’s angry shouts, she flies both him and Ochako out of the trolls’ reach and safely to the other side of the river.

“Mom—” Fear almost chokes off Ochako’s voice.

“Stay here.” Mom cups her face gently for a moment, then turns to give the boy a stern look. “Both of you.” Before Ochako can speak, she’s already gone.

The trolls are roaring on the other side of the river. Swearing, the boy clenches his sparking hands and runs back onto the bridge. This jolts Ochako out of her shock, and she lunges forward to grab his elbow before he can go any further.

“Wait!” she protests, because he’s rude and mean but that doesn’t mean she wants him to get eaten by trolls. “You can’t go back there!”

“Fuck you I can’t!” the boy snaps. “Do you know what they’ll do to me if that old lady gets eaten by trolls after they told me to watch her?” Yanking his arm out of her grip, he dashes back across the bridge.

Ochako gapes at his back, hesitating just a moment before she takes off after him, pack bouncing on her back. Up ahead, she sees her mother fly up and punt the smallest troll into the river. It thrashes—the water churns with something alive and vicious—and then it sinks and doesn’t come back up again.

The middle troll is still on the bridge, and the boy leaps onto its back. He clings to it, hanging on by handfuls of shaggy fur as he throws blast after blast at it. The creature rears up, bellowing with fury as it tries to shake him off.

“Be careful!” Ochako screams. “There’s something in the water—don’t let it throw you in!” She isn’t sure he hears her, but he clings to the troll’s back and continues to blast it. Beyond them, on shore, Mom places herself in front of Daddy as the largest troll lumbers toward them, and Chiyo menaces it with her cane.

Ahead of her, the middle troll gives a vicious shake, and the boy loses his grip on it. Ochako shrieks as he’s sent flying, but he manages to catch the bridge’s wooden railing instead of falling into the water. The troll rounds on him, teeth gnashing, and a swipe from its clawed arm keeps him from climbing back onto the bridge. A second swipe brings the sound of cracking, splintering wood. Ochako sees the boy’s eyes widen as the bridge’s railing begins to give way.

Throwing caution to the wind, Ochako throws herself at the broken railing and slaps her hand against it, as close to where the boy is holding on as she can manage. The troll swings its arm a third time, separating a length of railing from the bridge and sending it out over the water. The boy clings to it and yells—

It doesn’t fall.

The thick length of broken wood hovers over the water, and the boy hovers too, climbing on top of it so he won’t have to dangle over the treacherous river. The troll sees him still moving, still alive, and—

Well. It’s lucky that trolls aren’t very smart.

The huge creature lunges, swinging out at the boy again, and Ochako strains with her power to push it further out. It lunges again, too far out to keep from falling into the water.

It almost takes the boy down with it, but he sends another fiery blast into its face before it can reach him. The troll splashes down, and struggles just for a moment before something drags it under.

The effort of keeping the wood airborne makes Ochako’s head hurt. It’s too far for him to jump back, she’s sure, but she doesn’t quite have it in her to pull it back. The floating rail wobbles, her headache turns to nausea, and the boy crouches on top and braces himself. A double blast from both hands sends him flying back onto the bridge, crashing into the intact opposite railing without damaging it. Ochako lets her magic go, and the broken railing falls into the river. All at once everything snaps back, and she staggers and drops to her knees. Her head swims, and she tries not to throw up.

“What the fuck was that?” she hears distantly.

“Sorry,” she says. “I’ve never—on anything that big before.”

“Don’t follow me this time,” the boy snaps at her. “Stay back and don’t fall into the river.”

“Wait.” Ochako struggles to shake off the dizziness, and takes off her backpack. “Waitwaitwait.”

“What do you want—?”

Ochako holds out the nail.

The boy doesn’t say anything. He takes it from her hand, and then she’s alone on the bridge.

By the time she’s well enough to stagger back to her feet, it’s just in time to see the biggest troll staggering away as if it’s injured. Not toward the river, but into the trees. Daddy comes dashing over the bridge to scoop her up into a hug, and Mom quickly joins him. Ochako isn’t hurt, and to her relief they seem to be okay too. When Chiyo catches up she seems more exasperated than anything else, and the boy has gone back to sullen silence now that the excitement is over.

The rest of the journey is uneventful. They only pause to put on warm clothes before stepping over the boundary to Winter’s territory. They keep to the path, and nothing else attacks them.

The central Court itself is located at the heart of Winter’s woodlands, at the very base of a snowy mountain. It looks as if someone shaped out a space for it with a giant ice cream scoop—which seems pretty appropriate, all things considered.

Her parents present themselves, and they seem nervous until the Winter Knight himself comes out to greet him. Ochako fights the urge to hide behind her mother at the sight of him—Sir Nighteye is almost as famous as the Summer Knight himself, All-Might. He’s tall and imposing, and doesn’t look the least bit friendly, but he’s polite. He’s even polite to her mother, and that’s what makes Ochako finally relax. Chiyo seems to know him already, and Ochako isn’t at all surprised.

“I’m afraid I can’t stay to oversee your visit,” Sir Nighteye says gravely. “Kaoruko—”

A diminutive faerie woman appears at his side, entirely blue from her skin to her short hair. “Yes, Sir Knight?”

“Attend to them, while I’m gone,” he tells her. “See to their needs. Make sure the changeling gets a proper meal.”

“I’m fine,” the boy says stubbornly. Chiyo clocks him lightly with the head of the cane, and he curses.

“That’s bad manners, to refuse hospitality,” she tells him sternly. He growls wordlessly, and says no more.

Now that she’s finally here, Ochako feels her earlier promise weigh upon her. She has to try, at the very least.

“Um, excuse me,” she says softly, while her parents pay their respects to the Winter Court. There are other faeries here, lords and ladies with rich dress and sparkling magic. “Ms. Kaoruko?”

“Yes?” Kaoruko is pretty lively and emotional, for a Winter Court faerie. “How may I assist you?”

“I’m looking for someone.” Ochako tries to speak softly. “A faerie lady, who sent letters to a mortal woman. Have you heard anything about that?”

“That happens from time to time,” Kaoruko tells her, which is exactly what Ochako was afraid to hear. “Can you be a little more specific?”

“Um, she would’ve… stopped?” Ochako wishes she had written this all down. “She wrote for four years and stopped a month and a half ago. Do you—do you know if there’s someone like that? Or someone else I can ask?”

Kaoruko thinks deeply, lips pursed. “Mmm, well…”

“Excuse me,” an unfamiliar voice says, shakily polite. “I, ah, couldn’t help but overhear?”

Ochako spins around, alarmed. Is that bad, that she was overheard? That could be bad. One of the faerie ladies is standing there. She’s pretty, like all faeries, but she looks young and she’s dressed a little humbler than most of them, and she seems nervous for some reason. Even her gray eyes look young—if she weren’t a faerie, Ochako would guess that she was a teenager.

Her most striking feature is her hair, though. It’s as white as the snow around them, and shot through with streaks of red.

“If I may speak with her, Kaoruko?” the lady asks. Kaoruko hesitates for a moment, considering, then steps away. Ochako swallows nervously as the lady waits for her to walk out of earshot, then places her hand on Ochako’s shoulder.

The air about them shimmers. The snowflakes swirl in response. Ochako’s pulse jumps in alarm.

“It’s all right,” the lady tells her gently. “I won’t hurt you—this is just to keep away prying ears. I heard you talking, and… a month and a half, you said? That was when this human stopped receiving letters?”

“Yes,” Ochako says cautiously. “Th-the… the woman came here, to return a changeling and get her own child back. The faerie lady led her to Summer and gave her a boon to help her. I-I was asked to give her a letter—only her.”

“I see.” The faerie girl’s face falls. “Take the letter back. Or burn it. You won’t find her.”

“I-I have to try—”

“And you have,” is the reply. “You’ve tried, and you’ve come as close as you could have. You can go no further than this. The lady you speak of is no longer with us.”

Ochako feels a jolt. “Did… did she…?”

“I’m sorry that you cannot complete your task to the fullest,” she tells Ochako. “Please—go home. Burn that letter. Speak of it to no one else.” She lifts her hand from Ochako’s shoulder, and the air returns to normal. “I wish you well. Thank you for trying.” She turns away.

“Are you really a faerie?” Ochako asks, before she can help herself.

The young woman freezes in place, but does not turn to look at her.

“I don’t mean it as an insult!” she says quickly. “It’s just… a friend of mine told me that full faeries don’t say sorry or thank you.” When she doesn’t reply right away, Ochako takes a cautious step forward. “A-are… are you… like me?”

The faerie walks away without another word. Ochako sighs deeply, and wonders if there’s a way she can apologize to the boy who gave her the letter.

“Hey.”

She turns around, and stands a little straighter when she sees the changeling boy standing there. He thrusts out his hand, and shoves the iron nail at her.

“You can have this back,” he says shortly. “It blinded a troll. Maybe you can do something with it. I don’t care.”

“W-won’t you need it?” she asks. “You have to go back by yourself, don’t you?”

He sneers a little. “The old lady changed her mind. She’s gonna have me stay with her ‘til she’s done here, and then I’m taking her back. Says I need to learn manners, whatever the fuck that means.”

“Oh,” Ochako says. “Can I ask you a question?”

“No.”

“You know that other boy, right?” she asks. “The one with the dark green hair? Who calls you Kacchan?”

He gives her a dirty look at the name. “What the hell are you talking to Deku for?” he snaps.

“Could you please tell him something for me?” Ochako asks. “Tell him I couldn’t find her, and I’ll burn it, and I’m sorry. Just those things. Please?”

His scowl turns long-suffering, and he snorts before turning away. “Fine. Just this once, ‘cause you weren’t useless back at the bridge.” He glowers at her over his shoulder.” Just ‘cause these faeries keep using me as a stupid errand boy doesn’t mean you get to, too.”

“You’re a big jerk,” Ochako tells him. “But you’re kinda brave, too.”

He rolls his eyes at her, and Ochako goes back to her parents. When they get home, she burns the pages until only ashes remain. She has a long way to go before she’s worthy of any wings.

(There are work-arounds, of course. Ochako watches objects fly under her power, and remembers the log that hovered at her command, big enough to carry someone just her size.)

Chapter Text

It happens by accident. Most interesting things do.

Most schools of magic are scattered, informal things: study groups and clubs, casual private lessons, apprenticeships, workshops and classes taught out of people’s homes. But once in a while, enough resources and funds and willing hands come together in a single place, and a steadier, more official establishment springs up.

The United Alliance has resources and funds and willing hands to spare, so UA’s school is more renowned and well-established than most. It caters to beings of all shapes and sizes and backgrounds, human and otherwise. The only hard and fast prerequisite for enrollment is sentience.

A school means learning. Learning means mistakes. Mistakes mean waste. Unwanted leftovers from failed spells—or successful spells—botched experiments and excess and broken things. Refuse, in other words. It all has to go somewhere. Sometimes “somewhere” is a sealed, air-tight container whose contents await proper safe disposal.

And sometimes “somewhere” is a trash can out behind the alchemy building, where embarrassed students squirrel away the results of exam cramming and unauthorized experimentation.

The thing about leftover potion ingredients and spell components is that they aren’t edible, but they’re almost edible.

The thing about rats is that they don’t really make that distinction.

It’s not exactly a rat.

It’s a rat in the same way that a hellhound is a dog, or a kelpie is a horse, or a basilisk is a snake. Rats are typically significantly smaller than medium-sized dogs; this one can only be a dire rat.

It’s a young one, not quite three feet in length from nose to tail. Somewhere beneath the caked dirt and grime, its ribs show through the fur, and its beady eyes glint blood-red on the rare occasion that light hits them. It’s small and scrawny, a runt lost and wandering too far from its pack to find them again. Under normal circumstances it would die on its own, or at best it would scavenge alone, eking out a meager existence by subsisting on what other creatures leave behind.

But instead, this one ventures upwards and out. In the grayest stretch of evening, it finds its way to the waste and trash behind the alchemy building, and fills its empty belly before it is finally chased off.

That is how it starts, and it is a very strange start.

It takes perhaps an hour at most, as strains of magic brought together in a trash heap and made potent by time and neglect work their way into the creature’s system—from mouth to belly, from belly to veins, from veins to mind.

This is how it feels, though the rat does not have the words to describe it—yet. Its mind is a flat plane, a sheet of paper, a short list. Run. Hunt. Eat. Sleep. Survive. It is clever, because rats are clever and it makes them hard to kill, but it is flat. But now, the plane tilts. And like a holographic image, the picture changes. It is no longer flat—a new dimension begins to take form.

When the creature awakens, still alive and no longer starving, it remembers the source of food that was not toxic enough to kill it.

It remembers, and it returns.

The grounds around the academy are vast and varied, especially if you know your way around. The dire rat has wandered them for quite some time now, and fancies himself something of an expert, for all that it’s been about four months since he first figure out how to count them. There are woods and fields here, empty towns and magical facilities that hold trapped illusions, all manner of settings to explore. At the moment he is far too skittish to stay out in open fields for long, so he enters a stretch of forest instead. Even if he no longer skulks in shadows and darkness, there is still safety in cover.

He knows things, far more than he ever did before, and he knows that he is not wanted here.

Too bad, he thinks—and that’s another new thing he does, thinking—because he isn’t going anywhere. There is food here, and warmth and shelter. And best of all, there is so much to learn.

Sometimes he learns by lurking near windows and listening. His ears were always sharp, but his mind was dull; now he can listen not just for sounds, but words as well. As time goes on, speech and language fall upon his ears more effortlessly, and he goes from learning language to learning about the things being talked about.

Other times, he learns simply by watching. It’s almost a language all on his own, to take what he sees and hears and smells and turn it into knowledge.

He learns, for instance, that they know he’s there. They lock up their garbage far better than before, but that’s all right. He’s gotten what he needed from it, and he’s smart enough to find food in other ways. Knowledge, though—he still starves for knowledge. And so, in spite of the risks, he returns again and again, creeping close to the buildings to hide near the windows and listen. He hears conversations and gossip, lessons and lectures, all manner of things. He finds where other, better food is, the sort he can eat without wondering if it will poison him. He watches until he has schedules memorized, so that he can creep in unmolested and get it.

Bit by bit, he learns what magic is.

His favorite window, he finds, is at the very building where he first stole food from the bin out back. He spends many hours sitting beneath that window, listening to a voice whose face he never sees teach a room of students about alchemy. He learns about chemistry and potion-making, transmutation and the very nature of souls. He finds himself with questions that, if he is lucky, the class soon answers. He is not always lucky.

The grounds are still interesting to explore. It gets confusing, because some places change a bit when he isn’t looking, but the general layout is simple enough to learn. He sticks to the wooded areas and the empty towns, where there are plenty of hiding places. He lays low when teachers and students alike set out to try to catch him.

It isn’t enough. Not forever, anyway.

He’s minding his own business. Actually, he’s been minding his own business this whole time, eavesdropping notwithstanding—he’s only listening! It’s not like he’s planning on doing anything with this information—and it just so happens that his luck runs out today.

He gets very lucky, because the creature hunting him is overconfident enough not to bother with covering his tracks. It slips upwind of him at one point, and the brief scent of predator puts him on edge. It’s the only reason he isn’t killed instantly.

A blur of black flashes in his peripherals, and he dodges and scuttles toward a nearby thicket. Teeth dig into his tail, dragging him back before he can reach shelter. A clawed paw digs into his fur and flips him deftly onto his back.

Briefly he glimpses sharp eyes and wicked white teeth bearing down on him, and he stares at his oncoming death and plays the only card he has.

“Can we talk about this?”

The eyes and teeth and claws stop. He pulls free and makes it to the thicket, where he crawls deep into the thorns before the hunter can catch him again. Coarse fur and thick skin protect him from the thorns, and he finds a little hollow beneath where he can curl up safe and out of reach.

Footfalls—a set of four—reach his ears. His hunter is pacing just beyond the edge of the thicket. There’s no telling whether or not there’s a way out if he keeps going.

Ah, well. Nothing for it, then.

“Is that a yes, or a no?” he asks. “Come on now, I’m pretty sure you understand me.”

“Guess so.” The voice that answers is low, rough, and vaguely disinterested. “Never seen a talking rat before. Call me curious.”

“If you insist, Mr. Curious,” he replies, though he isn’t sure why. It’s a pleasant feeling, saying that. Makes him feel jittery, but in a good way. This must be what ‘funny’ is.

“He makes jokes,” the hunter says wryly. “That’s of course assuming you’re the one talking.”

“I don’t see anyone else around, do you?” the rat says reasonably.

“Considering who put me up to this, I can’t be sure this isn’t some kind of elaborate prank. Is this Nemuri’s doing? So help me if this is Nemuri—”

“It isn’t,” the rat says. “At least, I don’t believe it is. I don’t know what Nemuri is.” He pauses. “What exactly were you put up to, if I may ask?”

There’s a rustle and thud just outside his hiding place as the hunter flops down in a patch of moss and grass. “Something about a dire rat roaming the grounds of the school, knocking over trash cans and stealing food that doesn’t happen to be nailed down. Kind of a pain being called in for something like that, as if I’m common pest control.”

“I see,” the rat says. “Well… for what it’s worth, it sounds as if you’d rather not hunt me, and I’d rather not be hunted by you.” He hesitates. “We’re both reasonable creatures, from the sound of it. Perhaps we could come to some sort of understanding.”

There’s a pause, followed by low, almost vibrating laughter. The rat stays still, wondering if this is a good thing.

“I can see why they haven’t been able to catch you,” the hunter chuckles. “They’ve been chasing after a rat this whole time, but you’re a person, aren’t you?”

“I don’t see why I can’t be both,” the rat replies, a little wounded. “Is that a yes, then? I don’t believe I’ve done anything wrong, besides take a little food here and there. I have to eat too, you know. And I haven’t harmed anyone to do it.”

“Yet,” the hunter replies.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Rat, person, or whatever you are,” the hunter says. “You’re still an animal, and not a very clean one. You’ve tracked quite a bit of filth and fleas into the school. Considering how often you’ve been seen skulking around the alchemy building, there’s been some concern about contamination of valuable ingredients. Nemuri says they had to close one of the buildings after a small outbreak of very tenacious lice was traced back to one of your… visits.”

“Oh.” The rat is quiet for a moment, thinking this over. He glances at himself, feeling self-conscious for the first time when he sees how ratty and pestilent his fur still is. He’s never thought much of sickness before, except as an abstract concept when he heard about it in passing in a lesson he eavesdropped on. That was always the sort of thing other creatures dealt with. “I didn’t know that. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

“Hm.” There’s a pause from the hunter outside. “This is looking more and more like a misunderstanding. Why don’t you come out?”

“I would prefer not to,” the rat says politely.

“I won’t harm you.”

“How can I trust your word?”

The hunter snorts quietly. “I’m fae,” he says, and for the first time the rat raises his head.

He knows about faerie creatures—he’s heard teachers and students speak of them, many of them speaking of themselves. They can’t tell lies. Of course, this knowledge is only helpful if the hunter is telling the truth about being a faerie in the first place.

“Are you going to come out?” the hunter asks. “I didn’t get a good look at you before. And like I said, I’m curious about what you are. Where you came from.”

“I’m… not sure,” he says. “What I am. Or whether I’m going to come out. I’m not sure of a lot of things. Except that I’d rather not die today.”

“Well,” the hunter says. “You did say you might be a person. A thinking, reasoning creature. And that means you’ll have to learn to trust eventually.”

“And you’re saying I should trust someone who admits to trying to kill me?”

“We all have to start somewhere.”

The rat thinks this over for a little while longer. The hunter falls quiet, waiting patiently.

It takes some wriggling, but finally the rat ventures to poke his nose out into the open again. He’s still mostly under the thicket, because there is a difference between trusting and being foolish, but it allows him a proper look at the creature who nearly killed him.

It’s a cat.

It’s not like any cat that he’s ever seen before. The ones he has met have been tiny things, quick to hiss and spit and run away, but this creature is large. Larger than he is, even. His fur is smooth and black, his eyes dark and slitted as he watches the rat. The only part of him that is not dark is the spot of white on his chest.

“What happens now?” the rat asks.

The cat climbs to his feet. “You may as well follow me. The school will know better what to do with you than I will.”

At this, the rat hesitates. After all, the school sent a hunter after him in the first place. He points this out to the cat.

“True. But you did mention coming to an understanding, didn’t you? I have no authority here; I’m only here because a friend called in a favor. If you want to clear up further misunderstandings, then you’ll have to take it up with them.”

With great unease, the rat finally pulls free of the thicket. The cat makes no move to kill him, and so he follows him through the woods and back to the school facility. To the rat’s relief, the grounds are mostly empty; he wonders if the school kept it clear specifically to give the cat room to hunt him.

At the foot of the main building, the cat halts. Rather than leading him inside, he seats himself near the main door and starts yowling. Prey instinct makes the rat want to flee, but he forces himself to keep still and wait.

The first person to greet them is a tall, dark-haired woman—not a human, though. The rat knows humans when he smells them, and this is no human. Her features are too sharp, her eyes too yellow. She strides out with a fluid sort of grace, takes one look at them, and turns to the cat.

“You were supposed to catch the rat, not adopt it.” There’s a note of amusement in her voice.

“There were extenuating circumstances, Nemuri,” the cat replies. “Who’s in charge this week?”

“No one’s ever really in charge of this place,” the woman Nemuri says with a huff. “These snooty humans can never decide on anything—the only tolerable one is Maijima, and he’s too busy playing in his lab to want to be in charge.”

“Is Mera here, at least?” the cat sighs sharply. “Any of the other teachers? Any of the wizards? They might be happy to know that their ‘pest’ problem is less of a problem and more… interesting.”

“What do you mean?”

The cat opens his mouth to reply, then glances back at the rat. “I think he can speak for himself.”

“Hello,” the rat offers.

The woman’s eyes widen. In an instant she’s crouching in front of him, looking at him closely with her bright yellow eyes. “Oh. Yes, now that you mention it… he’s got some interesting magic in him, underneath all the dirt and bugs. Hello there.”

The rat backs up a few steps.

“Wait here!” Nemuri stands up and whisks away back into the building. When she turns her back, the rat spots the bushy black fox tail sweeping behind her.

Shortly afterward, the rat proceeds to meet in person many of the lecturers and teachers that he has thus far only listened to by the windows. Most of them are human men, though there’s one among them with pale skin who smells sharply of blood (the others call him Kan) and one tiny woman who looks three times as old as any of the others.

Cautiously he introduces himself, and they look at him like he’s some rare curiosity, a marvel, an utterly unique existence. It’s all very overwhelming, sitting beneath the weight of their stares, surrounded by their curious whispers.

Among those whispers, one voice springs out as familiar, and the rat raises his head and looks around until he finds its owner.

He has never seen this man’s face before, but he would know that voice anywhere.

While the others talk amongst themselves, theorizing and speculating on the nature of his existence, the rat cautiously creeps forward until he stands before the man whose voice he knows.

“Excuse me,” he says, and stands as tall as four legs will allow when the man looks at him. “I was just wondering. Is there a relationship between the energy that fuels ritual spellwork, and the metaphysical factors that turn chemical components into a viable physical body? And, you said that vervain and belladonna could be substituted for each other as components in divination spells, but chemically they’re very different plants, so I was wondering if chemical composition had any… any bearing on… er.”

Everyone is staring. Nemuri stifles a snicker.

“It’s just, you were giving a lecture on it the other day,” the rat continues, aware that he might be babbling a little. “On spellwork energy. And two weeks ago on herbal components for divination potions. I was hoping someone would ask, but no one did, so I’ve—I’ve just been wondering.”

“You’ve—” The alchemist blinks, glances at the others, then crouches down so that he’s closer to the rat’s eye level. “You’ve been listening to my lectures, then?”

“I’ve been listening to a lot of people’s lectures,” the rat replies.

“Now why would you go and do a silly thing like that?” Nemuri snorts. “Don’t you have rat things to do? Eating things, chasing cats?”

“Well I was doing them before, and then something occurred to me,” the rat replies.

There’s a short pause while they wait for him to continue.

“I mean, that had never happened to me before,” the rat explains. “Things occurring to me. I never had space for it before, in here.” He taps the top of his head with his paw. “But now—now I do have space. A little too much space.” A light chuckle runs through the gathered mages. Even Kan, the frowning pale one, cracks a grin. “And I like to fill it with things. I like learning.”

“We have that in common.” The alchemist smiles at him, looking thoughtful. “Tell me, do you also like to read?”

The rat considers this. “Maybe,” he says. “I’ve never tried before.”

“Are you really that starved for good students?” Nemuri asks with a sharp, teasing grin.

“Perhaps not a student,” the alchemist says, still looking pensively at the rat. “But I have been thinking of taking on a familiar.” The rat stands a little taller, intrigued. He knows of familiars. There’s an entire class on them here, though he hasn’t listened in on it much.

One of the other wizards snorts softly. “A familiar? Really? I know the talking is a novelty, but for heaven’s sake it’s still a dire rat. It’s not even fae.” The old woman raps him sharply in the shin with her cane, and he hops away with a noise of pain.

“This is a place of learning,” she scolds. “You heard the creature—he likes learning. And from the sound of it he has a cleverer head on him than most of you.”

“It’s worth keeping him around, anyway,” the alchemist points out. “Magic’s prone to impossible unexplained things from time to time, but if eating from the waste bin behind the building turned a dire rat into a thinking, reasoning being, I’d say it’s worth looking into.” He turns back to the rat. “What would you say to that? Staying here, learning? Helping us learn as well?”

He would love nothing better, in truth. All that time creeping around, eavesdropping under windowsills, he never imagined properly joining them. He never imagined being welcome.

“You’ll need a name, though,” Nemuri pipes up. “Do you have one of those? Can’t imagine rats have much use for them.”

“Not really,” he admits.

“Better pick one fast, before Nemuri does,” the cat said dryly. “When she gives things names, they tend to stick.”

“I don’t know,” Nemuri says, as her tail whisks from side to side. “He kind of looks like a Nedzu to me.”

“Too late,” the cat sighs.

In spite of himself, the rat (who will soon be known as Nedzu) smiles. It’s not a natural thing for a rat’s face to do, but thinking isn’t quite a natural thing for a rat’s mind to do, either, and he’s well past that by now.

He looks around, at Nemuri’s grin and the cat’s long-suffering patience, at the eager-looking alchemist with his familiar voice, and at the schoolmasters gathered around him. Wise faces. Intelligent faces. Creatures of learning.

Well. He has to start trusting somewhere, doesn’t he?

Besides a name, the second thing they decide he needs is a thorough cleaning.

Nedzu has never minded the dirt and grit, nor the persistent crawling feeling beneath his fur. It has always been there, and he never saw the need to try to stop it. But then he finds himself with a clean coat, thoroughly de-loused and rid of every flee, mite, and tick that ever set foot on him. For the first time in his entire life, he doesn’t itch.

“Goodness,” the alchemist remarks. “You were white under all that. I never would have guessed.”

Rats are not vain creatures, and an enhanced mind does not change that. Still, Nedzu feels satisfied as he turns a few circles, inspecting himself. He’s soft now.

“The cat told me about the lice,” he says awkwardly. “I apologize for that.”

“No harm done. For what it’s worth, I’m very glad you got the Cat Sith on your side before he… er. If we’d known you were the way you are, we wouldn’t have called for him.”

Nedzu shrugs. There isn’t much more to say about that. It was a misunderstanding, and it’s been cleared up now. Better to move past it.

The alchemy classroom is empty—no classes on the weekend, of course. It’s a demonstrative class, with lab tables for hands-on lessons instead of desks. The front of the room is spacious enough for demonstration, and the alchemist’s desk is laden with alchemical equipment.

“So… I don’t know much about familiars,” Nedzu says. “I know what they are, sort of, but I didn’t listen to very many of those lessons.”

“Hm, well.” The alchemist taps his chin. “I’ll start from the beginning, just to be thorough. Familiars are taken on by human practitioners of magic—including those with mixed magical ancestry, like half-fae and half-elves and the like. As such, familiars are always wholly non-human. There have been attempts in the past to form bonds between humans, or for non-humans to take on familiars—all unsuccessful, though. Similar magical bonds may be formed, but they tend to be far more superficial and even temporary, whereas true familiar bonds last until death.”

“But what exactly do they do?”

“I’m getting to that.” As he speaks, the alchemist consults a book, flips through a few pages, and goes to the storage bins for components. “A familiar is a nonhuman ally, magically bonded to a mage. That’s the basic definition. The bond allows mage and familiar to magically bolster each other—once equilibrium is established, they can access one another’s magical power, share in each other’s strengths, and consistently locate one another. A familiar is a friend, an ally, and an extra set of senses if need be. There’s also an empathic bond involved, which I hear is a mixed blessing.”

“Hmm.”

“Something wrong?” The alchemist glances up from a case of gemstones.

“I don’t have any magical power,” Nedzu replies uncertainly. “So… I don’t think I have much to offer you, in that respect.”

“Ah. Don’t worry, you do.”

“Beg pardon?”

“You have magical power,” the alchemist explains. “I mean, even disregarding whatever quirk or magical accident gave you full sentience, you already had magical power to begin with. All living things do.” He turns, components in hand. “You asked me before, about the relationship between the energy that powers spellwork and that which creates life. They’re both different forms of magical energy. Ergo, all living things have some level of magic. It’s what makes them living things. How much you have remains to be seen.”

“I could learn to use it, then?” Nedzu says hopefully.

The alchemist grins at him. “Maybe. I can’t wait to find out.”

Nedzu’s fur prickles with excitement.

Step by step, the alchemist begins to put together the spell. Nedzu watches, committing each measure to memory. It seems simple enough, centered around a single iridescent gemstone. “In a pinch, one could manage this spell without any components,” he explains. “But having a central conduit helps stabilize it. Opal’s best for it.” He pauses. “Ready?”

Nedzu nods.

It takes a small amount of blood from both of them, but it’s over quickly and neatly. Nedzu feels a tug within him, drawing a thread of power from him like spun wool. In a twinkling, it connects with the alchemist’s—his alchemist’s power—and the spell ends.

Nedzu feels excitement twofold—his own, and his partner’s.

“And there we are,” the alchemist says softly. “How do you feel?”

“Fantastic. Odd. New.” Nedzu shakes himself. “I look forward to working with you, and learning from you.”

“Likewise,” the alchemist says with another smile, warmer this time as he puts away gemstone, vials, and chalk. “First order of business—I’m teaching you how to read, my friend.”

Nedzu’s learning takes off with an alacrity that he never would have thought possible. He takes to reading as if he was born for it. The school’s librarian is wary of him at first, but it’s impossible for her not to grow used to his presence after a while. Any moment not spent at his alchemist’s side, Nedzu devotes to working his way through every book in the library. There is so much to learn, to discover, and he hasn’t even made it out of the alchemy section yet.

Word spreads about him. He makes appearances in his wizard’s classes, and learns to keep well out of reach after the first few times some of the students try to pet him. It’s not that it’s unpleasant, it just makes him feel… patronized. Like he’s a pet instead of a proper familiar.

That’s just a minor hiccup, though. And the novelty is quite quick to wear off; before long, most of the students and all of the teachers are used to his presence, leaving him to read and study in peace, or assist the alchemist in his own work. His alchemist shows him every inch of his personal lab, from the delicate equipment to the various vials and jars of preserved spell components. Nedzu may be new to the idea of being a familiar, but he knows that he could not have made a better choice of partner. The alchemist’s thirst for knowledge and discovery rivals his own, and his passion for learning only doubles through his bond with the human.

He gets to know some of the other non-humans at the school. The cat—Cat Sith, as the others call him—is no teacher or student, but on rare occasions he comes and goes as he pleases. Nemuri never really loses interest in him, and she even introduces him to a friend of theirs—Yamada, who is… not human, but Nedzu is not familiar enough with various races and creatures to work out what he is. And Nemuri won’t tell him; she seems to delight in watching him tactfully work his way around it. Actually, she delights in a lot of things he finds inconvenient.

“That’s a nogitsune for you,” the alchemist tells him, when Nedzu remarks on it one day. “They like mischief. She’s probably just waiting for you to trip up and ask him what he is, which would be awkward at this point, since you’ve been talking to him for a few months now.”

Which only makes him more determined to figure it out on his own. If he can’t figure out the identify of one creature, then he obviously isn’t as smart as he’d like.

“Do you know what he is?” Nedzu asks out of curiosity.

“You know, actually I don’t? He’s some kind of faerie, but I can’t tell what court, or whether he’s a wanderer.”

Once Nedzu finishes all the books on alchemy, he moves on to studies of the Fae and the Nevernever. It’s frightfully easy to lose track of time in the library; more than once he’s missed one of his alchemist’s classes, or read so late into the night that he can see the sun just peeking over the horizon when he finally remembers to leave. Thankfully, his alchemist is patient with him, and never seems upset with him. And why would he? They have the same passion, and the bond lets them share feelings so easily. If his alchemist can’t understand, then no one can.

Magic lessons bring new excitement. Nedzu finds that he hasn’t the head for evocation or healing or summoning—none of that bright, flashy, spur-of-the-moment spellwork. Alchemy and transmutation are still where his passion lies, and before long they are where his skills lie, too. He learns about ley lines, the very veins of the earth that allow the flow of magic. True to his alchemist’s word, he learns to tap into his own well of magic—and his alchemist’s magic as well, though he’s careful with that. His alchemist is an attentive teacher, and Nedzu is an eager student. They fuel one another, both in magic and in enthusiasm, and Nedzu realizes one day, out of the blue, that he is happy.

Rats don’t need friends—a pack, perhaps, for protection and strength of numbers, but not friends. Rats don’t need a home—shelter, perhaps, to keep safe from cold and predators, but not a home.

Nedzu has both now, and he doesn’t know what he’d do without them.

“Evening.”

Nedzu startles, wincing when he jars his bandaged paw, and shoots a disgruntled look at the Cat Sith. It’s hardly the first time he’s literally dropped in on Nedzu while he was in the midst of his studies, but it’s been many months since they last spoke. “Good evening,” he replies.

The hunter eyes his paw. “Are you injured?”

“Nothing serious,” Nedzu assures him. “Nature of alchemy—lots of glass and delicate equipment. Happens every now and then.”

“Still? You’ve been here—what, three years now?”

“Well, seeing as I haven’t developed thumbs in those three years—”

“Ah, right, right.” The Cat Sith seats himself in the grass next to him. “So what are you reading?”

“A treatise on levitation spells.”

“…Good call.”

“Mm.” Nedzu turns a page—he can manage that well enough with his paws, thank goodness. “So, what brings you here? You’ve been away for quite a while.”

“I’ve been busy,” the Cat Sith replies. “Some trouble among the wandering faeries. I was hoping to ask around.”

“Trouble with the Fae is trouble in the Nevernever, isn’t it?” Nedzu says without looking up.

“I’ve determined it’s a threat from the outside,” the cat says. “Lots of information goes through this school—rumors and the like—and you and Nemuri have the best ears in this place.” He pauses. “There are grimalkin going missing.”

Grimalkin—fey cats native to the Nevernever. Cat Sith are one type of them, a great deal rarer and more powerful than the rest. No wonder this particular cat has been busy investigating.

“Grimalkin don’t get lost,” the Cat Sith continues. “But these ones vanish. And no one’s safe—toms, queens, kittens—no one. I started this when a mother and the litter she was nursing went missing. Some of them turn up dead. Not all the ones that do turn up in one piece.”

“That’s…”

“Gruesome,” the Cat Sith finishes for him. “And recently, other courtless faeries have been disappearing. Mostly animals, but a few others. Wanderers are getting scared.”

Nedzu has long since given up reading his book. “What do you need from me, then?”

“Rumors, if you’ve heard any. This is UA’s principal learning institution, and the United Alliance was set up to keep the peace.” The Cat Sith lays his ears back. “This smacks of malevolent magic. Has your wizard heard of any dark dealings lately?”

“No, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Nedzu sighs. “He gets deep into his studies, and he tends to shut out the outside world.” The Cat Sith sighs, irritated. “But I have heard things. Nothing major—just blips in magical readings. Disturbances in ley lines near here.”

At this, the cat’s fur prickles. “Now that is worrying.”

“How so?”

“I’ll tell you once I’ve found out more,” the Cat Sith replies. “I’ll see you later. A week, maybe. I’m closing in, I can feel it.” And he vanishes.

Nedzu confides in his alchemist, of course. The Cat Sith may have been vague, but he seems to think there’s some significance to the anomalies found in the ley lines. If they can find more about that, then it might be helpful.

“It’s probably worth looking into,” his alchemist muses as he continues to clean lab equipment. “I haven’t tried studying ley lines since you came. We should try it.”

There’s an odd note to his voice that Nedzu can’t quite place. “Why do you say that?”

“Well, there are numerous studies proving that non-humans, and animals especially, can sense and connect with ley lines instinctively,” his alchemist explains. “That’s another common reason mages take on familiars. It’s certainly a reason why you’re more likely to see someone with a cat or an owl than, say, a gargoyle.”

“Oh!” Nedzu’s eyes widen. “Oh, then… then if mages and familiars can share in each other’s magical power, then that means mages can connect directly to the power in ley lines, through their familiars?”

“Theoretically, yes. There are few cases of it happening successfully, however. It’s a risky practice. Animals are built to connect to those veins of power. Human mages aren’t.” His alchemist smiles as he goes to clean his hands. “Still worth looking into, though. I don’t think anyone ever tried it with a familiar like you.”

Nedzu is uncertain at first, but when he reaches through the bond, he feels nothing but the pure drive to learn, the same passion for knowledge that drives his own heart.

Well. If anything dangerous happens, he can always advise them to stop. He’s a familiar, after all; that’s what he’s for.

Yamada finds him in the library later, reading up on ley lines. “You might want to slow down,” he teases. “If you’re not careful, you’ll go through every book in the library, and then where will you be?”

“I can’t wait til then,” Nedzu replies, with a brief glance up at his friend—who, he’s worked out, is a solitary faerie of some kind, though Nedzu’s not sure exactly what type. “Because then we can go on to discover new knowledge.”

“He really struck gold with you,” Yamada remarks, shaking his head with a smile. “I was never this book-smart with my wizard.”

“You were a familiar?” Nedzu asks.

“Long time ago,” Yamada replies. “I outlived them of course, that’s how it is with humans. But yeah, I was. We were friends, so we did the bonding spell kind of on a whim. Had some good times.”

Nedzu thinks about how fussy Yamada can get—he screams at bugs and frets over every bump and scratch he sees, both on himself and on others. “I’m surprised you could do a blood-drawing spell on a whim,” he remarks. “You must’ve been a different kind of person back then.”

Yamada’s quiet for a moment. When he speaks again, there’s a hesitant sort of confusion in his voice that makes Nedzu look up. “It’s… not a blood-drawing spell, though.”

Nedzu blinks at him. “Beg pardon?”

“The bonding spell,” Yamada says. “To take on a familiar. It doesn’t take any blood. Not even to boost it. There’s no blood-drawing involved.”

“Oh.” Nedzu stops, and his mind shifts and reconfigures around this new bit of information. “Odd. I wonder if he was trying to improve upon it.” It wouldn’t be the first time his alchemist had drawn him into helping him test out some new spell or potion, now that he thought of it.

Except… chronologically, it would have been the first time.

“Yeah, I dunno,” Yamada says. “I’m trying to think about the usual effects of introducing blood into spellwork, and I can’t think of how it would’ve helped things along. Maybe he wanted your blood for something else?”

And that is… certainly a disquieting thought. But, he reasons, it was years ago. Any blood he took back then would have stopped being viable long before now. And it’s not as if his alchemist takes samples from him regularly.

He turns another page, and the corner catches on his bandaged paw. A thought begins to take shape in his head.

“Oh hey,” Yamada continues, and the thought bursts like a soap bubble before it can properly form. “Did the Cat Sith talk to you earlier?”

“About the missing grimalkin? Yes. I hadn’t heard anything about it, aside from what some of the others were saying about ley line disturbances.”

“Yeah, I heard about that too.” Yamada picks worriedly at his lip. “You know, it’s always the solitary faeries that get picked on. People think we’re easy targets just because we’re not under court protection.”

Nedzu hums sympathetically. “I hope it gets resolved soon. I may not have the best past experience with cats, but I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

Yamada chuckles. “That’s because you’re a softie, Nedzu,” he says as he leaves.

By the time Nedzu goes with his alchemist to investigate the ley lines, he’s all but forgotten the conversation. There’s a crossroads close to the school, a place where several veins intersect at a single point. The United Alliance guards it closely; if this sort of place were to fall into the wrong hands, the results could be disastrous.

It’s as his alchemist said: to touch the ley line, reach in with his senses, and dip into the humming channels of power that run through the earth, is instinctual. It’s not so easy to quiet his mind and let intuition take over, but something about the well of power drives him on.

The taste of that power, rushing in all at once, is as terrifying as it is thrilling, and Nedzu yanks himself back out before the feeling can consume him altogether. It is not to be taken lightly; he can sense that too much might kill him, or worse, turn him into something else.

He likes himself just the way he is, thank you.

Nedzu trembles as he turns to his alchemist, and he can tell by the look of daunted awe on his face that he felt it, too. Fear and exhilaration and curiosity flood through the bond, overflowing within him until he burns with it.

He will not know it until later, but this is the moment in which his alchemist becomes The Alchemist.

In the end, a great deal more than a week passes before he speaks to the Cat Sith again. This is why:

Nedzu is no stranger to losing his alchemist to a few days of deep, immersive studies. He has been with him long enough to recognize it through the bond, and he knows it’s better to leave him to it. His alchemist is a dedicated researcher, after all. Usually Nedzu whiles away the time in the library, or wandering the grounds and beyond, or letting himself get dragged into Nemuri’s antics, until his alchemist emerges from his personal lab again, refreshed and ready with some new bit of spellwork or potion-making or theory to share.

This time is different.

At the foot of one of the old facilities, unused except as his alchemist’s surplus storage, he finds a patch of freshly dug earth.

It’s not out in the open. Nedzu does not know what drives him to dig, but he does, and beneath the loosened earth he finds an oilcloth sack. If it weren’t for his nose, Nedzu would have assumed someone simply buried a bundle of trash. But Nedzu is a rat, and all rats can recognize the smell of death and decay.

It is not an animal, either.

The figure tucked within the bag is humanoid but small. Elfin, almost—but not an elf. The size of a small child, but with adult proportions and an adult face. The eyes are gone, mouth left tongueless, even the hair dug out at the roots. The pitiful little body is curled up in a ball, and Nedzu can see broken fragments of paper-crystal membrane protruding from its back.

A pixie, savaged beyond recognition, wings removed as if plucked from a fly.

Nedzu flees back to the school, back to the comfort and safety of the alchemy building, down the steps to the lab below the main classroom. With chattering teeth he whispers the locks open and hurries in.

His eyes fall upon the bubbling flask in his alchemist’s gloved hand, just in time to see the fragment of pixie-wing dissolve in the liquid. He looks past it, to a clean surface converted to a dissection table, if the pitiful mound of tabby fur is anything to go by.

He stares at his alchemist, unconsciously reaching through the bond, grasping desperately for some kind of explanation.

All he feels is that same passion, that thirst for knowledge that has driven them both for the past three years.

“Tell me it isn’t you,” Nedzu whispers. “The grimalkin. The wandering faeries. Disappearing—dead—tell me it isn’t you.”

“I wasn’t finished yet,” his alchemist replies after too long a pause. “If you’d only waited—if you could have seen it finished first, you’d understand—”

He steps forward, and Nedzu steps back. For the first time, something creeps from beneath the passion and curiosity—or maybe it’s only the first time he’s felt it. Maybe it has always been there, growing from beneath like a strangling weed, and Nedzu was too blind to see it.

“I’ve been working on something,” his alchemist says. “It’s a project I’ve had for years, but it was all theoretical until—until you came along. I can tap the ley lines directly, I’m sure of it. All of that power—it’s just been sitting there, unused, but I can make it possible for people to do what you did! When you dipped into that power, I got a taste of it.”

“Stop this,” Nedzu pleads, eyes flickering toward the dead grimalkin and the flask of liquid. “Even if there was a way, it can’t be like this. This isn’t how magic is supposed to be done. You know this. Let—let me help you. We can fix this. Whatever you’ve done to yourself, we can fix it.”

“You’re right,” his alchemist says, and something dark and hungry glitters in his eyes. “There’s so much you can do to help me, Nedzu.”

He does not know, then, that he will not hear his own name again for a long time.

He feels the burst of magic as it comes, but there is nothing he can do against it. Evocation has never been his forte.

In future years, people will ask Nedzu about what followed, and most of them will never be satisfied with his answers. It’s not that he’s unwilling to speak of it; it’s just that, when you get right down to it, there really isn’t all that much to say about it. Pain and betrayal are quite exciting when they first happen, after a while it all starts to run together.

Nedzu spends the first part of the Alchemist’s research project leashed. After the fourth time he attempts an escape, he spends the rest of it in a cage.

They are not at the school anymore. Nedzu does not know where they are, and the Alchemist does not tell him.

He is not killed and dissected like the grimalkin, nor savaged and harvested for useful parts like the pixie. No, that would be too easy. That would defeat the purpose.

“Do you know how many unanswered questions there are about the nature of a familiar’s bond?” the Alchemist asks him at one point, when Nedzu is too blinded by desperate pain to form a proper answer. There’s a catch in his voice when he tries to speak after hurting Nedzu. “There are countless hypotheses, and no way to reliably test them. The only possible methods are too inhumane, and no one has the courage to test them on themselves.” He gives Nedzu’s head a comforting stroke, and Nedzu can’t even bite him without causing himself even more pain. “But the pursuit of knowledge takes sacrifice. And I refuse to be selfish.”

Nedzu tries to reach out, tugging and clawing at the bond between them, the bond that is still there, the bond that only one of their deaths can destroy. He hears the hitch in the Alchemist’s breathing, sees the faltering of his steps. “Please,” he says softly, to no avail.

The Alchemist says other things during that time, but that conversation stands out the most to Nedzu’s memory. That one is important because, truthfully, it can stand in for all the rest. “The pursuit of knowledge takes sacrifice.” Nedzu is that sacrifice.

He is kept in a cage, fed only enough to keep him alive, kept alive only because he is valuable for study. He was once asked if he was a rat or if he was a person, but there are no such questions here. Here, he is treated as an animal.

The thing about being treated like an animal is that it sort of turns you into one.

He stops thinking. He needs energy to think, and he has none to spare. And escape is impossible, so there is nothing else worth thinking about. He snaps for food, claws at his cage until the Alchemist learns to stop sticking his fingers through, growls whenever his cage is approached.

His mind is a short list again.

Eat.

Sleep.

Breathe—in, out, in, out.

Survive.

Crave the quiet, when it does come. Crave the long stretches in which he is left alone.

And then one day the Alchemist leaves him, and does not come back at all. He waits and waits, but his water runs out before food comes. He snarls, screams, claws at his cage until his paws are bloody, until his strength runs out, and he finally lies down.

Perhaps this is where he dies.

Perhaps it will not be so bad, if it means the bond is finally broken, and he is finally free.

He shuts his eyes and waits.

When he hears a door opening, and footsteps, he thinks (hopes) it is a dying dream. Voices call to each other, and he understands none of them. It is only when he hears them approach, and the scent of human reaches his nostrils, that he comes awake again.

He is not going to die like he thought (hoped). The Alchemist is back, and his existence will continue.

No, some deep, buried part of him whispers. No, it will not.

He will fight. So help him he will rip and tear and gouge until he is free or until the Alchemist is forced to kill him.

The voices get closer. He recognizes none of them and he does not care, if they are here then they are with him and he will not let them torture him a moment longer.

“—look, you see? A dire rat—a white dire rat, like they said.”

“It can’t be, they told us the rat was his familiar. Who in their right mind would do this to their own—?”

“Nighteye.” the voice is low and booming. “Do you honestly think the Alchemist is in his right mind?”

He opens his mouth and snarls. The Alchemist always took his teeth whenever he bit, but they’ve always grown back. A large hand comes near his cage, and he hurls himself at the bars.

“Get back. All-Might, this is foolish—”

“We don’t have time. Can’t you see he’s scared?”

I’ll show you scared.

The spell that keeps his cage locked shatters. The catch is undone, the door swings open, and he hurtles through so forcefully that the bars scratch his sides.

He runs, but in an instant he’s cornered. Humans, both of them, towering over him—one broad and bright, the other pale and thin. The first is closest, crouching down to him, creeping toward him. He presses back into the corner, showing his teeth and snarling until he’s sure his throat will bleed.

“It’s all right,” the bright human tells him. “We aren’t going to hurt you. I promise you that.”

Lies, lies, lies.

The human’s hand moves slowly toward him. It’s wide and strong, the perfect size for gripping the scruff of his neck, for seizing him by the throat and squeezing.

“It’s all right,” the human says again, and once the hand is within his reach, he lunges forward and sinks his teeth as deep as they will go.

He waits for the blow, waits for death. It does not come. Warm blood pours into his mouth, but still it will not come.

“Release him, you—”

“Don’t.” The human whose hand he grips speaks with both tenseness and calm. “It’s all right. No harm done.”

His red eyes blaze with mad desperation, but all they find are the human’s calm blue ones.

“It’s all right.” The other hand comes toward him, and he bites down harder, drawing a noise of pain from the human.

“All-Might.”

“Get Aizawa.” There’s only a faint note of tension in the bigger human’s voice.

“I don’t think—”

“Go, Nighteye.”

After a moment’s hesitation, the other human leaves. Another hand reaches him, but the blow does not come. It’s only a touch, the brush of a fingertip on his fur. He flinches and does not let go. “It’s all right, little one. I’m not going to hurt you. No one’s ever going to hurt you again. It’s all right.”

The touch becomes a caress, and the pain never comes, and it has been so long since he has been touched like this.

His grip loosens. Slowly, he lets go of the hand.

“That’s it,” the human tells him softly. “There’s nothing to fear. You’re all right. It’s all right. I’m here.”

He’s shaking. From nose to tail he trembles violently. This human isn’t hurting him. The bond tells him that the Alchemist is nowhere near. The floor is cold and hard as he lies down, exhaustion rolling over him once more.

The human doesn’t touch him again, just sits with him until the door opens and he hears the patter of paws.

As darkness gathers in his vision, he catches familiar smell, and then a familiar voice.

“Nedzu?” the Cat Sith calls out, right before he loses consciousness.

He will later learn that it has been ten months since he last heard the name Nemuri gave him.

He awakens draped over someone’s back as they run. He opens his bleary eyes, stirs, and curls his claws instinctively into black fur.

“You’re awake!”

How long has it been since he last spoke? “Nemuri? What—”

“Hush.” She quickens her pace. “We’re nearly there.”

Nedzu holds on for dear life and lets the kitsune carry him.

“Here!” another familiar voice calls out, and with a great effort Nedzu lifts his head to see another sleek dark shape standing just ahead, beside what looks like a shining doorway in the air. Nemuri runs through, and the Cat Sith follows them before it closes behind them.

It’s warm here, wherever it is. The Cat Sith’s footfalls are soft—carpeted. They’re inside. But where?

“We should be safe here.” Nemuri’s fox form is big enough to carry him, and as black as the Cat Sith, touched with silver in some places. Her tails number six in all. “It’s not easy to follow a kitsune into one of her foxholes.”

“Where did they go?” Nedzu asks. “There were—humans. I bit him.” He can’t help his regretful tone. He’d been out of his mind with terror at the time. His imprisonment had driven him crazy.

“I wouldn’t worry about him,” the Cat Sith scoffs. “He’s had far worse.”

“Mm.” Nedzu is lowered to a soft surface, a bed or a cushion, and he nearly drops right back to sleep on the spot. The feeling of magic washing over him makes him tense at first, but it’s only a healing spell. “What happened?”

“We tracked down the Alchemist’s hidden laboratory,” the Cat Sith replies. “The Summer Knight and the new Winter Knight went to investigate. They found you and freed you.”

“Where—” Nedzu’s voice catches. “Where is he now?”

“We’re beyond his reach,” Nemuri tells him. Bitter satisfaction colors her voice. “He took your loss pretty hard. He hasn’t stopped hunting for you.”

“Not that it will do him any good,” the Cat Sith says. “You’re under our protection now, and Yamada has been keeping lookout to warn us of danger. If he tries anything, I will tear his throat from his head.”

This news should bring relief, but Nedzu is simply too tired. “What is he doing? What—why—?”

“Long and short of it is, he’s lost it,” Nemuri answers. “No one’s sure exactly what he was working on—he burned down the alchemy building and his lab before he vanished last year, and he keeps burning every hiding place of his we find. But whatever kind of magic he was trying to perform, it messed with his head. He’s pulled more magical ethics violations than anyone cares to count—a month ago he set an army of husks on a town to cover one of his escapes—and no one can figure out what he’s trying to do.”

“Ley lines,” Nedzu murmurs.

“Sorry?”

“He’s trying to tap into ley lines.” He struggles with consciousness. “Directly.”

The others are quiet for a moment.

“Well,” the Cat Sith says. “The good news is, it’ll probably kill him before he manages to do anything with that kind of power. The bad news is, it might cause some lasting damage in the process.”

“Said he was finding a way,” Nedzu says. “He’s smart. He just might.”

“It’s worth reporting,” Nemuri says. “Thank you, Nedzu. Now rest.”

“Can’t—”

Her magic touches him again. “Sleep.”

He does.

The next time they have to flee, it’s because the Alchemist sends an army after them. Their hiding place is compromised, and they are forced to run. By this time, Nedzu is well enough to carry himself, but his legs are short enough that Nemuri carries him anyway.

It’s mainly because of Yamada that they aren’t instantly overwhelmed. He was the one to bring them a warning, and when the first wave of animate corpses springs upon them, he drives them back with a chilling scream that seems to shut them down.

Banshee, Nedzu thinks when he hears it, and that’s one mystery solved.

It’s not just husks after them. There are goblins too, nasty denizens of the Nevernever whose hunting skill and strength are easy to buy for the right price. The Alchemist’s cobbled-together horde chases them through the rural countryside, and the cover of trees is wearing thin. In the distance, Nedzu can see smoke rising in the distance—the forest nearby is burning.

“Persistent little bastards, aren’t they,” Nemuri remarks. “Surprised he wants you back, considering how he was treating you.”

“I’m his missing piece,” Nedzu says, clutching the fur on the scruff of her neck. “Or at least, that’s how he sees me.”

“So whatever he’s trying to accomplish, he at least thinks he needs you to pull it off,” the Cat Sith says.

Another scream from Yamada sends husks toppling, tripping up those behind them. “Look around you!” he says. “This many husks, this fast, this durable, all at once? Enough to make half an army with goblins? If he’s trying to tap ley line magic, I’d say he’s accomplished it!”

“Good news, then,” Nemuri says grimly. “Doesn’t matter what ‘way’ he’s found, if he’s dipping directly into the source, then it’ll kill him eventually. Human bodies weren’t made for that kind of power.”

Through the bond, Nedzu feels only desperate want. What had once been passion and curiosity is now a ravenous hunger. The Alchemist hasn’t fulfilled his desires; he’s only given himself an itch he can’t scratch, a cup to fill that doesn’t have a bottom.

Their luck runs out. As soon as they break from the trees, a smoldering field stretches before them. A new wave of husks and goblins is rushing in, ready to meet them head-on and overwhelm them with sheer numbers.

Nemuri curses softly under her breath.

“We won’t let him take you again,” Yamada tells him.

The Cat Sith snarls and spits, tail lashing.

Overhead, a deafening roar shakes the sky like rolling thunder. Nemuri actually yelps as she skids to a halt, Yamada nearly trips over his own two feet, and the Cat Sith arches his back until he seems twice his normal size.

There’s an army pursuing them from behind, and another charging them from the front. And now, divebombing them from above, is a dragon.

It drops down from above the clouds like some impossibly gigantic bat, until Nedzu can see the sunlight flashing against deep, violent red scales. The monster curves off as it nears the earth, great wings stretched wide enough to cast a shadow on the ground far below. Its jaws stretch wide in another deafening roar, and Nedzu flattens himself against Nemuri’s fur. He has never seen a dragon before. He never thought that the first one he laid eyes on would kill him soon after.

The roar tapers off, just in time for him to hear Yamada speak. “He actually showed up,” the banshee murmurs. “I thought you were pulling my leg, Nemuri.”

The dragon roars down on them, flames pouring from its mouth as it heads straight for them. Nedzu braces himself—

The fire misses them by a mere stone’s throw, buffeting them with hot wind as it reduces a swathe of the horde to ash. And then the dragon lands.

Goblins scatter. Husks are swept out of the way or crushed. The beast is massive, with a head the size of a car, a long, arching neck, and great folded wings that act as forelegs. A sweep of its long, heavy tail scatters more of the army as it approaches them, walking on the thumb claws of its wings.

The Cat Sith flicks his tail, snorting as his fur lies flat again. “Took you damned well long enough, firedrake.”

The dragon arches its neck and fixes him with coldly disdainful blue eyes. “Watch your tongue, wanderer. Be grateful I deigned to come at all, and waste my time on an army smaller than the one the Summer Knight defeated yesterday.” If a rockfall on a mountainside could be turned into a voice, it would probably sound something like this dragon. The cold eyes turn to Nedzu, and it takes all his courage not to shrink away. “All this fuss for a rat.”

“Yeah, well, he’s our rat,” Yamada answers, in a slightly meeker tone than the cat.

“Good morning, Endeavor!” Nemuri greets the dragon, tails waving cheerfully. “How’s married life treating you?”

The dragon growls, fangs showing. “I am not here for niceties,” it—he snarls. “I am here to destroy an army. Stay and fight, or flee. Just stay out of my way.” He turns, tail swinging, and goblins run and scream and burn to death in his flames.

“That’s our cue to leave,” Yamada murmurs. “Come on, let’s get while the getting’s good.”

Nemuri must feel Nedzu shaking, because she brushes at him with one of her tails. “Don’t mind him,” she assures him as they take advantage of the havoc the dragon is wreaking. “He wasn’t born with forelegs, you understand. So he’s compensating for a lot.”

Nedzu hears the Cat Sith snort with amusement at this, but he can’t quite muster the nerve to laugh. “Where are we going?” he asks.

“Back to the school,” the Cat Sith tells him. “I don’t like it—it’s too close to where All-Might is battling the Alchemist, but it’s the most magically defensible place we know. You’ll be safe there until this blows over.”

“He’s at the crossroads,” Nedzu realizes. “He’s still connected to the ley lines—”

“Which means there’s only so long he can last,” Nemuri reminds him. “We just have to trust that the Summer Knight can get close enough to stop him before he does lasting damage to the flow of magic.”

“Stay close,” Yamada advises. “They’re opening the barrier for us, but once it closes, nothing gets in or out until all of this is over.”

“Understood,” Nedzu murmurs. And he does. He knows what he must do.

Unhindered, they finally pass into familiar school grounds, with its facilities and buildings so close—home is close, he’s here, he’s home—and Nedzu feels the barrier beginning to close behind them. He looks back, judging the distance. The timing must be just right.

He springs from Nemuri’s back, dodges around her six tails, and runs for the closing barrier.

“Hey—” Nemuri yelps.

“Nedzu!”

“Get back here!” the Cat Sith yowls, but Nedzu doesn’t stop his mad scurry until he’s outside again, the barrier shutting just short of his tail tip. Teeth meet in the scruff of his neck—he was fast, but the Cat Sith was faster.

“Don’t follow me,” Nedzu tells him.

“Are you insane?” the Cat Sith demands, speaking around half a mouthful of fur. “He’s after you!”

“All that means,” Nedzu replies, “is that if I go to him, he’ll let me get close.”

The Cat Sith is silent for a moment, before slowly releasing him.

“I’m sorry,” Nedzu says. “I’ll be back, I promise. But I have to do this. Please don’t follow me.”

“That isn’t up to you,” the Cat Sith replies.

It isn’t hard to find the crossroads. All he has to do is reach the nearest ley line and follow it, and before long he can feel the pulse of massive power ahead of him. Two wells of magic lash at each other, one bright and blinding as the midsummer sun, the other warped and bloated and sickly.

The Alchemist is connected directly to the intersection of magical veins. A veritable fortress of magical power surrounds him, and the Summer Knight batters his way through.

It’s too slow. Nedzu can feel the flow of magic churning, thrown out of alignment. The Summer Knight will break through eventually, but not soon enough.

He thinks he hears the man call out to them as he passes. He reaches out to touch the barrier, and it burns his paw like coals.

Nedzu whispers the Alchemist’s name. A moment passes, and the barrier parts for him. He walks through, now limping on his burned paw.

Through the bond, a thread of painful hope grips him—the Alchemist recognizes him, recognizes his own name, sees his familiar coming back, and it brings hope to the maddened wizard. When Nedzu is finally close enough to see him, standing at the center of the crossroads, he barely looks like the man he once knew. He barely looks human at all. His magic is swelling, bursting, overflowing—he’s drowning in magic, and too blinded by power to see how it’s killing him.

“It’s you.” The Alchemist’s voice is different now—distorted, tone shifting wildly between a guttural growl and a reedy whine. “You came back. I knew you’d come back.”

“Of course I did,” Nedzu replies. “You’re my wizard aren’t you? When you need help—that’s what I’m for, isn’t it?”

The Alchemist smiles, or tries to. Power leaks from his lips, toxic and blinding until Nedzu’s red eyes sting. “I knew. I knew you’d come. Don’t you see, Nedzu? I’ve done it.” he spreads his arms, and sickly light pours from his fingertips. “I’ve done it. It’s all finished—my work. I don’t have to hurt you anymore.” He kneels down, holding his trembling hands out. “It’ll be better now, Nedzu. I know it was hard. I’m sorry you weren’t happy. But all that—it’s over now. I won’t ever hurt you again.”

“Yes, you will,” Nedzu says sadly.

He closes the distance and leaps—the Alchemist holds his arms out as if to catch him—

Nedzu’s teeth close in his throat.

The Alchemist doesn’t scream—can’t scream, with Nedzu’s jaws crushing his windpipe. The taste of blood and corrupted power pour onto his tongue in rivulets, sour and burning as the Alchemist struggles. He lashes out with physical and magical blows. Burning pain scores down the side of Nedzu’s face until his own blood flows, but still he holds on, crushing and crushing until the struggling weakens.

The bond is still there, pulsing as strong as ever, lashing at him with fear and pain and desperation. It’s still there, and as long as he feels it, he can’t let go. He can’t be sure until it’s gone.

They fall together. Nedzu thinks he hears his name choked out, just seconds before he feels his alchemist die.

He awakens battered and exhausted, as if he’s been swallowed whole by some great snake and spat out teeth and bones. He’s being carried again, in arms this time instead of sprawled over someone’s back. He recognizes the smell, but it doesn’t make any sense—the creature it matches isn’t supposed to have arms and hands.

“So much fuss,” he hears a familiar voice mutter. “Wouldn’t let All-Might pick you up. So now I have to take this form, because heaven knows you’re too big for me to carry otherwise.”

He fights to open his eyes. The right one stays shut, crusted over with blood, but he still catches a glimpse. The creature carrying him is shaped like a human, tall with a scraggly mane of dark hair. But the eyes are the same, and the voice is the same.

“…Cat Sith?”

The hunter grumbles softly. “After all this… you may as well call me Aizawa.”

“Oh.” It never occurred to him before, that the Cat Sith might have any names. “Where are we going?”

“Where else?” Aizawa scoffs. “Home, obviously. The library’s missed you.”

“Ah. That’s good, then.”

It’s only out of habit that he reaches for the bond again—because what kind of familiar would he be, if he didn’t check on his wizard from time to time—?

Nothing comes to him through the bond.

There is no bond, and no wizard waiting on the other side.

(Nedzu has never wept before. But this is as good a place to start as any.)

Chapter Text

Katsuki has dreams, when he is small.

Not special dreams, not dreams that mean anything. That’s not where his magic is. But he has ideas that feel like plans when he is five and six and seven, and maybe for a little while when he is eight. He dreams of freedom—of having it, and taking it. When his magic first comes in, it feels like he can make those dreams real, but now…

Now, at twelve, he knows better. He knows that they were just dreams. Wispy, hazy things that are nice to think about but will never come true, like how Deku likes to think he’ll free Auntie Inko one day, but Katsuki knows that’s probably not going to happen. No matter how much they all might want it.

He dreamed of breaking free with his own strength, his own rage and defiance, back then he was tiny and stupid enough to think that was enough. He would break his own shackles to pieces—not dance and beg and do tricks until his masters decided he’d earned the key.

The thing about living under the thumbs of faeries is that if you’re very very lucky, then it will kill your dreams. If you’re very unlucky, then it will trap you in them forever.

That was what the witch Chiyo told him, anyway. And as much as Katsuki hates to admit it, the shriveled old hag knows what she’s talking about. For the life of him he has no idea why she keeps showing up to bother them, but she’s been around the block a few times and she has good advice. He can’t decide whether he hates her or feels grateful to her.

“It’s a game,” Chiyo told him once. “How well do you know the rules?”

“I don’t give a fuck about their stupid games,” he’d said, and gotten whacked in the head with her cane. Deku hadn’t laughed, but he’d made that stupid face that told Katsuki that he really wanted to. Hitoshi did laugh, and Chiyo whacked Katsuki again when he tried to kick him.

“Hard head you’ve got,” she’d said. “That’s your problem—you don’t bend at all. You’re rigid as a chess piece yourself, all wood and alabaster. Is that what you want? Do you want to be just another chess piece, too rigid and stubborn to look beyond what’s right in front of you? Or would you rather be a player?”

Katsuki doesn’t want to be either. He wants to kick the board over, set it on fire, and stuff the pieces in the various orifices of the faeries that stole him.

But he can’t.

That’s probably the hardest lesson he ever learns, from Chiyo, from the faeries, from Auntie Inko, from Deku, from Hitoshi, from the Nevernever itself.

He can’t, any more than Deku can cast a spell.

What pisses Katsuki off more than anything is the fact that, no matter what Chiyo teaches him, it seems like Deku already knew it, has known it for years. Katsuki’s spent years with his head stuck up his ass while Deku was learning this shit by himself, and now Katsuki’s left playing catch-up.

At least he’s got magic. There’s still that.

Of course, just because he accepts that he’s the bug these faeries think he is, doesn’t mean he has to like it. It doesn’t mean he has to pull a Deku and go native. It doesn’t mean he has to smile and play nice and let them walk all over him. When they yell at him, he yells back. When they hit him, he shows his teeth.

And when his chance finally comes, he lunges at it like a starving animal.

Faerie laws govern everything that faeries do. It’s not because they like them or because they make any sense, but because rules are rules when it comes to faeries, and they can’t break them any more than Katsuki can turn Uwabami’s hair-snakes into worms by glaring at her.

Because of that, the faeries know the ins and outs of the rules. They know every path, every loophole, every opening for cheating. Faerie laws cannot be broken, but that just makes them masters of bending them.

Of course, just because the rules bend doesn’t mean it’s always in a faerie’s favor—especially since their worthiest opponents are each other.

Uwabami is in a foul mood. Katsuki knows this because he finds himself punished viciously for things he would usually get away with, and it takes him extra-long to figure out where the new boundaries are. He knows she’s mad because the boundaries keep changing, and he can never win.

Not that that’s anything new, with the older faeries.

It’s Deku who gives him the warning, like it always is. They always stay up late, waiting for Auntie Inko to come back before letting themselves sleep. They trade secrets, things they’ve learned, gossip they’ve heard. Deku does most of the talking, Katsuki does most of the cursing, and Hitoshi says little, but listens while his eyes glint and flash in the moonlight through the window.

“The lady owes Giran a favor,” Deku murmurs to him one night, and Katsuki doesn’t know how he knows that, doesn’t want to know how he found out, but he clenches his teeth all the same.

“Yeah?” Katsuki snaps. “Her and half the damn Court.”

Everyone knows Giran. Nobody likes Giran, but everyone knows him and most people owe him. He’s a Winter faerie who’s not even a noble, and everyone hates him and calls him a snake-in-the-grass or worse, but somehow everyone owes him and they only hate him more for it.

“Maybe,” Deku says softly. “But half the damn court doesn’t own Mom. Or you.”

(It’s weird, hearing Deku swear. He doesn’t swear to swear, he just does it if he’s parroting something back or trying to make a point. He never swears like he means it, and it always sounds out of place in his voice.)

Deku’s not completely right, about Auntie Inko. She may have pledged herself to Uwabami, but by now, her services have been loaned out so often that most of the Summer nobles on par with Uwabami feel like they have a claim to her. At the very least, they all like having her around. If Uwabami gave her to somebody like Giran, her peers might string her up.

Katsuki, though?

Nobody likes dealing with Katsuki. He’s spent his whole life making himself a Problem. He curses and breaks things, takes his punishments and then keeps doing the things that got him punished in the first place. He doesn’t cook and clean and smile prettily and obey each command with a smile, the way Auntie Inko does. If he gets given away, no one will care.

“I’d care,” Deku tells him, when Katsuki says as much.

Katsuki snorts. “You don’t count.”

Deku falls quiet, and in the silence comes the voice that Katsuki hears maybe once a day, if that.

“I’d care too.”

“You barely count, Rock,” Katsuki scoffs. Hitoshi counts for a little more than Deku since he’s actually got magic, but he’s a solitary faerie and that makes him less than dirt to the Court nobles. So it all sort of balances out, almost.

Katsuki’s on his own, always has been. Deku’s a magicless wimp, Auntie Inko’s not a fighter, and Hitoshi doesn’t fight and never even uses the magic he does have, so in Katsuki’s opinion, he might as well not have any at all.

The only one who can fight for Katsuki is Katsuki himself. That’s the way it always has been and the way it always will be.

And so, when the snake-haired bitch lends his leash to Giran to pay her shitty favor, Katsuki’s not surprised. He’s not scared. He can’t afford to be.

“What do you want.”

A saner human wouldn’t dare. A middling Winter faerie is still more powerful than he is by its very existence, but Katsuki doesn’t care. He hasn’t made it this far and stayed himself by caring about what these shitty faeries think of him.

The faerie smiles at him, silver eyes glinting. The smile is friendly, but Katsuki doesn’t like his face. He doesn’t like any faeries’ faces, but Giran’s he hates even more than the rest. He’s slimy—Katsuki isn’t sure how he knows that, but it’s true and it turns his stomach.

“It’s quite simple,” Giran answers. “One tiny little task and I’ll let you go, and let your mistress know how helpful you’ve been. It should be easy enough, for someone in your position.”

“Hurry up,” Katsuki snaps.

“There’s a certain faerie within Summer’s territory,” Giran continues, as if Katsuki didn’t interrupt. “Though not a Summer faerie. An elusive creature—difficult to find if it doesn’t want to be found, and difficult to catch otherwise.”

Something inside Katsuki twists up into knots.

“You’re powerful, or so the lady tells me,” Giran says. “There’s not a faerie child or youth who can stand against you. So this should be easy for you—the creature I speak of is a child itself.” Those silver eyes watch Katsuki, lazy and shining. “A little wanderer child, with violet hair and, so I hear, quite the silver tongue.”

Katsuki’s hands curl into fists, palms growing hot with magic.

“Bring him to me,” Giran says. “Never mind how. Just bring him to me unspoiled, and your task will be over and done with.”

His magic bursts within his clenched fists. “Get fucked,” Katsuki spits.

Giran makes him bleed for it.

He almost crawls back home, bloody and seething, but he remembers what Giran wants. So instead he tucks himself in one of the many hiding places they’ve found in the woods, for when Katsuki needs a breather or Deku needs a break from the pushier fae kids. Katsuki needs one hell of a breather, so he hides and patches himself up as best he can. When he can walk again, he goes not to Giran, but to Uwabami, and tells her no.

Uwabami smiles, tranquil and beatific, and Katsuki hates hates hates her. “Is the task too difficult?”

“No, it’s bullshit-easy, I’m just not doing it,” Katsuki snaps. “This is a challenge. I’m not gonna be your goddamn slave anymore. I don’t care about your stupid favor to Giran, I’m not doing shit for that slimy fuck.”

For a while, Uwabami seems to simply… take him in.

“You’re mistaken,” she says eventually, still smiling. “Any debt I owed to Giran has been fulfilled, when I lent him your temporary services.”

“You’re not hearing me,” Katsuki snarls. “I’m not fucking serving him. I’m challenging you instead. I want my freedom and I don’t care about your debt.”

“There is no debt.” The smile becomes a smirk. “I lent him you. If he failed to account for circumstances such as these, then that is his fault, not mine.”

(And that’s even better for her, isn’t it, some small part of Katsuki realizes. She owed Giran but she hates him as much as anyone else, so isn’t it just convenient for her that she could pay her debt with a magically gifted slave who would rather bite through his own chains than do what Giran wants?)

“In the land of the young, there is a mountain,” Uwabami tells him. “Its name is Horai in some tongues, and Penglai in others. I have heard whispers that the Winter Queen lost a valuable tool on that mountain, and would surely pay a great price for its return.” Her eyes narrow. “Bring me this tool, and freedom shall be yours.”

With a twitch of her hand, she dismisses him.

Katsuki’s heard of the Land of the Young, and of the mountain that stands within it. Everyone has. It’s a place where there’s no death or aging, but enough curses to balance things out. What Katsuki doesn’t know is where it is or how to find it. And he knows Uwabami certainly isn’t going to tell him. This is all a game to her, and what’s the fun in spilling the answers at the beginning?

The only thing he can do is ask around.

And the thing is, Katsuki tries. But the only ones there are to ask are faeries who are too powerful to scare the answer out of, and faeries he’s beaten the shit out of in the past. None of them are going to want to help him without a heavy-ass price, and the ones that might be easier to deal with probably don’t know where it is anyway. Giran probably does, because that’s exactly the kind of thing he’d know about, but like hell is Katsuki gonna let that smug shithead weasel a debt out of him. And the old hag Chiyo is nowhere to be found.

It’s fucking infuriating. If he can just get there, it’ll be fine. He can climb a mountain. Maybe he can even find this tool, and fight whatever stands in his way if he has to. But it’s useless if he can’t find the goddamn place.

And Giran’s still waiting. Giran wants Hitoshi.

Inevitably, it comes down to Katsuki hiding in a cave, hidden and out of the way so no one can hear him scream and vent his rage on soil and earth and stone. (He doesn’t dare scar any trees. Not after last time.)

Deku finds him down there in the midst of a blind fury, because of course he does. He doesn’t run away when Katsuki curses at him, just sits at the mouth of the cave and waits for Katsuki to tire out.

“What’s the matter?” Deku asks, and Katsuki tells him.

He tells him because there’s no one else to tell, because the faeries hate him or laugh at him or want to use him, and because Auntie Inko has her own problems, and somebody has to let Hitoshi know that Giran wants him for some reason. But Deku’s here, Deku’s always here and he’s always been here, and Katsuki hates having to rely on anyone, but there’s no one else and he doesn’t know what else to do.

“You don’t even like me.”

Katsuki jumps and whips around, furious. He didn’t even realize Hitoshi was there, but it should have been obvious. Wherever Deku goes, Hitoshi’s never all that far away. He doesn’t look too worried over the fact that Katsuki’s been assigned to hand him over to the slimiest fae in the Nevernever, but he’s never looked worried over anything before.

“What?” Katsuki snaps.

“You don’t even like me,” Hitoshi repeats. “Why’re you sticking your neck out for me?”

“I’m not doing this for you!” Katsuki shoots back. “I’m doing this because I want out! I want my damn freedom!”

“You’ve wanted your freedom since we were small,” Hitoshi says flatly. “But you’ve been waiting to get stronger. To get so strong you crush whatever challenge they throw at you, that’s what you said last week. You’ve never bothered with me before, you’ve hardly ever talked to me without insulting me, so why am I where you draw the line?”

“Shut up!” Katsuki throws a dirt clod to miss, and it does. Hitoshi’s either screwing with him or he genuinely doesn’t know, which means he really is as dense as a rock.

Katsuki doesn’t have things, changeling kids don’t have things. They don’t own, they are owned, and anything the faeries give them are loans, not gifts. Even the food in their bellies doesn’t belong to them, because the fae could carve them open and take it back if they wanted to.

Changeling kids don’t have things, but Deku and Hitoshi aren’t changelings anymore because they don’t belong to the fae. They’re here because they won’t leave, because they choose to stay with Auntie Inko and with Katsuki, and that makes them as close to his as he’ll ever get. He doesn’t have things but he has them, they’re his, and nobody gets to take them away, not Uwabami and not Giran.

“What’s the challenge?” Deku asks. “Maybe we can help.”

“You can’t help me,” Katsuki growls. “It’s my challenge. Nobody can win my freedom for me except me.”

“Maybe, but I could still find things out for you,” Deku offers. “I’m good at that, remember?”

“How’re you gonna find out where the Land of the Young is, dumbass?” Katsuki snaps back at him. “Hardly anybody knows anything about it, and you can forget about how to get there—”

“I do,” Hitoshi says.

Deku never lets faeries see when he’s surprised, but Hitoshi’s always been the exception to rules like that. His eyes almost bug out stupidly, and both he and Katsuki stare at Hitoshi, who stares back and blinks slowly like he didn’t just flip the entire argument on its head.

“You… know where the Land of the Young is?” Deku says slowly, and it’s been so long since the last time Katsuki heard him so blindsided that he has to take a moment to bask in the fact that they’re both on the same page for once.

“I’ve been there before,” Hitoshi says, like it’s the most normal thing in the world instead of something fucking absurd.

“Shut up, no you haven’t,” Katsuki says, but there’s not much behind it because Hitoshi might be all right but he’s still fae, and that means he can’t lie.

“Have too,” Hitoshi says, even though he doesn’t really need to. “I can show you where it is. What do you need there?”

Katsuki hesitates a moment longer, chewing on his tongue. Finally, because he literally has nothing else to go on, he answers reluctantly. “There’s this mountain.”

“Mount Horai?” Hitoshi asks. “What does she want, one of the fruits on the tree? They’re supposed to be a panacea, so they’re very valuable.”

“I don’t fucking know what she wants!” Katsuki kicks at the ground and tells them the rest of Uwabami’s challenge. How’s he supposed to find something when he doesn’t even know what it is?

“I know where the border of the Land of the Young is closest to the mountain, so I can lead you there,” Hitoshi says, and then he pauses, because it probably hits him that this sounds a little like the beginnings of a hustle. “I mean, not for a deal or a favor or anything. This benefits both of us, right? You want to be free, I don’t want to get handed over to Giran or anybody else.” He shrugs. “If anything, this is me repaying you for not handing me over the second he told you to.”

The scars still itch, and it makes Katsuki’s temper even shorter. “Are you stupid?” he growls. “Why the fuck would I want to do that?”

Hitoshi shrugs, a smooth little roll of his shoulders. “Doesn’t matter why you would or wouldn’t. Just matters you didn’t. Are we doing this or not?”

“When should we leave?” Deku asks. There’s a little tremble in his voice—not a scared tremble (of course not) but an excited tremble, as if this is any other adventure in the woods.

“Shut up, Deku, you’re not coming,” Katsuki says.

Deku gets ready to argue, but to Katsuki’s utter shock, it’s Hitoshi who says, “No, it’s probably better if you don’t come this time.”

Katsuki has never seen Deku look so betrayed.

“We can’t all three go, not for something like this,” Hitoshi goes on. “It would mean leaving Mother alone for too long.”

“How long will it take?” Deku asks.

“Well, I’ll be searching an entire fucking mountain for something when I don’t even know what it is,” Katsuki snaps. “It’ll take a while.”

“It’ll be pretty easy to find, or at least not as hard as you think,” Hitoshi says. “The Land of the Young is far beyond Court territory, which means it isn’t drenched in their magic. Anything fae-touched is going to stand out. Trust me, I can sniff out Winter magic, easy. It’ll take us a day within those lands, maybe two if something goes terribly wrong.”

“Two days isn’t bad,” Deku argues. “It may even go by faster with all of us.”

“Normally, you would be right,” Hitoshi says. “Unfortunately, time runs differently in the Land of the Young. For every hour that passes within it, a day passes outside. If it takes us a full day, we’ll be gone for almost a month.” He locks eyes with Deku. “One of us has to stay with Mother.”

Katsuki gets ready for more arguing, but Deku’s shoulders slump and he looks away.

“Fine,” he says quietly. “I’ll stay. But—here.” He reaches for the cord around his neck, pulls it over his head, and holds it out.

Katsuki opens his mouth to turn it down, but Hitoshi speaks before he has the chance. “Your seeing-stone?” He raises a single purple eyebrow. “I just said we might be gone for a month or more. Are you sure?”

“That thing’s half the reason you’re even still alive, Deku,” Katsuki growls.

“Just take it,” Deku insists. “This is for your freedom, Kacchan. If I can’t come with you then at least let me help this much. The Land of the Young sounds like the kind of place you’ll need it.”

“You’re probably right,” Hitoshi says, and takes the stone from him. Then, reaching up, he teases out a lock of his own hair, severs it, and holds it out.

“Um,” Deku says. “I’m only lending it to you, so you can give it back to me when you come back. You don’t have to repay me or anything.”

“I’m not,” Hitoshi says. “We can trade back when this is over. If we’re gone for longer than two months, you can use that to track us.”

“He doesn’t have any magic, idiot,” Katsuki snaps.

“I could find help,” Deku says. He picks a thread from the hem of his shirt and uses it to tie the lock together. “I know how the spell works, so I’d just need someone to lend me the magic for it. I could do that.” He puts it in his pocket and bites his lip. “When are you guys leaving?”

“Right now,” Katsuki says bluntly. Hitoshi gives him a disdainful look, and Katsuki flips him off. “We’ll stop for food first, or whatever.”

Hitoshi lets Deku hug him longer than Katsuki usually tolerates it. “Take care of Mother,” he says, and they leave Deku behind.

It feels wrong, going off on their own like this and leaving Deku behind. Katsuki doesn’t want him along, barely wants Hitoshi along, but this isn’t like his other tasks. This is an adventure all on its own, and with adventures it’s always been the three of them together. Hitoshi’s useful, he knows when to shut up, and he’s less slimy and mealy-mouthed than Court faeries, but having him tag along without the buffer of Deku between them will never feel right to Katsuki.

It’s only when they’re leaving the border of Summer territory that Katsuki realizes he doesn’t even know how to talk to Hitoshi when Deku isn’t there.

“Which way?” he snaps, because when he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to sound, he goes straight for angry.

Hitoshi doesn’t answer out loud, or try to talk to him at all. He just leads the way out of the faeries’ corner of the Nevernever, and Katsuki has never been more grateful to him in his life.

It’s not as if he’s never been outside of the faerie realm. He has been, loads of times. But it’s never been like this, never on his own, never for something this important. He’s left faerie territory under guard before, to carry out some stupid chore for Uwabami or one of her bootlicking toadies. Hell, he knows for a fact that even mealy-mouthed know-it-all Deku has never left faerie territory, even though he keeps learning and knowing things about it—more things than it should be safe to know.

Until just recently, Katsuki thought Hitoshi never has, either.

But that’s a stupid thing to assume, he realizes. They’ve only known him since they were four, and faerie toddlers aren’t like human toddlers. Who even knows what he’s gotten into?

Beyond the forest territory of the Summer Court, the land beyond is mostly flat, broken by a few rolling hills. Both of them pick up the pace; there isn’t much cover here, so the sooner they pass through, the better.

“Stay close,” Hitoshi tells him. “I can’t keep you hidden if you get too far.”

Katsuki starts, glaring at him. He hasn’t felt any magic off of Hitoshi—at least nothing besides the fuzzy aura he always feels. “What do you mean, keep me hidden?”

“Not hidden, exactly. But unfriendly things tend not to notice me if they don’t know to look for me. If you stay close enough, it’ll cover you, too.”

“I can fight,” Katsuki reminds him with a scowl.

“You will, eventually. If we’re going to steal a magic tool off that mountain, then something’s bound to try and stop us.”

That appeases him, at least for now. “Whatever. When’s the last time you were there, anyway?”

“Since before I met any of you, and Mother,” Hitoshi answers. “The one who stole us found me after I left the mountain.”

“Did you live there?” Katsuki asks.

“For a while.”

“How long’s a while?” The question comes out snappish. Hitoshi has that tone he always has when he’s trying to sneak by someone’s questions, and Katsuki isn’t going to stand for that shit.

“I don’t know,” Hitoshi answers bluntly. “I was small, and I lost track of time.” His purple eyes flicker to Katsuki’s, and he must see the million impatient questions on his face, because he sighs. “My parents left me there, at some point. They said they would be back when it was safe, and left. They never came back. I got tired of waiting, so I left the mountain to look for them, and that was when I was stolen.”

“What?” Katsuki bursts out. “You mean you have parents somewhere, and you’ve been staying with us instead?”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no!”

“I told you,” Hitoshi says, and he almost sounds testy. “Time passes differently in the Land of the Young. An hour within is a day without. I was waiting on that mountain for months, at least. Maybe more.” His eyes flicker toward Katsuki’s face again, and then back to the path ahead. “It would’ve been years for them. They couldn’t have lied about coming back for me, so they must have died. Or they forgot—that happens too, from time to time.”

He says it calmly, as if it doesn’t matter to him either way. Even Katsuki knows that his own parents were desperate to find him.

“That’s fucked up,” Katsuki growl.

“Says the slave.”

Katsuki stops in his tracks and whirls on him. “I’m not a slave!”

“Stolen from your home, forced to work for nothing, punished if you disobey,” Hitoshi says, cruel in his calm honesty. Katsuki snarls wordlessly at him. “You wouldn’t have to fight for your freedom like this, if you weren’t a slave first.”

“I’m not fighting for my freedom!” Katsuki kicks a clump of grass.

“Don’t shout so loud. And stay close, remember?”

“Shut up.”

“If you aren’t fighting for your freedom, then what are we doing out here?” Hitoshi asks, as if that isn’t the stupidest question Katsuki’s ever heard.

Fighting for yours, dumbass, Katsuki doesn’t say. If he were fighting for his own freedom, he’d be waiting longer, until he was properly strong enough to pull it off. But thanks to that shithead Giran, he can’t afford to wait that long anymore.

They have a near miss at the boundary line to the Land of the Young—a roc swoops down on them, eyes sharp enough to see through whatever sneaking magic Hitoshi has. It almost plucks them off the ground, but Bakugou drives it off with explosive bursts of magic aimed at talons and tailfeathers. It’s not enough to drive it off, but it is enough to slow it down and distract it with its own burning feathers, which gives them time to escape over the boundary.

It doesn’t feel very different from the rest of the Nevernever. They’re standing in a wide-open meadow, almost knee-deep in grass. There are trees in the middle distance, clustered at the base of what looks like foothills. It’s nothing like the cover of thick faerie forests, but they’ll take what they can get.

Except… they can’t seem to get it. It’s not until they walk and walk and keep walking for hours (days, Katsuki remembers) that he realizes that the trees aren’t getting any closer.

“Oh what the fuck,” he growls. He hates having to do this, to say this, but— “Hey Rock, gimme the rock.”

Hitoshi blinks. “Beg pardon?”

“The stone, Deku’s fuckin’—the seeing stone. Give it.” Hitoshi hands it over, and Katsuki is almost blinded when he peers through. “Oh for the love of—we’re up to our armpits in magic, there’s some kinda—shitty spell or something, lemme just—” He grabs Hitoshi by the arm and tows him along, letting the seeing-stone guide him on a safe path through the encumbering magic. It’s not a straight path, but it’s one that actually moves them forward. They reach the trees, and the foothills, and through the stone Katsuki sees what he couldn’t before, when they were surrounded by illusions and magic.

The foothills stretch before them, clustered around the base of a mountain.

“That’s it, right?”

“Should be.” If he didn’t know better, he could swear that Hitoshi sounds almost sheepish. “I could see the mountain from a distance—illusions don’t do much to me. But the spell that kept us from moving forward was better hidden.”

“Good to know,” Katsuki growls, and hangs the stone around his neck.

Katsuki didn’t even want to take it in the first place, but that fucking thing saves both their necks at least four more times before they even get to the base of Mount Horai.

They sleep through the night in the shadow of the mountain, about as well as they could have hoped.

The next morning, the trek up it is hard. There are no paths or trails but those left by creatures, and the steepness forces them to climb more than walk. There are more traps, more beasts to evade, more mazes of magic disguised as empty air. Sometimes Katsuki’s magic saves them, sometimes Hitoshi’s does, and sometimes the seeing-stone does, and sometimes it takes all three at once.

“Who the fuck,” Katsuki snarls when they stop to rest on a ledge high above the mountain’s base. “Who the fuck sets all these traps?”

“Who’s to say anyone sets them?” Hitoshi says with a shrug. He’s not as winded as Katsuki is. Much as Katsuki hates to admit it, he’s always been the better climber. “For all we know, these enchantments were woven by the land itself. They’re different from how they were when I was small.”

Katsuki makes to spit on the ground, only for Hitoshi to stop him with a swat to the mouth. He glares daggers at the faerie, but Hitoshi doesn’t give any more of a shit than usual. “You said before you could find anything fae-touched in this place. Are you getting anything?”

Hitoshi nods. “There are caves further up,” he answers. “I remember them. It’s where they left me—one of the few sheltered parts of the mountain.” His eyes narrow. “It’s in that direction.”

“Makes sense.” At Hitoshi’s raised eyebrow, he scoffs. “We’re looking for a tool, remember? If it was lost on this mountain, then obviously someone had to bring it up here and drop it. Makes sense it’d be in the one place people would go.”

Hitoshi nods. “Use the seeing-stone. If it’s an enchanted object, it’ll shine like a beacon.”

“Obviously. Let’s go, we’re wasting time.”

Luckily, the higher they go, the fewer beasts they run into. Katsuki catches a glimpse of dire rats scrabbling around among the rocks, but they don’t come near and he wouldn’t be worried even if they did. They might be big, but they’re small-fry vermin. In the distance he could swear he sees the faint shape of the roc from before, circling and wheeling overhead, but it never comes any closer.
The caves are in sight when Hitoshi pauses. “Do you smell that?”

Katsuki stops, sniffs, and smells the same dewy-misty mountain air he’s smelled since they started climbing. “Smell what?” Hitoshi doesn’t answer right away, so he repeats it louder. “Smell what?”

“Grass,” Hitoshi replies. “Grass and… dung. Blood.”

There’s grass growing in uneven clumps wherever soil pokes through the rock, but it’s certainly not enough for Katsuki to smell. “Is it something that’ll eat us?”

“Maybe.”

“Alright, well, keep sniffing I guess. If it gets closer then… I don’t know. Bark or something.”

“I am not a dog,” Hitoshi says pointedly.

Holy shit, Katsuki’s actually found a way to get a rise out of him.

As they near the caves, Hitoshi pauses again, but keeps going. “More blood. Think it might be human.”

Katsuki shuts his eyes. He really, really doesn’t want to have to pick something off a dead body. He’ll do it, but he doesn’t want to. “Anything else?”

“The smell’s sour.” They’re level with the caves now, approaching the mouth. “Like an infected wound.”

“Or a rotting corpse?”

“Perhaps… no, I don’t think so. It would be stronger—” Hitoshi’s hand closes on Katsuki’s wrist, hard enough to be painful. Katsuki turns to him, ready to yell, but sees the faerie staring up and past him, eyes wide in alarm. Following his gaze, Katsuki’s eyes light upon the thing climbing down the mountain toward them.

It’s at least twice as tall as Katsuki, and built like a spider. Bristling brown and black hairs cover a thick body and eight spindly, clawed legs that carry its bulk easily over the rocks. Its face is almost like a bull’s, with wide-set eyes and a thick snout and two rust-brown horns, but its mouth bristles with many sharp teeth as it crawls closer.

It lunges, and Hitoshi steps between them before Katsuki can ready a blast. His voice rings out, speaking in a language that Katsuki knows only a little.

“Stop. Let us pass.”

The monster shudders, struggles, and obeys. It falls to the side, beady eyes glazed over, as Hitoshi drags Katsuki past it and toward the cave.

At the mouth of the cave, Katsuki looks through the stone and goes still.

He’s borrowed the stone from Deku before, just to look at thing, once to look at himself. He remembers peering at his own hand, admiring the faint outline of red-orange fire that played over his skin, the telltale light of magic. And now, peering into the darkness of the cave, he sees a faint, distant glow that reminds him of it—the silvery-blue outline of a person.

“There’s someone in there,” he says. “Someone alive. Someone with magic.”

“Wait here,” Hitoshi tells him, and shrugs him off when Katsuki tries to hold him back. “I don’t need light to see. Wait here.” With that, he vanishes into the cave.

Katsuki almost runs in after him—if he comes back from this without Hitoshi, then Deku would look at him with that stupidly horrible watery look in his eyes, and Auntie Inko… Auntie Inko would just be sad and disappointed, and that’s worse than her being mad.

But before he can properly panic, Hitoshi emerges from the dark again. “You’re right,” he says. “It’s a human, and they’re injured. Come on.”

By the light of the crackling magic in his palm, Katsuki follows Hitoshi to a sleeping man tucked away in the back of the cave, hidden by a simple spell to mask his presence. He looks young-ish but exhausted, with one arm wrapped in bandages.

“That’s what I smelled,” Hitoshi whispers. “He’s been here for a while.” He grimaces at the sight of the injury. “The land keeps away death, hunger, and thirst, but not wounds.”

Katsuki chews at his lip. He can blast through solid rock with the force of his magic, but he’s never learned how to fix things or fix people with it. “Can you do anything?”

“Not much, but I can try.” Hitoshi passes his hand over the man’s injured arm and shoulder. The man stirs and awakens.

“My mind must be playing tricks on me,” he says faintly. “I could swear there are a pair of children in front of me.”

“Who’re you? Did you come from the Winter Queen?” Katsuki asks, and the man sits up.

“I—yes.” he winces as he flexes his injured arm. “Yes, I’m—call me Tsukauchi. Was I sent for?”

“Don’t know. Did you bring anything with you? Like a tool, or… or a weapon?” A sick feeling stirs in his stomach. If this all goes wrong, then he might have to steal from an injured man and—what then? Leave him for dead?”

“Nothing but the clothes on my back, I’m afraid.” Tsukauchi smiles wryly. “She sent me to the top of the mountain for one of the fruits of immortality. Getting up was easy; getting back down has been tricky.”

The sickness turns to a heavy sinking. “You… you do stuff for the Winter Queen a lot?”

“From time to time, yeah. So—wait, if you don’t mind me asking… how’d you two get past the monster outside?”

“It’s dealt with,” Hitoshi says. “Temporarily, so we’d better leave. Can you walk?”

“Thanks to that little healing, I should be all right,” Tsukauchi replies, struggling to his feet. “Let’s hurry. The fact that you didn’t say it’s dead is making me nervous.”

The giant cow-spider is still standing motionless on the mountainside when they emerge. Tsukauchi shudders at the sight of it but says nothing, and they skirt past it quickly and quietly. Katsuki’s fingers itch to blast it and send the hideous thing packing, but he grinds his teeth and keeps moving.

They’re almost clear when something nearby lets out a hiss.

A woman’s head emerges from a smaller cave, an opening that he missed it on the way up. After the head comes a pebbled green neck, which keeps coming and coming and coming until a coiled serpentine body slithers all the way out into the open.

“Run,” Tsukauchi murmurs, his voice low and urgent. “Both of you need to run. This just got a whole lot worse.”

Katsuki tenses, ready for an attack, but the snake-woman turns away from them, forked tongue darting from her fanged mouth, and turns on the spider instead. His heart lifts, eager to see one monster do away with another. But instead of attacking, the woman hisses and headbutts it, striking it painfully but harmlessly until the glaze of Hitoshi’s magic vanishes from its eyes.

Hitoshi lunges forward, drawing in a breath to speak again, but the spider leaps at him and lashes out with a viciously sharp leg. Katsuki shoves him out of the way and blasts the end of the monster’s leg off. The creature shrieks in pain, and Katsuki attacks before it can recover.

Again and again he lashes out with explosive bursts of fire and thunder. When the head proves too hardy to burn and too dangerous to attack without getting gored, he aims instead for where the legs join the body. When his wrists ache from recoil, he draws the goblin knife and carves through its flesh. Hot, acid blood flecks his arm, burning on contact. Hitoshi attacks from the side, drawing its head and horns away from Katsuki until finally—

Finally the creature doesn’t have enough legs to stay standing. It happens not a moment too soon, when Katsuki’s hands are burned and bloody and his wrists feel ready to shatter. With a yell, Katsuki finishes off the creature by knifing it in the back of the neck.

It’s a hard-fought victory, but only half a victory. The snake woman comes for him with a wordless scream of rage, and Tsukauchi throws an arm around his middle and drags him out of her reach. But she keeps coming, eyes feral and blazing with fury. Hitoshi shouts with all his power, but her screaming drowns out his voice. Katsuki is exhausted, Tsukauchi is wounded and tapped out, Hitoshi is helpless—

In Katsuki’s blurry vision, he sees a familiar small, dark-haired shape fling itself from a ledge further up the mountainside. It crashes down on the back of the snake-woman’s neck, bringing her to the ground with the force of impact alone. But it’s not enough to keep her down, not nearly enough when Deku is small and light and magicless.

Before his shocked eyes, Deku slams his hands over the snake-woman’s eyes and, with a yell of fury, casts a spell.

More to the point, he casts Katsuki’s spell.

There’s a burst of magic like a fiery thunderclap. The snake woman stops moving, and Deku pitches forward off her back and rolls limply to a halt in the dirt and stone.

Hitoshi is at Deku’s side first, with Katsuki only a step behind him. The snake is unconscious or dead. Deku’s eyes are wide and blank, his skin clammy and almost gray. He’s breathing, but only just. Hitoshi tries to lift him up, but Deku shoves him away, rolls over, and vomits weakly.

“Deku—what the fuck,” Katsuki hisses. “You’re not supposed to have any magic, so what the fuck was that—”

“Ah,” Tsukauchi says quietly. “That explains it.”

“Explains what?” Katsuki hisses, as Hitoshi lifts Deku up and away from the puddle of sick.

“Well, technically, there’s no such thing as a creature that doesn’t have any magic,” Tsukauchi explains. “Magic is the energy that keeps us alive, after all. And in your friend’s case, that’s all he has. He tapped his own life force to cast that spell.” He looks at Deku, who continues breathing while still looking like absolute shit. “Don’t do that again. Most people who try that are killed instantly.”

Deku shakes his head, eyelids drooping. “Knew I wouldn’t.” His voice is slurred like he’s drunk. “I know magic. Don’t have a lot, but I know it.”

“Well. Still.” Tsukauchi sighs. “In any case, thank you. All of you. We’d better get off this mountain and leave the Land of the Young while we still can.”

“What the fuck are you doing here, Deku?” Katsuki demands. “We haven’t even been here two days!”

“I waited a bit,” Deku says groggily. He’s piggybacking on Hitoshi, who is now the freshest one in the whole group. “Got tired of waiting. Got a tracking spell with your hair—didn’t do it myself. Got somebody else. No debt.” He looks around, from the back of Hitoshi’s head to Katsuki to Tsukauchi. “Did you find the tool?”

Tsukauchi’s eyebrows rise. Katsuki doesn’t answer.

He’s happy to finally get down the side of that wretched mountain, happy to make it back across the foothills and the meadow and the border of the Land of the Young. The Summer Court is close, freedom is close.

A shadow passes overhead, and the roc swoops down upon them.

Before Katsuki even has time to feel fear, the land lights up with a brilliant burst of light, not fire and thunder like his own magic, but a golden sunburst that almost blinds him. The huge bird shrieks in pain and surprise, and the powerful wind of its wingbeats almost knocks them all flat as it takes to the sky again. The light dims, and a man stands in its place, a brawny arm held high as he chases the roc off with another spell.

Katsuki’s jaw drops. He must look stupid like this, covered in dirt and blood and worse, gaping at the golden-haired giant of a man who just saved them, but he doesn’t care.

It’s not every day you get to meet a legend.

Tsukauchi lets out a burst of hoarse laughter and launches himself at the Summer Knight—or he tries, at least. He’s weak and wounded, and the Summer Knight catches him before he can fall.

“Tsukauchi!” All-Might’s voice booms with joy and relief. “So you are alive, then! I was ready to go looking for you myself!”

“Got stranded up there. Big ushi-oni, you should’ve seen it. Damn thing was filthy enough to get the wound infected, and it took all my magic just to keep it from getting worse.” As Tsukauchi speaks, sparks of bright yellow wind their way around his injured arm, and the man’s unhealthy pallor begins to fade.

There’s a tug at Katsuki’s sleeve. “Kacchan,” Deku says. “Can I have my stone back please?” Katsuk thrusts it into Deku’s hands. Deku looks through it, as if checking to make sure it still works, and hangs it around his neck again.

“Actually, if you’ve got a healing spell to spare, could you see to those kids?” Tsukauchi nods toward them. “That one’s hands are injured, and the other tapped his life force to cast a spell.”

“I see.” The Summer Knight’s face is difficult to read as he approaches. Before Katsuki can insist he’s fine, his battered hands are healed.

Deku takes a bit longer, and even when the sparks fade, he still looks exhausted. Katsuki can tell he’s as bad as he looks, because if he wasn’t, he’d be swooning right now.

“There’s not much to be done besides resting,” All-Might says gently. “That was a foolish thing you did.”

“Had to,” Deku says.

The hero’s hand lingers on Deku’s shoulder. “Even so. You are young and resilient, so you’ll be all right. But if you continue to abuse yourself this way, eventually you’ll start draining years out of your own lifespan.”

Deku nods, and his eyes drift shut.

All-Might turns back to Tsukauchi. “Did you complete your mission, at least? I can escort you back to the Winter Court.”

“No!” Katsuki blurts out before he can stop himself, before he can think about what it means.

“Not yet,” Tsukauchi says. “I think I have a quick errand in the Summer Court first. I’ll talk to you later, there’s just something I need to take care of.”

All-Might nods to him and steps away. A shimmering doorway appears, and he slips through and vanishes.

“Come on,” Tsukauchi says. “Why don’t we discuss things under some cover?”

“I have to take you to Uwabami,” Katsuki says. His voice shakes. “I have to.”

Tsukauchi smiles ruefully, and leads the way back to the forest of Summer. Katsuki’s freshly healed hands shake.

He was stupid. He was so fucking stupid. He should have known it wouldn’t be so cut and dried. Of course the tool wouldn’t be an object. Of course it’s a person, because as far as faeries like Uwabami are concerned, people are objects.

“You’re a changeling,” he says, once they’re back beneath a canopy of trees. “Aren’t you. You work for the Winter Queen, you’re the tool she lost on the mountain.”

“Word’s already spread, then?” Tsukauchi says with a wry smile. “She won’t be happy about that.” He shakes his head. “Here’s a question for you—because you’re a changeling yourself, I can tell that much.” His eyes are sharp, like he’s seeing more than he should; there’s a big part of Katsuki that wants to aim fire at them before he sees too much. “This isn’t just any old task for you, is it? These are the terms for your freedom.”

Katsuki clenches his fists.

“I can tell that, too—because you look a lot like I did, when I was completing mine.”

What little balance he had is destroyed. Katsuki gapes at him, and Tsukauchi keeps smiling.

“You’re half right,” Tsukauchi says. “I was a changeling, to some petty Winter lordling. But I’m not bound to that Court anymore, or anyone. I’m my own man now. I do favors for the Winter Queen, but only those I choose to, and only for a price. I do them well, so she likes me.”

The rotten feeling swells within him, like a corpse in the sun. It’s not bad enough he’d have to hand over another changeling. If he wants his freedom, then he’s going to have to lead a free man back into chains. It’s that or keep being a slave. It’s that or do what Giran wants.

Hand over Hitoshi, or hand over a stranger he’s just met. Shouldn’t this choice be easy?

Katsuki doesn’t realize his eyes are watering until Tsukauchi’s hand lands on the top of his head. “It’s all right,” the former changeling says. “I’ll come with you, either way. But don’t worry about it—I’ll take care of things.”

“Take care of what,” Katsuki snarls through his tears. “A-are you crazy, or just stupid? I told you, I have to give you to—”

“Lady Uwabami is a vain, opportunistic snake,” Tsukauchi tells him, shocking him into silence. “I’ve dealt with her before. If all she told you was to look for a tool, then that was all she knew about it, too.” He grins a little wickedly. “She’d never deal with me willingly, otherwise.”

Katsuki stares at him, wide-eyed.

“All you were told to do was bring me to her, correct?” Tsukauchi says, straightening up again. “Do that. I’ll handle the rest.”

It’s not like he has much choice at this point. Katsuki makes sure to scrub his face dry before they reach the Court, and he’s glad of that. It means his eyes are clear enough to see the look on Uwabami’s face, when he strolls in with Tsukauchi.

“I’m to understand you sent your changeling to fetch me, when I was stranded on the mountain?” Tsukauchi says brightly.

“Well. Isn’t this a surprise.” Uwabami’s face is as smooth as glass; only someone who knows her well would know that she’s seething on the inside. “Tsukauchi. How… wonderful to see you well.” Her eyes are cold and calculating, and if she’s trying to figure out a way to still come out on top. Katsuki tries not to gawk like an idiot. Is there some reason she can’t just snap her fingers and make him a prisoner?

“It was kind of you to send help,” Tsukauchi says. “An emissary like myself can’t afford delays, as I’m sure you know.”

Uwabami breathes in slowly through her nose. “Of course, of course.”

“And kind of you to promise freedom to a changeling child in the same breath. One would think you wanted no reward at all!” The smug fucker is teasing her. “That won’t do, of course. I was on a very important mission on the Winter Queen’s behalf. I’ll be sure that she knows that I could not have completed it, if it hadn’t been for your help.”

Those are the magic words—a favor from the Winter Queen. Uwabami’s eyes go from sharp and dangerous to their usual satisfied sparkle.

“Unnecessary, but greatly appreciated,” she says. “Please send her my compliments.” She glances at Katsuki like she’s half forgotten he was there, and twitches her hand. “Well, off you go then, darling. You aren’t one of mine anymore. Do as you like.”

Katsuki stands in the clearing and stares at her, shaking, until Tsukauchi takes his arm and gently leads him out of the middle of everything.

He stares down at his battered hands, healed but scarred and currently empty of magic.

He can’t do much else, except stare.

And that’s it. He’s free, but what good is it? His freedom isn’t even his own, not really. He didn’t even win it himself. He needed to be helped along, every step of the way—by Hitoshi, by little magicless Deku of all people, by the very tool he’d been sent to go fetch. And after all that, years of blood and sweat and puke, his freedom is an afterthought.

It’s over.

He’s won.

He has never felt so empty in his life.

All he has to look forward to is a world he doesn’t know, and parents he barely remembers, while the woman who raised him stays behind.

(“You’re coming with me,” he growls, once Deku is awake and looking less like he’s halfway to death’s door. “You do know that, right? I’m getting the fuck out of here, and you’re coming with me.”

Deku looks away.)