Father Simon told me once that refusing painkillers isn’t a penance that’s required of me, but that’s not why I do it. Or—penance is the least of those reasons. When Eva brought me home from the hospital all those years ago, seven pills came with me in my bag. Taking the first one was enough to know it wouldn’t be an option. Not for me. Not if I wanted to be alert enough to protect my siblings from my father, and to protect my secret from my siblings. The amount it takes to touch the pain is enough to render me unconscious. I told myself that one day I would be in a position to take them.
It’s never been true. The years have added more responsibilities. More threats. And a reputation that makes it more necessary than ever not to offer that kind of weakness to my enemies. I would never forgive myself if I missed something. If I let danger through because I couldn’t handle the pain.
I woke up from that first and only pill in a cold sweat. It had made me defenseless, made my siblings defenseless, and stole my ability to know when our father was arriving home. The clutching fear set off a new round of pain.
It’s been a long eighteen years.
I take the bottle out of the cabinet and shake it. It’s full. A month’s worth of pills at least.
Enough.
In my office, a bottle of whiskey waits for me in my desk drawer. I don’t particularly like whiskey. Lucian gave it to me as a joke. It burns going down, but my brother was right. It is a joke. A fucking joke. It goes to my head but it doesn’t touch the pain. I can see Haley out of the corner of my eye. Not all of her, just a flash of blonde hair and the glimmer of sunlight in her blue eyes. If I look directly at her, she disappears. I make a game of it. Drink. Look for her outline. Drink some more. Consider the glass paperweight on my desk. Drink. The paperweight is shaped like a rose. Daphne gave it to me when she was twelve. She was so proud of it. The whiskey loses its burn and its taste.
I’ll never see Haley again. She’ll stay with her father, and she’ll help him recover from his heart attack, and she won’t be able to leave. She won’t want to leave. She’ll realize that’s where she is supposed to be. A good daughter. A good sister. Not mine. Never mine. God. Fuck. It hurts. Does it make me a coward to open the pills and take one out? Does it make me a coward to take one? What about two? Three?
I abandon both bottles and take out my phone. I have a question for a person I talked to once. I have a fucking question. Does it make me a coward that I couldn’t ask him before? I’m quite drunk now. Drunk enough that it’s difficult to search my call log for the number. Consciousness starts to play hide-and-seek between rings.
“I don’t have anything you want, Leo. You got your book. Did she like it?” The coldest voice I’ve ever heard spears through my drunkenness. Colder than Lucian’s voice. Colder than snow. Colder than the void of my life without Haley.
“She wept to see it.”
A silence. I hate Hades’ silences. What a prick. “You’ve been drinking.”
“I’ve been dying.”
“In what sense?”
“All of them. And me with no one to say the last rites.”
“If it’s a priest you’re looking for—”
“No. No. I wanted an answer.” Ah—there she is. Getting clearer all the time. Hallucination or dream? I’ll take either one.
“I’ll require the question first.” In the background, a door closes. Is he in his office too? Or somewhere with his wife? I don’t have a wife. I don’t have Haley.
“You’re so fucking demanding.”
“This from the man who’s called me in the middle of the night. Ask.”
“You said you were acquainted with pain.” Haley disappears again. “What kind is it?”
“It’s nerve pain related to a genetic sensitivity to light. My past history worsened the condition.”
“You get headaches or something?”
“I have seizures. Preceded by pain I would describe as excruciating. It’s the feedback loop of the pain that causes the episodes. This isn’t what you want to know. Ask the question.”
“You can’t be a ruthless terror if you have—” A hiccup interrupts me. “If you have seizures. That would make you weak.”
Hades laughs, the sound icy and dark, the tone a vivid illustration of fuck around and find out. “Perhaps. Though it has had little to no effect on my reputation.”
“How?”
“No one in the outside world knows. As far as they’re concerned, I am—how did you put it? A prick with strange eyes.”
“I know. You just told me.”
“You’re drunk. And you sound like you’ve taken pills.”
“Just a few. But I can’t take them normally. Only on special occasions.”
“What’s the occasion tonight?”
“I lost Haley. I sent her out of my house to save her. I won’t see her again. And even if a fucking miracle happened, even if she came back to me, I have nothing to give her.” I stifle a bitter, unhinged laugh. “I’ll die like this. Either I’ll die from the pain, or I’ll be a fucking coward and die from a hit while I’m incapacitated by painkillers. I have too many enemies to risk them.” The dark is closing in. Haley brushes her fingertips over my cheek. “Did you find a way to live with it? Did you find some secret? Or do you just wait to die? That’s what I want to know.”
“A secret for a secret. What happened to you eighteen years ago?”
God help me. I tell him. I just fucking tell him, slipping into a nightmare. He’s a voice on the phone. A windswept mountain. A prick with strange eyes. A confessor. And he keeps his word. When I’m done talking a lifetime later, he tells me a story like a fucking fever dream. About a farm and a mountain. A white building in the city and the sea. And a wide green field with red poppies.
I fold my arms on my desk and put my head down. Bless me, for I have sinned. I don’t receive absolution before I fall into a black, eternal night.
A door opens.
A gasp.
“Leo.”
I’ve been here a long time. I don’t want to wake up. Don’t want to come back. Can’t move.
“Oh, shit. Oh my god. Oh my god.” Glass scrapes on wood. Shut up. Shut up. I’m not here. A muffled sob. “No, Leo, No. Oh, shit, what do I do? What do I—Leo. Please? Leo—”
A hand meets my shoulder blade and pain erupts over my skin. It takes me off the desk with a roar. I sweep one hand out to get them the fuck away. “Don’t fucking touch me. Don’t touch me.” Jesus, it hurts. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I stand up to get out from under it and brace two fists on the desk.
“I thought you were dead.” Daphne stares, her face pale, eyes shining with tears and terror. “You weren’t moving, Leo. Have you been in here all night? Did you drink all of that?” She points a shaking finger at the bottle on my desk.
“Get out.” I glare at her, and she shrinks back. “Get the fuck out.”
“No. I can’t leave you in here. I thought you were dead. Did you try to kill yourself? You’re—you’re scary like this.” I sit down hard in the chair, the fight going out of me. The pain stays. It’s Daphne. My sister. It’s just Daphne.