Chapter Text
The first thing I’m aware of is the patter of rain hitting my skin. Little drops of cold water, hitting my body in random patterns--that’s the first thing I notice. The other stuff starts to creep in afterwards, realizing that I’m lying on a hard surface--pavement--that I’m lying on pavement while being totally naked, not a stitch of clothing to be found, that the hum of voices, the shuffle of foot traffic, of cars going past, means that I’m in public, and worse, means there’s a crowd gathering around me, while I lay naked on a busy street.
I open my eyes, and I’m, I’m--
I’m home. In London, the real London, not the shadowy replica that’s been my prison for God knows how long. I’m home and I’m real again, in a body that feels solid, that can feel the scrape of pavement against my bare skin, that can register cold, that--is completely fucking exposed in front of a crowd of strangers, Jesus Christ. I move to sit up, and the people nearest me take a step back, wary of the strange man who has the nerve to lie down starkers in the middle of a busy street in what appears to be midday.
Hastily covering myself, I peer around me, realizing that I’m on London Bridge, right where this all fucking started, but praise God, there’s not a whisper of Mr. Punch to be found. No cackling laughter echoing in my head. At least that’s one success to be put down at my doorstep, mine and Sir William Tyburn’s.
God, how long have I been out? It can’t have been that long, it still looks to be springtime in London--by which I mean cool and drizzling, so maybe I’ve been only gone for a little bit. A few days, maybe.
But somehow I know better than to believe that.
Dimly, I realize that the crowd around me isn’t acting right--there should be more jeering if nothing else, and more smartphones out. But the way everyone is watching me, the awe and fear on their faces...
And then I hear a voice shouting, “Oi, lemme through, dammit--” And then, bursting between a white middle-aged lady and a bike messenger is Zach freaking Palmer, scrawny and scruffy as ever, his gaze lighting on me before his face splits ear to ear with a huge grin. “Fucking hell, I knew it,” he whoops triumphantly. “I fucking knew the starling would be returning back to London. Been hanging around this stupid bridge all week waiting, and here you are. Took you fucking long enough, mind, those birds have been going mental for the past three fucking days--”
“Zach,” I interrupt hastily, because Zach’s making even less sense than normal. To my alarm, even the sight of his face is enough to fill me with relief, being as it’s both familiar and, if not exactly friendly, at least not openly hostile. “Not that I’m not pleased to see you too, but what the hell is going on?”
Zach throws his arms out wide. “You’ve fucking come home, fam,” he says to me. “Risen back from the dead and everything.” He peers at me a little more closely and adds, approvingly, “With a wicked chest scar and everything too.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice sounding faint. “Dead?”
Zach lets his arms drop, and views me with a concerned air. “Oh. Shit. You are well out of it, aren’t you?”
“Clearly,” I say, holding onto my patience with both hands. “Look, just--” I accidentally catch the gaze of the middle-aged lady standing next to Zach, who’s eyeing me up with far too much interest for my liking, and I flush. “Fucking hell, Zach, before you get started, get me something to wear.”
“Oh, right!”
To give Zach some credit, he hastily scrambles out of his worn denim jacket and hands it to me, along with giving me a hand so I can lever myself up to my feet. Ignoring the slightly.. .odd smell of the jacket, I quickly wrap it around my waist so as to preserve what little remains of my dignity. Tying the sleeves around my hip, I ask, “Zach--not that I’m not pleased to see you, but what the hell is going on? How long--” I stop, then force the words past my lips, “How long have I been gone?”
Zach’s eyes go huge in his face, and I see the moment it hits him that being first on the scene isn’t so great when it means you’re the one who has to provide some answers. “Well,” he starts, “--the good news is, you’re not Sleeping Beauty, so it hasn’t been a century.”
“Zach.”
“Bad news is, you’ve been gone for a year, and just about everyone thinks you’re dead,” Zach finishes quickly, wincing. “But on the positive side--you’re back? And clearly you’re not dead, so you know, positives all around.”
I stare at him, speechless, and of course that was the moment when two police constables finally arrived on the scene, walking towards us briskly, both of them with professionally blank look that, had the circumstances been even a little bit less bizarre, or less upsetting to me on a personal level, I might have applauded. “All right sirs, what seems to be going on here?” the female constable asks us both.
I set my teeth and prepare myself to dive in. I’ve got no ID and no clothes, and I’m accompanied by Zach Palmer, who certainly isn’t going to enhance my standing--but I’ve still got to get through this.
And all I need is to get to Nightingale, and to the Folly. Everything else can work itself out after that’s done. “Constable, I’m DC Peter Grant, with the SAU. This is a Falcon case, and as you can see, I don’t have my Airwave, so I’ll need you to call this in and--”
The PC clearly has stopped listening to me, as she pales beneath her freckles. “I’m sorry,” she says, faintly, “--did you say Falcon?”
“Yes,” I confirm, trying hard not to let my eyebrow fly up at the look of total alarm on her face.
"Oi," Zach says, deciding to insert himself into the proceedings. "Look, this here is Peter Grant, yeah? The Starling--" I could just hear the capital S in his voice, "--apprentice to the Nightingale, and the cause of all that mess with the birds this past week, and oh yeah--he's just come back from the dead." Zach pauses for a moment, then adds brightly, "But not in a zombie way, though, I don't think."
The look on the PC's face at hearing all this is a picture, and I can't blame her in the least.
"I'm calling this in," the PC says at last.
"Please do," I say. "And make sure that Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale is informed."
While the PC makes the call on her Airwave, I'm left to stand about in my bare feet, nearly naked, with only Zach Palmer to answer the dozens--hundreds--of questions I've got rattling about in my head.
I pick one that seems the least likely to make my head explode. "What were you talking about earlier, with the birds?"
Zach's face lights up. "Oh!" He rummages in the pocket of his jeans and then pulls out a iPhone. "You have to see this, it's amazing. Well, I mean, you caused it after all."
The 'it', as it turns out, is a Youtube video, camerawork shaky, of a flock of starlings moving in midair over the Thames, dipping and rising in perfect unison, as though they were a hive, moving with one mind. The sight is beautiful and eerie, and something in me twists at the sight of it.
"I didn't do this," I tell him, and at Zach's disbelieving look, amend, "Well, I didn't mean to do this, I don't remember--" I try to grope for a memory, but my recollection of my--my time away has already seemed to grow muddled, cloudy. I think, I'm almost positive I remember Sir William saying to me at one point, Don't worry, they'll know you're coming home, but even that's vaguer than I'd like.
"Well, it happened whether you meant it to or not. For the last three days straight, at the same time each day, at same spot, ever since the anniversary of your death--or disappearance, I suppose," Zach tells me.
Jesus. I stare down at the phone, and then the question comes out of me, almost without my knowledge, "Is everyone alright? My mum, Beverley, Nightingale--everyone, they're okay?"
Zach's eyes go wide, and then a sympathetic look appears on his face. "Yeah, mate. They're all good. Your mum's started working for the Folly, as a secretary, I think? And your cousin's gone and officially joined as an apprentice. The Nightingale's still around, the Folly's still standing. Your girlfriend's all right too," he says, and then adds as an afterthought, "Well, she's more terrifying than she used to be, but that's to be expected."
The relief at hearing everyone's all right is enough to make me go weak at the knees, even as my ears prick at the mention of Beverley--terrifying, what the hell does that mean? But I don't get a chance to press him on it, as I hear sirens approaching, and there's an ambulance coming down the bridge towards us.
There's something depressingly fitting about my return being marked by the sound of ambulance sirens. At least I can't be blamed for any collapsing buildings--at least not yet.
To my surprise, Zach decides to stick around while the paramedics check me over, wrapping me up in a shock blanket. As the female paramedic hands Zach's jean jacket back to him, his eyes narrow, and then widen in recognition. "Esme!"
The paramedic, who appears to be South Asian and, upon closer look, part-fae, rolls her eyes. "Palmer, will you back off and let us do our jobs here?"
Zach is clearly past paying attention. "Esme, look, it's Grant. It's the starling, he's returned."
"Yes, Zach, you've won the pool, congratulations," Esme says wearily, then at my surprised look, explains, "There's been a betting pool at the Chestnut Tree, Zach won it."
"Not that I'm not pleased to have you back," Zach quickly interjects. "I'm just also pleased to be five hundred pounds richer. Should've gotten in on it, Esme."
Esme rolls her eyes as she strips the pressure cuff off my arm, my blood pressure having met with her approval. "I'll settle for not pissing off Beverley Brook--or the Nightingale," she adds, as an afterthought. "I’d prefer not to be drowned any time soon."
"But it's fine now," Zach protests, gesturing at me. "Look at him."
Esme sighs loudly, and looks over at me. "Do I have your permission to tell him to fuck off?" she asks.
"Sure," I say, and turn to Zach. "Thanks for the jacket. And--" I hesitate, but I've seen far too much sci-fi not to be cautious, and so I say next, "Do me a favour, though-- stop by the Folly. In case they haven't gotten word yet."
"Will do," Zach says, and the tosser actually gives me a salute. A sloppy one, but there it is. "Thanks for the five hundred quid, mate."
As Zach disappears into the crowd, presumably to collect his winnings and hopefully to send word to the Folly that I've returned, a blue Porsche pulls out of traffic to park itself right next to the ambulance.
Tyburn steps out of the driver's seat, and without quite meaning to, I can feel my spine straightening as she looks me over.
Before I'd disappeared, before that last deadly confrontation with Martin Chorley, my relationship with Ty had come a long way. Dating Bev had helped, sure, but what had actually turned things around was when I'd finally managed to finish the big, sprawling paper on modernizing the Folly. Not that I'd had much of a chance of implementing most of those changes, as the hunt for Chorley and Lesley had heated up.
Maybe they'd pushed those changes through, after I had... not-died.
As she walks over to us, a part of me wants to ask if Sir William had sent her. I refrain, but only just barely. "Hello, Tyburn."
Tyburn doesn't say anything, just looks at me, her mouth pursed. When she finally speaks, it's to Esme, saying in a brisk tone, "You'll need to take him to the A&E at St. Thomas. They'll be able to take things from there."
"I'm sorry?" Esme says, in a fainter voice than before. Clearly the appearance of Ty on the scene has impressed her, even more than my miraculous return from...where I was.
"What kind of things?" I ask, and Ty turns her attention back to me.
"There's a protocol that needs to be observed," she says, calmly. "Your sudden...reappearance needs to be handled properly and in private, not as some public sideshow on London Bridge."
I don't actually have a real objection to that. What's got me tense is the fact that it's Tyburn delivering this decree, rather than the plain-clothes officers I can see have also arrived on the scene.
But then, Tyburn's the one on the scene, and I can't argue with her. Not when I know she's not wrong.
"So I'm to be poked and prodded until you can prove I'm the genuine article, is that it?" I ask, keeping my voice as steady as I can.
"You can't have expected anything else, Peter," Ty says to me.
"No, I suppose not," I agree. All those carefully-cherished fantasies of simply walking into the front door of the Folly, walking into Bev's house on the riverbank, or my mum's flat at Peckwater, of just being able to go home--
It's just a delay, I know that. I'm already home. But my stomach's sinking down to my feet anyway.
Tyburn's expression doesn't change, but her voice gentles just a touch as she says, "You'll see Nightingale soon, Peter, I promise."
"And Beverley," I say, looking back at her.
Ty pauses, but then agrees. "And my sister too."
"All right," I say, although I know there's no other option to go along with Ty's plans. "St. Thomas it is, then."
*
Being poked and prodded, it turns out, was an understatement. I've had six vials of blood taken so far, I've been fingerprinted, I've had my cheek swabbed for a DNA test, hair plucked from my head for yet another DNA test, and I'm currently lying flat on my back, undergoing what promises to be the first of many MRIs. The doctors and nurses they've got assigned to my case are professional but wary, and from the way their eyes flick up to look at me when they think I'm not looking tells me they know something of my story, even if it's not the full truth.
They're all fascinated with the puckered scar on my chest, right above my heart, and its corresponding scar on my back. “This isn't listed on your records,” one of the nurses, a older white woman with her gray hair pulled back in a bun, says. She's got a faint Eastern European accent--Polish would be my guess. “Where--can you tell me what caused this?”
I briefly consider lying, but instead I go for nothing less than the truth. “A spear,” I tell her.
Her mouth opens briefly in shock, and for a second I think she's going to press me for more, but in the end she just says, “I see,” and makes a note on her clipboard, carefully tilted so I can't read it.
I don't know her. Just like I don't know any of the doctors or nurses that have come through. For all I know Dr. Walid's come barreling over from UCH and is hovering outside the door right now, for all I know Dr. Vaughan's the one reviewing every test result as it comes back in--but I haven't seen them, or Nightingale, or Beverley, or Guleed or Seawoll or Stephanopoulos—Christ, not one familiar face. Even Tyburn's disappeared to who knows where.
I keep my temper as best as I can, I hang on to my patience as best as I can.
But when the MI-5 spooks show up in my hospital room, my patience is put through its own battery of tests. I had wanted to see familiar faces, but these are not the ones I had in mind.
"Hello, Finula. Arthur," I say, keeping things polite.
"DC Grant, it's good to see you," Finula says politely. "If rather unexpected."
Arthur just nods his head, taciturn as ever. Underneath the harsh lighting, I can see that his blond hair is thinning.
"What can I do for my favorite spooks?" I ask, giving them both a winning smile. Arthur just squints at me, mouth pursed, while Finula gives me a faint smile, but it's one that doesn't reach her eyes.
"We need you to undergo an assessment," Finula explains, and when I pointedly look down at my hospital gown, she adds, "It's a questionnaire, just so we can note your account of...recent events."
Like my sudden resurrection back to the land of the living.
"All right," I say, like I actually have any choice, like I have the option to refuse. Let's get started then."
Finula and Arthur both pull the rickety hospital chairs right up to the bed that I'm perched on. Arthur pulls out a small moleskine, while Finula balances a tape recorder on her lap.
Without anything to do with my hands, I fold them in my lap and wait.
Once the tape recorder's on, Finula recites the date, time, and location in a dry tone, and then turns to me. "Please state your full name for the record."
"Peter Saikou Grant."
"Date of birth?"
"April 27th." With a jolt, I realize my birthday's coming soon, that I'll be a year older--well, two, technically, depending on how you'd count it.
"Your father's name?"
I'm surprised at the quick spasm of grief that goes through me. "His name was Richard James Grant," I say. Of course, they could tell me that themselves, along with the exact date and time of his birth, death, and likely every place he'd traveled to in his lifetime, but I'm well aware that's not the point of this little exercise.
"And your mother's name?"
"Which one?" I ask them. "She's got two, you know." Finula just flicks one eyebrow upward, waiting, and I sigh. "My mother's birth name is Mamasu Kamara, she changed it to Rose when she came to the UK."
Arthur clears his throat. "And where were you born and raised?"
I, Peter Grant of Kentish Town, do hereby swear to--
I've paused for too long, both of them are looking at me now. "Sorry," I say. "Born in London. Raised on the Peckwater Estate in Kentish Town."
It goes on like that for a long while, tedious and exasperating in equal measure, as Finula takes me through the minutia of my life, Arthur taking note and squinting at me the entire time. We cover my time at Hendon, my apprenticeship with Nightingale, and finally, we get to the events of March 2017, and my final, deadly meeting with Martin Chorley.
"I would've thought this would be in Nightingale's report," I say carefully.
"It is," Finula says. "But it's your perspective we're looking to get."
"All right. Once the building was cleared, I went in, Chorley was there, we fought--"
"Physically?" Finula asks.
"No, with magic," I say, biting back any snottiness. "I told him I was arresting him on suspicion of murder, various acts of terrorism, conspiracy to commit murder, and told him to surrender. He didn't, we fought, and I killed him."
"Before the warehouse exploded," Finula pushes.
"Yes, before."
"So what caused the warehouse to explode?"
I stay silent, caught in the memory of that day, Chorley's nose and chin lengthening into that moon-shaped caricature, his voice rising up into that high-pitched cackle even as he shrieked in despair, "No, no, no!"
And then he’d rounded to face me, and I'd seen my moment, and I'd taken it. Everything else that came afterwards was--payment.
"Peter?" Finula prods me, after a moment has passed. "Can you tell me what caused the warehouse to explode?'
"Mr. Punch," I say shortly. "He was--there, for lack of a better term. And very angry. He just happened to go after Chorley first.”
If Finula is frustrated with my vague answers, she gives no sign of it. “Why Chorley first?”
“He was...offended,” I say, slowly. “Chorley’s plans were about controlling Punch, harnessing him for Chorley’s grand schemes--except it’s Mr. Punch. He's the god of riot and rebellion in Merry Old England--you don't control him. And once Chorley turned on Lesley, that was it so far as Punch was concerned.”
“So Chorley was sequestered by Mr. Punch,” Arthur says, scribbling away madly with his ballpoint pen. “That tracks with the damage we saw to the corpse’s face, at least.”
“And as he was being sequestered, you saw your chance,” Finula says.
“Yes,” I say, tight-lipped.
“By beheading him with a magic spell,” Finula says.
“Yes.” I don’t say anything else, either as elaboration or excuse, because what can I say? I cut a man’s head off. Never mind that he was the most evil fucker I’d ever had the misfortune to meet, never mind that he’d cut a bloody swatch of pain and murder and mayhem through London--I had still cut off his head. After you admit to doing a thing like that, you can’t say very much else.
“And once Chorley was dead, what happened with Mr. Punch?” Finula asks me.
“He came for me,” I tell them.
The poker faces that greet me at this announcement are really impressive, it must be said. Yet that’s a tell in its own way, their still faces and still bodies signalling that if I were to get up and shriek, “That’s the way to do it!” and have my nose and chin twist and lengthen into that malevolent mask, they wouldn’t be surprised at all.
Finula only says a single word in response. “How.”
“He wasn’t trying to sequester me,” I explain, because one word answers are just not going to cut it here, not at this point. “He wanted--he knew he wouldn’t be able to stay in this world, not like before. But he wanted to get his revenge against me, and so he did.”
Right on cue, Finula’s gaze drops to my chest, which is thankfully covered by my paper thin hospital gown. “The doctors mentioned you had a new scar,” she says, gently for her.
“I do,” I confirm for them. “Mr. Punch gave it to me. When he plunged a spear through my chest and left me pinned at the center of London Bridge like a dead butterfly.”
There is a brief moment of silence while everyone absorbs this, and then Arthur says, carefully, “But not...the actual London Bridge.”
“No,” I say. I try to keep my mind away from that moment of terror and pain, Mr. Punch cackling madly as he stabbed me through with the plinth. What it had felt like to scream and scream, knowing that no one could save me.
I try not to think of it, and I mostly fail—it’s only a question from Finula that drags me back to the present, to this reality, where I was eventually saved—first by Sir William Tyburn, and then by myself.
“Sorry,” I say through a suddenly dry mouth. “Could you repeat that?”
“Did you realize when you were...” Finula pauses, and then continues delicately, “elsewhere, how much time was passing?”
“No,” I tell her. “I thought—I hoped it wasn’t too long, maybe a few weeks at most but not, not a year.”
Sir William had been very circumspect, the few times I had asked him about it. The few times I had remembered to ask him about it. Don’t worry so much, he’d always said. “You’ll be home soon enough—just in time to catch your mum’s cooking, in fact.”
“There you were, trapped in that reality, with Mr. Punch--what happened? What did you do for all that time?”
“Hunted,” I said slowly. For a moment I could feel the heft of a spear in my hand again. “I had help, though.” And I remembered Sir William whooping with a savage joy as he ran at my side, happy to have something to hunt again, happy to have a hunting partner.
I’ll have to talk to Lady Ty about that.
“And now you’re back,” Finula says. “Mind telling us how you managed that?”
I consider trying to explain all of it, the long fight to hang on to my memories, my self of self, to recall the oaths I’d made that still bound me. I considered trying to describe it, and decided to cut to the chase instead.
Besides. That’s not a story for these two.
“I could,” I say, keeping my voice polite but brisk. “But I don’t think you’re really interested in that story. What you want to know is if I brought Mr. Punch back with me. If he’s lurking somewhere in the back of my head.”
No one says anything for a moment in response to that. I can see Finula looking me over, I can see Arthur glancing to check that he’s between me and the door. And I know, somewhere outside this room, is Lady Ty, that Nightingale is also somewhere in this building, waiting, preparing himself for--for whatever needs to be done.
Finula is the one to break the silence, asking with a truly remarkable display of casualness, “Well? Is he there in your head right now?”
“No,” I say, but concede, “But there’s no way for you to know if I’m telling the truth, I understand that. What I’d suggest, if I were you, is bringing someone in who can tell if I’m really myself, or if I brought company with me.”
“And who,” Finula asks, “would be able to do that? Inspector Nightingale, perhaps?”
“No,” I say in response, and I have the pleasure of watching Finula show a flicker of surprise at my answer. “You should talk to Lady Ty.”
*
By the time Ty finally shows up, my patience is fraying. I know why this is all happening, I even support it on a rational level, but God--I want to eat some food, I want to see something that isn’t the beige walls of this hospital room, I want to wear proper clothes instead of a hospital gown, I want--I want to go home.
But then Tyburn steps into the room, and I know I’m getting closer.
“I almost think I should be flattered,” Tyburn says lightly as she comes in. “Apparently you think I’m the one to tell if you’re the real deal after all.”
I give her a look. “No, I think you knew it was me the second you saw me on London Bridge this morning,” I say to her.
Tyburn tilts her head. “Oh, I definitely knew it was you. Whether you brought someone else with you is the question of the hour.”
“Well, you would know,” I say without thinking, and then have to keep from wincing as she gives me a hard look.
“I suppose I would,” Tyburn says eventually. She takes a breath, and then briskly walks over to the bed. “All right. Give me your hand.”
I hesitate, and Tyburn raises her eyebrow at me. “This was your idea, Peter.”
“Yeah,” I admit, and after a moment, place my left hand in hers. Tyburn’s hand is cool to the touch, and I glance warily at her. “Okay, so what--”
“Shh,” Tyburn says. “Just be quiet, look into my eyes, and let me in.” Her voice was low, almost hypnotic, and in her dark eyes I could see rushing water. I exhaled, and stayed quiet and still, vaguely aware of the smell of meadowgrass tickling at my nose.
I don’t know how much time passed, exactly, but after what feels like only a few moments Tyburn blinks, her gaze sharpening as she comes back to herself. “I see you met William,” she murmurs.
“Yeah, he was…” My throat tightens for a moment, remembering that last goodbye, William smiling at me as I recited my oath, kissing me goodbye on the forehead as he’d said, “Give Cecelia my regards, all right?”
“He was really helpful,” I say, clearing my throat. I look up at her as I add, “Wanted me to say hello to you.”
I can’t read the fleeting expression on Ty’s face, and don’t bother trying to decipher it. “Well,” she says softly, then shakes her head a little, as if to get ahold of herself. “I’m pleased to report that the only thing rattling around in your head is, in fact, you.”
“No echoes of Mr. Punch?” I press her.
“No echoes,” Tyburn confirms, and while it’s what I expected to hear, what I knew to be true--there’s still a relief in hearing someone else say it. Particularly someone with as much pull as Tyburn. I might actually get to leave UCH before my next birthday at this rate.
I exhale, and before I can think twice, I ask, “How’s Beverley?”
I’m not imagining the brief pause before Tyburn answers me with, “She’s fine, Peter.” My eyebrows come together at this too-short answer, and Tyburn gives me a faint smile. “I promise, she’s all right. You...you’ll see her soon, she’s in Birmingham at the moment but I’m sure she’ll--”
“Birmingham?”
No need to decipher the flash of irritation that moves across Tyburn’s face, although I’m sure I’m not the cause of it. “Yes, Birmingham. Don’t ask me for details on that--you’ll hear them soon enough.” Whatever irritation Tyburn’s feeling at Bev’s travel plans is clearly put to one side as she looks down at me, openly considering, before she says next, “Do you know...I’m genuinely relieved to have you back with us, Peter. For many reasons.”
Her eyes are sharp as she looks at me, and I try and fail to come up with a response, only to settle on a faint, “Thank you.”
Tyburn gives me another faint smile, and walks out without another word, the click of her heels the only sound in the room. Once the door shuts behind her, I let out a long breath, and I wait for Nightingale to appear.
*
It’s not that I don’t know how long I’ve been gone, that in the year I’ve been away everyone I knew, everyone I loved, believed that I was dead.
It’s just--it’s a hard thing to truly grasp, especially when I’ve been shut away in this hospital room, with no phone or TV or internet, no way for me to adjust to this reality where a year’s gone by. For all I know, self-driving cars are a legit thing right now, and not the malfunctioning toys of billionaires in Silicon Valley. Maybe we have a new monarch. Maybe Molly’s come out of the Folly and travelled the world. Maybe Nightingale--
But my mind shies away from thinking about that. Or about what Beverley’s been up to, what the reasons might be for Tyburn frowning at the mention of her, for Zach calling her terrifying.
And then I hear the creak of the door opening, and I abruptly stop thinking of anything at all, because Nightingale is standing in the doorway, wearing a suit I recognize, silver-tipped cane in hand, presenting an image of perfect composure--that is, as long as you’re not looking at his face. As long as you don’t see how pale his cheeks are, the way his mouth is tightly pressed together, how his eyes are glittering with emotion.
I stumble to my feet, the tile of the floor cool against my bare toes. “You’re here,” I say dumbly. Looking at him right now, I can’t believe I thought I was gone for a few weeks.
“I’m--” Nightingale catches himself, biting his lower lip so hard I fear that he’ll draw blood. He stares at me, his gaze scanning every inch of my body before finally resting back on my face.
He still hasn’t actually come inside the room. “You can come in,” I offer after a minute. “Tyburn’s made sure that it’s--that it’s safe.”
Nightingale’s nostrils flare at that, and then he abruptly takes two quick steps inside, shutting the door behind him, all while keeping his gaze locked on me. He grips his cane and says, his voice sounding like it’s coming from a far distance, “I’d like you to produce a werelight for me, if you would.”
Of all the things I pictured Nightingale saying when I came back home, this was definitely nowhere near the list. Yet how can I refuse, with Nightingale looking at me like that, so brittle that one good push might make him shatter?
So I hold out my hand, and even though I’m years past needing to say the word out, I whisper, “Lux,” and create a warm globe of light in the palm of my hand. I don’t bother with any variations, nothing at all flashy, just the werelight. And my signare, the one thing that nobody can fake, that marks me as Nightingale’s apprentice, as a wizard of the Folly, as myself, as I’ve always been.
I can see the moment it hits Nightingale, the second that he recognizes it--his expression doesn’t change, but his eyes become wet, shining in the reflected light.
I close my hand, not because I can’t keep the spell going but because my own vision’s grown blurred. “I--”
“Again, please.”
I hesitate before doing as he asks. “It really is me,” I say softly, hating the pleading note in my own voice, the way that I want him to stop holding himself with the parade-rest posture of a soldier, to just come and clap me on the shoulder, put an arm around me and say, “Well done, you can rest now, you’ve come home.”
It’s a selfish, self-centered wish, and I’m sorry for it the second that Nightingale’s face wavers, his jaw working from emotion before he asks me once more, “Again. Please.”
If I end up breaking the electronics in this place, Dr. Walid will never let me hear the end of it. I let out a slow breath, close my eyes, and wordlessly fill the room with dozens of tiny werelights bobbing in mid-air, the light kept to a dim glow so as not to blind us.
It’s a bit flashy, but that’s not important. What is important is what we can’t see in the room, the vestigia I carry with me, that I’ve been told smells like fried plantain, that carries the heat of a hot summer afternoon and the faint sound of breaking glass--a carryover from my adventures on top of the Skygarden roof.
Nightingale lets out a soft, low sigh as his shoulders slump, as if he’s finally put down a burden too great to carry.
“Thomas,” I say, the name fitting easily in my mouth, like it’s the hundredth time I’ve called him that and not the first. “Thomas, I promise you, it’s really me.”
I start to walk towards him, slowly, the way you’d approach a skittish animal, my hand held out in front of me. Nightingale watches me step forward, but he’s not wearing that awful mask anymore, instead he’s watching me with a wondering look on his face, almost...almost awed, like I’ve performed the world’s most incredible trick and he can’t fathom how I did it.
And then he starts to step forward to meet me, jerkily at first as if his legs refuse to work properly, and then--
And then Nightingale’s arm is around my waist and he’s leaning his weight against me, his face resting against my shoulder, his breathing coming in harsh gasps while I carefully, slowly bring up my hands and place them in the center of his broad back, letting the werelights extinguish as I do.
Nightingale and I have lived together for half a decade at this point, which brings its own sort of intimacy with it, whether you want it to or not. But this is--this is just overwhelming, being back in my real body, in this world, feeling the heat and strength of Nightingale’s body resting against mine, an anchor holding me to this spot.
My throat’s burning as I let my hand move in slow, soothing circles between his shoulder-blades, the reality of the situation crashing on my head. I was the last remaining apprentice of the Folly, and I went and fucking died on him. On all of them, Molly and Beverley and Abigail and, Christ help me, my own mother, who’d lost her husband just a year before her only son went and fucking disappeared.
“I’m sorry,” I say very quietly, the words feeling hopelessly inadequate. “I swear I didn’t mean to go, and I really didn’t mean to be gone this long.”
I feel Nightingale take a deep, bracing breath, my hand rising and falling on his back as he drags air into his lungs, and then he says, his voice so quiet and still almost savage in its ferocity, “Don’t you dare apologize to me, not for any of it. You...”
He still hasn’t moved. He hasn’t moved an inch, and I don’t think I could make myself move if I tried.
“Christ,” Nightingale says, softly, and then suddenly steps back and away from me, scrubbing at his face with his hand as he says, jerkily, “I have--good God, I have to call your mother.”
And before I can say anything else, he’s leaving the room without a second look back at me. I slowly sit down on the edge of the bed, my legs unsteady, and fold my hands in my lap to keep from shaking.
Nightingale reappears just a few moments later, thank God, still looking ruffled but also present in a way he wasn’t before, a light in his eyes that was absent before now. “Your mother’s on her way,” he assures me. “Seawoll had already arranged for her to get a ride here, once Tyburn--I mean, once we were assured that…”
“That I wasn’t a double agent?” I joke, offering him a little smile, a way to bridge the awkwardness, turn the conversation away from what would’ve happened had those suspicions turned out to be correct, what Nightingale would’ve had to do…
Better not to think about that. Better to think about my mum, about Beverley, once I see them again.
“Beverley’s been told, right?” I say suddenly, anxious, and Nightingale gives me a quick smile.
“Tyburn assured me she would handle that--insisted on it, in fact. Under the circumstances, I felt it best to concede.”
There’s something about that that pings as wrong in my head, but Nightingale’s hovering there awkwardly, and it’s on the tip of my tongue to offer him a chair, but for some reason that I can’t fully explain, I shift over on on the bed, making room for him to sit on the edge of it next to me.
Nightingale immediately take the silent offer, carefully placing his cane to one side as he sits next to me, looking me over once more, but with a concerned, anxious air this time. “Are you hungry?” he asks me. “You’ll be released soon, I’m told, but I’m sure we could find you something.”
“No, I’m all right,” I assure him. “Besides, I’m kind of waiting for something more decent than hospital food.”
Nightingale smiles at this and says, “If your first meal isn’t something cooked by either Molly or your mother, I fear there will be open revolt.”
I laugh at the idea of my mum and Molly teaming up, then go quiet as I realize that might actually have happened already. I look back over at Nightingale, who’s still watching me with that awed, disbelieving look. A shiver goes down my spine, and I blurt out, “Everyone’s all right, aren’t they? Zach told me that everyone was okay, but--”
Nightingale’s face softens. “Everyone’s all right, Peter,” he promises. “Abigail and Sahra are apprentices now--” my eyes grow huge at Sahra’s name being mentioned, nine million additional questions jumping to the forefront of my brain, but Nightingale’s continuing, saying now, “Your mother’s been brought on as administrative support for the Folly, and Beverley--” I know I’m not imagining the faint pause in his voice before he says, “Beverley’s fine. She’s been very helpful to us over the past year as well, even if…”
He trails off again, and I press him, a cold spike of worry in my head as I ask, “But she’s okay?”
“She’s fine, Peter,” Nightingale tells me. “It’s only that she’s missed you very badly. We all have.”
“Oh,” I say softly, staring down at my hands. “Does it help if I say that I missed all of you too?”
“It does, actually,” Nightingale says, his voice thoughtful. When I look up, he’s biting at his lip again, but in a more abstracted way this time. Clearly hesitant, he asks, “Your time away, was it…”
I try, but a shudder goes through me. It had been easier to keep the horror of it away while being questioned by Finula and Arthur, they hadn’t really understood what it meant, me being trapped in that ghostly version of London, but Nightingale...Nightingale will understand all of it. “It wasn’t exactly a holiday.”
“The scar on your chest,” Nightingale murmurs gently, and I don’t flinch, but it’s a near thing.
“Turns out our old friend Mr. Punch comes from the “eye for an eye” school of revenge,” I tell him, trying to keep my voice light.
Nightingale’s jaw tightens. “So that was--” He stops, and explains in a tight voice, “After the warehouse exploded, but before we could think of going in, there was a scream--” His voice cracks at the memory, and he pauses before continuing on. “I’m told nearly everyone connected to the demi-monde in London heard it, no matter their location.”
“Yeah,” I breathe out, my voice nearly a whisper. “Yeah, that was me.” I glance down to find my right hand trembling where it’s resting on my knee, I squeeze it into a fist to stop it from shaking.
Next to me I can hear Nightingale exhale softly, and then he’s reaching out and holding my bare wrist in a reassuring grip, his hand warm and strong on my skin. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t tell me that I’ll be fine and that I’ll get over it, that the memory of that spear plunging into my chest will fade away like mist. Nightingale’s a truthful man, after all--he wouldn’t lie to me like that.
But he doesn’t let go of me, and his steady grip is the most reassuring thing I have felt all day.
“It was Tyburn that helped me out,” I tell him eventually, looking over at him. “The old Tyburn--Sir William. He was there, he pulled the spear out of my chest, helped me off the bridge. Then we hunted Punch together.”
“And did you get him?” Nightingale asks me.
“Yeah,” I say, and I can’t hide the satisfaction in my voice at that. It’s not something I take pride in, mind--but I’m not hiding it either. “Yeah, we got him.”
“Good,” Nightingale says, his voice darker now, almost savage.
I look at him and pick one of the many questions circling around in my head. “Did you know? That I was...that I was out there, that I’d be coming back. Zach said that there were signs, like the starlings.”
Nightingale closes his eyes briefly. “No. I...there were some incidents, some possible signs, but I couldn’t, we couldn’t let ourselves hope for anything.”
“That way lies madness?” I ask, trying so hard to keep my voice light.
“You have no idea,” Nightingale says, very quietly. His thumb is rubbing circles into the delicate bones at my wrist, almost absently, like he’s not aware he’s doing it. “Those damned birds, Christ help me.”
It’s the outrage in his voice that has me snickering, a little hysterically it’s true, but still laughing under my breath. Nightingale stares at me, shocked for a moment before his face breaks out into that joyous grin that makes him look decades younger, and he laughs with me until the sound of it fills up the entire room.
We’re still laughing when the door opens, and I look up and away from Nightingale to see my mum, it’s my mum standing in the doorway, Seawoll and a couple of other officers behind her, all of them staring at me like they’ve just seen a ghost.
Nightingale lets go of my wrist, and we both quickly get to our feet. “Mum,” I say, already reaching out for her, not caring about anything else in the room, not when my mum’s staring at me like that, her eyes filling up with tears, mouth trembling.
God, she’s--she’s so thin. Don’t get me wrong, my mum’s always tended towards the slender side, I get my skinniness from both parents, but she looks to have lost at least a stone in the past year. As I gape at her, she takes a shuddering gasp, and suddenly she’s coming towards me and pulling me into a bruising embrace, burying her face in my shoulder as she starts to sob.
Oh God, oh God. It’s instinct for me to curl around her, my arms circling her back as I duck my head, tears blurring my vision. My mum smells exactly the same as she always has, and she’s crying so hard now that my hospital gown’s getting soaked through, and I could not give one single fuck, because my mum’s here, and the little boy inside of me’s so damn relieved that I could collapse from it, if I let myself.
“It’s really you,” she’s saying into my shoulder in Krio, over and over again, “My God, it really is you.”
“Shh, it’s all right,” I promise her, my voice cracking, throat aching as I say it. “It’s all right, I’m all right, it’s okay.”
“Do you promise?” she asks me wetly, finally pulling away just far enough to stare up into my face anxiously, disbelief and joy warring in her eyes.
“Yeah,” I whisper, nodding. “Yeah, I promise--doctors cleared me and everything.”
Her mouth trembles at this, and she reaches out to stroke my face, her hand warm against my cheek. “Look at you,” she says softly. “Oh my God, I can’t believe it, just look at you.” She starts to wipe at the tears on my cheeks, her touch tender and firm, and I close my eyes, overwhelmed.
It’s really all right. I’m home again.
“It’s true then?” my mum asks, and my eyes open, but she’s not talking to me, she’s looking over my shoulder at Nightingale. “He’s really all right, Thomas?”
“Sound as a bell, Rose, I assure you,” Nightingale tells her, his voice sounding choked too.
My mum turns her attention to me, cupping my face for one moment before she says, firmly, “Okay. Then we’re taking you home now.”
I take in a shuddering breath of air, letting it fill my lungs before I reply. “Yeah,” I say, wiping at my face with my free hand, knuckling away the last of my tears. “Yeah, that sounds...it sounds really good.”