fish in a birdcage

by limelines

Summary:

If there is one thing Francoise Night is certain of throughout all of her life, it's that she has never quite been like everyone else. Though she wishes she could be more like her peers, it seems as if her wishes fall on the deaf ears of an ultimately uncaring universe. Whatever has contributed to this impermeable barrier between herself and the world at large is so minute that she can never put her finger on what, exactly, has caused it. All she knows is that it's there. Right from the start.

Or: How it all comes together, and how it all falls apart. From childhood to that night in Iago Tower.

If there is one thing Francoise Night is certain of throughout all of her life, it's that she has never quite been like everyone else. Though she wishes she could be more like her peers, it seems as if her wishes fall on the deaf ears of an ultimately uncaring universe. Whatever has contributed to this impermeable barrier between herself and the world at large is so minute that she can never put her finger on what, exactly, has caused it. All she knows is that it's there. Right from the start.

It's apparent from the moment she has the horrific misfortune of starting public school. The other girls look at her, they see her, but they don't accept her. Not in the way that matters. Every time she reaches out, she is met with confused stares, as if she spoke in tongues or grew three heads. She never understands it. She doesn't know what she's doing wrong.

But though she is different, she is not alone.

Always at her back is her brother, Isaac, barely a year older than her and equally strange. Unlike Francoise, though, he has the decided benefit of having an easily-defined reason for his otherness, albeit no less unfair. He is ousted by the other little boys his age, quite simply, for his weak constitution. While they run, play, rough-house and wrestle until someone's mother needs calling, Isaac sits with Francoise, occupying his (and her) time with reading, doodling in a sketchbook or doing his homework. He seems to enjoy explaining every little detail to Francoise, and she is happy to let him.

His favorite subject is science. There's explanations for everything in the world, he says, from the stars in the sky to the way things fall when you let them go. As with everything Isaac loves, it's dreadfully complicated. One thing Francoise does understand is when he talks about animals and how they work. She likes foxes the best. Isaac says foxes belong to a family called vulpes, which sounds funny. They're like dogs, but they're not dogs. Despite their appearance, they're more like cats. Isaac disagrees, insisting that they are neither. It's all the same to her.

Foxes don't have to go to school. Foxes just have their family, and they hunt, and that's it. It seems vastly preferable to being a human, that's for sure.

Isaac's studiousness additionally sets him apart from his peers as he moves into third, then fourth grade. It makes him popular with teachers, less so with other children who are just starting to become old enough to realize that one kid doing a little too good makes the rest of them look bad. Unskilled with words as they are, they resort to more physical means of communicating their discontent, involving a creative assortment of methods from locker-shoving to stolen notes, much to Isaac's endless annoyance. There is nothing Francoise can do but meekly insist that they stop.

The girls are different, more insidious in their methods than the boys. Francoise is spared the shoves and elbows her brother receives - instead, she is treated to hushed whispers when she turns her back and giggles at things she says that really aren't meant to be funny.

It doesn't matter. Francoise has Isaac, and Isaac has Francoise, and that's all that matters.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

In the winter of 1982, just before winter break, Isaac gets sick. Sicker than he ever has been. So sick, in fact, that they take him away to a hospital, and Francoise is left to spend a whole month's worth of recesses, lunches, and tense family dinners alone.

She has never been as scared as the day when they were walking to lunch, engaged in a passionate debate about the ethics of frog dissection in Mr. Hesketh's science class, nothing out of the ordinary, when Isaac's lips suddenly turned blue. He'd sunk to the floor, clutching at his chest, so out of breath that he could not speak. Not a single word. Looking like he did then, pale as a sheet, lungs clearly not obeying, and scared like she had never seen him before, she was certain she was going to lose him right there.

It haunts Francoise's dreams.

They don't visit him, no matter how much she begs to.

Eventually, Isaac is brought home, with a fresh bunch of scary-looking pills and strict orders to rest. He doesn't tell her why, he only insists that she doesn't need to worry about him.

Ultimately, this changes nothing - Isaac has always been a weak child, after all. Weaker, even, than Francoise. Neither of them particularly benefit from forgotten or purposefully skipped meals at home from parents who simply have better things to be doing, be that nipping at a foul-smelling bottle or simply wasting away by the window, watching life pass by. Their parents, after all, are different too. Dad has a gift that they must not speak of at school, though Francoise doubts anyone would believe her if she told them that her father could move things with his mind when he's lucid enough. And Mom... well. Mom is very quiet. The medicine she takes leaves her a shell, barely responding to the world around her. Whatever Dad says, she obeys without question. Isaac and Francoise quickly learn to do the same. Obey, and no one needs to see the back of a hand nor the flat side of a belt. Simple.

Francoise could do simple.

Isaac reads a lot. When the weather finally turns warm again, they frequently find themselves sitting in the meadow behind their house just out of their parents' earshot; Francoise watches the butterflies dance amongst the grass with her head propped up on his knee while he reads aloud from books that rapidly increase in complexity as days, weeks and months pass them by.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

Isaac is in fifth grade and Francoise in fourth when a boy in her class starts a rumor that she and her brother are closer than siblings should be. It's the first time Isaac moves something with his mind, sending a rock flying at the boy's head. Their parents are called.

It's ugly.

For the new school year, Isaac is to be sent away to Nevermore, an academy for people like him with special abilities. It's not far at all, only about a half hour walk, but it still feels like the end of the world.

The mere mention of Nevermore stirs something in their mother. There's screaming, crying, broken glass, police lights. Within the week, Francoise learns what a Hyde is - massive, terrifying beasts with bulging eyes and jagged teeth straight out of her worst nightmares - and she learns that her mother is one. She learns, also, that she will never see her again. They take her somewhere called Willow Hill, leaving Francoise and Isaac with their father and his bottles and his belt.

Mere weeks later, orderlies shadow their doorstep. They tell their father in gentle words that their mother had unfortunately passed away following a violent altercation with their staff. They give their condolences. The words ring hollow to Francoise's ears from the top step that she is crouched at, pressed side-to-side against Isaac, to listen to the conversation. Dad's too drunk to care, to... anything.

When he finally starts sobering up enough to be responsive, he talks like their mother was the devil. She deserved this, he says, monster that she was. Got what was coming to her. Isaac talks back. He scores himself a black eye.

It's all so unfair, Francoise can scarcely comprehend it. She cries in Isaac's arms that night, too tired and too bruised to feel ashamed for taking this one shred of warmth that life would afford her. He strokes her hair and rubs gentle circles along her shoulders until she can breathe again.

She doesn't miss the way his heart beats just a bit too quickly, or the way his breath hitches more and more often. Losing Mom was bad enough, she cannot imagine losing Isaac. It is inconceivable. She knows for a fact that she would not survive.

Jacqueline Night is buried weeks later in the local graveyard, commemorated by an unremarkable gravestone and a funeral which only Francoise, Isaac and their father attend.

The next school year passes by in a blur. With Isaac now at Nevermore, Francoise spends her time alone. She stares at anything from juice boxes to erasers with a feverish intensity, hoping to make them move with her mind. Just like Isaac.

They never do.

Her peers are relentless, now. Gone are the days of subtle jabs - now, the rumors are outright and unapologetically vicious. According to them, she sleeps with her violent brother, her mother was a looney and a witch, she is a witch. It never ends. At home, Dad wants nothing to do with her. He eyes her like she's a bomb waiting to go off. He eyes her like he used to eye Mom.

On the weekends, Isaac sneaks out to see her. She doesn't know how he does it, and she doesn't ask. It doesn't matter. When she's with him, the worries of the world fade into the background. In his arms, she is safe. He shows her everything he's been learning, extending his right hand to make all manner of objects float. Once, he makes a pencil and a notebook fly into mid-air, where he draws her a little fox in the margins of her notes.

The ability he shares with Dad makes him a DaVinci, he explains one night while sitting in her bedroom. The mind is like a muscle, and he need only focus to make the world bend to his whims. He uses it to cheat at checkers. She throws a pillow at him. He throws several back, without touching a single one. Their laughter rings deep into the night.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

Francoise is hellbent on one thing and one thing only, and that is getting into Nevermore with Isaac. Luckily, this is something she never had to worry about. When sixth grade and the prospect of a new school looms on the horizon, her father is more than happy to send her away. The day can't come soon enough; she packs her bags weeks before she accepts her final 'normie school' report card and sets off to Nevermore Academy after a largely uneventful summer break.

Nevermore is overwhelming; a gorgeous, castle-like campus nestled deep within the forest, its students clad in purple-striped uniforms so unlike the attire she knew from public school. Everyone here is so different that, at first, it's refreshing. Even if she never really gets used to seeing the Faceless.

But for the first time, what makes Francoise different is just how normal she is. She is one of very few students who do not have even the inkling of an ability yet, accepted purely on the basis that one would likely manifest soon. The daughter of a Hyde and a DaVinci, she is destined to be something. What that was would reveal itself in due time, they tell her with polite smiles and no small amount of unvoiced concern.

Most jarringly, Isaac has managed to make friends here. It's such a bizarre concept to her, that either of them would have anyone besides each other. Her first instinct when she meets Gomez Addams - the boisterous and loud young boy Isaac shares a room with - is icy cold jealousy. It grips her insides like a vice.

It never truly goes away.

They're a group - Gomez Addams, Morticia Frump, Larissa Weems, and Isaac. A spark, a seer, a shapeshifter and a telekinetic.

And then there's Francoise, who is also there.

No abilities, no friends of her own. An outcast among outcasts.

The kids in her year call her a normie. They say it's not mean, it's just a matter of fact. The cliques that form here are less of a petty social allegiance and more of a rigid forming of camps where each member can support each other as they explore their abilities. Only one thing is truly certain, and that is that Francoise doesn't belong with any of them.

Isaac makes time for her whenever he can and she is grateful for every second where the world is just them again, but he has obligations, classes, extracurriculars. He's trying to make an impression, and it's the first time any of the teachers seem to recognize his potential. Nevermore has done wonders for him, his eyes practically glow with enthusiasm. For the first time, he fits.

It leaves a bitter tang on Francoise's tongue, even against her best efforts. She's happy for him, she tells herself. Anything else would be a betrayal.

As the leaves turn from green to all shades of red, orange and yellow in the first chills of autumn, Francoise starts visiting Jericho again, yearning for something like normalcy in between the DaVincis, the Werewolves, the... everyone, really. The town that used to feel like a trap starts feeling more and more like an escape. A potential.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

She's twelve when she has her first kiss. A boy named Dylan Jones, only slightly older than her.

She meets him in the town book store one day, and it's the first time anyone who isn't Isaac has really paid any attention to her at all. By the third time they 'accidentally' run into each other, it would be ridiculous to call their meetups chance encounters.

It's summer break on the Fourth of July, the night air warm on her skin, when she finally invites him back to her father's house while he is out drinking at the local bar. The bar, which he does not leave. Not even for holidays.

Isaac tells her it's a bad idea in no short order, yanking her aside after exchanging polite greetings with Dylan.

"Dad'll kill you," he whispers, his sunken eyes wide with concern.

"Dad isn't here," she replies easily. She breezes past him and up the stairs to her bedroom with Dylan in tow. "You worry too much."

Kissing, she finds, is weird. Awkward. Kind of messy. But Dylan enjoys it, enjoys her, his eyes closed in bliss while she is trying to figure out what, exactly, she's meant to be doing. His hands are on her, exploratory and uncertain, warm against the skin of her back where they find their way under her sweater. Her heart threatens to beat out of her chest.

Of course, Isaac is right, in the end. Isaac is always right. Dad is home much earlier than expected that night, before the fireworks even start. She is so preoccupied with Dylan that she doesn't hear the door open, or Dad coming up the stairs.

He doesn't bother knocking. By the time she hears the floorboards outside her room groan beneath his weight, it's too late.

Dylan is out the door in moments, scruffed like an unruly cat and thrown unceremoniously out into the street. While he scampers away off into the night, her father rounds on her.

She's never seen him quite so angry. Behind her, she hears Isaac scrambling downstairs.

The first fireworks shoot off into the sky, showering sparks that glow against the stars.

"You're just like your mother," her father snarls. Even from where she's standing, she can smell the sickening-sweet stench of alcohol on his breath. "Just like Jackie! Fucking women, all the same, all you do is ruin people's lives. Bringing a fucking normie kid into this house, what the fuck were you thinking?"

"Dad-" she starts to protest.

Before the word can even fully leave her mouth, a sharp, stinging pain blooms across the side of her face, her head twisted violently to the side by the force of the strike.

The sound of her father's palm connecting is so loud that not even the fireworks mask it.

In the silence following, her disbelief bleeds into anger.

This isn't fair. None of this has ever been fair.

She's only dimly aware of Isaac trying to reason with their father, desperately trying to get him to back off. His right hand is raised. There's yelling. She can't make out the words through the violent haze of red permeating her every thought. She can't breathe.

Behind her eyes, there is a terrible pressure.

And the world erupts into pain.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

When she comes to, she is wrapped in a blanket, cradled against Isaac's chest.

His voice is soft, gentle, despite the sound of his heart thundering against his rib cage. "It's okay. You're okay, Francoise. Everything's going to be okay."

Red and blue flashes illuminate the caustic yellow walls of their kitchen.

They aren't from the fireworks.

Francoise clings to her brother, the only thing she can focus on. Her shaking fingers are closed in a death grip against his sweater. She doesn't think she can let go even if she wants to. She doesn't want to.

When the shock of it wears off, all she can do is cry. Isaac bundles her up and carries her back upstairs, back to her bed.

"I told them it was a bear," he explains softly, offering her her softest pajamas to change into, "Pulled him outside, called the ambulance. I think he'll be fine. They don't have to know, okay? I won't let them take you."

She sniffles, throat raw as though she's swallowed a razor blade. "He's okay?"

He brushes an errant strand of hair out of her face. "He will be. Okay, Francoise? He doesn't deserve it, but he'll be alright."

Slowly, solemnly, she nods, wiping the tears from her eyes. The world gradually sharpens around her. Isaac looks just as terrible as she feels, he's white as a ghost, but there's an intensity in his eyes that she won't soon forget. A grim determination. Her attention catches on a flash of red near his abdomen; a series of long, jagged holes in his shirt.

"Isaac," she breathes, "You're hurt."

He's hurt. Isaac is hurt and she hurt him.

"It's nothing," he says, "Really, it's nothing. They're just scratches. You didn't want to hurt me. I know you didn't want to, and you didn't. I'm okay. I promise."

In an instant, the tears are streaming again. She feels like she's been stabbed in the chest.

"I'm a monster," she wails, "I'm a monster."

Isaac doesn't hesitate in pulling her close again, long arms wrapping around her shaking frame. He shushes her until her breathing steadies again.

"You're not. You are not a monster. He hurt you, and you hurt him. You were defending yourself," he says into her hair, arms trembling but tight around her. "I'll fix this, okay?"

She believes him. More than anything else, she believes him.

Their father comes home some days later, his arm in a cast. They don't talk much, after that. The only act of fatherly love he ever shows her is sparing her from a future at Willow Hill.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

By the time seventh grade begins, her teachers have been informed of her nature as a Hyde, and her classmates finally drop the normie moniker. It's replaced by mildly terrified whispers and a conversational tone so deliberately soft it comes off as condescending. As if she needed any more reason to resent interacting with them. Hydes are rare, she is told. And like Gorgons, not exactly popular, considering just how destructive they could be.

Isaac's little group fully adopts her, that year. They don't have much of a choice, he spends so much time in the library researching Hydes that their only hope of hauling him beyond school walls is by using Francoise as bait. It works, to an extent. She even enjoys herself.

The group is nice enough. Gomez, Isaac's roommate, is loud, flamboyant and boisterous. Eye-roll inducing, sometimes, but alright in moderation. She pities Isaac, having to room with someone who speaks like his own voice is his favorite sound in the world. But there is a softness to him, a kindness, that even she finds endearing. Morticia, meanwhile, is more quiet, but exudes an elegant confidence that Gomez evidently finds very exciting. She has family drama of her own, Francoise learns - a sister, a seer like Morticia herself, but a raven rather than a dove. Afflicted with terrible visions of doom, Ophelia Frump is cause for concern on a semi-regular basis. It's refreshing, not being the only person with problems for once.

Francoise likes Larissa most - she's opinionated but kind, firm but protective. And she has a really nice taste in style. On weekends out, Larissa takes her shopping, equally annoyed by Gomez and Morticia's gross and overt flirting. Honestly, they should just get together, they both agree. But no. Those two need the dance of it the way they need air to breathe. What Francoise doesn't mention is that she sees Larissa making similar eyes at Isaac. Eyes that he seems completely oblivious to.

But then, Isaac seems increasingly oblivious to a lot of things. Distant, even to Francoise, in a way that makes her sick with worry.

Over the school year, he loses a lot of weight, frequently finding excuses to skip out of meals or outings. Now approaching fifteen, he's taken on the appearance of a gangly skeleton, freakishly tall and no meat on his bones. He's not sleeping, either, judging by the dark bruises blooming near-purple beneath his eyes.

Francoise corners him in the hall one evening while the others are happily chatting over dinner. Dinner - which Isaac has once again chosen to skip with the excuse that he just wasn't hungry and had project work to catch up on.

"Isaac, don't lie to me. What's going on?"

He smiles at her, but it's a hollow thing. "Nothing, Fran. Just project work."

God, he looks so tired. "You know you need to eat, right?"

"Just because you don't see it doesn't mean I'm not," he argued.

"That's stupid. Come to dinner."

"Francoise, I'm not hungry. Really. I'm fine."

"Then let me come with you to wherever you run off to. I'm bored, Isaac," she whines, "And I think being around Gomez and Morticia any longer might actually kill me, if I don't kill them first."

He barks a short laugh, something that seems to slip past before he can reign it in. His smile finally reaches his eyes. "Fine. Anything to spare you from those lovebirds."

With a soft and obviously fond sigh, he extends his arm for her to lead the way to the study hall. Delighted by her victory, she all but skips past him.

They spend the whole evening there, mostly in companionable silence save for Francoise's occasional questions. Turns out, he really is working on a project. It's something about hearts. He's drawn some schematics, labelled in his trademark scrawl. In hushed tones sure to keep the overseeing teachers and librarians happy, he explains all manners of things - how blood is circulated around the body, how there are different chambers to a heart, how they can fail. The walls of the heart can thicken, he says, so your heart doesn't pump enough blood. You suffocate even with a lung full of air.

Beneath his coursebook is yet another tome on Outcast abilities, doubtlessly another attempt to learn more about Hydes.

She falls asleep on his shoulder to the tune of the scratching of his pen against paper, more at peace than she's been in weeks. The moon is high in the sky by the time they are both woken up by a teacher, shooing them out with bird-like squawks about curfew. Judging by how groggy Isaac is, he too had managed to catch a few winks of rest. Something like contentment swells in her chest.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

She starts spending her lunch breaks with him and Larissa whenever Gomez is too busy fawning over Morticia and following her around like a lost puppy. Something's wrong with Ophelia - Morticia explicitly told the lot of them to stay out of it, which everyone but Gomez has the sense to comply with. They barely see her for weeks. She resurfaces just after Christmas break, and things finally go back to some semblance of normal.

They even fall into something of a routine.

Beyond the Hyde situation (which Isaac still researches tirelessly), there are still such mundane afflictions as school, classes, grades to worry about. School dances, Christmas, Easter. Time does what it does best, it passes them by, somehow both too slow and too fast at the same time.

It feels like hurtling toward a cliff. The edge feels impossibly far away, but the distance to safety just keeps growing larger and larger.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

When Isaac doesn't show up one morning in the spring of 1989, Francoise thinks nothing of it. With any luck, he's finally getting the rest he so direly needs. She's not stupid, though. More likely, he's in the library.

What's more suspicious is how Gomez isn't here, either.

Still, she shrugs it off. Gomez and Isaac are thick as thieves. She can only hope that they're not off getting into trouble again - the last time the two of them went off on their own, they landed themselves in detention for a week straight.

When neither of them show up for lunch, either, she goes looking.

They're not in the library, nor the courtyard, so she finds herself trekking over to Caliban Hall.

Where she finds only Gomez.

"Where's Isaac?" she asks, taking an uncertain step into the boys' shared dorm room and craning her neck to look around. He's not here. His uniform lays draped across his desk chair, unused.

Gomez blinks at her from where he's sitting - on Isaac's bed, mind - bearing a striking resemblance to a beaten dog as soon as the question leaves her lips. For once, the great machismo is at a loss for words, stammering with his mouth open like a fish drowning on air.

She's about to turn away, patience already worn too short and bleeding into annoyance when he grabs her by the wrist.

"Francoise, wait."

Her skin crawls. She repeats, more urgently: "Where is he?"

Something's wrong, the Hyde whispers into the space behind her ribs where fear begins to freeze into panic. Something is terribly, terribly wrong.

Gomez grimaces. It's an ugly thing on his face, pulling the wispy little mustache he's attempting to grow into all sorts of directions. "Listen, I don't know how to tell you this, but... Isaac... you know he's not... y'know, well?"

Not well? Isaac is... he's fine. He's always fine. He has a weak constitution, that's all. He had a growth spurt, that's why he's so skinny. His body simply hasn't caught up to the fact that he is now rapidly approaching six feet tall. Even though he's more prone to stumbling or needs more rests than he used to, he's always assuring her that it's nothing, and he's fine.

Unbidden, the memory of that day that feels a lifetime ago flashes into her mind. Blue lips, breathless, leaned up against the brick wall of their normie school. A month spent in hospital, and pills he took care to keep out of her sight thereafter.

When she doesn't answer, Gomez finally decides to elaborate. "He collapsed, chiquita. I don't know what happened. One moment, we were talking, laughing, the next minute... boof." He mimes falling over with his hands. "Passed out. Out cold. Started shaking all over."

This can't be happening. Not again. Not now. Not like this.

Francoise can do nothing but stare, covering her slack jaw with a shaking hand.

Gomez continues, "It was terrible. Professor Stonehearst was nearby when it happened, gracias a Dios. Don't know what I'd have done otherwise..."

"When?" she interrupts. She needs to know.

The answer doesn't come immediately. He winces. "Last night."

They didn't tell you.

It's the middle of the day, and no one had thought to tell Francoise that Isaac isn't here, that he was taken away.

Because they're scared of you.

Pressure builds behind her eyes like a threat. Like a promise.

"Francoise, carnalita, breathe," Gomez soothes, guiding her to sit down with a gentle hand on her shoulder. "He's gonna be okay, yes? They took him to a hospital. Come on, I'll get Tish and Larissa and we'll ask a teacher if we can visit."

An hour later, they're all piled into Professor Stonehearst's car, who graciously agreed to take "one or two of you" to see him. Unlucky for him, no one was really willing to compromise. So now, Gomez sits in front, with Larissa, Morticia and Francoise piled into the back. Every bump on the road jostles them together, though none of them dare interrupt the tense silence.

Francoise tries to ignore the looks she's receiving from all of them.

Her head hurts. She closes her eyes against the building nausea.

She would have preferred if none of them came with. It isn't their right.

Beyond that, Francoise knows beyond a shadow of doubt that Isaac wouldn't want to be seen like this, not by everyone. But she doesn't have a say. When does she ever?

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

Isaac is awake when they are finally let in to see him after what felt like hours in the waiting room. Surrounded by machines and the incessant beeping of a heart monitor, he's so pale that he almost blends into the sheets. The only things stopping him from doing so are the deep shadows of his eye sockets and his dark, unruly hair that he normally keeps artfully mussed in a way that he'd never admit takes effort. His lips are cracked, but he still smiles when he sees her.

She's at his bedside in moments, taking his hand in hers, careful not to disturb the machines and needles affixed to him. There's tears running down her face, collecting at the edge of her jaw. She barely notices until he lifts his right hand to let a tissue hover over to her, delicately wiping them away.

"Hey," he says. His voice cracks.

She barely swallows a sob. "Hi."

"The whole gang's here?"

"Yeah." Unfortunately.

Isaac exhales sharply through his nose. "Who drove?"

"Stonehearst."

"He's here, too?"

"We have to get back somehow," Gomez pipes up in his usual jovial fashion, coming up alongside her. "Glad to see you doing better, amigo! Thought you were a goner."

Though he tries to catch it, Francoise sees the way Isaac's face drops, just for a moment, as though he's been struck. It's an expression so profoundly vulnerable that it turns her blood to ice in her veins. It doesn't thaw, even when he regathers himself to give Gomez another thin smile.

"Yeah," he says, then, quieter, "Yeah." She gets the distinct sense it's for himself more so than his roommate,

Larissa makes herself known with a quiet "Hi, Isaac,", though she keeps her distance. She's brought a single flower, a white lily, with her, which she places on his bedside table. It's sweet in a way not even Francoise can deny. "Do you feel any better?"

"Can't complain," Isaac says with an air of nonchalance that contrasts so sharply with the never-ending beeping of the monitor next to him. He nods toward the flower. "Thanks. Didn't want to worry everyone-"

"Don't be stupid," Morticia warns. "Of course we're worried. We've been worried for weeks."

Francoise glowers at her. She's right, of course, in the fact that Isaac has been cause for concern for weeks (years, really). But who is she to say that?

Isaac looks sheepish, pained in an awkward sense. "I thought I had it under control-"

"Well, you didn't. Do you want to tell us what's wrong now? Or are you going to continue pretending?"

"Morticia," Larissa hisses. Thank God she does, because Francoise is inches from throwing something at the raven-haired girl.

"It's... complicated," he tries.

"We have all the time in the world."

Now, even Gomez is hovering at her elbow with a quiet "Tish..."

The beeping speeds up. There's no more smile on Isaac's face. He just looks exhausted, frail in the way a boy just about a month shy of his sixteenth birthday shouldn't be.

A different beeping sounds, and with it, a frazzled-looking nurse comes bustling through the door. "Alright, everyone out. No arguments. Visiting time is over. You can come back tomorrow."

No, no no no. Francoise only just got here, she can't leave him, she can't. She looks to him and finds him staring back at her, his eyes blown wide with horror in a way that likely mirrors her own. His grip on her hand tightens. A plea. It might be the only thing he's ever asked of her, and he doesn't even say it out loud. Don't leave.

She'd sooner burn the whole hospital to the ground than let him go.

"You're the sister?" The nurse asks her.

She swallows. Nods. Her throat feels dry like paper, tongue heavy in her mouth.

"You stay. The rest of you, out."

Thankfully, the others, in fact, do not bother arguing. They say their goodbyes and file out the door. Francoise glowers at Morticia's retreating form.

The nurse wordlessly hands Isaac a pill and a white plastic cup of water, which he takes without protest. It's an awkward affair, he won't let go of Francoise, and he won't use his powers in front of the nurse, leaving him with only one free hand.

"Try not to get your heart-rate up, sweetie. You're not out of the woods," the nurse says, a lot more compassionate with the significantly emptier room. She turns to Francoise. "You're his sister, huh? Francoise?"

"Yes. Yes, that's me," she replies. She can barely raise her voice above a whisper and even still, it wobbles dangerously.

"I'm Nurse Betty. It's nice to meet you. He was asking for you."

That explains how she knew her name.

Isaac asked for her, and she wasn't here. She wasn't here, and no one told her until hours later, while he was all alone.

Betty smiles. It's more pity than sympathy, and it makes her sick. "I'll let you two have a minute."

The tears are back and never-ending the instant the door falls shut behind her. "They didn't tell me, Isaac. They didn't tell me."

"There's nothing you could have done, Francoise. It's okay." He's trying to be encouraging, but behind it all she can see that he's just as scared as she is. It's in the tightness of his grip on her hand, the furrow of his brow.

It isn't okay. Nothing about this is okay.

"What's wrong with you?" she finally asks. It's a question so laden with guilt that it just might crush her. A question carrying the weight of years and years of concern, a re-run of every time she could've, should've asked this exact question running before her mind's eye. All the times she should have asked, instead of blindly accepting that her big brother would always be fine, that no matter what was wrong with him he would always bounce back. Part of her still wants to believe that, even now.

He looks away, dark eyes fixed on the blank white wall across from him. He is quiet for a long time.

"It's my heart," he confesses, finally, between the staccato beeps of the monitor that seem to underline his words. "It's weak. I won't bore you with the science of it. It's just... it's not good."

Something clicks. The late nights in the study hall. His 'project work', intermixed with his never-ending research on Hydes. All this concern about her and her ability while his heart was failing him, and she was none the wiser. Guilt, hot and sharp, nestles between her ribs.

"When will you come back?" she asks.

"The doctors say I might have to be here for a while."

Francoise doesn't think it's possible for her heart to sink any lower. "What's a while?"

"I don't know."

He's shaking. It's subtle, but there. She reaches out with her free hand to caress his cheek. He offers her a watery smile.

He looks so tired.

She stays until the sun has long since dipped below the horizon, until soft conversation fades into companionable silence. It speaks to how drained Isaac is that his breathing soon evens out as he drifts off into sleep, leaving her alone with the sounds of the machines around him and the soft hiss of the cannula they've put up his nose.

Nurse Betty has the sense not to disturb them. Thank God for small mercies. Whatever has become of the others, Francoise doesn't care. Sleep soon claims her, too, her head resting on Isaac's hospital bed and the smell of antiseptic stinging in her nose. She doesn't let go of his hand. Not once.

Eventually, she is woken to a crick in her neck and Nurse Betty ushering her out to a waiting Professor Stonehearst, ready to take her back to Nevermore. She wants to kick and scream, she wants to stay, she has to stay. Isaac has no one else. He'll be alone here, alone in this sea of sterile white and machines and death. But his lips quirk, and he murmurs words of encouragement until she lets the Professor drag her off.

As they pass the waiting room, she meets the bleary eyes of her father, hollow like his life has long since been snuffed out, leaving only a bloated corpse in its wake.

It's so brief, she's not quite sure if she might have just dreamed the encounter. A figment of her stressed and sleep deprived imagination.

Professor Stonehearst volunteers to drive her to the hospital twice a week - he says his daughter Judi needs to go anyway, so he might as well take her along. Judi is only just a toddler, inquisitive and bright-eyed in a way Francoise knows she, herself, never was. Strangely, she never gets the sense that the dark-haired little girl is sick in any way, but she isn't about to question any means that get her closer to Isaac. If it were up to her, she'd take up living in the hospital and annoy him into feeling better.

The others come along too, sometimes. At his very specific request, Gomez brings Isaac's books, pens, notes... everything but his desk, really. Every visit is filled with the scratching of ink against paper, a dance of elegant lines in mid-air.

Larissa and Morticia bring flowers and well-wishes with Larissa additionally keeping Isaac abreast of whatever he's missing in class. Francoise quickly comes to understand they they are each other's chosen study partners and have been for a while now. She doesn't know how to feel about it, but she does leave the room sometimes to give them space. She can grant Isaac that much.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

The decline is slow at first. He struggles to accept water cups that are too full. They're heavy, he argues, and his persistent tremor makes keeping the water in the cup more challenging than it strictly ought to be. Soon, he struggles to sit up. The slightest of movements wind him, heart monitor chirping its warnings whenever he tries.

He insists he's going to be fine.

Isaac is a good liar, under any normal circumstances. You'd have to be, growing up in the household they did. But now, it's about as convincing as an elephant insisting it will fly.

One day, Larissa uses her ability to disguise herself as a nurse. They're tired of being left in the dark, all of them are, and Isaac isn't forthcoming about his state. They know he's planning something, his whole room is littered with drawings and sketches of a mechanical heart, but none of them know quite how bad it is until she comes back into the waiting room, disguise fading into a stark pallor that rivals Isaac's. She looks like she's seen a ghost. In a way, she has.

Terminal.

The doctors had described him as terminal. They say he has mere weeks left.

Larissa is inconsolable.

Francoise is numb.

"When were you going to tell us, hermano?" Gomez asks Isaac later on.

Isaac tilts his chin up in defiance, as if he can spite God. "I'm not planning on dying anytime soon."

He lets all his notes fly up around them, circling them clockwork. A heart to replace his own, made of gears and cogs. He will be done soon, he insists, it's almost finished, almost perfect. He just needs a little more time.

Time, which is the one thing he does not have.

Alone in her dormitory room that evening, Francoise cracks. She screams, she cries, she tears posters off the wall and throws her notebooks onto the floor. She doesn't care what her roommate, who is once again too busy violating curfew with her stupid werewolf boyfriend, will say. The horrible pressure is back again, bearing down on her, wrapping around every muscle and bone.

Isaac is dying, and she will be alone.

In the carnage, a lone piece of paper lays face up on the ground.

Notes, from years ago, and in the margins, a little fox.

The pressure around her limbs ebbs away, leaving only the vice-like grip of the headache. She can't lose control, not now.

She cries until she falls asleep on the cold floorboards.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

Stonehearst proves to be more and more helpful as time goes on. He's impressed with Isaac's work, intrigued by his schematics and bewitched by his potential. "A bright mind", he calls Isaac. A bright mind that grows dimmer every day that he struggles to stay awake for even the brief amount of time they're allowed to visit. A bright mind with a heart that needs to be shocked back to a normal rhythm every few days because his body is failing.

The Professor is the one who puts together the heart by Isaac's schematics.

It is a week after his sixteenth birthday when Isaac performs his miracle. A second lease on life, he calls it, and just in the nick of time. No one believed he could do it, it's wholly unheard of, the doctors didn't even want to try. Who, after all, trusts a young boy to design his own heart replacement? Still, they aren't cruel enough to deny a dying boy his one shot at life where they have already failed, especially at Orloff and Stonehearst's insistence.

And he pulls it off.

Francoise is pacing the waiting room like a caged animal, worrying at the skin beside her nails until they are bloody and sore when Nurse Betty comes in to tell her that he's awake. That he survived.

Nested between his ribs in a gaping wound is his greatest creation. The heart works, faintly ticking beneath several layers of gauze

He looks awful, but he grins at her, eyes bright despite the looming exhaustion and doubtlessly large amount of painkillers he's on. Mindful of his wound, she wraps her arms around him, crying tears of joy.

"Told you," he says.

She sniffs. "I know."

Isaac is always right.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

Some weeks later, he is finally allowed to return to Nevermore. They would have sent him home to their father, but after some convincing and off-hand mentions of Dad's penchant for alcohol that isn't the rubbing kind (and perhaps even more help from Stonehearst), he returns to Caliban Hall to rest and recuperate.

It's a dreary Saturday evening when Francoise is curled up into a tight ball on Isaac's bed while he sits at his desk, fervently making notes on a truly ancient dusty book he's been allowed to let slip from the restricted part of the library. The rain patters against the window, accented by the mechanical ticking of Isaac's heart.

Outside, the last bit of light fades from the gray cover of clouds as evening bleeds into night.

"Isaac," she says, rising from her nest of blankets to hover by his shoulder, "You need to rest. Doctor's orders."

"I know, Frans," he replies, not looking up from the notes scattered across his desk. "But I think I'm onto something. About the Hyde."

"Isaac..." Not this. Not now.

"No, really!" he insists. He's up on his feet in moments, nearly tripping over the leg of his chair as he does so. She doesn't miss the way he falters for just a moment. It sends her stomach into sickening somersaults, though he rights himself immediately. "So Hydes are triggered by trauma, we know that, right? Big shock to your system which triggers a latent gene. Simple epigenetics."

Francoise raises an eyebrow, finding none of this particularly simple at all. But he's as spritely and enthusiastic as she's seen him in possibly years, so she is happy to let him talk.

"What I'm thinking is that if one was to provide enough of a jolt, if you put the body under enough stress with, say, a strong current, you can draw the Hyde out and essentially burn it out at the source. Shock the system, undo the damage."

He points to a small, orb like device he's sketched on the back of some class test he's gotten an A on. "You just have to generate a charge powerful enough."

"That sounds dangerous." The idea of Isaac surviving a heart transplant only to be taken from her by an electric shock is too awful to even consider. She shudders.

He grins, unbothered and just a touch manic. "Oh, definitely. But if I refine it, if I crystallize what exactly causes these outcast abilities... if I get it right, Francoise, you'll be free."

"Isaac." She tugs his arm, guiding him to sit on the bed beside her. "I don't care about the Hyde right now. I care about you. Okay?"

She's exhausted. The events of the past months weigh heavily on her like a shawl cast from lead, thoughts and feelings she doesn't know how to place, how to deal with. Even though Isaac is sat right beside her, he feels more like a specter; like part of her can't accept that he's really here. It's the first time she's seen him in anything other than a hospital gown in over a month.

For all intents and purposes, he died. His life is now sustained by the clockwork of his own invention. How he can continue on, as if nothing happened, it's inconceivable to her. How can he be worried about her when...

There's a flicker of recognition in his eyes; he reads her like an open book. Before the first tear even falls, he's drawn her into a hug, all of his explanations fizzling out. "Hey, it's okay. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."

"I almost lost you," she whispers, hoarse around the lump in her throat.

He rests his head against her shoulder, breath ghosting across her collarbone. "I know," he says, like a confession.

Because he is just a boy. Because he'd almost died, and that scares him, too.

She threads her fingers through his hair, feels his curls beneath her fingertips. His boney frame, still too skinny, but alive, against her chest. He's real, and he's here, and he's breathing. "Don't leave me, Isaac."

"Never."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

She eventually falls asleep to the sound of his clockwork heart and the steady rise and fall of his chest.

No one bothers her about curfew.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

Things change quickly, then.

Stonehearst quietly arranges for Isaac to take up Iago Tower as a special laboratory where he can experiment to his heart's content. So intrigued was he by Isaac's mind, in fact, that there is no convincing required. It's almost too easy.

There's a sharp, shark-like quality to Stonehearst's interest that leaves Francoise uneasy. Predatory. He's been taking little Judi with him to Nevermore more and more frequently, though she is well-known to be a normie like her father.

Something feels off, about the whole situation. She tells Isaac as much.

"It doesn't matter what he's planning," Isaac insists. She knows better than to think him ignorant - it's just that he's deemed this partnership, this risk, as worth taking. "As long as I keep him happy, I get to keep the laboratory and work on what really matters." He knocks the side of one of his machines for emphasis; the metallic sound echoes through the clock tower. She can't argue - it's her life on the line, after all.

Isaac works like a man possessed, tinkering day in and day out, before, between and after classes until Francoise is genuinely concerned he will work himself into an early grave as he had almost managed to just months prior. But nothing can stop him. He's full of life, full of ambition, inventive in a way that feels like his potential has finally been realized. There's a spring in his step and light in his eyes.

He's convinced this will work, and the enthusiasm starts to rub off on her, too.

Dues demand to be paid, though, and Isaac is soon pulled off the project for something else.

Professor Orloff is a kind man and a wise Professor, a living and breathing caricature of something of a mad scientist himself. He's well liked amongst the student body, but it doesn't take a DaVinci to see that his time is running short.

Death will come for them all, eventually. Some people are more willing to accept that than others.

Orloff comes to Isaac personally; one of few teachers who know about the deal between him and Stonehearst, and asks him to share his notes on his heart.

Isaac does him one better and devises an entire life-support system to replace the Professors aged and cancer-riddled body, based on the very same power supply as he had already designed to power his machine. Only his head is kept.

Though it is a decided readjustment, it is an absolute success. Orloff lives on, a head in a jar of preservatives.

Isaac becomes known as the boy who defies death.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

Morticia and Gomez finally get together in the autumn of 1990, leaving the other three members of their little group to collectively sigh in relief. Relief which lasts exactly as long as it takes for the realization to set in that Gomez's idea of flirting is vastly less obnoxious than his idea of courting.

They're disgusting, the pair of them.

The most shocking part of it all isn't even Gomez, who rather predictably lavishes his lover with kisses literally every chance he gets, it's the fact that the usually dignified and graceful Morticia is now flirting back and driving Gomez about as wild as a starving dog spotting a bone. Intentionally. In public.

"I'm going to kill them," Larissa declares. "I think it would be a mercy upon the world."

Isaac laughs; it's a light, easy sound. "Please. I think they'd enjoy it. Nothing more romantic than dying together, right?"

Crossing her arms, Francoise blows a stray strand of hair out of her face. The October wind is nippy; her sweater almost isn't enough to keep the chill from creeping into her bones. It's the first time she thinks of Dylan in years. The boys at Nevermore seem to avoid her like the plague, her status as a Hyde serving as enough of a warning to keep them well enough away.

She hates it.

"I'll bring an axe," she declares, watching Gomez twirl Morticia around to a tune only the pair of them can hear.

The other two laugh.

"So, Isaac, I suppose this means you're going to have to make extra sure to knock when you get back to Caliban Hall," Larissa's lips quirk upward in a coy smile.

Isaac grimaces. "God, don't remind me."

"Wait, have you...?"

"Nothing too scandalous. More than I needed to see, though."

Larissa gasps, her hand flying to her open mouth. "Oh God."

When their father caught Francoise with Dylan, she sure as hell hadn't had a warning, or even a bit of courtesy. The memory of it sends shivers down her spine, a familiar headache creeping in around her temples at the mere thought of it. She wished he'd had the sense to just close the door and walk away. Maybe things would be different now.

She scowls into her morning cocoa, an all-too-familiar headache pressing in on her temples as she watches the steam trail lazily towards the sky. She's barely listening to the other two anymore, and she's pointedly ignoring Morticia and Gomez being unspeakably gross across the courtyard.

As if that all isn't enough, Larissa's going to ask Isaac to the Rave'N ball. Francoise knows, because Larissa asked her if she thought he'd accept. She had answered, truthfully, that she didn't know. It's not something she wants to think about. All she has is Isaac, and though she tells herself that she doesn't care, it still doesn't fix the fact that she's really not too keen on the idea of sharing. But, she remembers how Isaac never once gave her any flack for Dylan, so she had given Larissa her blessing. She just doesn't want to be within the same postal code when it happens.

"I'll see you guys later," she announces, standing abruptly from her place at the courtyard picnic bench.

She hears Isaac call after her, obviously concerned, so she throws a little smile over her shoulder with her best chipper "I'll be back for dinner!"

Her cocoa sits abandoned in her wake.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

Boys are frustratingly, gratingly oblivious.

Francoise sees it in Gomez, about everything but Morticia. She sees it in Isaac, about Larissa, because somehow even after agreeing to go to the Rave'N with her he still hasn't gotten the hint yet. Most frustratingly, she sees it in the boys she meets in the various cafés and shops dotted around Jericho that she frequents whenever she can.

Her side of the dorm room floor is littered with romance novels and magazines aimed, clearly, at girls, with their garishly bold pink lettering and prominent celebrity placement. She's read every tip there is, she's asked for Larissa's advice, she's even asked Morticia for her thoughts. She can bat her eyes at as many boys she wants, not one of them seems to even notice her.

Seems Dylan really was lightning in a bottle.

"Frans, what's wrong?" Isaac asks her one late night in the lab. She's perched on top of one of the unfinished consoles, watching him float objects this way and that while he solders some complicated bit of machinery. The goggles he's wearing look positively ridiculous - he lifts them to meet her gaze. His eyes are soft.

She blinks, somewhat startled by the question. "What?"

"I can hear you thinking from all the way over here."

"That's dumb. You're a DaVinci, not a mind reader."

"Maybe I can read minds and never told you. Wrench, please." He gestures to the tool laying beneath her foot, letting it wriggle like a trapped animal under her weight.

With a scoff, she makes a point of jumping off of it. It flies into his hand. "As if you'd keep that to yourself."

"Hm. You're right," he says, thoughtfully. "The gossip would be impossible not to share."

"I'd be hurt if you didn't. That's like, the worst kind of betrayal."

"What, not sharing the gossip?"

"Obviously."

Isaac laughs, pulling a bolt tight as he does so. She almost thinks she's successfully applied the infamous Isaac Night technique of question-dodging when he launches a crumpled ball of paper at her.

"Really, Francoise. I can see something's up."

"Have you always been this annoying?"

He rolls his eyes fondly. "Just answer the question. You're the one being annoying."

"Screw you," she says to that, and throws the screw she's only just realized she's been fiddling with at him for good measure. He catches it in midair.

"Touché." The floorboards creak, stirring up dust with every step as he walks over and sits beside her. The screw is deposited in her reluctantly opened hand.

Francoise scowls. "Fine. It's stupid. You're not allowed to laugh."

He raises his right hand. "Night's honor." 

With a deep breath, Francoise decides to confess in one short burst. Eyes closed and through.

"Everyone has a date to the Rave'N but me."

To his credit, he doesn't laugh. Instead, he purses his lips and looks like a cat who's gotten stuck in a box its jumped into and now can't get back out of.

"Morticia has Gomez, you have Larissa," she reminds him, before he can argue.

"Larissa and I are going as friends," he insists, brows raised behind the messy curls that have come undone over the course of the day.

Francoise can't help but groan, pressing the flats of her palms into her eyes. "Isaac."

"What?!"

"You're the dumbest smart person I know."

He's quiet for a second, the implications evidently not quite sinking in yet. Blushing is an ability Isaac no longer has, the clockwork heart is advanced, but not quite attuned enough to permit such things. The look on his face, though, says it all. "Larissa? No. She has better things to do. Think of. I mean think of."

"Yeah. Like you. Doofus."

He crosses his arms. Puffs. "Absolutely not."

"Fine. Live in denial. See if I care," she grouses. "At least she asked you."

"Frans, if there's anyone you're interested in, you can always go up and ask, too."

"That's not how it works." Trust Isaac to be oblivious to these things. Of course he was. Larissa had to ask him, not vice versa.

"Well, is there anyone you're interested in?"

She sighs, "No. Not at Nevermore."

"Outside of Nevermore?"

"No! No one. No one at all," she pauses, worrying at her lip. "But if it was someone, I wouldn't want him to be from Nevermore."

Her last confession is quiet, almost under her breath, as if saying it quieter would take the weight from it. It doesn't.

The look he gives her is puzzled. "Why?"

"I don't know," she frowned, pushing an rogue dust bunny around with the tip of her shoe. "It seems nice, doesn't it? Normie life?"

He shrugs. "Not... particularly. But then, I'm not a Hyde."

"Yeah. Boys here know what a Hyde is. Boys out there don't."

"So ask a boy out there to the Rave'N."

"No, you don't get it," she moans, "I just want to leave this, all of this, behind. I don't want to think about Gorgons or Werewolves or Hydes or... any of it." She gestures vaguely into the air. He catches her hand.

His hand is cold. It always is, since he left the hospital. "If this works, Frans, you can leave. You can go live your life. You'll never have to look back."

She withers into him like a marionette with cut strings. He catches her easily. He always does.

"I can't wait."

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

On the day of the Rave'N, Francoise spends the entire afternoon in Morticia and Larissa's shared dorm room, sitting cross-legged on the floor and hunched awkwardly in front of a full length mirror surrounded by a variety of colorful and floral-smelling cosmetics. Across the room, a small CD-player croons a silly, upbeat song about a "Love Shack".

The application of eyeshadow seems so simple, in theory, but all she's managed to do so far is make it look like she's given herself a black eye. So, the very opposite of appealing for a formal dance, really.

She's really starting to believe that maybe some people in this world just aren't born to do makeup.

Her next attempt sees her laying down some oranges that Larissa says, 'really tie in your hair', though she's still struggling to get the color to really stay.

"You have to tap it, Francoise!" Morticia calls, dabbing dark red pigment onto her eyelids with a stippling motion of her brush. Like an artist. "And use a brush, not those sponge things. You're just wiping it off by doing that."

Closing one eye, she tries to imitate her motion, tap-tap-tapping against her eyelids.

Good news, there is now actually color there.

Bad news, it looks even more like a bruise than it did before. The pigment she's chosen is so dark, it swallows up the paler orange shades she laid down earlier that she actually kind of liked.

She groans and lets herself fall backwards against some pillows, reaching for the makeup wipes for quite possibly the hundredth time today, much to the amusement of the two older girls.

Despite the setbacks, it's the first time she really feels like a normal girl.

Morticia's already mostly done, applying her signature bright red lipstick for which she's received numerous dress-code violations in the past, while Larissa has managed to make herself look like a Hollywood actress, practically oozing glamor. Isaac really is an idiot.

It takes her another full forty-five minutes and plenty of help from the others for her to get her makeup to a point where she likes what she sees. It's almost fox-like, warm hues of orange and brown dappled across her face, something distinctly autumnal about it all. Alive, if fleeting.

The unfamiliar image in the mirror smiles back with brown-painted lips.

The joy of it lasts about as long as it takes her to realize she needs to figure out the hair curler, which bears a striking resemblance to something that could have been a medieval torture device. It's Morticia's room, too, so honestly, the chance isn't zero that it might actually be one.

Outside their window, the clouds promise a rainy, gloomy night.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

The Ball itself is a disaster.

There's no other way to put it. The night ends with Gomez in the back of a cop car, a dead normie kid, and the Night siblings sitting with Larissa in the pouring rain under an umbrella that is too small to fit the three of them. No one's seen Morticia for hours, and everything is awful.

It's cold.

Francoise's skin is slick with rain even despite Isaac's frock coat that hangs around her shoulders, her meticulously fluffed and curled bangs now unflatteringly plastered to her forehead and poking her eyes.

They don't speak. There's nothing to say.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

Life goes on, somehow. Gomez is acquitted, and is now inexplicably more inseparable from Morticia than ever before. Morticia won't speak to Larissa and vice-versa. Isaac flees to the lab and throws himself into his work with all that he has while Francoise keeps him company.

Their little group is never really the same, after that night.

As if it couldn't get any worse, Francoise feels a cold coming on. As the days go on, her limbs feel heavy and sore down to the very bone, soon accompanied by one of the most skull-splitting migraines she has ever had the misfortune of enduring.

She stops visiting Isaac in the lab, and it takes him a half hour flat to come looking for her in her dorm room when she fails to show up at her usual time after classes.

She insists it's just because they were out in that stupid rain for so long. It'd be enough to get anyone sick.

Except she keeps getting worse.

Francoise stays in her room for two weeks with the shutters fully drawn, mostly hidden under her covers except to accept the tea and plain meals that Isaac brings her from the dining hall. He stays until curfew to keep her company, reading to her when she can bear to hear it, and sitting quietly next to her when she can't. Honestly, she doesn't know what she'd do without him. Die, probably.

On day sixteen of this horrible malaise, she is summoned to the principal's office, together with Isaac. At first, she's convinced this is about the murder of that normie kid, but she and Isaac have already told the police everything they know. That being precisely nothing. They were nowhere near the scene of the crime, and they know nothing about this Garrett Gates kid. Morticia's love life is something they are forced to endure under duress, the intricacies of which aren't something either of them are - or want to be - privy to. They've told exactly this exact thing to at least four separate people. It's getting old.

Francoise doesn't even bother to brush her hair. It's wild, frizzy, and sticks out at odd angles. Her bangs have quite literally taken to the sky. She doesn't care. She just wants to get it over with and get back to bed. The sun feels like its burning her retinas, like it has some kind of personal vendetta against her.

"Trust the Night to hate the sun," Isaac quips.

Francoise punches him in the arm, smiling despite herself.

It's clear from the instant they step foot into (or shuffle into, in Francoise's case) the principal's office that something isn't right. The principal, normally so jubilant and bright, looks at them both like he'd rather be anywhere but here. Like he's an awkward bug who's been pinned on the spot and forced to perform a mimicry of sympathy.

Their father is dead.

He died two weeks ago. They found his body yesterday.

And all Francoise can feel, besides the pain lancing through her skull and the persistent, never-ending ache of her muscles, is relief. Pure, unadulterated relief.

Good riddance.

There's logistics to being an orphan that she hasn't the energy to figure out. At sixteen and seventeen, the pair of them are too old for the foster system in every sort of practical sense.

Group homes are brought up. Full-time residence at Nevermore is out of the question - until Stonehearst steps in, his eyes hawk-like and gleaming with something that feels dangerous. They stay at Nevermore. Jericho is close enough that they are welcome to spend time in their childhood home if they so choose.

It's the best arrangement they can think of, even if Francoise is less than delighted to be further dependent on Stonehearst. Neither of them are.

Isaac goes back to their home on the Saturday, to clean up. Their father died alone. An 'unattended death' and 'advanced decomposition' case, the police say. It's the alcohol that killed him, in the end.

When he comes back, far earlier than expected, he's about as pale as he was when he was quite literally dying and she can tell by the curl of his lips that the nausea doesn't leave him for hours. He doesn't speak of what he's seen.

Francoise doesn't get better. With each passing day, her headache feels worse, like her skull is ready to implode on itself. She's irritable, snappy. The headache starts to feel familiar in a way that is nauseating. She doesn't understand it, there's nothing that should be triggering her Hyde. Her father died, sure, but he deserved it. Her friend group torpedoed itself, fine, but they were more Isaac's friends than hers anyway. She's fine.

But her blood still whispers into the silence at the dead of night. It's so overwhelming she finds herself skirting curfew and sneaking her way into Caliban Hall at three in the morning on a Monday night, barely able to keep herself upright as she trudges through the halls. She wraps her arms around herself, as if she can somehow hold the jagged pieces of her soul together. Its like she can feel shards of herself spilling out across the dormitory halls as she walks, pins and needles beneath her feet.

It's Gomez who answers the door, groggy and dressed in a very extravagant housecoat. He ushers her in without question, peaking out the door in both directions behind her to make sure no one has seen.

Isaac sits at the far side of the room, asleep at his desk rather than in his bed. Even the sight of him is enough to make her breathe just a bit easier. He sits up with a jolt when Gomez loosely shakes his shoulder.

There's an ink smudge across his cheek. It's almost endearing, but Francoise just wants to cry.

"Francoise, what's wrong?" he asks, gentle despite being only half-conscious. He hasn't been sleeping right, the bruises under his eyes are as dark as they've been in a while.

And the floodgates open. She's crying, bawling, really, from both the panic and the never-ending throbbing in her skull, all but collapsing into her brother.

He catches her. He always does.

"The Hyde," she chokes, "I can feel it. It wants out. It wants out, and I don't know why."

Isaac half-drags, half-carries her over to his bed with a hint of strain, guiding her to sit. He doesn't let go, not once. She leans against him with all her weight while he strokes her hair, calming and constant.

"It's alright. I won't let it take you, okay? You're safe here."

Consciously, she knows that he has very little say on what the Hyde does or does not do. Neither does she. But now, for just this moment, she wants to believe him. His cold hands feel good against the feverish heat of her head.

"I know why this is happening," he says softly.

She sniffles, swiping at her nose with her sleeve. "Why?"

"Unlike Werewolves, Hydes are unlocked. You remember?"

She nods.

"Dad unlocked you. Whoever unlocks the Hyde becomes the master of that Hyde. Without a master..." he shudders, almost imperceptibly, "Without a master, you get sick."

"But, the rain..."

"He died right after the Rave'N, Fran. It lines up."

"Chingada madre," Gomez swears. Francoise almost forgot he was there at all, but there he is, offering her a glass of water that she blearily accepts with both trembling hands. "Does it ever end, huh?"

"When it rains, it pours," Isaac agrees flatly, moving so that she can sit up easier. His hands move from her hair to rubbing circles against her shoulder while she takes a sip of water. It's soothing. "I think I have a few possible solutions, but none of them are... optimal."

"What about that machine of yours?" Gomez asks. "You've been working on it so long."

Isaac shakes his head no. "It's not ready, and I won't take that risk. I was looking into suppressants, but that takes time, which we don't have."

Lifting his hand, he summons one of the books off of his desk, rapidly flipping through the pages in mid-air. "The other way is to rebind the Hyde to a new master. It's not great, but it will buy us time."

"A new master?" Francoise grimaces. She was much happier before she knew she had a master at all.

"Like I said, not great. But we need time. Female Hydes can live longer without a master than male ones can, but I don't want to chance it."

"They die without a master?" Gomez puts his hands on his hips, his ever-so-expressive face twisted into a look of pained sympathy and faint horror.

"Not if I can help it," Isaac murmurs, levitating a second book next to the first and flipping through that one, as well. "Where is it... ah! Here."

All of it's so surreal that it makes her head spin. "You're saying Dad was my master?"

"Yes. You were stable for years because he didn't command you to do anything. You were out of his reach," he explains, absently tracing a line in the book with an index finger.

"Ugh."

"Terrible, I know."

"You'd be my new master?" Anything else is inconceivable.

Isaac pauses his incessant searching and turns to face her fully. "If you'll let me. I know it's not the best of situations. I know. It's only temporary."

Honestly, she doesn't care. If she has to have a master, she wants it to be Isaac.

"I trust you," she says, and promptly lets herself sag back onto him. Because she does. She trusts Isaac more than she trusts anyone on this entire god-forsaken planet. She trusts him more than she trusts herself.

She's barely aware of the boys conversing around her. She falls asleep, as she so often does, to the ticking of Isaac's clockwork heart.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

It takes Isaac about a week to synthesize whatever toxic-looking concoction is meant to permanently rebind Hydes. In that time, they practically don't leave the lab. They've both been pardoned from classes - her on account of being sick, and him on account of, of course, Stonehearst, who finds all of this dreadfully interesting. Isaac can only just manage to bar him from the lab, insisting that it's too dangerous to involve anyone else when she's this volatile.

He keeps music on; quiet, soothing melodies that fill the air at all times and mask what little noise he makes while tinkering around the corner. The windows are covered haphazardly with blankets and sheets to block out the light, while Isaac works by candlelight that he keeps out of her immediate line of sight. The light hurts too much. It's almost cozy, for the first day or so. Like the pillow forts they used to build as kids.

Not that anything was particularly cozy to Francoise right now. She spends most of her time practically face down in the cot he set up for her, anyway. The pressure on her face is just about the only thing stopping her head from exploding.

The Hyde is on a hair-pin trigger, chomping at the bit, waiting for the slightest excuse to explode. It wants out. It grows worse each day. Every out-of-place noise, every minor irritation is enough for her to want to claw her eyes out.

Isaac understands. He keeps his distance. Outside of his time in the hospital when they were children, it's quite possibly the longest time they've gone without speaking to each other. Meals are left far enough away that she doesn't have to see or smell it unless she actively wants to.

On the sixth day (she thinks, at least - it's hard to keep track), he lightly nudges her shoulder, informing her in hushed tones that it's finished.

She blinks up at him, blearily. "So, what now? I take it?"

The cot dips where he sits beside her. "No. It only works on the Hyde."

"I have to... transform?" Francoise croaks, incredulous. "That's... no. Isaac, I'll kill you. I will kill you."

It's not a threat. It's the very opposite of a threat. She can practically see it before her eyes, through the red haze of the Hyde. Massive claws, a broken body, blood, his blood, on her hands. That cannot happen. She would not forgive herself if that happened. Her breathing quickens, like there's a hand around her ribs, squeezing.

"It's our best shot," he says, his dark eyes pleading. "I'm willing to take that risk."

"I'm not." She cringes, the ringing in her ears spiking to a fever pitch. The Hyde wants out. The bones in her fingers crack. "Isaac, I can't, you have to go."

"Let it happen," he says, impossibly soft. "Let go. Let me handle the rest."

"I don't want to hurt you!" she says, voice pitching upward. It hurts. It hurts so very, very bad. The panic flares through her veins, a spark to a powder keg. At least he has the sense to take a few steps back, then.

She catches sight of a vial, full of purple-blue liquid, in his left hand.

The Hyde sees it, too.

Her vision fades into a sea of red.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

When she comes to, it's like finally being able to breathe again. The headache is all but gone, her muscles still sore, but less like they're trying to escape her skin, and more like the feeling a day after a particularly demanding P.E. lesson. She takes one breath, and then another, the floorboards of the lab cool against her forehead.

She feels alone in her head again. What a magical feeling that is.

With a soft groan, she pushes herself up into a sitting position, rubbing absently at a sore spot on her neck. Her hand comes away with few drops of blood.

Right. The solution. Isaac had injected it. He'd done it.

"Isaac?" she calls into the darkness that seems to press into her from all sides, blinking rapidly as if it will make her eyes adjust faster. It doesn't.

"I'm here," he replies. She doesn't miss the way his voice cracks.

For the second time today, panic floods her system. She's on her feet in moments, tearing a sheet from the closest window. Light floods the lab, hitting her like a wall, blinding in its sudden intensity.

Her vision gradually fades back in.

There, across the lab, she spots him, propped against a wall with a smear of red across his cheek.

"Isaac," she exclaims, kneeling beside him with enough momentum that will definitely leave bruises. Her hands hover just above him, scared to touch.

The smile he gives her is strained, but there. "I'm fine, Francoise."

"You don't look fine! Oh you idiot. I told you this was a bad idea!"

He pushes himself up with a wince. "The risk I took was calculated-"

"And apparently, you're bad at math!"

He laughs. Winces again. "Who are you calling bad at math? The Hyde threw me. Knocked the wind out of me, that's all."

She looks him up and down, pushes his head this way and that, scrutinizing every inch of him. He obviously looks worse for the wear, his hair tussled, a few scratches here and there, but nothing that looks like he's about to bleed out on the laboratory floor. She releases the breath she was holding.

"How do you feel?" he asks.

"How do I feel?" She has the urge to punch him. How can he ask her that, when he's laying there, bloodied and bruised because of her? Shame, hot and furious, rises in her chest. He could have died. He would have died, for her. But he hadn't. He's here. And she feels better.

Deflating, she rocks back on her haunches. "... good. Better. Thank you."

"Then it was worth it."

Leaning her head against his shoulder, she settles beside him, her arms wrapping around his.

"I could have killed you," she whispers.

He lets his head drop against hers. "I told you, I won't leave you. And I won't lose you, either."

"Thank you," she repeats, quietly, against the fabric of his lab coat.

"Always."

He pauses, his breath hitching ever so slightly. A slight, pained cough shakes his frame. Francoise jolts upward, eyes wide with concern, but all he does is smile at her with a hint of guilt. "Maybe a visit to the nurse wouldn't be a bad idea."

She might punch him.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

A nurse visit and the diagnosis of a broken rib later on Isaac's part later, and the school year finally starts to feel something like normal again. Whatever normal is for them, now.

Francoise returns to her classes. She tries her best. A good, middle-of-the-road performance, because who is she trying to impress? Her parents are dead. There's a certain freedom in that. Stonehearst is too busy fawning over Isaac to care about her. She's not the useful one in this transactional relationship, she's the dead-weight bargaining chip that he tolerates to keep Isaac around, and she knows it. She's not as smart as her brother, but she's not stupid, either.

Between Isaac's exams, keeping Orloff and Stonehearst happy, and the final stretch of trials for the machine, he's busy. Incredibly so. As if he didn't have enough to do, there's a hiccup with the power source of the machine. There's not very much Francoise can do; there never really has been, but she does her best, bringing him the meals and water he attempts to skip and keeping him company while he tinkers away at machines and formulas.

It's almost like taking care of a hamster, except it's her brother who forgets he has needs whenever he gets too invested into something. And he gets too invested into everything.

"If I can just get it going, we'd be fine," he murmurs, more to himself than to her. He's pacing again. At this rate, she's certain he'll wear through the floorboards. "But we're already drawing on Iago Tower and the orb's peak output. Taking any more, especially so much at once, could cause a complete power grid failure and compromise the experiment. What we need is a catalyst."

"Those sure are big words, Isaac," she quips. Mostly to annoy him.

"We don't have enough power. The whole system, it needs something big to get it going. But pulling that much power at once shuts down the machine. And possibly plunges Nevermore into a blackout. Better?" he says with a good-natured but tired smile.

She nods, throwing her arms around him. "Better."

"The orb itself is already practically a small reactor. There's really not much more I can do," he mutters into her embrace, idly rocking them back and forth. "We're so close, Francoise."

"I believe in you," she says, pulling away to give him a small, playful salute. "And I will continue contributing moral support from the sidelines."

He chuckles. "You're good at it."

"Your standards for lab assistants are low, but my physics grade is lower."

"No amount of good physics grades can save this. At this point, we need a miracle."

"Great. You're good at those."

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

Stonehearst starts taking more and more interest in the machine, and as a result, Francoise is quietly exiled from the lab. Isaac tries to keep them as far apart as he can. Though any day she doesn't have to spend with his creepy eyes on her is a good day, she worries about Isaac, alone with a man who is almost certainly out for blood. Cogs. Whatever.

This means Francoise finds herself actually spending time with people from her own year.

She's well-known now, both for her ties to the Gomez Murder Conspiracy (which is something she is asked about quite often, much to her chagrin), and as the little sister to the boy genius who defies death. Who, according to rumors, might be a necromancer. Or a necrophile, depending on who you ask. Particularly the boys, who think it's all incredibly funny. They're lucky her Hyde is contained, or she'd tear them to ribbons. She wouldn't even be sorry about it.

She bears it for exactly a week before she seeks out Larissa, instead. Since the Rave'N, nothing has really ever been the same, the entire group has just... drifted apart. Of all of them, Larissa got the short end of the stick. Gomez and Morticia were busy with the aftermath of the Rave'N, while Francoise and Isaac were busy with... everything else. Between parental death and Hyde mastership, the pair of them didn't exactly have time for socializing.

Speaking of Isaac, despite her endless curiosity, it occurrs to Francoise that she's never really thought to ask if anything happened between Larissa and Isaac at the Rave'N. Evidently either nothing, or nothing good, considering she rarely sees the two outside of class together. It's hard to tell, with Isaac's self-imposed lab isolation. She makes a note to ask at some point, once she finds the least awkward way to bring it up.

Larissa's been busy, obviously trying to rival Morticia in terms of how many extracurriculars she can accumulate and take over. Leadership is something that comes easy to Larissa in a way it never did for Francoise.

The crushing realization hits her, as the weather gradually warms, that Isaac and Larissa will be done with school this time next year. Francoise's senior year will be spent without them.

"I don't know what I'm going to do," Francoise confesses to Larissa one dreary May morning, watching the morning dew drip from the first buds of a nearby tree. It's a late bloomer, apparently. "It's weird to imagine school without you guys."

Larissa shrugs. "You'll be fine. It's only a year, not even. Besides, I'm coming back to Nevermore."

"Voluntarily?" She props herself up on her hand, raising an inquisitive eyebrow at her.

"Someday, Francoise, I'm going to be principal of this school. Just you wait."

"Please save that for after I'm done," she replies with a playful grin. "Is this because of Morticia? The ultimate Nevermore takeover?"

Larissa frowns, a small indignant huff curling into a cloud of condensation in the crisp spring air. "Not everything is because of Morticia."

She rolls her eyes. "Sure. How is she, by the way?"

"Busy," Larissa mutters, expression turning grave, "You don't have this from me, but Ophelia's having visions again."

"Oh. That's... not good."

"No," she agrees, "She's saying Gomez will 'burn out like a dying star'. It has her all out-of-sorts. Well, both of them really."

"I thought Morticia said she doesn't care what Ophelia says," Francoise says, picking idly at the pilling fabric of her sweater.

Larissa leans in conspiratorially, voice hushed. "Morticia says a lot of things, and means about half of them. On a good day."

"But she's taking this seriously."

"Obviously. Morticia has a bad track record for losing her head, when it comes to Gomez."

So Larissa was obviously still holding a grudge for the Rave'N. Understandably so, she'd seen the victim's body, he'd landed right in front of her feet. On the night, she'd been inconsolable about it. She'd also been entirely convinced it was Morticia's fault, even though she saw Gomez holding the sword. The whole thing is odd, to say the least.

Francoise hadn't even known that Morticia had managed to collect some normie admirer. Ultimately, she tries not to question it too much, the normie kid is dead and neither Morticia nor Gomez are behind bars, so clearly the cops know something they don't.

"Ouch. And to think you seemed to be getting along again."

Larissa swipes a stray strand of hair behind her ear with unmistakable irritation. "Yes, well, I'm stuck with her for another year. God forbid we have one uneventful term."

"Did she ever get over you ratting her out to the cops?"

Larissa crosses her arms. "I did not 'rat her out', I merely informed the police of a connection between her, Gomez and that Gates boy, which was relevant to the investigation at hand. Not telling them would have been an obstruction of justice. What was I meant to do, lie?"

Francoise shrugs. Arguing is a conscious choice. She chooses against it. "I don't really blame you. I think. I don't know, it's not my business."

Seemingly satisfied with her answer, Larissa nods, her gaze shifting to the sky to watch the clouds flit past.

Francoise breathes a deep sigh, pulling the arms of her oversized sweater over her freezing hands, and joins her in watching the breeze ruffling the fresh spring buds on the trees above.

"How is Isaac?" The nonchalance in Larissa's voice is so clearly fake it almost hurts.

"He's..." Overtaxed, overworked. Not sleeping, as usual. Frustrated. "... Good. He's in your class, Larissa, you see him probably more than me. You know you can just ask him yourself, right?"

Uncharacteristically, Larissa worries at the hem of her skirt. "Yes. I mean, we see him. It's just..."

"He's not talking to you?" she asks. Concern prickles vaguely up the back of her neck.

"He's distant," Larissa corrects. "Distant, like he is when he's hiding something."

She's seen him hide one thing, Francoise thinks with no small degree of ire. Granted, that one thing in question was his heart failure and near-death, so it was a pretty big thing. And granted, Isaac does have some semblance of a life that Francoise isn't privy to. But still.

"What is there to hide? He's working on his machine. Stonehearst wants him for other projects, too, because apparently he can't even tie his own shoe without Isaac giving him detailed instructions on how to find the laces," Francoise takes a breath, steadies herself. "There's been a setback with the machine, something about the power supply, I don't know. I don't know everything that goes on in my brother's head, and if I did, my grades would be better."

Larissa's brows shoot immediately skyward, interest evidently piqued. "Lots to unpack there," she remarks. "I nearly forgot about Stonehearst. It's that bad?"

"Well, it's not good," she mutters, crossing her arms across her chest. She lowers her voice. Just in case. "Possibly bad. I can't prove it. But, y'know, who wouldn't be unhappy about being in the debt of a freaky old man who just happens to swoop in every time we need him? I mean, he's our legal guardian. Without him, it's not just no lab, it's no Nevermore. And it's... weird. I don't know what he wants, and Isaac doesn't want me involved."

"Odd, indeed."

"If he hurts Isaac I am going to kill him," Francoise grumbles.

"You believe he's dangerous?"

Francoise sighs heavily.

"I don't know."

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

"It's done," Isaac declares with a an incredulous little laugh. His notes, his readings, float alongside him like leaves in the wind. He scans each one once, twice, thrice. "It's done."

"What?" Francoise blinks up at him.

He looks to her with the biggest grin she's ever seen him wear. "It's finally complete. All the readings, everything, it's done. It all checks out."

It's late in the afternoon, sun casting golden rays through the windows of Iago Tower. It's picturesque. Warm. Francoise rises from where she was sat on the floor, just in time to be quite literally swept off her feet and spun round in a circle, both of their laughter filling the air.

He sets her down on her feet, face pressed into her shoulder, a bit out of breath.

"It's actually done?" She can't believe it. Isaac has been working on this machine for so long, she's almost accepted it as part of the family. It's one of those things that feels like it's always going to be in progress, never done.

The concept of the machine being done, of it working...

Isaac pulls away from her, absolutely radiant. "Yes."

"And your... power problem?"

"Gomez agreed to help. All we need is a little extra spark, just to get it going," he beams.

Involving Gomez is... unexpected. She can't help but feel almost a little disappointed - though that disappointment is immediately stifled by guilt. "Isn't that dangerous?"

"Taxing. And no experiment is truly without risk," Isaac says, "But he's informed. He agreed to help anyway. He says, and I quote, 'Anything for our hermanita'."

She can't help but laugh. "Sounds like him, alright."

"It's the last missing piece. And the human element works in our favor, too." A shadow falls over his expression. He lowers his voice when he continues, "I don't want Stonehearst finding out that the machine is done. Whatever he wants with it, it's not good."

"So Gomez is the key?"

"Literally. Without the key, no machine."

"Not like it'll stop him," Francoise mutters. She pulls her sweater sleeves over her fingers and leans against a nearby railing. "Plenty of friends in high places. What do you think he wants with it?"

Isaac purses his lips. "A normie, with a machine to remove outcast abilities. Could be a jealousy thing, but that doesn't explain Judi. Why involve her?"

"I know, right? It's weird. I've been wondering why he takes her."

"I don't like it. He can't know. Gomez swore to keep his mouth shut. That goes for you, too. "

Francoise rolls her eyes. "Really, Isaac, who am I going to tell?"

"I don't know. Larissa?" he raises his eyebrows. "No one can know."

"Got it. Pinky promise," she smiles, extending her pinky finger, which he gladly hooks with his own.

"Good. Perfect. Saturday should be the best night for it, less students on campus. You ready?"

It's surreal. She almost can't imagine life without the Hyde, she's so used to that infernal headache anytime she gets upset it's almost weird to imagine life without it. The idea that she can just... be, without that pressure behind her eyes anytime something happens, without the fear of hurting everyone around her, it feels more like a dream that a realistic possibility. But now, it's not just a possibility. Now it's real.

Of course she's ready. She nods, fervently.

"Do you think they'll let me stay at Nevermore?" she asks.

He shrugs. "Of course. They're not going to know, Francoise. Not unless you choose to tell them."

"What happens then?"

"What do you mean?" he asks, tilting his head to the side.

Francoise pulls herself up to sit on the railing, letting her legs dangle. "You know, after this. After school. Life things. What happens then? What'll you do?"

"Well, after this? Hopefully finish school. Then university."

"What do you mean hopefully? You're top of your grade."

A corner of his lips quirk upward, "Yeah, well, you never know."

"What major, anyway? Do they make majors that are just 'science, yes'?"

He chuckles. "Physics. I'm not into chemistry. Or biology. Except when I have to be."

"Hey, I love when you talk biology. Remember, when we were kids? All those big, scary words, that I didn't understand a word of, but man, animals. Gotta love animals."

"Biology is more than just animals, Fran. It's... innards. Gooey things," His face crumples like he bit into a lemon. "Not my favorite. Between myself and Orloff, I've seen enough for a lifetime."

"Eugh. Alright, fine," she relents. "No biology then. Jeeze."

"What about you? What will you do with your newfound freedom?"

The question stumps her more than it really should. Truthfully, she hadn't really given it that much thought. It feels like most of her life was living for this, for this miracle cure, not daring to conceive of an after. But, in the night, she dreams.

"I want a family," she says, after some consideration. "Just... a normal family. Find a nice man, get married, have a kid or two. I've always wanted kids. Give them the shot at life we didn't have."

"I'm sure you'd be a great mom," he replies with no small amount of fondness.

"Do you think you'll have a family? One day?"

"Me?" Isaac laughs, "You're my family, Francoise. You know that."

She can't help but smile at his words, bumping his shoulder fondly before turning to face his creation. The machine, large and impossibly complicated, looms over her, cast in shadow by the setting sun. Her future depends on this. Her future depends on Saturday.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

She's in pain. She is in so much pain. The charge hits her square in the chest, and with it, every single muscle in her body pulls in on itself, contracting impossibly tight. There is nothing anymore except for the blinding pain and the sound of her own screams ringing in her ears.

Beneath it all, her blood sings with a far-too familiar anger, bones threatening to escape from her body. The Hyde was in pain, and it wanted out, pulling against the immobilizing force of electricity coursing through her. Francoise can feel the bones in her face trying to shift, pressure building dangerously behind her eyes.

She's standing at a cliff, watching the rocks tumble down, teetering at the edge.

But the transformation doesn't happen.

The Spark continues to course through her. With each wave of renewed energy, the more only the pain of the shock remains. A cleansing fire, burning through her soul, licking at the cracked edges of glass until they melt together.

Until it suddenly stops.

All at once, Francoise sags against the cross-shaped table, muscles finally free, lungs finally expanding. She clings to consciousness by her very fingertips. She can't rest yet.

Something is wrong.

The ringing in her ears fades just enough to make out a pained cry in a familiar voice. Isaac.

"Stop! Let go!"

She looks up, up towards the console, up toward where she hopes to find her brother.

The first person she sees, though, isn't Isaac. It's Morticia.

An arc of electricity catches on the sharp gleam of metal of the object she's holding. An axe. Francoise doesn't understand; Morticia wasn't part of the plan. She's struggling with someone, something, then takes off running towards Gomez, almost tripping over the hem of her dress in her haste.

There. She catches a glimpse of a white lab coat, the form she knows to be Isaac dragging himself up by the side of his console. He is coming. He is coming to her.

"Francoise! Get down-"

He just about makes it to her, close enough for her to see the fear in his eyes as he envelopes her in an embrace and pulls her head down.

And the room lights up with an ear-drum shattering blast.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

Time loses all meaning. It could be seconds, minutes, hours, years.

Francoise is back in the meadow of their childhood home in Jericho, her head in Isaac's lap. Butterflies dance amongst the tall blades of grass, twirling in intricate loops and patterns around the pair of them.

Isaac is talking, but she can't hear what he's saying. His smile is fond. His eyes are warm.

She is safe.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

"We have to go, my love. We have to get out of here. Come on, up, up..."

"Tish..."

Francoise opens her eyes. She is in pain, the ground is hard beneath her. Around her, she sees nothing but fire and sparks. Destruction. She blinks, once, twice, willing the world to swim into focus. Despite the fire on the far side of the room, there's a chill in the air, the cold biting at her nose and stiffening her fingers.

The ground around her is littered with shards. Where there once stood the clock face of Iago Tower was now a gaping hole revealing the night sky beyond, stars shining against inky blackness, visible even through the smoke.

It's quiet.

Francoise pushes herself up, rubble pressing into the soft skin of her palms. She wills her aching muscles to move, to stand.

Around her is pandemonium. Everything is destroyed. The tower is in ruins. All that remains of Isaac's machine is a charred husk, spitting flames towards the ceiling.

"Isaac?" she calls, searching desperately for any signs of life in the chaos.

There, in the darkness, Morticia peers back at her, eyes wide as saucers. Her fingers are tangled in Gomez' hair. For his part, Gomez looks horrified, staring at some point on the ground behind her.

She almost doesn't dare turn around to follow his gaze.

She has to.

There, silhouetted by the light of the flames, lays a prone figure amongst the rubble. An achingly familiar lab coat and a mop of dark, curly hair, blowing faintly in the draft.

"Isaac," she calls again, more firmly. Moving feels like an impossibility, but she pushes forward.

There is no response.

None at all.

Her trembling knees give out beneath her, sending her to the ground by her brother's side. The pain hardly registers. It is secondary to the fear coursing through her veins. She reaches for his shoulder and calls his name once again, barely aware of the tears streaming down her face.

With a gentle tug, she rolls him towards her, half onto her lap.

His eyes are wide open.

They stare blankly ahead without focus, without any of the clarity and sharpness she knows so well. It is as if the light in them has been extinguished.

Nausea takes a violent hold of her stomach, twisting her insides with an iron grip. This is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. He must have been blown backwards in the explosion and hit his head, like when he'd tamed her Hyde. This could happen, right? He's just unconscious. He has to be. She pulls his limp form up so she can fully support him, steadying his head before it can loll backwards.

Her hand comes away slick with red. Beneath where he had lain, the ground is wet, a puddle of crimson creeping through the grain of the floorboard.

"Isaac, wake up. You have to wake up," she pleads again, shaking him ever-so gently. He's fine. Or, no, he isn't fine, but he will be fine. He will be okay. He looks -

God, she might throw up after all.

One of his hands is gone. There's only a bloody stump where his right hand was. He's hurt, badly, but Isaac is a genius, he can fix this. This is fixable.

She folds in on herself to press an ear to his chest, listening for the ticking of his heart. Of his creation. She strains past the roaring in her ears, past the crackle of the flames around them.

Tears, unbidden, completely take over her vision. She whispers under her breath, "No, no, no, no, Isaac, don't do this. Isaac please."

The words fall from her lips like prayers.

There has to be a mistake.

Francoise has never believed in God. How could she? But now, she is begging, pleading to anything that will listen. He can't be dead. She's almost lost him once already, and wasn't that enough? Wasn't it enough to watch him waste away in a hospital bed? But he'd gotten back up. The boy who defied death. This isn't possible. This isn't fair.

Her head aches, lanced with searing agony.

No longer mindful of the many injuries staining his once pristine white lab coat red, she shakes him again, harder this time, searching for something, anything, in the darkness of his eyes. "Isaac you promised. You promised!"

He stares up, up, at some point far beyond the ceiling, vacant and empty. A lifeless shell.

Wailing sobs rise into screams tearing from her throat as she holds him close, his body limp as a ragdoll and already so, so cold.

Isaac is dead. She knows this, now, with a certainty that rises like bile in her throat, sour on her tongue. Her world has imploded. It doesn't make sense. Just a moment ago, her last memory, Isaac was there, light in his eyes, panic in his voice, alive. Now, he is broken, and she goes to pieces alongside him.

It doesn't make sense, none of it does. Years. Isaac had spent years on this. He calculated for every possibility. It was perfect. He would settle for no less than perfect.

She turns, slowly, tears hot on her face, to find Morticia. She's still here, looking back at her. Her expression is difficult to decipher. Something in the set of her mouth reads grim determination, but pity dances in her eyes alongside the flames.

Morticia isn't supposed to be here. The one factor unaccounted for.

There, beside her and Gomez, lays an axe.

Francoise can't stop what happens next, it's as inevitable as the dawn. The familiar pain of her muscles straining and bones shifting, dislocating, growing into shapes that are a perversion of the human form hardly matter now. She's so far away. She's more than content to let it happen, to let herself fall into the haze of red. She doesn't care what happens next.

Isaac is dead.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

The Hyde screams, a desperate howl of agony.

Morticia is on her feet now, holding the axe again. The Hyde wants nothing more than to cleave her in two.

It takes one step towards her, then another. Her knuckles blanche white against the handle.

The Hyde is many things, but it is not stupid. Every step is agony, even through the rush of fury. That machine did something, leaving every part of it trembling, faltering, falling apart.

He is dead. And the Hyde can't change that. Its blood sings with the urge to make Morticia feel even an ounce of the pain it feels, but even now, it knows it's a fight it can't win. It would not, it refuses, to give her that satisfaction.

It turns back, watches the fire and sparks flicker and dance, reflecting against the pool of blood surrounding Isaac's broken body.

With a last anguished cry, it turns and runs into the cold air of the night.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

Francoise Night never learns where her brother was buried.

Notes:

Francoise and Isaac have really taken over my headspace these past few weeks. It's something I feel I can't quite communicate through the limited person POV, but I personally follow the theory that the Iago Tower incident was based on a misunderstanding. Jumping to conclusions.

If you'd like to know more, here's a more light-hearted Tumblr post I made explaining what I mean
https://www.tumblr.com/limelines/794882893325402112/the-ultimate-isaac-night-defense-post

If you've made it all the way through this, thanks for reading.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of foundations of decay