How to be Badass (2nd Draft)

Sparrow’s hands shook as she typed numbers into an Excel spread sheet. She had been avoiding doing this for a week now. She knew the numbers wouldn’t add up. No matter how far she stretched the food budget, even if she and her sister got through the next month—January—without heat, there wasn’t enough money if they wanted to stay in school and in their apartment.

Sparrow quietly considered. Fear was a sick feeling in her throat as she did. There was no one to catch them if they fell; their parents didn’t have enough money as it was, not since her mother had been laid off again because of her drinking habits. These were the options: Sparrow or Helene or both of them could quit school. The idea of Helene having to drop out was a physically agonizing one for Sparrow. She had worked so hard to get into this school. Sparrow didn’t want to take that from her.

Sparrow also didn’t want to drop out herself. It wasn’t that she was passionate about what she was doing; it was okay, just okay. She didn’t dream of being a massage therapist. She had wanted to go into medicine. Her grades slipping in senior year hadn’t allowed for that, but she was so tired of having to be the one to sacrifice. She had sacrificed herself for many things over the years—her parents, her sister, her mental illness. She had worked to support her sister through high school, and to support her parents because her dad worked two jobs at minimum wage and could barely make the mortgage while her mom passed out on the couch. She had saved what she could for school for her and Helene and yet here she was—twenty-one and what did she have to show for it? A bank account collecting overdraft fees not one year into both of their schoolings.

Fuck this. Fuck this. She had already stopped taking her meds last month because they were expensive, and even though she tried to hide it from her sister she was on the brink of losing her job. She had called in sick twice this week, unable to fathom getting out of bed. Today she had managed it only long enough to grab the laptop. It was dark and the only light in the room came from the screen. She hated the light and she hated the darkness.

In a fit of frustration Sparrow decided there had to be a better way. A third option. She was sure that if she stopped trying to do things on the right side of the law then she could make ends meet. When had the law been on the right side of her, anyways? Her heart raced, her mind struggling weakly to discern if this was a really good idea or if her depression was starting to swing into mania.

She had work in an hour. She had to get out of bed. She had to.

She couldn’t get out of bed. She cried into the pillow and the fear in her stomach sat like vertigo from the fall of their lives.

“Sloppy,” Mimi scowled as Allen sat on the ground with a humph, having successfully repossessed a small pocket lint demon. Mimi brushed her fingers over his forehead, but it was to banish the demon, not out of tenderness. No, Mimi was currently looking far from tender—which is to say, similar to how she usually looked.

“What do you mean sloppy?” Allen asked, scowling right back. In the week that had gone by Mimi and Allen had been trying to better the latter’s speed in regaining control after a demon possessed him. It was all well and good that he could repossess, but for how long would he stumble around making a mess of himself and anything and anyone around him before he managed it? He was getting a little better, but every time was an assault that left him emotionall exhausted from the struggle against his mind.

“You just,” —Mimi made a noise of derision— “shove all your power at it and hope it works out.”

“Well it does,” Allen snapped back. “It works. So what’s the big deal?”

Mimi shoved a finger at him. “It works now. It works when I’m giving you the weakest scum I can get my hands on. It works when the demon doesn’t even have enough power of its own to have powers! How are you going to manage a demon’s powers when you can’t even manage your own?”

“I don’t know! I don’t care!” Allen said. They were riling each other up but Allen couldn’t seem to let himself back down. The appointment was tomorrow. He was firing on all cylinders and would take a crack at anything in his way.

“You need to care,” Mimi thundered, putting her hands on her hips and leering forwards. Riled up Allen may be, but he had to admit that Mimi struck an intimidating pose. Six feet tall, full-bodied, and lined with hard muscle. Anyone with sense would take pains not to get on her bad side. Unless you were demons, or Allen. “We are it, Allen! We are all this fucking world has to keep it from becoming a demon fun farm! There are only seven of us and god fucking damn it the world needs what you can do.”

The words hit home, fuel to the fire already inside of him. “I can’t even use my tattoos. What use am I?”

Mimi leveled him with a look serious and still enough that Allen, although his fists remained clenched, headed off his train of thought to listen to what she said next. “You listen here, kid. You haven’t seen a level six demonslayer fight with the full strength of repossession behind them. What use are you? You’re a fucking beginner. That’s your problem, not your dead tattoos. What you need is to keep working. And listen when I tell you you’re sloppy.”

It went unspoken that Mimi was possibly the only one left in the world who could tell Allen his repossession technique was sloppy and know what the hell she was talking about. Sometimes, when Allen pulled his head out of his ass enough to think about someone that wasn’t himself or Dustin, Allen thought about it. What would it be like to have your entire culture, family, way of life, destroyed? Trying to compare that kind of loss to his own was a useless exercise. His life’s sorrow was the culmination of not only his own trauma but that of every one of his victims, victims which were strangers. Mimi’s pain was different; it was the death of all that was intimate to her. Allen imagined that probably who Mimi had been had died along the way as well.

Admittedly, Allen wasn’t very good at dealing with his own feelings; admittedly, he was even worse at dealing with other people’s. Instead of answering Mimi, Allen stormed out of the training room as Mimi angrily yelled out behind him. Worthless, weak, unworthy, spineless, cowardly, the words rang through his mind, a bizarre duet between the memory of his father spitting those words on him and the imagination of Mimi doing the same.

His breathing was ragged by the time he made it to the bathroom at the end of the hall of bedrooms, and he collapsed against the door. The effect was immediate; shut the world out, and a sob escaped him. Anger and guilt turning on a dime to become fear and shame.

He didn’t know how long he was in there, thoughts swirling, until there was a tap on the door.

“Other people need this bathroom, you know.”

It was Fay’s voice. Allen swallowed back everything he had let out of himself until he could answer. “Sorry. I’ll be out in a minute.”

“If it stinks I’m going to whallop you.”

Allen couldn’t help but huff out a breath at that, though it was a bitter kind of amusement. Only if she could smell his fear.

He opened the door and tried to brush out, get out of the way, but Fay was standing in the doorway in what Allen had taken to calling her fighting pose. It wasn’t overtly aggressive; her eyes were still heavy-lidded, arms still crossed. But her legs were planted beneath her shoulders in a way that made it difficult to get around her in the span of a doorway, and it usually meant she disagreed with someone and was about to tell them exactly why.

Allen didn’t want to know what she disagreed with at the moment. Probably his entire existence. Actually, if that’s what she thought then they did agree. Allen stopped and looked up at her dully.

“Do you have any weapons?” she asked.

That was unexpected. Allen was thrown. He blinked at her, brain sluggishly trying to move around the hurricane still kicking up in his mind to gather enough intel to give her an answer. “I have a knife,” he said slowly. What he didn’t say was that he had never used the knife himself, only the demons that possessed him had. At some point he had decided that blood and sliced flesh was preferable to slow deaths and smashed skulls. He only carried it to his possessions.

It occurred to him that he hated the knife. “I hate it,” he added.

“Do you know how to use it?” Fay said disinterestedly. Allen wanted to punch her to make her show some sort of expression other than boredom. At least when she’d been dripping acid words all over him it felt like—well, it felt like something. Allen’s brain was too much of a mess for her straight, simple lines.

“No.” Somehow the word didn’t splatter from the venom Allen put into it.

“Do you want to learn how to use it or do you have too many feelings about it?”

Allen couldn’t take it anymore. When he sent his fist flying towards her, she caught it, and raised an eyebrow. Her arm trembled a bit. “That’s a lot of feelings.”

“Fuck you,” Allen spat. She still didn’t seem amenable to letting him brush past her, but he didn’t particularly care if his shoulder knocked hers on the way out.

Allen missed Dustin. He knew he was still self-absorbed but he couldn’t seem to figure out how to properly stop, not when he was feeling so overwhelmed by the appointment that was tomorrow and his own incompetency. He didn’t even want to talk to Dustin, particularly. He just wanted to be with him. To absorrb his energy, his presence.

Allen wasn’t sure exactly where Dustin had been. He reappeared every couple days to get some food, and when he did he greeted Allen shiftily and kept moving, not quite meeting his eyes. It was driving him insane. Dustin hadn’t been sleeping in their room, either—where he was all night was also driving Allen insane. He was worried. He was aggravated. Mostly he was sad.

He thought often about the fact that Dustin had been bothered by something before he started avoiding the house (and Allen). Allen wondered if that thing was connected to whatever the hell was happening now or if they were different. He wondered if this had anything do with M. He wondered a lot of things.

As the day rolled from that one to the next, tensions in the house ran higher and higher. It was going to be a messy interception. They didn’t have enough information to do anything neater than showing up at the same time as Isadora’s appointment and trying to save her from by force. The only happy part of M’s visit was that the involvement of Isadora was more than a hunch—unless he had been pulling their leg, happily manipulating them into thinking that their information was true when it was not.

The next morning was quiet. Not only was it stupid early—it was a six hour drive and the appointment was at ten—but everyone was thinking about all the things that could go wrong today. Queri was in charge of getting the bystanders out of the way, but there were no promises. The damage of the last confrontation with this operation hung heavy in the air with the weight of the lives that had been taken in collateral damage.

Dustin appeared in the kitchen, looking like he might as well be in bed for how awake he was, and stated that he was coming. When Allen cast him a relieved glance, Dustin smiled a bit. It made a world of difference, and Allen felt just strong enough to be able to shove some food into his gullet before they had to leave.

Everyone was ready for a fight. Those with long hair had it tied up; everyone was in uniform and armed. Allen noticed that there were differing decorations on the uniforms. He wondered if that meant anything—or if it had meant anything. They were simple; lines of coloured stitching running along beside each seam. Silver or gold or some combination thereof. The uniform Allen had been given had a single silver line.

Despite the solemn aura, the demonslayers were professionals; they were tense, but not palpably so. They were serious, but would crack a smile. Allen couldn’t fathom it at first, until he realized he was the same; if this was your life, you had to figure out how to live around it.

In the car, he asked Queri, who was sitting beside him, about the uniforms.

“Oh,” she said, “it used to indicate the level of the demonslayers. We had to salvage all these from old guild halls so mostly they’re just random now, but yours is um… a level two uniform I think.”

(Did I explain/mention the uniforms before??? I don’t remember.)

“So did everyone have to where those weird suits all the time then?” Allen asked.

Queri laughed. “Yeah. It helped you identify other demonslayers, and they’re really great for fighting in. Form fitting but stretchy. Plus, they look classy.”

They did look classy, with their collar that mimicked a tuxedo and slightly squared shoulders skimming into sleek black shapes. Allen tweaked the end of his sleeve self-consciously. He didn’t like the way it hugged his body, even if it was good in a fight. He’d rather have his harem pants and tank top any day. But no, Mimi had told him that if he was going to fight as a demonslayer, he had to dress as one. He had almost shot back that the guilds were gone so what did it matter if they wore the uniforms anyways, but had managed to clamp his mouth shut at the last minute. That was a whole new level of mean. That was Fay-level callousness right there.

On the way, Dustin, Char, and Kidd fell asleep. Dustin was wrapped up in two sweaters and a quilted blanket he had brought from the house that had stitched patterns of different kinds of mushrooms. Dustin’s head was on Allen’s shoulder and the quilt halfway over his own legs; he became very familiar with the look of giant puffball mushrooms, and the inky cap mushroom, which looked fake to Allen. It looked like something a witch would use as an umbrella. How accurate would a quilt really be about mushroom species?

Allen wasn’t a fan of long car rides, since he couldn’t play his saxophone, or play video games. He usually listened to music but he didn’t have his MP3 player (yes, he was a literal ninety year old) or headphones since he had been kidnapped. Saved. Whatever. All the time without any distractions left far too much time in his own head.

So he kept asking Queri questions. He learned that level ones, or initiates, had plain black uniforms. Level threes had two silver lines where he only had one, and level fours had a gold line instead. Level fives and sixes were the only ones that got both silver and gold; level fives had two silver lines with a gold one sandwiched in the middle, and level sixes the opposite. Level fives also got badges that represented the type of demon they had in dormant possession, since team leaders or commanders working with unfamiliar demonslayers needed to know what you would be capable of if they ended up in a tight spot.

Down to earth writing… I miss my down to earth writing.

Still, all this new information didn’t stop Allen from descending into a numb sort of panic as they made their way to the doctor’s office for the second time. The only thing that made him come was that he wanted to protect Isadora, and the fact that he so badly wanted her to not go through what he had gave him a fresh perspective on the fact that he shouldn’t have had to go through what he had. And that maybe it wasn’t his fault, maybe it hadn’t been his responsibility to fix it; he had been so young. The people that had been supposed to protect him had simply failed him. He wouldn’t fail to protect Isadora.

Still, all these things didn’t stop him from doubting his decision to accompany the demonslayers. What if he was a liability? What if they failed because he came along and messed them up? What if instead of helping Isadora he became the reason they didn’t?

The doubt was disarming. The terror of returning to the doctor’s office was a knock-out. All in all Allen was having some trouble managing himself.

The muted whine in his mind escalated as the scenery became familiar, falling into the patterns and landmarks he had known his entire life. They passed the convience store that Allen and dragged Dustin to daily for almost a month when they started selling fr’eals. They got close enough to the park where they had met and spent so much time and Allen found himself feeling homesick for it, or something close. There was nostalgia or love or loneliness or something that ached deep in his belly when he thought about it and it’s gravel paths and stone benches and the groundhog that was somehow there every time he was.

The place absolutely stank of demonic possession when they turned onto the street the practice was on. The whine became a scream and Allen had to put his head in his hands to keep it in one piece. Dustin put an arm around him and tugged Allen until he was under his shoulder, and Allen was reminded that even when he and Dustin weren’t on good terms, Dustin was still there for him. This somehow made him both happier and sadder but it definitely made him feel less like he was about to fall apart.

After some agonizing consideration last night and this morning, Allen had brought his knife, despite what he had said to Fay about not wanting to learn how to use it. Any weapon was better than no weapon and he was going up against demons, after all. The moment he slipped it into his boot as they pulled up beside the sign that read [whatever the fuck it reads] his heart kicked into high gear. His throat closed up and he fisted a hand into Dustin’s sweater blindly, trying to ground himself in the moment as his mind and body insisted that the worst was about to happen.

It only took a moment for Dustin to reach down and take the knife out of his boot. “Put it somewhere else,” he murmured, and Allen nodded blankly, taking it with shaking hands and tucking it instead inside his jacket. “Allen.” Dustin gripped Allen’s shoulders and turned them so that they faced each other. It was a testament of trust that Allen met his eyes instead of fighting to look at the ground. “You’re okay. All of us are here together and we’ll all take care of each other. You’re not doing anything alone, and neither is anyone else.”

He wasn’t alone. He wasn’t alone. He realized all at once that although on a logical level he had known that he wasn’t alone, emotionally it didn’t hit him until that moment that he wasn’t alone. He had always been alone going into possessions; he had always been alone coming out. He had Dustin, but Dustin was always outside of that window of time in which everything went to absolute shit.

Char got up from the backseat and ruffled Allen’s hair on her way out of the van. Allen flinched, from surprise rather than dislike of the touch. “He’s right, you know. We all have our strengths and weaknesses and we all fill in the holes of each other. We’re a team and a family. It’s fucking fabulous. And, not to boast, but we’re the strongest goddamn team I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing.”

“Not to boast my ass,” Fay said. “Your pride is worse than mine. But you’re right.”

Char gave Fay a shit-eating grin, and Allen let out a breath.

He got out of the car.

This was only the third time Allen had ever been to this doctor, and he hoped it would be his last. The experiences, collectively, certainly hadn’t been good for his health.

It was even worse in daylight than it had been the night they’d gone to collect information. It looked so mundane, so exactly the same as it had when he was five years old, and he hated everything about it from the elegant albaster stone the building was made out of to the demure italic font the sign out front used.

Of course they couldn’t all just go sit in the waiting room, since none of them were registered with the practise and eight darkly dressed strangers would attract the wrong sort of attention. So, since Sparrow and Dustin had been dubbed the least intimidating of them, they went up together. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE FUCK I’M DOING anyways, the rest of them waited wandered down the street, trying to look like they weren’t a gaggle of demonslayers about to kidnap a child. It seemed to be turning into a habit for them.

Sparrow called Mimi a few minutes later, and they talked about nothing in particular as they turned around and walked back towards the practice. Allen’s heart was beating in his throat as they walked up the path to the building. His legs shook as they climbed the stairs, and the medical smell was far too sharp in his nose. If you had asked him he would have told you that he couldn’t remember the pattern on the walls of the hallway up, but looking at it still made him feel sick. Dumb beige diamonds.

Despite how much he hated it, stepping into the waiting room was worse. It felt like walking deeper and deeper into the warren of his panic, his nightmares. He’d dreamed about this place so many times. Sometimes the doors were locked. Sometimes they weren’t, but he could hear his mom or dad calling him somewhere inside so he didn’t leave as he ran around trying to find them. His stomach gave a funny lurch when the door closed behind them, and his breathing, which he had been trying to keep even, became noticably quicker.

He was so consumed with trying to keep himself in check that he forgot to look around and try to identify the child they were there for. His pupils were blown with fear as his gaze darted around the room like prey looking for an escape. Hard, worn carpet, that same awful wallpaper, and a room full of tired, ordinary faces greeted him.

It was Sparrow and Dustin’s familiar faces that stopped his mind’s headlong rush. “Come on,” Queri murmured, touching his back lightly, and Allen gritted his teeth and nodded, taking a step forwards mechanically, wavering, and then taking another, and another.

They were attracting some looks, as theorized. Blah blah blah… uh… Right. What’s happening? Oh yeah. Sparrow was talking to a little girl with straggly, dirty-blond hair and an energetic disposition, both of them smiling and giggling. The woman who was sitting in the chair next to them, who was probably her keeper, didn’t seem to care that a stranger was being so friendly with their child. Maybe it wasn’t her mother. Maybe it was one of the demons.

“Hi guys,” Sparrow said when they were close enough.

Crap I just realized this isn’t going to work since they need to be masked so they can’t be recognized and also they need a way to get the civilians out… Shit. Rewind.

New plan: Everyone stays in the car until Sparrow calls. They put their masks on and THEN they go up.

As soon as the people in the room caught sight of them they fell silent, expressions going sour with fear. Allen felt a twinge of guilt. How many times had he seen that look? Too many.

“Hey,” Mimi said, her voice artificially changed by a gadget Queri and Fay had put together for moments like these. “We’re in here for that kid.” She pointed directly at a little girl with straggly dirty-blond hair and wide, dark eyes. “Everyone else get the fuck out.”

They stepped out of the way of the doorway. The room was silent in shock. How well this worked depended entirely on the amount of decency in the room. It went without saying that if masked lunatics showed up demanding a child that you tried your best to not let them take said child.

One person simply stood and left.Two men in the corner had a heated argument that ended with one of them standing with their baby and leaving while the other got up and walked over to the child. That left only the stern looking woman who sat beside Isadora, the man, and an old woman who looked like she might have a stroke.

“Q,” Mimi said.

Queri gave a little sigh that Allen only heard because he was so close to her. Quite suddenly, the woman with Isadora yelled, “Demonslayers!” And stood up and grabbed Isadora’s arm and started dragging her towards the back room.

“Shit!”

Allen didn’t know who said it, but the room exploded into action. Sparrow instantly engaged with the woman, forcing her to defend herself, while Dustin took Isadora’s hand and tried to bring her out the door instead of farther into the practice. The man who had stayed behind when his partner left seemed inclined to go with them.

It seemed that the secretaries had realized that something was wrong, because Allen caught a glimpse of one picking up the phone with her eyes glued on the room in front of her before something hit her neck and she swayed before slumping forwards onto her deck. Allen whipped his head around and saw Queri holding what looked like a pistol.

The other secretary recieved the same treatment by the time Dustin, Isadora, and the man reached the door. Dustin stopped and gave a yell of warning before they were attacked from behind.

“What the fuck,” Fay yelled and Allen’s head whipped from the assault from behind to the door into the doctor’s offices as four people came through there.

No, not people—demons. Their movements were jerky and Allen saw the glimmer of bright green dripping from one of their hands. Fucking hell. He scrambled into the middle of the room where Sparrow had just finished putting down the lady who had been with Isadora. Allen presumed it wasn’t her mother, since she had known they were demonslayers, and furthermore, didn’t like that they were demonslayers.

Fay and Mimi had Isadora backed into a corner with Dustin, who was crouching with her and rubbing her back as she cried. His lips were moving. Allen had to do something; he wanted to help; he was here to help. Before he could do anything, though, Mimi yelled, “They’re vessels! Don’t hurt them!”

Allen had had very little training on that dance-like combat used on vessels, and even if he was any good at it he couldn’t use his damn tattoos. Still, he managed to assert that while those who had been attacked from behind were fine, as the majority of the demonslayers had been there, there were too many vessels attacking for the demonslayers to do anything but let the bodies collapse and move on to the next. They weren’t hard to take out—Sparrow’s staff was a blur in the air as she weaved and ducked and only a touch of it had the vessels tumbling to the floor. He figured someone might as well deal with the fallen vessels.

Stealing himself, he went to the nearest vessel and felt for a pulse. To his relief, it was there—pounding, but there. He tugged it into the offices in the back, hoping that there wasn’t any others back there. He didn’t know if he would defend himself or kill the vessel and he would rather not find out.

The vessel he had taken was a middle-aged woman with dirty hair and dirty skin. Allen found her a quiet corner and decided it was probably best not to wake her. He didn’t know how to explain this mess they were in.

He was on his way back into the waiting room when he felt the demon possess him, and if he had still been in control of his body he would have genuinely screeched in anger. He tried to grab for his power, but the possession had been so unexpected that the panic washed over him before he could. And there was something wrong, something that was distracting him as the demon walked with unerring smoothness from the office hallway to the door of the waiting room.

He realized as the demonslayers looked up at him in shock what it was.

The demon was leaking power—it was leaking the power everywhere.

Mimi’s words came back to him about controlling a demon with enough power of his own to even use power, let alone leak it everywhere like a goddamn fucking faucet. Even the demon seemed shocked by it, stilling himself and watching as it crept across the room towards—

Oh fuck.

He didn’t know what the power did and he sure as hell didn’t want to find out. He would be finding out real soon though if he didn’t find a way to stop it. Sparrow scrambled onto a chair as it washed over to her first, eyes widening as the tide swept towards the other. Queri grimly held her ground against—holy hells was that a half demon? Isadora and Dustin were still crouched in the corner. The thing was blocking Queri blow for blow, and he could see that they wouldn’t be able to get out of the way in time.

I’m never questioning Mimi in training again, Allen thought in horror as the power sloshed over first Queri, and then Dustin’s feet. Dustin was standing with Izzy in his arms, to hold her out of the way, but as soon as the power reached Dustin’s feet his eyes widened and his mouth opened and then closed, eyes becoming panicked. Allen, already off the hinge, felt his own spike in response.

There was a moment in which Dustin sucked in a breath, but then Izzy cried out and started crying harder and the stop of Dustin’s breath was so abrupt that Allen decided that must be what the power did.

It stopped you from breathing.

Hell.

Allen had to do something. He had to. It wasn’t a choice at this point; it wasn’t a crisis. It simply was. He reached for his power and felt every second slip through his fingers like mercury; shining, toxic, quicksilver. He took his power and he slid it over the demon inside him. Mimi was right; it wasn’t the same as the smaller demons. The demon didn’t simply fizzle out when he smothered it. It sparked back. It was like figuring out how to fight the ocean. It was large and full of tides that pushed back at you and threw you and hit with unrelenting unpredictability.

Except they weren’t entirely unpredictable.

And didn’t one conquer the ocean by learning to ride it?

It was a strange concept, but Allen felt himself flicker into control for just a second, and the feeling gave him vertigo as he flickered in and out of his own flesh. His brain didn’t like it; he started to feel nauseous. Focusing harder, Allen put more power into the technique until he felt himself slide back into his limbs and stay there.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a one-time-beat-the-demon thing—Allen had to keep that up. It got a little easier, after the initial overwhelm; enough so that he knew that he might be able to keep control now, even if it used all of his focus, but he didn’t think he had enough to get control back if he lost it now.

So he fell to the ground, first onto his knees as he thought of nothing but keeping control, and then sagging back against the wall.

Now that he had control he frantically tried to stymie the power that flowed from the demon and discovered that even if the demon had wanted to stop it itself, it wouldn’t have been able to. Its power was producing at such a rate that instead of pleasantly filling a well it instead uncontrollably overflowed.

Okay, so new plan. He couldn’t stop the power, but he could direct it. He could feel it around him, like an extension of himself, much like his own power inside of him. He put his hands into it tugged.

It wasn’t smooth or controlled or any of that shit, but it worked and that was all Allen cared about.

Allen’s mind was racing as he tried to figure out what to do with the power. There was too much of it to simply push somewhere; there were people in the building, in the surrounding streets—and he had no fucking idea what he was doing. He couldn’t even make sure it went where he wanted it to because he was so focused on repossessing the demon and he had no idea how to direct demonic power to begin with.

What he did realize from the tug was that it was easy to pull it back to him. He was a compass point, a magnet, and it was easy to pull the stuff made from him back to its home.

So he did. And the moment he started pulling it back, he felt the effects of the power for himself.

Allen had to admit that it was a terrifying feeling—not being able to breathe. It wasn’t that he was drowning, or that breathing didn’t give him oxygen. He quite simply was unable to draw breath. It was unpleasant enough of a shock that he almost lost control of the repossession, but reclaimed it with a sick, panicked feeling. He couldn’t let go now.

Focusing became notably harder when he stopped being able to breathe, and as he was already so consumed with repossessing, Allen soon lost sight of the room entirely as existing became nothing but the fire in his chest and the relentless war against the power and the demon inside of him.

He wasn’t sure how long it had been. He didn’t know what was happening. He just kept trying to hold on, his consciousness dimming, hoping that the demonslayers would figure something out. Get themselves out, get Izzy out, get him out if they could manage it. If there was something else he should be doing, he couldn’t fathom what it could be.

It was only a matter of time until he lost the fight, and everything went dark.

HOSPITAL SCENE WOOOO

CHAR IS STRESSED. SHE CALLS HER EX. DUSTIN IS ALSO STRESSED. HE VOWS TO LEARN TO USE HIS POWER SO WHAT HAPPENED AT THE DOCTOR’S OFFICE NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN.

THANK QUERI’S WEAPON-MODDING HABIT FOR ALLEN’S LIFE.

“Em,” Char said, breathing way too fast, trying to be stable enough to leave this voicemail. Shit, she was leaving this voicemail because she was not stable at all. “Em I’m so sorry I—I just really—Allen is dying. Allen—this other kid, you don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about—” Jesus Christ she was a mess “—I just watched him, not die, no he isn’t dead he can’t be dead his heart only stopped for—we don’t know how long, but…”

Char took a deep, shaky breath. Regrouped. Clumsily shaped her domino mind into some semblance of human communication.

“Allen is a good kid and I’m scared right now. I’m scared for him. And I’m scared because he’s so young and so mortal and so am I and so are you and so is Sam and I just… I want to see Sam before…” Char swallowed hard. Saying that she lived a dangerous life was not going to get her closer to seeing her child. That sounded like she was in the mob. “I want to see Sam just in case something happens. Please. Or even just let me help if—if you need help with funding college or something, I make a good salary now as an artist and I’ve been putting money aside for him for years already. I just want Sam to know that I love him. That’s all.”

She ended the voicemail quietly.

Char hadn’t been sure, at first, why she had called Em of all people when they got to the hospital and Allen was rushed to the ICU and they weren’t allowed to go with him. She had a family around her; a strong, close family and she didn’t need her ex from a dozen years ago.

But it hadn’t been about needing Em. It had been about seeing Allen so small and so collapsed and realizing with an escalating panic that she loved him as she loved Sam, and what happened next didn’t quite have a logic to it, as emotions often didn’t, but it had something to do with the likelihood of dying herself, or Sam dying, or even Em, whom she still loved very much.

She returned to the others a few minutes later. She collapsed into a chair in the hallway and put her head in her hands and Sparrow’s arms immediately went around her. “Thank you,” she said, the words muffled by her hands.

Sparrow’s arms had only tightened around her in response.

Although only two of them were allowed in to see Allen at a time, everyone else refused to leave the hospital. Dustin and Mimi had gone in; Dustin, because he was Allen’s best friend, and Mimi, because she understood what had happened the best. The rest of them were stranded outside, waiting.

“An average person will lose consciousness after about one minute of not breathing. irreparable brain damage will happen one to two minutes after that, and death about a minute later,” the EM had told them. “The brain is extremely delicate.”

Was Allen an average person? How long had he not been breathing? The entire scenario had been absolute chaos. It was impossible to tell, right away, what the power did. Or what Allen was doing. Or how to get to him. No one was certain how long Allen had been under. No one could tell exactly when he had stopped breathing.

In the end it was Queri’s weapon modding that had saved him. Thank god for Queri’s weapon modding. It had still been the most excrutiatingly long minute of her life as Queri thundered down the stairs to get the weapon, a half-demon pistol she had modified to take darts of the material that would channel demonslaying power. Char wasn’t sure about the specifics. There had been a coil and Char’s heartbeat in her throat, as if she could scream it out of her.

“He’ll be okay,” Kidd said stoically.

Char looked up to look at Kidd, and she met her eyes squarely, blazing with conviction. Kidd had such conviction about things. Char couldn’t fathom it. Fay, sitting beside her, chewed her lip in a rare expression of distress, and nodded in agreement. If it had been any other time, Char would have teased her about starting to care about the boy.

It wasn’t any other time. Char said nothing, and dropped her head back into her hands.

Mimi came out after a while, dropped tiredly into the chair next to Queri, and with a level of shamelessness that Char wasn’t sure she approved of because it’s what they deserved or resented because it meant she was so exhausted to let it happen, laid on her side to put her head in Queri’s lap. Queri looked down sadly at Mimi, stroking her hair. Mimi closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then said, “Where’s Isadora?”

“She’s with Sparrow,” Queri murmured. “She’s understandably freaked out. They’re getting food.”

“Okay,” Mimi said. “We need to decide what to do with her but maybe… not right now.”

Char silently agreed. They sat in silence until Mimi got up and left again, saying, “I left Dustin alone in there with him. I think he needed a moment, but I want to be there when Allen wakes up.”

It wasn’t until almost an hour later that a nurse came to them and said, “Allen is awake. You can all go see him, if you’d like.”

It turns out waking up becomes a lot harder when you have minor brain damage.

It took some time drifting in and out of consciousness before he woke up enough to realize that he wanted to be fully awake. He couldn’t remember exactly what had happened, but he had this sense of urgency. When he finally managed to claw himself into waking, and opened his eyes, his breath stopped for a second, and the machine beside him started beeping distressedly as his heartbeat sped up. Ugh. That did not feel good. Everything didn’t feel good, really. His head hurt; his chest burned; his neck ached. He grimaced at the bright lights of the hospital, squinting.

“He’s awake,” someone murmured, and Allen tried to move his head enough to see who it was. Why was he here again? Why did he feel sick? Why did he hate the hospital?

He wasn’t sure. But he felt better when he saw who was beside him. “Dustin,” he said, and his voice was scratchy and sounded like it had been rubbed with sandpaper. “Are you okay? Why are you crying?”

Because Dustin was crying, and that distressed him more than the hospital did by a longshot. His eyes were red and his face a bit puffy and his hair was a mess. The woman beside him said, “You scared us shitless, that’s the fuck why.”

Allen blinked at her. “Sorry.”

She made a noise of derision. “You shouldn’t be sorry. We should. We should have been able to save you before this was necessary.”

“What happened? What’s your name?” Allen knew that he knew her. And that he trusted her. But names were fuzzy—except Dustin’s. He had known Dustin a lot longer, he felt.

“Mimi,” she said. Allen nodded. That sounded right. “I’ll tell you when we get discharged. Can you remember anything?”

At the moment? Not really. Allen shook his head.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

Oh boy, now there was a question that took some consideration. “I guess… A car ride? Dustin was asleep on my shoulder. it’s, uh… I don’t remember what was going on but I remember that happening.”

Mimi looked relieved. “That’s not too bad.”

“Why do I hate hospitals?” Allen asked, since Mimi seemed to be good at answering questions.

Mimi blinked, and Dustin’s face contorted a bit and moved to hold Allen’s hand. Allen tried to squeeze it, to comfort him, since he still looked very upset even though he was no longer crying, but he was too weak to be able to do much.

“I don’t know.”

“I do,” Dustin said softly. “You used to visit your mom at one. And you were in the hospital a lot when you were young because… you got hurt a lot.”

The memories crashed into Allen like gentle waves onto shore, but they were icy. He wished he hadn’t asked. With it came more context of why he was here, what had been happening the past few weeks. A nurse came in and, upon seeing he was awake, checked his vitals with efficiency and smiled at him as if he was genuinely happy he was awake and speaking coherently.

“I’ll let your friends know,” he said, “so they can come see you, and I will also get a doctor to come and check you more thoroughly, but I think you should be fine.”

Mimi relaxed, and when Dustin smiled at the nurse a few more tears slid down his cheek.

The tears triggered something in Allen, and suddenly he gripped Dustin’s hand. “I’m sorry,” he said, emphatically, and Dustin looked at him with some bewilderment at the change of tone. “I said something to hurt you—before, and I know I’m a self-obsorbed ass and I’m sorry and I’m trying to be less like that.”

Dustin gave a choked laugh-cry, and shook his head before letting it rest on the fence of Allen’s hospital bed. “I forgive you,” he said, “if you’ll forgive me.”

“What for?”

“I hurt you, too.”

“Yeah, but you were right.”

Dustin shrugged noncomittally, and Allen got the feeling there was more to it than that, but he was so tired that he didn’t push. He wasn’t even sure what words he was supposed to use to push.

He lay back and focused on breathing without hurting too much. He wanted to go back to sleep, but not before he saw the others.

When they came in and they were all fine and walking it was an incredible relief. One woman came at him in a headlong rush, taking his head gently in her hands and stroked a hand down the back of his head, smiling at him through tears. “I’m so glad you’re alright.”

“Thanks,” said Allen. “Why is everyone so upset?”

“Because we fucking care about you, that’s why!” This was huffily from a girl closer to his age who’s rude language didn’t match the relief in her eyes.

“Why do people keep swearing at me when I ask questions like that?”

Sparrow—that was her name—laughed at that. “Because some of us need to learn to use less crude language than others. We just care about you. That’s all.”

Allen found this very bewildering, and he just shook his head in response, speechless.

The doctor came in a couple of hours later. He shined lights in Allen’s eyes, asked him some questions, and concluded that while he had some minor brain damage, he should be alright with some rest and patience.

“I’m not very patient,” Allen had mumbled when the doctor had told him this.

“I guess you’ll have to learn then,” the doctor had replied, giving him a stern look. “I hope you’re not a hockey player. No faking being better. That’s dumb.”

“A hockey player?” Allen asked, bewildered all over again.

The doctor just sighed and shook his head. “Never mind. Get some more rest and we’ll discharge you tomorrow.”