closing off the space i'm in. Who: Evander Finch. What: Clean up! Where: Various. When: Vignettes, from early adolescence to recently. Rating: PG. Status: Complete narrative.
TODAY.
The HOW TO PREVENT ILLNESS THIS SEASON! flier in a men’s restroom of the Royal Courts echoed the younger Finch’s network post. Evander's dimly lit reflection stared back at him from a smudged mirror, exaggerating shadows that the brightly framed vanities of his performer fellows would've banished. Bard-status shed, the honorable judge was a backstage worker to his stage-loving guildmates, wielding words like some did brush and dustpan.
Evan turned on the faucet, eyes on the flier’s instructions but mind wandering elsewhere, and washed his hands.
I.
Evander woke to find a nightmare in his father’s study. The frantic movements of his mother searching for what he could not yet comprehend betrayed the stern, elegant voice with which she tried to console him. His questions lingered in the air, unanswered. When she asked him to leave, he stayed.
All faith in the blind chase exhausted, she began to remove what evidence there was of her search. Following her silent command with measured hesitation, the boy tidied up a stack of envelopes, letters from an unnamed ghost. It was as though neither mother nor son ever took to the room like scavengers over a corpse.
Upon noticing her son wiping blood from a paper cut on his shirt, Allaine dismissed him to the restroom. It was his mother the boy saw in the mirror—puffy-eyed and tear-streaked.
II.
The other nobles began to call him “Finch” over “Evan” as he grew into his father’s clothes and names and roles.
His stutter and shame followed him to the restroom, once a sanctuary in solitude of his own reflection's accompaniment. Their servants left him in silence at his request, nothing but the dissonant clinking of shattered glass. He picked each piece up in hopes of find someone other than himself—his father—in the detritus; and indeed he did not recognize the wayward noble who met his eyes.
III.
Evander looked up from a buffet table serving sandwiches too small for ease of handling. He eyed the staff’s extra hands, uniformed men and women who hid in the shadows until they spotted a spill or stain or mistake. He saw himself in them. (“Golden child” did not mean that he shone.)
Hastily, he brushed crumbs off his hands with a kerchief and headed to the nearest disgruntled group of nobles to undo whatever his brother had said. With ease, he swept whatever grievances they harbored under the rug.
Experience taught Evan that Royse’s criticisms did nothing to change the system: judges still worked in conjunction with fighters to the a common end, to tie loose ends into nooses around criminals' necks. He felt the weight of his guild on his shoulders; yet it was alongside the lawful that he tread. With the slamming of his hammer, another thief was allowed freedom in exchange for the condemnation of his comrades. Satisfied peacekeepers escorted that defendant out of court and another in. Said thief mouthed a thank you to the judge.
Later the judge returned to his family’s estate, doffed his armor, washed his still-clean hands. In another district, a neighborhood welcomed a snitch back home.
Like rats clearing garbage off streets, they tore the thief down to bone and picked his body clean.