Rook remembers his brother clear enough, but he remembers in pieces. Not all of them match up right, and not all of them make a whole lot of sense, but they’re there, and straight after the fucking professor introduces himself properly, Rook has a dear fucking wish that they weren’t. Because the second he says it, the second Rook hears the name that used to be his come tumbling out of the little cindy’s mouth, he realises just why the jut of the professor’s jaw is so familiar, understands why it annoys him so fucking much when the professor cracks a smile at nothing in particular: for twenty-one fucking years, Rook’s been remembering that smile as the thing that he couldn’t protect.
It’s come on a bit since then, but there’s no denying Hilary. No matter how fucking hard he tries.
Rook's got a box in his room at the Airman. He doesn't look at it much, 'cause he can't fucking stand to, but every once in a while he pulls it out and takes a look before he shoves it away again, covers it over with old boots and jackets he doesn't like enough to wear more than once and pretends it doesn't exist.
There's not much in it. Bits and pieces, mostly, that had seemed important when he was burying himself in Molly's guts, and by the time he made it out he'd got so used to holding onto them that it was habit more than anything that kept him snarling at anyone tried to take the fucking thing.
Useless, most of it. But the thing he pulled out after that particular conversation was something he'd filched out of Charlotte when his brother was just starting to crawl - a wooden dragon with a little tin bell that drove him halfway fucking crazy on good days. He pulled it out and he glared at it and then he threw it at the fucking wall.
He managed maybe ten minutes of glaring at the other wall before he had to go pick it up and spent another fifteen minutes swearing because he'd lost the fucking bell. Couldn't find it, either. And can't. Not until he's packing up every fucking thing he owns, and deciding what to leave behind, like he's had to do so many times before, and then it's there shining at him from underneath a chair, and he wastes a half hour or so putting it back into place, muffling it with his fingers because if there is one thing he doesn't want the fucking professor seeing right now it's Rook being a nostalgic fucking idiot.
He puts it back together and he puts it in the box. And then when he's packing up the rucksack a couple of hours before dawn, he realises that packing a box is pretty fucking stupid when he could just take the entire fucking person along and use the room for another fucking shirt.
Although given who he's talking about, maybe he'd better leave the box and the shirt and just save room for the professor's fucking notebooks. They're brothers, or will be, or were, and if there's one thing Rook can do for Hilary, it's carry around all his shit.
Doctrine of Labyrinths; Mildmay + one piano key, a purple sheet, and a bridge
Mildmay
If there's anything to be said about being a kept thief, it's that it leaves you with a Great Septad stories to tell even if you're really fucking awful at it. There's a shortage of people to tell them to, but after things quieted down some, seemed like all Felix wanted was for me to keep talking, just to keep his mind off things, and uncomfortable as it was to tell it like he'd never left Pharaohlight, it was even fucking harder to make them work outside pure gutter Marathine. All I can say is, it was a long fucking trip.
Mostly, Felix didn't even nod. I'd pissed him off a few times waiting for some sign that he was listening, so after a while I started telling the stories like I used to tell them to myself, working out what I'd say, how I'd say it, where I'd pause. I was a lot fucking smarter than I'd been with Keeper, or I'd stopped thinking the same, at least, because most of what I remembered wanting to say was stuff that no one wanted to go admitting to Felix in a frilly pink fit.
The point is, I was concentrating so hard on the words I needed that I didn't notice Felix was paying proper attention until I'd stopped too long trying to remember exactly the lay of a particular room in this house with a broken piano and he said, "What were the numbers for?"
So I told him: there'd been a safe in the place, right up the top floor near a green room. A normal tumbler ain't even much trouble to me these days, but that safe had a lock that was the queen of all bitchkitties. I ain't never seen nothing like it, even now.
Reason was, the crazy alchemist who owned the building - can't remember his name, but there was a big fuss about his wife sometime or other, maybe to do with Obscurantists, 'cause most things did at the time - had managed to hook up a clock to the thing, so if you didn't turn it all just right inside a minute, you'd be shit out of luck for another while you waited for it all to reset.
I'd had pretty good instructions, but all Keeper could tell me about the combination was that there were bits of it hidden all around the house, and I'd have to be quick because this alchemist was sort of like a blood witch about grabbing people and putting them to bad use whether they liked it or not.
I got the numbers, anyway, and there was a key in the safe for the basement, which is where most of the nastier alchemy went on. What Keeper'd sent me in for was a bit of jewelry, which was easy enough, but the thing was that I didn't even need the fucking key to get it, and after all that fucking panicking up by the safe, there was no fucking way I wasn't going to use that key, no matter how fucking long it took, and Kethe be damned.
I wasn't purely stupid, though. I put it back and went back to Keeper and kept my ears open, and I was about to get on to the really interesting bit about the missing kids when Felix said, "There's the crossroads. And Terada," and gave me a look that said I probably shouldn't go on talking if I wanted to sleep inside, so I'd got my hopes up about the listening thing.
Didn't bother me too much to stop the story there, except that I hadn't told it right if he didn't want to hear the end, and that it meant he went back to staring at nothing for the night - and let me tell you, there's nothing worse than when all he does is eat and stare and sleep. So we both went to bed pretty fucking discouraged, him curled up on his side like he was back in Simside again, me staring at the ceiling because my fucking leg hurt if I slept any other fucking way.
Wasn't 'til we got out on the road again that he said, almost like his old self, "And the key?" Like it was something I should've already thought of, and I was keeping him waiting as part of the story.
I don't think I was ever more grateful to be a kept-thief.