Who: Lem & Vex Where: Forest, then Ludlow When Late May Warning:
For a while all that he knew was that things were different. He was the only thing that wasn't crisp and clean and it felt wrong. It was too bright. He spent a ridiculous amount of time just sitting among the trees, listening to the birds and trying to understand existence on both a primal and higher level. What was he? Who was he? He was filthy and he was human, at first that was all he knew. His stomach felt wrong but everything felt wrong so it didn't really pique his interest more than his environment did. Everything was so green, the trees weren't exactly cleanliness incarnate but they weren't coated in filth either, just moss and dirt. Could dirt be clean? It felt clean between his fingers when he touched it. Little things moved in the dirt but they didn't feel dangerous.
He roamed for a while until he found a small spring of water and nearly put his whole head under in his efforts to drink. It was cold, near freezing but it felt like it cleared his mind in a good way. Not enough to remember. Was he alone in the world? After a while he thought he remembered others but their faces were so vague. He missed the warmth of the wolf, it was cold that night and he curled in on himself up against a tree and wondered if he'd wake up if he fell asleep now.
He did wake up. His stomach felt worse and when he drank water he could feel it splashing around inside like he was hollow. He liked that feeling, let the water fill him up and then threw up at least half of it moments later. His body didn't like everything he did, it seemed.
Memories were returning, he still wasn't sure where he was but this was not the other place, the bad place. It was too clean, too vibrant and too bright. He scrubbed at his filthy skin with the spring water, his fingers numb and cold, goosebumps crawling up his arms. "My name is Arthur," he told a nearby squirrel. The name didn't feel right but it was his name. Arthur. He was a prophet. He had a house.
Walking was awful, his head felt light and his feet felt heavy as he stumbled through the woods and wondered if they'd ever end. Whoever Arthur was, he was not a man who loved camping. He knew some basic things about survival but what good was knowing what direction he was walking in when he had no idea where he was to begin with.
With all the beauty of nature surrounding him it felt a little stupid that the road he came across was the most beautiful thing he'd seen in a long time. Roads meant people, people meant civilization. Whoever Arthur had been he hadn't been a fan of it but right now he didn't care. Civilization meant hot water and food - potentially. He turned left because it felt right and after that it felt like he walked forever. Things got more familiar though and cars passed him but nobody stopped, he couldn't blame them, he doubted Arthur would have stopped for someone like him either. Detective, he'd been a detective, it was almost laughable because right now he couldn't detect shit. "Firecracker," he muttered to himself, fragmented memories seeping through and doing a chaotic little dance in his mind. Dark eyes and fae like posture. Firecracker. He remembered meeting her, remembered being medicated, maybe he was just crazy. It was dark when he found his way into town and he was pretty sure his feet were bleeding but all that pain in his body was almost pleasant, a reminder that he was alive.
The door to his house - he was pretty sure it was his house now - was locked but he remembered crawling in through a window as a kid and he was still skinny enough to do that now though he was nowhere near as agile or small so things fell over and broke as he squeezed his way through. He didn't care, these things didn't mean anything to him, they'd belonged to... Sarah? Aunt Sarah. She was dead. He remembered werewolves but it hadn't been his werewolf so that was okay. He shed his filthy clothing at the bathroom door and stumbled into the shower, groaning softly when he felt the hot water on his body. This was what being human felt like. Hot water and soap. It was ecstatic.
In an effort to act more like a human being, Lem had been having dinner over at Nic’s house more often. There was a warmth and camaraderie over there, especially with Gabriel living with them now and cooking so often. Sometimes it made Lem forget everything for a few minutes at a time. She wasn’t exactly feeling better, maybe just a little less lost. She still spent a lot of time alone in the house, and she felt like she needed that distance somehow, to properly mourn Vex. She couldn’t just forget about him and go on to some happy shiny life, not yet.
After saying goodnight to everyone, she walked back across the yard and let herself into her house. It wasn’t technically hers of course, but nobody had come to kick her out yet, and she was going to stay as long as she could. It took her until she was halfway up the stairs to realize that she heard running water. Lem froze for a moment, then quietly hurried the rest of the way up and slipped into her room, her heart beating hard and sick in her chest. There was someone in the house, someone in the shower. Lem grabbed the baseball bat she kept behind the door, and started back down the hallway, slowly approaching the bathroom. Lem stepped over the pile of filthy clothes, stepping as quietly as she could until she was facing the closed shower curtain. It was opaque, she couldn’t make out who was in there, but she was ready to bash their damn head in. Lem took a quick breath, then screamed, “Who are you?!”
He was busy trying to scrub the disgusting shit out of his hair when he was jolted out of this almost hypnotic state by her screaming. He jolted, stumbled backwards and it took him a second to realize just what had shaken him out of his deep thoughts. Firecracker his brain suggested helpfully and he let out a shaky little laugh, peeling back the shower curtain. "That's a fucking good question, firecracker," said just loud enough to speak over the noise of running water. It was her, definitely. His memories might still be a little fuzzy but there was no mistaking this girl for someone else.
Lem had lifted the bat when the shadow behind the curtain stumbled, ready to defend herself and her territory from this weird invader. But then she heard that laugh and the curtain pulled back. A jolt ran through Lem’s body as she instantly recognized Vex. She dropped the bat with a noisy clatter on the tile and gave a wordless shriek. Her hands flew to cover her mouth for a split second, her dark eyes like saucers in her head. It was him, and he wasn’t some faded vision come to haunt her. She could see the water still bouncing off of the pale skin of his shoulder, that one detail standing out to her like there was a spotlight on it. A half second later, she launched herself at him, hopping over the edge of the tub and practically tackling Vex back against the wall of the shower, her arms locking around him. Thin high pitched noises of excitement started to morph into more coherent “oh my god”s.
By the grace of some god or another they didn't fall and break anything. He remembered her enough to know this wasn't weird and even if his body still hurt and his stomach felt all sorts of wrong, the slam of her body against his made him feel alive. "Forgot how loud you are," he groaned, but he hugged her back as her clothes got soaked under the rush of water. "You don't call me Arthur. What the hell do you call me." She hadn't said his name and he still couldn't remember hers, just that she was a firecracker and he was a prophet and she absolutely would have cracked his skull in if she hadn't recognized him. For some reason that didn't worry him, it was soothing, knowing she could protect herself even when he wasn't there.
She hardly even felt the water, much more focused on the skinny form in her arms. He was solid and real and there, and Lem had to put work into quieting herself down so she could answer him. She took a few heaving breaths, tears already running down her cheeks, and pulled back to look at him. His beard was long and tangled, his hair way overgrown and still dirty, but she could never mistake those white streaks and that well-loved face underneath all the scraggle. Lem reached up to cup it with one hand, tugging a bit on the beard. “Vex, you’re Vex,” she said tearfully. “You’re back, are you really back? You promise?” She clutched at him like he might disappear at any moment.
"I don't know how," Vex replied and yes, that sounded right. Vex. Hearing it made him feel more real somehow, like he was really here and while it didn't make him remember a whole lot more, it seemed to solidify something inside him in a very pleasant way. "But I'm here. I promise." Her name was Lem. He was stupidly glad he didn't have to ask her that, it would have made her sad and there was nothing worse than those big dark eyes looking at him with sadness. He remembered her crying, weak and terrified and that pleasant feeling faded to make way for something else. He raised his hands to cup her face, frowning softly. "I hurt you," he said, trying to remember how and why. "Was I sick?"
Lem didn’t care how it had happened, not yet. The fact that it was happening was what mattered. Lem felt like volcanoes of emotion were erupting inside of her -- she wanted to scream some more and cry and laugh with insane glee. Vex was back, he’d come back to her! She bounced while still clinging to him, her face going through several twisting expressions, unable to answer that for a few seconds while she grabbed an unsteady deep breath. It meant so much to her that he remembered that he’d hurt her, even if he couldn’t remember the details of it. Lem wasn’t even sure how she knew he couldn’t recall everything, it was just this sense she got from him. “Yeah,” she said thickly, nodding as she shifted from foot to foot. “You weren’t yourself, you didn’t do it on purpose. But-- but are you okay? You’ve been gone for months.” She pulled away a bit to look at his top half over, hunting for injuries.
"Months," Vex echoed and that made no damn sense. "I tried to-" he started, mimicking drawing with his fingers in the air. "Tally marks. I tried to count but there was no night and no day. But we didn't eat, Lem. We didn't eat anything. Months..." He was bad about eating in general and Lem had often had to remind him to take care of himself, he remembered that much, but no human could survive months without eating, not even days without drinking. "What if I'm not human anymore," he mused, not at all phased as she looked him over. Nudity wasn't a thing with them, he remembered that too. It was all filtering back in, piece by piece, a little blurry but it was more than he'd had in the woods.
She barely recognized that Vex was naked, beyond glad that she could look at all of him at once. He didn’t seem to be hurt anywhere she could see, and he wasn’t much skinnier than he had been when he left, at least as far as Lem could tell. Not eating for months though ... he should be dead. Lem had no idea how he wasn’t, but she couldn’t deny that he was standing right in front of her. “I don’t care, just as long as you don’t leave again,” Lem said. She hugged Vex tight again, pressing her cheek against his chest, head turned away from the water. She didn’t even know if his problem was solved, if he would slowly start to drain her energy again, but Lem couldn’t care yet. If they had to get more help to fix him, they would try. What mattered was he was back. “I could feel you sometimes, I could swear it,” she murmured. “I couldn’t give up on you.”
"I felt like my arms had been cut off," Vex muttered. "A chunk of me gone." He patted her head soothingly and couldn't help but laugh a little at how it didn't matter to her what he was as long as he was here. He was here, he had no idea how or why but he was here. "I thought I heard you a couple of times. I came here... But it wasn't this house, not really." He and Carson had slept in Lem's room once or twice, he remembered that now and he knew seeing her room would probably jog his memory further. Not that he really wanted to remember that part and he gently pried her off of himself, holding her back. "I need to get clean," he told her as he started remembering this water wouldn't stay warm for long. "I'm so filthy, everything was so filthy." He wasn't the cleanest person, hardly a stickler for tidiness but that place had crossed his boundaries so thoroughly and he felt itchy and disgusting still.
Lem had all but forgotten about the water running over them, but he was right that the hot water wouldn’t last too much longer. “Here, let me help you,” she said, not about to leave him alone for a second. Not when he could vanish again into thin air. Lem started stripping off her clothes, tossing them out of the shower until she was just in her bra and underwear. She grabbed the shampoo and poured some into her hand, then got up on the ledge of the tub to start washing his hair. “You get the rest of you,” Lem instructed. “I’ll get your back.” If they both worked, it would go a bit faster, and it felt perfectly normal to Lem to help him get clean. He was completely filthy, and he was probably so tired on top of that.
It was natural to the two of them and Vex was glad for the help. He wanted to shave and cut his hair too, his beard especially felt itchy and he couldn't help the paranoid feeling that there were tiny things living there, tiny things that had come back with him, growing on him and in him. He pushed that thought away because he couldn't really handle the idea. He'd drink bleach if he had to but right now he could at least shave off his beard and cut his hair so short that it'd be easier to clean. "I need my razor and scissors," he muttered as he scrubbed his body with soap and a washcloth until his skin was read and streaked. "I want to dip my whole body into a giant vat of bleach right now."
Already, Lem felt her world coming back together. She’d washed and cut and bleached Vex’s hair off and on ever since they’d hit the road, and having her fingers in the tangled over-long strands now felt like coming home somehow. This was the role she’d been good at -- the supportive conduit -- and the sudden peace of it made her want to cry some more. “Soap doesn’t burn as bad,” she pointed out in answer, making sure she got his scalp good and clean. Lem could sympathize with the feeling, she’d wanted to douse herself in boiling water to wash those boys away, a lifetime ago. Human skin had its limits though. “We’ll get you cleaned up, don’t worry. ... okay, think you’re good to rinse now. I’m gonna have to cut some of those knots out, though.”
"Cut it all off," Vex muttered. He didn't like the way it got in his eyes now and he'd never been one to let it grow this much before. He liked it short, out of the way and Lem had often shaved much of it away. He wasn't ready to do that, go completely bald, certain he'd look like a dying man if he did and while he wasn't terribly vain that didn't mean he didn't have some limits there. But short. Very short. He gestured with his fingers how short as he dipped his head under the stream of water and gods that felt good. The stark difference between doing this alone and having her here to help him crossed his mind and he felt a rush of gratitude, turning around to give her a hug. Carefully of course, she was balancing on the tub's edge because she was so damn small, he didn't want her to fall and hurt herself, but he had to hug her again now that he wasn't quite so grimy.
Lem smiled a little at him specifying how short he wanted his hair already, and for the first time in a long time, nothing about it felt forced. She watched Vex rinse himself off, happy to see most of the filth going down the drain along with the now-ugly-gray soap suds. When he hugged her, she embraced him tightly back, her arms wrapping quickly around his bony shoulders. Lem just clung for a moment, her cheek pressed against his wet hair. She tried not to blubber, but she couldn’t help the way her throat closed up and tears sprang to her eyes again. It wasn’t all sadness anymore -- there was a ton of relief and love and gratitude mixed in there. Something had given Vex back to her, and she wished she could thank it a million times. “I was dead without you,” she told him, her voice small and shaky. “I missed you so much.”
"Then let's be reborn now, together," Vex said softly. "Because I died and came back and you can too." He had lost his faith in a lot of things in the other place, but not her. Never her. They were still connected through something big; he just wasn't so sure he could recognize it as easily as he thought he could. He'd been wrong about the monster in the fog and it had nearly killed Lem. Maybe that had been a lesson more so than a test, maybe he didn't know shit. The memories were still filtering in and suddenly he felt cold inside, pulling back and looking at her with intensity. "Did I kill Nic?"
It was the perfect thing to say, because Vex always knew exactly what to say to her. They were on the same level with so many things. In a way, they had died together, and now they could start again. Lem was a tiny bit startled by the sudden movement, but she quickly shook her head at the question. “No, he’s fine,” she said, then caught herself and gave Vex a pained sort of look. “I mean, not fine. He’s sad and brokenhearted and feels guilty, but he’s alive and healthy.” She petted the side of Vex’s face, giving his scraggly beard a little tug. “You didn’t permanently hurt any of us.” She kissed his forehead and then climbed down from the tub’s ledge, grabbing a towel to offer to him.
Vex wasn't terribly sure why Nic felt guilty when he'd been the one to shoot him, the events of that night still jumbled and weird but it was coming back and he didn't want to force any of it so he nodded and let it go for now. He let her wait a little as he felt the need to scrub himself with more soap before he left the tub but by the time he was done rinsing that all off, the water was going cold. "Carson was with me," he said as he climbed out of the tub and let Lem wrap the towel around him. It felt nice to be pampered and cared for and he ruffled her hair gently as he spoke. "He was a wolf the entire time, he kept me safe."
Lem turned the water off before she worked on drying Vex. It wasn’t something she’d done for him all the time, but at the moment it felt like an honor. She paused and cocked an eyebrow at him at that news, looking kind of impressed. “He was like, a wolf-wolf, or a werewolf the whole time?” she asked. If one had to be stuck in some terrifying alternate dimension, it was pretty handy to have a werewolf bodyguard, she guessed. “Is he okay, do you think? Are all of them coming back now?” She hadn’t heard about any returns, but she also hadn’t been paying any attention to the outside world. The most contact she had with it was at the Castells’ house, and they seemed to avoid talking about anything that might upset her. Lem was thinking now that she ought to tell Nic as soon as Vex was settled.
"I don't know," Vex replied honestly. "But yeah, he was a werewolf. I just remember he was very warm and soft to begin with, before we got all filthy. Eh, even then he was warm. Radiator." He smiled faintly but there was sadness there, tugging at his heart. Would Carson come back? Would any of them? "It was just the two of us for a while, I don't know if they died or if they- Maybe they're here." Maybe they were all scattered in the woods all over and if Carson was still a wolf he'd need his help. "Fuck, should probably go looking, right?" Not tonight, his body felt weak and wrong still, even now that it was clean. "I should probably eat something first," he added, his voice a little subdued.
It was kind of fun to imagine Carson as a nice and cuddly werewolf instead of the murder-machine she was used to seeing, and Lem grinned. Things had obviously been very different over there, and it made so much of her relax to know that Vex hadn’t felt completely alone. None of the others that had disappeared had been their allies, as far as she knew. “Maybe they are, but yeah, we can look later,” she agreed. Lem finished drying him off and hung up the towel, nodding eagerly. “There’s food downstairs, Nic makes sure I eat. Do you remember where your room is? All your clothes are still there, I didn’t move anything. Get dressed and I’ll go heat something up?” All that mattered now was getting Vex comfortable again, the rest could come later. He was back. “And then once you eat I’ll deal with all this.” Lem grinned a little and tugged at the side of his hair.
"No," Vex said with a little frown and a wag of a finger. "You got the order all wrong. I need this off now." Mostly his beard. He'd scrubbed and scrubbed at it but the thought of eating with those tangled hairs in the way made his stomach turn, like there might still be something there from the other side. Of course, if there was, it was also inside his body already but now that he felt clean, the thought of it was nauseating. "Snip snip, then we eat. I can shave, you cut my hair." He did remember his clothes, some of them at least, and he knew he had a tool to trim his beard at least, maybe they had razors too.
“Okay, you’re the boss,” Lem said, her tone more chipper than it had been in a long time. “Let me trim it down first though, it’ll be hard to shave like that.” She turned and squatted in front of the bathroom cabinet, pulling it open to rummage around inside. There was a razor and shaving cream on the sink, and soon enough she had found the clippers in their case. Lem opened it up and pulled out everything she needed. “Sit down so I can reach you,” she told Vex, gesturing at him vaguely. She could buzz off most of the beard and let him do the rest while she worked on getting his hair looking halfway decent again.
They made short work of getting his beard off and his hair shorter and once he'd rinshed off all the little stray hairs, Vex looked at himself in the mirror with a weird feeling of recognition. "Aw shit, I was a cop," he muttered and rubbed at his jaw. The man in the mirror looked both familiar but also so alien to him and those memories really did seem like somebody else's life. He'd been a cop but he'd gone crazy. Maybe he was still crazy, that would explain a lot. "Did you know me back then too?" he asked and one thing was for certain, he was letting his beard grow out again because this face didn't fully feel his.
He did look pretty strange without a beard, but he looked more like Vex than he had with all the scraggly shit, and Lem couldn’t help but hug him from the side as he looked at himself. She looked at both of their reflections and felt an incredible happiness fluttering in her chest. If he was still toxic or whatever, they would have to deal with it, but she couldn’t even say how glad she was to have him back. Smiling softly, Lem shook her head against his shoulder. “I met you after, we were in the same psych ward,” she told him. Lem raised her brows at him in the mirror. “Do you remember any of that? Do you remember what you can do?”
Vex took a moment to answer, pursing his lips as he stared at his reflection. "I remember the psych ward," he said. "I remember the little group session room, there was a nurse who always gave us some chocolate in the evening. I liked her." Or was she a doctor? It was hazy. But what could he do? He frowned softly in thought, remembering bribes and threats, doctors and delusions. "I thought I was touched by a god when I got hurt," he finally said. "Does that have something to do with it?" Or was that another delusion? They'd been in a psych ward for a reason but they'd also left for a reason.
Lem remembered that nurse too and it made her grin. All of that felt like a lifetime ago, even if it hadn’t really been that long at all. She gave Vex another squeeze and then let him go. He still needed clothes and food and then rest. “Something to do with it, yeah,” she answered. Lem reached up to rub at the hair she’d left on the top of his head. It was a pretty good fade, she was decent at doing his hair. “You’re a prophet,” she told him with a warm smile. “You see things that are happening far away, or already happened, or will happen. I’m your conduit, I make you stronger.” She didn’t hesitate to tell him any of that in the slightest. He would accept it, even if he couldn’t remember it yet.
Vex might not remember it fully but it made some of his stranger memories make a little more sense. "You do make me stronger," he said with a little smile and that went for more than just whatever farsight he might possess. He glanced at the mirror again and rubbed his hand over his hair as well. "Did you... bleach my hair? I thought it was white but the white grew out." He had barely said the words when he remembered that too and smiled again. "You've been taking care of me for a long time, firecracker. Haven't you."
She felt like she was glowing all of the sudden. They’d always had an affectionate relationship and Vex was generous with praise, but this felt different. It felt like more. After so long of suffering and not having him, he was back and saying things that made her chest feel like it might explode. “You’re gonna make me cry,” Lem mumbled, already halfway there. She covered her mouth with her hands for a second, then hugged Vex tightly again. “You take care of me too,” she told him unsteadily, pressing her forehead into his collar bone. Hot, happy tears leaked out of her eyes and she sniffled. “I’ll bleach it again whenever you want. You’d just better not be a dream, or I’ll be really pissed.”
"I'm pretty sure I'm not a dream," Vex reassured her as he hugged her back and rubbed his nose against her hair. "I feel like if this was a nice dream my everything wouldn't be hurting, you know?" He was being a tad hyperbolic but his whole body did feel tired and his stomach felt all sorts of wrong and he was sure that a nice dream would let him forget those things. Not to mention he hadn't been hungry in a long time so it felt a little weird to experience that again. He'd never been good at gauging his own hunger levels but this was different, he needed to eat. "I'm gonna get some clothes on and then I gotta eat," he murmured, rubbing her back gently. "Are you hungry too? Do we have any food in the house?"
That was a good point, though Lem felt fine, so maybe it was just her dream imposing a lot of realism onto Vex ... but no, she couldn’t let herself fall down that rabbit hole. This was a reality that she didn’t want to question, she just wanted to enjoy it. Lem sniffed again and gave Vex a tighter squeeze before she let go. She probably needed some clothes too, she was still just in her underwear. “Yeah, Nic’s been bringing me food. Zania’s boyfriend moved in with them next door and he cooks a lot, so we have all kinds of leftovers,” she said. Lem let him go and pulled back to smile up at him. She wasn’t exactly hungry, her body still full of emotion, but she had a feeling once they actually sat down together, she would eat. Lem patted him and turned to lead the way through the door and toward Vex’s room.
Did Vex remember Zania's boyfriend, he wondered. Had he even known him? It wasn't terribly important but he could only hope there weren't more people around that he couldn't remember. That time he spent in the woods, clueless about himself and his environment, had been difficult both emotionally and physically. He couldn't imagine how painful it would have been to come home and not remember Lem's face. "I'm glad Nic's been taking care of you," he said as he followed her down the hall. "Neither of us was alone, that probably helped." His room really hadn't changed at all and he found it easy to remember where he kept his things. Organized chaos. "Everything looked the same, you know. On the other side. Like it was this place but after a great fungal apocalypse." He opened the bottom drawer in his dresser and dug around for clean underwear and god, clean clothes really did have a nice feel to them, he kind of wanted to bury his hands in all this fabric and revel in how nice it was.
Lem had been mostly sleeping in Vex’s room since he’d been gone, in an effort to feel close to him, so she had some clothes in there too, in a pile at the foot of the bed. She stripped out of her shower-wet underwear and pulled on a pair of soft sweatpants and a big t-shirt that did technically belong to Vex. It had definitely helped not to be alone, even if she had isolated herself even more on purpose for quite a while. It made her feel guilty to think about already, and she knew she owed Nic about a million apologies. He would be so relieved that Vex was back, but she thought he would probably still feel bad about it all. But that would come later. For the moment she was interested in what Vex was saying. “Like all the houses were still here and everything?” she asked as she perched on the edge of the bed.
"All the houses," Vex confirmed. "Not all the furniture though, a lot of it was just gone, other stuff was broken. This room had a bed but there was no mattress." Not that it mattered much, he'd slept up against Carson wherever they went and the mattresses - like everything else - were really too disgusting to sleep on. He finished getting dressed and took one more look around the room as he considered going barefoot. No, it could still get cold he guessed so socks were probably a better idea. Soft, clean socks. He grabbed a pair to put on later and reached out for Lem, offering her his hand. "It's damn good to be back."
Lem took his hand and stood up, smiling broadly. Her cheeks were starting to hurt, she hadn’t been using all those muscles for a while. “It’s damn good to have you back,” she said as they walked out of the bedroom and started down the hallway. “I thought I could feel you sometimes, but I didn’t know if I just wanted that to be true, you know? But I didn’t give up on you. Nic is gonna be so happy and maybe Carson will come back too. I’ve got a lot to tell you but like, when you’re ready, you can eat first and everything.” Lem felt almost bubbly, the longer Vex was there, the more it sank in that he was really there. It was amazing. Even though she’d believed he was alive, she’d all but given up on him ever making it back. “How did you get home, do you know?”
"I have no idea," Vex answered truthfully, tapping his fingers against the railing as they descended the stairs. "I woke up in the woods, had no idea who or where I was. It was nice though, hard but nice. Everything was so clean, the colors were so vivid." He hoped Carson would come back too, as soon as possible.He vaguely remembered Max saying people were disappearing the last time he went to the house, had they come back? He hoped that too, hoped that none of them was left alone in that horrible place. "I'm clean now but I can't help but think what if all that filth is still inside me, growing like cancer, coating my lungs." He didn't exactly love hospitals but maybe it was worth looking into.
Lem frowned, worry twisting her gut suddenly. She hadn’t thought about that. “Well ... I mean, how do you feel?” she asked, trotting up next to him once they were off the stairs. She looked him over again, but he didn’t look any worse than he had upstairs in the shower. “Have you been coughing or anything?” She hoped that eating food wouldn’t make him sick, visions of Vex throwing up black gunk now dancing through her head. How awful would it be to get him back only to have him waste away in front of her? “Do you want to go to the hospital or something? Get checked out?” Neither of them liked hospitals at all, but Lem would rather suffer through a few hospital visits than worry constantly that Vex was dying.
He hadn't meant to worry her but he really didn't do well at thinking ahead before he blurted out what he was thinking and that hadn't changed. "Well, I puked my guts out in the woods after I drank too much water and that was... that was just clear so I guess I'm alright." He shrugged, grinning faintly at the way she was studying him, as if she could use x-ray vision to check out his insides. "But you know what, I'll go see a doctor tomorrow, let them check my blood and lungs and all that shit." If not for himself, he'd do it for her so he never had to see that look of worry in her eyes again - at least when it came to his health.
A doctor the next day wasn’t stalling much at all, so Lem was satisfied with that. And he started getting sick overnight or something, Lem would call for an ambulance. That seemed like a solid plan. “Good,” she declared. They’d arrived in the kitchen, and Lem nudged Vex to sit down at the table. She went to the fridge and opened it to start sorting through the leftovers. “There’s jambalaya, um, this chicken stuff that was really good. Shrimp gumbo -- Zan’s boyfriend is Cajun, I guess. Some Chinese food from the other night ... spaghetti ... what do you want?” She looked around at him with a little smile, happy to be able to feed him again. Why was it so much easier to do for someone else, rather than herself? Maybe because the thick ice of crippling depression around her was cracking.
All of that sounded wonderful and horrible at the same time and Vex found he wanted something very simple and basic and flavorless right now. "Spaghetti," he decided. "No sauce, nothing, just spaghetti." He felt like if he put flavors in his mouth right now it'd melt down his brain somehow or at the very least too many spices would just make his stomach riot some more. He wanted white bread and pasta, maybe rice, just plain, boring, something thick and bland that would settle in his stomach and stop that churning. "Are you eating too? Have you been eating? Or is all this leftover stuff something you were supposed to be eating?" He shot her a cheeky smile, no judgment there. They were so crippled without each other, he wouldn't be surprised if she was just as bad about him with food when she didn't feel compelled to make sure he was eating.
Just noodles? Lem’s eyebrows raised, but then she nodded. The leftovers she had already had sauce in it, but it wouldn’t take her long to boil up some more spaghetti, and she could do that without fucking it up. She was pretty sure she could, at least. Lem closed the fridge and started to pull out a pot. She shot him a sheepish look and gave a little laugh. “I mean, it was all meant for me ‘cause nobody thought you would come back, but ... yeah, I’ve been eating. At least once a day,” she told him, taking the pot to the sink. Lem didn’t want to mention that the once a day was usually when Nic was over, giving her that look and making her sit down to eat. “I’ll eat with you. I just don’t have any uncontaminated spaghetti,” she added. Lem put the pot on the stove and turned it on, then found the pasta in the cabinet to add once it was time. “Maybe ... bread and butter in the meantime?” she offered.
"Bread," Vex said with feeling, raising his hands like a bowl and spreading his fingers in exclamation in a somewhat theatrical motion. "Oh yes, bread. No wonder it's such a big fucking deal in some religions, fluffy, white bread." He let her get on with filling the pot with water and started rummaging around for the bread himself, groaning happily when he found it. "Look how fucking clean it is," he sighed with relief when he pulled out a few slices, knowing one or two wasn't going to do. If there had been mold on it he just might have died from disgust and disappointment but it was clear of any imperfections, white and fluffy and probably filled to the brim with preservatives. That sounded good to Vex, just as long as it was filling.
Lem grinned at his enthusiasm about the bread, though the comment about it being clean gave her a pang in the chest. It was crazy the things she took for granted. They all did. Since Vex was taking care of his bread craving, Lem started putting some stiff noodles in the water. She wasn’t great at cooking, but she could do the basics when she had motivation too. Apparently Vex was her motivation. “I can’t believe you didn’t eat for months,” she said, her tone conversational. It really would be unbelievable to most people, all of it, but Lem’s capacity for belief was larger than most. “Once your stomach’s settled, we need to like, go get whatever food you missed the most. Moxie’s? Pizza?” Lem glanced over at him curiously.
Vex wasn't sure how to tell her he hadn't missed any food while he was there. He'd missed a lot of things but food wasn't one of them. He just smiled and nodded at that, chewing his piece of bread slowly as he got used to that movement again. "You can bake me a cake," he said after he'd swallowed and wasted no time in taking another bite. "I'm glad I didn't have to eat, everything was so disgusting over there, there was no clean water. I guess we could have tried frying one of the little monsters Carson killed but I wouldn't be willing to bet it was edible." He hadn't even considered it at the time, that was how far removed food had been from his mind and thinking back on it now it was crazy. Months without food or water? It really had been a strange place.
She perked up even further at the idea of a cake, her smile getting even brighter. She loved cakes and Vex loved cakes and cakes were good at -- “We should have a party!” Lem declared, beaming over at him. “Not like, real soon, of course, but sometime! Everybody will be really happy to see you back. Nic and Zan are gonna be so excited. Oh and that Mal guy came back after you left? I let him see your board, he took some pictures. He’ll wanna see you too.” Lem hadn’t kept up with what Mal was doing with all that AIR information, but she was sure he would be interested to know that Vex was back home. The water had started to boil, so Lem shifted the softening spaghetti around a bit.
Vex blinked, realizing he'd completely forgotten all about AIR, about Mal and Jane and Neil. It seeped into his brain again, images and memories and ideas he'd held close. He'd been manic the last time he was in that basement, he barely remembered what had been on the board and the thought of someone down there, taking pictures and studying his work was weirdly awkward to him. He'd been dead to the world of course, Lem had every right to share what he knew with the people who would keep fighting but that didn't mean he had to love it. "Is it all still down there?" he asked knowing he needed to look at it again with a clear mind if possible. How much of that strange infection had affected his thoughts and actions those last few days? Could he ever fully trust himself again? He knew now he was crazy, even before the infection he'd been seriously ill and probably still was. It was going to be tricky to navigate everything knowing that.
Lem didn’t notice any unhappiness in his tone, thinking instead about trying to plan a welcome home party. She wasn’t really good at that stuff, but maybe Zania would help her. The parties Zan threw were always super cool, in Lem’s experience so far. Not that they needed a huge event, but something small and fun to cleanse the palate of all this darkness. At least a little. Lem was sure it wouldn’t be like an instant thing, Vex and Nic would need to deal with whatever feelings they had about how it had all gone down too, but Lem already felt a thousand pounds lighter. She glanced back at him while she fiddled with the noodles. “Yeah, it’s all still down there,” she answered. “I moved a couple things around, I uh, went looking for a couple of those people. But it’s mostly like it was when you ... left.” She paused, then gave Vex a fierce sort of grin. “Neil the librarian is afraid of me now, I’m pretty sure.”
"I think Neil the librarian is afraid of everything," Vex snorted softly but oh lord, did he want to know? "What did you do?" he asked, drawing the question out playfully. His Lem was fierce and vengeful, far more dangerous than anyone would guess by looking at her. It helped that she talked about Neil in the present tense so she hadn't killed him or anything and if she'd hurt him she probably wouldn't be here - unless the cowardly little man hadn't pressed charges. She might have needed an outlet though and Neil was the easiest one out of the four that had put Vex and the others away.
“Nothing!” Lem automatically insisted, then a laugh bubbled up out of her. It had been so long since she’d laughed, it felt weird and rusty, but in a good sort of way. Which made no sense, but so many things didn’t anymore. “Well, not much. I just screamed at him a little. But he looked like he wanted to shit his pants. Did you know he can make lightning with his hands? I wanted to know if he was psychic, I was trying to reach you. I didn’t even know he was one of the four until I saw the lightning and remembered it from Nic’s dream.” It was a bit of a roaming ramble, but she had the feeling Vex would follow along. He was good at that, better than anyone else she knew. “He said he could hear Carson sometimes, a little. But they couldn’t communicate, since ... y’know, wolf.”
"I've seen it," Vex said and he was following her easily enough as he idly chewed on his bread. "I don't remember when I saw it, maybe it's that thing you said I can do." Had Neil told him when he came over with Jane? Vex didn't think so, it was hard to remember what they talked about but he did remember Neil had been eager to leave and not much in the mood for sharing. "I wonder if Carson heard him. I hope he's okay." It broke his heart to imagine Carson by himself now. Maybe he'd sought out the others after Vex disappeared but Vex had been his person and he hated that he might have abandoned him even if he didn't have a say in it.
“Yeah, me too,” Lem said, glancing back at Vex with a bit of concern on her own face. She’d liked Carson, when he wasn’t trying to murder everyone, and it sounded like he and Vex had been close over there. “Maybe he’ll come back like you did. Only hopefully as like, a person again and not a perma-werewolf.” That would really suck, even if he could reason in that form. It wouldn’t just suck for him, it would suck for Rylee too. Lem wasn’t even sure what had happened to her after all of them had gone missing. She turned back to the boiling spaghetti. “I’m just glad you remembered enough to get home.”
Vex nodded along because of course he wanted Carson to be a person again but a small selfish part of him knew he'd miss the wolf terribly, even if Carson the man had been right there in the room with him. It wasn't the same and for a second Vex let himself really feel that emptiness inside of him. "It took a while," he admitted. "To remember. But yeah, me too. It's still coming back, a bunch of little memories keep popping up and settling in like they've always been there. It's kinda weird how not weird it feels. Like remembering oh hey, I need to put gas on the car, oh hey, I remember my mom's face now." He said that all in the same monotone voice and shook his head. "Guess that's better than it being hard. It'd probably suck if every memory was a big deal, I'd be freaking out right now." Maybe it was weird that he wasn't freaking out, but he was starting to get the feeling that weird was the real normal in this household.
Lem could understand all of that, even if she had never experienced it first hand. She was glad he wasn’t struggling with it all, rolling with the punches in true Vex fashion. She was sure he would’ve struggled somewhat if she’d been the one going missing, but Lem doubted he would have shut down the way she had. Vex just kept going, that was what he did. “I bet by the time you sleep and wake up again, you’ll remember everything,” she said. “The human version of ‘unplug it for thirty seconds and plug it back in.’” The noodles were about done, so Lem turned the stove off and went to drain all the water out in the sink. It was almost more cooking than she’d done for herself the whole time he’d been gone. Once she had some plain spaghetti in a bowl and ready, she brought it to him and flashed him a smile.
Vex wasn't as hungry as he had been but that pasta looked like the most beautiful thing, so clean. He still couldn't get over the clean part when it came to just about anything really. "Do we have any beer?" he asked and decided it was best to just agree that he'd remember everything after sleeping, even if he'd slept a few times now. He hadn't slept properly, not in a good bed with a full stomach so maybe that would make all the difference. "I think I could really use a beer." It would be so clean too, fuzzy little foamy see-through liquid. How had he not seen how beautiful even mundane things could be before his ordeal? Maybe it was a blessing in disguise because he felt so appreciative of just about everything right now and it was a feeling he wasn't used to, swelling up in his chest and making his whole body feel alive.
“Ummm ...” Lem hummed as she went back to the fridge. She wasn’t a beer drinker herself, and had preferred hard liquor to numb herself out while Vex was gone, but she thought maybe he’d left some behind. She probably ought to be more familiar with the contents of her own fridge, but Lem just didn’t look in there a lot, and immediately forgot the contents once that door was closed again. She found a couple of stray beer cans in the vegetable crisper and pulled them out with a triumphant sound. It made Lem unspeakably happy to be able to give Vex what he needed. “Beer doesn’t expire, does it?” she asked, bringing him the cans anyway and setting them down in front of him. She went back to the stove and grabbed a bowl to give herself some spaghetti too, her own appetite perking up at all of this cooking.
"Not really," Vex replied as he opened the can and sniffed at its contents. He was more of a hard liquor kind of guy but beer felt like it'd go well with plain spaghetti and white bread. He considered it, then got to his feet and fetched a glass. He needed to see through it, to make sure there was nothing disgusting hiding inside the can. He had a feeling it would take a while to trust things were fully back to normal. "It'll taste worse after a few months, maybe it'll go flat but... It's booze. It's fine." He liked the way it fizzed when he poured it but he'd forgotten just how much it foamed so he had to stop half way through. That was okay, he kind of liked licking the foam, it felt strange on his tongue.
Lem put some butter and a sprinkle of garlic salt on her noodles and called them done, moving to perch on a chair at the table, her feet tucked under her. She started to eat, her stomach cramping up at first before it relaxed into accepting the food. She eyed Vex thoughtfully as he joined her again and for a few minutes both of them just ate. “Can I tell Nic right away?” she asked finally, her tone soft. “Or do you need any like, time before you see anyone?” Lem didn’t want to assume, because she was sure Nic would want to see Vex for himself when he heard the news. But it wouldn’t be very fair to keep it under wraps for long and let the man who’d done so much for her keep suffering.
"Tell him when we're done eating," Vex replied. He cared a great deal about Nic and Zania even if he was a little worried about meeting Nic again. He had shot him after all and Nic had pretty much sent him to hell but Vex hadn't been in his right mind and Nic had done what he needed to do. He was sure they could leave it behind them now that he was back but there were still some traces of worry there underneath his stoic demeanor. "If you think he's still awake." He eyed the time on the oven and wondered if the clock was accurate. If it was then it was a little after eleven PM but their neighbors definitely kept strange hours too.
She knew it might not be a super heartwarming reunion -- she barely remembered the last moments with Vex out there on the snowy driveway, but Nic had told her it had gone very badly. And then Vex had shot him out in the woods. And then she’d been putting Nic through a lot while he’d been trying to take care of her in the meantime. “He’s awake,” Lem murmured as she poked at the spaghetti with her fork. There was guilt in her tone as she added, “I don’t know if we’re even really like, together anymore? Everything’s been terrible and I’ve been, like ... making him super unhappy.” She winced a little. “He doesn’t know how to calm me down like you do.”
Vex couldn't guess her relationship status but he also remembered that she tended to be hyperbolic so he didn't worry too much about it. "We'll start fixing things now that I'm here," he told her instead. "Making amends. I think maybe you should go tell him I'm here so he doesn't flip out when he sees me. I don't wanna get hit with an impromptu defense spell or something." As far as Nic knew, Vex was in that other place, just as crazy, spiteful and toxic as that environment had been so a heads-up seemed in order.
“Right now?” Lem asked, raising her eyebrows at him. She wasn’t opposed to the idea, she had just been thinking it would be something that happened in the morning, after Vex got some rest. But maybe he didn’t need any. Lem absolutely believed that now that he was home, they could start fixing things. There was no such thing as a ‘normal’ to return to, but not being trapped in a black depression hole, making everyone else miserable, would be a damn good start. She just hoped that Nic could forgive her. And himself.
"No?" Vex asked and wondered if he had a shitty sense of timing things and whether that was a new thing or not. "Whenever you want, firecracker," he added with a shrug even if he was pretty sure he wanted to get it out of the way, make sure there were no surprises, make sure Nic knew he wasn't dangerous anymore. Waiting until morning made it more likely that Nic might come over and panic when he found Vex in the house but his thoughts were still so jumbled that he didn't exactly feel like the best judge. Time had been so abstract for so long, he was just proud of himself for realizing Nic might be asleep now that it was dark out even if he himself hadn't adhered by any such laws for a long time - even before the other place.
Some small selfish part of Lem didn’t want to tell anyone else yet, it wanted to keep Vex and this surprise to herself. He was back and he was hers. It sounded like he wanted to get it done though, and he probably had a point about not leaving it to be a surprise. Nic did tend to check on her in the morning, and she didn’t want any accidents either. Lem forked up another bite of noodles and then stood up. “I’ll go get him,” she said, then paused and arched a brow at Vex. “Unless you want to come next door?” Lem wasn’t sure which option was better, honestly.
"No surprises," Vex repeated and he could just imagine the potential upheaval if he showed up on Nic's doorstep without warning. "Don't worry, firecracker. I'll be right here, finishing my pasta and my beer." He twisted some spaghetti around his fork as if for emphasis and gave her a lazy smile. "Just be sure to tell him we're cool and I am unarmed." It was easier to joke than to feel the full impact of his feelings, he wasn't looking forward to seeing Nic even if he hoped it'd be cathartic for both of them, there was hurt there and shame that would take a while to excise.