[ds ficlet] I can feel the change in the wind right now

[nickers]

The problem with going home was doing so in a way that meant Nick wouldn’t be under suspicion and could actually come back. Part of him, honestly, wasn’t sure he wanted to come back; that was the part that wanted to pretend none of this had happened, that he hadn’t been chosen by some magical key and didn’t have some kind of irrevocable responsibility.

Right now, he hated responsibility. He wanted to be eight years old and able to hide in his parents’ bed again. It have been a very long time since he’d felt that urge.

Whatever. The point was that he couldn’t appear too looked-after. The bruises from having been thrown under a bookcase were well on their way to being healed, but hadn’t quite finished, which left him with a rather helpful array of yellow-green marks across his back and shoulders. Some of the small gashes from broken shelves were, likewise, thick with dark scabs beginning to peel at the edges. The fact that he hadn’t slept much at all the night before he was due to leave Citagazze helped too. (He hadn’t been sleeping terribly well, in fact, since he’d been chosen by Riku’s keyblade. Didn’t it know he was the wrong kind of person for that kind of thing?!)

The teen had decided not to go back in the clothes he’d been wearing when he first came through the Window. They were altogether too well kept after over a month of being held against his will. He didn’t like the clothes he’d picked out from the leftovers bin—they looked like something Tom would wear—but they were old and faded and a little too big, and that was the point. He couldn’t just show back home and pretend nothing had changed.

Which was also why he’d left his sunglasses behind (because it was likely he’d have lost them if he really had been kidnapped) and stole an old handtowel from the kitchen to wrap his video camera in. He couldn’t let the cops have it; there were too many things on it that they’d question but not quite believe. He’d have to hide it somewhere, either in the Glen or the garden, before he let himself be seen.

None of which helped in the slightest when it came to standing in front of the Window. Nick’s heart pounded and he felt paralysed; he knew his face was pale, and the flickers at the corners of his vision that he knew were spectres were far less distracting than they should have been. It couldn’t be fear, but that’s all he had to compare it to. Toula sat beside him in her dhole form, but she wasn’t helping; every time he looked at her she was calm as you please, her ears pricked and eyes bright with anticipation.

“Come on,” she urged quietly. “We’ll get to see them all again.”

All of them. Yes. Ma. Dad. Elmo. Liz. Richelle. Sunny. Even Tom.

Finally Nick took a deep breath, stepped over the Window’s threshold, and found himself home.

The first thing he did—the very first thing—was to take a deep breath of air smelling like gum trees and eucalypts and a dozen others he’d never bothered to learn the names of. The second thing he did (because he really had no choice) was to blink against the sudden prickle in his eyes and swallow hard in response to the lump in his throat. That took a minute or two; then he took another breath and set off down the path, dappled with green-tinged sunlight. He was still moving a bit stiffly thanks to his bruises, which made it easy for Toula to trot beside him.

He found himself taking things slower than he strictly had to. For one, Toula kept on stopping to sniff things, as if she didn’t already know every inch of the Glen just from being part of his soul his whole life. For another, he kept slowing and looking around. They edged around the clearing where the gang usually met, just in case, but once they hit the street Nick just couldn’t help it.

He felt numb. Everything looked just the same, but everything was so different. Even if he forgot that Toula was beside him, there was an odd disconnect between himself and what he was seeing. The fact that it was so familiar was part of it.

The teen had felt this sort of thing before, after they got away from the Wolf and everything settled in. Except that time he’d had the gang with him, all in the same boat. He didn’t now, and abruptly he felt a pang of loneliness more intense than anything he’d felt in Citagazze.

It was fairly early in the morning. That was good; otherwise he’d have a lot more people to have to deal with. Maybe he’d be able to catch Dad before he left for work. With another clench of his gut Nick realised he didn’t even know what day it was. He knew it was August, though. Had to be August. Two months until he turned sixteen.

For all his stopping and looking, Nick remembered the journey home only through a haze. He was almost ashamed of it later, but it actually took him a minute to realise he was staring at his house. His house, tastefully white and with the lush manicured lawns.

Home.

Automatically he moved forward through the gate, and it was only because Toula tugged on his jeans leg with her teeth that he remembered he needed to do something with his camera.

“Hurry,” she hissed. “I think someone might be coming out next door.”

Dumbly Nick nodded, and crouched to wrap his camera and his PHS in the towel and then stuff the bundle under one of the bushes that rowed against the fence. No one ought to see it there until he was ready to get it, and even if they did they’d just think it was some gardening thing. A minute later he rose, wiping his dirty hands off each other before realising he may as well wipe them on his jeans for authenticity; and then he turned and trudged up the path.

All at once his heart was pounding. He thought of his warm, comfortable bed, and wanted nothing more to be able to go straight up to his room and lie down and pretend it was all a bad dream.

He still had his keys. Half in a daze he unlocked the door and wandered in, letting it slam shut behind him. There were sounds coming from the kitchen—sounds of washing up. Guess he hadn’t made it before his dad left after all.

“Demetrios, is that you?”

Ma’s voice was trying to be upbeat, Nick could hear, but there was something tremulous about it which told him exactly how she was feeling. He wanted to call out to her, but his throat had closed and his eyes were burning again, so he just moved toward the kitchen, barely aware of Toula at his heels.

Then he was in the doorway. Ma had been looking toward it, waiting for her husband to appear; her eyes were red-rimmed, black-ringed, her face pale and without make-up. The sight of it made Nick’s stomach twist. At the sight of him she went ashen; she dropped the soapy plate she’d been holding and it crashed against the bottom of the sink.

Neither of them heard it. Afterward Nick wouldn’t be able to say who spoke first, but he knew that one moment he was in the doorway and the next he was halfway across the room with his sobbing mother in his arms. She kept trying to wrap her arms around him as if he was a little kid, kept smoothing down the hair he’d deliberately left sleep-mussed, and didn’t seem to be able to say anything but his name over and over again.

Not that he was much better, really. He kept hearing himself saying “It’s okay, Ma, it’s okay,” in a thick voice, and it took him a little while to realise that he wasn’t just trembling because of his mother’s frantic movements. At one point she hugged him so hard that he let out an involuntary hiss as she hit one of his bruises, and that was what broke the spell.

“I call your father and police,” Ma said, her voice thickly accented and face wet with tears. She couldn’t seem to let him go, but Nick found he didn’t actually mind so much. It wasn’t like there was anyone there to see. “You go lie down, Nick—Nicko—go lie down on couch and I’ll call police.”

For a little while now he’d been feeling the yawning emptiness of exhaustion, just waiting for the adrenaline to wear off. Nick nodded dumbly, submitting to his mother’s push. She guided him the whole way there, her hands fluttering over his clothes and hair, smoothing them down and fussing over the frayed hems and patches.

He was pretty sure he was asleep before his head hit the cushions.



It was the voices who dragged him out of it. Nick couldn’t hear the words, but there was the soft rumble of voices and the clink of china in the kitchen, and after a few moments of wondering why the hell Collette was having a tea party in his bedroom and thinking that she’d bloody well better not have invited Edgeworth he realised—

Home.

Nick sat upright so quickly that it made his head swim. He let it hang for a moment, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes, and took a few deep breaths. There was a clatter and a moment later—

“Nicko! Are you feeling pain? Does it hurt? There’s medic here—”

“I’m okay, Ma,” Nick managed to break in long enough to say, finding one of her hands and lifting his head to smile at her. It wasn’t exactly a strong smile; there was too much mixed in with it for that. “I just sat up too fast.”

Ma smiled back tearfully, and despite his grip her hands still gravitated to his hair as she murmured little platitudes in Greek. He didn’t stop her; instead he rubbed his eyes and looked past her to see, through the arch to the kitchen, the chair on the edge of the kitchen table was lopsided as if she’s sprung out of it. Probably she had.

That only took his attention for a moment, because the next his view of the kitchen was blocked by his father coming through into the living-room. “Nicholas.” Dad’s voice was warm and deep and choked with emotion. It surprised the teen for a moment; Demetrios Kontellis was far from cold, but he was a businessman. He knew how to control his emotions.

He wrapped Nick in a hug that the teen didn’t mind sinking into, just for a moment, even though he’d caught a glimpse of a police officer’s uniform through the archway. For the time being he didn’t care about witnesses.

He did finally pull away, but neither of his parents moved an inch from their seats on the couch beside him. Toula curled up on his feet, and for a jarring moment Nick blinked down at her calm gaze before glancing up as Constable Greta Vortek entered the room. He blinked again at the sight of her face; surely her eyes weren’t just the slightest bit moist?

“Hello, Nick.” She smiled at him as if there wasn’t any chance at all she might have been choked up herself, a fairly warm but nonetheless serious smile that helped to bring Nick back down to Earth. With a deep breath Nick straightened up and put his hands on his lap, frowning for a moment down at the jeans he was wearing. Right. He’d forgotten for a minute there.

“Hello, Constable Vortek,” he said calmly, actually rather surprised by how steady his voice was. Greta took a seat on the edge of one of the armchairs, a notebook in her hands.

“I’ve got a friend from the hospital here with me to give you a looking-at,” she said, nodding back toward the kitchen; the paramedic there leaned back on his chair to wave through the archway, still with a piece of Ma’s cake in his hand. “But I think we’d better get the important things out of the way.”

“Important things. Right.” Nick tried to muster a smile. He could tell it didn’t work too well, because Ma squeezed his hands and ran her fingers through his hair, but that was probably just as well. It was important for the constable to know everything she possibly could about kidnappings.

The problem was that he hadn’t actually been kidnapped.

The teen kept to the truth as much as he possibly could. He told Greta that he didn’t know who had taken him, which was true; he had no idea who really ran the Company. He told her he’d been in the Glen when it happened, that he’d managed to escape from where they’d been holding him through a window. At her request, he showed her some of the bruises, and didn’t dare look up into his father’s face. He didn’t have to; he felt it when Dad’s hand clenched almost painfully tight on his arm and then released him a split-second later. Ma started crying again and hugged him, and then she wouldn’t let go.

Nick couldn’t blame her. Here he was, letting them believe someone had beat him up.

Greta had, very politely, asked if her paramedic friend could take pictures of the bruises, which had given Nick pause, but in the end he really didn’t have any choice but to let them. Toula pressed herself up against his legs in support, but he still couldn’t help but flush. And that wasn’t even as … well, embarrassing was the wrong word, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as what she asked after that.

“Nick,” the constable said, her face more seriously than almost any time Nick could recall, “answering this next question is going to be hard, but I’d really like you to if you can. Did anyone do anything to you other than hit you?”

For a few moments Nick stared at her blankly. It was Ma’s cry of comprehension that made it sink in, and the teen recoiled on the couch, unable to answer at first. Finally he managed to choke out a “No!” and the horror and disbelief in his voice seemed to convince Greta he wasn’t trying to avoid talking about anything.

It still left Nick shaking on the couch, his skin crawling and hands fisted, Dad’s arm around his shoulders. That was one thing he hadn’t thought of when he’d changed his clothes, but he could see why Greta might think of it as a possibility. Why would he get rid of his other outfit, especially to wear something so unlike what he usually did, unless he had reason to? It wasn’t that good of a disguise against anyone looking to pick him up again.

Nick wished Greta would leave. The look on his ma’s face was making his stomach twist and untwist so fast that he felt sick, and he wanted to set it all straight. Even if it meant summoning that damned keyblade.

Luckily, it wasn’t all that long before the policewoman did. She asked a few other questions about description which he answered as vaguely as he possibly could, and then that they wrap up his clothes when he got changed so she could take them down to the station. He had nodded numbly and let his father take care of the details. If it didn’t all leave him feeling wrung out, it would have felt good to have an adult nearby whom he actually trusted. He didn’t know anyone at Citagazze that well yet. Miranda didn’t seem very reliable and he hadn’t even met Laurence in person, unless you counted pulling his soulless body out of the city. So it was just a brat with powers, a girl and a guy who used different kinds of magic, a humourless idiot who shared the distinction of having a keyblade and a crippled teen who could turn into animals.

Maybe it really will all turn out to be a dream, he thought his mother chivvied him upstairs while talking nonstop about absolutely nothing, Toula bounding invisibly up the steps beside them. He didn’t really remember getting changed into his nightclothes or handing off the clothes from Citagazze, or lying down on his bed, or Toula leaping up to curl up against his side.

He wound his fingers in her fur and stared at the ceiling, listening to the sound of voices and doors closing downstairs. The phone rang; his mother picked up. Nick couldn’t hear the words, but listening closely he could pick the exact moment of silence between ending the conversation and the choice to ring the rest of the gang.

Nick wondered what their reactions would be. Had been. He didn’t think he was assuming too much to think they’d missed him. They’d been through too much for that not to happen.

I’ve missed the start of the new semester, he thought inanely a moment later, and found himself almost hoping that Liz or Elmo had saved the homework for him. Hoping for schoolwork. What was wrong with him? Most kids would be glad to be on some grand adventure. Usually, Nick wouldn’t exactly have minded himself.

Something about this one was different.

Maybe it was because the rest of the gang wasn’t around to share it.

He heard his mother’s light footsteps on the stairs and quickly closed his eyes before the door opened. She didn’t come in, but he heard her breathing and knew she just wanted to comfort herself with the fact that he really was there. She watched for what seemed like ages before finally leaving, closing the door with a soft thud. He’d have to expect that over the next few days, he imagined.

His stomach twisted. What were his parents going to think? It was just as well he had some kind of definitive proof, or they’d think he was insane. He could convince them he wasn’t, he knew.

The problem was that he didn’t know if he could convince them to let him go back. Or if he wanted to.

The sounds in the house quietened down. He might have dozed; it was hard to tell. At some point he heard the rustle of paper and his father’s footsteps, then the office door close, and fissions of energy ran through him. Toula lifted her head toward him, her ears pricked. She didn’t need to speak.

It’s time. Now. While he’s away from Ma.

Before he could stop to think about whether he really actually wanted to do this, or whether he wanted to just pretend none of it happened and go back to his life, Nick gave Toula one last pat and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He still felt rubbery from lack of sleep and adrenaline, but his nap on the couch had helped. A glance at the clock told him it was only mid-afternoon.

In his bare feet Nick went to his door and stuck his head out to make sure Ma wasn’t around, and then made for his father’s office. As soon as he slipped through the door Dad looked up, startled, and then rose to his feet with worry. “Nicko, what—”

“Dad, I need to talk to you,” Nick said urgently.

“What’s wrong?” Dad asked instantly. “Did you remember something? Should I call the constable—”

“No!” Nick seized his father’s arm before he could pick up the phone, shaking his head. “No, just—sit down. Please? And hear me out before you say anything. It’s going to sound really weird.”

Dad watched him with concern for a few moments, but then sank back into his chair. “Okay, Nicko. Alright. What is wrong?”

Nick took a deep breath and said calmly, “I was lying. I wasn’t kidnapped.”

He hurried on before Dad could say anything else, but from the way the man’s eyes widened and he half-rose again, he really intended to. The teen told him about the Window in the Glen, about falling through to Citagazze, about waking up in the hospital and learning about … well, everything. He pointed to where Toula was sitting patiently by his feet and though Dad’s eyes flickered down with the gesture, Nick knew the man couldn’t see her. He admitted signing the contact and explained, apologetically, that yes, technically he was breaching it by talking about it now—but since he was underage he would need his parents’ permission just to leave again, he didn’t think it was an undue bending of the rules. He spoke of the ruins of the city, of the spectres, of Collette and Laurence and Riku and (while eye-rolling) Edgeworth.

The more he spoke, the more enthusiastic he heard himself getting. He’d spoken to a man who lived with dragons. He’d seen a girl turn into an animal and back. Seen a woman who could turn back time. Had been to a world a few years into the future from theirs. It made his heart pound with the memories, with the possibilities. Volunteering to touch Riku’s keyblade had been a mistake, a stupid oversight he still didn’t quite understand, but there was so much out there that was new and exciting that Nick knew he’d regret it forever if he let the contract lapse.

The only thing he left out was the Heartless invasion. Well, he left out the details. He just said there’d been an infestation for a few days.

When he was finished there was silence so heavy Nick was surprised it wasn’t visible. His father’s face was masked, carefully blank, but there was a look of shocked fear in his eyes that confirmed what Nick knew he must have been thinking. The teen sighed. The keyblade it was. “Try not to freak out, okay? I don’t want Ma to hear about all this yet.”

A deep breath. He glanced automatically down at Toula; she ducked her head in a quick, encouraging nod. Then with a roll of his eyes and grumble that “Moysten was never going to let me hear the end of this”, he lifted his hand to summon his keyblade.

It didn’t take as long as it first had. He felt the warmth in his palm and then the weight of the blade, lighter than you’d think it would be just looking at it. Nick glanced at it and then swung it down, carefully, so the point was aimed at the floor. No stupid flourishes for him; he had no intention of hitting anyone with it by accident. (Just on purpose with regards to … some.)

Dad was sitting very, very still in his chair, staring at the blade. “I think,” he said carefully, “I am perhaps seeing things.”

“You’re not seeing things, Dad,” Nick told him, and then added, “If you want I can go get my camera. I left it someplace so the police didn’t ask for it. There’s some stuff on there they wouldn’t believe if they saw it.”

His father’s gaze rose to meet his, and for the first time Nick noticed how pale he was, how darkly his eyes were ringed, how haggard his face was. He swallowed hard. His father had always seemed … well, nearly invincible. The teen didn’t like seeing what effect his disappearance had had.

“You say this … this Citagazze goes to other worlds?” Dad asked, his voice a mixture of doubt and incredulity and shock, and maybe—just maybe—a hint of wary acceptance bound inside curiosity.

“Dozens of them,” Nick said instantly. “Some of them are really different. Like I said, the man with the dragons—Laurence—is from a couple of centuries ago. Bella is from just a few years into the future. And there’s this g—this woman there—” Sabriel struck him as far less of a kid than Edgeworth, even though Nick was sure they were the same age—“from a world which uses magic.”

“Like your … keyblade?” Definitely edging further toward incredulity, Nick noted, with maybe some hysteria.

“No,” Nick answered anyway. “This is magic from Riku’s world.” He shrugged, making sure not to gesture with the blade still in his hands. “I’ve just got to figure, that many worlds all connected to one place—how many people get opportunities like that? There’s a lot of things we could offer other worlds, and lot of things they could offer us. It’d be stupid not to take advantage.”

For another suffocatingly heavy moment Dad stared at him. Then he sighed and leaned forward to put his face in his hands, but before Nick’s stomach could sink the man said with a muffled voice: “What have I done, raising a businessman?”

Nick couldn’t help but smile grimly. Only thing you could do, Dad, being a businessman yourself.

“My not being able to come back was an accident,” he said, with all the calm and confidence he could muster. “It’s contrary to the very nature of the Company, which is to go out and explore. I won’t be stuck back there again.”

I hope.

Dad lifted his head. His face was pinched with a sort of restrained wildness, the sort of look of a man who knew that a situation had gotten far out of his hands. “Nicholas, you are fifteen.”

“And you’ve been wanting me to join you in your business for years now,” Nick countered. His father’s hands motioned violently.

“That is my business. I know what is what. I can protect you.”

Nick thought of fire and guns, and a deep pit with no exit. He thought of the Wolf. He thought of stories about aliens who took control of people’s brains, and a girl in a wheelchair who fought them.

He thought of the Heartless and the shiver when their groping fingers reached for Toula.

He heard himself say in a quiet, grim voice he’d never used before: “You can’t protect me.”

They stared at each other in the quiet of the office. Dad looked more unsettled than Nick had ever seen him, but really, that wasn’t a surprise; this wasn’t your everyday revelation. Nick’s heart pounded, but it was the slow, distant pound of detachment, like he’d felt back when he and the gang had gone through with his plan to escape the Wolf by taking their doppelgangers’ places. It was that enveloping coolness of knowing what was what and what had to be done.

For the first time in Nick’s life, his father dropped his gaze first. It came to rest on the keyblade the teen was still holding.

“I will talk to your mother,” the man said, his voice tight, and then his gaze snapped up again with a frown. “This is not a guarantee, Nicholas. We will see your tape and we will talk, and maybe—maybe—something will happen. I cannot say what.”

Nick nodded, still riding that wave of absolutely calm. “I’ll go get the camera.”

With a wave of his hand he banished the keyblade, and then he turned and walked out of his father’s office, Toula out his heels.

It was only once he’d closed the door behind him that he realised he’d just talked down his father in his pyjamas.