He paces the room, glancing at the door. Every movement hurts, but the pain is almost grounding; something to focus on that isn’t the big empty gap in his mind. Something beyond the blank.

He glances again at the door and scowls, tail lashing through the air. They left him here. But then again, could anyone really blame them? He hadn’t said he wanted them to stay, after all. But how embarrassing is it to admit you need something? Much easier to say nothing, even if it leaves him alone in here with the ache in his ribs and whatever thoughts his mind can scrounge together, broken pieces in what he could maybe call a brain.

The child—or, no. The woman with the magic called the child Coronis, didn’t she? Coronis, then. They said he was alright. That Crux hadn’t hurt him too badly, or that he was treated, or that the fall hadn’t been as bad for him as it was for Crux.

Did they really believe him, when he said he didn’t mean to do any of it? Did that woman have to, her and her magic? The truth spell she claimed to weave together? He didn’t know anything about any of that. Made him feel twitchy. On edge.

Fuck, he was so stupid. What had he been thinking? Things that seemed reasonable at the time felt downright idiotic in retrospect, the embarrassment so potent he wanted to reach into his own mind and tear it asunder. Obviously the child had been scared: he should’ve left immediately upon realising that it was a kid in the house. He should’ve gone away from the beginning. Surely that’s common sense. Surely that would come easily to them, to normal people.

Normal people. Now there’s a thought, something unpleasant enough to send him scowling once again. Everyone else. People to whom these things were sensible, easy, clicked in place in their minds.

People who had memories, families. Connections, things tying them down. Little links, chains and a net where he only had freefall.

He wasn’t completely stupid, not all the time. He’d put enough pieces together to know that he wasn’t like them. No one else had the same jagged darkness over their body, the same odd feet that didn’t work with the shoes others wore. No one else had…

Rio, it has a tail.

The memory lances through him, the smug voice of that man, and he snarls, tail lashing. Of all the people to now owe, it had to be him, didn’t it? Crux should’ve left it alone when he had the chance: stayed away, looked away. But now he owed the pale haired man more than he could repay with any item, any currency.

They wanted to know if you were ‘touched by wickedness’.

He swipes at the air, trying to bat away the second memory, the other man’s voice.

“Shut up,” he mutters. “Shut up.”

Before I shut your mouth for you.

“Get out of my head—”

Crux claws desperately at the crystalline patch on his cheek, part of him hoping it would peel away, peel back, and he’d be like them on the other side.

It was never going to work like that.

He storms back over to the bed and sits down with a soft fwump. He puts his head into his hands.

No. He wasn’t like them at all. No matter how hard he tried to stare in the other direction, he knew, deep down, what he was, where he’d came from. No memory of it, no gut feeling, but he’d put the pieces together just fine.

Void-Touched, they’d called him.

It was awful. The weight of it all. The weight of being alive. The debt he owed and the price he’d have to pay. The voices in his head and the memories absent from it.

There was so much he didn’t know, didn’t understand.

And it didn’t feel fair at all.