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For as long as Evan can remember, he has felt like an outsider at Moorland House. It's a twofold problem. For one, he was a curious child to snoop around and realize that the house is not owned by his father, but, according to some papers he'd managed to get ahold of before anyone could catch him out, Uncle Jakob, which by definition appears to make him an outsider. For two, he has never felt like he was wanted there. He barely sees his parents, has barely seen them for all his life, and no one hired on ever stays long. People come and go, of course, but they drift around like ghosts, and they certainly never pay Evan any mind. Evan's always tried to get someone to hang around for a chat, and always being rebuffed in not very kind terms, for as long as he can remember. It's like living in a house full of strangers.
Even strangers have the occasional familiar face though. He knows his parents, despite their limited interaction with them, and he knows Uncle Jakob and his son. Evan has never actually learned how exactly Jakob and Peter Lukas are related to him, given how much older Peter has always seemed than him. He'd tried to ask him once, during a family funeral when he can't have been more than nine years old, and Peter's shiny, sharp, and painfully false half smile had fallen away in an instance to blank nothingness before swiftly walking away. It felt very apt. Evan doesn't know much about him, but he's known that Peter is the perfect Lukas for as long as he'd known him, and Evan knows that he's anything but. Yet he finds himself, in strange and twisted ways, looking forward to the times Peter comes to Moorland House to discuss things with other members of the family.
Peter's patented cheer, so gratingly alienating and artificial, means that he will occasionally actually make something approximating to conversation when he sees Evan. It's not much, but it is human interaction, insofar as Peter is able to be human, if he, or anyone in the family is at all, and Evan desperately craves it. He holds onto the occasionally predatory smile or mocking wave Peter might send his way for hours, and when Peter actually talks, he clutches at that for days.
Most times it's nothing more than a bright "Evan!" when he seemingly pops in out of absolutely nowhere, though he will occasionally make some banal observation that Evan will latch onto and attempt to milk for all it's worth in a desperate attempt to keep him in the same room.
"Ah, Evan!" he might say, materializing out of thin air, looking half like a ghost mid vaporization and still translucent slightly around the edges. "Wonderful weather, isn't it?"
And Evan will know that the weather is ghastly, because the weather is nearly always ghastly at Moorland House, and that if he looks out the window he will certainly see nothing but rolling fog, or maybe dark clouds sending down hours and hours of depressing rain that makes him want to beg whatever deities exist to let him live somewhere else, anywhere else. But he will also know that if he agrees, Peter will nod and stride swiftly away, and so he will play the contrarian and say "I think the weather is awful today," because he knows it will keep Peter talking.
And Peter might look at him askance, eyebrows raised over blue eyes, and say "Matter of opinion, I suppose," with an airy wave of his hand. And then he will likely tell Evan "Now, get out of my way," before striding off, with as much emotion as if he were remarking on the time of day. But it will still have been words, conversation, connection, quite possibly more than Evan's gotten in a week from other members of his family, and Evan will play it over and over again until it has lost its warmth for him and he feels all alone again.
He hates being alone. He despises it, as much as he despises the infernal weather. It's why there's a war within him today, staring out at the, for once sunny sky. It's pale and almost sickly looking, and ringed with dark grey clouds, but it is the sun, attempting valiantly to shine on the damp grounds of Moorland House. Evan has been staring out the window at it for some time now, in a happy daze one rarely sees in seventeen year olds, wondering if it has anything to do with the mood he senses from his father today. Peter is here, and Cousin Conrad, but they are accompanied by outsiders. They're crowded in the study now, the Lukases, gnashing their teeth and clenching their jaws as they do business with a blind man who doesn't use any sort of cane and a small, far too spry old man who immediately smiled wide the second he saw Peter. Someone happy to see a member of his family, that alone is enough to make Evan suppose the very house itself is furious.
He wants to stay, enjoy the occasional voices that drift around making their way back to him ( someone had mentioned something French, perhaps a person's name, and the shouts that had erupted had been so fierce and hot Evan had almost been able to make out words ). But he wants to feel the sun. This is not the first day Evan has ever seen the sun, but those days are often few and far in between, and he is determined to make all of them last as long as he can.
At the end of the day, that is what wins out, over anything else. Evan makes his way outside and starts walking, enjoying the sunlight on his face.
It's warm.
He keeps walking, into the scattering of trees that exist on the property, buoyed by this all too rare excursion. They generally seem foreboding, from his window, dark and twisted sentries barring the way out, or when they actually let him go outside for the occasional family funeral, all curling, lowhanging branches in this clusters that cast gloomy shadows. But now, with the sunlight, they don't seem so scary, and Evan even enjoys the cool shade that they provide. This must be what other people feel like, living in other places than Moorland House. This must be how it feels to actually get to live and feel alive.
So engrossed is he in his own thoughts that Evan doesn't even notice the slowly creeping mist, or the ever smaller patches of sunlight, until the sun is blotted out by thick clouds completely and he can barely see anything around him because of the fog. He feels a sharp pang of despair in his chest at the vanished light, but turns to go home all the same, ready to trudge back to that miserable house. But when he turns, he doesn't see anything he recognizes it, and suddenly has no idea which way the house is. All he says is fog, and trees, and damp grass, and the despair turns to terror. It claws his way up his belly and chest with startling swiftness and chokes off his throat.
This is what it means to be truly alone, he realizes. There's always someone at home, even if they never talk to him or acknowledge him except to treat him like dirt at the bottom of their shoe. There's at least one person, due to nothing more than the fact that the house is large and needs multiple people to manage. But here...Here there is no one around him, and nothing familiar, he can feel it. He's entirely on his own, in the cold and damp, and he cannot breathe. The fog is choking him, the loneliness is choking him, that unrelenting feeling that he's never going to see anyone ever again. That he'll stay here, never seeing another living soul, not even a godforsaken bird ( he's never seen or heard any animals on the grounds, at any point in his life ) until he dies. Evan feels himself begin to cry at the thought, great hacking sobs and tears that feel almost unbearably hot on his now cold face, his breath coming in short, hyperventilating gasps.
I don't want to be alone. The thought replays in his head, as he sinks to the grass, feels the dew soak through his pants. He doesn't want to be alone, he'll do anything not to be alone, he wants to see anyone, he doesn't even care who. It can be a member of his family, his horrid father, for all that it matters. At least it would be another person.
"Well, well, well," a voice says, as if summoned by his mind, and through swimming eyes Evan sees a tall, rail thin figure leaning against a tree. "Hello Evan," the figure says, his tone neutrally pleasant, like they're meeting at a tea party or some such thing. It's a person he recognizes, and the small relief Evan feels is so sharp it's almost painful.
"I don't want to die," Evan blurts out suddenly, rather than be polite.
Peter straightens and stares down, faint wisps of fog rising off him, and all Evan can think of is a predator. He still looks like himself, his features as proud and cold and merciless as any Lukas's, and he tilts his head, as if Evan was a strange happening he can't quite figure out. As if Evan doesn't even matter. Without his usual smile, Evan is reminded of lions, intent on prey seconds before they pounce and claw and devour, faces drenched in blood.
"Evan," and Peter's voice curls, burning cold, around the word. "You have gotten yourself rather confused. No one said anything about dying." It's true, no one did, and no one ever really dies at Moorland House, just vanishes, and that idea in and of itself is so deeply terrifying to Evan that he can almost feel the ice forming on his skin, the tears freezing on his face, at the edges of his eyes, as soon as they fall. The fear, the hysteria of it, forces a small keening sound of his mouth, like a wounded animal.
"I don't, I don't, I don't," he babbles, half crawling and half stumbling in Peter's direction. "Not alone, I don't want to die alone, all by myself-"
"Evan." Peter hasn't moved, but he leans back slightly, into fog that appears to be getting thicker and darker by the second, eager and pressing closer, and his voice has lost its mocking roundness, has an edge now, of warning, the sharpness of unease. And the look in Peter's eyes is neither disdainful nor sympathetic. It is simply unfathomable. The look of someone who might be deciding to stick around and torment, or turn around and run far, far away from the conversation.
"I can't be alone," Evan chokes out, and twitches as if to reach out for a hand. Peter seems to realize the same thing, folding his fingers together swiftly, as close to openly saying Don't touch as anyone can without saying anything at all. His father would have berated him by now, perhaps even raised a hand, and countless others would have shaken their heads in angry, bitter disappointment, all turning away, but not Peter. The mist swirls, curious and uncertain at the situation, as Evan takes in searing cold hacksaw breaths, trying to get his crying under control, and Peter stares down at him, looking as if he'd rather be anywhere else yet staying and as a result, more terrifying than anyone in the family.
Evan almost starts when Peter finally breaks the silence. "Go climb a tree."
"What?" He's confused enough that it gets his emotions under control, if only for a moment. Evan hasn't spent much time around other people, but he knows all the different sayings for telling someone to go away, and telling them to "climb a tree" is a new one.
Peter sighs, annoyed, and actually grabs a fistful of Evan's jacket and hauls him to his feet, snatching his hand away as soon as possible. Evan stumbles for a moment, and thinks about grabbing onto Peter for support, but decides agains it. It might be the straw that break's the camel's back, as uncomfortable as Peter looks right now.
"I'm being literal," Peter says. "Turn around, and go climb that tree. I mean it."
And Evan does turn and spots one of the trees, with a lot of branches at perfect climbing height and thick foliage to prevent any sunlight from shining through, if it was still there. His whole body still feels shaky and uneven, and he keeps on glancing back to make sure Peter isn't going anywhere ( he's still there, even as he stares resolutely ahead of him like he refuses to acknowledge that there's another presence with him at all ), but he does climb. He can feel himself cut his hand, and feels the rough bark under his fingertips, and definitely feels like he might have pulled something in his leg he's not used to using when he throws it higher than he should, but eventually he's high enough that he's perched over Peter's head. The air feels different, still cold, but clean now, not as oppressive.
For a moment, with the height and the freshness of the air, even by himself in the branches, it almost feels good.
"Now what?" he calls down. Peter stares up at him dispassionately, face carefully blank.
"You need to find something you can't do with anyone else," he says. "Something that has to be done on your own, with just you, but something that preoccupies your mind all the same. Something you can even enjoy doing, all by yourself."
"Why?" Evan asks.
"To get yourself comfortable with being alone," Peter explains. He falls silent, but his mouth works and twists, like he's fighting an impulse to say something. To divulge, or share. It almost looks painful, and Evan wants to tell him not to bother, but he can still feel hints of that yawning isolation, the despair of it in his chest, so he waits, and keeps Peter around. "For me, when I was your age," Peter forces out, at last. "I climbed trees."
Evan tries to picture it, a Peter who doesn't dress in thick sweaters and simple clothes that don't look ostentatious but do look well made because that's what you always look like when you're old money rich, a Peter with no grey in his hair and less Lukas perfected poise, climbing in trees and relishing in the solitude as the family ignores that he even exists at all. A young Peter, a different Peter than the one under him now. A Peter who had his own awful family he had to suffer through and ignore in order to survive. It feels almost impossible, but natural all the same, that Peter didn't spring up fully formed as he is now, but had to grow, adapt, stay alive. Like Evan.
It's a very lonely thought.
"What if I don't want to?" Evan asks, tightening his grip on the bark under his hand. The cut on his palm stings. "What if I don't want to be alone at all, even if I'm comfortable with it?"
Peter's eyes go hard, as if Evan committed some grave social faux pas, and the fog thickens around him, twisting like a boa constrictor in its irritation. "Then you either get with the program," he snaps. "Or honestly, you get used to the idea of dying very young. It'll be one or the other." He turns sharply to go, a knot the size of a golfball visible in his jaw even from Evan's vantage point.
"Peter," Evan says, like they're back at Moorland House and Peter has miraculously appeared in whatever room Evan's in, bright and cheery as always, and is off to go to another meeting before Evan thinks of something to say or do that'll keep him as a companion for a couple more seconds. Peter turns, raising an eyebrow. "Do you know what kind of tree this is?" It's a stupid question, but like nearly everything Evan's ever said to him, it's just to keep him here a little longer, keep him talking, before he's once more alone.
The smile on Peter's face is small, and unreadable, but there all the same. "A, ah, friend-well," he snorts softly to himself. "Someone once told me, and he was very convinced, that these might be horse chestnuts." And with that he's gone, not vanished in a puff of smoke so much as just swallowed up by the writhing mist that had been so desperate to grab him, and by the time Evan clambers down, the fog is gone too, leaving only an oppressive grey sky but at least a clear view back to the house.
His lungs burn by the time he stops running, throwing open the door and slamming it behind him and listening to the sound echo in the silence.
He tries to follow Peter's advice, find something that he can't do with companions, like climbing trees, or teaching himself the piano, something solitary but enjoyable all the same. But he's not Peter, it doesn't stick, and in a year he's eighteen and making plans for university and telling himself over and over again that he'll never go back to Moorland House, not as long as he's alive. It doesn't matter how comfortable he might be in solitude, Evan doesn't want it. That's what they never understood, what they never wanted, what they couldn't shame or beat or cajole out of him. He wants people. He's not his father, and he's not Peter. He doesn't relish loneliness, and he doesn't want to be in the thick of it, ever again.
He doesn't think about his family much, once he leaves. He learns to hate them with a burning passion, and enjoy it, enjoy that it's a communal emotion, that you have to hate someone, that there is nothing isolating about it. Sometimes Evan hopes that they can feel it too, that it stings for them, if it can.
But he does hear the occasional piece of news, and he hears about some housing or development project that was in the press ( they must have hated that ), and then he hears from another Lukas emigré that there are rumors floating around that the family is furious with Peter, who appears to have vanished. Some of them even think he's dead. Evan isn't sure how he feels about, and isn't sure why he thinks he should be feeling anything about it at all. But he has a day off, and goes to the biggest park he can find, and asks around until he's directed to the tree he's looking for. A great big horse chestnut.
He doesn't climb it. He stands under it, by his lonesome, lets the shadow of the leaves fall over him, and breathes in cool air. And then he turns, and walks through a crowd to go back home.