Chapter Text
"Oh, Modesty," says their ma-- says Mary Lou-- and Credence knows what she will do to Modesty. He usually takes worse punishments than his sisters, but Modesty brought a wand into the house. An implement of magic. If she'd just stayed quiet-- if she'd let Credence take the blame-- but she doesn't. Maybe this is one time too many for her to be quiet and let Credence get hurt for her, but it is poorly timed. Credence is barely keeping his skin together. He loves her. He is terrified. He is shaking.
Then the belt flies out of Ma's hands.
The three of them stare at it for a heartbeat or two, eyes wide with horror. For-- for the obvious reasons, really, but Credence for a moment cannot breathe because it wasn't him.
It was Modesty.
The stillness is broken-- his ma reaches for the belt on the floor and Credence can see that she's going to get there. She's going to grasp it and she's going to hurt Modesty, because Modesty herself is so shocked at what she has done that she cannot move-- cannot repeat the action-- and Credence will not let that belt come down on Modesty shoulders. Not ever.
He moves the belt, and he isn't even thinking about passing both acts off as his own magic-- he's just thinking about blood welling on Modesty's back, and maybe his ma says something, maybe she doesn't-- there's both ringing and silence in his head that make any other noise seem distant and muffled, and there's some wild heaviness in his stomach, coiling and tensing, and then he explodes.
White light-- he's still in the tunnels, he knows, so such brightness, like staring right into the sun, isn't natural.
It's magic, and it hurts, it hurts so much. He's being slashed at, ripped apart, burned, and maybe he's screaming and he thinks he can see tears in someone's eyes through the blur of his own consciousness stretching through such a vast space. He wanted magic so badly and now it's killing him. It's always been killing him. He's everywhere and shredding to pieces and then he's small and quiet and curled in on himself, bits of him drifting away and fading out. Disappearing. He wants to disappear.
He only vaguely knows that someone is crying-- the witch with the brown hair, who he thinks might have helped him, once. He drifts, up up up, and he thinks that maybe all this pain means that he can reach the sun.
He's drifting towards the church, he realizes later. Where-- where--
He killed his ma. Maybe Chastity, too. And Modesty--
It is hard for him to feel anything other than pain and guilt, and he remembers the fear on Modesty's face and thinks that maybe he should just try to give up and die, finally; stop holding himself together, if he can figure out whether or not he's alive on purpose, and just go-- but she's alone somewhere. She's alone and afraid and even if she can't bear to see him, he has to make sure that she's found.
Modesty sits and cries. Quietly-- she doesn't know if that strange man is coming back. She doesn't know him, but she doesn't want him to find her.
Her ma is dead.
She'd seen it; she'd seen the smoke throw her into the wall, destroying everything in the church in some terrible black cloud.
Not a cloud, not really-- she's only nine but she knows that clouds are distant and beautiful and made of water and that thing that her brother became was violent and terrible and all too close.
He'd killed their ma. It was him who did it, unless maybe he was possessed, and it was a demon who'd killed their ma-- but no. When he came for her, bringing that man-- or trailing behind the man-- he'd been himself. Crying, and then terribly, terribly angry, but himself.
The room is in shambles, but she huddles in it anyway, aching for the blood family she only half remembers and the normalcy of her adoptive home. It's scary, at home, but it's where she lives. Where Chastity and Credence are. Things are bad sometimes-- maybe most of the time-- but she knows what's going on. Nothing unexpected happens. Nothing like this.
Maybe this is just a bad dream. There are enough similarities. Ma. Threats of violence. Terror. She even wet herself, like how she used to do in bed.
Credence will help me hide the sheets, she thinks, but somewhat nonsensically, because there are no sheets. Just her dress. No mattress, either, just the dirty wooden floor. And Credence is gone.
She doesn't know if he's coming back, or if she even wants him to.
It feels like hours pass, and she hears thunder crack outside-- she should go find Chastity, but she is so afraid of finding Chastity dead in the church too that she can't bear to get up. Her legs start to hurt and she still doesn't move.
She thinks the pain spikes for some reason, but then she realizes that her legs feel about the same-- the pain is from somewhere else. From something else. She's not feeling it, exactly-- she's sensing it. She carefully doesn't let the word magic creep into her head-- she doesn't think about what she'd done with the belt, either. Instead, she shoves everything down down down and then crawls out of her hiding spot, tentatively looking around for that overwhelming presence of hurt.
A slip of smoke about as big as both of her hands clasped together slinks slowly towards her. It's not slow like it's trying to sneak up on her; it's tentative in a way that reminds her of a dog with a wounded leg, creeping shamefully towards its master, expecting to be hurt even more but coming all the same. It reminds her of Credence.
She kneels on the hardwood floor and lets it approach, memories of her ma's broken body and the hugs that she and Credence had shared warring in her head. When the shade lowers itself even further to the ground just out of reach, like it's cowering, something in her breaks, and she can't even think about the great massive thing capable of destruction. She's just breathtakingly alone and afraid and confused, and she really, really wants her brother back.
"Credence," she whispers, and then she's sobbing again. She hadn't realized that she'd stopped. "Credence, Credence." She repeats his name and reaches for the smoke, and when it recoils from her hand she sits back on her heels, wraps her arms around herself, and cries. Her tears make her eyes all blurry, but she can make out the little thing hovering just above her knee but not daring to brush against her dress, and grief and guilt and fear come from it and hit her in strong pulses. It's Credence. He's alive. He's not a person, he's a weird wisp of shadow, but it's him. He's sorry, she can tell. He's afraid-- maybe of her, or of himself, or both-- and he's so sorry and he's in so much pain. She cries harder, and the guilt gets stronger, and he pulls away.
"Please don't leave," she gasps. She swallows and tries to control herself, shuddering and gulping, trying not to cry anymore. Maybe he thinks he's scaring her worse. She has to calm down. "Don't leave me here." Again, she doesn't say. "Please don't go."
He hovers by her knee again, but shifts away when she reaches down to cup him in her hands. She frowns, and brushes away tears. Be like Chastity, she thinks. Self control. Like Chastity. Stop crying. "I can't touch you?" she asks, and then feels silly when she remembers that he doesn't have a mouth anymore.
Modesty can feel his guilt and fear, and remembers the grey look to Ma's skin when she ran past her body on her way out of the church, and thinks that maybe she's better off not touching Credence for now. "Okay," she says. "I can't touch you." She takes a moment to collect herself. She wishes badly that she could wake up and go hide in Credence's bed, or Chastity's, and be encircled by protective arms, but this isn't a nightmare, and Credence is tiny and doesn't have arms, and Chastity--
"We have to find Chastity," Modesty tells Credence. She does her best impression of an adult voice to sound more confident, but maybe she shouldn't have, because Credence quivers. He's afraid, still, but this fear that she senses seems like it has a specific purpose.
He doesn't know if Chastity's alive, either, she knows. More guilt and grief shudder off of him, and it would be so easy to get caught up in it, but she's bolstered now by the fact that she's already recovered one sibling. Sort of. The survival of the other one seems a bit more possible, now. "Come on, Credence." She stands up, ignoring that some of the urine staining her dress drips to the floor. Credence only notes it with more, quiet guilt-- he'd scared her badly in the church, when he'd lost control. Really badly.
It doesn't matter now. Only uniting her family is important. It's all she has left. Figuring out everything else will just fall into place after. Once we're together again, she thinks, somewhat naively, everything will work out. "We're going home. We're going to see if Chastity is there."
She takes the stairs with caution-- they're a bit broken, now-- and Credence drifts beside her. He won't leave her again.
Somewhere else in the city, three people watch tearfully as their friend steps out into the rain.