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all the way! "Unofficially?" Oh what fun That didn't make it is much sense. to ride Since when was in a one-horse there an officially to compare to? open sleigh! Also: Jingle bells! the idea of Jingle bells! Aiden not getting along Jingle with someone? all the way! Made no sense. Oh what fun What else was it is the point with to ride being as obsessed in a one- with being obedient horse open and on time and sleigh! everything as he was? Jingle bells!

Jingle bells! ...Okay, someone was talking. Jingle all the way! Persi had no idea who, but Oh what fun he could hear someone now. it is to ride He looked around, in a then remembered one-horse the fudge and resumed open sleigh! stirring. Jingle bells! "No." Jingle bells! "I'm going to assume it's a snake in the walls." Jingle all the way!

"Okay." That would be easy, especially if Miss Gemma really did just want him to say hi, I'm still fine most of the time.

Part of Persi's mind wanted to ask experience? You have the experience of losing your family and being guilty for not caring enough and doubting God and not being able to die when you ought to? but that part was nasty, and just because Persi hadn't managed to get rid of it didn't mean he had to let it talk. Instead he shifted. "Drawing?" It was a hobby, at least, but he wasn't sure if it counted for the schedule part.

...Well how was Persi supposed to answer that?

"I'm...." Also glad? Annoyed? Vaguely terrified? Really, really confused? That last one was definitely true, but Persi was pretty sure it wasn't the correct response. "It's... fine. I don't mind...." He also didn't really know what he was talking about anymore. Persi shut up.

At least the hot chocolate was a good distraction. Staring at it was slightly less pathetic than staring at the floor. He should probably say something, though; ignoring Miss Gemma wasn't polite either. Even if he couldn't think of what exactly to say. "It wasn't that bad." He thought. Probably. It didn't seem like it had been. Everyone else seemed to think it was, though. Persi had no idea anymore.

Supposedly Persi was healthy now.

Mostly, anyway. There was still you need to eat more and drink more and aren't you tired yet? like Persi was apparently exceedingly fragile now, but it was all the sort of healing that was supposed to happen just with daily life anyway. Not real healing; not burns or cuts or broken bones or bruises, so Persi was supposedly healthy and back in his (not Aiden's, and when had that happened? And why?) room.

He didn't feel healthy, though. He felt tired and kind of dazed, like he wasn't ever totally awake, and he never felt like moving at all. Which made sense, if he was still healing or whatever, but it was annoying. And food still hardly ever sounded good, so it was kind of hard to fix it.

More annoying was his head. Or his thoughts, whatever. Persi couldn't quite get ahold of most of them--or didn't want to, since when he could it usually meant he spent the next several hours trying to hide under the blankets of his bed, so that no one would see him if he started crying. He didn't often, but it always felt like he would, and it wasn't like he had anywhere else he wanted to be, so he ended up staring at the inside of blankets with his mind screaming incoherent circles of what happened why didn't it work it should have worked what was wrong why didn't it work what's going on? Was it not supposed to work? (Was everything he'd ever believed wrong after all?) He couldn't quite touch that question; every time he got near it he just... couldn't.

Right now, though, he might be supposed to be somewhere, so while the thoughts were there, Persi was trying to ignore them. At least he knew where things were in the Mansion; finding Miss Gemma's office was less like finding and more like a flashback. He still wasn't sure if he was actually supposed to be there, though, so he knocked before going in. "I... don't know if I'm still supposed to be here?"

((Warnings: Um... abuse is horrible. And some swearing and terribly clumsy attempts to be open minded, but mostly the abuse.))


Anthony Blair had really hoped no one would find his brothers. And he had said so, often and explicitly, and mostly gotten away with it. There had been a few lectures about loving thy neighbor and doing what's best for people even if they're bad and obnoxious, but that was really it.

It almost worked. Blake had been gone nearly eight months. Six of those were before Michael disappeared and they actually started looking, but eight months was still pretty good for a sixteen year old to disappear with no warning.

Almost wasn't good enough, though. Anthony realized something bad was going on when his parents called in the middle of a shopping trip that was supposed to have lasted two more hours and told him to get ready to leave as soon as they could get home. Maria was not pleased to be abruptly shooed away because "I have no idea why, but my parents said so," ("You're twenty, not twelve! Who cares what they say?") and Anthony didn't have enough time to appease her, get her to leave, get ready to go and figure out where they might be going before his parents got back. He barely managed the first three. Once he was in the car, the simplest way to figure out where they were going was to ask. "It doesn't matter. Just behave."

Well. That wasn't ominous at all. Anthony stayed quiet.

Where they were going turned out to be some sort of boarding school, or... something. Orphanage. A mutant orphanage, from what some of the kids on the grounds looked like. Anthony was hit by enough dread then; what were they doing, adopting mutants to cleanse now? He wasn't sure he could stop that--he had no idea how adoption worked, if he'd have a chance to talk to the kid or the people running it and warn them without being caught....

They weren't adopting. They were picking Blake up. Shit. Anthony couldn't interfere with that, even if he'd been able to do much more than drift through the entire situation in a horrified daze. He'd hoped Blake would, the kid had had the sense to run before and it wasn't like things could get any worse for him than going home, but instead he just stared at the floor and agreed with everything their parents said. Idiot!

Their parents had to give the orphanage--or whatever it was--their address, among other information, and Blake's name since apparently he hadn't been using it. Anthony would have thought that was smart, if Blake hadn't been so stupid as to not say anything about what was going to happen as soon as they got home. Anthony hoped the orphanage would use the address to check on Blake, maybe tomorrow... their parents were annoyed by the entire process, though, so tomorrow might not be soon enough.

Blake wasn't any more talkative once they were out of the orphanage and back in the car; he just sat and stared at the back of their mother's seat the same way Anthony stared at the back of their father's. For several minutes, at least; eventually he got around to one barely audible question. "Where's... where's Michael?"

"Gone." Blake wilted at their mother's terse answer.

"Probably decorating some rich guy's bed for food, but I figured that was all you were doing so maybe not." Anthony couldn't tell if Blake got the message he was supposed to from Anthony's snipe and was still annoyed, but there was some relief along with the anger in his expression, at least. If he knew Michael wasn't dead, it probably didn't matter if he knew Anthony had intended to tell him that.

"Blake, hit Anthony for me." Their father's order was expected. Blake's obedient punch actually hurting was not. It only barely hurt, but still, it was Blake. What had he been doing while he was gone? Anthony was not used to thinking of orphanages as martial arts studios.

Their mother must have been watching, since neither of them said anything but she still went into the lecture. "We do not discriminate against anyone, Anthony! Not even a little bit, and we don't stereotype. Gay people are no more likely to be prostitutes than straight people... and prostitution isn't shameful! Some of those girls--and boys--are just victims, so don't be rude. Am I clear?"

"Yes, mother. I'm sorry." Anthony didn't particularly care. He probably could have thought of something better to say if he'd had time... but he hadn't, and he definitely couldn't let their parents know he was trying to be nice to Blake, so it had to be some sort of petty insult. It didn't matter what he came up with; no one gay heard him except Blake, and Blake was about to be dead anyway, and Michael was probably more important.

The rest of the ride was silent after that. Anthony tried catching Blake's eye a few times, but he was staring out the window, and apparently not paying attention to any reflections. He finally managed when their parents dropped him off in the apartment's garage--"no, you stay right where you are; Anthony, we'll see you in a few days...."--and Blake looked over. Anthony tried smiling at him, but just got a glare in return. Well, that was fair, he supposed; he was letting his brother die to save his own life, after all....

...He'd really rather not have thought of it in those terms, though. Anthony was able to get into the stairs and out of sight before he started crying, and into the apartment before he broke down.

He managed to get himself back together fairly soon, and call Maria. "Hey, it's Anthony--look, I can't talk about what's going on, but I need a distraction, can you come back over?"

Persi glared at Aiden. It was a very small, tired, and depressed glare, but it was a glare. Or at least an irritated eye. "We already went over that. I annoy people all the time."

"As many as I could find." And had any reason to talk to, anyway. The church did invite plenty of people to preach. And every single one of them said the same thing, and most of them weren't too happy with Persi for asking. He'd gotten pretty good at asking without making anyone suspicious, especially by his standards. "And God is omniscient. I... don't know if it counts as multitasking, but He knows."

And now Persi wanted to kill himself again, but instead of because God wanted him to he just wanted to to make up for feeling really guilty for making Andrea unhappy. Or escape feeling guilty, or punish himself for it, or something. Maybe all of them. He went back to staring at the floor. "It's..." hard to speak. He had to swallow before he could. "It's only sacred if it's the way He wants it to be."

"...I'm sorry." He really, really was. That she was a mutant and that he'd upset her and that there was a little corner in the back of his mind that was trying to find God and demanding why? Why, why, why? This would have been so much easier if everyone in the Mansion had been jerks instead of people.