(A continuation of day 6: Injury)

The prison cell Phoenix found himself in was a cold and unwelcoming place. He wasn’t sure why he expected anything different. He’d been here before – that one time he got involved in a bar fight he had to spend the night in a stuffy cell with several drunkards and couldn’t sleep a blink.

This time was different, though.

Phoenix rolled his head back to stare at the ceiling. Tonight, he was sure, he again wouldn’t sleep. The smell of blood was inescapable, his clothes soaked in it, crusty and unpleasant to wear. He felt dirty and – though he barely dared to admit it to himself – scared. Not of punishment, though being caught red-handed over a dead body was a rather compromising position.

No, Phoenix was scared of the real murderer. He was scared of failing.

He was scared of being alone.

A flash of a face, twisted in agony, flashed in his mind, and Phoenix bit his hand harshly in a fruitless attempt to distract himself. There was nothing to do, nowhere to run, no way to stop thinking of all the blood and death. Tentatively, he tried to reach to a distant part of his mind, the part that didn’t belong to him, but to someone older and wiser.

There was emptiness where a familiar presence usually was, and Phoenix curled up on himself, wondering if he’d lost Katherine, too. He vividly remembered her translucent, ghostly form throwing herself in to shield him, and hugged himself tightly, determined not to cry in this dirty, unhomely place.

Heavy footsteps broke the painful trance, and Phoenix sniffed, flattening himself to the wall. He glared at the constable that unlocked the cell and motioned for Phoenix to get out.

“Come on, out you go. The inspector wants to talk to you.”

Phoenix got up with some difficulty. His legs felt like lead, but he stubbornly walked out of the cell as confidently as he could.

The inspector was indeed waiting for him at the office. With him was another man, strange-looking, dressed in stark white, with long white hair loose over his back. He turned to look at Phoenix, his piercing hazel eyes making the young man even more unsettled.

“Your lawyer’s here,” the inspector said, motioning at the strange man, and Phoenix tried not to show how the words sent a shiver down his spine.

“I don’t have a lawyer,” he thought, looking at the inspector’s tired face. “My lawyer died mere hours ago and I don’t have anyone that will miss me if I disappear. Not anymore.”

But he said nothing out loud, instead sitting down carefully and observing both the inspector and the other man. The inspector sighed and opened a file in front of him.

“Alright, kid. You’ve got one nasty charge on you, so you better make use of that talk. Anything you want to say before I leave you two to it?”

Phoenix shook his head and both he and the inspector turned to the “lawyer”, who slowly looked over Phoenix from head to toe.

“How old are you?” the man asked. He had a pleasant voice, deep and soothing, and that set Phoenix even more on edge.

“I’m eighteen.” Something shifted in the man’s expression, and he turned back to the inspector, raising a questioning eyebrow.

The inspector shrugged, “Might look like a kid, certainly didn’t kill like one, eh?”

Phoenix wanted to scream. He dug his fingernails into the other hand’s palm, unable to give up the habit even despite the pain doing nothing to actually keep him calm.

“I didn’t kill him,” he should have said, except maybe he did, maybe if he were faster, stronger, better…

“I do believe there is nothing to actually prove he was the murderer,” the strange man suddenly said, looking straight at the inspector. Something shifted in the air, some strange but familiar feeling radiating from the man in white.

“Yes, there is”, Phoenix wanted to say. “I was literally standing over the body with a bloodied sword when they found me.”

But he stayed silent, too tired to actually speak up, and then to his eternal surprise the inspector looked at the file in front of him one more time and then back at the “lawyer”.

“Huh.” the inspector seemed a little surprised himself. “You’re right. Well, lad, sorry about that. Had to be thorough, you know. Have a good life.”

Before Phoenix could find anything to say, the stranger thanked the inspector, said his goodbyes and then grabbed Phoenix by the elbow and led him out of the office.

“Where are you taking me?!” Phoenix hissed, digging his heels in.

“That depends on you,” the man answered calmly, stopping at Phoenix’s insistence. “I can take you home, but I imagine it will still be crowded.”

Phoenix faltered. Now that he had to actually think about it, he himself wasn’t sure where he wanted to be. The stranger raised a fair point. His home, the small townhouse, despite being too-big for him alone was the last reminder of a family he used to have. The image of constables and reporters stomping in the pristine halls, snooping where they weren’t welcome…

And even if there was no one, that would mean Phoenix would be left alone to imagine the judgment of his ancestor’s portraits, which was perhaps even worse.

The man waited a little, but hearing no answer, continued, “Otherwise, I was going to take you somewhere safe. I’m sure a bath and a change of clothes will make you feel better.”

Phoenix honestly wasn’t sure if he wanted to feel better, if he deserved to feel better. So he stubbornly stuck his chin out and glared at the man in white.

“Well, what if I don’t want to go with you?”

That gave the stranger pause.

“Ah.” He sighed. “I was hoping to do this somewhere with less people…”

He motioned for Phoenix to follow him into an empty interrogation room, seemingly familiar with the police station’s layout despite definitely not being a lawyer.

Still apprehensive, Phoenix followed and sat down on the uncomfortable chair. “You never even told me your name,” he complained. “Why would I follow a strange man to a strange location? I wasn’t born yesterday.”

“Right. I apologize. I was planning to explain everything properly, but you seemed… distressed. I thought it was worth the trouble to get you out of here immediately.”

The man also sat down, carded a hand through his stark-white hair and shook his head. “No, let’s start properly. My name is Augustine Hayes, and I’m the head of an organization known as the Order of the Sacred Ashes.”

Very confused, Phoenix shook the hand offered to him. “Phoenix Bailey,” he said dumbly. “Is that, like… a religious order? You don’t look like a priest…”

The man chuckled at that, which Phoenix found pretty offensive. “No, not religious. Although you could say we share a common worldview and ideals.”

“Okay, fine,” Phoenix decided all that could be unpacked later. “What does your cult have to do with me?”

“Our organization mostly deals with threats of… occult nature, so to say, be it humans or monsters,” Mr. Hayes said, and there was something painfully soft in his voice when he did, completely ignoring Phoenix’s jab. Phoenix felt his throat closing up.

“Like…”

“Like the creature that killed your friend.”

When Phoenix didn’t answer, Mr. Hayes added, “By now, it should have already been hunted down and dealt with. My people are capable.”

After a short pause he added, quieter, “I’m sorry we couldn’t find it faster.”

Something shattered in Phoenix at those words.

As if a dam broke, he couldn’t stay silent any longer. His eyes stung, and everything hurt, and…

“It wasn’t your fault. I was the one there, I was the one… I was the one who wasn’t fast enough.”

He didn’t notice when Mr. Hayes stood up, but in a moment his head was loosely hugged to the older man’s side and a hand was patting his hair in a way Phoenix hadn’t really experienced since his mother’s death.

“You did well. You did all you could, and no one could ask you for more,” Mr. Hayes whispered somewhere above. “Sometimes, even our best isn’t enough, and that hurts but you have to learn to let it go.”

“I don’t want to let it go!” Phoenix felt torn between wanting to break away from undeserved comfort and wanting to lean into it, to be forgiven by someone if he couldn’t forgive himself. “I just want it to never happen again, to anyone.”

They both were quiet for a while. Then, with one last pat, Mr. Hayes stepped away from Phoenix to look him in the eye.

“I cannot promise you that, no one can. But if you want to, you can join us. You won’t have to be alone, and we can help you train with both the blade and magic. We can help you save people, and you’d help us do the same.”

Once more, silence stretched out. Phoenix felt embarrassed of his reaction, and Mr. Hayes seemed to want to give him space to think. With a start, Phoenix felt a familiar tug on his subconscious – not quite Katherine, but a whisper of her presence, encouraging and warm.

Still uncertain, Phoenix looked up at Mr. Hayes’s calm and serious face. “I… would like to see how you work. Is that okay?”

The man merely smiled and nodded.

A fresh start started to sound tempting.

—–

Whyyyyy oh why did I have to make it so long. Anyway. I think this is more hurt/comfort than angst, but Phoenix is angsty even on his own, so it counts.