A Hackwith - The Library of the Unwritten

Something of the acidic feeling withered in Leto’s throat and turned to ash that left an awful feeling in his mouth. He heard the whispers from the raven road again. We never talk anymore.

“No,” Leto said instead. “I just… I followed you. Because you seemed… different, better. I didn’t know where else to go, and you seemed to care.”

“Seemed.” Claire repeated the word, half-rueful. She made a cautious approach around the fountain, slow and wary. And weary. Exhaustion bruised her eyes. “You can care and still cause harm. Feeling, caring , for someone else is the worst kind of weapon, in my experience. It allows you to do things you never thought you could do and things you never thought you would do. All for the love of someone else. It’s a trap I’d avoided on principle since Beatrice, up until recently.”

There was an earnestness, an entreaty, that softened her face when she looked at him. The librarian of Hell’s Library wasn’t ever soft, but Claire, occasionally, was. It was what eased the last of Leto’s anger. It drained out of him like an oil spill, leaving him suddenly hollow but stained feeling. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to hold on to it or let it go. His shoulders slumped. His voice felt more lost than angry when he found it again. “How do I trust you?”

Claire sat down beside him and considered his question seriously. “I think it’d be disingenuous to ask you to. Let’s make a deal.”

Leto rolled his eyes. “Give me a break. Adults only say ‘Let’s make a deal’ when they need something they can’t justify.”

Claire’s frown inched up into a smile at one side of her lips. “It appears your teenager memories are coming along nicely.”

Leto gave her a dull look. “That’s also insulting.”

“Fair enough. I’m sorry. It’s been a long time since my—” Claire slouched her shoulder against his. It felt comforting. “You don’t have to trust me. Just work with me. Give me the chance to set right all the wrongs I’ve done here. I need to get back to the Library. There’s something off here, this whole situation. The codex, Beatrice just happening to be here, even you—”

“I already knew I wasn’t right.”

“You are perfect ,” Claire snapped, and the protective fierceness made Leto smile, just a little. She was wrong—everything in his screaming heart knew it—but it meant something, that she believed it. “I mean all of this happening at once. Coincidences don’t happen, not in Hell. Brevity should have sent word by now too, if the Library was in rights. Something else is going on, and of all the members of our little family right now, I trust you at my side the most. I need you.”

Leto turned and found himself blinking to process that. Claire was a wielder of words, prone to confusing speeches like a teacher, ingrained with librarian authority and scholarly control. But this request had an unvarnished, raw grain to it. Honest and easily bruised. Leto felt the world silently resettle around him to account for that. It confused him, and he was so very tired of feeling confused.

Claire was wrong about him. Wrong about the humanity he had left inside. She cared, and she hurt people with that caring. But she tried . She was trapped, perhaps even more than he was. The Library and Hell were tethered to her, like a cuff around her neck, but she never stopped trying. She never looked back. Leto desperately wanted some part of that. “When can we leave?”

Claire’s lips twitched at the plaintive note in his voice. He supposed it was ridiculous: the idea of a soul eager to leave Earth and go to Hell. She didn’t see that every time they went to Earth, he seemed to feel more confused, more tugged in two directions. He worried one more good tug might rip his seams entirely. Only the Library held him together.

“You want to go back?” Claire asked carefully.

Leto shrugged. “I didn’t think there was a choice.”

“Our ghostlights have run out, and Hellhounds are after our souls. It’s going to be difficult, to say the least, to set foot outside the walls without being obliterated. I’d say desperation has broadened our bartering position.” Claire made a vague gesture: to the courtyard, to the fading twilight above. “What do you really want, Leto?”

He had a hangnail. His thumb worried at it as he thought. It was a question no one had asked him—not in Hell and, Leto felt relatively certain even without memories, not often when he was alive. The choice was a little unnerving. “I want… to make a way forward. And I guess I… want to know. I can’t stand not knowing. These feelings I get, I don’t know which part of me…”

“Hell may not help that. We send our souls there for various reasons but… you should know,” Claire said quietly, a complicated look furrowing her brow. “Realms enjoy stasis. The longer you’re there, the harder it is to see yourself anywhere else. It has a way of seeping in.”

That didn’t sound comforting. Leto gnawed on his bottom lip. “I just want to know who I was. Who I am. I won’t find that here.”

Claire tilted her head as if absorbing that, then nodded. “Fair enough. We’ll just have to outsmart the Hellhounds.”

She stated it like a simple course of action, but made no movement to get up. The silence was companionable as they gave the flagstones more contemplation than they probably deserved. Leto felt his chest unwinding and said, “So. You like girls?”

A smile tipped onto Claire’s face and she chuckled. “I like… interesting people. Everyone has their charms. The details never mattered much to me.”

“So you’re pan?”

“Pan?”

“Pansexual,” Leto explained.

“Is that the term now?” Claire asked, and it took a moment before the realization fluttered into Leto’s gut. Another word, another memory. Claire studied his face and relaxed. “I remember loving, a few times. I was married to a very nice man in life. We had a daughter, even.”

“A daughter?” Leto was caught off guard by that.

“She was…” The ease fell off her face. Claire frowned. “Damn. I can’t remember her name anymore. My own daughter.” A kind of grief flickered but was just as quickly tucked away. She cleared her throat. “Memories are another casualty of Hell. The more you’re forgotten on Earth, the more you forget yourself. It can be a blessing or a curse.”

The light in Claire’s gaze had faded, dark as the twilight clinging to the square now. “Well, I’ve already got that problem,” Leto said, hoping it would cheer her. When it did, it felt like a small victory. He rocked to crouch on his heels. “Not that I’m likely to forget all this. Should we be getting back, ma’am?”

Claire heaved a deep, grumbling sigh at that. “Oh, blast, we should. The heroes are likely at each other’s throats again.” She fluttered her hand and Leto helped haul her to her feet. “And I still haven’t gone over how I need your help. Let’s talk on the way.”

THE FRONT ROOM OF Beatrice’s apartments was already in disarray from the search, and now appeared to be the scene for a very lazy duel. Beatrice perched at the edge of her desk, feigning interest in the paperback in her hands. She appeared entirely unaware of the half-lidded glare Hero maintained. He was slouched against the wall near the door, and straightened as Leto returned with Claire. The Hounds picked up again as their targets returned closer to the walls. The intermittent growls shivered through the floor at Leto’s feet, sending a chill over his skin. At least they were no longer throwing themselves against the wards.

“You’re wasting time refusing,” Hero pointed out, seeming to continue some line of debate he’d engaged in with Beatrice while they were gone. “The warden is very persistent when it comes to her books. I should know.”