FOUR


She asks me to stay but I decline. Pending a blood test to confirm we are related, there isn't much to say. I can't give too much of myself, and neither can she.

I go home and drink with the cockroaches and rub the flat plate of my necklace with the pad of my thumb. The smooth metal is no comfort. It's a symbol of everything that could have been, a life that might have been mine in a parallel universe. It's no comfort, but I drink and worry the chain, and wonder what comes next.

I'm surprised she didn't throw some cash at me and tell me to get lost. That was the plan. That was my expectation. I never thought she would want more.

If this is for sure, I will go from tragic, lost child, to the family's dirty secret. If Lia was as practical as she seemed, she would bury me.

Instead, I'm her hope. A dream come true.

She doesn't know me.

I drink so much, I black out, and I wake up in the bathtub covered in vomit. A sane person would stop drinking. I turn on the shower and lay under the hot water and finish the bottle.

When it's gone, I dress in the least filthy thing I can find and go to the bar.

The hooker I almost took home before sits at a table in the back. She smiles. I grimace back and order her a drink.

I shell out the Gil for an hour of her time. We stop for a fresh bottle on the way back to my reeking apartment.

What she expects is not what she gets. Her hands slide over my chest as soon as the door is shut but I push her away. I don't want her to touch me.

All I can think of is Ultimecia inside Edea's body, using me like a wind-up toy. The scars her fingernails left on my back raise and prickle and I want to puke. All this time, and I can still feel her. All that lust, all that hate.

It's not sex I need. There's a deep, unsatisfied craving way down in my soul for things this girl can't give me.

She tries again and I flee to the other side of the room. I might kill her if she lays a hand on me, even though that's what I paid her to do.

I pour each of us a drink. She sits at the table and watches me. I can't look her in the eye.

I'm not a man anymore. I'm a dumpster fire. A demon, walking around in a man's skin.

"You paid for my company," she says. "Tell me what you want."

I rub my thumb over the metal plate at my throat. I answer her honestly.

"Nothing."


Lia's attempts to contact Almasy have failed. Zell suspects Seifer has left town, but he doesn't tell Lia that. She's pinned all her hope on a man she doesn't know or understand. Zell has never understood Seifer Almasy, either. Not his motives. Not his choices. Not his reasons.

After four days of silence, Lia sends Zell off in a company car to find him. She makes Zell promise he won't start swinging, and he agrees, but it's a promise Zell doesn't think he can keep. When Seifer is unwilling to cooperate, a fight is inevitable.

He sees the resemblance between the two, and in the portraits of long-dead Masseys that line the walls of Lia's home, but that does not mean anything to Zell. He doesn't believe this is anything more than a scam on Seifer's part. He only wants some quick cash to fuel his aggressive descent into oblivion.

It's plain to see, Seifer is drunk more than he isn't. It shows.

Zell climbs out of the car in front of Seifer's apartment, and he's torn between utter disgust and sorrow. He's not so blind that he can't see Seifer was only partly responsible for what happened. He was there. He saw what it did to him.

He knocks on the door, but Seifer doesn't answer. He paces the hall and waits, and then tries again.

Maybe he isn't home.

Zell waits some more, checks the time, and knocks again. Waits, nothing.

Downstairs, he convinces the landlady the tenant in 3A might be wounded or otherwise in danger. The woman accompanies him to the door and unlocks it.

A vile odor hits him the moment he steps inside. Dirty socks. Unwashed human flesh. Rancid food. Vomit. Every surface in the room is littered with empty liquor bottles and dirty clothes are spread across the worn, brown carpet.

Seifer is naked and unconscious on the kitchen floor. There is drying vomit on the linoleum beside him and a nearly empty bottle of cheap whiskey next to his head. He looks dead.

Zell checks his pulse and lays a hand to Seifer's chest. He's still breathing. He still has a heartbeat.

"You sorry motherfucker," Zell says. "What the hell are you doing to yourself?"

He remembers Seifer in his prime. Tall, muscular, confident and as mean as a belhelmel blade. That cocky smile Zell loathed and admired in equal measures.

Back then, Seifer could have done anything if he had a little more humility and a little less pride.

Seifer has no pride left. Zell wouldn't have found him in this state if he did.

The landlady stands in the hall, awaiting the verdict. She has not stepped a foot inside. Zell would bet she doesn't want the inconvenience of finding a dead body in one of her rentals. He reassures her that everything is fine, and she leaves without a word.

Zell crouches down and shakes Seifer's shoulder. His skin is clammy and cold.

"Get up, Almasy."

Seifer doesn't move. There are eight long, ugly scars on his back. They stretch from his shoulders to his hips.

Something tore him wide open not so long ago.

Zell goes to the cabinet and fills a glass with ice water. He dumps it over Seifer's head, and he wakes, sputtering and cursing.

"Fffffuck."

Zell swears he can see the bones of Seifer's face beneath his pale, sickly skin. The shadows under his eyes only amplify the effect.

"Get up," Zell says. "Test is back. Lia wants to see you."

Seifer rests his cheek against the floor and closes his eyes.

Either out of pure stubbornness, or abject incapability, he's making this harder. Zell does not want to be the one to clean him up. He very nearly despises Seifer, for a lot of reasons, but this is not something Zell wants to see.

He lifts Seifer into a sitting position and Seifer spits out rapid, gun-fire curses and insults but he's in no shape to back them up. Zell grits his teeth and ignores them. He promised Lia he wouldn't hit Seifer, and he plans to keep that promise. Even if it would feel amazing to deck Seifer good and hard a few times for falling apart.

Seifer fights him, wrenches away, and crawls across the floor to cower beside the stove. He folds in on himself, covers his head, flinches from imaginary blows.

Zell has never seen anything so pathetic in his life.

He offers a hand and Seifer bats it away.

"Don't fucking touch me."

"Then don't make me," Zell says. "Get up. Right now."

The bathroom is as disgusting as the rest of the apartment. There is a black ring inside the toilet and dead roaches in the corners. It smells of piss.

Zell starts the shower and shoves Seifer toward it. Seifer shoves back.

"You don't want to do this, Almasy," Zell says. "Get in the damn shower or I'll make you."

"Fuck you."

"Not even on a good day. Besides, don't know what kind of fungus you're growing," Zell says. He thrusts a passably clean washcloth and a bar of soap at Seifer. "Clean yourself up."

While Seifer showers, Zell searches for a clean towel but everything smells of mildew or dirty socks. In the closet, he finds a sheet waded up at the back of a shelf. It will have to do.

Clothes prove to be a bigger problem. The only thing clean are a pair of underwear and some stained, holey sweat pants. He finds the least offensive smelling shirt available in one of the piles of clothing on the bedroom floor. It isn't fresh, but it isn't so gross that it reeks.

Once Seifer is dressed, Zell coaxes him to the car with the promise of alcohol.

He doesn't keep that promise.

In the car, Seifer slumps against the window and stares out, unseeing.

It's hard to hate a man in such sorry shape.


I don't want to know the truth. It's better, not knowing.

I've spent a full five days doing nothing but drink. I hoped it would be enough to kill me.

When Dincht shows up, I'm less sure I want to die, but I'm definitely not sure I want to live.

He lies and says he'll get me something to drink, but I can't muster the strength to be pissed when we stop in front of a clothing store instead. He cuffs my wrists to the steering wheel and leaves me there.

When he returns, he unlocks me and I think about decking him, but I don't.

He chucks a pair of gray slacks and a dress shirt my way and orders me to change. I do it only because I can't stand the stench on my clothes.

I'm almost presentable by the time we arrive at Lia's estate. My hair is still damp, but I don't smell like puke and mildew anymore.

She doesn't offer me a drink this time. I almost beg her for one, but it's not even noon, and I don't want her to know how bad it is.

There's a stranger in the room with us. He looks like a lawyer, but also like he might be related. A cousin, maybe.

"I'm sure Zell told you, the test is back," Lia says.

"Yeah."

I draw in a shaky breath.

"Are you ready?"

I'm not. Not even close. I spent days trying to destroy myself so I don't have to know. Either verdict will be the death of me.

I nod anyway and sit down. Dincht sits at the other end of the couch. I don't know why he's still here. It isn't his business.

The lawyer opens a sealed envelope and reads the contents to himself. He is not pleased with what he reads.

My hands shake and my heart starts to pound.

"The test results indicate that you, Seifer Almasy, are without a doubt, Caius Massey."

My vision blurs, my pulse throbs behind my eyes, and everything goes stark white. The room around me is so quiet it's a vacuum. No one moves or breathes and when my vision clears, Lia sits across from me, her cheeks wet with tears.

"You really are mine," she says.

"I'm not what you expected."

"No," she says, "but you're mine."

Her face is full of defiance, like she would wage war and fight to the death to defend me.

"I understand if you don't want this made public," I say. "I wouldn't claim me, either."

Lia wipes her eyes and moves to the space beside me. I shrink from the hand that reaches for my face.

"You being my son presents a bit of a PR problem." She withdraws her hand and lets it rest in her lap. "But nothing that can't be fixed."

I laugh at how over-simplified that is. I wonder if she understands how much the world hates me.

"I bombed a fucking school," I say. "How do you fix that?"

"Spin it so you become the victim," she says. "Which, from my understanding, you were."

She wipes her eyes again and sniffles. She's having a hard time keeping her composure.

I don't know how I'm supposed to feel. I'm in desperate need of a drink so I don't have to feel.

"Good luck with that," I say. "So what now?"

Her knuckles brush over my cheek and her eyes soften.

"We get you cleaned up, dried out, and you stay here, where you belong."

Where I belong? I can't even picture it.

"I..." she begins. "I haven't held you since you were a baby. I know I'm a stranger to you, and maybe it's a lot to ask, but could I... would you let me hug you?"

If she touches me, I might spontaneously combust or choke her to death or lose my mind, but I grit my teeth and let her. It breaks me wide open, the thought that for the first time I can remember, my mother is holding me. I wish I could say it feels good, but it makes my skin crawl.

I catch Dincht's eye over her shoulder.

He looks troubled.

What does he know that I don't?