Arthur stared at the ceiling, eyes half open, breathing deep. It was a nice ceiling, imprinted and painted with gold detailing. This was an old house, having been built with those imprints and curves of plaster, and it would probably crumble with them too. He stared and breathed and let the cold air press in on him. This room, the living room, had a very specific smell, sort of… metallic, though warm. It was an odd smell. It bothered him; he had never wanted scented candles more in his entire life.

He didn't know what time it was; late he presumed. Everyone else slept soundly, even the two boys who had been extremely reluctant to go to bed as they had been requested to do. It was just him, awake in the house, staring at the ceiling of the living room. Breathing.

One of his arms pressed against his forehead and the other lay on his stomach, and he wanted to sleep, wanted to close his eyes and have it be morning when they opened again, and he'd be well rested and fresh.

He hadn't been well rested or fresh in a very long time.

Even if he did sleep, he would only wake up again covered in sweat, shaking, and chances were, probably yelling. And that filled him with fear, made him anxious, made paranoia sink into his bones and refuse to give him up, because maybe if they knew how damaged he was, they would leave him like Francis seemed to have done.

He breathed in and held the breath in his lungs before swinging his legs onto the floor, feeling the chill of the polished wood beneath the balls of his feet. He only let out his breath when he stood, rising to his full height and working the stiffness out of his shoulders.

He stared forwards at the darkened fireplace, the ash ready to be swept out once the morning came, the blue-green tiles that lined the space around it, blackened with the years of continuous burning. And then, his expression unchanging, cold and still, he moved, placing one foot directly in front of the other, practicing being graceful. He held out his arms for balance and hopped from one floorboard to another, making sure to avoid the ones that he remembered to creak. Choosing directly not to step on any of the lines like Kieran had told him to do when he was younger.

He headed towards the kitchen.

The kitchen was Arthur's second favourite room next to the music room. He liked it because it smelt exactly the way a kitchen should, kind of homely, and warm, like dough, and that comforted him. It was an old kitchen, still with most of its original furnishings, though it worked well. It had been built to last and lasted it had. He liked to think that he had also been built to last.

The curtains that hung over the window just above the sink were open and the moonlight streamed in, bathing the whole room in a clean, white light. He stood in front of it and breathed slowly, the floor tiles prickling his feet with cold, and none of his movements ever making a sound, not wanting to wake his hosts.

He shook his head and huffed slightly. This was stupid, this whole goddamn situation was stupid, and he couldn't guess anyone's motives and he was bored and he couldn't sleep and this was just… stupid.

And it wasn't meant to happen; none of this was meant to happen. His whole life had been a series of extraordinary events that had passed him from one person to another, and he couldn't do this anymore. He couldn't just go slowly; he didn't have that luxury. He didn't want to keep getting taken care of. Why couldn't someone, for once in his life, just look him straight in the eye and tell him that he was perfectly capable of looking after himself? He wasn't weak; he knew he wasn't weak.

He was volatile and scared and distrustful and rude, but he was not, in any sense of the word, weak. And he would not be treated as such.

He sighed. Then snapped his fingers.

A soft green light lit up the room, brighter than the moonlight had been. Green flames flickered upon the palm of his hand like he had doused his hand in chemicals and lit it to burn. Ironically this was the first thing he had ever been able to take control of, learnt how to make it happen on will, learnt how to make it his own. And now it was nearly effortless.

He wasn't weak.

He held out his hand to the cupboards in the shadow of the moonlight, lighting them up to reveal the door handle, which he pulled open in search of the biscuits. This family might not have had any tea, but they at least had biscuits.

Arthur didn't take many, only two, not enough to be noticed, just enough to get him through the night. He hadn't eaten much at dinner; he didn't really like their food. He wasn't picky, hardly, but he missed Francis' food. He liked Francis' food. The soups especially, and the pastries, and the stews made his mouth water now by mere memory alone.

He extinguished the flame in his hand, shoved a biscuit in his mouth, closed the cupboard and turned around to find Lilli staring at him with wide eyes, clinging to the doorframe. He froze where he stood.

And then, a long, creative, thought-provoking string of profanity went like a steam train through his head, which ended quite simply with:

Shit.

Lilli liked him, the boy, Arthur. She thought he was sweet, but he was also one of the saddest people she had ever met. She could see it in his eyes, and the way that he had watched her the night that he had come, the way that he hunched his shoulders when someone new came into the room. The way his eye would twitch when someone touched him, and the way that he spoke, somewhere between defiance and rage, and the way he looked when he thought that nobody could see him. The way that his shoulders levelled, and he stood straight and proud, and his eyes would be thin with speculation, like a snake, and it was in those moments when he looked completely and undeniably colossal.

You could tell. You could tell that it took everything he had not to crumble to the floor with the relief of not being seen, and weep his little stone heart out, but he didn't. He just remained, strong and patient and waiting for something to happen, for something so go horribly, horribly wrong.

And she liked that about him. She liked the way that he was so strong, so unbeaten. Crushed but still working.

But unlike so many ruined people, he didn't speak like those he spoke to were weak. He didn't look at them with any resentment, or envy, or jealousy. And he was smart, curious, and he wanted to know. He didn't want to ask, but he wanted to know.

And he was good. He had seen the worst of humanity, seen the worst that they could possibly do, and he was still a good person. If she fell down, she could count on him to help her up. If she was scared she could count on her to comfort her. You could see it in his eyes.

Papa didn't think that she knew where he had come from or what he was doing there, but she did. She had noticed his thinness, and the faded bruises and the frantic scratches around his neck as if he had been throttled. So she had asked, and Da had told her, thought that she was old enough to deserve the truth, and suddenly, then, it had all made sense. Why he feared and distrusted them.

It was good that Francis had taken him in, taken the broken boy into his home with the hope that he might get better. It would almost be like adopting a bird, fixing it's wing, and teaching it how to fly again, had Arthur been a bird, But he wasn't. He was a person, and he had thoughts and emotions, and she wondered if he had a family, if he had a home to go back to, and if he yearned for it like a bird yearns for the sky.

The flame in Arthur's hand flickered as he looked through their cupboards, going for the biscuits Lilli realised. She remembered noting how little he had eaten at the dinner table, and knowing that Da had noticed it too. Papa had been pretending he didn't care.

Papa didn't like the boy, didn't like the fact that he was in their house and eating their food and all that had happened. He knew, naturally, where Arthur had come from, and that was what worried him, worried that the boy would blame them for his imprisonment and would snap and go after them.

She hadn't thought that he was big enough to go after them, to do any significant damage, but then, a flickering flame was in the palm of his hand and she wasn't sure. Then the flame went out. Arthur simply closed his fingers over his palm and lowered it to his side casually, and then he turned around and they stared at each other for a long, drawn out moment in which both party refused to make any movements.

It was hard to fear him; she had to admit. His hair was uncombed and going in all different directions, and he had a trail of crumbs down his chin, and was hardly taller than she was. He was hardly intimidating, but still.

Of course she had heard of the magic users of the North Land. They were notorious for their secrets and ancient practices, the rumours were innumerable and everywhere. Some were ridiculous, like man dancing and chanting around bonfires, half naked and tattooed, casting curses and other nasty things. And others were smaller, just whispers heard around corners. About the ancient tribes that still lived undisturbed by the modern world up in the northern most mountains, and the silent traditions of an ancient people with years of experience. And then there were the magic users and they were everywhere. The folklore of the Northern land had been dictated by their presence, there were the ones who wrote it down. They were the healers and warriors of the Great Northern Land. They had many names, those born with the ability to cast spells and look at the world differently from the way that the rest of them did. She had heard nearly all of them; mages, warlock, witches, wizards, or sorcerers, but she had also heard that they had died out nearly a hundred years before, some sort of mass extinction, she did not know. And the boy didn't look even twenty years old, let alone a hundred.

Arthur didn't make any movements, probably didn't know what to say. She didn't know what to say either, so she just stared at him, and waited for something to happen, something that would lead to the discovery of something.

He reached out to her with a shaking hand and a mortified expression.

"Please don't tell your dads."

And then she ran as quickly as she could out of the kitchen and back up the stairs and into her bedroom to fret about the person sleeping in her living room.

Ironically, he slept really well after that, as if relieved that, finally, something had gone wrong.

Arthur sat silently at the table, his hands folded neatly in his lap, his shoulders coiled and all the muscles in his body perfectly tensed. His bones were springs and his heart and elastic stretched thin inside his chest cavity. Elizabeta swept around the kitchen, her skirts sweeping around behind her, making oatmeal before any of the other patrons of the house arose to meet the day. He could already hear the quick, short footsteps of the boys right above him.

He could tell that Elizabeta was looking at him, monitoring him, and he didn't know whether it was because she was scared of him, or because she thought he was scared of her. He wasn't scared of her, because she knew what he was. Francis had told her. It had bothered her in the beginning, he had been able to tell, but then, he had just told her the truth, the truth about him, explained the circumstances, because he gained nothing from her anxiety, he didn't want her to fear him.

He liked the fact that Francis knew that he couldn't control him, liked the fact that there was always the possibility that he was extremely powerful.

So he just remained sitting there, not talking, and waiting for some wrath to come down upon him, because he was sure that it would. Eventually.

He expected them, when they came down and found him in their dining room, to hit him, beat him, yell at him. And he wouldn't fight back even though he could, because at least for a time, they had let him be in their house, had let him eat their food, and study with their daughter and play with their sons, and that, that had to mean something to someone, and it meant something to him.

Of course, it wouldn't be the dark haired man who would beat him; it wasn't enough of an instinct. He would be the one to look at him with terror and betrayal in his eyes, as they rushed down to see if it was true, telling their children to stay upstairs, out of sight. It would be the blond man who would beat him. Because the blond man was violent, Arthur could see it in his eyes, so undeniable, so impenetrable. He would fight because he instinct told him to and Arthur couldn't resent him for that.

At this point it just felt like everything in the whole world wanted destroy him, drag him back from whence he had come, no matter the fact that he would always stagger back on broken limbs, ripping off his bonds, through the mud, dirt and decay.

But he didn't know if he had the energy to fight it anymore.

He wanted to run, he could feel it in his bones; the urge to cut his losses and bolt as quickly as he possibly could, out the door and into the street. He imagined running, his bare feet pounding against the cobblestones until he reached the inner city like the city that he remembered. He imagined breathing in the city smog, and the smell of cigarettes and wine and broken dreams, because at least there, at least there he could slip into the skin of someone whole and unshakable.

But he didn't. Because there was still the chance that between now and the time it took for the masters of the house to arrive, Francis might come back for him and take him away before they could point and sneer and spit words like acid.

Freak.

Monster.

Get out.

Maybe Francis would prevail for him again, maybe he would be the shining face in the crowd all over again.

But he didn't.

Because then the men appeared at the doorway together, dressed for the day, and Arthur looked at his hands and waited, some part of him already half way out of his chair, ready to dart away. He waited tensely for hands to wrap themselves around his fragile neck and steal the breath from his lung.

But they didn't.

Nothing happen. The dark haired man just bid him good morning and all he could do was grunt confusedly. It took him ten minutes of listening to the three of them chatting about the morning, before he could look up to sniff the air, to tell if they were just playing with him, toying with his fears.

But they weren't

He found her in the garden, sitting on the wooden bench with one of her books and one of the nice summer dresses that he was sure that Elizabeta would have pointed out for her. And she was wearing that little, green bow in her hair and he was sure that it had been a gift from someone. She didn't notice him when he stood there, to the side of her, but he liked that.

"Thanks for not telling them." Arthur slid in to the seat next to hers, with the second book he had been allowed to retrieve before Francis had bustled him out of the house. Lilli slid a look over to him before darting it back down to her book, as if trying to pretend that she had seen him there.

"How do you know I didn't tell them?"

He shrugged.

"I just do." He knew because if she had told them they would have smelled like fear or anger or maybe lying, but they didn't. They smelt the way that they usually did, save for Lilli. She smelt like fear. Not full blown fear, just… agitation, just anxiety. The sort of anxiety that came with not knowing what you were meant to do with your hands, and not knowing whether it was appropriate to look someone in the eye.

He let her stay there, let her stew in her worry, didn't attempt to draw her out of it, knowing on some level that it would only make her more suspicious. He had to admit, he liked her, liked her silence, liked that she liked him back. And when she hadn't told anyone about the fire in his palm the night before, the sentiment only solidified.

Because, you know, she was nice, and Arthur had the capacity to be nice if he really wanted to… and his mother would like her, and he based nearly all his relationships off that.

Plus, it would be nice to have a friend who didn't legally own him.