Spencer
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102.
They lay in silence in the rapidly-becoming-an-icebox-van, Emily clicking a flashlight on and off and making the light reflect oddly from Sergio's snow leopard eyes. He was lying down her side, tail wrapped around her throat. On Spencer's other side, Aureilo was tucked under the blanket as a wolf again, keeping the cold from creeping in. It was warm, if close, and Spencer kept all his limbs under the covers.
Emily didn't. She kept restlessly reaching for things to fiddle with, almost certainly to dispel the anxiety of waiting for Aaron to return. Spencer dispelled it another way: he simply didn't think about it, or anything else. Utter silence reigned in his mind. He'd perfected withdrawing, after all, he might as well use it. If he thought about it right now, he'd crack.
Instead, he just watched her as she picked up the cards, trying to practice a magic trick he'd been teaching her before her hands had got too cold. After a short time under the blankets to warm up, she popped back out, trying to get the Walkman to turn on but finding it flat. After that, it was Spencer's battered box, glancing at him for permission before pulling it onto the bed and tracing her fingers over where the flashlight illuminated the words he'd written long ago: We can find her.
Spencer wondered if Aaron was coming back yet, then quickly distracted himself.
"Do you think Sergio will settle as a snow leopard?" he asked, wiggling closer to her and watching as she opened the old poetry book he kept in there and paged slowly through it. "It would suit you. Pretty and dangerous."
"Are you flirting with me?" she teased.
"No. You must have thought about what you want him to be. Everyone does. And we're all really old for our dæmons to settle, so it's probably going to be soon."
"Sergio won't settle," she said resolutely, putting the poetry back and pulling out the stickied photo. "Why isn't Aureilo settled? We all know he's going to be a hare."
"He might not be," Spencer mumbled, burrowing deeper and regretting this conversation. "I mean, probably once he would have been … but we're different now, and I don't believe in fixed destinies."
Emily was quiet for the longest time after that. "Where is she?" She tilted the photo down as though to show him without realising that the angle she was holding it at completely obscured the details. But he knew who she was asking about.
"I don't know. I haven't seen her since I was a kid. Sometimes I think she might have died and Dad just hasn't told me."
Emily shivered. "Urgh, that's so awful. Can't you, I don't know, I guess you probably don't want to, but couldn't you look it up? I'd want to know if I was you."
"I think I prefer thinking she's alive out there somewhere, you know? I really don't remember much of her around the time Dad took me away, but I do remember that she was sick and getting sicker. I guess I don't want to know that she died alone without ever saying goodbye …"
He thought of Aaron and lost his voice, falling silent.
"Yeah," Emily said in a low mumble. "I get that."
Silence again, except for the muted sound of wind. They should send a dæmon out to clear the windows so they didn't suffocate, but Spencer was warm and scared and just wanted everyone he loved close to him right now, not out in the snow.
"Hey, Spencer?"
"Mm?"
"Do you think we'll ever be okay again? That things can get better?"
Spencer thought about that for a while. "My brain says no," he finally admitted, feeling her flinch before he had a chance to continue, "but …"
"But?"
It was Aureilo who answered for him; not his brain, but his soul. "It will," he said. "Things have been worse before and we've always made them better. This? This is nothing compared to our mom going missing or Aaron's dad beating him or—"
"Rome," Emily added, closing her eyes, "or my dad."
Spencer nodded, taking her hand. "Let's sleep," he suggested, wiggling close and folding himself around her, rubbing her cold hands in his to warm them up. "Aaron will be back soon."
"You don't sound like you believe that." Emily's voice was already drowsy, dozing off.
"He doesn't," said Aureilo. "But I do."
.
103.
They slept and woke to Aaron shaking them.
.
104.
The trip to the cabin was short but terrible. They didn't have enough clothes to risk getting drenched in the snow; the wind-chill alone would be deadly even for the short hike to the cabin Aaron said he'd found. Or rather, mumbled, what was visible of his face behind a knotted shirt stung pink from the cold and his eyelashes iced over.
They didn't waste any time. Any clothes they had left, they put on, wrapping the blankets around that and belting them in place. Aaron helped Spencer onto Hal's great back — the dæmon a huge Clydesdale horse that Spencer couldn't help but stare at, having never seen a dæmon so big before in his life — and climbed on behind him. Aureilo became a long, masked ferret that wound around Spencer's throat like a living scarf, clinging on grimly as they clomped out into the blizzard. Emily followed, arms wrapped around Sergio's neck and face buried into his ruff while he tried to carry her above the snow as the tiger he'd only ever been before when angry beyond rationality.
Riding Hal was strange. Arms around Aaron's waist and with nothing between him and the dæmon below, Spencer could feel Hal living underneath him. A pulse of alive warmth radiating up into his thighs and crotch as well as from where he was hugging Aaron tightly. Not only that sense of her life, but also of Aaron. Spencer could feel Aaron through Hal more vividly than ever before, despite not trying to and despite there being no bare skin touching her.
Because of this, barely three minutes into the push through the heavy snowbanks, Hal's previous tracks having already been covered over, Spencer knew she was failing before she stumbled. He peered around Aaron, just in time to straighten his boyfriend before he slumped over, and then realised that the path hadn't been snowed in — they'd diverged from it.
"What's happening?" Emily screamed over the wind from behind them. "Why have we stopped?"
Spencer ignored her. "Aaron?" he yelled, shaking him. "What's happening?"
Aaron just shook his head, turning half-way round and staring impassively at Spencer. "S'cold," he slurred out, hunching over. But, unlike Spencer, he wasn't shivering.
"Not shivering is bad," Aureilo reminded Spencer, claws digging through his shirt. "We have to get him inside."
"Keep going," Hal whinnied, tossing her head and stumbling forward into the snow, eyes closed against the snow building on her large muzzle. "Keep going, going, going …"
But she staggered again, dragged down by Aaron's torpidity.
"Get down and lead her?" Aureilo suggested. Spencer couldn't — he was the only thing holding Aaron upright and, besides, he wasn't sure he could get down from this terrible height, not without breaking an ankle. "Oh no …"
Before they could panic, something brushed past them in the whiteout. They looked to the side, seeing orange and black: Emily. Even as they watched, Sergio shook and rippled, trying to grow taller and failing. They both winced. Being bigger than they should be hurt, they knew this from past attempts. Sergio rippled again and again, Emily yelping with the weirdness of her dæmon changing under her until, finally, he shoved into the snow in front of him as a barrel-chested pony with a shaggy coat, mane ripped about by the wind as he pushed close against Hal's side and whickered.
Emily reached up, pausing for just a second, before resting her hand against Hal's huge neck. "Come on," she shouted, tugging on Hal's mane. Spencer felt Aaron shiver, twitching awake and looking at her, expression hidden behind the shirt around his face. "Follow us." She let her hand move down, touching Hal's chest, as Sergio moved doggedly forward.
Like that, in an uneven, wobbly line of teenagers and their dæmons, they moved steadily towards their destination.
.
105.
Aaron was completely out of it by the time they got him into the cabin and down in front of the unlit stove, leaving him crumpled there staring blankly while they raced to gather blankets from every dresser and cupboard and pile them around him.
"What do we do for you?" Emily asked Aaron frantically, but he didn't respond, just laid down and closed his eyes. He was so still. His lips were blue. "Fuck, fuck, fuck! Spencer, what do we do?"
For a moment, it was like the paintings all over again, his brain utterly shutting down in the face of too much stress for him to handle. But, unlike the paintings, this panic passed — it had to. Aaron needed them; if they messed up here, he'd die. "Can you get the stove going?"
Emily glanced at it, panic showing in her eyes too as she hunkered over the silent Aaron and the equally silent Hal, now a rabbit curled into a shivering ball on the rug, eyes closed even as Aureilo tried to lick ice from her fur. Then, just like him, the panic passed from her as well.
"Yes," she said, nodding furiously and scrambling for the fire, dragging a wicker basket with balls of paper over and beginning to pack it in around the logs she'd placed within. Spencer left her and went searching. This was a remote cabin — there would be a first-aid kit somewhere. This was a remote, expensive cabin; if there was a first-aid kit, it was likely pre-packaged and would come with a manual.
He found it under the kitchen sink, hauling it out and spilling it over the floor, finding exactly what he needed set in the bottom: a first-aid manual with tiny, condensed text that he paged through rapidly until he hit the Hs and read the entire Hypothermia entry in one hit. Distantly, he could sense Aureilo's constant worry. That was good. Constant meant Aaron wasn't declining. If his worry spiked, then Spencer would react.
The book was basic, but enough. He took it with him back to where Aaron was, pulling the cushions from the couches and making a nest of them with blankets on the bottom. "Come on," he coaxed, slipping his arm around Aaron's and pulling him upright. "Wet clothes off. Emily, fire?"
"Burning," she responded. "I'll see if there are any dry clothes left."
With that, she was gone, padding into the bedroom.
Spencer was shivering himself, but his own discomfort didn't matter; he ignored it and stripped Aaron down, resisting the urge to rub the ice-cold patches of skin he revealed, all white and red and mottled grossly. "You're going to hurt when you warm up," he told Aaron, seeing the boy blink hazily and look at him. "Sorry."
"I have one shirt and a pair of leggings," Emily announced. "Put them on him?"
"Nope," Spencer replied. "Help me lift him. Clothes will rub his skin, maybe peel it if he's frostbitten — you should strip too before your clothes freeze to your skin."
"Oh boy," muttered Emily, dropping the clothes on the back of the couch and beginning to wrestle with her coat. "We're all going to be getting so intimate."
"You can take the shirt," Spencer said graciously, removing Aaron's pants without so much as a warning.
.
106.
Aaron was the first to sleep, unsurprisingly, drained by the agony that had been his slow return to the land of the thawed. His skin burned him as it warmed, to the point where he was a shaking, crying, insensible mess huddled naked under the blankets where Spencer had put him. Despite how exhausted they were, Emily and Spencer didn't rest.
What had happened today had changed everything. Instead, they sat in silence, naked as well with blankets around them, and watched him, both tense in case his slow breathing stalled. They were circled completely by the warm bodies of their dæmons. The book had instructed the use of any close-by dæmons, pressed as close as possible under the blankets without touching him and — if unsettled — preferably in the forms of animals from hot-weather climates with fur designed to shed heat instead of insulating it. Sergio was a cheetah, Hal a small antelope of some kind with Aaron's feet tucked under her. Aureilo was a wallaby, only the tip of his nose showing from under the blanket. By the stove, their clothes were laid out, steaming as they dried. Emily, at least, had the shirt they'd found. Spencer had declined the leggings, hyper-aware of their bare legs touching under the blanket and entirely unsure of how he felt about her now having seen him completely naked.
"What if he'd died today?" Emily asked abruptly. Deep in Spencer's chest, something jolted, a dreadful sound tearing from his mouth at the thought. "No, really, Spencer. What if he'd died, saving our asses?"
Spencer was silent for a moment, tense. Thinking of Aaron with his back sliced open, thinking of how disorientated he'd been when they'd dragged him in from the blizzard. And all the times in between, when it had been them who'd been hurt or scared or lost and he'd been there to hold them while they cried or to help put them back together.
"It can't happen. We can't let him do that again."
"If it wasn't for him, we'd be nothing …" Emily whispered. "No hope runaways stealing food to get by, and we'd never leave this life. We need him, but we can't rely on him, not how we have been. It needs to be more equal. We need to do better because he can't take it like this much longer, and neither can we."
Spencer asked, "So what do we do?" knowing that she was right. It had to change, for Aaron's sake. He'd fought for them for too long; it was time they gave back.
She stood up and went for the kitchen, shirt just barely covering her bare rear.
"We grow up. Come on — help me out."