Hello everyone! A big thanks to the kind comment of a guest on the last chapter:)

It's going to be sad for now before it gets better. TW: Suicide, mention of war, description of blood. Also, there is no mention here of suicidal/depressed people needing help. If anything triggers you, please don't read. Stay safe!
Anyway, I'm glad to be able to post something for you and hope you will like it!

Chapter 4: Two glasses

1946

The thick metal door weighs more than David's coffin. At first the lamps flicker and then buzz softly as Thomas flicks the switch. Cold, ugly light illuminates the room and gives the lab a clinical look.

There is less dust than he expected. Molly doesn't clean down here, but no one had entered this part of the Folly for exactly a year anyway. There was no reason for it. Sometimes Thomas sees these verdant cement tiles all night long. Wandering through the rows and staring at the cool floor until everything sinks into red.

He dares to take the first steps inside and places the key to the steel door on one of the first lab tables. Now that he is inside, there is no turning back, no escape. Thomas has locked this door just as he locks the Black Library, but now that he is back down here, he has to realise that there is nothing dark here, nothing supernatural staring back at him from the dark corner on the other side.

Before him lies the stage of a nightmare that has lasted a year now, but although he sees the lab almost every night, there are cupboards, corners and table edges here that were absent in his dreams. The lamps also make it bright and although the air is a little stale and carries the typical cellar smell, it is not stuffy. On a day at the end of June, the coolness on Thomas's skin is pleasant, even if everything in him resists acknowledging that.

The golden summer sunlight that drew patterns on the countertops of the tables and the dark green of the tiles that day is missing tonight. The day that marks the first anniversary of David's death is actually almost over. The entire day Thomas has felt this darkness. That heaviness in his stomach dragging him down to the basement.

Guilt was what finally brought him down here. A feeling that had not left him since that day. Only now did he give in to it. A nightmare becomes real and shatters before his eyes, for the floor is clean and that may be what astonishes him the most.

Not a single brown spot speckles the place and even the gutters between the tiles are of a clean grey although blood must have flowed in there too. Briefly he is struck by the memory of how large the pool that had spread under his body had been... But that wasn't actually true. He had found David countless times. Usually he was lying sprawled behind one of the tables when Thomas rushed in. His body had been punctured several times and he lay in a small tide of blood. When Thomas is finally able to hold him close, the laboratory around them fades and a shower of snow brings Ettersberg back to life.

In reality, David has shot himself in the head. Still, there had been blood on the floor and dirty clothes. After a few days Thomas had even found a small remnant of David's blood on his neck.

Now the floor is clean.

Thomas didn't really expect anything. He has no right to be surprised at the absence of a bloodstain or even a chalk mark, like at a crime scene. There is nothing here, not even David's signare.

That's why I'm here, he suddenly realises.

Before that day, the lab was filled to the brim with David. He was in every corner, sitting at every table and strutting across every patch of floor as he loudly debated his latest idea. He David nodded off over his papers, even when he entered the lab all alone. Even on the blank slate he saw David's neat scrawl and heard him discussing, arguing and joking all the way down the corridor outside the door, even though it was completely silent.

It seems as if Thomas has forgotten all these impressions of him. Yet he really tries, tries to remember a reason why David had spent so much time in that cold room with ugly lighting instead of being with him. But it's as if time has stopped with this day, because when Thomas is very still, he can almost hear the echo of the gunshot under the buzzing of the neon lights. It's finally the first truly familiar thing. After all, the sound has stayed in his ears for a year.

Noticing that he is still staring at the spot where David's body lay, Thomas tears himself away. His gaze wanders aimlessly around the room, but it is already too late. The memory of David's heavy weight on him catches back up. How his wound must have hurt when he pulled the body into his arms. David had still been so warm.

Molly somehow managed to call Hugh, because he appeared at his side after what felt like a few minutes. In truth, at least half an hour had surely passed, but Thomas had lost his sense of time before when he drew in David's scent. They took him away from his body. That's the last thing he remembered of that day; the image of David being torn away from him burned into his memory. The feeling of warmth in his fingertips, abruptly fading. A coldness that spread through his heart forever.

Time is a strange thing. The year has passed so quickly and yet so slowly. Perhaps he really did lose David only yesterday or has lived with this emptiness for a decade. Thomas can't find a moment in his memory when he hadn't thought of David in the past year and yet... yet he can't remember when he ever cried over David.

Also missing is a real memory of him. Of him and not of the lifeless body on the tiles of a laboratory. Would he still recognise David's laughter today?

There had been so many meaningless days since David's death. Not immediately afterwards, of course. He had to take care of the funeral, he had to renew and strengthen the protective spells around the Black Library. He had to honour the dead.

Third row, second from the right. David's name on the wall at Casterbrook.

When it happened, he had trouble with the wound again. Maybe he screamed too much, or it had happened when he drew David into his arms or only later when he clung painfully to David until finally Molly helped Hugh to tear him loose.

He was forced to spend a couple of nights in hospital and this time he thought of nothing. Back at the Folly, the magic heartbeat had stopped, and he saw what every other surviving practitioner saw: an old house full of ghosts.

Although Thomas didn't even cry at the funeral, there were days later when he kept the curtains locked and did purely nothing. But was that real sadness? This constant guilt did not allow him to ever feel anything else. Yet he really wants to laugh about old memories with David, he wants to be angry and sad because David deserves to be grieved for.

But he feels nothing, would never feel anything again.

David's death probably doesn't leave him with a single emotion in retrospect. Thomas always knew that something was wrong with him. If it weren't for the guilt, Thomas could now go carefree, lie down and sleep and continue to live this empty life. Instead, he moves away from the imaginary bloodstain, wandering hesitantly around the room, towards one of the corners, hoping to find a trace of him.

Looking for David now, he opens cupboards and immediately finds some papers, but the yellowed print proclaims of old bills. David's handwriting, illegible and yet so neatly missing.

In a drawer lies a small pocket knife, which Thomas stares at with wide eyes. It lies coolly in his hand and briefly a minute vestigium comes over him, which he doesn't care much about, as it is far from David's.

Molly, without actually ever expressing it, has somehow banned him from the kitchen and when he got up once in the night to have a drink he found, through sheer curiosity, that the knives had probably followed the example of his old service weapon and found a new place unknown to Thomas. He had never made it clear to Molly, but he never thought about it. Not really. He rather believed that if he continued to feel so empty, it might just happen at some point, without him having to prevent or even assist anything. Then it would be the natural course of things and he wouldn't leave a mess.

Since this event had never occurred, Thomas just carried on. Someone had to manage the folly, after all. But now holding an actual knife in his hand put him into the beginnings of what he might define as excitement. Of course, he wouldn't allow himself to even think about doing it. He wouldn't leave Molly and London alone, really.

Ironically, though, this act of forbiddenness fills him with life after all these years. It's almost like when he stole the whiskey bottle at Casterbrook to prove himself to David. Somehow emboldened, he starts checking the nearest drawers and wishes almost instantly that he hadn't.

Sure enough, there is a bottle of whiskey. As Thomas reaches in to pull it out, a paper, which must have been attached to the label somehow, falls to the floor.

I'm sorry, little bird, is written in David's unmistakable handwriting. There's the note, the farewell, which Thomas has been missing for a year without knowing he did. And he can do nothing but stand there.

He staggers back to one of the chairs as his hand begins to sweat around the neck of the bottle, half crumpled David's last note to him, for the knuckles of his hand are white. He's breathing erratically, Thomas realises after a while, and sets David's gifts down on the table in front of him. Spends a while more staring at them.

And then finally Thomas sighs, gets up and leaves the lab.

He returns with two glasses, which he fills with whiskey, one for him and one for David, and drinks. The liquid running down his throat burns, like the betrayal he felt when he stood in that tent with David in winter, like the pain and fear when David collapses shot in the snow, like his kiss and summer nights and stars that used to know their names. It awakens something in him, somewhere in there, in his heart, buried far under the cloak of guilt, and Thomas, for probably the first time in his life, truly allows the emotions. Resists the urge to suppress them, to lock them away in little boxes and behind unmarked doors.

He inhales, almost gasping, as he tastes desperate anger on his tongue.

The bottle shatters against the wall and a black circle of soot decorates the worktop where the small fireball hit the lab bench.