He doesn't know how long he's been here.

He knows it was moderately warm that morning in Utah when he woke up to all of this madness, but it's always at least moderately warm in his hometown, and they've been all over the country. Initially he kept a mental list and tally going of how many cities they'd stopped in. He lost track around twenty.

Christmas has passed, he knows that. It was a show day. He never thought to wonder before whether traveling carnivals had to work on Christmas, but… now he knows. They did have celebrations among the cast and crew afterwards. Livia gave him a Blues Brothers poster for his wall and pineapple with a huge red bow, and he got very, very drunk in Sebastian's train car apartment with a few of the sword swallower's friends.

He'd been having random flashforwards of everyone's Christmases back home for a week by that point anyway. Alcohol was what he needed. Unfortunately, the following morning brought the absolute worst headache he'd ever had in his life, along with jumbled flashes of what had gone down after the memory center of his brain decided to take the rest of the night off.

The train traveled through snow and ice two days later, and soon enough it was 2014. Arashk went to bed early that night, and in his sleep watched his friends herald the new year together. Their toast made him wake up with tears fresh on his face: "This is the year we find him."

It's warm this morning, so instead of a turban and robe, he goes for some simple face paint and a vest over a collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up—putting his third and last tattoo, a design like a vine curling around his right forearm, in full view. The Master didn't even order that one directly. The tattoo artist just showed up one day and said, "I was told you wanted some new ink. Just so you know, I'm only free till four."

He went all-out, making the decision to get it in a fairly visible area, and hoping he'd be allowed to leave his skin in peace for a while afterwards. So far, it seems to be working.

He peers into his reflection, putting the final touches on his eyelid eyes and the simple sunburst designs on his cheeks. He's glad he ended up getting a mirror in his bathroom, and often wonders why he didn't have one to begin with. It was strange, too, the way it came—in a package on his doorstep. And taped to the back of the box was a typed message reading simply, "This should help in using the face paint underneath your sink. –M"

Just thinking of it makes him snort. "M." Already mysterious enough, buddy. Now you're just trying too hard.

Livia's gotten him a few more decorative things in her trips downtown—often related to the town they're in, just as souvenirs, but sometimes she goes out on a limb and buys something just because it's from or is referencing something from the eighties. That kind of thing is pretty hit-or-miss, and while he appreciates that she tries, he can't bring himself to put up the posters of movies and shows that he's never watched. It just makes this room feel even more like someone else's. Not that he wants to feel like he's creating some kind of home here, but… he does want somewhere he can feel comfortable. Even if he's fooling himself just by thinking that might be possible.

She doesn't seem to mind that he doesn't use everything, and she never asks about it. In the beginning she seemed to treat him like he was made of porcelain—like communicating with him required constant vigilance and care, or she might accidentally break him. He's gathered that whatever the Master said to her about his "powers," he made him out to be very fragile, having had bad experiences with his visions and wanting to avoid having an excess if he could.

Of course, that's become closer to the truth since this whole mess started.


It was seven days after Mary when a little boy no older than seven or eight came in after a twenty-minute lull, and sat down silently at Arashk's indication. The moment Arashk touched his hands, fear shot through him—panic, concern, regret, all shapes and forms of negative emotions. He felt tears prick in his eyes, and quickly yanked his hands away, staring first at them and then at the bewildered child before him. He took a good look at his face for the first time, and immediately noticed the red rims around his eyes.

"You're upset," he said.

The boy wiped his nose on his sleeve. "Well, yeah." Rubbing his eyes, he continued, "I've been looking for my family… my sister and my parents. I was here with them but I haven't been able to find them and it's been like… a long time. You're like a fortuneteller, right? Do you know where they are?"

Arashk was still struggling through the residue of the boy's fear, and, not knowing what else he could possibly try, he only said, genuinely apologetic, "Don't worry so much. I'm sorry, I'm not… currently capable of fine-tuning my visions like that. Let me point you to security. They'll help you find your family."

As the days passed and he conducted a series of tentative experiments, it became clear that sometimes a touch transmitted a person's current emotions to him, and clued him in to his or her state of mind—but other times, it showed him a scene, and sometimes that scene hadn't happened yet. It all depended on whether the person he was touching was thinking about something specific—though the line between specific and not was one too fuzzy for even him to distinguish. One time a middle-aged woman entered his tent and he asked her to think about something she was looking forward to in the next week or two. By touching her hands, he got a pretty clear view of what was going to go down when her daughter came home from college for the weekend—the family would go out for pizza, the girl would have a ton of trouble with her biochemistry homework, and her time of departure would be delayed by a couple hours. Arashk described this to the woman, and she was obviously impressed, so he took it a step further—he asked her to picture a farther off event, at least a couple years away. This time, all he got was a vague sense of warmth and comfort, and a few flashes of blue. He confessed he wasn't sure what he was sensing, and she told him she'd been thinking of the cruise she and her husband planned to go on for their thirtieth anniversary.

Arashk eventually found the same principle applied to past events: the further from the present it took place, the harder it was to pick out details. He did get better at it with practice, but that trend was definite. Past and future, it was the same, except for the clarity—and while he would have thought that events that had already happened and were set in stone would be clearer, it was quite the opposite. When he looked at the past, he saw two images occurring in congruence—the way the person remembered it, and the way it had actually happened. Each version had a slightly different atmosphere hanging over it, but it varied so much from person to person that it was almost impossible to tell which was which without asking questions.


He sighs, half hoping he'll run into Livia later today, just to see a reliably friendly face, and half hoping he won't, because she's the one who treats him the most carefully. He's made it clear to pretty much everyone he speaks to on a semi-regular basis that he's not overly fond of touch. And doing that took conscious effort—normally he has no particular aversion to touch, but now things are different. For example…


On the eighteenth day after Mary he went to watch people practice their acts. It was something he hadn't done since he'd discovered this whole different side to his mind, as he'd been spending a lot of time trying to work through that. But he couldn't hide in his room forever; he'd already wasted enough time doing that. He needed to continue information-gathering. And maybe… maybe this way he'd have more success.

Sebastian was just sliding the tip of a long sword out of his mouth when Arashk arrived. The man was holding two other swords in his free hand, and Arashk could only assume that he'd had all three down his throat at once mere minutes before. When Sebastian's throat was clear, he tossed the sword into the air with a small flourish and managed to catch it in the hand that already held two other swords. In the same motion, he snapped his head downward and threw his arms outwards in a classic applause-seeking pose. His eyes immediately fell on Arashk, who began to clap wildly. "Attaboy, Seb!" he called, grinning.

"Ronaldo!" Sebastian cried, placing the swords carefully on the ground and stepping forward, hand extended. Arashk had found that the sword swallower frequently greeted people with a handshake, and he placed his own hand in Sebastian's unthinkingly.

The words "It's been a while" echoed in Arashk's ears as if over a loudspeaker as an image popped into his mind, overwhelming all of his other senses. His eyes went wide, and that was the last bit of awareness as to what his body was doing before he was standing in Sebastian's train car at least a decade before.

The area was not nearly as decorated or comfortable as Arashk had come to know; the walls were bare, and there was an empty suitcase propped against a wall. Sebastian was seated at the edge of his bed, and standing across the room from him was a younger version of the Master.

His physical appearance was more youthful, certainly. Late twenties, maybe? His haircut was a bit different—shorter. He had stubble, and his skin definitely appeared smoother. But that glint in his eyes… that was exactly the same.

"You don't have to worry so much," the man was saying, a seemingly genuine note of encouragement in his voice. "As long as you're slow and careful, it's the safest thing in the world. You know this."

"I do know," Sebastian said, but there was a shudder in his voice. Arashk felt how shaken he was, the nagging doubt that filled his mind to overflowing, but he couldn't discern any details. "I just… have trouble remembering."

As the scene continued, and Arashk's perspective shifted back and forth between a bird's eye view of the scene and a view through Sebastian's eyes, he began to notice something… off about Sebastian's face. Something was keeping him from identifying what it was, though… the vision's clarity? Was it too foggy? He couldn't quite figure it out. All he could do was receive the information that came to him.

"Well," said the Master, smiling at Sebastian reassuringly, "you have a very, very long time to train yourself to do that."

Sebastian nodded, but he looked tired.

Arashk realized he was gasping lightly, and suddenly remembered that he had to have a connection to his body to do that. Which meant he must be back in his body. The train car around him was gone. He was outside again, stumbling backwards, not sure what he was looking at. The sky was spinning around him, and he fell to his knees, and it was then that he finally figured out which way was up.

"Arashk, I'm sorry!" Sebastian's voice was floating around him, gradually climbing into focus. "I didn't realize that could affect you so much… is this unusual? Arashk, are you okay?"

"Fine!" he said brightly, or at least tried to, just like how he also immediately tried to get to his feet, but the ground lurched dangerously beneath him and he would have fallen on his damn psychic head if Sebastian hadn't grabbed his shoulder to steady him. He stood there, just focusing on his breathing for a moment before transitioning into simultaneously trying to mentally deal with what just happened and trying to come up with a reasonable lie—not something anyone should ever have to do at the same time, he told himself sourly.

"Yes," he finally said, and his voice was almost normal, "it's unusual. Sorry, Seb. I do get visions triggered by touch—not all the time—it's just… for some reason, since I joined the show, they've been harder to control."

"That's odd," Sebastian said, concerned. "Are you all right?"

Seeing an opportunity to respond without speaking any more, Arashk only nodded.

Sebastian hesitated, and removed his hand from Arashk's shoulder. He swayed in place for a moment, but all his faculties had returned to him and he was pretty sure he remembered how to stand now.

"What did you see?" Sebastian asked quietly.

Of course he was wondering. Perfectly understandable, really. He had every reason to believe that Arashk was just inside his head—and he was right. "Not a lot," he said, and really, it hadn't been. "Just you talking with the Master about the whole sword-eating thing. Felt like an early conversation. You've been doing this gig for over ten years?"

Something in Sebastian's face changed. Arashk was sure he witnessed a compacted version of a war raging behind the man's eyes as for how to respond. After a moment, he only said, "Sixteen."

Arashk whistled. "That long?" He furrowed his brow. "How old were you when you got started?"

Another war. Shorter this time, though. "Nineteen."

"Wow. I tell you, you're probably more cut out for this traveling circus life than me. At least more used to it."

"How long have you been psychic?" Sebastian asked, a mixture of true curiosity and an obvious preference not to continue with this topic of conversation in his tone.

Arashk froze, and immediately gave himself a solid mental kick for it. This was exactly what he had just witnessed as rendering a lie completely ineffective, and here he was doing it himself. "Since I was eighteen," he said, maybe after the pause had stretched on for too long, but maybe not.

Sebastian nodded. Arashk wasn't sure whether that was trust in his eyes.


Arashk sighs. There was definitely something wonky about that conversation, and he's been dying to ask Sebastian about it ever since, or better—or at least easier—just touch him again and see if he can't have another, more useful, vision. But the guy won't lay a finger on him. It's out of respect because he's not sure Arashk can handle it, and honestly he's totally right to think that, but it's annoying as hell.

Livia pretty much does the same thing, which is really just as grating, because she's obviously hiding something too. He's been trying to brush against her seemingly on accident and pretend that the resulting visions don't really affect him, and he's had success only a couple times. But she's never thinking about anything particularly dramatic or useful when he tries this—once she was remembering a conversation with a fellow acrobat the day before, another time she was thinking about a TV show she was looking forward to watching that evening.

There was one notable exception to this, however.


He came to her door seeking company and, when she answered, got the feeling that she'd recently been crying, despite no physical evidence to back up this theory. He was immediately excited—and simultaneously kind of guilty about that excitement—thinking maybe something had happened with the Master. He had no good reason to think this, but he couldn't stop himself from hoping.

As soon as he saw an opportunity, he placed his hand on hers in what was meant to be a comforting gesture. Instantly a storm of emotions barreled from her mind and memory to his, and voices wafted around him, and he did his best to maintain some kind of façade of normalcy, and then he was plunged into something he didn't understand.

Shouts echoed all around him. There were only two voices involved, and one was Livia's. It took longer than usual for the visual part of the scene to come into focus. He didn't know why.

He was standing in a kitchen that seemed to glow a pale yellow with all the sunflowers it was decorated with. The windows bore golden curtains and there was a sunflower pattern circling the walls a bit below eye level. Arashk could see pale echoes of a little girl with blonde pigtails reaching to touch the images, a faint, encouraging voice telling her she'd be even taller than they were, one day.

The voices surrounding him now were nothing like that voice. The first words he made out belonged to Livia, stinging with tears: "Shut up! It's my life, my choice!"

Finally he located her. She was in the corner of the room, and her hair was a lot longer than he was used to. Almost to her waist. Impressive amounts of tears were dripping from her eyes and down her cheeks.

The other voice came again into focus, and it made him flinch, in whatever way he could: "You bet your ass it is, and I'll be glad of it when you crash and burn! Well, when that happens, don't come crying to me!"

Livia wrapped her arms around herself, and then Arashk wasn't seeing her anymore: He was seeing the woman across the kitchen from her. A bit portly, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, with light brown hair just starting to go white and the same grey eyes as Livia. The look of absolute rage she wore didn't sit well on her face.

"Please," Livia whispered. "You're not… You're serious?"

"Do I look like I'm anything but, you little brat?" the other woman snarled. "If you're gonna go, then go. And don't expect to be able to come back."

It was at this point that the negative energy, the tension whose buildup Arashk hadn't witnessed, hit its breaking point. Arashk lost all sensation, and then he was sensing more than he could process, and then he was on his hands and knees on Livia's carpet, letting out ragged gasps he couldn't control for a good long while after becoming aware of them. Livia was next to him, her hand on his back, saying words he didn't understand, and he was getting a little sick of that particular brand of crap.

After several seconds of focus, he realized she was pretty much just saying "Arashk" and "Are you okay?" over and over. Mild panic permeated her voice.

He grasped her arm, and she clasped her hand over his own. "How long did that last?" he asked, voice shuddering.

"Just a few seconds," she replied promptly, sounding relieved to receive the question. "You were just… standing there, blank-faced. You were kind of mouthing some words, but I couldn't begin to tell what you were saying. And now you're on the floor. Are you all right?"

He clapped his remaining hand down on her other shoulder, and was still gasping a little as he said, "I'm so sorry, Liv. I shouldn't have seen that."

"Seen what?" she asked quickly, but he heard the understanding in her voice.

"What you've been thinking about." Finally he was able to meet her eyes—wide, fixed on his face, and in the early stages of producing tears.

She flung her arms around him, and as he hugged her back, he got the distinct sense that she was trying to provide support to him just as much as she was seeking support for herself.


He never did describe that vision to her in any detail, and she didn't provide any context for it.

That's fine. He sincerely doubts that it's relevant to his escape efforts anyway.

He finishes his mental recap of all this information—which he finds himself engaging in most mornings these days—around the same time he finishes gelling his hair. Normally under these circumstances, he wouldn't bother with his hair at all. But it's been getting longer than he can manage, and gotten pretty obnoxiously tangled more than once, which isn't something he's had to deal with in a long time. Besides, he's seen the Master stare at him with a knot between his eyebrows, discreetly running his hand through his own hair, one too many times, and just last week found that some new products and combs had appeared underneath his sink.

He knows how messed up this is. The Master can't possibly really care about how he manages his hair—no, it's not at all about the hair. How he grooms himself is not important to either of them (normally, of course, it would be quite a ways further up the list for Arashk, but his current situation is far from normal). It's about little displays of the hold the man has over him. Arashk will gladly invest more time in his personal appearance if it will lessen the chances of someone he cares about getting hurt. And it's sickening.

Shaking himself out of these thoughts, he steps back a bit and surveys his work in the mirror. He's wearing a faded orange vest over a pale blue shirt. Tiny orange jewels decorate the vest, and an orange sash is wrapped around his waist. Clunky blue bracelets on his wrists tie the look together. The suns painted on his cheeks and the blue circles around his eyes, not to mention the short but thick and scruffy beard he's grown out of lack of shaving options, leave his face looking… not his own. He thinks his skin has paled a shade or two since starting here as well; that certainly doesn't help either.

He wonders how long it would take one of his friends or family to recognize him if they were to walk into his tent. The people he was closest to at the time were in on his psychic charade from the jump, so he has no frame of reference for their reactions to news like this. But others he'd known in the past, when finding out that he was allegedly psychic… none of them were exactly floored. They were impressed at what he knew, sure, but a lot of them were still dubious, and those who weren't still didn't consider his abilities too… otherworldly. He just saw more than most, and that was the end of it.

Now… he can hardly touch anyone or anything without flinching, he can't control when he has revelations, and he actually hears the dead and it's more terrifying than he would ever have imagined. He recalls her reaction on finding out he was a fake; how will she take it when she finds out it's real?

Hopefully better than he's been.

At least the ordinary act of remembering is still mundane, he supposes. At least he doesn't have to go through a vivid flashback whenever he wants to recall something from his own life. That would really suck. And as much as it steams him to admit that anything good has come of this unwelcome addition to his mind… it does seem that his brain can work even faster nowadays than it used to.

Not worth it, of course.

Or at least… he will absolutely not be able to clearly evaluate its pros and cons until he can get the hell out of here.


That evening at dinner, he's sitting at a table on his own, staring at his pile of nachos and trying to remember when such gloriousness stopped being so appetizing to him. He recalls eating this very meal-slash-snack ("sneal" some as-of-recently disused part of his brain supplies) with his best friend and tearing into it like animals. Somehow it just… doesn't make much sense to him anymore.

What is this world coming to when he, Arashk Ronaldo, can't just enjoy some freaking nachos?

It's been a lonely day. He had a brief exchange with Sebastian at the tail end of lunch, but that was it. Apart from his clients, anyway. He guesses that Livia is eating in her apartment, which she does for about sixty percent of dinners. He normally doesn't, going for the usual gruel provided during the workday. Because the only food he has in his own apartment is stuff that appears in boxes on his doorstep every week or so—mostly prepackaged microwaveable crap—and pieces of fruit and bags of chips he's taken from the community meals. Sometimes Livia brings him snacks from the supermarket, but it's not a terribly common thing, which is good, because he can't pay her back. His mini fridge is usually pretty well stocked with soda and water, and he's even started getting used to how crappy the latter tastes, so there's that at least.

As he chews unenthusiastically, he eyes the paper plate across the table diagonally from him. It has crumbs on it, and a possibly empty soda can resting on top, and he assumed when he sat down that whoever had been sitting there would be back soon. They haven't returned yet, and he's starting to think maybe they're not going to. Which just might give him an opportunity to practice.

Visions that he can't control or block and that could be about flipping anything are one thing, but he's found that visions triggered by objects are a little more predictable. Primarily, plates and cups and utensils are usually pretty innocuous. He'll get to watch someone eat a meal, maybe creep on a juicy conversation or two, and nothing intense enough happens to make it a difficult transition back to his own mind in the present. Once he saw the beginning of a tender conversation between a crew member and a trapeze artist whom Arashk hadn't known were dating. Once the napkin he picked up happened to be Sebastian's, and he just watched the sword swallower eat with a couple friends Arashk thought he recognized from Christmas.

In this moment, it's a way he can attempt to familiarize himself with the visions and maybe fine tune his understanding of them. And it's safe.

He counts to one hundred. It looks like the poor plate and can have been abandoned. He reaches for them.

When he touches the edge of the plate, rather than him being plunged into a different scene entirely, the scene around him just slowly melts until the sky's a touch brighter, the shadows are a touch shorter, and an old man is sitting across the table.

It's the same man Arashk very nearly spoke to the day the Master left that article on his bed, however long ago that was. His hair's grey, with just a few hints of brown left, but it's impressively thick for his apparent age. Reading glasses are tucked into his breast pocket, and he's enjoying a grilled cheese sandwich alone.

Doesn't look like it's going to be that fruitful. There's no sense of time in these vision things, which Arashk has found to be the most difficult to explain; it's like his brain fast forwards through the uneventful bits, and then later he has no idea how long any of it took in real time. Right now, the geezer's looking pretty chilled out, and some part of Arashk's brain begins to consider breaking the connection; it's not looking likely that anything's going to happen other than the old guy getting up and leaving his trash at the table, probably in a moment of forgetfulness, as old people are wont to experience (unless you're my father, Arashk adds silently).

Until someone sits across from him.

"Art," the newcomer says in greeting, and Arashk feels the man's name for the first time—Arthur. Arthur… London? Lowry? Lewis? Not remotely important, as Arthur's reply is simply

"Master."

The way he says it trips Arashk up. There's an extra layer of meaning, some kind of unspoken irony, some context that Arashk doesn't have access to. He's never heard anyone else say it like that.

How… interesting.

"What's new?" Arthur asks then.

"Not a lot." The Master passes him a soda can. "One of the snake charmer's snakes died. Utterly morose. Gotta order a new one."

Most people Arashk has spied on… erm, seen via his visions have talked about family and home life. Sure, they talk plenty about work as well, but Arashk would be surprised to hear that the Master has a family he still keeps in touch with. But then… making assumptions is still very dangerous.

"And it's looking like the fortuneteller is settling in."

Arashk stiffens.

Arthur nods. "That's good. He's seemed so unhappy. Glad he's starting to get comfortable."

"I don't know if I'd go that far. This method is of course the one that leaves them most prone to be unhappy. He may never get comfortable."

Arashk's mind is going in a million directions at once. Number one—"the snake charmer"? "The fortuneteller"? Surely he knows their names—goddamn, he's the one who picked out "Arashk Ronaldo"—and yet he refers to them by their acts. A very cold, dehumanizing thing to do really, and it just adds to Arashk's suspicion that the guy is simply a sociopath. What's even weirder is that Arthur didn't point it out or even react to it.

And what's this talk of "this method"? What method? Of doing what? Arthur obviously knew what he meant despite how freaking vague it was. How familiar is he with the Master and his mannerisms and activities? How long have they known one another?

The conversation's still going, but it's turned in the direction of one of the strongmen and is beginning to fade away. Around Arashk, the present is reasserting itself, and he finds himself sitting alone at his table, clutching a paper plate like it holds the answers to the deepest questions of the universe.

It might not know anything about the universe, but it certainly knows something.

A smile begins to curve Arashk's mouth, unbidden.

He has a new lead.