Several things.

1) Milestones that have now been passed: 100 reviews, 75 follows, 20 chapters, 60k words. Keep those reviews, favs, and follows rising, folks. They're where my motivation comes from. Stay awesome.

2) Remember to speculate away. I am basing the speed at which Shawn figures things out on the speed at which you guys do. I don't want to be too slow or too fast.

3) Remember how I said two chapters ago that things were about to pick up? And remember how I'm really bad about sticking to my outline? Yeah, another chapter that I didn't anticipate writing has popped up. Sorry. I'm getting just as impatient as you are, if not more so. If I repeat the assertion now, with renewed force, will you believe me?

4) Wow, this took forever. Sorry for that too. Hopefully this is worth the wait. It turns out Shawn is really hard to write after you've broken him.


Arashk enters a fog that day.

He gets up in the morning, he tells people's fortunes, he usually remembers to feed himself, he goes to bed, and the cycle repeats. It's not all-encompassing, but it allows him to stop feeling so much. It lets him go through his days without even wondering whether or not any of this is normal, without thinking about his past or his future. The sun rising and the moon rising, it's all the same to him. Either way the light is muffled.

The fog is self-induced.

As long as he's not fully aware of what's happening around him, he doesn't have to care.


Feeling the passage of time becomes difficult. Such is the way of the fog.

Sometimes he wakes up in bed and can't remember whether he's just had a nap or slept through the night. There comes a time, very quickly, he thinks, that he doesn't know whether it's been a matter of days or weeks since he knew what day it was.

His visions of home are becoming less and less frequent. At first he was worried about this, but he came to realize that this worry took up more energy than he has at his disposal. There's nothing he can do to stop the decline, anyway. So he just takes what he can get. Besides, the more he sees them at night, the more it hurts not to see them during the day.

He still enjoys the updates as they happen. When he exists only as a projection in the faraway happenings of the lives of his friends, he doesn't hold back any of his feelings. The idea is that the little bit of relief will help him stay strong while he's awake. Frequently the visions are nothing to get too excited about, but every once in a while—and who knows how long "a while" is—he'll get a gem like his girlfriend petting a dog in the park and making fast friends with its owner, his best friend getting very off track during a meeting when he finds out he and his client have the same favorite TV show, or the head detective and his wife talking about starting a family.

The evidence that they're starting to figure out how to move on and live without him is comforting.

When he's not dreaming about the people he's trying to protect, he's seeing the ones he spends the most time around at the carnival. Not that there's anyone with whom he actually associates on a regular basis; it's just that apparently these near-nightly dreams are mandatory, so he ends up with random updates on the fire-eater with whom he happened to speak two days in a row and the group that always sets up and takes down his tent interspersed with the ones of the people he actually cares about. And every once in a while, sometimes inexplicably, he still gets a peek into the daily lives of Livia, Sebastian, and Terrence.

He doesn't know how long it's been since he spoke with Livia. The evening after the Master came to him, she turned up at his door asking worriedly how he was doing, if he was okay. He doesn't really recall how he responded, but he's certain he used the words "I'm fine." They haven't had a conversation since then. Not of any length, anyway.

The information he's gathered about her and the conclusions he's drawn from that information still bounce around his head from time to time, but they're in stasis. He doesn't give them the time of day. He'd love to be able to. He knows he would. But any further conclusions would be less than useless to him. If he reaches any, he will just have more incentive to act, and then somebody he loves will die.

No incentive. No risk. No escape.

He will never be able to convince himself that he's happy here, not if he spends the rest of his life trying. But he was never really happy for the first three decades of his life anyway. He knows how to get along without being at peace.

Really, this is no different.

Except that now, he has had a time in his life when he was happy. He found out just how wonderful it was to be able to wake up and go to a job that he loved and that allowed him to help people, and he didn't even have to dress up for it. His partner was also his best friend, and he was in love. He even had an okay relationship with his dad.

He doesn't see how he can ever return to it.

So he has to get back the mindset he had pre-happiness.

He has to forget.


He starts to work on developing the ability to compress time, at least in his own mind. He doesn't know if a technique for this sort of thing exists, but even if it does, he has no access to information on it, so he's got to try to develop his own. Frequently he doesn't even need to make a conscious effort, but sometimes, when he's alone with nothing to distract him from his thoughts, it strikes him as a very useful skill to have.

At first, his attempts are so ineffective that it's almost not worth the discouragement. It would never have been easy for him; his brain has been working on overtime since he was a kid. And now, with a sixth sense he doesn't even understand added to the mix, it's almost impossible to shut his mind down.

But gradually, he starts to see progress. At one point he's been sitting on his bed, doing his best not to notice the passage of time, and then a short moment of unawareness passes and he realizes that an hour has gone by. His initial reaction is fear and alarm, before he harshly reminds himself that this is exactly what he's been trying to do.

This is a good thing.


He feels cold all the freaking time. The three spirits are, at this point, pretty much constants. Following him around, worming their way inside his head, but he does all he can to shut them out. To shrink into himself. To lose awareness. To forget. They don't have the strength to actually be on constant offense, continually trying break down his barriers and say whatever the hell they want to say, but they're always there.

He can't keep trying. Even if he doesn't change his behavior at all, even if he just tries thinking through this puzzle, he's not sure he has the strength to hope anymore. Whatever the ghosts have to say, he doesn't want to hear it.

And anyway, it's been shown that even some of the things inside his head aren't safe. He could actually get someone killed by knowing too much.


Really, this is a pretty sweet deal, compared to a lot of the jobs he's worked before. All his living expenses are paid for. He doesn't even have to do his own grocery shopping. And riding in a train all the time is pretty cool.

There is one downside he's having a tough time putting a positive spin on, though: for all the people around him pretty much 24/7, it feels like he's always alone.

Arashk has never enjoyed being alone. But this feeling of being thus even when surrounded by people is at least something he's familiar with.

As often as he can, he scrounges for dinner in his apartment. Livia doesn't bring him snacks nearly as often nowadays—she barely even comes round anymore. After a while he runs out of food and has to go to the community meal until his cabinets are magically restocked. He always sits alone. Nobody ever joins him.

Well, that's not quite true. Sebastian does sometimes.

The guy has clearly heard of his little… incident. He's never brought it up directly, but he always asks "How are you doing, Ronaldo?" and always wants an answer, even if it's an obvious lie. He does most of the talking, which Arashk appreciates. Always light chitchat—talk of work and the various goings-on of his friends, some of whom sometimes join them at the table, but they never directly address Arashk and barely even look at him. He recognizes many of them. He's associated with them by proxy of Sebastian multiple times before, spent Christmas with them, said hello in passing.

Strangely enough, whenever Arashk is with Sebastian, the whispers nagging just outside the barriers he's set up around his mind go completely quiet. He hasn't yet formulated a plausible theory as to why; the best he's got so far is that maybe, for some reason, they care about letting him have some form of a social life.


Life becomes extremely predictable. It's not something Arashk ever wanted before. At least the work itself is pretty exciting; he can never be sure when people walk in what he'll find in their minds. And not only is being able to get inside the heads of strangers still a pretty novel concept for him, but he's gotten some really interesting people in their own right. One day a guy comes in who speaks eight different languages, and that makes the finer details of his thoughts practically impossible for Arashk to decipher, because they come in a mix of some Nordic language and what he's pretty sure is Spanish. Then the following day he gets a woman who was homeless for three years in her twenties but has since then started her own company. There are some really impressive stories he gets to see and oftentimes it feels like he's living vicariously through his clients.

There's one location that he knows is pretty near the west coast, and even as he sits in his tent for those three days he imagines he can feel the ocean breeze upon his skin. Every time he hears the slight rustle of the curtain being pulled back by a client, he tries not to look too eager as he waits to see somebody he knows and misses walk into his tent.

For the most part, he can identify this hope as an irrational one originating from his heart rather than his psychic head. But at one point, near the end of the first day, a young woman about his age with mousy brown hair walks in, and her face seems extremely familiar to him. It takes him until he divines her name to realize that he went to high school with her—even had a crush on her for about two weeks, but never said anything except to his best friend.

Of course, when she looks at him, there's not a hint of recognition in her eyes. So he feels safe telling the story of the kid who spilled milk all over her skirt on the third day of freshman year (it wasn't him, but his entire class was there to witness it). Her eyebrows go up as she slowly realizes the story he's recounting, and he has to stifle a smile.

It's a moment of levity that he didn't realize he needed so badly, but it's also an opportunity to do things the way he used to do things—without psychic powers. Just with an exceptional memory and a whole lot of luck. It feels fantastic.

As she leaves, though, he reminds himself that he's not allowed to think about that anymore.


He is unable to convince himself not to be terrified when he loses almost an entire week.

He passes the impressionist, a kind Asian gentleman with whom he's hardly ever spoken, during a break and is stopped and asked, "You doing okay? You seemed very out of sorts when I saw you last weekend." And Arashk can only blink in shock as a response, because he would have sworn that was just yesterday. After asking for the day, he concludes that it's been eight days since what he thought was yesterday. Try though he might, he can summon up only a few random snatches of memory from this entire span of time.

He doesn't know what he says to the impressionist. That's lost to him too.

Every free moment he has for the rest of the day—thankfully, not too many—is spent trying not to hyperventilate, violently wishing he could allow himself to just think, and knowing that he can't.


"Look, Arashk," Sebastian says abruptly during one of many long lulls in dinner conversation, just as they're winding down after about half an hour, "I won't lie; I'm a bit concerned about you."

Huh, he thinks in a rather detached manner, running his finger around the rim of his cup. Somebody finally said it.

They're sitting on their own at the moment in the moderately busy dining area. Arashk hasn't eaten outside of his apartment in at least… five days? Six? And in that time he's seen Sebastian in passing several times but they were never close enough even to say hi.

"I know you've been having… some trouble," Sebastian goes on hesitantly, "but… but you're not getting better. At all. Do you need help? Is there anything I can do?"

Arashk doesn't know why the queries surprise him. He supposes if anybody were going to ask them, it would be Sebastian, but somehow it's still unexpected. In his lifetime he's found that generally, even when people know something's wrong, even when it's clear as day, they won't bring it up, and they come up with as many excuses as they need to—they don't know the person well enough, he'll probably be fine tomorrow, she probably doesn't want to talk about it, and Arashk's favorite: it would be too awkward.

He stares at Sebastian's salad, contemplating how to respond. If the question is of whether Sebastian, or anyone else really, can do anything, he's immediately inclined to answer no. But for some reason, he feels the need to fact check. Is that actually true? Sure, he can't… he can't rip up Arashk's problems by the roots, but might there be something he could do to make things better?

Sebastian's watching him like he's the only person on the face of the earth right now, and Arashk realizes that he can't ask any more of this man. He already spends so much time with the psychic who can't even remember how to hold a normal conversation and has a laundry list of psychological defects besides—and Arashk isn't even sure why. They were tight before, he guesses, back when things were brighter and Arashk didn't feel so damn tired all the time, but Sebastian is a fun guy, and he likes to be entertained. Arashk has nothing to offer him.

It suddenly strikes Arashk that if they had met under other circumstances, they could have become very good friends.

It's somewhat miraculous that even with this disconnect between them, Sebastian hasn't given up on him. Maybe he sees the potential too. Somehow.

He realizes the pause has gone on almost too long. It's not something he ever would have let happen at home. Finally, he just shakes his head, and says, "Nah." And, almost as an afterthought, he adds, "Just keep doing what you're doing."

Sebastian's mouth twists into an expression of deep thought, and for a moment Arashk expects him to ask another question or try to pry more information out of him, but instead he picks up his empty cup, rising from his seat, and says, "I'm gonna get a refill."

Arashk watches Sebastian's retreating back until his vision loses focus—not an uncommon occurrence nowadays. As the happenings around him become blurry and undefined, he slips into convincing himself that no time is passing. It's still not easy, but it's become more so with practice.

Evidence of this fact comes when Sebastian seems to be back immediately, waving one hand in front of Arashk's face while the other holds his full cup. His lips are moving, and Arashk pulls himself back into reality, blinking, and mumbles, "Sorry."

Sebastian doesn't try repeating himself, just regards Arashk with unmasked worry as he takes his seat. After several seconds, he asks quietly, "You still missing whoever it is you're missing?"

The word YES screams through Arashk's head without warning, and he grimaces slightly. It wants to be heard. But he can't risk giving a voice to it, can't even put the reasons in words in his own mind, or he might actually fall apart.

"Nah," he hears himself repeating, and finds that the strength to fake a small smile is minimal and manageable. "I'm over that. But thanks for the concern there, Seb."

He's waiting for the sword swallower to drop the matter and continue on, just like he's always done after Arashk lies to his face about being fine. But instead, following his answer is silence. He feels the man's gaze on him, and for a couple seconds he tries to work out where to look. Eventually he has to submit, and looks up to meet Sebastian's brown eyes. As soon as he does, the man says, voice still low and accompanied by a smile that's both knowing and sad, "Saying it out loud doesn't do a thing to make it true, friend."

The undeniable truth of the statement hits Arashk like a freight train, and it is exactly what he doesn't need to hear right now, because it undermines his entire mission. He has to convince himself he's happy here, dammit, because succeeding in that delusion is the only way he can do any good with whatever remains of his worthless life. He is going to die, and he feels this certainty weighing down more and more on his heart with every passing day, and in the part of his mind that he's no longer allowed to acknowledge he's beginning to wish that bastard would just get it over with already so he can drop the charade and really give up and maybe finally find out what the hell this was all for.

He's thinking too much, more than he has in the last week combined, and he screws his eyes shut, willing himself to stop before it spirals into something he can't control.

"Okay, Arashk," comes Sebastian's voice again, and with an effort Arashk pulls his eyelids apart to make eye contact with the man, "it's obvious you don't want to talk about this, whatever it is, and I'm sorry for bringing it up, but can I just say one thing?"

Arashk wants to say no. But he can't quite bring himself to, and Sebastian obviously takes his silence as permission to continue: "When you first arrived here, I heard that you'd had some nasty experiences that you'd rather leave behind, and for quite some time, I believed it. But lately, the way you just stare into the distance… you're obviously not here and now. If you'll pardon the unsolicited advice, I'd really recommend you decide where you want to be: here, or there, wherever there was. You can't be happy if you're always wishing you were somewhere else." He must see the determined set of Arashk's jaw at this, for he adds, "And you can't cherry-pick your wishes either. As hard as you may try."

Arashk stares at him searchingly. As he knows him, Sebastian is not one for heartfelt speeches such as the one he has just produced. "You really believe that, do you?"

Sebastian shrugs, the corner of his mouth quirking upwards, and immediately when he says, "A wish is a gift. It's the only reason anybody does anything," all of a sudden the three presences Arashk has been desperately trying to block out start losing their minds for no discernable reason, and as he starts throwing up mental defenses he barely catches Sebastian's next words: "That's what my mama always used to say, anyway."

At this, one of the voices rises above the others—something that has never happened for more than a second at a time. But now, it lasts. It's still not intelligible, but it's distinct, and for the first time, Arashk can tell that it belongs to a female.

Sebastian's voice echoes around him, just as unclear, but he's probably asking something dumb and meaningless like whether he's okay, so Arashk just pushes out the word "Yeah," because the rusty old gears in his mind are spinning now and it's a feeling he missed dearly but never mind that, something's happening here—this is the first time Sebastian has ever mentioned his family without being prompted, and even then it was just that one time. Arashk would remember if it had happened outside that isolated incident when the only thing he really learned was that Sebastian wasn't going to make the learning easy for him. At the time he figured the information was irrelevant to his efforts anyway, and he let the matter rest.

He finds himself staring at Sebastian, who doesn't seem to be readily picking up on Arashk's distractedness. He's somewhere else at the moment. In his past. With… with his mother.

The voices in his head speak with clarity for the first time since they bade him to replace Loriss' book, and two words sound in Arashk's head as he looks at Sebastian.

"Save him."

Arashk flinches back so far he feels himself falling. He doesn't know whether he manages to catch himself before he hits the ground or whether he has to pick himself back up again, but the next thing he knows he's stumbling away through the grass, picking up speed until he's in a dead run, the temperature around him somewhat normal, the inside of his mind suspiciously quiet, and finally he finds himself outside his apartment, jamming the key into the keyhole, and finally stepping inside and slamming the door behind him.


He can't pretend this doesn't change anything.

Things he knows for sure: his life is in danger. Indirectly, so are the lives of his loved ones. Sebastian's loved ones are dead. They've been following Arashk around.

And they are convinced Sebastian's life is in danger, too.

He sits at the edge of his bed, wringing his hands, periodically running them through his beard and his mop of hair. It's been half an hour since he ran off, and thankfully Sebastian hasn't come after him. He's not really sure what he would tell him if he did.

Should… should he tell him? If Arashk has been hearing from his dead family, he feels the guy deserves to know. With what little information Arashk has garnered from them—no information at all really, just instructions—he wouldn't really have reason to believe him and would probably go to the Master about it. So Arashk clearly can't say anything now. Maybe after he has more information and thinks it would be worth it to enlist Sebastian to… to… He doesn't really know what the sword swallower could do for him, except agree to stop giving the Master updates on his condition.

Although Arashk once thought he'd enlisted somebody, and now he's not sure if Livia has slipped back into her old habits of talking about him with the Master or not. At least she obviously has kept the important stuff on the down low, or Arashk's girlfriend would probably be…

He clutches his head between his hands and leans forward so far it's almost between his knees. What the hell is he doing? He should not be thinking about this, not any of it. He should be blocking everything out and… and…

Slowly he takes down his hands and sits up again.

This is ridiculous and it needs to stop.

It's obvious now that this is bigger than him. Bigger even than his friends and family. They are back home living with no knowledge of his location or condition, his dad is hanging onto life by a thread, and of course he has to be careful beyond measure to make absolutely sure he doesn't worsen the situation, but he owes it to them, and Sebastian as well, to try. Even if the hell wherein he allows himself a modicum of hope turns out to be even worse than the hell he's in now.

Time to stop trying to be a damn martyr and start thinking again, Arashk, he tells himself grimly as the remaining cobwebs slowly begin to fall from his mind in sheets, and he feels a thrill of excitement despite himself at the idea of being not useless again. You've got work to do.