Levi didn't know anything but the space under the bed.

He knew nothing but how to watch and wait and stare.

Watching his mama's feet, and then the back of her legs as she slipped on her shoes.

Waiting for her to bring him food she'd hidden down the front of her dress. A few bites of bread, half a tube of cheese paste, milky water given as a gift by one of her 'friends'.

Staring at the cracks in the floorboards when her friends came into the room. Staring at her thin shoulders as she drew shaky letters in the grime. Staring at the dust coating his legs as he held them to his chest when she was gone.

He was staring at a sliver of light that spilled in through a crack in the door when a brown ball bounced into the room, near silent under the sounds of laughter and slurred words outside, and stopped in front of the bed.

He watched the new object for a few seconds, but it didn't move again. He moved his arm away from his body and reached out slowly, brushing his fingers against the side and accidentally pushing it out of reach.

He stopped with his fingers outstretched, staring at it, and then he quickly pulled his arm back as the door opened a little more and small shoes came in and stopped. He watched them move closer and had the sudden urge to stop them as they bent down to take it, but he didn't move out from the safety of the bed.

The hands stopped just as they grabbed the ball and Levi looked further up, freezing when he saw the eyes locked onto him.

They stared at each other; Levi with wide eyes, and them with their mouth hanging open.

"You're not suppose' to see me," Levi rasped, and it made his throat hurt.

"I thought you were dead," they whispered to him.

"I can't move my eyes if I'm dead," he said.

They blinked, and then got down on their hands and knees, peering in at him. "You're so thin."

Levi felt an odd heat in his stomach but didn't defend himself. "You won't tell?"

"You'll get in trouble?"

Levi nodded.

They glanced at the door, licking a cracked upper tooth. "What's your name?"

"Levi."

"Rian," they returned, holding out their hand.

Levi pushed it out from under the bed.

"No, shake it," Rian insisted, shoving his hand at him again. "That's how you close a deal—"

Rian's head snapped to the door. Seeing something Levi couldn't, they scrambled up and left.

After a second, Levi reached out again, managed to get his fingers around the top of the ball, and rolled it towards himself. Without making a sound, he hugged it to his chest.

-p-

"I'm not suppo-suppose't-I can't come in the rooms. That's pa's rule."

Levi, with his head sticking out from under the bed, absently rolled the ball back and forth. "The door is suppose' to be open. If it is, you have nothing to hide."

He didn't look at the door as he said it, which Rian had closed all the way.

Rian blew long brown strands out of his face. His right knee was scraped, but he said he'd been playing and fell. "Sit here and wait for me, Rian," he said, lowering his voice as much as he could. "Don't move, and don't make trouble for me."

"I have to stay under the bed. If I don't, we can't live here anymore."

Levi hesitated, but rolled the ball to him, and he rolled it back without looking. Levi pressed mouth to his arm to hide his smile.

"I think my pa comes to see your mama."

Levi nodded. "I know already. He's noisy."

Rian leaned towards him. "How do you know it's my pa?"

"His hair is different, but you have his eyes. Ashy, like smoke."

Rian sat back. He looked away and frowned, and Levi felt like he'd said something wrong.

-p-

His mama wrapped his small fingers around a shard of glass and tilted his head up, forcing him to look her in the eyes as she said,

This is only for emergencies. If you've no other choice, understand?

-p-

"What's it suppose' to be?" Rian asked, lifting his head, his hands stained black from the rock he'd found outside that they were coloring with.

"You say your s's like shhh," Levi told him, awkwardly positioned under the bed with Rian and a paper between them under it too.

Rian stole the rock from him, forcing him to pay attention to him.

"It's a bed," Levi said, deeply aggrieved. Even more so when he didn't give it back.

"I don't want to be here," Rian said suddenly, scratching so hard at the paper that it ripped.

"But I'm here."

Rian stopped, then scribbled at another spot. "Still. My pa has to take me with him 'cause I left home and got lost and the Military Police had to find him. You emb'rrassed me, Rian."

"What's the Military Police?"

Rian licked a cut on his lip. "They make the rules, I don't know. My pa told me that it'd be more trouble for him if I get stolen, so I have to come."

"Stolen," Levi repeated, drawing out the word with dirty fingers.

"It has an e, not an a," Rian corrected, rubbing away the wrong letter with his finger.

-p-

Levi made himself smaller under the bed as the door banged against the wall as Rian's pa burst into the room, stumbling but not falling.

Rian spun around, eyes wide, completely rigid.

"I think I finally figured out what's wrong with you, why you won't listen to a word I say," his pa slurred, and Levi watched his shoes as he came into the room.

Rian scrambled out from under the bed. "Pa—"

A quick, thunderous sound that Levi hadn't heard before and couldn't place and Rian fell on his side in front of the bed, holding his cheek.

The sound of it echoed in his head.

Rian's pa's shoes were black. He always scrubbed them after he and his mama went silent, but he could never rub the scuff marks out of them, no matter how hard he tried.

"It's bad genes," his pa said, clenching his fist. "I come here looking for her, wanting to ask if she hated her father too, forget she's dead."

Rian didn't make a sound, but only pushed himself back as his pa lurched closer.

"The ladies, pretty as they are, keep interrupting my time with Olympia. Can't have a drink anymore without hearing, my kid's run off again, and if I can't control him, I can't be here. I keep you fed, keep you out of adult business as much as I can. Least you can do is let your old man have his fun during his free time, but no."

Levi heard another sound like the first, not a smack but a solid hit, and Rian dropped down again, his head narrowly missing meeting the floor as he coughed violently into his hands.

"You like making me look bad? You don't think I deserve respect?" his pa yelled, and the noises outside quieted for a second before becoming noisy again.

Rian shook his head, quietly sniffing, and his pa surged forward and dragged him up by the arm.

Levi found himself gripping the shard of glass his mama gave him, not knowing when he'd grabbed it, or what he wanted to do with it.

"Stop," Levi rasped to the shoes in front of the bed, but didn't hear himself, and wasn't sure if he'd talked. He shivered with fear. For himself, for Rian, or for his mama if he'd been heard, he didn't know.

"You think I belong with all the other bottom feeders down here, don't you?" his pa shouted furiously, and Rian gave a short, strangled gasp and his feet scraped and kicked at the floor, but he couldn't get away.

Levi tightened his hold around the glass, thinking of the knee he said he'd scraped himself, his chipped tooth, his cut lip, and knowing, right then, that Rian had been being hurt for a long time. He wanted it to stop. He wanted it to never happen again so badly it shocked him.

It made an odd fire ignite in his chest, burning with the desire to act, move, fight, along with the anger of listening to the half-sobs of his only friend.

"What the—wait, you look like—Olympia never told me she had a kid—"

Levi found himself on his feet in front of the bed, and his first thought wasn't on the ache of his underactive limbs, but that it was bright.

Rian's face was an odd blue, his fingers moving sluggishly, pulling at the fingers around his throat that pinned him to the bedframe.

Levi saw this and had no more thoughts. He moved like a child possessed, holding the glass tightly as he spun, bringing it up and aiming for the side of Rian's pa's throat.

Rian's pa quickly let go of Rian and his friend slumped. He caught Levi's thin wrist before the glass could connect.

"What the hell is going on—They put something in my drink...?" he asked himself, bewildered, his glassy eyes blown wide.

Levi let go of the glass as he spoke, caught it in his other hand, and had it raised again when he was done.

"I'm not dead," Levi said and didn't know why as he stabbed the glass into his leg.

Rian's pa faltered, starting to fall, and without a moment's hesitation he drove the glass completely into the side of his neck.

There was a moment of utter incomprehension on Rian's pa's face where there was only the sound of Rian coughing violently until he threw up, and then Levi pulled the glass out and his pupils became tiny dots as blood gushed from the wound.

"Help!" his pa managed to shout, and the noise outside stopped again.

It was the only word he managed to say before his grip around Levi's wrist went slack and he fell silently to the side, his eyes still open.

Levi stared silently at him as if he might get back up, but he didn't.

Blood coated the floorboards.

Before he or Rian could snap out of it, he felt hands like needles digging painfully into his shoulders.

His hand was bleeding and suddenly empty.

"Levi," his mama said breathlessly, her eyes wide in terror. "Levi, what have you done?"

Levi looked at her and the fire in his chest smothered itself with her worry until it was tiny but didn't go out.

She gripped him tighter. "Do you know what they'll do to you, Levi?" she asked in a hurried, frenzied whisper. "When they find out what you are—when they test you—this cursed blood will have me dissected and you turned into a weapon—"

A scream interrupted her and a woman dressed in a similar dress to his mama fled away from the door.

His legs unable to hold him anymore, Levi collapsed in her arms, but his mama wasn't looking at him, but at the door as hurried footsteps and raised voices came closer.

Her eyes found Rian in the same instant that men in uniforms stopped short in the doorway.

Without a moment's hesitation, his mama pointed a finger at Rian. "That's his son! He killed his father!"

Rian, wiping his mouth, stopped to stare at her in shock.

"Are you sure that it was the kid who made a wound like that...?" the first one asked, eyeing the wound skeptically and not coming into the room.

The other squinted at Rian, ignoring the body completely. "Wasn't it him we were called here to look for? If we collect him, you think we can avoid dealing with this?"

"It was—" Levi was muffled against her shoulder before he could finish.

"There will be an investigation," she said over him and before the first uniformed man could answer, voice shaking. "If you don't want to do one, you should close the case before it can begin. There are witnesses who can tell you that his father treated him and us poorly and deserved what his son did to him."

The two exchanged a long glance, and then the second one shrugged and stepped into the room. "Whatever gets this off my plate fastest."

The first one scratched his cheek, tapping his foot as he said to his mama, "Think about this. This kind of accusation isn't something you can take back."

"I understand," his mama said, squeezing him.

And Levi could only watch as Rian was taken away, as he was ignored as he tried to pull away from them and explain what really happened. He could only wait for his mother to release him, and then watch her shake and urge him quietly, gently, back under the bed so she could clean up.

The world had seemed so small to him then. The four walls of that room. The unknowable, impassible space outside.

And then his mama got sick.

And then she died.