Chapter 44: Not yours

Ziad dropped by earlier than usual, a kraft-paper-covered slab in hand. A bit too big and thin to be a book, unless they were talking about a picture book.

"How did you sleep, Vlad?"

The younger man had dreamed of the accident, woken up around five floating above the bed, and been unable to go back to sleep without fear that his powers would act up again. He'd elected against practicing the night before because of a headache, and obviously he'd been wrong to.

"...I've had worse."

The nurse nodded, oblivious to the evasion as he pushed the button for the window's shutter. If Ziad had been looking at Vlad, he would probably have caught on and tried for more, but the patient had learned that Ziad didn't pick up on tone unless it was obvious, more at ease with facial expressions and body language.

The best times to lie to the nurse about how he felt about how bad it could be were always when Ziad wasn't looking.

"Better than nothing, I guess. At least you slept."

Then he handed Vlad his parcel.

"Director Bianco mentioned your friends' theses, said you might want your own copies. They work on ghosts too, right?"

The nurse hadn't been working on this room when Vlad had first transferred from the hospital in Madison that was June and June wasn't not anymore, and that meant... He most likely didn't have the context of Vlad's situation. Maybe he knew it was an accident, logically he'd been told Vlad had been exposed to an explosive "banzai!" a flash of green amount of ectoplasm, but the details?

Vlad himself had told him about his degree in ectology, about experimenting on the physical properties of ectoplasm, but that was about it.

Talking about Maddie who wasn't here who'd left him behind who'd gone and married Jack and hadn't even told him forgotten left aside and Jack "banzai!" who had killed him made him a damned abomination of life and death who didn't care Vlad shouldn't have trusted him shouldn't have called him a friend he'd been erased from Jack's life unfit to even warrant an apology a visit news anything at all was dangerous, it got his powers to behave wildly and that was a problem for Vlad and sometimes for other people too.

When he could even manage to say anything.

Jack's fault

Usually people mentioned them, asked about Vlad's friends – and Vlad just, didn't answer. June had asked, once; he'd acted as if he didn't have any. Bianco brought them up occasionally, when they talked about Vlad's time in college.

He'd almost told Ziad, not so long ago, the day he'd first gone to the library – then he hadn't, because he'd realized there was nothing to say, nothing of value in that conversation.

What could he have even gone with, when the older man would have inevitably asked about the lack of letters, about them worrying for him?

they obviously didn't

or if they did

he'd never heard of it

"They..."

Vlad's throat felt dry, the headache lurking just by his temples. Not quite there yet, but present, looming, inevitable.

"...We were on the same project, and it... the project... We'd made artificial ectoplasm from a sample, we wanted to see if we could use it for energy and if we could duplicate its properties, but our first-year project was just a bit different. We were using... We..."

green pain make it stop

Vlad gritted his teeth, ignored the thrumming in his skull.

"My friends... We had a project that used artificial ectoplasm as energy, and it... exploded on me."

Jack didn't look Jack didn't care Jack had done everything wrong

even the damn last-step calculations

hadn't been patient enough to let Maddie check his work before he'd pushed on the activation button hadn't checked if there was someone by the portal hadn't

Vlad didn't know what face Ziad was making, right now – if the nurse felt pity or horror, if he understood or didn't get it. He couldn't look, could only stare blankly at his bedsheet. He hadn't gotten out of bed yet, hadn't moved since the nightmare and getting himself securely back on the bed instead of above it.

"They... Jack and Maddie, they didn't get hit, and..."

And what? What was he supposed to tell Ziad about them? That they'd been his only friends in years, that they used to be there for him, that they laughed and did things together, that they cared about the same weird things he did?

Jack killed him and didn't care erased Vlad from his life moved on married Maddie too and Vlad hadn't known because because because

it was like he didn't even exist

It would only make it more obvious that none of it was true today.

Well. Maybe not the last one. They'd finished their theses on ectoplasm, had no particular reason to change their field of study.

nothing after all had happened to a friend of theirs had it

They just... didn't do that with him anymore.

Ziad's voice sounded hesitant, careful, not too forceful, when it filled the silence Vlad had fallen into – as if he didn't want to break something with his words.

as if there was still something left to salvage

"Do they write to you? I haven't seen any letters but your family's and the university."

Vlad choked on his answer, cold, burning please make it stop tears at the corners of his eyes, his fingers too sharp too cold too dead digging into his legs.

"I... I... They... I..."

left to rot

Careful, still:

"I could try and look them up, if you want."

Vlad didn't know what Ziad was thinking, what excuses he could be grasping at for the glaring absence. He'd gone through them all, probably, over the last two-and-a-half years. Just shy of thirty months since the accident.

The truth was, he couldn't even remember most of those excuses.

"Don't. Please."

Vlad didn't think he could bear it, if Ziad came back with the definite news that no, Jack and Maddie Fenton didn't actually care. That they knew perfectly well how to reach him and hadn't. That they hadn't even bothered to find out. That, when someone contacted them to see if they wanted to reach out now even if they hadn't so far, they weren't interested.

"Are you sure?"

Maybe he was wrong, but.

if he wasn't

"...No."

The nurse whispered a quiet "alright" and went to roll the shutter back down. The pounding against Vlad's head lessened a bit. Ziad added:

"I'll come back in two hours. Try to rest a bit, Vlad."