Chapter 43: The help that never came
Bianco put down the newspaper he'd brought for Vlad and dragged the chairs to the room's window, beckoning the younger man over. The director had been visiting more consistently in the last months, and while Vlad had first wondered if that was a consequence of renewed worry – why, though? he'd never been better since he'd been brought to the clinic – he now had a sneaking, disturbing suspicion that Blanco came over more often simply because he was at the headquarters more often, perhaps he even had appointments at the clinic for himself.
The older man hadn't gotten any livelier since Vlad had first seen him and thought: "he looks older somehow".
Tired, fragile. Perhaps he fell ill more easily, too.
the book whispering and dripping caught under a dome sealed away like a bad curse
Something had happened in Florida, of that Vlad was certain, and Bianco was obviously paying a price of some kind here – but he wasn't saying anything, wasn't sharing. Couldn't, perhaps, because it had come about from his job. Wouldn't, most likely, because Vlad was still in worse shape with an uncertain future and the older man might not want to worry him.
Vlad couldn't really blame him for that: he kept his fair share of secrets, too.
Bianco gave him a brittle smile.
"Come here, let's look outside."
Vlad didn't like the window the sky outside that he hadn't seen in literal years except through glass panels the top leaves of a tree he hadn't been able to see from his bed when he'd first woken up in the clinic but that was now always a tuft of green in the bottom of the sky even when he was lying down in the morning. He still joined Bianco after he closed the bathroom's door, throwing a look at the forest and the gently hilly curves he could guess outside. There was a training field to the left of the building, which Vlad could vaguely glimpse if he strained against the window – sometimes he heard the indistinguishable clamor of people doing various exercises down there.
"You haven't been out once since the accident, have you, Mister Masters?"
Vlad tensed at the question, but Bianco wasn't even looking at him, his eyes lost somewhere in the greenery. There was something wrong with his complexion, and the younger man felt his stomach twist unpleasantly with worry.
The director continued on without waiting for an answer:
"Or maybe they did get you out occasionally, at the hospital in Madison, provided you weren't too sick to get off the IV and other tools... I must admit I didn't look into that part of your hospitalization specifically. But since we brought you here, and you weren't awake or coherent for any of it, you've been confined to the building. To this room, too, until the other month. It made me realize we didn't have a park or an inner garden for patients. No one... Well. You've been here for a long time now, Mister Masters. Nurse Moore-Hamoud is right when he says you need to expand your daily life, and not only in social matters."
"...I don't think I'm up for hiking through the forest, somehow."
That almost got a laugh out of Bianco, who shook his head fondly.
"Of course not, we wouldn't want you to have an attack somewhere out there. But I had to sign papers for the construction of a bigger storage unit and I added plans to renovate the western side of the third and fourth floors. A ghost escaped through there half a decade ago and electricity hasn't worked well since then, but thankfully an inner garden doesn't need a lot of electrical components to do its job. It'll be accessible to the patients and the rest of the staff, which I believe would be better for everyone. God knows I'd enjoy a break from paperwork with flowers around and no drill sergeant being very vocal as he trains his agents on the field..."
Vlad's eyes drifted to the left of the window, even if he couldn't see the training field from where he sat. There was still a whole forest around them for workers to enjoy, but he guessed a garden would be more easily accessible – and easier to watch over, too.
Bianco's plans, however, touched upon a truth Vlad didn't like one bit:
"When do you expect that garden to be finished, exactly?"
That kind of work took time, and Vlad... didn't want to contemplate the fact that he'd probably still be at the clinic when it'd get finished.
Bianco chuckled.
"Ah, nine to ten months? So a year, give or take, considering the usual delays with those things. You might leave us beforehand, but in that case you'd be able to enjoy the outside anyway, so, no loss. I... just wish I'd thought of it earlier on."
Vlad would have wanted to say he might be out, indeed, in a year – but the truth was that, for all he was doing much better than before he'd gotten a hang of his powers before he'd even known what was wrong with him before the ugly truth had reared its head and hurt June in the process, he was now stagnating. Things were good enough, he could think and do things with his time, he wasn't having heart attacks or screaming in the night, but...
Bianco's smile grew wistful, his eyes finally on Vlad – something like paternal care and an ache of worry lurking behind. It was the kind of face Vlad's father would make while saying he wouldn't always be there to take care of him, that one day he'd be gone and he hoped his son would be grown up enough to live through it and deal with everything he'd used to do for him.
They were talking about a one-year span, though, not two or three decades, though. The older man looked weaker, older, that was true, but he wasn't that old, was he? Was he sick, too?
Vlad didn't remember how it was to be sick like a normal person didn't know if he could still recognize the signs if Bianco was not doing well at all if
Bianco didn't seem to know what was going on through Vlad's head, and that was perhaps for the best – unless he just didn't want to talk about it, just like Vlad never told him the whole truth.
"You are doing better, after all. Do you feel better, too?"
Vlad didn't look away – wanted to, but shouldn't, not if he wanted the lies to sound true.
He didn't think the director wanted to know about the progress he was making with his unnatural powers, how transforming was almost instantaneous now, how the mist of turning had taken the quality of rings of dark light as the process had become more instinctive than forced. Bianco most likely wouldn't like knowing about the leftovers, either, even if it was to say that he hardly ever had to deal with those unless he wasn't focusing properly nowadays and that, as a consequence, he hadn't needed to pry out his own fang and suffer through the regrowth of a normal canine in two weeks. The older man, finally, probably didn't want to know about Vlad's experimentation with ectoplasmic constructs, or that he really didn't want to try overshadowing people even if the knowledge that he might be able to kept lingering in the back of his mind.
he knew exactly what it was like to be stuck inside your own body and not know what was happening to you he'd lived through it that first day night he had no idea but when after "banzai!" trapped aware forever unfit for anything except rotting away or was that what death felt like? powerless consciousness tied to the scattered molecules of their remains when he'd though the hospital was the morgue
where corpses were left to wait
and later the fevers the cardiac arrests every single time he'd been unable to act uncomprehending of the reason for his suffering stuck waiting and enduring
No, Bianco was simply worried for him, he didn't want – didn't even know it was a possibility – to hear about all the ways Vlad was straying further and further away from humanity or perhaps he'd been there all along since green hurts the swirling eyes of death he just hadn't known it. The director, after all, had been hurt by a ghost, somehow – Vlad was certain of it, looking at the older man, listening to the way he'd spoken of Florida, of the Book of Wraiths – and didn't need to know one of the clinic's patients – one he spent a lot of time with, one he was showing worry over – was just as abnormal monstrous worse perhaps as the specter that had done this to him.
Besides, Vlad was feeling better.
Of course he was. It wasn't good yet, but it was better.
"I'm doing alright, I guess. Considering everything, I mean. I... Your books are enlightening, Director. Thanks for letting me see them."
"We already had that conversation, I think."
"Thanks anyway."
Vlad hesitated – if they were talking about the library, though...
It might not be weird to ask now.
"Say, Director Bianco... All ghosts are bad, no? I haven't found any testimony of a good action from them in the books I've already gone through, and even what I'd found before... before I got here. At best, they ignore humans, and even that is rare..."
Whenever a ghost appeared somewhere on Earth, there were consequences for people who hadn't asked for any of it.
just look at June
Bianco took a moment to answer, his gaze shifting back to the window, the forest outside, the bright blue sky and three wandering clouds in the distance.
Vlad would have expected the director of a secret organization that focused on dealing with ghosts to have an immediate answer to such a question – not because it was an easy one, but simply because Bianco had certainly been asked that before, because it didn't make sense for him not to have thought on it already.
Eventually, the older man settled on a tired tone:
"...I'd say they are careless, on the whole. Not all of them are trying to hurt us humans, but they don't care if it happens in the pursuit of whatever their goal may be. If there are good ghosts... We never see them here, so for all purposes we can only work on the assumption that they will hurt someone if we don't stop them beforehand. In fact, we generally hear of them only once someone has already been mixed up in their business."
...Yeah, he'd figured the answer would be something like that. Vlad hadn't expected the director to be quite that nuanced – positive was definitely not the word – on the matter, but in the end, people could and should only act in accordance with the evidence, not on baseless guesses that would end up with them getting hurt.
Bianco wasn't finished, though.
"Take the ghost that took refuge inside you after the accident. I don't think it purposefully got blasted into you or that it wanted to affect you and your body the way it did, but it also didn't care about the consequences. When it woke up again, it didn't try to help you with your ectoplasmic issues, it hurt Nurse Porter to escape. Maybe it was confused and scared by the situation, but in the end, you two were the ones to suffer the consequences."
Ah. Vlad forced himself to smile – and Bianco didn't comment on the blankness of that smile, didn't seem to think it odd, after all, who would want to smile at the memories of what the older man had just described?
it didn't matter that it was Vlad
who had hurt June
who hadn't done it on purpose
he'd still caused it all he'd still thrown the consequences onto a human who hadn't deserved it who'd been trying to help he'd still remained in the shadows and escaped the blame
maybe he cared unlike the ghosts out there but in the end
he still did exactly the same thing they were guilty of
Bianco, of course, couldn't know how guilty rightly so this example would make Vlad feel. He couldn't guess and anyway he was right it was Vlad's fault, couldn't imagine that the younger man would take something entirely different than intended from that statement.
"Mister Masters, I noticed you didn't check out your friends' thesis in the library. They do touch upon that aspect of ghosts in the introduction, even if it's far from their main research... I did tell you we were interested in your experiments, even before you had to be transferred to the clinic, didn't I? It's a given I requested a copy of Jack and Maddie Fenton's thesis for our library. You should read it."
Something slammed hard into Vlad's chest – and he didn't answer.
He hadn't gotten anything from his friends Jack's fault except monstrous powers and unending agony since the accident, not a letter, not... Not. No help with the acne or the other symptoms, no words, nothing.
and he'd heard the surname the only one Fenton the name Bianco had just used to talk about Jack and Maddie what it implied what he hadn't known about the fact that he hadn't even gotten a wedding notification he'd been about to ask Maddie out and maybe she wouldn't have said yes but he'd never find out now and her and Jack they were they had
it was like Vlad didn't even exist
He'd seen the thesis on a shelf a few days ago, and Vlad...
Hadn't known what to do. He'd left it there, pushed it out of his mind.
"Jack these calculations aren't right"
Maddie
Maddie had tried
Maddie had tried to make Jack wait and maybe she hadn't visited him in the hospital or written either but she'd tried and Vlad Vlad Vlad hadn't gotten to ask her but now now Maddie and Jack were
"banzai!"
a flash of green
burning acidic death down his lungs choking him
Bianco said something, and Vlad couldn't hear him at all.
Jack's fault
and here he was now
alone
Something foul turned in the back of his throat.