2230 hours, Maida Vale. Carstairs Residence.


Where do you go when your first point of safety[1] didn't turn out to be so safe after all? Virgil could feel a fever coming on as he walked through Maida Vale, past white townhouses with yellow lights in the windows. His heart thumped erratically, sweat collecting at the back of his knees and arm pits. He couldn't tell if it was the aftereffects of Muse or... or...

Virgil stood at the doorstep of his childhood home, air filled with the delicate scent of winter pansies. He wiped his eyes and knocked. His father answered, wearing an old WILLY WONKA BY STARDUST t-shirt over sweats.

           "Virgil!" he exclaimed softly, stepping out into the cold. "Hey. Hey, sleepy boy what's happened?"

No matter how many times Virgil came back here, after vampires or Cepheus or whatever, Edgar found a way to sound surprised. Yavin was never surprised. Yavin was... Yavin never judged. He just. Just accepted. He just helped, no matter what, and he didn't judge. But tonight - what was tonight? What was different, that made Yavin say that...? What had Virgil done this time??

The young wizard hesitated, never the kind of child to be swaddled. He didn't need to hesitate. Edgar pulled him into a hug, shutting the door as Angela came into the foyer with an alert look. Virgil buried his head in Edgar's shoulder, shaking it, muttering as he hugged back tightly.

"Fhy...rike...fis..." his voice was muffled, punctuated by childish little sniffles, and his mother approached to embrace him from behind. Her blonde hair, so much like his own, fell in waves around his head. She smelled of jasmines. "W-why," Virgil chocked back a wave of self-loathing, "why am I like this?" he demanded weakly, and Angela's arms drew tighter around him. 

Edgar placed a hand over his golden, kissing his head. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," he said, and kept saying it, and Virgil tried to push them away - mother and father - trying to fight out of his own skin. They didn't budge an inch. "Virgil, we're sorry, we're so sorry..." Edgar repeated and he went still between the pair of them.

"I don't want to be me." Virgil murmured, feeling warm and wrapped up, surrounded by old comforts. "I don't want to..." he trailed off. His heart thumped on at a more sedate rate. He didn't want to be anything at all right now.

He simply wanted to exist, here, not feeling or hoping or wanting.

1.	16th Jan - It Scares me Half to death