Partners in self-destruction. He liked the sound of that, and bowed his golden head in acquiescence. Unless it was Mysteries related, why not ring up Nemo the next time he felt like toeing a line? They could handle themselves, together. They survived the vampires.

Virgil waited patiently as she tapped away on her phone, always on the move. She was a runaway. That much he could tell without evening have to lift the rug to examined the dirt underneath - but he didn't pry, assuming this was their mutual understanding. Nemo wouldn't poke about his sensitive business and he wouldn't poke about hers. Nobody crossed an ocean because they were leaving behind something good and safe, anyway. Not if they barely had a life waiting for them here. Often, she made him realise how reassuring it was to have a home.

            "How are your people?"

He reached behind his ear to pluck a cigarette that had miraculously survived the trip up. "Not bad," Virgil shrugged. "I got into an argument with Yavin though. I mean, not really an argument, he was being an arse. He does that sometimes."

That made it sound so simple, and hearing himself say so was a relief. The young wizard lit the cigarette and took a long drag, lips going numb in the cold wind.

 "I miss my family," the confession came out as a sigh, and he rubbed his tired eyes with the heel of his palm. "I miss being a kid. Do you know what I mean? Back at Hogwarts, I was trying so hard to grow up because I thought I was so fucking clever. And now I'm here, it's like I'm being pulled apart. I miss Edgar and Angela[1] and Adelaide." Virgil pulled a face and passed the fag over to Nemo. "Even miss my stupid little brother."

1.	The other immediate Carstairs

Aw, sweet boy. He missed his family. Nemo had rolled her eyes at Yavin who wore his red flags like he wore his bright sweaters; he'd saved them and kept the questions away, but now she'd met him twice, she meant to avoid him. And each time Virgil mentioned him, Nemo's urge to protect him ticked up one notch. Not high enough yet to say anything, but she didn't like that anyone would be an ass to gentle Virgil.

Nemo listened and discovered she hadn't realized how big Virgil's family was. She'd met his parents and thought she remembered he had a sibling, but. She lifted her eyebrows. "You don't see them anymore?"

She took the cigarette - nasty habit, but it warmed her up and sharing a smoke was a friendship ritual for back stoops on drizzly nights.

"I miss it, too, yea. Being a kid,," she said. "I might have made it hard, though. I tried to be weird for the sake of it being weird. Try to be cool to impress older people. I dunno."

Nemo winced and handed the cigarette back, becoming self-aware. Almost everyone she knew here was older than her, except for Dido who Nemo could never pin down. "Guess somethings don't change." 

             "You don't see them anymore?"

"My parents, loads." Virgil looked away from the skyline - Maida Vale, where he grew up, it wasn't a part of the glimmering skyscrapers and piss-scented streets. "Cecil's at school and Laidie..." he trailed off and shook his head as if though a fly were buzzing around it. Adelaide. "I don't know." What was he going to say about Adelaide? Something itched at the back of his head, something that made him want to reach into his brain and give it a good, long scratch. Virgil scratched the back of his neck instead.

Oh, of course - of course he knew why he didn't see her anymore. But it was alright. Nemo was speaking again and he didn't have to talk about it. She wasn't going to needle him for answers.

He reached for the cigarette, smiling softly at the little witch. "You're pretty cool without trying." Virgil breathed out a cloud of smoke and watched it dissipate into the night, white wisps carried away by winds. "And hey, pretty weird without trying too," his sleepy mouth stretched into a grin and he leaned down to bump heads.

"Why thanks, kid," Nemo said and put her boots up on the crenelations and ashed the cigarette as if it was a big cigar. It was reassuring, she supposed, that Virgil found her cool and weird.

"Saw something on the internet," she said and puffed the smoke slowly. "What was it... If we want to be loved we must submit to the..." her stomach pulsed in a silent laugh, "...to the mortifying ordeal of being known."[1]

"S'like, this leap, you know. To let someone in. I used to hate seeing my name, like, in the school paper or the orchestra program. Or if a teacher said it. I was always trying to decide between the two: attention or anonymity. Because once they know you, it's like. They've got you. They can see you."

She held her hand up to the sky. "I can't decide."

1.	Actually coined in 2013 by Tim Krieder of the New York Times.

He listened, passing the cigarette to and fro. London was distant but audible below them - sounds of brusque car horns and middle eastern music blaring from bike trishaws. Drunken yells. Nemo's voice in his ear, carrying with it an accent and cadence of a history about which he knew nothing. Her familiarity with muggle worlds and muggle words. She had lived a life before this one and she carried it around with her.

The mortifying ordeal of being known. A phrase so accurate it stung his insides just to hear it.

            "They've got you. They can see you...I can't decide."

"To be somebody or to be nobody." Virgil reiterated, glancing down at the cigarette in his hand while she looked up at her own against the night sky. "Can we ever actually be seen by someone else? I feel like I could spend years in your head and I still wouldn't actually know you, Neems. Not truly."

Their true selves, that had to be unobservable. The one excruciating secret every single being kept: to be alone in one's understanding of oneself, because how other people saw you said more about them than about you. Virgil shook some ash off the cigarette, watching the embers crumble and drift off. "But I think I know what you mean," he glanced back at her, wry.

"Sometimes I feel stingy about who I share myself with," his mouth pushed out into a thoughtful pout. "As in, do I want this person to know me like that? Do I trust them with this part of myself?"

Will they use it to hurt me?

Nobody. No one. Nemo. They'd walked right into it, like a clearing in a wood.

Virgil took the concept to outer space, up with his deafening stars. Nemo watched him go. Was he cosmic, Virgil? She decided this bridge tower was as much his as hers. He fit up here. Nemo budged closer to Virgil so they were shoulder to shoulder. The cigarette did as much as the black coffee as an illusion of warmth.

"Yea, you know what I mean," Nemo confirmed. She moved her fingers in a wave and then gently closed them as if she'd caught a lightning bug. She wondered if there were lightning bugs in Britain.

Nemo shook her head and brought her hand down to folded in with her other arm. "No, you have to be stingy. Even if they don't really know you, sometimes a little thing is enough to put you in a box. Feels cliche to talk about labels, but yeah. Little tags on everything."

She thought for a minute, all this talk about knowing inner selves, stars as minds, living in her mind. She'd never thought about it much, hadn't been too put off when she'd found out, but if anyone had opportunity to find out, it was Virgil Carstairs.

Nemo turned to look at him. "Do you think people don't trust you? Because of what you can do?"

Maybe this was one of Yavin Morgenthau's red flags. How he looked at people how he talked about Virgil - how much did he know, and what was he going to do about it?

He wondered what other labels had been applied to Nemo. People were complex but they still placed each other into boxes, making little assumptions as they go about their day. To do otherwise might drive a person mad... all the same, he wished they gave more thought to it or at least to the notion they might be wrong about those assumptions. Virgil accepted that he made these mistakes. His guesses were educated because he could look into minds but that didn't make them right, nor accurate.

             "Do you think people don't trust you? Because of what you can do?"

Blonde eyebrows climbed up, caught off guard by her question. The question of his life, even. He paused to nurse the cigarette and took his time with it. Other legilimens had this secret doubt too, when their ability is made public knowledge.

"I know for a fact Nick doesn't trust[1] me." Virgil stared into space, thoughts sprawled in every direction as he spoke. "And other people probably, but I don't think it's because of what I can do. It's because of what I've already done, what I continue to do. Can't blame them."

His track record wasn't exactly great. He eavesdropped on a regular basis, it came naturally to him though he did refrain just as frequently as not. Virgil liked to think he knew better than to use other people's thoughts against them, now. The level of manipulation he could exercise was substantial. Tedious amount of effort, though.

"If you don't want me looking, I won't," he turned to Nemo, one hand on his chest and the cigarette hand raised as if to take an oath. "I don't all the time anyway, promise. It's just normal sometimes. Like a sixth sense."

1.	3rd Oct 2011 - Swimming in These Empty Towns

Nemo listened to Virgil seriously, watched his emotions play over his face. He felt ashamed, but was he penitent? Nemo felt such a need for privacy and to let others be that the urge to spy felt offensive a temptation that she'd not forgive herself for. Of course, she had her own vices. So sharp was the knife she used to cut people out of her heart, sometimes without even a word of warning.

She picked at her nails. She didn't want to tell him not to look; tell him to shut off what he said was part of him or ask him to darken that sky he showed her. But to have him in her head when she didn't know he'd been there, it made her wonder what he'd moved around. He swore and oath, but it felt like he was teasing.

"I guess it depends what you've seen already," she said, forward. "Why -"

Nemo bit back a question she didn't want to ask because she didn't want to hurt him. Why he hadn't cheated at blackjack. But maybe they'd already answered that, both of them on this tree branch tempting fate like plucking fruit.

"What do you think you're going to find up there?"

Her hesitation told him more than a direct yes or no could have. Virgil took a deep and final drag from his cigarette - perhaps he needed to have this conversation with more people. Or perhaps he shouldn't have told anyone at all, life was easier when nobody knew before. He breathed out a lovely little cloud before stubbing the fag on the ledge of the battlement.

            "What do you think you're going to find up there?"

"I don't know. I don't... I don't go looking for things, it's only surface stuff." Virgil turned slightly to lean against the wall and bring his legs up so to hug his knees, facing Nemo. A little shove could send him plummeting. "Just, imagine if everyone around you was always talking. Always. Since you were a child. Sometimes they're talking about trivial things - you know, groceries or calling their uncle Isiah or whatever."

He reached for the coffee and drank more of the coffee to wash down the taste of tobacco. Virgil looked at his own fingers wrapped around the thermos, uncomfortable with making eye contact when he talked about his Legilimency.

"And sometimes people talk about really fucked up things. You get used to it because your baseline for what is normal is constantly changing," he drank again, then used the back of his hand to wipe his mouth before glancing at Nemo. "Then someone finds out, hey, you can hear them talking to themselves. They worry."

The wizard shrugged, making an effete gesture as if to wave away this imaginary concern. "It's white noise. I'm not really listening unless I need clarity for a conversation. I would go proper mad if I listened the way they think I listen."

Who's to say he hadn't already gone mad?

"I haven't gone spelunking in your head." Virgil clarified gently. "Fishing in a shallow stream, maybe, to catch whatever we're talking about at any given time."

Something about what Virgil was saying didn't line up. He didn't normally talk this much, and this was the first time they'd ever talked at length about anything like this. She thought back to the night she'd been first banished from Camden Town Hookers and he'd been a pal and they'd read palms.[1] He'd been deft, but then, divination was his training. What she wanted, she realized, was to be able to trust him. She'd always loved Abby Ried, but she and Abby had found a line when Nemo had asked her to help with the Grimshaw's phenomenon.[2] They'd made up, but it felt like a door had closed and her world was smaller.

Virgil was at the same time reassuring her that he didn't pay attention but that there'd been times he'd done things he wasn't proud of. Nemo relaxed her face realizing she looked pained, and busied herself with her hat and her hair again. People were complicated, and they ought to be, but it left her feeling isolated.

Things had been simpler when she and Virgil were just two blonde waifish idiots.

"Like."

She hedged.

"I just want you to be you, man. I don't want you to act weird around me, protecting me or whatever."

1.	22 Oct 2011 - Don't Cry, Bone Dry
2.	20 Dec 2011 - Procedures and Protocols, Quills and Queues

            "I just want you to be you, man."

Virgil dropped his head back against the battlement, laughing. He could hear the hint of hysteria in his voice and it sobered him. His smiled softened, his lucid blue gaze settled on Nemo as if he were looking at her from very faraway. "Do I look like I have any idea what it means to be me? Does anybody?" What did that even mean? It was  something you would see on a billboard in the underground, waiting for a train to come rumbling into the congested tunnel.

Live your authentic life! Buy Schwarzkopf hair dye!

The wizard rubbed his face with both hands. What was he doing, talking to Nemo about this? She didn't understand, she had her own problems. Like telling a shark you have knee problems.

"I look out for my friends, that isn't acting weird is it?" he dropped his hands and sighed heatedly. "Friends look out for each other, but I've never... I trust you to tell me if you actually need my proper help."

Virgil glanced to his right, catching the breeze against his face. His nose was red and his eyes watered in the cold. "If you think I am acting weird, just say so. I won't mind," he looked back at Nemo. "I like to think that we can be honest about that."

"Aw...!" Nemo's face fell at Virgil's reaction. She hadn't meant to do that. "Nooo...." she whined with a little chuckle, but let him carry on. Now they were both feeling super self-conscious and ordinary and angsty and that wasn't them. They were meant to be divine and poetic and above the folderol. Maybe that was a fantasy and they were both as mundane as everyone else. That was an icky thought to step in.

He did, though! He did seem like a boy who knew who he was, who existed as a concise form, a nebula with edges. She sat back and pursed her lips seeing his exasperation with her. They weren't on the same wave length, just a few inches to the left of each other and what she felt was static. She let the discomfort ride. Discomfort could be instructive in its abrasion, in its tendency to peel back dead layers.

"No, right. I get that. We can. That's not what I meant," she said gently.

"I mean, when it comes to your -- 'gift' sounds insipid and I hate it and I'm sorry -- what you do, what you said comes naturally, the mind-reading and all those stars. Just do it. I don't care."

Nemo shrugged and furrowed her brow, feeling very convicted in that. Why should her friend have stifle himself? Of course, she wasn't giving him permission to just go strolling in whenever he felt like it, and Nemo hoped he understood that. She nudged his foot with hers.

"You don't have to keep your hands over your ears around me. S'all I'm saying. That's the most honest we can be, right?"

She lifted her eyebrows at Virgil who looked like he might cry. She crossed her arms feeling like she shouldn't touch him again.

             "You don't have to keep your hands over your ears around me. S'all I'm saying."

He looked at her rather seriously for a moment, unaccustomed to being given permission. Virgil was mored used to asking forgiveness. It meant a lot - and not just to him, he could see that it was a big deal for Nemo even if she was trying to be really cool about it. She wanted him to be comfortable, wanted them to be comfortable around each other. Not many could or would say the same. Sometimes it felt like he was born to throw people off-kilter.

"Okay." Virgil nodded, crossing his arms over his knees and hiding his face in them. "Okay, thank you..." he mumbled as he pulled himself together, uncertain of when he had started falling apart in the first place. What was wrong with him? Even being at home with his parents hadn't solved it; Edgar and Angela would always be there to help but they weren't the right people for it. All they could do was hold him. And he didn't want to be held, not now.

When the young wizard looked up again, chin on the tops of his bony knees, he nudged his foot back at hers and smiled gently.  "Sorry. It's been a difficult couple of... difficult few months. It's nice being up here with you, away from the rest of it all."

Nemo was good at sitting in quiet, good at existing in the exposed and awkward. It was disarming though, seeing a boy feeling something. Growing up, the boys had derided feelings and passion, laughing when they managed to push a girl to shouting. Here now, she chose her people better. Here, now, she hardly knew anyone younger than twenty. She didn't know how to comfort V, or even if she should, so she let it be until he was ready.

And soon, he seemed to be. He looked young like this, like maybe they were in a make-shift fort in the woods. But they weren't - they were on a tall tower in the middle of one of Europe's business cities, high in the air and no one knew where they were. As far as she knew, it was only her, Virgil and Lazarus who'd been out here.

"Yea, it's pretty wild," she agreed. She tried to decide whether to ask him more but then decided he'd tell her if he wanted. That's what they were agreeing on. Instead, she moved onto her knees and pulled over her always-bulky bag. She rooted around - obviously bigger on the inside - and soon pulled out her tarnished accordion. Nemo got settled again, sitting up on the edge of the roof, propping her foot up on the battlement.

She began to quietly play, just something gentle in her favorite key; she barely moved the bellows. The night sky sucked up the noise.

"Can't remember if I told you," she said, unable to keep her mind away from the edge. "But this is were I met that vampire. Lazarus."

Nemo didn't seem upset about saying so. It had been intriguing. And the contrast to how he was then to when he'd played apart in their tragedy made her mind swirl.

Something in him calmed at the sight of Nemo's accordian and he thought: there is always music. The world could be ending but were will always be music and they must never forget it. Before he was even born, lullabies sang to a swollen belly, there was melody and rhythm. And long after he died - Merlin knew when - there will be voices, a funeral hymn.

            "Can't remember if I told you...But this is were I met that vampire. Lazarus."

Virgil turned his head and looked right at her. His chest thrummed anxiously, calmed again. Lazarus, who rose from the dead. Was that actually his name or a poetic joke? The vampire who had saved Nemo by telling Hooker to bite him instead, and stick her with a needle or whatever it was. He still couldn't tell if that night had been a blessing or a curse.

"Lazarus, Lazarus, fanged and pale," he half-sang in a falsetto voice as he hugged his knees tighter. "Looking out for mortals, hearty and hale..." Virgil trailed off, humming along to the accordion for a second. Perhaps a blessing. Nobody had forced them to go to Camden and without Nemo's friend something even worse might have happened. He could have been turned or she could have been drained or...

Or whatever Terry Hooker did to people in the back room of his pub. "Tell me about meeting him," Virgil finally asked.