One year after Lumenaire transferred and blocked my number, Jasper approached me, guilt heavy in his eyes. Though he had been in Astra’s team, he had started a year early. Now he was to graduate.

Now he was to leave.

I did not grow to love Jasper until after I was alone, brotherless, with only Astra and - Gods forbid - Viscryn by my side. There was Cithrel, as well, but they often eluded me. They eluded everyone. 

I sat in their dorm when Jasper entered, almost knocking despite him living there. “Is everyone here?”

“No,” I said, a little curiously. I was half-lounging on the couch, trying to hide how lost I looked without Astra. She had left not long ago for her evening training, though she had told me to stay. When I had asked why, she merely slid her hand down from my forearm, to my wrist, to the tips of my fingers, grinning a little.

“Maybe it’s time we discuss something more than us,” she had only said, the glint of her glasses not hiding how she winked.

I was still trying to recover from that when he walked in, and then I noticed the opened envelope clutched in his shaky hands.

“Just you, Lavinia? Well,” he flopped down across from me on the opposite side of the couch, long legs sprawled and nearly squishing me in the process. When Lumenaire had left, I had taken the chance to go by Lavinia, for nothing was in my way, now. Even VIscryn switched names with ease, though now he complained about having to live with a girl. 

“Where’s Cithrel?” He asked, looking around and noticing their bow tossed haphazardly on the counter.

“Astra took them to the hospital this afternoon.” She did not tell me why, only looking impossibly worried when I had asked.

The look on Jasper’s face was enough to tell me that this was a secret kept between the three of them, for he worried at his bottom lip as he looked at their empty room. “That’s the third this week. Did she say what’s - uh-”

“I don’t know anything about Cithrel,'' I said quickly, knowing the importance of secrets and knowing that whatever it was, they did not want many people to know about. Astra said that they once fought her tooth and nail on the trip to the infirmary - so much so that she had to put them to sleep. If they did not want me to know yet, then I would not let Jasper tell it to me. 

“Ah.” He shifted a little uncomfortably, antsy as always. He practically bounced off of the walls at all hours - I used to hear the noise complaints he would get from the other end of the hall. Now he was serious, almost ashamed of something. “I … wanted to do this when the others were here, to make it easier, but we’re close enough that I don’t want to wait to tell you. I - um - I got this today.”

He handed me the letter, though I nearly dropped it when I spotted the signature: The Oberon Military. He seemed to wince when I looked back up at him, knowing what I would say - what all of us would say.

“You’d join them?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. Jasper, who cried when he stepped on a slug. Jasper, who stayed awake for over twenty-four hours to ensure Cithrel would be okay. Jasper, who broke curfew and stayed with me when Lumenaire left. This boy was someone I would have loved, if we did not love the other gender. This one was too soft for the military and for battle and guns. 

He paused, fiddling with a strand of his hair - the hair he conditioned. Military boys didn’t do that. “Y-Yeah. I thought - well - my family’s in Oberon, and they pay really well.”

“My family is in Ereachia,” I retorted, bitter for reasons we both knew, unfair as it may have been to say. “Am I running to join a band of fucking vagrants when I could be doing something useful?”

“The military - they do good things. They protect Oberon,” he ended his sentence almost like a question, as if even he were uncertain. 

“Are other people more dangerous than seruses?”

“There’s plenty of Guardians.” Now he was simply lying, in denial. God, Jasper was stubborn - and just stupid. “There’s nothing in Oberon except people who can’t protect themselves-”

“-Yeah. From seruses. Jasper, those things eat people. Why do you prefer war? Are you prepared to kill a person?” His eyes widened as he looked at me, shrinking away as I dropped the letter. 

“I - Chances are I won’t-” He swallowed thickly. “You aren’t being fair. You’re still bitter about-”

I stood up so quickly that he leaned back, looking up at me in perhaps surprise at his own words. “I’m being more fair than you are to yourself. You know of the horror stories of what fucked up men do to people like us.”

“People like-”

“You can have swords and shoot guns and fight people all you want, but the armor you wear won’t make you like women.” I spat the words like a curse and he flinched as it hit him, making me worry for only a second that I had used real magic on him. “You hate what you are so badly that it’ll get you killed in some random field in the middle of nowhere, when you could stay with us.”

Viscryn once called him a slur, slamming him against a locker because some fucking idiot claimed Jasper had been checking him out. A week before that, he had been crying to Astra about kissing a boy on a dare and not recoiling. Lumenaire had predicted it a year before it happened. Hell, even I knew, but I knew denial all too well.

Jasper tried to steel himself, looking away from my hard gaze and staring at the sword leaning against the kitchen wall. All of them had the habit of leaving their shit in the kitchen - it always drove Astra crazy when she’d try to cook. Now there would only be two of them - one if Cithrel stayed sick or broken or whatever had occurred.

“I was hoping that you wouldn’t care,” he finally said, his voice soft. “It’s not like I’m going to die.”

“If you believe that for certain, then you’re either stupid or a damn good psychic.” I headed towards the door, no longer recognizing this person who thought being gay was worse than being dead, shot through by another man. “If you do this, do not act like you know me. Not while you’re there - even if it means forever.”

I slammed the door shut and hurried towards my room in a whirlwind, only slowing when I nearly ran into Astra and a stumbling Cithrel, the latter of which looked furious. “I really don’t mean to embarrass you- oh!” Astra paused, noticing me with a fond look, a toothy grin that made her look almost childlike in her excitement. All for me. “Did you chicken out, then?”

I then remembered how she had looked when she first left. And then I realized just what she had been talking about. “Oh,” I said, my cheeks heating up. “I - It was unexpected, but - did you know about Jasper?”

She blinked, almost as if I were insinuating that I had fucked Jasper or that he somehow objected to me and her. “What about him?”

Cithrel was staring at me without even looking at me. It was unnerving. “Um - He wanted to talk to you two. About the military. Sorry, I’m a little nervous - are you upset with me?”

They blinked after too long, looking away almost instantly as Astra enveloped them closer with their arm. They looked like they wanted to recoil but something kept them near. “No.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Astra said after a moment of analyzing them. “I also plan on talking to Cithrel about a few things.”

The last thing I thought of as they left me at my door was that Cithrel had looked sick, pasty white with messy hair that looked not at all how it usually did. That and the steps they took to the dorm, supported almost entirely by Astra, were shaky.

–

I decided to go back to Ereachia after we had graduated, just before our gap year filled with training and deciding what to do with ourselves. A small handful, like Jasper, had gone to the military. It felt like a betrayal to the Academy, to the professors who had taught them everything. When Jasper left, they merged Viscryn and I to Astra and Cithrel’s dorm. 

It worked out well for the two of us. Perhaps less well for Viscryn and Cithrel - or so I thought. Cithrel had offered their bed to me immediately, despite the fact that I had grown used to living with Viscryn. He was kinder now, filled with the guilt of what he had done to Jasper. The magic scars on his hand told me what Astra had done to him shortly after, and the way he cowered around the girl so much smaller than him confirmed it.

Not long after Astra finally asked me out, Viscryn had emerged from his room with scratches on his shoulder, a large bruise on his collar bone. I was still oblivious, apparently, because I had gaped at him when I saw him. It had been late but I wasn’t able to sleep, thinking about Lumenaire as if it were an omen. He had not entered my thoughts for two years. Now he wouldn’t leave. 

Why, dear brother, did you haunt me?

“Are you alright?” I asked Viscryn, my eyes wide. “Was it - did you get into a fight?” There were scratches down his back, too.

He stared at me in confusion, the gentle glow of the open fridge illuminating his bare chest, his pajama pants just barely on his hip bones. He looked a little surprised to see me awake so late. “Oh, this?” He laughed as if remembering that it had taken me four years to realize that Astra had been flirting with me - that she had propositioned me. “Do you want the honest answer or do you wanna stay innocent?”

“What do you - oh.” I stopped. “Oh god. With - not with Cithrel in the room, surely?”

He laughed again, a harsh bark of laughter as he leaned on the counter. “Oh, no. With Cithrel.”

“I - oh, God. I didn’t think Cithrel liked men. Or, well - anybody, really.”

“They like me - a lot, I’d say-”

“Okay,” I stopped him, shuddering. “I don’t want to know this. At all, actually.” I grimaced as he snorted. “Do you - you don’t see them as a girl, do you? Because the person you’re … with - they aren’t one.” 

Viscryn scratched at the scar on his nose absentmindedly, shaking his head slightly. “Nah, I see ‘em as themselves, if that makes sense. I don’t know what that means for me and who I like, ‘cause I’ve only ever had a thing for them. I just didn’t want to go for it because - well - you know.”

I knew, now. Cithrel didn’t get the chance to tell me themselves. I found them in their room and took them to the hospital not long after I changed dorms. They had not looked at me for a week afterwards until Astra forced them to talk to me. 

“I’m sorry,” they had muttered, looking at their bitten nails.

“I should be the one apologizing,” I had said, trying to not look at them like they were sick, for they did not want to be. Astra wanted them to come to terms with it - I just wanted us to be somewhat friends again. “I didn’t mean to see - I just happened to-”

The glance they gave me told me to stop there, so I did. “No.”

It was something. They started hanging out with me - or rather, just near me - again. They were almost catlike in how they decided to sit near me as I read, not needing to talk to spend time with me. Astra had told me that it meant something if they did that.

That summer, our group would temporarily be splitting off to do our own training, though most of us had chosen to stay in Kanalion. I instead chose Ereachia, though Astra had looked concerned when I announced this. 

“If it’s to find Lumenaire, you should be prepared for the worst,” she said, nonetheless helping me pack, for she would always be there to support me - even if she fretted. “Because of how angry he was when he left, he may not want to be found. He also may not recognize you.”

“I’m not sure what I’ll do about the latter, but the least I could do is try to contact the Ereachian academy.” I stared at the ticket to my home country - the academy itself was only an hour away from our old home. I had not seen my mother in almost five years, afraid of what she might say that one of her beloved twins was now her daughter.

“I’m not sure what I’ll do with Cithrel and Viscryn without you,” she remarked with a grimace. “They’ve been … a lot lately.”

“I think he’s good for them. They at least attack him less when he tries to help them to the infirmary.” 

“He seems to like it when they do.” Astra frowned as both of us remembered the many times he walked around shirtless. It was horrid. After a quiet moment of looking over my things and making sure it was all ready, Astra grew a little nervous. “If you see Jasper - you’d at least try talking to him, wouldn’t you? I heard that there are some groups of five in the academy.”

Jasper was gone - he’d been gone, and yet all of us felt his absence. All of us missed him just as much as the first day, though I was hesitant to ever admit it. I couldn’t disappoint Astra, though. “If I see him, but Oberon is south of Ereachia - there’s not really a big chance he’d be there.”

Astra hesitantly agreed, as if her intuition told her otherwise - I myself had been more than a little anxious about the trip, though I merely chalked it down to nerves. As I boarded for Ereachia, I looked back and saw the three of them - my closest friends - waving at me. Even Cithrel, though they were considerably less sad than Astra. 

I wanted to be back within two weeks. 

I did not return until two months later.