“You could prevent it,” she said, fumbling in her pockets until she pulled out a small, orange bottle. Cithrel couldn’t believe what they were seeing. “If you take it now - as in right now - you won’t have one.”

“I’ll fucking never-”

Their vision went black almost instantly. It always felt like falling, but they didn’t notice when Astra caught them.

It happens again.

They wake up in the hospital, and Astra is sitting in the same beige chair. This time Cithrel spoke through the fog. “Stop taking me here.” Astra flinched at the words, looking up from her homework to find that they were awake.

“Deal with it,” she said, highlighting something in her textbook. “I’m not going to leave you and let you get brain damage. I won’t neglect you - even if you’re kind of an asshole.”

Cithrel’s retorted, “I already have brain damage.”

The book slammed shut and Astra nearly threw it to the ground. She likely would have, had Cithrel not been sensitive to sound. “You could have stopped it years ago! Do you not understand that I don’t want you to get worse? That you’ve already gotten worse since last semester?”

It’ll kill them in a decade - that’s what they had been told at home, bitter words seeping into their skin even as a child, even when it had first started and they didn’t know what was happening. 

“You won’t even make it to thirty.” 

Cithrel was seventeen. They probably didn’t even have a decade. Their death followed them like a shadow in the corner of their eye, always lingering. One day it wouldn’t linger - one day Cithrel would choke on their vomit or bite through their tongue or-

“It’s worse than usual.”

Cithrel flinched a little, realizing that the nurse was holding their arm, placing a bandage over it and speaking to Astra. They stared unblinkingly at the empty syringe in her gloved hand. 

“When did-” Cithrel swallowed. “Did I-?”

“No,” the nurse said, a little amused. “Well, you weren’t exactly with us, but you didn’t have the ones you usually do. I gave you an anticonvulsant - it’ll last until next week, and then you’ll need to continue taking your normal medication, provided this one works for you.”

Time was skipping over and over, Cithrel realized, out of their control worse than ever. For once, it scared them. Astra must have noticed this, scooting closer to them the moment they were alone. “You can tell me why you don’t want to take it,” she said. “Because I know you’re more afraid than you’ll let on, yet you ignore the one thing that could help you.”

“I-” So many deaths. Cithrel had barely known their mother, but they had lived with their aunt. And then she died too. It didn’t matter how they grew up, really, but it mattered that there had been none in their family to survive the disease that ran rampant. It felt almost infectious, crawling into their brain once their last victim was dead, a gluttonous parasite only ever wanting more. “There’s too much.”

“Could you at least try?” 

“It’s-” a sense of ache and unraveling within them caused long ago. Time moved slower at home but now it was impossibly fast. “Familial,” was all they could manage to say, unable to stop thinking about it all, about back home. They should have never been allowed to stay in that house - not after the accident that-

It made little sense, but it was enough to satisfy Astra. She frowned as if trying to understand, though she sat in silence. 

120.

125.

130.

At 135 Astra looked at the heart monitor, a cold feeling washing over her. “Are you alright?”

Cithrel did not speak, meeting Astra’s eyes for the first time before looking away again. “Don’t - don’t watch.”

Neither of them wanted to admit what it meant for Cithrel, whom had just had the medicine that should have worked. Neither of them wanted to admit that something was very, very wrong. That perhaps the years of neglecting themselves had consequences.

For the first time, Cithrel and Astra were not alone in the room, for just as their eyes glazed into blackness, they saw Jasper bursting in. And it was Jasper whose eyes widened with horror, looking to Astra like a lost puppy.

Whose body is this?

What did it lose?

Why is it grieving?

“You’re okay,” they opened their eyes to see not only Astra but Jasper with them, though Jasper was more terrified, his voice shaking as he held their hand. For once they didn’t pull away, allowing him to do whatever he thought helped. The doctor was saying something a bit urgently to Astra, who nodded along, but to them it sounded like crashing syllables and nothingness. Staccato sounds unsensible in their ears, but somehow Jasper was the only thing that came through.

“How long?” He asked, trying to perhaps distract them though he was doing it badly. How long have you been sick?

Lifelong. Forever. Chronic. Permanent. None of those words came forward. The two in the back stopped conversing to look at them. They were quiet but they usually answered. Now there was nothing. 

“Cithrel,” Astra said slowly, approaching when the doctor turned to speak to a nurse, glancing back to watch.. They were usually combative afterwards, though only to strangers. He had learned from a lot of punches. “Tell me your name.”

It was a trick question, but they still froze. There was nothing. They felt like a ghost, like nothing at all, like a body that just sprung from the earth with a blank canvas. Jasper seemed to go rigid, looking back at Astra in practically hysteria.

“Do you know what year it is?”

Nothing. It could have been the Era of the Shadowbringing one millennia ago.

The doctor was writing quickly, talking to a nurse on the side. Something about brain damage and a lot of words. Astra was thinking of what to do when Jasper approached, having been nervously pacing.

“Do you know our names?”

They did, and all of a sudden the fog cleared. They opened their mouth and only air came out. The vocal cords did not move, rigid as their body often was. Cithrel’s eyes widened and for the first time, they grabbed Astra’s arm, their hands shaking. They tried again and nothing happened, though they weren’t entirely sure if they were even doing it right. 

“You can’t speak,” Astra said, holding their hand as if they hadn’t been a massive asshole for months. She turned to the doctor in the first hostile motion they had ever seen. “You. Explain what’s going on with them.”

“It’s - if they cannot speak at all, then it's a mutism. Usually it gets resolved within a few months-”

“‘Usually?’ And what happens if it doesn’t get resolved? Can it be fixed?” Jasper asked. He had only just discovered their secret, their sickness, but he was already defending them. Cithrel was breathing in terrified breaths, trying to not vomit but ultimately failing, swiping at Jasper’s leg until he got the can nearby. 

Ten minutes ago they were speaking.

Now there was silence. 

–

No one that Cithrel knew could use sign language - including themselves. Though Astra and Jasper accompanied them to the classes, the first week was more lonely than they had anticipated. They spoke little anyways, never wanting to reveal the stutter and sudden loss of words that plagued them, but now there was nothing they could do.

And all at once, their secrets went from the Headmaster and their roommates, to every professor they had. The first secret was the disease. The second was the lack of speaking. Every professor stared at them without ever meaning to, knowing what had happened. One tried to remark that it had its benefits, for archers lived longer if they were silent.

Cithrel, even if they could speak, had no possible response for that. 

They did not want to be treated differently, but now they were treated like glass. The only upside was that Kylantha knew sign language for some ungodly reason.

The first week that they could finally understand a good amount of the language, having learned a lot faster than Astra and Jasper, Kylantha spoke to them after class. She waited until everyone had filed out, asking to speak to them in a flat, professional tone that had even Astra leaving. All at once the loneliness disappeared, all with a simple, “How are you now?”

Cithrel responded despite the shaking of their hands, though it was not from any looming threat but from the simple tears that filled their eyes, frustration of everything they had been through finally boiling to the surface. They responded in the only way they could manage. “There has never been any good.”

Kylantha sat for a moment as if unsure of what to do, not having been trained in how to deal with one of the most quiet students suddenly sobbing in front of them. She did not touch them, merely offering a napkin from her desk drawer before moving to sit with them. When Cithrel was finally themselves, when it was all over and they were a bit humiliated from it, Kylantha said, “I’ve seen your file.” 

It was all she had to say. Students went through an extensive background check without ever knowing of it, but Cithrel knew what would be on theirs. A hunting trip up north in a town with no future. An uncle with his back turned towards his neglected niece. 

An uncanny sense of aim and a sickness. One that could only be cured with vengeance.

It had been written off as a hunting accident. No one wanted to blame the frail girl who had been forced to wield a shotgun twice her size, especially when the town knew of the disease she inherited. 

But Kylantha knew of the old Wynmenor who had been arrested for domestic cases. She knew what Cithrel had probably done. 

“Why tell me?” Cithrel asked, unable to portray how angry they were - at him, at Kylantha, at the fucking school and the hospital and-

“Has anyone ever been kind to you? Has anyone tried convincing you that it’s not abnormal?”

Maybe Kylantha would leave the safety of her classroom and go straight to the Headmaster, to declare that Cithrel was too broken, too wrong, to ever be a Guardian. It didn’t matter if they could hit a bullseye and survive in the woods if their brain was wrong.

They started their story knowing that there was no one left to distrust, that this was rock bottom and that if they could dig deeper, that this would be it. Cithrel tried to steady their hands. “It was the bathtub.”

It was when they were twelve - maybe younger, maybe older - and needed to shower. Their last incident had left them drenched in a cold sweat and they smelled like the floor - dirt and dust and whatever else came from an uncle who hated cleaning. They went into the bathroom and found it dismantled, the shower head missing and only a clean spot on the wall remaining where it had been. The rest of the walls were a dingy yellow, stained from decades of cigarette smoke. 

Their uncle was smoking another cigarette on the couch when he said, “If you think you’re so different than ‘em, then you shouldn’t worry about the tub. It’ll be fine, won’t it?” 

He was always mocking them and every time, it sent hot anger up their spine until they couldn’t see past the desire to run. Later it turned into the desire to kill him. Later, they stopped fighting it. 

So Cithrel had ran the bathwater, steaming hot on white porcelain. It was not drowning that often killed people like them. 

They stood and the blood rushing from having been leaned over is what done it. Their vision went black before they could brace themselves, falling backwards, backwards, into the tub. They didn’t remember the back of their skull hitting it, staining the sides and the water red - all red all around them. 

When they woke up, the water was to their mouth, and they gasped and found mostly air. It had been cruel, they thought, to have survived - but they didn’t survive. Not really.

It had been the only time they had been taken to the hospital, because the blood wouldn’t stop until they thought they would be drained of it, their paper-thin skin pasty white. Death should have came. They shouldn’t have been saved with fifteen stitches and the news that the hit would likely cause the condition to worsen. 

Kylantha was misty-eyed as she waited for Cithrel to finish, and then was pulling them into a tight hug. Cithrel nearly fought back until they gave in, allowing themselves to be buried in it, finding that it was more comforting than they wanted to admit. 

“I’m glad you left,” she said. “I’ll have the Academy do anything they can for you - or else.”

Cithrel realized that they were glad, too. At first the Academy meant having a place to go and a way to escape their hometown. Now it meant much more. 

–