Anwyll woke to the world slowly. The first thing he registered were soft sheets against his skin and the warmth provided by a thick blanket. His fingers caressed the blanket curiously before he even knew the difference between awake and asleep. It was soothing, and heavy. Heavier than it should have been. Neither him nor Orion owned that kind of blankets.

The smell surrounding him didn’t match with Orion or his apartment’s either. It was scentless, oppressively so, but mingling in it was a hint of familiarity, nostalgic even. He had spent many hours and days surrounded by this smell when he was younger, all the way to adulthood. Smell of books and chocolate and flowers. Once, he had known the names of the flowers, because they were the ones Jay grew in her room and dried the petals of when they fell. Lavender, orchids, different citruses and eventually mint and other herbs and Anwyll had lost track of what was what.

Regardless, the smells were familiar and comforting. Enough so that blinking his eyes open was just a bit easier. At least until the point where the bright light hit his eyes and sent a spike of pain into his head, forcing his eyes back closed. The annoyed groan he made was more of an exhausted breath and when he turned his head to hide from the light, the movement was sluggish and slow just like his thoughts.

Soft sound of shifting fabrics drew his attention to his left side, even when he couldn’t quite make himself open his eyes again just yet.

“Anwyll?” The voice was familiar just like the smells. Soft and calming like lavender. Anwyll had not heard that voice for months, even when before he didn’t go more than few days at most without hearing it. “Are you awake?” Sudden, overwhelmingly wistful and hopeful emotion washed through him and made him open his eyes despite the flare of pain from the light. It took him a moment to make sense of shapes in the glaring, white light filling the room. Then his eyes focused on the dark brown hair tied in a ponytail, the color broken by stripes of white from the dye. A pair of familiar blue eyes stared back at him, filled with concern and relief.

“Hey.” The word came out as a rasping sound and Jay smiled at him warmly, before reaching for a glass of water at the night stand. Plain wood, white. Hospital equipment. His thoughts stilled for a moment as he stared at the table.

He couldn't remember the last time he had been to a hospital. His dad didn’t often take him to the hospital, preferring to pay for a home visit instead. The foreign environment made him look around, the question “why am I here” on the tip of his tongue, before he realized the person he was looking for wasn’t there. It was unnerving on its own, even without taking into account the place he was in.

Jay reached over to help Anwyll to sit up when he didn’t move and the gesture snapped Anwyll from his thoughts. His chest felt tight in a way he didn’t want to linger on, so he took the glass of water from Jay eagerly.

The coldness washing through his mouth made him realize just how parched he was and the thought made him wake up a bit more. Enough to realize that the annoying feeling on his arm was a needle attached to a tube, just above his bandages, leading to an IV. He blinked at the sight a few times, trying to comprehend it, before Jay took the glass from him.

He had never been attached to an IV before either.

“They gave you a remarkable amount of stitches on both arms,” Jay told him, gesturing at Anwyll's wrists. Anwyll blinked again, before looking down at the bandages again. Stitches. He lingered on the word, trying to remember what it meant. The memory came to him slowly, not helped by the fact that he had never seen a professional doing the stitching. Granted, Orion had never complained about Anwyll's handwork.

Nor had he asked Anwyll to ever do it again. Anwyll could only hope it was because there was no need to.

Lingering on the thought, he did remember having stitches of his own, a long time ago. He had tried to forget, but the memory of the pain emerged and mingled with more recent memory. His arms ached and throbbed with pain and for a moment he wasn’t sure where the pain was coming from, until he remembered the knife, flash of metal against his skin and the sharp, burning pain-

The water threatened to come up as he drew a sharp breath and clutched his arms to his stomach, wincing when the movement tugged uncomfortably at the needle in his arm. As soon as the memory came, he wanted to forget it and welcome back the fogginess in his mind. He just wanted to not think about it, just wanted to not feel it, just-

“Hey,” Jay’s voice remained calm, but now tinted with concern as he grabbed Anwyll’s arm gently. Anwyll flinched, expecting a different voice and different touch that would help him press the blade down. He felt sick.

It made sense now that Koresh wasn’t there. Maybe he thought Anwyll had died.

“No,” he said, but his voice was barely a whisper. He was shivering and he didn’t realize he had pushed the blankets down until Jay started tugging them back up again. That’s why it had felt so heavy, Anwyll realized. It was many blankets, rather than just one.

“You’re okay,” Jay told him, still calm, reassuring and Anwyll latched on to the words when he felt Jay slide her hand lower to grab Anwyll’s hand instead.

Her fingers were more slim and graceful than Koresh’s and Anwyll clung to it as if it was a lifeline, even though it felt more like a replacement.

I’m okay. He just needed to focus on something else, to find something to distract himself. To think about anything else than the suffocating feeling forming in his chest. Jay’s hand against his felt warm and the contrast made him realize his trembling was because of the cold. He gripped her hand tighter as if he could seep in the warmth from her. Her hand was soft, the only callouses and hardened skin at the sides of her index finger from writing. Her nails were still as polished as they had been when Anwyll had last seen her, painted with a subtle, warm brown paint. It was the only color Anwyll and her had managed to paint Anwyll’s nails with when they were younger and not have Anwyll’s dad scold him for it.

Jay’s hands looked professional, just like her collared shirt and jeans and unlike her worried expression and unbrushed hair and lack of makeup.

Perfect opposite from Orion.

“You worried us,” Jay said silently, when Anwyll started easing his grip on her hand, his heartbeat slowing down again. He could feel Jay’s pulse under his fingers, her skin warm against his. It had been a long while since the last time someone warm with a beating heart had touched him. 

It had been a long time since he had even seen Orion, much less touched him and in that brief moment Anwyll missed him so much his chest ached.

“Sorry,” Anwyll said, voice still a bit rough, “didn’t mean to.” Worried expression lingered over Jay's face as her eyes dropped back down on Anwyll's wrists. She brushed her thumb over the edge of the bandages there and Anwyll’s stomach twisted painfully again at the gesture.

“I wasn’t trying to,” he had to trail off to steady his voice when he locked his eyes with Jay’s. The words refused to come out and he tried to convey his meaning with his eyes.

 Jay’s eyes were still disbelieving as she gazed back at Anwyll and Anwyll pushed himself to sit up straighter, his breaths trembling slightly. The cold attacked him as soon as the blankets pooled down and he hunched his shoulders as if it would help him retain his body heat.

“I wouldn’t do something like that,” he said, trying to hide the pleading undertone of his voice as he squeezed Jay’s hand. It was the truth, he told himself, but a whisper lingered in his ears, exhaustion weighing on his limbs, in his mind. Was he trying to convince himself or Jay?

The whisper sounded unmistakably much like Koresh, because he hadn't been wrong. Anwyll was exhausted. And he had never pulled away from Koresh. He had been the one to hold the knife.

At the rising nausea, he told himself to stop thinking about it.

Jay nodded slowly, but averted her eyes again before Anwyll could tell if it meant she believed Anwyll or not. Perhaps she could see the doubt Anwyll felt.

“You disappeared for months, Anwyll. Years,” Jay said, her voice still silent and calm, “Then Cadell calls me, telling me he got a call from the hospital. We didn’t know what to think. Still don’t. These were… Pretty obviously self-inflicted.” Anwyll shook his head anxiously even before Jay had finished, frowning.

“He made me do it,” he explained, but the words sounded feeble even to his own ears and something heavy formed in his throat, blocking whatever other explanations might have slipped out.

He made me do it. Koresh. It sounded unbelievable even to him, someone telling him to cut his wrists open and him doing it against his will. But that was what had happened, right?

“You’re tired of the ghosts.” Anwyll shook his head to shake off the whisper in his ears. “You’ve done enough. You should rest.” The words were something he had yearned to hear, but it didn’t mean Anwyll actually wanted to do it.

“Who?” Jay asked, shaking Anwyll from his thoughts. The concern evident on her face had grown more severe and her shoulders were tense. Her fingers tightened ever so slightly around Anwyll’s, but it didn’t feel restraining as much as it felt protective. When Anwyll didn’t immediately respond, didn’t know how he was supposed to, Jay frowned.

“They said you were there alone when they found you,” she added carefully. The word they made Anwyll look at her curiously, itching to ask who she was talking about, but he held it back for now. Diversion and distraction were easy, but he cared about Jay more than that.

Instead he inspected the patterns on the sheets the wrinkles created and twisted them under his fingers.

“A ghost,” he responded silently, not daring to look up. He knew if it had been his father or Cadell, they’d insist ghosts couldn’t touch him, couldn’t hurt him, couldn’t do anything to him. Jay never had told him that. Jay had always listened, always lingered on the scratches and bruises on Anwyll’s skin. In return, Anwyll had never hidden anything from her regarding his Gift. She never said she thought Anwyll would hurt himself, so out of anyone, she would be the one to believe him now.

He didn’t realize he had tensed or that his hands were sweating until Jay brushed her fingers soothingly over the back of Anwyll’s hand.

“Which one?” she asked instead and Anwyll had to draw a deep breath to fight against the suffocating relief that washed over him. Relief over the fact that she believed him and didn’t tell him he was imagining things and sadness and regret, because Jay would know who Anwyll was talking about.

Anwyll dared a glance up at her. Her blue eyes shimmered in the bright white hospital light, shadowed by her bangs as she waited for him to respond.

“The one I told you about,” he said, nervous. He parted his lips to continue, but the name refused to leave his lips. Kor, Koresh. His ghost friend. The one Anwyll had talked endlessly to Jay about whenever he could do so without Koresh eavesdropping.

“Kor?” Jay asked and hearing his name from her made Anwyll’s breath hitch. He nodded, not trusting his voice. Brief silence followed as if Jay expected him to say more and Anwyll searched for words to say. Because there was nothing more to say. Nothing more, yet so much the words got caught in his throat when he tried to make sense of them.

I trusted him.

His chest swelled with emotion he couldn’t name, but that made him feel like he was suffocating, like he couldn’t breathe. It blurred his vision and made him grasp on to the bed tighter, worried he might fall if he didn’t hold on.

“I trusted him,” he whispered the words out loud, hoping it would make breathing easier, wishing it would make his heart ache less. It didn’t. Instead he bit his teeth together to hold back the overwhelming anxiety, anger and grief that followed the words.

“I’m sorry,” Jay told him in the kind of voice that told Anwyll she didn’t know what else to say. Anwyll nodded anyway, his jaw starting to ache from the force he was biting his teeth together. He told himself to relax, not to cry, not to be angry, take deep breaths.

All his efforts were shattered under the weight of the facts. That the person he had trusted the most had made him try to kill himself.