Mess looked Lu over and seemed to decide to follow Adon’s cryptic message and trust him to come back unharmed, pulling Lu’s heavy arm up and dropping it over his own shoulder like he was assisting a patient, “come on bird-boy, we have a restaurant to clean up.” He sent Euri to Lu’s other side—it made them feel better to walk him down like a prisoner, calling him gimpy the entire way though they were the ones limping through the Mid-Gate, Lu practically carrying them into Nyx’s, following Euri’s lazy direction. They’d been out looking for Adon for the two days he’d been in the Med bay and the only reason Lu didn’t feel guilty about that too was that there was no possible way for him to have reached Mess, and because he was certain Adon was in Mess’ emergency contact list, but like everyone else in Adon’s life, Mess had thought his brother indestructible, a line of tallies that would never run out.

“Don’t worry, if Adon doesn’t kill them, I think Nyx will,” Euri snorted as Lu dumped them into the nearest bench and reached for the med kit sitting on the bar where they’d left it for Adon. 

Lu nodded patiently, unsure whether he’d missed a conversation or if the new kid was just speaking to break the stifling silence of the closed bar. 

“Are you telling him or me?” Mess grunted as Lu tugged up pant legs and found swollen ankles, a few raspberries, and a patch of nasty abrasions down Euri’s shin that cleaned up into a simple scrape. Lu wrapped a compression band carefully around Mess’ foot, Mess gripping Lu’s shoulder for stability, digging in ungrateful nails.

Euri chopped his hand between Mess and Lu, holding Mess up himself. “Doni’s survived worse,” he pet Mess’ hand and set it in his lap then eased Lu up, nodding toward the transport hub, “Xeri doesn’t like outsiders, and Nyx will kill us if we let someone else bleed on her floors.”

Lu glanced down but saw no blood. His sigh matched Mess’ at the reminder that they were both outsiders without Adon, but he thought of Orestes hypothetically sending his dumb friends after Adon’s brother (brothers?) just for being seen with them and nodded, agreeing to go as he eased blood flow back into sleeping limbs, both knees cracking.

Mess grabbed his arm, “don’t cut through Forest.”

Lu tried to hide his smile, ruffling Mess’ hair the way he used to, “I’m from here.”

Mess slumped away from him, “things change,” but he knew even though their clothes matched now, they were not the same kind of Midder. Lu-Bird was Gideon’s, then Adon’s, and maybe his own someday, but Mess had only ever belonged to himself, suddenly overwhelmed with a bitterness at Aphy who wanted for a mother, and a gratefulness to Doni who’d tried to be everything in order to give him that. He watched Lu leave, and realized it was what haunted the Grounders, they all had belonged to someone else first, and they could all only dream of belonging to themselves. Euri had belonged to Sias, then Adon, maybe a debt collector or two, and unlike Doni or Mess, Aphy had belonged to their mother first, abandoned. 

Mess realized how much of life was luck and digested a little more of the naive judgements he’d accidentally casted over his patrons. Nyx’s bar was just a place to belong to themselves for a minute, and he thought maybe that was the kindest thing to do for the world, maybe that had been why he’d wanted to follow Chandris into medical education, because in a way, doctors helped people belong to themselves too. Maybe someday Adon would be his own, not the brother supporting them, not the victim of his mother, not the burden of Lu-Lu, or the Finder, or the cryptid legend walking in Y’s wake. Maybe Adon could belong to himself and Mess would be absolved of his sin of being too young to understand. 

Lu stepped warrily around Euri and traipsed back up to wait with a cat he’d inadvertently started calling Adon, scuttling down alleyways and navigating abandoned corridors, only mistaking one deadend and getting lucky several times because he only knew a few ways back into the Mids from the Arcade side of the Ground that didn’t involve illegal sub riding on a bike he’d sold ages ago. He’d thought about traveling the rest of the way to the Wells and tracing a more familiar route from there, but he got close enough to Nika’s track that his nav system rebooted and guided him through the politics of shifting Ground districts in quiet shadow, avoiding Forest and what was left of Navy. 

He looked himself over, relieved to find no accidental sec-off neon greens that would clock him as an easy (or at least worthwhile) target because it was a popular color among higher Midders who’d grown up in the jewel toned preferences of their parents. Lu had always been habitually adverse to the neons of the Ground, avoiding sec-off green on instinct probably, and now he looked too muted, too monochrome, too blank, not a single interesting thing about him, no pins, no scarves, no patterns, no jewelry, only a tattoo scarring his back and a bleeding lip because he couldn’t stop picking at it to remind himself the past few days were real. Adon wasn’t coming to kill him. Adon had kissed him. Adon had told him he couldn’t hide forever, then run away with guns chasing. Adon had said he could escape the violence, and now all Lu could do was wait.

He trudged up the thumping grated stairs in a sour mood. There were a million reasons Grounders might jump him, and only one they wouldn’t. With each step up, he wished some arrogant threat would saunter out of the dark and he could release all the unease pent up inside him in self-defense. He wanted a matching chain like Mess and Euri, he wanted Adon waiting for him at home, safe and whole and healing. He wanted a coat that felt like his, but rejected the idea as the surly thought flitted through him. Coats that stood out were for people who knew how to run. Hiders needed plain wool that blended in. Besides, Gideon had forced him into every obnoxious new line of Heranika’s best sellers, and somewhere along the way, Lu had called that his identity. Anything decorated had become him, no matter who else threw it at him. He didn’t have the right to a fancy coat until he was sure he could step in and out of it himself. Besides, he had plenty of identifying details staining his back. 

He’d thought he would hate tattoos, but he didn’t hate Adon’s. Because Adon’s are his own you dumb fuck, he berated, annoyed that the concept of identity was so simple when observed in others, but frustratingly complex when he tried to apply it to himself. He understood the idea, the process, the redevelopment he had to do, but he had no way to start doing whatever actions actually created an identity. He had no idea how to belong even in his own home, because it was a home he’d built for a hundred Adons. 

Lu picked up a potted plant at a biodome in a night market on his way through the Mids, petting the cool leaves, marveling at the pink veins, pink like Adon’s hair, pink like Lu’s socks. 

He rode the rails and jogged through Peach, hoping to see his light on, his door askew, Adon curled in a chair, but there was only a temperamental orange cat bored of being alone, eagerly investigating its new housemate while Lu frantically searched to confirm it wasn’t poisonous. 

Adon was not waiting anywhere. 

Days passed and no one heard from him. 

Even Phaios was beginning to worry. 

☆☆☆