I spent the next several minutes assembling the kit for my impromptu examination. The room was so familiar that I could have moved through it blindfolded, my hands knowing exactly where to find every pipette or vial. But every time I moved I felt Kit’s gaze like a blade in my ribs.

He stayed right where I had left him: perched on the edge of the counter, arms around his stomach as if to hold himself together. Small, and shivering, the tension in his body never dissipated as he watched me like a hawk. If I didn’t know better, I never would have assumed he was capable of violence. Not this fragile thing, a beautiful mess so artfully dishevelled, his dark hair falling into his eyes and his lips wet and bitten.

But I knew what kind of hatred could fill those dark round eyes, the kind of venom that could spill past those full blushed lips… the kind of pain those thin, elegant fingers could bring.

I grimaced, trying not to look at him for too long. If I did, I might lose the momentum I’d scraped together. The image of a hardened alchemist who wouldn’t tolerate any further nonsense. The last thing I needed was for Kit to see how truly rattled I was. My neck throbbed, and I caught myself absentmindedly rubbing the bruised flesh. The bruises were tender, aching, but there was something else beneath my anxiety and grim determination- a residual exhilaration, the feeling of barely having survived a storm… and a dark, dangerous desire to see another.

Frustrated, I slammed the drawer shut with unnecessary violence, seeing Kit flinch from the corner of my eye. The sterilized silence between us was shattered with quiet clinks and scrapes as I gathered the last few things I needed- various glass vials, calibrated syringes, and a simple but precise rune-inscribed scalpel. The sight of the cold metal made my stomach churn, memories of all the other times I had used it in this room barely kept at bay.

It was for survival. I had to remind myself of that. Just as Kit had spent over a decade running, I had spent my time in this basement, fighting for the right to see another day. And in the end, we had both resorted to equally cruel methods to spur us on to the next morning.

With no more excuses to delay, I turned to Kit with my tray carefully balanced on my hands, the usual array for preliminary bloodwork and tissue sampling arranged in neat sections with sampling jars.

Kit’s gaze finally rose for more than a fleeting glance, and his lips thinned with suspicious distaste. His hands were wedged between his knees, glare razor-sharp. He looked like a portrait of anger, but I could see what was underneath. The chill to his expression, a blankness to his gaze- the way he’d retreated, mentally, to some bunker far below the surface. His eyes never left me, but I could tell he was holding on by a threat.

Desperately trying to protect himself from the same innate, biological temptation that made my fingers twitch against the cold metal, my throat working as I sternly reminded myself Kit was just another tool. An expensive and fragile one I could not risk shattering.

I set the tray down gently on the counter next to Kit, careful not to knock over any of the glass. As I arranged the tools and vials on the counter, he watched me for a few moments before something prompted him to break the silence. 

“What are you going to do?” There was fear in his voice, of course- but also an undercurrent of curiosity that tempered the dread.

I looked up, an eyebrow raised, and he quickly looked away. “I need to gauge how much damage you’ve inflicted by taking that potion so regularly. Once I know, I’ll be able to begin working on a counteragent for the poison in your system.” I fidgeted with the arrangement of the vials one last time before I couldn’t delay any longer. Picking up one of the syringes, I held my other hand out to Kit. When he raised an eyebrow at me, I sighed, saying, “Give me your arm.”

Kit blinked, then narrowed his eyes. “You expect me to just… let you stab me?”

“You just had your hands around my throat, and you’re squeamish about a noddle?” I couldn’t stop my lips from curling in a bemused smirk. “Besides, you’ve survived far worse, haven’t you? This should be nothing in comparison to poisoning yourself every morning, or being paraded onstage as a good for sale.”

His gaze sharpened, the stormcloud gray of them growing colder. He deliberated for a moment, then gritted his teeth and rolled up the sleeve of the shirt I’d given him, thrusting his arm out as if the very idea of me touching his skin insulted him. 

His forearm was narrow and slender, his skin so pale I could clearly see the delicate mapping of blue veins just beneath it. It struck me again how withered down Kit was: gaunt, thread-bared, as if each day had stolen a little more from him. I had seen more signs of life in the morgue, sometimes, than on the living man sitting in front of me. 

I pressed my lips into a thin line as I picked up the small length of elastic to wrap around his bicep, Kit making a fist on instinct. I tried not to think about what that meant- what he had gone through before his parents escaped with him. It seemed obscene, almost, to put that needle to his unmarked skin… like debasing holy ground.

I tried to be swift and clinical, cleaning a spot with alcohol before gently inserting the needle into his arm. To my surprise, Kit didn’t even flinch. The only reaction was a rapid little twitch of his jaw, his gaze fixed on the opposite wall, as if he were determined not to betray even a single sign of pain. I kept the needle in place as I attached the first vial, watching the glass slowly fill with crimson.

“Relax your hand,” I murmured. When he didn’t respond, I grasped his curled fingers, working mine between them until they had straightened. His skin was cool against mine, his ashen eyes widening in shock- but his hand relaxed, and the blood flowed quicker.

I released him, working in silence as I drew three vials from him before removing the needle and pressing a bit of gauze to the crook of his elbow. Kit pressed it in place without direction, wincing slightly at the pressure. His gaze followed me as I arranged the vials in their rack, runes inscribed on their translucent surface glowing slightly as they ensured the blood would stay fresh.

Though I’d done this dozens-hundreds- of time, I hesitated with the next step. There was nothing pleasant about taking tissue samples, especially from living subjects. I picked up the scalpel and met Kit’s gaze, waiting for him to object.

He didn’t.

He watched the way I moved, tracking every motion with silent intensity. Only when I took his wrist in my hand did the tiniest tremble run through his fingers, a subtle warning that tension still coiled beneath the facade of compliance. I could have pressed that weakness, dug for a reaction until he was shaking and tearful. It would have been simple to act in my role as my grandfather’s prodigy and prove he feared me as much as any other ‘subject’ that had been on my table.

But there was something about this one, the core of steel still visible in his eyes despite his anxiety, that made me loathe to do it. That made me crave something else that would never grow in the wake of cruelty and abuse.

So I steadied his hand in mine, trailing my thumb lightly over the heel of his palm. The flesh was thicker, pillowy under my touch- the first bit of softness I had found in this man full of spite and sharp edges. “You’ll want to brace yourself,” I murmured. “This will sting.” It was the closest I could come to an apology, but I gave him no time to react before the scalpel pushed into his flesh.

The runes worked into the metal made it impossibly sharp, slicing through skin and muscle like wet tissue paper. The shock of the first cut made Kit twitch, a shallow gasp escaping his lips- but still, not a sound. I saw the flash of his teeth as he gritted them together, refusing to allow me any further reaction as I worked.

I made it quick; small, neat cuts less than a centimeter in length, just below the base of his thumb. The blood welled up instantly, a bright crimson that seemed to shimmer against his pale skin. Kit closed his eyes, giving up his vigil so that he wouldn’t have to see me extract the small bit of flesh from his palm and place it in a small glass dish. I did it twice more, beads of sweat breaking out on Kit’s forehead as I made each incision with careful swiftness.

Seeing Kit tolerate the procedure so well, absent any kind of pain medication because it could make the results unreliable, made me contemplate exactly how many times he’d been forced through something like this. I wondered, with a queasy twist of my stomach, how often he’d been examined like this before his parents risked- and ultimately sacrificed- their lives for his freedom.

I felt uneasy as I put the lids on the containers, more runes glowing with alchemical magic as they preserved the samples. Kit shivered as I applied small patches over the wounds, his lips curling with disgust as the formula of the medicine imbued in the bits of fabric molded them to his flesh like a second skin. I watched the fingers of his other hand twitch toward his palm as if he were tempted to pull them off before he obviously forced himself to relax.

“Finished?” he grated out the word, his tone strained and stiff.

“Yes,” I murmured, stepping away from him and picking up the tray.

I crossed around the counters, all stocked with the materials I needed, and chose the one on the opposite side of the room from him. I hoped that putting a physical barrier between us would help ease the tension in the room, but Kit just sat perfectly still, staring at the place my scalpel had been a moment before as I hunched over the vials to begin the first round of analysis.

I tried to ignore him as I worked. It should have been easy. This was what I was good at- this was what, in my grandfather’s eye, made me worth keeping around even as he’d whittled the rest of me down to bone. I prepared my reagents, drew out droplets of Kit’s blood with a glass pipette, and carefully inscribed the circle of runework which would allow the reagents to color-code for specific toxins and structural breakdowns. My hands were steady, my mind impossibly focused… but I couldn’t block out the sensation of Kit’s energy filling the basement lab, a silent stormcloud threatening my one safe space.

I had thought I knew what I was getting myself into, but I was realizing more with every moment that I had not bought myself a silent, obedient test subject- a tool I could use as easily as my grandfather used me. And there was a foolish, arrogant part of me that was thrilled it wouldn’t be so easy.