how easy you are to need (redux) (7)
warnings: misunderstandings, feeling trapped, unhealthy thoughts about an assumed situation, death and injury mention, discussion of debts, unreliable narrator, virgil horribly misinterpreting yet another normal conversation, literally embarrassing levels of thick-headedness
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Letting his guard down around the humans was far, far easier than it should have been.
He still eased his defenses down slowly, bit by bit, of course, he wasn’t a complete fool. An understanding between him and Patton didn’t necessarily mean that the others felt the same.
They were humans, not shifters, after all, and while he could see the shape of a pack in their closeness, that didn’t mean he could assume the same principles would apply. They all took on equal responsibilities in maintaining and protecting their home, and none of the three had shown any particular indication that they were a designated envoy, meant to speak for the entire pack.
Frankly, with it only being the three of them, a lack of envoy wouldn’t have been too surprising even if they had been shifters. Some smaller packs forewent assigned roles, rotating them as needed, or were close-knit enough that they essentially acted as one whole, any individual able to speak for the pack.
The humans loved to bicker, though, and it would have been like a slap in the face to trust in Patton’s promise and then have them argue about it right in front of him. Instead, Virgil tested the firmness of the new ground he’d been offered with slow, tentative steps, like a deer crossing over a frozen lake. Better to take his time and test the ice than plunge right through.
Irritatingly, the humans made it far too easy for him to forget how precarious his standing was.
Even the simplest of interactions seemed to please them. When he’d responded to Patton’s friendly greeting for the first time, the morning after their midnight conversation, the human’s expression had lit up like a lightning bug at dusk. When he’d finally answered one of Logan’s questions during a meal, the scholar had blinked a few times in quiet surprise before smiling in a way that made his entire face look softer. When he’d pursed his lips and snapped out a sharp retort to something annoying Roman had said, the hunter hadn’t hesitated to needle him right back with friendly delight, the same as he did with the other two.
They were keeping him trapped here, because they were human and they knew better than to let a monster roam free in the woods around their home, but they didn’t want a starved prisoner or a ticket to easy riches. They wanted to offer him comfort and belonging in the time that he had left.
He’d saved them, and they were repaying it in the only way they could afford to.
It was pathetic, how relieved he felt. How genuinely grateful he was for the simple fact that he wasn’t being forced to relive the unending torment of his first imprisonment. How such basic offerings of food and warmth and companionship made it possible to ignore or even briefly forget about the executioner’s axe hoisted over his head.
He’d been on his own for a long time. Returning to that solitude would be its own kind of death, a slow and painful relearning of what it meant to be alone. He knew this, but tried not to dwell on it. He’d survived it once before, and he would again. Better to endure the loneliness than lose the safety of isolation.
So, he forced himself to keep focusing on methods of escape, on the ways this slowly-growing camaraderie would offer lapses in security, on the new freedoms he could take advantage of, and didn’t think about what he would do afterwards.
With this goal in mind, he immediately decided to test his luck by poking his nose where it didn’t belong.
He’d regained some mobility after another week of healing, though he kept his walking pace to a slow shuffle out of caution, and the humans still tended to hover like agitated honeybees whenever he was on his feet for too long. The cabin was small enough that he had mapped out most of it within a day or two, and now he approached the only room he hadn’t yet entered or peered into.
When he pushed the door of Logan’s workspace open, the human’s head snapped up immediately, wearing the beginnings of a frown. Once he saw that it was Virgil who stood in the doorway, though, the displeased turn of his lips faded away, replaced by eyebrows raised in intrigue.
“Hello,” he said, voice polite despite the interruption. “Is there something I can help you with?”
Of the three of them, Logan had been the most respectful in his formality, and so Virgil impulsively tested the bounds of that patience by not answering right away, instead letting his gaze drift over the room and its contents.
There were far more plants scattered about than he’d expected, though perhaps he should have expected as much from the dedication Logan tended his garden with. Pots of different shapes and sizes were settled on every inch of the window ledges, and planters hung from shelves and hooks on the ceiling alike. There was an entire corner of the room dedicated to racks of drying herbs and flowers, both wild and homegrown, which lent the room a pleasant dusty floral smell that almost covered up the sting of ink and chemicals.
There was a table against one wall, the shelves around it packed full with bottles of miscellaneous ingredients, all of them labeled in neat handwriting. The table itself was covered in neatly-organized supplies, with protective sigils carefully carved into the outer edge of the wood, keeping any experimentation contained. It stank less than he’d thought it would, for human magecraft, but then he hadn’t yet seen Logan doing any of the typical dissection and harvesting of supernatural creatures, either.
After the full moon, it would have the bitter tang of magic made through unwilling sacrifice, the distant preserved rot of bottled blood. Virgil would recognize the stench of post-harvest ingredients anywhere. Not that he’d be there to smell it, at that point. He forcibly pulled his attention away.
The last section of the room was less orderly than the rest, primarily due to the heaps of books that were stacked and shoved wherever there was space. Logan’s desk was the only semi-clear spot, and even that had a few precarious book towers sitting atop or alongside it. It was also covered in stacks of parchment, with lines and lines of writing or intricate diagrams sketched on the paper.
Logan sat behind it, still awaiting a response, those keen eyes watching him right back.
There was no sign of the lodestone for the ward around the cabin at first glance. He had known better than to think it would be that easy, though.
He hadn’t known that he would actually get this far, assuming that they wouldn’t want their magic prisoner sticking his nose in the most likely place to find a way out of their wards. Even Roman and Patton didn’t tend to disturb Logan too often when he was working in this space, so he’d assumed he’d only get a few moments to glance around at best.
“You haven’t been to the leyline crossing,” he said, because the silence had begun to grow awkward and he’d panicked and they really hadn’t, even though it was well past the usual time of the month they went.
Logan’s stare sharpened, which was probably a bad sign, but he only stood up to clear the books off of a second chair, and gestured for him to sit.
This had been a bad idea. Virgil slunk forward with extreme reluctance and sat.
“We haven’t,” Logan answered affirmatively as he returned to his seat, adjusting his spectacles. “It didn’t seem wise to venture into the woods, seeing as that is where the bear headed, last we saw it.”
That was… a really good reason, actually. Virgil shuddered at even the idea of them running into that creature again in the dead of night, without him to help.
“I take it that you’ve been familiar with us for a while, then, since you know of our routine offerings?” Logan continued, sounding more curious than angry.
Virgil froze up, regardless. He should have known better than to hope he could make it through a conversation without giving anything away. He hadn’t even managed to make it through the first sentence.
“I am not upset,” Logan offered, glancing down at the open book before him in a gesture that seemed designed to give Virgil a moment to breathe. “On the contrary, I am… rather relieved, to have my suspicions confirmed.”
“Relieved?” Virgil echoed dubiously, his voice a low croak. It tended to go raspy and hoarse if he wasn’t focusing on speaking, probably the result of not using his human vocal cords to speak to anyone in literal years.
“Indeed,” Logan answered. “I will admit, my initial impression of you was made hastily. We had never seen you before, and yet you didn’t hesitate to defend us, and you earned a significant injury in the process. It was worrying to unexpectedly incur such a debt.”
Virgil managed to shove aside his embarrassment in favor of confusion. It was strange to mention a debt, especially one owed to a shifter. Humans didn’t consider shifters worth trading with in any fashion, in his experience, and even other supernatural beings knew that wolves weren’t fond of holding debts or grudges. Really, the way Logan spoke about it sounded more like…
“You see, I was aware that it is rather rare for a shifter to reveal themself to humans for any length of time, as I’m sure you know, and I was also aware that the fair folk are often deft hands at taking on wild shapes of their own, particularly when interacting with humans, so…” Logan trailed off, looking a bit flustered at the admission.
“You thought I was fae,” Virgil completed the thought, feeling a bit taken aback at the idea. He certainly would have done a fair bit more against that bear if he’d had the sort of natural power that faeries so often courted.
Of course, things also would have turned out a lot worse for the humans if he’d been a fae, more likely than not. Humans who had fallen under the attention of one of the fair folk frequently met an unfortunate end because of it. Whether the faery in question was maliciously fixated or lovingly obsessed, the human would be lucky to come out irrevocably changed. They’d be lucky to come out alive at all.
“It was a working hypothesis,” Logan said primly, turning a page in his book despite the fact that he almost definitely hadn’t been reading while they spoke. “It was disproven easily enough, and so my precautions weren’t needed in the first place, but seeing as my haste has gotten me and those around me in trouble before, I thought it best to perform them anyhow.”
Precautions? Patton had said that Virgil saved his life, if not all of theirs. To the fae, a life debt like that could only be paid off one way, whether they’d been tricked into it or not.
Oh. He had wondered why Logan had been so uncharacteristically careless before, carrying an agitated and injured shifter back with its teeth only a handspan from his neck. If Virgil had been fae, if he’d chosen differently and torn out Logan’s throat, that would have been the end of any debt between him and the others. A life paid for a life owed.
“Did you run that plan by the others, first?” he asked, despite already knowing the answer.
Logan waved a hand dismissively, not bothering to pretend at regret. “They traveled out here on my behalf, in the first place. To let them suffer for my mistakes would be a poor repayment.”
From what he knew of them, Virgil thought Patton and Roman would disagree. Loudly.
“…Right,” said Virgil, in his most dubious tone. “On your behalf?”
“I’m cursed,” Logan explained shortly. “I don’t have the constitution required to perform magework without damaging my health. It was intended to make me choose between my health and my passion, but I was willing to give up neither, and found a third option: proximity to powerful natural magic, which would prevent spellwork from being as taxing.”
“Huh.” It was a clever solution. Logan might have been the one to propose their solution to Virgil, too. Offering a shifter a peaceful last few weeks certainly wasn’t an option he would have expected from any normal humans.
Right. He’d almost forgotten that his plan had been to push against the boundaries of his cage, to force them to acknowledge that he was stuck here, to remind himself that no amount of kind company was worth the pain of how this month would inevitably end.
“Well, you don’t owe me anything,” he said, a little too sharply. “And in that case, there’s no point in me staying.”
Logan sat up straight, posture stiffening as he frowned. “You’re still far from healed. I understand why you don’t wish to shift, but surely, leaving is a bad idea for the same reason?”
There it was. In the end, that was the biggest flaw in the arrangement the humans had come up with. If Virgil attacked them or tried to leave, they’d be forced to kill him immediately. He would lose, but so would they; killing him in his human form would make his corpse far, far less valuable.
“You’re only making things more difficult on yourself,” Virgil told him, crossing his arms as tightly as he could without jarring his wound. “I’m not fae. There’s no worth in being hospitable to me.”
It certainly wasn’t going to convince him to stop trying to escape. He might be pathetic, but he wasn’t that pathetic. Honestly, it’d probably be easier for everyone if they just cut their losses and killed him now.
Logan closed his book, folded his hands over it, and met Virgil’s eyes squarely. “We offered you our hospitality because we wanted to. It is freely given, no matter the ease or difficulty involved.”
Virgil couldn’t help the way his eyebrows lifted slightly in surprise. That implied that they would keep on offering him this kindness even if he did get caught attempting to escape.
Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t ever been truly punished for that first desperate sprint to the wards, had he? None of the things he’d believed to be threats or punishments had ever panned out the way he’d assumed. Ultimately, they hadn’t so much as directly scolded him about the escape attempt, as though the act was hardly surprising. He hadn’t been drugged, and he still wasn’t guarded.
He couldn’t be certain unless he got caught again, but… the signs were all there. They were confident enough in their cage to indulge him even when he was caught gnawing at the bars. They were underestimating him.
“Don’t blame me if you regret it later,” he said dismissively, but he couldn’t help the disbelieving half smile creeping onto his lips.
Logan returned his smile with an encouraging one of his own, apparently unfazed by Virgil’s renewed determination. “I very much doubt I will.”
He snorted and left the human to his work, not cowed at all by the arrogance. Logan could doubt all he liked. Virgil had beaten much worse odds before.