do the marwick triplets not have parents? i'm pretty sure in the books they never found their parents. do you think they're always searching? do you think matt and marcus are a little uncomfortable around mandy, because he reminds them of the family that they don't have? do you think they'd rather have people believe they're just twins, because it makes it easier to forget what they've lost?
The thing is, even though Marwick found his brothers again, he still doesn't feel completely theirs.
Matt and Marcus only notice him half the time, which is more than he had expected. Or maybe less. Marwick would like to say that he can acknowledge this without a weird, empty ache taking over his chest, inside his ribcage, over his heart. Crushing and contracting and suffocating. It hurts.
When his brothers notice him, their eyes widen in sync, as if they forget Marwick exists at when he's not right in front of them, looking them in the face. Mostly, though, they're busy. When Marwick travels from the Keeper's Cottage to visit, he'll sit in the back of the Gothyk Grotto. Marcus or Matt will catch his eye, widen theirs, and smile at him like, Oh! I'll get back to you, one moment. But Marwick doesn't exist when they're not directly looking at him, and the promise is forgotten at the end of the day. Just one more thing on a to-do list they barely glance at.
Marcus sits next to him one day, lets him flicker back into existence. The bench is cool and silver, comfortable under Marwick's burnt palms, but unfamiliar. The way the shadows curl comfortably around the shops are unfamiliar. The gentle orange blip of the sun over the Wizard Tower is unfamiliar. He misses the forest, and he misses the trees. The forest was so vast, it felt like it would eat him alive. The trees stood firm with their veined trunks and twisting roots, like they had been here for decades, centuries, eons. Forever.
This bench looks new. Tarnished, yes, but only because it is visited often.
"-over here," Marcus says. Marwick blinks, brings himself back to the present.
"Sorry?"
Marcus blinks back at him and repeats. "I wish you would take a break from the Keeper's Cottage for a bit, since there's not much to do there, and stay over here," he says, conveniently forgetting that he conveniently forgets that Marwick is thing when he isn't at the Castle, isn't in his or Matt's direct line of sight. He sounds almost sad, regretful. "Maybe you can make new friends."
Marwick smiles at him, squinting so he blurs to look more like him than Matt. Marcus doesn't mean anything bad. He's just busy. He's just more used to being a twin than a triplet, like Marwick's more used to being a wolf than a boy, more shadow than human.
There really is not much to do in the Keeper's Cottage, so Marwick doesn't dispute his comment. Instead, he says, "I don't think I need new friends."
"What? Of course you do. Everyone does. You hung out a lot with forest Heaps, right? You still do that."
Marwick does not do that.
"I don't think that's true," he reasons, tipping his head up to catch the sun's rays. He can feel Marcus's eyes on his face, and wonders, for a moment, what would happened if he falls off this bench right now and slips out of view.
Marcus leans forward so they're face to face again. His smile is dazzlingly, intensely white, his eyes a shade lighter in the sun. "Come on, I can introduce you to some of our customers. You'll make friends with them in a flash, you know. I think you just don't see you the way Matt and I see you."
Marwick smiles back, but he doesn't feel very happy. He doesn't think Matt and Marcus often see him at all.
A few miles from where they sit, a river winds around the walls of the Castle, a little branched off stream from a larger river in the forest. It flows gently, the barest hint of the sound of water moving downwards, always shining and glint blue. During rainstorms, it becomes a monster. A boy fell in there, once. 410, 411, 412, and the Chief Cadet watched.
No one stopped to fish out his body.
Marwick wonders if they remember that day the way Septimus does, wonders what they were thinking, wonders if they ever noticed him back then, wonders if they were ever even watching at all.
He’s never been very good at math, but he knows that one plus one will never equal three. One times zero will never equal anything, and that is okay too.
He tears his eyes away from where they are staring: beyond the Grot, beyond the misshapen Castle walls, beyond the forest, to the stream that nearly killed him within. Marcus is still smiling at him, and Marwick’s lips curl up to smile back, but now Matt is coming to sit with them, sliding up to Marcus and beaming at them both, and Marwick watches that gap between his brothers get smaller, smaller, smaller, until they are leaning on each other and there is no room for anyone else, not even a little.
