Lev goes to Mordred's room to sit at his feet and be read to.

Lev is pretty sure he is the worst person in the world.

He keeps remembering Mordred's face. It is preserved in his mind like a photograph.

Mordred... isn't punishing him. He wonders, on the plane to Miskatonic and Rome and Ethiopia, whether Mordred is delaying his punishment as some sort of stalling tactic, to lull Lev into complacence. But he keeps... not punishing him... and Lev grows increasingly certain that there won't be one. Or, rather, there will and it is feeling sick and sad and disgusted without any sort of punishment to make it feel clean.

(My father murdered my brother and almost killed Agravaine too and the way Mordred was bracing himself against the counter and the way he flinched and the expression on his face that's just like Lev's and--)

Lev doesn't want to be Ramon. But he hurt Mordred just because he could, to make himself feel safe, because Mordred made him angry, to prove something to Mordred and I bet Echavarria could have put the knife in your hand directly and you would still have told yourself you could never have known and--

Uncomfortable self-awareness has always been one of Lev's-- not best traits. Traits.

Mordred's not wrong. He clings to Oswald because Oswald understands (evil evil evil they're both evil) (who knows what Oswald would do if Lacie gave him the knife) and he-- doesn't talk to Mordred. Mordred doesn't want to talk to him.

(He can't stop being Ramon, can't stop being (evil evil evil) tarnished by the people he used to love and turned into someone as bad as they are, but he can stay away and leave Mordred alone and not hurt him. It's what he wishes Ramon had done for him.)

Sometimes at night he closes his eyes and imagines Marlo holding him and looking at him the way he used to and-- Marlo was so good, he wouldn't love Lev anymore (evil evil evil)-- but it is nice to imagine that Marlo would hold him and love him and see that there was any part of him at all that was good.