"I love you," he tells Tereza hoarsely, still on the floor, arms awkwardly folded together, "I'm so glad you're here, I'm not very good at hugs right now but I love you so much."

He is going to sit next to Tereza and let her talk to him and answer her questions as best he can without veering into upsetting or emotional or trauma-laden territory.

After a while he remembers how to summon up a smile. Not a real one, but it's not for his sake.

Back in New York, Mordred writes to Inaaya.

He tells her that they're in New York for a few weeks where not much is happening but are bound for Bangkok next. He promises that there is an explanation for what happened with the Mouth (although he carefully doesn't promise a reasonable one), tells her he hopes to see her again, and then immediately gets down to the important business, which is book recommendations.

When he gets a letter back, he reads every book on it.

Oswald cannot read any eldritch tomes, but he can read some things, and he's tired of feeling useless and out of the loop. So he stays in reading Anemone's books and he goes out and tries to do independent research, copying down key names and locations and time periods and topics from Mordred's notes and trying to separate the grain from the chaff. There is... a lot of chaff. But he is getting a better sense of the concepts and motifs surrounding the esoteric periphery of what they're looking into, and just because most of the explanations are probably wrong doesn't mean that the subjects aren't significant.

A lot of his reading is going towards researching the occult, but he tries to take the opportunity to spend some time at the library without any objectives, trying to find that peaceful feeling again. It's hard to separate the two, though. It mostly ends up feeling like he can't take a break.

Every day or so, he sees a vision of a mouth. He can't tell whether they're hallucinations or real, or the former sometimes and the latter other times. They hiss words in the Tongue of Lies: Lacie, they say. Lacie loves you. Lacie is looking for you. Lacie wants you. Lacie is waiting for you. If you go back, you can be with her again. Sometimes Lev sees them too.

Another nice thing about the occult studies is that they're too far removed from what's really going on to remind him he's fighting his own sister.

He whispers into Lev's back that he misses her. He braids Tereza's hair and reminds himself that there are people here he is fighting for, that there is a person he is still trying to be. He remembers his own terror when he thought they might die under that warehouse and tells himself that taking Nectar is its own kind of death, which does not feel convincing, and that he does not want to live to see all the ways he can hurt his loved ones, which does, a little. He closes his eyes and covers his ears. Sometimes this doesn't block anything out; sometimes it does, and that's somehow worse. He thinks about talking to their resident cultist whisperer. He stalls.

Meanwhile--

Mordred is in the apartment he shares (shared?) with Agravaine, helping Agravaine cook. (Whether he shares it still or not is complicated. Things with Agravaine are, in general, complicated.)

He's given the broad strokes of what happened in Malta via letter already-- he wasn't going to not tell his brother he had died-- but they haven't gone into specifics, and he doesn't want to bring them up until Agravaine does.

"I heard you broke your promise."

"....yeah. I did. I'm sorry."

"So are you a zombie or a fishmonster?"

It's supposed to be a joke but it doesn't land. He sounds too tired.

"Fish monster. Or something like one, apparently 'doesn't die when drowned' doesn't narrow things down much."

It's supposed to be a joke. He's not sure if it landed or not.

"That sounds like you broke both of your promises."

"I would argue that it was just the one promise but it had two clauses, and also since I'm not dead I'm not sure I can be said to have died."

This isn't the point. He knows full well that this isn't the point.

"I want you to quit."

Chop chop chop chop chop is he moving the paring knife with more force than necessary yes does it matter no.

"I know you want me to quit. And you know I'm not going to."

"You died."

"What if the next person to try to murder you doesn't drown you?"

"...Agravaine, I closed the mouth in Malta. I died, and then I did more to actually help people than I have in my entire life.

If the next person to try to murder me doesn't do it by drowning, then I guess I find out if there's more things I'm immune to. But I can't just-- not."

"You can just not! It's very simple. Instead of flying out to Siam you stay here."

"Let someone else's brother save the world."

"Someone else's brother is not going to, any more than someone else's brother has ever done the things that were important."

"Mrs. Winston-Rogers is clearly capable of hiring people who aren't you."

"And the next person she hires, if they die, is going to stay dead."

"So might you!"

This isn't working. With anyone else he'd go 'time for a different track.'

He's so much worse at feelings when they're his own.

"Yes, well. I am, empirically, better at this than almost anyone else who'd do it, and it's important enough that that matters."

Agravaine cuts his finger, curses, puts it in his mouth and sucks on it. "You can get someone else to close the Mouth but I can't get someone else to be my brother."

"You're the only family I have."

Neither of them have talked to Gawain or Gareth in years. There are letters, for if Mordred dies and stays that way, for Lev to mail. That doesn't help Agravaine at all.

"I know. I'm sorry. But I can't in fact get someone else to do it."

"Have you even tried?"

No. No, he hasn't. He can't say that.

"If you find someone who's willing to drop everything to save the world, can talk a cult leader into turning traitor to their god while in a flooded basement at gunpoint without losing their head, and doesn't have any siblings who will miss them, go ahead and let me know."

"Sounds like Mrs. Winston-Rogers' job. And I don't care about some stranger's siblings, I care about you. I love you."