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Nick graduates. Alex knows Nick graduated and didn't just die in the graduation hall because he asked around the incoming Tampa freshmen the day after. Clay, Nick, and George all made it. It's not really a surprise, not with the way they trained and the resources behind them and the way they worked together, a well-oiled fighting machine. Still, it makes him relax a little, to hear that Nick's out.
(Clay, though--Alex would be lying if he said he was happy that Clay's alive. If there was any justice in the world, he'd be burning in hell with Schlatt. Alex doesn't know exactly what he did, but he's seen Tommy, he's not a fucking idiot. At least the kid's stopped joking about wanting to die now that he and Toby are attached at the hip again.)
Nick's graduated and Karl's dead (and Schlatt's dead and Wilbur's dead) and Alex really needs some new friends. New friends who he doesn't care about, because he's seen what caring about people does to him, it makes him stupid. "Friend" is the wrong word, maybe, for people he doesn't care about, but so is "allies", because it's not an actual alliance, he can't trust them either, can't rely on them. So he does favors, makes trades, maybe threatens a little when he can get away with it. Doesn’t make friends. It’s more like—a business association. He’s learned his lessons. He has a list of them in his head, goes down it to remind himself until they’re as easy to recite as prayers.
(Lesson one: humans are assholes who will leave you given half a chance. Lesson two: politics are the way to power. Lesson three: create no emotional attachments, everything gets destroyed. Lesson four: hold your ground, your pride is the only thing you have. Lesson five: trust nobody. Lesson six: legacy is all you leave behind.)
His project in his own time is a personal shield. The amulet itself is mostly bone, and he’s cribbing a lot of the notes from the project he worked on with Karl. (Okay, maybe he’s not doing a great job at not creating emotional attachments. But it’s useful, it’s practical, that was the whole reason he kept Schlatt’s bones in the first place.) After a bit, he’s got it set up so that it’s entirely automated, looking into the future and shielding as a warning as well as protection, drawing on one of his mana crystals without him having to do anything.
He’s not Tommy. He talks to it some, enough to be friendly and hope that it doesn’t decide one day to kill him, but not—he doesn’t sweet-talk it, doesn’t play nice. It’s not his friend, and he’s not expecting it to be.
Still, he does a double-take when he reaches for food and the shield goes up. He glances around for mals; none visible, but hey, the shield knows the future, it knows more than he does. The person behind him in line clears their throat and he hurries forward without taking any of the pudding.
He sells some of Schlatt’s potion stock that evening. The pudding had poison in it. As far as he can tell, it didn’t have mals. The necklace isn’t supposed to detect that, isn’t supposed to detect any threats other than mals.
Huh.
He’s not Tommy, but he does know Tommy. The study group is officially disbanded, but it’s not hard to get Tommy and Toby for a bit of studying—for a moment, Toby looks almost pathetically relieved when Alex offers, before getting himself together and answering in a politely neutral affirmative. Smart kid. From there, all Alex has to do is come up with an excuse to take it off for a moment, let Tommy steal it, and then ask for it back. (He’s willing to threaten Tommy for it, if he has to. It’s his last year before graduation; he needs all the shielding he can get. But he knows himself, and he knows Tommy and Toby; he’d bet that he won’t have to.)
Tommy rises to the bait, and Alex watches him poke at it and whisper to it out of the corner of his eye while he pretends to do homework. Tommy’s expression changes, first to annoyed, and then to thoughtful.
“Alex,” Tommy says, when he can’t hold it in any longer, “did you know your necklace was a person?”
“And why do you have my necklace, Tommy?”
“I was just wondering.”
He gets it back eventually, like he knew he would. Doesn’t need to threaten, except implicitly. He should probably just let Tommy have it, or insist on destroying it, if he's being honest with himself; the rule is to always destroy an object that’s started doing things on its own, because that makes it smart enough to hurt you, unless maybe you have Tommy’s affinity or something like it. That's the safe thing to do.
But he needs all the shielding he can get, and—the first thing it did was to keep him from getting poisoned. So he takes a gamble on it.
He’s sitting on his bed in the dark when he decides to just ask it whether it’s a person, see what happens. He doesn’t even get the chance to open his mouth; the shield is up and down, up and down, flickering at him excitedly.
Okay. So that’s… Okay.
He does start talking to his shield more, after that. Asks questions, or doesn’t even ask them, just intends to ask them. Flash up and down once for yes, twice for no. It gets faster, the more he’s used to it, and the shield is smart, the shield knows the future or at least has some damn good guesses. Makes homework a lot easier, that’s for sure. (It doesn’t know about the past, but it asks, one night, flickering insistently at him until he tells it a goddamn bedtime story. It’s… frustrating, but more than that, kind of cute.)
He makes a spot on an indie alliance, starts training for graduation. It’s not a great one, honestly; they’ve got one good fighter and one good artificer between the four of them. Well, beggars can’t be choosers, and Alex has a lot of practice at shielding now, even if he’s still shit in a fight. He tries not to think about it, tries to focus on the next day, and then the next.
This works for a while, but not long enough. Not when he can talk to something that sees the fucking future. It’s past curfew but he can’t sleep, just sits in bed, worrying. He could decide to ask questions, right now, but instead he decides to explain to his shield that this is one of those times where he wants to think out loud, wants to actually talk to someone and not just do the weird deciding thing about the future, sits with that for a bit before changing his mind so it’ll have time to mull it over.
“Hey, Shield?”
On-off.
“There isn’t really—there isn’t really a good way to ask this, is there? I’m—graduation isn’t safe, you know that as well as I do. Maybe better. Am I—do I live, next year, am I still alive, out of here? Or—I guess you probably can’t be certain. But you know my chances, at least. What do you think, would you bet on me living?”
On-off-on-off. It’s upset, or something like it; it shakes on his chest. He just takes a deep breath.
“Yeah. I kind of—I kind of figured that. Does it—does it—is it worth it?”
No answer. Then: on-off.
“No, hear me out. Maybe Wilbur was—maybe Wilbur was right.” On-off-on-off. He sighs. “Lesson six, right? Legacy is all you leave behind. And my legacy is going to be—what? Selling some drugs? Fucking around with people who, who fucking left me? It doesn’t fucking matter, does it! Because I’m just going to, to fucking die! And I can—I’ve worked so hard, on all of this, and what does it mean? Nothing! Fucking nothing! You can work your fucking ass off, and it doesn’t matter, it’ll never actually work, and meanwhile there are people like fucking—Clay—get everything handed to them, decide to—to fuck other people over, for, for fun, and just—just get away with it—” He’s crying; he swipes at his face, frustrated. He can hear Schlatt’s voice in his head, calling him a whiny little crybaby. Boohoo, Alex, life’s not fair. “So tell me, huh, why isn’t Wilbur right? It’d probably—I bet I could figure out something that hurts less than getting torn apart by mals. Why is it worth it?”
The shield doesn’t have words to answer him, but it turns on. It spins in place for a few seconds, as though it can’t tell if it’s trying to shield him or shield from him, and then just—stays. It feels like it’s looking at him, or asking him something, or—or something.
Minutes pass. Nothing changes. His eyes adjust to the light. He’s not crying anymore; he just feels tired.
Eventually, he sighs again. “I guess I have nothing to lose, right?”
No answer, and then a few flashes in a row, not a yes or a no.
“I guess I have you.”
On-off.
“Okay. I don’t—if I die, you’ll die too, you know that, right? Best case scenario, you aren’t completely destroyed, some agglo picks you up and carries you around until you run out of mana and starve to death.”
On-off.
“Okay. Just—just making sure.” He’s got a nervous laugh; it comes out here, high and thin. “And you want me to try and fight, huh?”
On-off.
“Okay. How do—what do my chances look like? School average is, is 25%, right?”
On-off.
“Are mine better than that, one flash, or worse than that, two flashes.”
Two flashes.
“Right. Better or worse than 10%?”
Three flashes.
“About 10%?”
On-off.
“Great. Fucking—great.”
On-off-on-off.
“It was sarcasm, I was—I don’t actually think it’s great.”
No response. Makes sense. He didn’t ask a question that time.
“Does it help the chances of, of the rest of my alliance, if I stay and fight with them?”
On-off.
“Well, fuck, what the fuck am I supposed to do with that—just, just fucking, fight for other people, I am fucking sick of fighting for other people who wouldn’t fight for me, I’ve been fighting for way too long for that shit. I don’t, I am done. It doesn’t make sense to keep going. Maybe it’s time to just—stop.”
On-off-on-off.
“...Do you want to live, is that it?”
It hesitates. For a few long moments, Alex thinks it might not answer. Eventually: on-off.
Alex can relate. He exhales slowly through his teeth. “Yeah, okay. Makes sense. If I—if I give you to someone else, can you pick someone out with good odds? Someone who will keep you and live and get out of this place?” This is, quite possibly, the stupidest thing he’s ever asked. He doesn’t need to ask if it’ll hurt his own odds; he already knows it will. His alliance's, too, but fuck them, he's tired of fighting for people he doesn't even give a shit about. He won't kill himself early, he'll stay and fight, but he won't let his shield die for them too, not if it might actually have a chance.
It hesitates again, longer. Minutes, not seconds. It shakes, hard, against his chest.
On-off.
“Okay,” Alex says, eventually. “Okay. Make sure they remember me, alright?”
On-off.
“That’s all I can ask for, I guess.” (Lesson six. Legacy is all you leave behind. He hopes he's leaving behind a good one.)
He waits until the day before graduation to say goodbye. It’s harder than he expects; his last words to the shield are awkward, but he does his best. The boy he gives it to is a junior—well, a day away from being a senior—named Charlie. (He won’t even know that the bones are Schlatt’s, that the plans behind it are Karl’s.) His neck feels empty without a cord around it. Charlie’s a good guy, at least—not good enough to say no to a goodbye gift, but better than most people in this place. Good enough that Alex can hope he’ll be kind to the shield, like it was kind to him. Alex hopes he fucking appreciates it. He’s going to die for this, and he won’t even know if it helped.
Alex doesn’t graduate. (A year later, Charlie does.)