33. Love’s Redeeming Work
Bastian holds Briar as they fall apart.
They can’t even feel him there at first, so all-consuming is the horror, their breath coming in sharp bursts, their heart flayed raw.
When the onslaught abates slightly, the feeling less urgent but no less painful, Briar realises that they’re crying.
Great, heaving sobs, soaking Bastian’s shirt, ugly and primal.
It was Briar’s fault. Bastian had tried to shield them from it, but now they know the truth. They can’t stop picturing Jason: limbs at impossible angles, all that blood.
‘I didn’t mean to,’ they say, knowing it’s pathetic, a pitiful excuse, something they’re clinging to in their desperation. ‘Fuck, it was an accident. I thought it’d give us time to run, I thought he’d be okay, I thought . . . I thought . . .’
‘I know,’ Bastian says into Briar’s hair, his voice tight.
‘I know, Briar. Listen. Shhh, listen. It wasn’t your fault.
I told him to get away from you. I used the Work.
I was already too strong. He went too far.
If he hadn’t been so close . . . Listen to me.
It was my fault. It was all my fault, Briar. ’
Briar wants to believe him, wants so badly to be liberated of this weight, washed clean, but it’s not true.
And they realise, as Bastian strokes their hair, their back, whispering more quiet words of absolution, that he’s not freeing them both from this.
He’s trying to take Briar’s burden, to shoulder it alone.
‘No,’ Briar says, lifting their head from Bastian’s chest. ‘I hit him. I . . . I wouldn’t stop hitting him. I didn’t want to stop. I was so angry. At you. At him. He’d have been so . . . so hurt, even without the fall. I felt his bones breaking.’
‘You did it for me,’ Bastian says, as if this is somehow still his fault.
‘Stop,’ Briar says, touching his neck clumsily, finding it wet with their tears. ‘You were scared, you were - you were just trying to protect me. For God’s sake, Bastian, it wasn’t your fault.’
‘It was,’ Bastian says simply, with an untethered, faraway look in his eyes that Briar hates.
He shifts away on the bed, opening up the air between them.
‘I’m the one who sent him towards the edge.
And that’s okay. You know, that made it easier for me here, I think, not harder.
Easier to be someone who doesn’t care. Every ruined kid, the pips, the first-years learning to be cruel .
. . every time I turned away when I could have helped - just adding another mark on my record.
I try to Ease their paths, I really do, when the best I can.
Or tell them to weather it and feel nothing.
I don’t enjoy it, I never have . . . but Temple .
. . Temple demands its pound of flesh. And I was already .
. .’ He takes a fortifying breath, gaze fixed on the window. ‘Already too broken.’
‘You’re not,’ Briar says, like they have any authority over the matter. They want to say: I thought the same, when I saw first saw you again. That something had gone terribly wrong. But now I see it’s not just what you did, but what was done to you.
‘During the pipping I was so homesick I wanted to die,’ Bastian says.
‘I mean, everyone was, we were all walking around like . . . like we’d just been packed up and shipped off to war.
Even before the Trials started, we all felt like the world had ended, even the ones who’d been excited to come.
There’d be brave faces all day, but at night, the lights would go out and almost everyone was sobbing in their bunks.
It was funny, really, because I didn’t miss my house, or my room.
Certainly not my mother. Some of the other boys would cry out for theirs while they were sleeping. I just missed you.’
Bastian in a narrow bunk, alone, in terrible pain.
Nobody to look out for him, and no happy home awaiting him during the school holidays.
Briar had been bereft in their own bed missing him, feeling like the world had ended - but at least they’d been tucked in with love at the farm, secure and safe.
‘But I never cried. And I thought, well, maybe there’s something wrong with me.
All through the Trials, I would . . . I can’t explain it.
It was like closing my eyes, but they were still open.
My body might have been stuck, but my mind wasn’t there.
I’d recite poems in my head, play films from start to finish, or recreate conversations we had, you and me, back at Grove.
Mons were furious, because I hardly reacted, no matter what they did.
I think some of the other pips were scared of me. ’
He reaches for what must be an ice-cold mug of tea next on the desk and takes a sip.
‘And they were right to be. When we started classes, I was so good. Too good. I was always the first one to understand, to be able to wield the text, so they’d have me practice on the other scholars in the class, the ones who hadn’t caught on yet.
It bred resentment, and the teachers encouraged it.
It didn’t matter. You were the last person to ever see any good in me.
That’s why I wanted you to leave, to quit this job.
I didn’t want you to see me . . . here, like this. ’
‘Do you know . . . why?’ Briar asks, clearing their throat, wiping the tears from their hot cheeks. ‘Why you’re so good at it?’
Bastian tilts his wrist, watches his tea swirl around the mug; it’s old and chipped, and it has a different school crest on it, three flowers on a black shield topped with a fleur-de-lis and a lion.
‘No. I have my theories. Mostly just that I . . . needed it, so much. The Work was all I had. I was willing to give it absolutely everything. And it gave me so much in return. Too much. There was an incident in fifth year . . .’
‘Hadley told me,’ Briar says, so Bastian doesn’t have to repeat the horror of this story, but he shakes his head.
‘It was an accident,’ he says, his voice thick.
‘And I let everyone believe it wasn’t, because all I wanted was to be left alone.
I just wanted him to get away from me, to reinforce my Working, I never thought .
. .’ He takes a breath. ‘Nobody was even angry with me. Not really. The board of governors called me in for a meeting and I thought I was going to be thrown out - I mean, he has almost total loss of vision in both eyes, and he’ll never get it back - and they just wanted to talk to me about my future at the school, what I wanted to do afterwards.
My father recuses himself from board meetings when I’m there, but he’s always there afterwards to shake my hand, and I could tell he was just so proud of me.
’ Bastian shudders involuntarily. ‘Because he’d thought I was weak. And he thinks this is strength.’
‘That’s . . .’ Briar can’t find the words. ‘What does your mother think?’
‘I have no idea,’ Bastian says, recovering himself slightly.
‘She’s usually away. She’s having an affair with some scuba instructor in Barbados right now.
I go to my father’s place in Battersea occasionally, but I’ve mostly been spending my holidays with Alistair’s family, or sometimes at the Rudersbergs’ house in Bavaria.
There hasn’t really been anything to . . . go home for.’
Briar has been so comfortable for the past seven years casting themself as the one who was spurned, Bastian as callous and selfish for leaving - and for the past three weeks, simplifying things further: hero and villain, good and bad.
But if Briar’s the one who broke Bastian’s heart, who let him down when he needed them the most, who pushed a boy almost to his death - the one who’s been all too willing to lie to Bastian to gain his trust, even as they kiss him, touch him, hold him - who’s the villain here, really?
Maybe they truly are as bad as each other.
Or perhaps I’m worse.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s okay,’ Bastian says quickly, even though it isn’t. Something must be showing on Briar’s face, because he hesitates, then takes Briar’s hand and kisses their wrist, then their knuckles, watching them carefully like one wrong move might be enough to ruin them both.
When Briar doesn’t move, he kisses their chin, then their neck, cool lips and warm breath nuzzling over the pulse in their throat.
It’s like he’s trying to make it all go away.
Briar’s eyes are closed now, trying to let go, to feel it all - but they can’t turn off their brain, the part of them that’s still raw from the full weight of the past, the part that knows they’re betraying Bastian all over again.
‘Here,’ Bastian says, shakily hopeful; Briar lets him ease them down on top of his unmade bed, where they hold on tight to Bastian’s waist like he’s a life raft as Bastian hovers over them, knees bracketing Briar’s thighs, ducking his head to kiss their collarbone, right next to the burn that’s beginning to scar - soft at first, then with tongue, then teeth.
His hands go to the buttons of Briar’s shirt and he starts to undo it, careful and methodical, until Briar lifts a hand to stop him.
He sits back on his heels, lost, searching Briar’s face for cues, and then his hands go to his own shirt, pulling it up and over his head.
He’s so beautiful, so nervous. Briar can’t believe they ever looked at him without seeing it; the desperately loneliness behind his eyes, inherited from his mother, passed down like a precious heirloom in that empty house.
He pulls back his hair, swallows. Enough power to level a whole village, wrapped up in skin so thin Briar can see his heart beating.
They can’t believe that they ever wanted to hurt him. He’s hurt enough for a lifetime.
‘Bastian,’ they say, and Bastian comes to Briar immediately like they’re the one wielding the Work. But it’s not right. Briar had wanted this so much, but as Bastian bends to their chest, thumbs brushing shakily across their ribs, they say, ‘Stop.’
Bastian freezes. ‘I thought this . . . I thought this was what you wanted.’
Briar sits up, buttons their shirt, and Bastian watches, looking utterly bereft, shivering slightly in the breeze from the open window.
‘What do you want?’ Briar asks, hand going to Bastian’s thigh, where they hold on, hoping to ground him to something solid.
‘I just . . .’ Bastian’s gaze drops to the fold of the sheet. ‘I want you to stay. For now.’
‘Okay,’ Briar says. ‘Then I’ll stay.’
Bastian doesn’t seem to believe them. Not even when they take off their shoes, then their socks and their trousers. He stays sitting on the bed, watching carefully.
‘Do you have a toothbrush I can borrow?’ Briar says, and Bastian looks at them like he’s never heard of a toothbrush before, shocked by the mundanity of the request. He finds one and hands it to Briar, though, and when Briar comes back from sneaking to the bathroom he watches them climb into bed and pull the sheet up over them like it’s an unimaginable feat, never attempted before by mankind.
Once he deems it safe to move, he rummages in a drawer and then disappears, and comes back wearing a black vest and cotton pyjama bottoms, smelling of juniper and peppermint.
When he gets carefully into bed, Briar shifting towards the wall to make space, he comes to a rest on his side, every muscle tensed, like he’s expecting a fire alarm.
He jumps when Briar reaches over and touches his arm, then says, ‘Sorry.’
Briar just eases the black elastic tie from his wrist and shifts up onto their elbows, gathering up his hair and finger-combing it before they begin to braid, frowning with concentration, trying to get it right.
They feel Bastian’s body coming to rest, his breathing slowing, hands unclenching from their fists.
His chest jerks, just once, and Briar knows from the wet hitch in his breath that he’s crying.
It feels monumental. Terrifying. They don’t say anything, though; they just keep up their diligent work, until the moment passes over them both and leaves them quiet and exhausted.
By the time Briar is finished, Bastian is leaning back against their chest, still and safe. Just where Briar wants him to be.
He falls asleep within minutes, and Briar lies down, curled around his body like a shield, and stays.