Somehow, I’d managed to shock Tabbris into complete silence. Well, I’d shocked Miranda too, but the latter found her voice first. It started as a high-pitched whining sort of sound, before gradually resolving into actual words. “Fliiiiiiiiiiick! What the hell was--how did--how long have--that was--the stories of--we were talking about--I swear you never had a--when did--how many times did--what was-- were you always--did you take over the--is he--are you--”
Yeah, I said they were words, I didn’t say they were coherent or formed anything like an actual sentence. But hey, Tabbris by that point was still just staring in disbelief. After babbling that much, Miranda finally stopped and gave me a long look before settling on, “What the hell?”
“Yeah, that’s fair,” I agreed. With a thought, I shifted my body back to my usual form after giving a quick glance around. A few of the ghosts who weren’t totally exhausted were scattered around to keep an eye out for any more potential problems, though I didn’t expect any for the moment. Obviously, I wasn't going to just take that sort of risk without keeping some lookouts handy.
I started to say something, but Tabbris had finally gotten herself together enough to make actual sounds again. And in her case, they were even in an actual logical order. She immediately blurted, “You’re Jacob!? Jacob is you?! You’re--he’s--we were talking about Jacob before!”
Miranda pointed at her, head bobbing rapidly. “Uh huh, uh huh, that! What she said! Everyone was talking about Jacob because of the Odysseus thing! But we didn’t know that was you! How was--how is it you?! How is Jacob you?! You’re not--you didn’t just change yourself to look like him, did you? No, no, he’s you! He’s always been you, that’s not--that’s--oh God, Jacob is Flick. Flick is Jacob!” She made a motion as though she felt a little dizzy, muttering, “I saw drawings. I heard stories. I kind of had a crush on him. Oh my God, I can’t believe I had a crush on him--you! I had a crush on you! That’s so--that’s just--what?” Yeah, she definitely looked dizzy, steadying herself with a hand against the nearby wall. “I had a crush on my best friend because I thought she was a cute Necromancer dude with cool style and--oh.” Visibly blushing, she looked away from me. Her expression, her reaction in general, was enough to make me giggle just a little bit despite myself.
“Okay, yeah,” I confirmed slowly, taking all that in. “I’m Jacob, I made up the name and everything else. Well, I had some help with the style and all, but mostly--wait, what did you say?” I gave a double-take then. “Odysseus? How do you guys know about Odysseus? Actually, hold on, what do you mean you were talking about Jacob? Who? Why? What?” It was my turn to blurt out a mix of confused words. “Why would some random nobody Necromancer named Jacob mean anything to you guys in the future?” In the back of my mind, I could hear Extra muttering something about me being in denial about what sort of reputation I’d been building for him.
Sure enough, Tabbris shook her head at me. “He’s not a nobody--I mean, you’re not a nobody.”
“Definitely not a nobody,” Miranda agreed quickly. “You should hear the stories everyone’s been telling about that guy ever since he came up with the Odysseus thing. You’re like, basically a legend for some of those people. Or, you know, the bogeyman. I think they’re afraid of you.”
She and Tabbris both went on to tell me exactly why the subject of Jacob had come up. Apparently I--or rather, Jacob--was supposed to have Odysseus’s ghost, whom the woman who had been helping the Robins, Stasia, and Judas had been looking for. Oh, and on top of that, ‘Jacob’ was also supposed to be the Necromancy teacher for Maid Marian, know how to stop Charmeine from becoming a threat again, and have some sort of proof that Grigori Rasputin wasn’t responsible for what happened to Anastasia’s entire royal family. Somehow, Jacob was connected to all of that. Which meant I was connected to all of it.
Well, that was a lot to take in, putting it mildly. I absorbed it, somehow, rocking back on my heels from the weight of it while the other two continued to stare at me. I had a feeling they were trying to see just how surprised I was by all of it, and how much I already knew.
“Okay, um, I do have Odysseus,” I started slowly. “But that’s very recent and basically right at the end of the story I have to tell you, about how all this happened and--uh, yeah. But the rest of it, the Marian thing, Rasputin, all of that I--um, well, you’ll see. I guess I should just start from the beginning?”
“Please,” Miranda urged with a gesture. “We really wanna hear all of this.”
Head nodding quickly, Tabbris agreed, “Uh huh, before something else happens! That was Mister Katarin back there! So-so we could get attacked by anybody! What’s going on, why are we here? What…” She swallowed, her anxious gaze meeting mine. “What happened to you?”
Seeing that, hearing the confusion in her voice, and the emotion she felt about Katarin’s presence and hostility after we’d last seen him being murdered by Isaac (emotion I definitely shared), made me want to hug my little sister even more. But I had to get through the story, I had to explain everything so she and Miranda wouldn’t be so confused.
Which meant there was no more stalling. While the other two stared at me, I told them about everything that had happened. Partway through, I summoned a few chairs I had stored away, along with snacks and some bottled water. Honestly, there was so much to tell them about that my throat was parched. I had to start from the beginning, but it was obvious that they were mostly focused on the whole Jacob thing. Well, at first they were. When I got into the stuff about Maestro, and especially the Ankou and my current… situation, they were definitely interested, to say the least. Both of them made noises of confusion when I started to tell them about the Flique, and how I had so many more versions of myself linked through the Ankou-Fae Archive. Which was fair, given that was, uhh, a lot to take in. I’d lived it--I was still living it, and it was still a lot even for me.
So, eventually, I managed to tell them everything. At some point through all that, I'd had to stand up again and start pacing around, while they sat there and watched me. Occasionally, they asked for clarification, but mostly they just listened. Even then, it took quite awhile to get through. I hadn't really thought about just how much had happened with me in the time I was away until I had to start explaining all of it from the start. Laying it all out like that really showed how absurd my life really was. And this was just from explaining the past few months to people who already knew about everything that had led up to that. Just how much would it take to explain my entire life and everything that had become part of it to people who were complete outsiders?
Pushing that distracting thought out of my head, I turned to face the other two. While I had been wrapping up my explanation with the whole thing about why they were here and what we were supposed to be doing, I have been facing the other way. Now, when I looked that way, I could see that they were both on their feet, snacks forgotten behind them. At some point in that whole thing, they had stood up and moved closer together while staring at me with a mixture of emotions.
And speaking of a mixture of emotions, I definitely felt an array of them in that moment. Actually, I was probably feeling emotions from the rest of the Flique as well. They were all anxiously paying attention through that whole story, waiting to see how our old best friend and little sister reacted to everything. I could feel their close presence even more acutely than I usually could.
Yes, I had just been through two quick and dangerous fights in rapid succession, one of them facing a man who I respected a lot, and still mourned whenever I thought about him. On top of that, there was the entire larger situation with the rifts. And, well, Ehn’s death in general. All of that was stressful and important. But somehow, none of it seemed to matter when put next to the question of how Miranda and Tabbris were going to react to who and what I was now. Or rather, who and what we were. All of us, the entire Flique. I knew my sister. I knew my friend. We all knew them both. We knew they cared about me, that they loved me. We knew they were open-minded, and that really there was no reason to be afraid of rejection or disgust.
Logically, we knew that. But logic didn’t stop that trickle of fear that ran through us. The idea that this little bit might be the straw that broke the camel’s back, that explaining this part would be too much. This was Tabbris and Miranda. They knew me--us. They knew everything else. My best friend, my sister, my--there was no reason to actually think they wouldn’t accept this, not really.
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But a part of us did. There was no explanation for it, no logical reason. We had every possible advantage when it came to explaining our situation to them, but we were still afraid of being rejected or seen as wrong somehow. What did that say about the people who didn't have all those advantages and had to explain something deeply personal to someone they cared about?
And what did it say about those situations where their explanation wasn’t accepted?
A little shudder ran through me at the thought. No, that wouldn’t happen here. I knew better-we all knew better. This was Tabbris and Miranda. They would understand. But thinking that and seeing it were two different things. We needed to know. Crossing the distance between us, I extended my hands toward the other two. My voice caught a little bit as I found myself asking, “You guys know I'm still there, right? We’re still us. Flick and the Flique, all of us, all of me. You know that?”
Miranda accepted my offered hand, squeezing it. But Tabbris didn’t. No, instead she threw herself at me, arms wrapping around my waist as she hugged me as tightly as she could while burying her face against my side. “Flick, don’t be such a big old dummy!” Immediately afterward, she amended, “I mean, don’t be a bunch of big old dummies! A whole heap of dummies!”
“Exactly,” Miranda agreed, using her grip on my hand to pull herself into that hug. Both of them embraced me like that as we stood in the old London alley with the sound of horses clopping along in the distance, and the smell of--well, not nice smells continuing to permeate the air. But I didn’t care about any of that, it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was the feeling of Miranda and Tabbris hugging me. No, hugging all of us. They knew the truth, they knew about the whole Flique. And in that moment, though they were embracing me physically, it was definitely meant for all of us.
“Did you really think we wouldn’t accept all of you like that?” Miranda demanded after a moment, pulling back just enough to squint at me once the hug had gone on long enough. “You do remember Denny and the rest of the Carnival, right? Hell, you know about the Robins! Why wouldn’t we accept multiple Flicks? We love you, idiot. Having more of you is just a good thing!”
Okay, when she put it like that, my blush deepened as I gave a helpless little shrug. “I dunno, who said emotions were logical? They’re kind of definitionally the opposite. And this was like, anxiety from all of us. Even having a tiny pea-sized nugget of anxiety gets magnified out by all of us having it.”
Hang on, that really was true, not an excuse. I was feeling the stronger emotions from the other members of the Flique even when they weren’t in the backseat. My connection to them was getting stronger already. What--what did that mean? Was this because we were working on finding a way to get several of them in the same ‘waiting room’ area so I could hot-swap in and out more easily?
I had no idea, but it was worth thinking about once I had some time. For the moment, I just reached out to embrace the other two. “I missed you guys so much, seriously.”
A somewhat teasing tone came to Randi’s voice as she leaned back to raise an eyebrow at me. “Are you sure you had time to miss anybody? Because it sure sounds to me like you barely had any time to even breathe, let alone miss people.”
“I missed you like I’d miss breathing,” I replied with a small, wistful smile. “Believe me, I missed all of you. This whole thing, these past six months, it's been… it's been a lot. I kept wishing you were all there every time something happened.” Grimacing a bit then, I looked around with a somewhat sheepish expression. “I--err, I guess maybe I wished just a little too hard this time.”
My words were met with a snort from Randi, before Tabbris latched onto my waist once more, having released me for a moment there to give Miranda room. Now she was right back again, holding me as tightly as possible. “Well,” she announced immediately while staring up at me with an urgent and insistent gaze, “I'm glad you did. I wish you’d wished harder even sooner!”
Miranda immediately agreed, and I assured them that if I'd had a way to bring them back before now, I definitely would have. Over the next few minutes, we sat back down those chairs I’d produced, and I took the time to make sure I had told them everything. I'd already been through it, but with everything that had happened, and as much as there was for them to take in, it would have been easy to miss something. But, more importantly, it wasn't just me going through it that time. I had Extra slip out and start talking to them so they could see the difference between us. Meanwhile, I focused on pulling a few of the others close to coming out as well. When Extra was done talking, she slipped back and I took a few seconds to change her with Story, then Hot Type, and so on. Several of them came out to give their own take on the whole story. All while Tabbris and Miranda watched and listened in rapt fascination. At one point, Randi murmured under her breath about how we could make a killing doing a ‘one-person’ show, even if that in itself would be a lie. Then she mused about whether calling it a ‘one-body’ show would work better.
That led to Tabbris wondering if her jumping inside me would be cheating the whole one person thing even more, or the same amount. And suddenly, just like that, everything was completely comfortable again. Yes, we were in an alley probably over a hundred years in the past, and we had to find that rift before the most dangerous monsters in the universe were made a thousand times more dangerous. The man who had been helping me get stronger, who was supposed to be our best weapon against those monsters, was dead and his power was being funneled directly to them. Oh, and in the more immediate category, there were those monsters that had attacked us. Not to mention the presence of Boschers out there who not only knew about ‘Jacob,’ but actively wanted him--me dead. That… was concerning. It made me wonder just what those other versions of me spread across the timeline were doing. Obviously, the only thing that really mattered was getting to those rifts, but what… what exactly did those other me’s have to do to accomplish that?
There was a lot to worry about. Too much, really. But at that moment, for just a minute or so, we were enjoying ourselves. I was with my best friend and my sister. That was enough for me.
Apparently, it was not enough for the universe, however. Tabbris had just raised the question of whether she could possibly see the rest of the Flique properly by possessing me, if that would work. Which I was about to tell her to go ahead and try, just before Miranda jumped to her feet and spun to look up at the roof above our heads. “Something’s coming,” she blurted, gesturing to a lookout duplicate she had up there.
Sure enough, as I teleported the three of us up there, we saw one of those harpy-like beings from before. Like the others, it didn’t look like an old woman with wings. More like a hodgepodge of various human parts stitched together with oversized bird parts. And it didn’t seem to be attacking us. Instead, the creature flew down to land on the far side of the roof, staring at us. Her face was bruised all along one side, and her wrists showed signs of rope marks. “Tis you--you. Tis you.” Her voice came in a hiss, punctuated by clicking sounds. “Another you. Another Jacob-blood.”
Yeah, that caught my attention. I gave a quick double-take. “What--what do you mean, Jacob-blood?”
She smiled at me, showing an array of broken, twisted teeth, half of which seemed to be from different animals altogether. “Jacob-blood gives our master, our creator, his gift, his power. Jacob-blood flooooooows through time.” She twirled in a circle, cackling just a bit with her wings spread before focusing on me once more. “You know of this. You are Jacob-blood just as him. You have been given the Jacob-blood. Powered. Made from human to more, made Jacob-blooded. The Jacob was torn through time, ripped and cut and sliced. Blood came through, all the way through, blood fell through time and filled others, like our master.”
Miranda spoke slowly. “I think she’s saying that Jacob’s… blood went through the timeline and… fell on people?”
“Splash, sploosh!” the Harpy agreed with a loud cackle. “Jacob-blood raining down, pouring out, blood blood blood, finding its children, finding its friends, giving them gifts! His gifts! Jacob selecting his proteges! The bloodshed rains through the rifts, showering his chosen!”
When I went through that first rift, when I almost died, I’d felt like I was being torn apart. Was--was part of that real? My blood was scattered through all those years just like the different versions of myself being sent to those other rifts were. Just… just bits of my blood appearing at random throughout time and… and finding people?
“Oh my God,” Miranda blurted, “Jacob isn’t a Heretic, he’s a Fae. His blood can create new Natural Heretics. That’s what she’s talking about. Her creator, he’s--he’s a Natural Jacob Heretic. Yo--his blood went through time and made more Natural Heretics of--of himself.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” the Harpy cheerfully confirmed. “Master has done Jacob proud, has created many deaths for him, as Jacob would want. Our master has done much in his name. A name all in the streets of London fear.
“Jack the Ripper.”