Home wasn't just one thing, and it was rarely just a place. So, when Luka finally headed home, he didn't go back to his own apartment. He did crave the solitude it would provide, but it wasn’t what he needed. Besides, there was one more thing he needed to fix today.
The apartment might have been too big, too impersonal, to ever feel like home, but Quinn did. He found him on the couch, the TV running the news in the background. Quinn’s attention was on his laptop, but he set it aside when Luka entered, and straightened up. Luka paused to drop the gun on the coffee table with a soft clack, and then folded himself down next to Quinn, resting his head on his thigh. Quinn's hand fell on his hair as soon as he was settled, as if Luka were a pet crawling into his lap for attention.
Quinn leaned forward and grabbed the gun, his touch momentarily vanishing as he ejected the clip and counted the bullets. He heard the thump as Quinn settled it back down on the table, but closed his eyes. He could feel the silence in his breaths and wondered how many it would take before he stated the obvious. He felt the touch of fingers returning to his hair, and Quinn inhaled. "You fired it."
"Don't," Luka said. "Not today."
"Okay," Quinn said gently. "Are there no good news at all?"
He nodded his head minutely. "The cure worked."
The fingers stilled in his hair as Quinn processed the news. It had been his idea, so he really shouldn’t be surprised that it had worked. Luka’s mind was too muddled to analyze the reaction, but of course he knew what it was: fear. It was no doubt related to the same fear that had made him leave the Academy, and swear off magic. Luka didn’t know the story because he had never asked and Quinn had never offered, but he had gathered details like puzzle pieces. Still, they only revealed fragments.
“Did you think it wouldn’t?”
Luka twitched his shoulders in half a shrug. “That’s not the point.” There was a point somewhere in all of this, probably something about the dangers of arrogance. He should have listened to the speech he gave Alice, but even if he believed those words, he struggled to shake off his own guilt. This had felt personal from the beginning, because it had been. He kept thinking that he could have played it differently if he had realized the truth sooner.
“What happened?” His fingers started up again, stroking gently through his hair. It was too vast a question to answer, and he was too tired. He should be getting to the point, to his apology, so he could sleep. Details could wait.
“I’m sorry,” Quinn said, when the pause had stretched too long. “I just want to know where your head is at.”
“My head is tired,” Luka muttered.
“I know, babe. We don’t have to do this now.”
"No," Luka said, pushing himself up. "We might as well." He had spent a lot of magic curing the virus, but he released a small boost to stay awake. It wouldn’t work for long, but he had little more to give. He would have gotten coffee, but he was planning on passing out as soon as possible. "Just promise me you won't kick me out tonight. I don't have the energy to get myself home."
"I won't." Quinn reached for him again, like he was trying to hold on to some of the vulnerability, but Luka was already hardening again. He focused on the gun, lying quietly on the table. He knew that guns weren't the real killers, but it still felt wrong for it to look so harmless.
Luka didn’t know where to start and didn’t know how to explain Lewis, so he asked the question he should probably have asked a long time ago.
"Does the name Garrett Bailey mean anything to you?" He left out the middle name, just to avoid the obvious association. Which turned out to be pointless because the first thing Quinn asked was,
"Warren's son?"
He took his eyes off the gun and looked at Quinn. Apparently, his expression asked the next question for him.
“He was in my year at the Academy,” Quinn explained. “I knew him.”
“So you know his story?"
Quinn nodded absently while he was reconciling the Garrett he knew with what Luka was telling him in between the lines. Maybe he understated just how well he knew him. “He’s behind the virus.”
“Yes,” Luka confirmed.
Quinn glanced at the gun. “Did you kill him?”
He really was too tired for this conversation, because it sounded a lot like he cared if a terrorist was dead. Then again, Luka cared too, but he suspected their reasons were different.
“No. I tried to save him.”
“Tried?” It was nearly a whisper, and Luka could have put him out of his misery, told him that he was alive. Even if that status was hanging in the balance. He found himself holding back, wanting Quinn to admit that he didn’t care that Luka was a murderer, but only that he might have murdered Garrett.
Quinn was, as far as Luka could tell, a fairly standard Legacy, broken by the immense burden of impossible standards. With Garrett, the parental issues must have been fairly public, since he didn’t even know who they were when he manifested. It shouldn’t be surprising that they would find each other.
“You were friends,” he said. He should have left it at that, but even though he hated himself for it, he added, “Or…?” He didn’t want to care, and most of all, he didn’t want to be judgmental. But the thought did make a small part of him want to leave Garrett to the Council, even if he couldn’t do that.
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“Friends,” Quinn said firmly, and added, “He saved my life.”
An unexpected detail, and he wondered where it fit, but that wasn’t important right now. This was not going to turn into a conversation about Garrett. He needed to get back on track.
“Is he—?” Quinn finally asked before Luka could move on.
“No.” He’d been here when Alice texted him to get out of the hospital, and he’d left to warn Garrett. He had just discovered the cure and had let Quinn believe he was going back to the Academy. So he told him now, briefly, where he’d really gone, about Garrett's refusal to run and his arrest. Only then did he mention his confrontation with Lewis. It was hard to get through it, and he left Quinn with a lot of blanks to fill out, but honestly, the missing bullet in the gun had already told the story for him.
"He wasn't giving you much of a choice," Quinn offered, but it rang hollow to Luka. He knew that already. In the moment, it seemed clear that one of them would have to die, but there was always another choice. There had to be. Lewis was a drop in the ocean of people that had died this day, but he was perhaps the least inevitable.
"He chose to die," Luka said. "I didn't have to let him."
"You would have died in his place?" Quinn asked.
"I would have shown him mercy."
"He didn't want your mercy, Luka."
He shook his head. "You don't know that."
He watched his hands. They had taken on a slight tremble, and he could tell himself if was weariness all he wanted; he knew it was a lie. “He was a kid who thought I was a threat to him. He thought I was coming to take the thing that made him special, made him invaluable.” He stopped himself before he could say too much of what he was thinking. That, with everything he had ever done, why did this feel so hard to move past? It was the kind of thing he would have to bury in order to function.
"Garrett let me go after that,“ he continued, ignoring the way Quinn was looking at him. ”He had gates set up. Several of them, and he let me escape, before the Agents arrived."
He closed his eyes. His magic sparked across his skin, a useless instinct, given how weak it was. Quinn reached out, little more than a brush of his fingers, but Luka recognized it as silent disapproval.
"The gate took me to the street, and I went back. I don't know how many mages died, but the courtyard was dyed red by the time I left."
Quinn slipped his hand in between his clenched fingers and held on tightly. Luka had twitched at the first touch. He wanted to withdraw his hands, except that they had steadied. Because Quinn was his anchor, and sometimes he forgot that. "You did the best you could, Luka, but you don't control other people. You think it was on you to stop the deaths, but you never could have."
"I could have found the cure faster."
"No, you couldn't have," Quinn insisted. "You almost killed yourself for this case. Twice. If you gave anymore to it, it would have been your life, and that wouldn't have solved anything."
Three times, Luka corrected to himself. Either he was forgetting that Luka had infected himself, or he was forgetting about Lewis. It didn’t necessarily improve his point because Luka had never stopped to calculate the impact of his own death, had never really considered it an option. It also didn’t make it true because there were things he could have done differently.
It was pointless to try and track those alternative paths, but maybe one of them would have ended with less blood being spilled.
Quinn grabbed his face, forcing him out of his spiraling thoughts. "Luka," he said, not entirely gently.
He nodded as best as he could in his grip. "I'm fine," he said. "I'll be fine."
"I know." Quinn tipped his head forward until their foreheads touched, and Luka leaned into it. "Go," he said. "Sleep."
"No. There's one more loose end,“ Luka said, pulling back. "I owe you an apology."
"Oh, Luka. It's fine—“
“It’s not,” he insisted. He sighed and averted his eyes. "I shouldn't have kept you in the dark. I made a decision to cut you out because I thought it would be better. I thought I was protecting you, but I also couldn't allow you to interfere. I'm sorry. It wasn't only my choice to make."
"When have I ever interfered?"
He had expected forgiveness, or maybe even the opposite. Quinn didn’t understand, then, that it wasn’t about whether or not he would interfere, but that he could have. He could have told Luka to stop, to walk away, and he would have. He should have, because this was the Academy, because he had seen them digging their claws into Luka. He had asked him not to stay, but only because he knew he would, and it wasn’t enough anymore.
Because Garrett had started something—a rebellion or a war—he didn’t know yet. He only knew it was going to be important. He could walk away, and he would, but only if Quinn very firmly told him to.
"This is different."
"Yes," Quinn agreed. "It's the Academy. I couldn't have interfered if I wanted to."
Luka was quiet for a while before he said, "No. I suppose you couldn't."
Because there was that fear that Luka couldn’t quite define, but he knew it had little to do with him. It would have to be weighed against the option that the Council wouldn’t let him go easily, that they would track him down, and that Quinn would be back on their radar. Only, if he was actually hiding from them, why was he still in this city?
It was like prodding an old wound, aching underneath all the new ones, to remember this imbalance between them, and it was more than he could contain right now. He already felt like he was still bleeding. He felt like every inch of his body should be aching with bruises. He felt vulnerable.
It was easy for Quinn, perhaps, to appear unperturbed. He was good at acting strong, but he forgot that Luka knew him. Even though he couldn't always see the cracks, he knew they were there. They had to be. You didn't slip into an oxycodone addiction because you were perfectly well adjusted.
He was too tired to push him on whatever he wasn’t saying, so he let it go. This wasn't really about Quinn, anyway. Luka knew what it meant to go back. The Council would be holding all the cards, and he was sure Constance knew it. He was sure his leash would be a hell of a lot tighter.
So why did it feel like he had already made the decision?
He wanted a better future for mages, and for once, it felt within reach.
Garrett was misguided, but he was useful. His movement was useful.
If he had a chance to stop the persecution of Rogues, the genocide of magical creatures, the injustice caused by the Council, shouldn't he take it?
Then there was Alice. He had told her, indirectly, that he would be her mentor if the Academy would have him. If the Council would have him. If Hadley would have him.
He no longer questioned the Council’s motivations. Quinn was right; they would want to control him. Especially during a possible Rogue uprising, having Luka on their side would send a powerful message. Hadley was different, but he wasn’t likely to get a vote.
Quinn's fingers brushed against his temple. "Okay, that's enough. Go get some sleep."
Luka tilted his head into the touch, only for a second, then reached out and patted Quinn's leg. "Right," he said, or perhaps, "Ladno." Was he even speaking English anymore? When had he slipped into Russian?
He had felt his accent thickening, stumbling over the English pronunciation, but he didn’t feel sure about which language he was speaking anymore and shook his head against the cloudiness of his mind.
"Wait," Quinn said, as Luka rose. "Which part was meant to make me kick you out?"
"The murder?" He said, except he'd really said ubijstvo. He started towards the hallway, then paused. "And I'm not finished with the Academy, but you already knew that.“
He didn’t wait for the response, since there had been no real question in it. He would assume forgiveness, at least until he woke up, hopefully in something like eight to twelve hours.