All the pleading in the world did not get Will to back down. Bee pulled out all the stops. Threatening. Bargaining. Finally, begging. It was no use.

Will spent his days alternating between tinkering on that elixir of his and running a pseudo school class with Bee, Loony, and Oatmeal. Teaching them letters, to start. He promised more could come later.

It was torture. And Will, the sadistic shithead, was getting off on her suffering. Getting to stand over her like an overbearing teacher and point out all her mistakes. There were a lot. Out of the three of them, she was making the least progress. Mom had always said that she had nothing but rocks rattling around in her head. Or was it Dad who said that?

There was precisely one upside to the situation. Will did suit the stern teacher routine. Giving instructions, correcting mistakes, praising success. Frowning over their shoulders. He did a lot of that. Frowning. It was attractive in an infuriating kind of way. Stupid sexy Will.

At least, while he was preoccupied with his projects, Bee got to vent some of her pent-up energy through sparring and exercising. Both Oatmeal and Loony needed training badly. Oatmeal hated weapons training even more than he did studying, and after he had accumulated enough bruises over a few days he flat-out refused to come out in the yard anymore. Bee did not have Will’s hard-on for discipline. She let Oatmeal have his way.

Remembering how he had burnt himself out before, Bee made sure to check in on Will often while he was working. Making sure he was eating enough, resting enough, sleeping enough. Pacing himself. Of course, he was doing none of those things. Flat-out, like always. It was the only way he knew how to do things.

She couldn’t be too mad at him. She was the same way, just in another direction. Still, it was frustrating to see it in someone else. To speak sense to them and watch it go over their head. Especially when it was someone you loved.

Bee felt his fatigue growing with every day that went by. He was abusing that Dash of Love thing too much. Trying to recreate perfection. Every few days he went to Sheerhome to source new reagents from that old pal of his, Crooked Dick. With each crop of mismatched oddities he brought home, he intensified his efforts.

Stupid man. How he’d kept himself alive for five whole years without her was entirely baffling.

Since he was intent to ignore all reasonable attempts at intervention thrown his way, Bee decided she wasn’t going to give him the option. If he was going to act like a child, fine. She’d just have to babysit him.

She set a curfew for him. No tinkering past eight o’clock. Of course, he was the only one with a watch, so it was a fairly loose system that involved a lot of ‘drag him out on his ass now, check the time later’. She watched him like a hawk at every meal. He was not allowed to leave until he had cleaned off his plate to a mirror shine. She made him take something to help him sleep at night, and made sure he went to bed first, so she could make sure that he actually slept and didn’t try to tiptoe out on her in the night.

He did try that a few times by drinking a neutralizing agent before the sleeping potion. The penalties she gave him became increasingly severe and painful. He quickly stopped trying that avenue. Good for him, using his big-boy brain

Of course, Will was extremely vocal about his displeasure. ‘Unfair’, he cried. ‘You don’t understand’, he insisted. ‘If you’d just let me do this one thing’, he pleaded. Idiot. She enjoyed keeping him in line just as much as he enjoyed forcing her to fill her head with junk letters.

Weeks went by. Loony got better with her knifework. Not that there was much to using a knife, anyway. Not much point in fancy techniques, all that slashing and twirling you always saw in movies back on Earth. Just stab, stab, stab, until whoever you were stabbing quit moving.

But she did get better at concealing weapons, producing them when needed. Using her Illusion, she could have a knife appear in her hand out of nowhere, or magically switch hands, or disappear from view entirely while it remained in her hand, an invisible blade.

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Of course, Bee couldn’t imagine it would do her too much good in a proper fight with someone like, well, herself. But Will wanted her for wetwork, and yeah, she could definitely see the use there.

Loony had been practicing her faces, too. Even full-body glamors. It was still a little rocky in the details, especially while moving or talking, but there was a definite improvement in quality, and she could hold on to her illusions for longer now. One other neat thing was that she could use Illusion to cover her sheet as well, meaning that she could conceal ever having used the AP in the first place. People wouldn’t pick up on the fact that she was using a skill unless they used Detect Magic or some other such thing.

Number One’s condition worsened gradually. He hung on longer than anyone had expected. He got to spend a lot of time with the others; did some gardening, too. He liked plants. Liked doing chores around the house, taking care of the chickens. She’d never realized that about him. Never paid enough attention. Then again, she hadn’t known him long enough to get to know him well.

Eventually he was confined to bed, mostly too weak to stand. His aging came on rapidly. His heart got weaker, and his eyes clouded over, leaving him mostly blind. His hands shook.

At least he wasn’t in any pain. Will whipped up a painkilling concoction that did the trick for him. Highly addictive, Will explained, but of course that didn’t matter much to a dead man. Chimp.

Then, one day, Number One announced that today would be his last. Mongrel did not understand at first. Or maybe he didn’t want to. Number One explained that he wanted to spend one last day with his family, and at the end of it he wanted Will to give him something that would help him die in peace. Before his body degenerated further. While he could still go out with dignity, and leave only fond memories behind.

If there was anything that characterized Number One in his last few weeks of life, it was that. Dignity. When his brothers got rowdy with him, he tolerated it with a sagely smile. When Nix glared venom daggers at him, lethally jealous that she wasn’t the center of Mongrel’s world, he spoke with her in private. Bee wasn’t sure what he said to her, but she was mostly pacified afterwards.

Mongrel acted like an overprotective mother hen, checking on him twenty times a day and making sure his pillows were just right and going through a level of effort that, even with Bee’s limited experience of the man, she knew was entirely out of character. Number One accepted that, too, and seemed only to enjoy the nearness.

Everyone wanted Number One’s last day to be perfect. Nix went all out on the breakfast in bed, complete with a pack of smokes to suck down. Then, with a hefty dose of painkillers, he managed to get out of bed, and he hung out with his brothers out in the sun. He gave them gifts. Little trinkets to remember him by. Bee wasn’t sure if he’d made them himself, or if they were things he’d had for a long time.

She didn’t expect to receive anything, but he had one for her, too. A red ribbon bracelet with a blue marble clinking at the center of the neat little bow. Maybe Will had picked it up for him to regift on one of his regular city trips. She thought it was too pretty for her to wear. Pretty things had never suited her much. But having it on did feel nice, and playing with the marble made her smile.

In all honesty, Number One did spend much of his Perfect Day smoking. Smoking in bed. Smoking on the porch. Smoking on a stump. Smoking in the chicken coop. Smoking at the dinner table. Smoking in the outhouse. By god, did he reek. But then, she wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. She could tell he was enjoying himself.

Towards the afternoon, he and Mongrel went for a walk in the woods. Just the two of them. A father and his geriatric son. They returned at dusk, when the trees were alight with a deep golden glow. Hand in hand. There was something magical about that picture. Bee had to look away to stop herself crying.

Then he went back to bed. Will put a much bigger dose of the same painkiller in his tea. Number One drank it, smacked his lips, and nodded. Half an hour later he was asleep. Half an hour after that, he was dead.

There weren’t a lot of dry eyes in the house that night.

He truly went out like a champ. Chimp.

* * *

There was a funeral. They burned him on a pyre, right in the yard, so that the animals and monsters wouldn’t get at him. Will and Mongrel both said some words, having to raise their voices so it would carry over the crackle and roar of the flames.

When the fire died down, they used the embers to light up some smokes. Everyone had one, like a farewell toast.

Mongrel didn’t cry. He looked numb. The next day, he was almost back to normal. Smiling and laughing and making his crude little jokes. It was almost creepy. But there was a darkness there too, hiding just behind his eyes. Maybe he’d already gotten all his feelings out during the slow leadup to Number One’s death, and now he was just numb, stuck bearing the weight of absence and trying to lighten it with all that was familiar.

There was no point speculating. But whatever form it took, she could empathize with his hurt.