Memoria

Vanguard: Calder City

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_{Present - Morning ◈ Marth Oldfox ◈ The Docks (The Collapse Site) ◈ Marth@Memoria, Joanie@Natty (Mentioned)}

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Emile Oldfox drove with both hands on the wheel. And not once did he question Marth's certainty. He only drove. That was how Marth knew his father was frightened. Ordinarily, Emile filled silence the way painters filled a canvas, with his own color of language. He'd make small observations, with some passing remark about clouds or brickwork or the tragic emotional life of bad signage. But now the truck moved through Calder City with no music on, no commentary, and none of the gentle, somewhat aimless nonsense his father was known for. Only the trucks old engine, the wet road hissing beneath the tires, and Marth in the passenger seat with fingers pressed to his temples and the small strained sound of him breathing through his nose. Eyes shut. Whenever Marth opened his mind, the city became too loud. But not outside. From within. Every mind they passed brushed against him in fragments. And beneath it all... Joanie. Or at least, what remained of her mind's telempathic signal. Marth listened to the thin thread tugging somewhere under his ribs. They drove deeper toward the Docks, where the first psychic ache had pointed him. Marth reached again, carefully, trying not to tear through the city's noise and take half of Calder into himself with it. ~ⱼₒₐₙᵢₑ~ His thought went out softly. ~Cₐₙ yₒᵤ ₕₑₐᵣ ₘₑ?~ For half a breath, he felt her. Then the thread went cold. Marth’s eyes opened. Émile looked over. “What?” “I lost her.” His father’s hands tightened on the wheel. “Lost her how?” “I don’t know.” Marth swallowed. “It was there. She was there. Now it’s faint. Like something moved between us.” He hated the helplessness in his own voice. He hated that his gift, which could make a stranger’s private sorrow feel like thunder, could suddenly leave him with nothing but a direction and dread. Marth did not know how else to say it. Joanie’s pain had been a lighthouse when it struck him at the Gables. Now it was a thread under dark water. Then they saw the collapse. A street near the old route had folded in on itself. Dust hung low over wet pavement. Emergency lights strobed red and white against broken concrete. Police tape held back a crowd of witnesses who stood pale and stunned in the morning chill. Firefighters moved through the wreckage with careful urgency, their radios crackling like insects. Emile pulled over, but Marth did not get out. The place was loud with too many sounds and too many thoughts. Marth opened too far and the collapse poured into him, mind's replaying the fragments of the moment again and again in broken, distorted loops. ~ᵣᵤₙ. Gₑₜ Bₐcₖ. ₜₕₑᵣₑ wₑᵣₑ ₖᵢdₛ. Wₕₑᵣₑ dᵢd ₛₕₑ gₒ? Dᵢd ₐₙyₒₙₑ ₛₑₑ ₕᵢₘ? ₙₒₜ ₘₒᵥᵢₙg. ₙₒₜ ₘₒᵥᵢₙg.~ He searched for the shape of her mind in the chaos. He had hoped at least. But he knew, from the fear in her psychic voice, that she was not here anymore. Just the private little songs of the living remained. Marth closed his eyes and tried again to reach out to her, forcing himself narrower. ~ⱼₒₐₙᵢₑ~ Not the woman crying at the bus stop. ~ⱼₒₐₙᵢₑ~ Not the paramedic thinking of blood on concrete. ~ⱼₒₐₙᵢₑ~ Not the man praying under his breath. ~ⱼₒₐₙᵢₑ~ For a moment, he whispered to his father, eyes still shut. "She's not here." That was all Emile needed to hear. He put the truck back into traffic and they circled the Docks some more.

Vanguard: Calder City

@Lord Wraith

Thank you :) I appreciate that. Yeah, I don't think his power would typically work so poignantly like this and certainly not over such a long distance (at least for now), but I think his empathic connection to Joanie and the weight of her emotions in that moment amplified his power in that moment as well (like when his power first manifested as his grandfather was dying slowly and painfully). Plus, I really have to give props to @Natty's last post for inadvertently setting up my next post so perfectly. I was in the middle of writing my post, saw their post, and then rewrote my post after their post gave me spontaneous inspiration. So thanks to Natty! lol <3

Vanguard: Calder City

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_{Present - Morning ◈ Marth Oldfox ◈ Old Calder (Old Prue Gables Bed & Breakfast) ◈ Marth@Memoria, Joanie@Natty (Mentioned)}

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The Old Prue Gables had a way of making mornings feel older than they were. Light entered through the tall front windows in slanted, dusty ribbons, catching on the beveled glass, the brass umbrella stand, the framed photographs along the hall. The house had been awake long before anyone admitted to being awake. It had muttered through its pipes, groaned softly in its staircases, and let the smell of coffee and blueberry-lavender scones drift room by room until even the most committed sleepers were forced into civility. By half past eight, breakfast was in its gentle little commotion. Guests moved through the downstairs rooms in soft currents and murmured over Oldfox recipes in the dining room. Someone asked for more honey. Someone else wanted to know if the house was “actually haunted” or only marketed that way, which made Sybil look up from the sideboard with a face so blandly pleasant that Marth knew she was choosing mercy by the thread. His mother swept between tables with a vase of fresh-cut flowers, rearranging beauty as if beauty were a household chore. His father stood near the parlor, half-listening to an elderly guest explain a dream she had about the wallpaper of hummingbirds. And then there were the bells too. Not proper bells, though the house did possess one of those too, a little brass thing near the front desk that guests rang with varying degrees of entitlement. These were smaller, household bells, like the spoon-clink of marmalade against china, the silver chatter of cutlery, or the faraway ring of Bone's phone alarm going off for the fourth time upstairs. Marth sat at the old piano with a screwdriver in one hand and the expression of a man making polite war against a sticking key. He had not meant to tune anything. He had come downstairs intending only to help with breakfast, check the guest room list, and make sure Joanie’s first morning at the Gables did not begin with his entire family circling her like affectionate peacocks. But the piano had been sounding wrong all week, one middle note catching slightly whenever it was pressed, and Marth had never been good at leaving a wrong note alone. Neither, apparently, had the house. The Old Prue Gables leaned over him in all its plum-gray patience of high ceilings, dark wood, violet-colored wallpaper faded by generations of sunlight, and doors that closed only when they felt respected. Outside, the garden still glittered with last night’s rain. As did the Faraway Tree. Inside, the morning gathered itself around him in warm domestic increments. Cups. Plates. Voices. The soft percussion of ordinary life. It was a sort of mundanity some people might find uninteresting and provincial. Joanie was expected at nine. He told himself he was not watching the clock. At eight fifty-seven, he adjusted the piano key. At eight fifty-nine, he stood to fold napkins. At nine, Sybil walked past him with a tray of spoons and said, “Try not to look like an abandoned bride.” Marth did not dignify that with much more than a glance. But he almost smiled. Almost. He had told his family enough about Joanie to prepare them, but not enough to make her feel studied before she arrived. Eighteen. Recently aged out. A resident of St. Dymphna’s. Bright, capable, and proud. In need of a job and, perhaps more importantly, in need of a door she could close. His mother had immediately begun planning muffins, while his father had asked what sort of music she liked. Sybil had said, with unusual practicality, that everyone should behave as if a normal person was coming to work and not a wounded bird being delivered to a Victorian rescue aviary. Marth had agreed. Then Sybil had accused him of being the aviary. Which was not entirely unfair. He glanced at the clock again. Nine-oh-three. Not late enough to mean anything. People were late. Buses were late. Nerves made people late. Hope made people late too, sometimes, when a person had to stand outside the door of a new life and gather herself before knocking. He folded another napkin. But then the floor trembled. Only once. A brief, low shudder moved through the house, so subtle that for a moment it seemed less like the ground shaking and more like the Old Prue Gables had taken a breath too sharply. China chimed in the cabinets. The chandelier in the dining room trembled, scattering small nervous sparks of light across the walls. One of the guests gasped. Somewhere upstairs, Bone shouted something about dying before breakfast. Then it was over. His father stepped into the hall, eyebrows raised. “Truck, maybe?” “Or the boiler being fussy again.” Sybil said. Marth’s mother put one steadying hand on the back of a chair and gave the guests a bright, soothing smile. “Old house. Sometimes it does such things.” A few people laughed. Uneasily, but enough. The room began putting itself back together. Forks returned to plates. Coffee was poured. Someone resumed talking about the weather as if weather had earned the privilege of being ordinary. The Gables settled back into its wood and plaster bones, creaking once, then going still. Marth remained where he was. The napkin in his hands had gone half-folded. It was not that the tremor had been large. It was not even that it had been frightening. But something inside it had reached him. A faint emotional bruise under the physical shake. A pressure in the mind. The kind of disturbance that did not pass through furniture, but through feeling. His gaze moved to the clock. Nine-oh-five. Joanie. The name came into him with a small, cold certainty. He tried to tell himself not to be foolish. Calder City had underground trains, old infrastructure, construction, heavy trucks, strange little moods of its own. Joanie had powers, yes, but not every tremor in the world belonged to one troubled girl. Still. He set the napkin down. “Marth?” his mother asked from the dining room archway. He had not realized she was watching him. “I’m all right,” he said automatically. Her face did not believe him. Neither did Sybil’s. She had gone still near the sideboard, one hand resting beside the spoons, her eyes sharp as pins. Marth drew a breath and closed his eyes. Not fully open, he thought. Just enough to peek. His mind had been closed most of the morning, the way he kept it closed in crowded places and family breakfasts, with every guest thinking three things at once and his relatives’ emotions passing through the house as intimately as smells from the kitchen. He loosened the latch by the smallest degree. Naturally, the house came first. His mother’s worry, warm and immediate. Sybil’s suspicion, brisk and blade-edged. Bone’s half-asleep alarm from upstairs. A guest’s private irritation over runny eggs. His father’s curiosity, bright and painterly, already trying to turn the tremor into an interesting story. Then the city beyond the windows. A blur of minds, traffic, hunger, grief, errands. But then...Joanie screamed. Not anywhere near close enough for him to possibly have heard it with his ears. No no no. But in the deep, inner country where pain had no need of air. It struck Marth so violently that his breath left him. The room vanished. For one terrible instant, there was only sorrow. Sorrow so raw it had no skin. Horror followed close behind it, sharp with dust and broken stone, the awful gape of something witnessed and impossible to unwitness. Joanie’s grief opened inside him like a door blown off its hinges. It poured through him, not as words, not at first, but as a feeling vast enough to drown the language that often came to his mind first before the emotional undercurrent. But this was certainly different. Marth made a sound. Small at first. Then broken. His knees hit the rug beside the piano. The screwdriver clattered away. Someone cried out. His hands flew to his head as if he could hold his skull together through the force of it. The pain was not physical, and that made it worse. There was nowhere to put it. No wound to cover. No blood to press back inside. Only the emotional scream of a girl somewhere in the city, tearing through him with such force that his own heart did not seem to know whose grief it was carrying. And beneath it, older terror woke. A hallway. Childhood-dark. The smell of medicine and old sheets. His grandfather dying behind a closed door. That first impossible cry. Pain not meant for him. Pain that found him anyway. Marth was young again for half a breath, small and frightened, hearing his grandfather’s mind crying out from the wreckage of his body, the agony of it so intimate and enormous that it had broken the world into before and after. His gift had begun there. Not with wonder or a starry light, unfortunately, but with suffering entering him without knocking. Now Joanie’s suffering had done the same. This was the telempathic underbelly of his telepathy on cruel display. “Marth!” His mother reached him first. He felt her hands on his shoulders, then his face, her fear striking bright against the wider storm. Sybil was beside him a second later, cursing under her breath, one hand braced against his back as if she could keep him from being pulled somewhere she could not follow. “Marth, look at me,” Sybil said. “What happened?” He tried to answer but only a low moan came out. The psychic aftershock rippled through him again, and with it came pieces. Not clear visions. Not enough. Only telepathic impressions dragged behind Joanie’s scream. He saw gray dust rising, concrete split like a cracked tooth, a shape on the ground, hands reaching, the crushing absence where hope had been a moment before. Sorrow. Horror. Guilt. The taste of earth in panic. Joanie. Rowan? He could not tell. He did not want to tell. The telepathic images were too amorphous. Perhaps distorted by Joanie's own emotional agony and distress. His mother’s voice trembled. “Is it Bruno?” “No.” The word tore out of him before anything else could. “No. It’s...” He swallowed hard, eyes squeezed shut. “It’s Joanie.” Sybil went very still. “The girl coming today?” Marth nodded once, though the movement hurt. “Something happened.” His mother’s fingers tightened against his cheek. “What kind of something?” “I don’t know.” His voice shook, and that frightened him almost as much as the pain did. “I can feel her.” The room around them had gone silent. Too silent. The guests were watching from the dining room as if the house had become a stage and no one had told them what play they had entered. His father stood in the hall, pale now, all the color gone from his painter’s face. Marth opened his eyes and they were wet. But worse than that, they were lit. Not glowing brightly, not yet, but touched by that strange witchlight that sometimes moved through him when his emotions came too near the surface. Soft, starry, and troubled. Like moonlight seen through water. “She’s screaming,” he whispered. His mother made a soft sound. Sybil’s hand tightened at his back. “With your gift?” He could not pretend. Not here. Not with them. “Yes.” He forced another breath into himself. “Oh my god. Something’s wrong. Something terrible has happened. I can feel the shape of it, but not enough to...” He stopped as another image passed through him. There was dust, a hand, a broken edge of stone. A splash of crimson like paint. His stomach turned. “I have to go.” “Absolutely the fuck not,” Sybil said at once. He looked at her. She looked back, fierce and frightened. “You can barely stand.” “I can stand.” “That was not the point.” His mother’s eyes were shining now. “Darling, please. Let your father drive. Let someone call...” “We can call as we go.” “You don’t know where she is.” “The Docks.” The answer came before he understood where he had found it. It had been buried in the scream somehow. The emotional direction of Joanie’s pain pulling at him like a thread tied under the ribs. He could tell too, by the distorted scene that came to his mind. Ocean wind and old concrete. For a moment, he thought he could almost taste blood and sea salt in his breath. “I think she's somewhere in The Docks district,” he said again, firmer now. Sybil stood with him because he was already trying to rise. “Then I’m coming.” “No.” “Marth.” “No.” Softer this time, but no less certain. “I don’t need you running into the unknown because you’re angry.” “I’m always angry. It’s never stopped me.” Despite everything, despite the pain still singing through his skull, a broken little breath almost became a laugh. Almost. Then Joanie’s grief rose again, and his face changed. There was nothing dramatic about the way Marth became decided. He did not square his shoulders like a hero in a story. He did not speak with thunder. He simply gathered himself around the point of someone else’s pain and moved toward it. That was all. That had always been the danger in him. Gentleness, when frightened enough, could become terribly direct. He stood. His mother steadied him. Sybil did not let go until he was fully upright. The house seemed to lean in around them and the guests were frozen over their breakfast by the spectacle of it all. “Marth,” his mother whispered. He looked at her, and for a moment the resolve nearly broke. “I really have to go.” No one argued quickly enough to stop him. He crossed the hall, moving faster with each step. Past the parlor. Past the front desk and the little brass bell. Past the vase of flowers his mother had arranged too carefully. Past the photographs of Oldfox children in crooked frames, all of them caught in some safer century of sunlight. The front door opened under his hand. Outside, the morning remained bright. Somehow, that felt obscene. Rain still glittered on the garden leaves. A delivery van rolled lazily past the gate. The sign for the Old Prue Gables swung once in the mild wind, beautiful and simple. The world had the audacity to look unchanged while Joanie’s pain burned like a brand through the back of his mind. Marth stepped onto the porch. And then he made the choice to reveal himself. He paused, fingers to his temples, his mind's eye carrying itself on an invisible psychic wind until it landed in Joanie's thoughts. Her pain hit him again, relentlessly. But he pushed through to talk to her. From his mind, to hers. “ⱼₒₐₙᵢₑ. ₜₕᵢₛ ᵢₛ ₘₐᵣₜₕ. ₐᵣₑ yₒᵤ ₒₖₐy? Wₕₐₜ'ₛ wᵣₒₙg? Wₕₑᵣₑ ₐᵣₑ yₒᵤ?" Behind him, his family’s voices tangled together in fear and love. Ahead of him, somewhere in the city, Joanie was screaming. He followed. And then his father followed after him, demanding that he would drive. Marth did not argue with that.

Vanguard: Calder City

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_{Present - Morning ◈ Joanie Porter, Marth Oldfox ◈ The Docks (St. Dymphna’s Home For Wayward Youths) ◈ Joanie@Natty, Marth@Memoria}

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Another day, another job interview. This one was at a coffee shop that told her she didn’t have enough experience to pour drinks. The rejection sat heavy in her chest, another reminder that she was running out of options. “Joanie, this is the third one this week.” Mrs. Qadir exclaimed as they moved through the hallway, their arms filled with laundry. Given everything with Rowan, Mrs. Qadir was stretched thin, her worry spilling into every corner of the house. Joanie coming home after failing yet another interview was just another problem on her belt. “I know, I know” Joanie said, heat rising in her chest. “It’s not my fault.” How on earth was she meant to get experience if no one wanted to hire her? It was a vicious cycle. Mrs. Qadir simply shook her head in response, stepping closer to the laundry shoot. “You have been distracted. Anyone can see it.” Joanie’s jaw tightened. “That’s not why they turned me down.” Deep down though she knew it was a factor. Her temper had been worsening the last few days. It hasn’t been help by that Detective’s phone number taking her straight to an answering machine. She had left a message but wasn’t hopeful. There wasn’t much room for hope these days. “Maybe not,” Qadir said, her voice sharpening, “but I’m worried about you sweetie. You come home everyday looking like the world is ending. You barely sleep. You barely eat. You are out every night searching for Rowan. I understand why, but I cannot have you falling apart right now.” “I am not falling apart,” Joanie snapped. “I am trying. I am doing everything I can.” “I know you are,” Qadir said, softer now, but the fear in her voice was unmistakable. “But child services are breathing down my neck. They want answers. They want proof this home is stable. They want to know why a boy is missing and why the older kids look exhausted and frightened.” Joanie looked away, throat tight. “So this is my fault.” “That’s not what I said.” “It’s what it sounds like.” Qadir’s composure cracked. “I’m scared, Joanie. I’m scared for Rowan. I’m scared for all of you. I am scared of losing this home. I am doing everything I can to keep this place together, and I need you with me, not fighting me.” “I can’t do this right now,” Joanie muttered, the pressure behind her ribs building until she felt it in her fingertips. She dropped the clothes in a heap at her feet. “Joanie…” She turned sharply, the movement sending a faint tremor through the wall beside her. Mrs. Qadir’s eyes flicked to it, worry deepening, but she did not speak again. Joanie stormed down the stairs in a tight, frustrated huff and pushed into the kitchen, needing space, needing air, needing to get away before she said something she could not take back. —-- For the next few days, Marth slept beneath the crooked roofs of the Old Prue Gables. It was safer there, everyone agreed, than letting him stay alone in his flat in The Docks with Bruno able to appear and vanish like a bad thought. The decision had been made around the long dining table with the grave democracy of family panic. His mother with one hand over her mouth, his father going silent in the way he did before anger found its color, Sybil speaking in clipped and poisonous little sentences, and Bone trying to make jokes and failing at every single one. Marth had confessed the whole thing, or nearly the whole thing, after the Remembrance break had ended. He had not enjoyed being the subject of everyone’s love when love had become alert and armed. The Old Prue Gables itself seemed to take the news personally. It creaked around him at night like an old aunt keeping watch. The plum-gray walls held lamplight late into the evening. Someone always knew when he came downstairs or when he needed tea before asking. Marth noticed Bone pretending not to be waiting in the hall when he returned from brushing his teeth. All at once, it was tender, suffocating and unfortunately, safer. So Marth behaved. He went to Oceanside Middle School in the mornings, taught his classes, and returned directly to the Old Prue Gables as soon as the school day ended. No wandering. No coffee shops unless accompanied. And certainly no traveling home alone with his mind half-open to the city. Marth’s family had become especially creative about texting him when traveling alone was his only option. Sybil sent threats disguised as check-ins, the kind only big sisters could do with instinctive finesse. Bone sent humorously artful photographs of himself looking suspiciously through windows. His mother sent little hearts, then long silences, which were worse. Marth kept telling them he was all right. This was not untrue. It was only incomplete. Still, other worries had begun gathering at the edges of him. One of his students, Rowan, a resident of St. Dymphna’s, had not been coming to music class. While absence was not always disaster, Marth had learned that silence around children often had weight. The recent report of missing Grays had made that weight heavier. Every rumor seemed to have teeth now. There had been other small heartbreaks too. Samir’s love song had not survived the morning after all. Marth had not needed his gift to know it. One look at the boy’s body language had told him everything. Seventh-grade affection had met the world and limped back from it. Marth had felt ridiculously sad about that, perhaps more than was reasonable. After a few days, half-distracted and uncharacteristically wound tight with his students, Oceanside’s principal (once he confessed to her why he was not performing at his best) asked him to take some time off. So he did. When Marth got the chance, he volunteered at St. Dymphna’s Wayward Home, though he had always disliked the word wayward. It made the children sound like roads that had been chosen incorrectly, when most of them had only been pushed, chased, lost, hidden, or left to find their way through a world that kept moving the signs. He helped where he could. Music sometimes. Groceries sometimes. Homework, little repairs, errands, piano accompaniment for the few who could be talked into singing. Over time, he had formed relationships with some of the young people there. Not dramatically as some savior with a songbook and a soft cardigan. Simply by returning. There was power in returning, he knew. Children noticed who came back. Joanie had noticed, though Marth would not have presumed to say what that meant. On this particular visit, he spoke first with Mrs. Qadir. They sat in her office with the door half-closed and talked about Rowan—and Joanie, who apparently had stormed off not long after he had arrived. They talked about Rowan’s missed school days and whether anyone had seen him. They couldn’t help but assume there was a connection between him and the reports of the missing Grays, which had begun to make every ordinary absence feel haunted. Mrs. Qadir was one of the few people outside Marth’s family, Oceanside’s principal, and Bruno, who knew what he was. A Gray. A telepath. A man who could hear more than anyone had given him permission to. She did not ask him to use it. He was grateful for that. He was also aware of what it cost not to ask when his power made it so easy to pry. By the time Marth entered the kitchen, he was carrying a cardboard box of groceries balanced against one hip. Of course, Joanie was there. Mrs. Qadir had informed him as much. Marth saw her before she saw—no. He did not let himself reach for more than what he could see. He closed his mind gently but firmly, the way one closed a door in a house where someone might be sleeping. Whatever Joanie was thinking belonged to Joanie. He would not brush against it by accident, if he could help it. Not right now when she had enough people in the world trying to take things from her without asking. Still, he had eyes. And his eyes were enough to tell him what her mind did not need to. Her posture had edges today. Her expression held a silver undercurrent. This was not the ordinary 18-year-old bad mood that came with boredom or insulted pride. This had sparks to it. And as Marth gazed at her for that brief moment, really gazed at her, there was understanding and quiet, tender solidarity. Perhaps even more than that. There was witchlight in his eyes. Soft, starry, and comforting like magic. Marth shifted the box against the counter and began unpacking it without ceremony, setting cans in small, tidy rows. He did not look at her too directly again. Direct concern could sometimes feel like a lamp held too close to the face. He had learned that from students, his siblings, and even himself. He took out another can and set it beside the others, finally speaking to Joanie without looking at her. “Mrs. Qadir said I’d find you in here. Everything alright?” Without waiting for an answer he turned, opened one cabinet, considered it, and gave a small, thoughtful hum. “Actually, yes…this is worse than I feared.” he said with a sort of breathlessness that made it sound like he was noting something to himself with a murmur. His mouth tilted, not quite a smile and not quite asking for one. She had been stewing in silence when he entered, her eyes were fixated down on the table she sat at. Her eyes blinked up at Marth as he placed down the groceries, before giving him a smile as she tried to bring herself out of her mood. She was back up onto her feet in an instant, moving to help as if on autopilot. She grabbed a bag of carrots and some greens before making her way past him to the fridge. Marth was one of the few volunteers Joanie actually respected. Most of the people who drifted through the house came with that look in their eyes that said they were here to save each and every one of them. Some of them talked to the kids like they were made of glass. Others talked to them like they were problems waiting to happen. Marth never did either. He moved through the place like someone who understood that help did not need to be loud to be real. She had never been in his class. By the time he started teaching at Oceanside Middle she had already aged out of the system. But the younger ones talked about him with a kind of easy fondness that was rare for a teacher. Joanie did not know if all of that was true, but she believed enough of it. “I’m fine.” She lied, placing her items neatly into the fridge’s vegetable drawers. Even she could tell by her tone unfortunately that that wasn’t the truth though. “You know how it is,” she continued without turning. “Long morning. Kids were loud. Qadir’s stressed. Nothing new.” It was like she was trying to convince herself. Thankfully his follow up comment as he opened the cupboard was a good distraction. Her eyes flicked in the direction of Marth and the open cupboard before him as she made her way back to the bag. “What’s wrong?” She asked inquisitively. “Ooooh, nothing serious. I may have left a small tea tin here, that’s all.” Marth said, glancing toward the upper shelf and then toward Joanie with a warm, soft smile of the eyes. “Lavender. Blue lid. Blackcurrants on the side. My mother is convinced it improves difficult mornings.” He paused for a moment, then said, almost absently, “Mrs. Qadir keeps the tea somewhere high, doesn’t she? I always forget which self.” Her eyebrows raised themselves in recognition as he described it. She dragged the stool she’d been previously perched in across the floor with her foot and stepped up onto it, reaching up towards one of the taller cabinets that she’d long since claimed as her territory for storing treats and snacks that needed to be kept safe from prying hands. Her fingers skimmed along the back of the shelf until they closed around a similar tin. “Oh, this one?” She asked, easing it out carefully before presenting it to Marth. “Yeah sorry we had to move things about a few weeks back.” She thought back to it; one of the newer residents, who whilst nice, was just absolutely ravenous. He’d eat anything he’d get his hands on. And as they soon discovered after finding the remains of one of the locks they’d tried on the cupboard doors, it wasn’t just food he would eat. Poor kid. She stepped off the stool and offered it to him. “Had no idea it was yours.” She said apologetically. “Might have to give it a try, then.” Marth accepted the tin from her with both hands, as if it were something more fragile and breakable than tea. “Yes, that’s the one. Thank you.” His thumb moved lightly over the painted blackcurrants on the side, and for a moment his expression warmed with a fondness that had clearly come from somewhere old and domestic. His gaze seemed a bit starry as he gazed down at it. And then he came back to himself and looked up at her. “And don’t apologize. I leave things everywhere. My family has made a small mythology of it.” he said, his tone tinted with a soft humor. A pause. Then, gently, as if the thought had only just occurred to him, “Actually, I could make us some now. Let’s do that. I get the feeling we could both use a little decompressing, though it’s not quite as miraculous as my mother claims.” he said, chuckling lightly. Marth set the tin on the counter and reached for the kettle, moving with the same unhurried care he had given the groceries. No pressure or bright, direct concern. Only water, tea, lavender honey, and the quiet permission for the room to become something softer. After a few minutes of preparation, he handed Joanie a mug and then cupped his own as he sat at the dining table, beckoning her to join him. The room filled with the scent of dark berries and lavender. He let the steam rise into his pores, blowing gently into the mug to cool it off before shifting his gaze up to her. On the table in front of him was a small handful of creamy sugar violets wrapped in gilded foil. He’d brought them from Old Prue Gables, nicked from one of the empty guest rooms on his way out. “How strange things have become. Haven’t they?” She brought the mug to her nose, apprehensively, as she took in the scent herself, before bring it down to her lips for a sip. She almost winced from the temperature, but god, was it good. She nodded to herself slightly in satisfaction, gave the steaming liquid a quick blow, before bringing it back to her lips. “Your mother is a smart woman” She breathed after another sip, before turning to listen to what Marth was saying. Strange was definitely one word for it. Although there were certainly other words Joanie would probably have used to describe how life had changed for her recently. She simply nodded. “Guessing you heard about Row?” Marth nodded softly, “Mhm. He hasn’t been in class for a few days, so I had hoped you might have an inkling of his whereabouts. Mrs. Qadir, nor I, have the faintest clue.” She certainly had some ideas, but none she wanted to share just yet. She was still secretly hoping it wasn’t true. “We’ve checked some of the homeless camps.” She explained, gesturing her head in the general direction of the overpass. “No luck sadly.” She leant back against the counter, cradling her drink. It was frustrating. Finding a lone kid in a city like this was impossible. Maybe they would’ve had more luck if that damned detective would’ve picked up the phone, but it seems they were by themselves here. Marth’s gaze had lowered to his mug while she spoke, following the slow turn of lavender steam as it curled upward and disappeared. The kitchen was quiet around them in that worn, morning way, with the radiator ticking beneath the window and the soft clink of his spoon settling against the ceramic. “No luck,” he repeated gently, mostly to himself. He believed her frustration before he had time to think about it. It lived in the room with them, sharp at the edges, threaded through the warm scent of berries and flower. And then, because he was tired, because Bruno had frayed him more than he wanted to admit, because the city had been too loud lately and his careful inner doors had not latched quite right… Maybe they would’ve had more luck if that damned detective would’ve picked up the phone. Marth looked up, faintly puzzled. “The detective?” he asked. It came out naturally, too naturally, as if she had said it aloud. Only she hadn’t. And only after the words had left him did he realize the silence had shifted. His hand stilled around the mug. The tea steamed between them, sweet and dark and suddenly fragile. A small, delicate horror moved through his face. Not dramatic. Only enough to dim the starry softness that often resided in his eyes. Joanie blinked, the words landing wrong in her ears. Her fingers tightened around the mug, just enough to show the hitch in her chest before she smoothed it over. “The… detective?” she echoed, brow pulling in. A small, puzzled frown. “I didn’t say anything about that?” Marth blinked, softening the mistake into something quieter. For a moment, he only looked at her. “No,” he said, with a faint little sip of his tea. “You didn’t.” His gaze slipped down to the mug in his hands, to the steam uncurling itself into nothing from the dark tea. He gave a small, almost rueful hum, gentle enough to pass for self-correction. “With Rowan missing, I suppose I got ahead of myself.” Marth let the words rest there, simple and almost unremarkable, then took another careful sip of tea as if that were the end of it. His thumb moved once along the curve of the mug. A pause. Not too long. He let that be all the explanation he offered. Just enough to make the strange little stumble seem like a teacher’s tired, worried assumption rather than anything more. He reached for one of the sugared violets, unwrapped it with quiet fingers and set it beside his mug. He grabbed another one and held it out for her to take, soft-eyed, natural, and careful. “Has someone tried to reach one yet?” Her eyebrows raised slightly in confusion as he explained himself. Sure what he said was reasonable, but it was also odd. She gave him an inquisitive look as she took the violet, but couldn’t read from his face what he was thinking. Marth let his gaze drift down to his tea, as though there were some answer waiting in the steam. He had learned, over the years, that if one looked too eager to be understood, people often became suspicious of the understanding. “No clue, honestly.” She admitted, unwrapping it and putting it into her mouth. “Guess that’s for child services to decide whether it’s worth their time.” The way Mrs. Qadir had spoken about it didn’t make her hopeful. “I tried calling someone. We have a P.I. who rocks up here from time to time” She let out another sigh, leaning back once more in frustration. “Not gotten back to me yet though. Typical.” “Mmm, I see…” Marth breathed softly. He did not ask for the detective’s name. Not yet. His mind funneled with unsettling thoughts about an 18-year old calling an unknown private investigator about a very serious matter and it brought a pang of deep concern. Certainly Mrs. Qadir didn’t know about this, he assumed. He hid the concern well beneath his steam-misted gaze. For now, he made a mental note to himself to look into this Detective further once he found a moment of respite. She centered herself as she held her mug close, letting the warmth soak into her hands. “This whole week has just… worn me down,” she said quietly. “It really makes you think about what it means to be a Gray. How people look at you. How quick they are to decide what you are, what you’re worth. Sometimes it feels like no matter what we do, there’s always someone out there who wants to see us hurt, or scared, or pushed into corners just so they can feel better about themselves.” She shifted her weight against the counter, thumb brushing the rim of her mug. “And it’s not even like my gifts are obvious. I’m not like Franklin or Mina. Half the time people don’t even realize I’m a Gray until something goes wrong. But it still sticks to you. That feeling that you’re being watched differently. Judged differently. Expected to fail in ways other people never have to think about.” Her gaze drifted toward the window, unfocused. “And with Rowan still missing… it’s hard not to think the worst. And people don’t look as hard. They don’t worry the same way. If he were normal, there would be posters everywhere. There would be people out searching. Instead it feels like the world just shrugs and moves on.” She took a slow sip, shoulders curling in slightly. “I think that’s what’s getting to me. That feeling that we’re always one bad moment away from being treated like we’re not even people. And I’m so tired of it. Tired of being different. Tired of pretending it doesn’t get under my skin.” Her voice softened, almost a whisper. “And without school, I don’t even have a place to breathe anymore. I hated it, but at least it got me out of the house. Now it’s just chaos here, all day, every day, and I love everyone but… I need space. I need quiet. I need one minute where I’m not bracing for the next thing to go wrong.” She looked down into her mug, eyes heavy. “Just one minute where being a Gray isn’t the first thing anyone sees.” Something in Marth’s chest went very still. Not surprise. It was a feeling closer to recognition, though recognition kept behind glass. He looked at Joanie with the same mild gentleness he always carried, but guilt had begun its small work inside him. He was sitting across from her with his secret folded neatly behind his teeth. A Gray listening to another Gray speak as if he were only a kind volunteer with tea and soft hands. It was not a lie, exactly. But it had the shape of one. He had his reasons for hiding his status as a Gray from most people, including Joanie. Safety. Privacy. His family. The city with its appetite for names and categories and things to fear. Still, the reasons did not make the guilt lighter. So for a moment, Marth said nothing. He only sat with her in the quiet she had made. Then he set his mug down gently, careful not to let the ceramic strike too hard against the table. “Take a breath for me,” he said softly. Not like a command or a correction. More like an invitation to set one burden down before picking up the next. She nodded, taking in a deep breath with a nod. “One thing at a time.” His voice stayed low, almost domestic and maternal, as if they were discussing the groceries again. Almost as if, the world could be made smaller by speaking gently enough. “You’ve got a lot going on, Joanie, and it all matters. It really does. But you can’t hold every piece at once without eventually cutting your hands on it.” His mouth softened a little, not quite into a smile. “So for now, let’s focus on something closer and more in your control.” He let the thought settle before continuing. “I can’t necessarily guarantee you quiet, but you said you need somewhere to breathe, right?” A pause. “Well, the Old Prue Gables could use some help.” He said it plainly, with no grand announcement attached. No bright, eager rescue or charity dressed up in ribbons. Only an opening placed simply on the table between them. And truthfully, his family’s bed and breakfast could use a lot of help. It had been understaffed for several months now after his eldest twin sisters, Penelope and Piper, had moved overseas for a long-stay humanitarian aid assignment. And with Bone, the youngest Oldfox sibling and his only brother, having just started university and a new job as a Barista, the only one who could consistently help around the place was his perpetually unemployed older sister and middle child, Sybil. And at 28, she was still as much of a handful for their parents as she was for them when she was 8. “It’s mostly guest work, which I suppose is many of the things you already help out with around here.” He lazily gestured to the space around them with a loose flick of the wrist. “You know, breakfast things, laundry, changing rooms, setting tables, helping guests. Hell, helping my grandmother pretend she isn’t at war with our online reservation system.” His expression warmed faintly at that, fond despite himself. “It can be busy, but sometimes quiet too. It’s not chaos in the same way…” he paused, thoughtfully, “...you might be accustomed to. But the house has rules. Old ones, mostly. And a great many stairs.” “And there’s the Faraway Tree too…” his voice trailed off when he said that. He wasn’t sure why he brought that up. Perhaps an etched memory, no matter how unrelated, had subconsciously crawled itself to the surface as he thought about home. He continued. “I can speak to my family. Properly, I mean. See if we can make something steady of it.” Then more softly, he added, “You would be paid. And you would be allowed to close a door when you needed to.” Meaning, she could have her own room there when she needed to escape from it all. That, he suspected, mattered more than the rest. Marth reached for his mug again but did not drink. “But no need to decide this second,” he said. “Just breathe first. Then we can take the next thing after that.” Joanie’s eyes widened as he spoke, her heart fluttering. Appreciation shone across her face as she placed down her mug on the counter. The Gables had an air of familiarity too it. It was like the home in a way. It sounded like just what she needed. “Nah, I don’t need a second” She beamed. “That sounds perfect!” She had a job! Marth let out a soft chuckle as he looked at her with a warm, dazzling gaze. There it was again. The witchlight in his eyes. “Perfect.”

Vanguard: Calder City

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_{Present - Morning ◈ Marth Oldfox ◈ The Docks (Oceanside Middle School) ◈ Marth@Memoria}

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After being safely escorted to Oceanside Middle School by the masked hero Ace of Blades, Marth realized the school was not locked. He stood for a moment outside the main entrance with his key already in his hand, looking at the door as if it had spoken first. The glass was cold and faintly cloudy with morning damp. Beyond it, the front hall waited in holiday silence, its old brick walls holding the dim gold of the security lights. He tried the handle again and it opened. Must have been one of the janitors, he assumed. Mr. Belsky, perhaps, who treated days off as rumors invented by weak men. Or Mrs. Ibarra, who came in during holidays to polish floors with the severity of someone preparing a ballroom for ghosts. Still, Marth lingered. His wrist ached where Bruno had held him. Not badly and not in a way that would bruise, probably. But enough that his body remembered what his mind was trying to arrange into something more manageable. Bruno’s face kept returning to him in pieces: wet hair, bright unfocused eyes, want curdled into entitlement. And then the masked hero, too, arriving out of nowhere like a dark answer to an unprayed prayer. Marth had not seen much of him clearly during the alteraction. Only motion, presence, a kind of impossible timing. A figure between him and Bruno when his ex-lover had been on the edge of doing something he could not take back. It was absurd, really. The sort of thing that belonged to other people. Marth had lived a rather provincial life, despite being raised in one of the strangest houses in Calder City. The Old Prue Gables Bed & Breakfast had been eccentric enough for anyone as a grand old Victorian with too many angles, too many windows, and the deep plum-gray temperament of a house that had spent generations learning everyone’s secrets and deciding to keep them mostly out of affection. He had grown up among siblings, interesting guests, his father’s paintings, his mother’s dancing feet, his grandparents’ old stories about their world travels and the "Faraway Tree" in the backyard, breakfast bells, crooked stairs, and family arguments that always ended with someone buttering toast for someone else. It had not prepared him for being stalked by an ex-lover in an alley. It had certainly not prepared him for being saved by a masked hero before lunch. His phone buzzed in his coat pocket. Sybil. He answered, softened his voice, and let her worry at him for three and a half minutes. She asked where he was, whether he had gotten to school, whether he sounded strange because something had happened or because he was being himself in a concerning way. Marth told her he was fine and that he had arrived. He did not mention Bruno, or the masked hero, nor the way his wrist still felt occupied by someone else’s hand. There were omissions, he thought, that were not quite lies. Then again, there were songs that were not quite good. He hung up with the vague guilt of both. Oceanside Middle School rose on the edge of The Docks district, an old brick building with tall windows, a wide front staircase, and stone trim darkened by years of coastal weather. In spring, the courtyard planters tried very hard to look cheerful. In winter, the building looked like a stern aunt in a sensible coat. Today, with school closed for the Days of Remembrance (most, but not all schools were closed) it seemed smaller and more solemn than usual, as if the absence of children had taken some necessary madness out of its bones. A painted starfish smiled from a banner beside the office door. GO STARFISH! Marth had never found the mascot intimidating, but he had become fond of it. There was something admirable about a creature with no obvious face deciding to represent school spirit anyway. He moved through the front hall with his satchel against his side. The floors shone from recent cleaning. Bulletin boards displayed construction-paper wreaths, student poems about remembrance, and a large hand-painted sign that read: HEROES HOLD THE CITY UP. Someone had added, in very small pencil beneath it, EVEN WHEN THEY ARE TIRED. Marth paused at that, and then he kept walking. The music room sat at the end of the east hall, past the auditorium doors and the trophy case where Oceanside’s debate team had been undefeated for so long that Marth suspected mystical intervention. The closer he came, the more he expected silence. Instead, he heard a chair scrape. Then a small, guilty rustle. Marth opened the music room door. A boy startled so hard he nearly knocked over a music stand. “Mr. Oldfox!” Samir Vashani stood beside the piano with a notebook open on the bench and a pen in one hand. He was in seventh grade, narrow-shouldered, solemn-eyed, and currently wearing the expression of a person caught committing a crime. Around his sneakers lay several crumpled balls of paper. More were gathered under the piano like a little nest of failed courage. “I’m sorry,” Samir blurted. “I know school’s closed. I just—I didn’t think anyone would be here, and the door was open, and I wasn’t doing anything. I mean, I was doing something, but not anything bad.” Marth looked at the notebook. Then at the pen. Then at the crumpled paper. He heard, and then felt, the bright nervous tangle inside the boy. Anxiety wound around fragmented thoughts, half-formed lyrics, a melody that kept tripping over itself, and one image that flashed up shyly before Samir could bury it again. It was a girl with dark curls, a yellow backpack, and a smile Samir’s mind had polished until it glowed. Oh, Marth thought. Oh, dear. His face softened. “It’s all right.” he said. Samir blinked. “It is?” “Sure.” Marth said. He moved to the teacher’s desk slowly and sat his satchel down, giving the boy’s embarrassment room to survive. His classroom looked strange without the students and even more strange with the chairs tucked in almost properly, instrument cases stacked along the wall, the whiteboard still holding the last lesson on dominant seventh chords, and paper stars hanging from the ceiling in honor of the Remembrance holiday. The room smelled faintly of old wood, dry-erase marker, brass polish, and the particular dust that lived inside old instruments. And of course, that signature Oldfox lavender. Marth took off his coat and asked, “What are you working on?” Samir’s ears went red. “Nothing.” Marth glanced at the crumpled papers again. “Impressive volume for nothing.” “It’s just—homework.” “Is that so?” Samir pressed his mouth shut. Marth tilted his head, as if making a harmless guess. “Is it a song?” The boy went very still. Then, after a second, he nodded. “A song,” Marth said, warmly enough to take the sharp edge off the word. “That’s lovely.” “It’s not good.” “Most first drafts are shy little monsters.” Samir looked up despite himself. Marth smiled. “They become friendlier when you stop frightening them.” The boy’s grip on the pen loosened. Marth could still feel the emotional undercurrent in him, tender and terrified. The girl’s image slipped through again, this time with a name attached only in shape, not sound. Samir liked her with the full catastrophe of being twelve. They were absolute, secret, and with no reliable sense of proportion. It was very serious. It was also, in a way Marth would never say aloud, adorable enough to bruise the heart. “I came to grade essays,” Marth said. “You may keep working, if you like. An hour or two.” Samir stared. “Really?” “Really. But you cannot come to school again when it is closed or without permission from a teacher and your parents. Okay?” A small smile broke through the boy’s panic. “Ok.” “Good.” Marth sat at his desk and opened the stack of music theory essays his students had turned in before the holiday. They had written about melody, harmony, tension, resolution, and, in one memorable case, why rests were “the music taking a nap.” He uncapped his pen, drew the first paper toward him, and tried to become the kind of man who graded efficiently. Samir returned to the piano and for a few minutes, the room settled into a companionable hush. Paper shifted. A pen scratched. Samir plucked at a borrowed classroom guitar with great care and not much skill, each chord arriving like a diffident animal from under a porch. Marth listened without appearing to, because he knew what it meant to make something tender near another person. He understood songwriting as a private little wound. His own had begun years ago as a hobby of transcribing classical pieces for cathartic pleasure, then for family, then once, with dreadful sincerity, for Bruno on their second anniversary. A whole arrangement, handwritten, ribbon-tied, impossibly earnest. Bruno had looked at it as if no one had ever made him something that required patience before. Marth had believed, then, that love could be preserved if one wrote it carefully enough. He set his pen down. No. Not that. Not now. He tried to shake Bruno from his mind the way one shook rain from an umbrella, but the thought clung. Bruno’s hand on his wrist. Bruno’s voice. The obsidian smoke. The masked hero’s sudden arrival. A hand between him and harm. At the piano, Samir hummed silently in his head. Marth caught the words by accident. If I could say your name like lemonade... He almost smiled. Then immediately looked back at the essay in front of him, because it was unethical to enjoy the private lyrical distress of innocent first love, even when it was sweet enough to make him want to rest his chin in his hand. And for a brief moment, he did. His mother would have loved all of this. She had spent his childhood dancing through The Old Prue Gables announcing to anyone who would listen, and several guests who had not agreed to listen, that her son was a musical prodigy. Marth had never believed her. Mothers were built with generous inaccuracies, but he had liked the way she said it, one arm lifted, scarf trailing, as if music were not something he did but something that had chosen him and would be terribly rude to leave. An hour passed. Then a little more. Samir’s song improved by three chords and one brave crossing-out. Marth graded six essays, though he suspected his comments became increasingly ornate after the third. When Samir finally closed the notebook, he looked exhausted in the way only young hope could exhaust a person. “Thank you, Mr. Oldfox,” he said, hovering near the door with the guitar returned to its stand and the notebook clutched to his side. “You’re very welcome.” “I’ll lock—well, I guess I can’t lock anything.” “I’ll take care of it.” Samir nodded, then hesitated. Marth did not pry. Prying was easy. Kindness was harder. “Good luck, Samir.” Marth said. “Ugh,” Samir paused, curious as to why Marth would say that. "Thanks?" The boy slipped out into the hallway. Marth watched him go through the classroom window that looked over the side path toward the street. Samir emerged from the school a minute later, small beneath the old brick archway, his notebook held tight against his jacket. For a few steps, he walked with purpose. Then he stopped. Like always, heard it first and then he felt it before he fully understood it. A sudden bloom of anxiety. sharp, bright, and humiliating settled beneath a tumble of frantic thoughts about her house, the song, too stupid, what if she laughs, what if she tells everyone, what if she hates it, what if she knows, go home, go home, go home. Samir turned half-back toward the street that would take him away from her. Marth stood at the window. He rarely used his gift to intervene in people’s private lives. Rarely. Almost never. He believed in the sacredness of choice, even the foolish little choices people made at twelve with a love song burning a hole through their backpack. Especially those. The heart had a right to its own complex sentiment. But compassion rose in him swiftly. And despite his gifts, Marth was immensely empathic. The boy looked so small out there, caught between courage and retreat, with his little song pressed to his chest like a candle in wind. Marth closed his eyes. Just a little assistance, he told himself. Only the gentlest thing. He opened his mind just enough to reach. Not a command. Not control. No hand closing around the will. Just a telempathic sensation, soft as a palm between the shoulder blades. A nudge. The image came to Samir's mind first, with the feeling of being believed in from behind. And one word. Go. Outside, Samir jolted. He turned around, eyes wide, one hand lifting as if someone might truly have stood behind him and pushed him forward. No one was there, of course. Only the empty walkway, the old school, the starfish banner stirring near the entrance, and the city holding its Remembrance hush. Samir looked baffled. Then slowly, wonderfully, his shoulders changed. Not fully brave. Not magically transformed. But corrected, a little. As if doubt had been a too-heavy coat and he had finally shrugged one sleeve free. He glanced back once toward the school, his expression half-startled, half-awed, as if a mystical cupid had wandered out of the sunlight, tapped him on the spine, and declared itself in favor of love songs. Marth stood very still at the window. Samir lifted the notebook closer to his chest. Then he ran. Not toward home. Toward her. Marth watched him go, his head tilting slightly, a soft smile beginning before he could stop it. There was something almost painfully dear about it, from the thin legs and earnest notebook to the whole bright foolishness of youthful affection flinging itself at possibility. “Well,” Marth murmured to the empty classroom. The paper stars stirred faintly above him, though there was no breeze. He hoped it helped and he hoped she was kind. But most of all, he hoped, with the helpless tenderness that had always been his most inconvenient talent, that somewhere in Calder City a seventh-grade love song might survive the morning.

Vanguard: Calder City

Anyone keeping tabs of the lore drops?

Vanguard: Calder City

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_{Present - Morning ◈ Marth Oldfox, Scott Knight (Ace of Blades) ◈ The Docks District ◈ Marth@Memoria, Scott@Captain Uni}

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The city went on. That was the worst part of it perhaps. Not Bruno’s hand around his wrist. Not the obsidian smoke coiling between their shoes like something alive and listening. Not even the awful knowledge opening inside Marth with the cold precision of a door unlocked from the wrong side. The worst was that Calder City went on as usual. Beyond the alley, the morning hummed with its indifferent little errands. In this small, wet slit between buildings, one more foul thing pressed itself into being and the city couldn’t care less. The city had so many pockets and corners and places where harm could happen quietly enough to become no one’s business until afterward. Marth looked at Bruno’s hand on his wrist and then looked at Bruno and said again, “Let go of me!” only there was more alarm in his voice, an unusual tone that settled like a fragile thing stirring with desperation. Bruno’s jaw only trembled. And for one almost tender second, Marth saw the man he had loved in him. The beautiful, careless man who had once taken his hand and whisked them to the top of a half-finished tower just so Marth could see the sunrise before the city gave its morning exhale. Then Bruno’s thoughts rose sharp and bright. Take him now Marth’s stomach lurched. Take him now. Somewhere quiet. Make him listen. He’ll understand once we’re alone “No…” Marth whispered. But the world had already become too small. He felt it begin, the strange tug in the air, the world loosening around its edges, the alley preparing to vanish. It was a sensation his body knew too well. Once it felt like a secret door opened to somewhere beautiful. Now it felt like being stolen. Marth’s pulse leapt as Bruno’s grip tightened. And Marth understood, with a grief so clean it almost felt like calm, that he was not going to reach him this time. Marth lifted his free hand and touched two fingers to his temple. The thought struck Bruno’s mind like a bell thrown down a stairwell. Not memory. Not image, at first. Words. Stop. Let go. Stop. stop stop stop stop— Bruno flinched, but did not release him as the sensation of being smoked away became more visceral. So Marth did the thing he hated most about his gift. He pressed the suggestion deeper, threading it through fear until the mind believed the body had already begun to suffer. A snake, then. Not a real one of course, it was never real. Only the idea of one, cold and heavy and impossible, coiling around Bruno’s throat in the theater of his own mind. Bruno’s eyes widened as his hand around Marth’s wrist spasmed open. Marth stumbled back as Bruno dropped to his knees, both hands clasped to his own throat, gasping, choking on nothing. There was no snake, only air and Marth standing and staring at him with a face full of horror at what he was doing. “I’m sorry…” Marth whispered. Bruno doubled forward, dragging air into lungs that had never been denied it. His mind believed otherwise and his body obeyed the lie. That was the ugliness of it, of Marth’s psychic gifts. Marth took one step backward and then another, watching as Bruno’s knees scraped against the wet pavement, his breaths ragged and broken. Marth’s hands were shaking. Guilt arrived at once when he saw Bruno looking at him, ruined and frightened. But then the alley seemed to tilt, so Marth turned and ran. At the far end, daylight waited like a promise it had not yet decided to keep. Behind him, Bruno gasped, then coughed, then breathed. The effect was already thinning. Marth felt it unravel the moment his eye contact broke and his focus slipped beneath his own panic. The false telepathic image of the snake loosened. The mind corrected itself and Bruno’s body remembered air. Marth ran faster. Almost there. Almost— Obsidian smoke bloomed in front of him. It arrived with a sound like a match struck underwater. Marth stopped abruptly, struck by fright as Bruno stepped out of the smoke. His eyes were wet, but not only from fear now. Deep sadness worked through his face, an emotional bruise spreading under skin and beneath it came rage, dark and humiliated and no longer trying to dress itself as love. Bruno moved toward him. Marth stepped back, but there was nowhere to go. He had a brick wall at his shoulder and the city beyond the alley bright and moving and useless. Bruno’s hand shot out for Marth’s arm, fully committed now, the intention loud enough in his mind to make Marth cold from scalp to heel. Take him. Take him. Take him now! The smoke began to rise, black as burned glass. Marth had time for one breath. Only one. Just as Marth had started to inhale, something struck Bruno in the back of the head, a dull thunk as the object bounced off of his skull and then clattered to the asphalt. He gave a shout of pain and pivoted to look at what struck him, finding a blue apparition of a sword, the edge dulled enough that it wasn’t even a blade but more of a club. The wisps of smoke began to dissipate as the sword did the same, and a figure approached the two men from further down the alley. The stranger’s expression was hidden behind the blackened visor of a motorcycle helmet, his outfit reminiscent of a city biker with the leather jacket and riding gloves. As he stepped forward, the discarded trash accumulated in the alley crunching under his boots, he lifted a finger at Bruno and spoke: ”Get away from him, or the next one will cut right through you.” Marth’s breath came back to him in pieces. For a moment, he could only stare at the place where the blue sword had been, wondering if it had been a miracle or a hallucination, or very practical violence. The terrible pull of teleportation loosened. The world, which had been about to vanish, stayed. Marth pressed one shaking hand to the brick behind him and the other to his heaving chest as he looked toward the helmeted stranger, breathless with relief. On the other hand, Bruno touched the back of his head, then turned with humiliation already sharpening into rage. “Are you fucking serious?” he snapped, glaring through the alley at the mysterious figure. Marth flinched before he could help it, and something ugly flickered across Bruno’s face when he noticed. Shame, maybe. Or only the anger that came after shame. He took a step forward, shoulders tight, eyes wet and furious. “Piss off!” he shouted, “This has nothing to do with you.” The masked man stood his ground, the heat of his glare still being felt even behind the mask. ”It has everything to do with me,” he said, his tone dripping with venom, ”I’m the one who watches over these streets. You start a problem down here, I show up to solve it.” His outstretched hand shifted from a pointed finger to a grip as a new blade manifested in his grasp, still too dull to cut but a weapon nonetheless, the tip of the blade pointed at Bruno. ”Last chance to walk away.” Bruno let out a laugh, more of a sharp bark. ”Oh, I get it. You’re some wannabe cape going around beating on people because it makes you feel big.” He took a few steps closer, the wisps of smoke beginning to appear around him. The masked man stepped forward to meet him. ”Come get me, then.” As soon as the words left Bruno’s lips, the masked man swung his sword and a cloud of smoke enveloped Bruno. The blade cut through the smoke, scattering the veil and revealing his target was no longer in the cloud. The vigilante pulled his blade back, his head jerking around wildly trying to find the man. A fist met the back of his neck and he stumbled forward, using the momentum to turn his body around and face his attacker. Bruno rushed forward, rearing his fist back for another punch, but the masked man was ready for the attack. The blade held low by his hip swung upwards in an arc that connected with Bruno’s wrist, a sharp crack ringing out as the dulled blade struck the arm. Bruno cried out in distress before grasping his wrist in the other hand and backing away. The would-be hero stepped forward and jabbed the weapon into Bruno’s chest, the man doubling over and gasping as the air was knocked out of his lungs. Pitch black smoke rose around Bruno again as he groaned, the vigilante lifting his sword up high to bring it down on the man’s head. The haze enveloped Bruno just as the blade was brought down and the weapon passed through the cloud only to strike concrete. When the smoke cleared, Bruno was gone, and the vigilante grunted in what might have been either annoyance or pain. The ghostly blade in his hand dematerialized and he leaned down to place his hands on his knees, taking in steady breaths. Marth did not move when Bruno vanished. For a brief instance, he only stood with one hand pressed to the damp brick and the other curled close to his chest. But his wrist ached, so his hand went to his wrist, not dramatically though, just there, thumb brushing the place Bruno’s fingers had held too hard, as if checking whether his body still belonged to him. The alley had been all motion a moment before with smoke, blade, fist, breath, and the ugly crack of force against bone. Marth couldn’t help but flinch during all of it. Now it held itself in a strange little pause, unsure what to do with the silence left behind. Where Bruno had stood, a little black obsidian smoke unstitched itself into the morning. Marth looked at it until it was gone and then he looked at the masked man, hesitant. He swallowed. There was gratitude in him, yes, but it had arrived with fear on one side and pity on the other, so it did not know how to stand by itself. With what resolve he could muster after witnessing such a distressing escalation, Marth took one careful step toward his masked savior. “Are you hurt?” he asked. His voice came out softer than he meant it to. Not weak. Only shaken. And then he exhaled. The man stiffened instantly as Marth spoke, his steady intake of breaths coming to a halt. He stood up straight and turned to face him, trying to look strong, in control. When he spoke, it was in a practiced cadence, like he had been rehearsing these lines before: ”I’ll be fine. Did he hurt you?” Marth looked down at his wrist, where Bruno’s grip had already begun to leave a faint, ugly bloom of bruising beneath the skin. Marth tried to hide it away. “Only a little,” he said, though his voice made a very gentle lie of it. “I think it will look worse than it is.” If the masked man noticed the bruising, he didn’t give any indication of it. He came closer to Marth. ”I’m just glad I was able to step in before it got any worse,” he said, setting his attention fully on the other man. ”I can take you to wherever you’re going, if you want. Make sure he doesn’t come back and try anything.” Marth looked back toward the mouth of the alley too, watching the careless whispers of the city pass by like nothing had just happened here. And without warning, he let out a soft laugh, thin and gossamer-light and disbelieving, not because anything was funny, but because his body had not yet decided what to else to do with all that fear. Better to release it into the ether, he supposed. “Thank you, by the way.” he said, still a little breathless, his fingers curling carefully over the bruising at his wrist. A momentary blip of pain washed over his countenance, but it disappeared as quickly as it came. “Truly. I don’t think I quite understand how that didn’t become worse.” The vigilante nodded in response. ”There’s no need to thank me. I was just doing my part.” He took in a breath, looking back at the wisps of smoke that were almost gone by now. ”Who was he?” Marth glanced at the masked man, then down at the wet pavement, embarrassed by the whole shape of himself in that moment. The whole, small wreckage of it. “He’s my ex...” Marth added quietly. “Which is a long story, and not a very elegant one.” Another small, disbelieving laugh left him before he could stop it. ”Don’t feel like you need to explain it,” the man responded, trying to sound reassuring. ”So where were you off to?” “Ummm…” Marth started, looking back toward the alley opening, “I was only heading to Oceanside Middle School, but…” he adjusted the strap of his satchel, more to give his hands something to do than because it needed adjusting, “...you’ve already done a great deal. I don’t want to take you farther out of your way.” It was then that the masked man let out a laugh of his own, lighter than the low tone he had been taking on throughout the conversation. ”It wouldn’t be a problem, really. I just want to make sure you stay safe.” He paused, before reaching out a hand for Marth to shake. ”You can call me Ace. Ace of Blades. What’s your name?” Marth looked at the offered hand for a half second longer than politeness required. His wrist still ached and he suddenly found himself briefly suspicious of hands. Then his expression softened, and he reached out to take it carefully, his grip gentle but sincere before pulling away. “Hm. Ace of Blades…” he repeated quietly, with a small, almost hopeless smile, not recalling any known superheroes operating in Calder City by that name. “That is rather grand, isn’t it?” The tease was mild, warmed through with gratitude rather than mockery. “Marth.” he finally added. And after a brief moment of contemplation, his gaze settled on this Ace, as he called himself, Marth scratched his brow, still a bit weary by the whole of it, but grateful, and truthfully, wary that Bruno might return as soon as Ace is gone. “But umm, okay. Sure. Why not. If you’re sure. I guess that would be nice.” He smiled again, lovely as a precious, fragile stone one locks away in an heirloom jewelry box. Though his expression was hidden behind his mask, Ace’s reply made it seem as though he was smiling as well, his tone a far cry from the growl he put on when confronting Bruno and the professional voice he had carried through most of the conversation. ”Great. Let’s get out of here, then.” He turned, motioned for Marth to follow, then began to walk out of the alley. “Ok.” Marth said softly through a warm smile and then followed behind him.

Vanguard: Calder City

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_{Present - Morning ◈ Marth Oldfox ◈ Central City District --> The Docks District ◈ Marth@Memoria}

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Morning unlatched itself over Calder City in a wash of pale after-rain. The streets were not dry yet. They glimmered under the buses and the early shoes, every curb holding a little silver bruise of water. Buses sighed at curbs. Shop windows blinked awake one by one. On street corners, gilded banners hung from the lampposts for the Days of Remembrance, their edges stirring whenever the wind passed through. For the next three days, school would be closed and Calder City would remember its fallen heroes: the powered, the unpowered, the famous, the half-forgotten, the ones whose names had become statues and the ones whose names were only spoken now at kitchen tables. He sat in a coffee shop two blocks from the central train station, one elbow on the table, his notebook open beneath a little drift of eraser crumbs. The shop was warm and narrow and soft around the edges, with fogged windows, old brick walls, and pendant lamps that made little golden circles over the tables. Someone had pinned dried Amaranthus above the register. The air smelled of coffee, cinnamon, steamed milk, and the faint burnt sweetness of croissants left a minute too long in the case. Marth tried not to listen too closely to the minds around him. It was easier with family at the table. His younger brother, Bone, sat across from him, stirring an iced coffee so pale and sugary it could hardly be considered coffee anymore. Bone was not his given name, but one of those childhood nicknames that had attached itself like a burr and become more official than anything printed on paper. He worked at the coffee shop part-time, though his shift had not yet begun, which meant he was still allowed to behave like a customer and drink something with whipped cream leaning over the lid. One of his older sisters, Sybil, sat beside him in sunglasses, indoors, with the regal exhaustion of a woman once again between jobs. She had been fired again. Marth had not asked why this time. It seemed kinder. “All right,” he said, and looked down at his notebook as though it might bite him. “Be honest, but not cruel.” Sybil folded her hands. “I make no promises.” Bone leaned forward. “Read it.” Marth sighed. It was a very musical sigh, in his defense. He lifted the notebook a little and read, “‘And if the dawn should find me ruined, let it find me with lips like mine...’” Silence settled over the table. Not awe. Marth’s face changed in slow, private horror. Bone’s lips pressed together. Sybil lowered her sunglasses just enough to look at him over the rims. "Well." Marth put his face in his hands. “Lips like mine? Ugh...I can’t believe I wrote something that lame.” “You’ve written worse,” Sybil said. That startled a laugh out of him, small and helpless and mostly hidden behind his fingers. It was one of the gentler things about him, how easily laughter found him when he was not guarding the door. His shoulders shook once. Bone pointed at him with his straw. "Honestly, it's been a month. I have been trying to write this song for a month, and I still can't get it right." Marth lowered his hands and looked mournfully at the page. “It keeps almost becoming something and then it just...fades into stardust..." Bone considered this with all the gravity his whipped cream allowed. “Maybe you should take a break. Come back to it later.” Marth looked at him fondly. “That is sensible.” Sybil leaned back, tapping one nail against her coffee cup. “Are you coming to home later?” What she meant was Prue Gables Bed & Breakfast, named after their great great grandmother Prudence. Marth's pencil stopped. “Old Prue Gables” was what guests called it when they wanted to sound charmed. To the family, it was just home: a grand dark plum Victorian home with a wraparound porch, fretwork trim, and the personality of a beloved aunt who had opinions about curtains. It had been passed down through the Oldfox family for generations and run, with varying degrees of competence and affection, as a bed and breakfast. Everyone helped. No one escaped. His maternal grandparents still held court in the parlor. His mother had once danced through the dining room with a tray of biscuits so gracefully that a honeymoon couple from Westlake had applauded. His father had painted half the guest rooms and then pretended the crooked bluebirds in room three were intentional. It was home in the way only a crowded place could be home—slightly inconvenient, deeply beloved, and always smelling faintly of lavender, old wood, and breakfast. For the Days of Remembrance, the family had planned a private observance for Marth’s late grandfather. He had been unpowered, a firefighter, and a hero of the city all the same. A man did not need a gift to run into a burning building. Marth’s gaze drifted to the window. “I might,” he said. Sybil watched him carefully. She had a gift for noticing the answer under the answer, though not a supernatural one. Just elder-sisterly suspicion, sharpened by years of practice. “Might?” “Well, I have essays to grade.” Bone checked the clock on his phone and made a wounded sound. “I have to become useful now. Pray for me.” "Mhm." Marth said with a subdued smile. Bone stood and collected his drink. Before leaving, he leaned over and kissed Marth on the top of the head because the Oldfox family had never quite respected personal solemnity. Sybil waited until he was out of earshot. Then after a few moments of glaring at Marth, she said, “Is it that awful little prince again?” Marth looked at his notebook. The line blurred a little. “Ugh...Sybil please, not today.” “Bitch, don’t ‘Sybil please’ me. Is it him?” The coffee shop seemed suddenly louder around them. Milk steam. Cups clinking. Someone laughing too hard near the pastry case. Marth kept his mind closed against it all, not with panic but with practice. Most people imagined telepathy as a door one opened. For Marth, it was more often a hundred doors trying to open at once, and his life had been the long, quiet education of keeping them shut. He tapped the eraser against the notebook. “He’s been showing up,” Marth admitted. Sybil’s mouth tightened. “Again?” “More lately.” “At your apartment?” “Sometimes.” “At night?” Marth said nothing. Her face went cold in a way that made her look very much like their oldest sister. “Drunk?” “Sometimes,” he said again. It was a small word. It did not deserve the amount of shame it carried. Sybil removed her sunglasses fully now. “Why haven’t you called the police?” “I have.” “And?” “And by the time anyone gets there, he’s gone." Sybil sighed as if suddenly remembering, "Right right. The cheating little peacock can blink away when consequences come knocking. How fucking convenient." “Mhmm”, Marth said with a weary sort of expression, laying his elbow on the table with his cheek rested in his palm. “He is a parasite with cheekbones.” "Sybil." She ignored that and leaned closer. “Use your powers on him.” Marth’s face softened, but not in agreement. More like something inside him had gone very tired. “I don’t want to do that.” “He is stalking you.” “I know.” “Then don’t say it like I’ve misunderstood." Marth closed the notebook. “It isn’t that simple.” “It is exactly that simple.” “No,” he said, still gently. “It isn’t.” He did not raise his voice. He rarely did. But there was a kind of quiet in him that could lower the temperature of a room. He used it with students on the edge of tears, with siblings on the edge of theatrics, with himself on the edge of becoming less gentle than he wished to be. Sybil knew that tone. Everyone in his family did. Calm, kind, immovable. “He’s spiraling,” Marth said after a moment. “That doesn’t excuse anything. I know that. But we shared a lot of history and it wasn't all ugly." “No. Just the cheating. The lying. The late night harassment." Marth never mentioned that his ex had begun appearing during the day now too, more desperate than before. He gave her a look. “I need to go to the school.” He slipped his pencil into the notebook and closed the elastic band around it. “The building is closed, but I have my key. I won’t grade anything properly at home, and certainly not at my apartment." For a moment, the morning sat with them, then Sybil put her sunglasses back on with great dignity. “Ok well, I’m staying here to job hunt.” Marth stood and slung his satchel over his shoulder. He touched her shoulder as he passed, light and affectionate. “Then I wish you the very best my dear.” He smiled, bent to kiss her hair, and left her among the coffee cups, job listings, and whatever private war she was waging against cover letters. Outside, Calder City had become louder. Morning had found its full voice. People moved in shining currents beneath the Remembrance banners, coats brushing, phones lifted, voices rising into the sunlit air. Somewhere down the avenue, a brass ensemble had begun rehearsing for one of the public ceremonies, and the notes came thin and brave through the traffic. Marth walked with his mind closed. It took effort, though not as much as it once had. A muscle, that was all. A strange one. An invisible one. He held the city at a distance the way one might hold back heavy curtains. Without that discipline, the ambient thoughts of hundreds of people would come pressing in—train schedules, old grudges, hunger, love, irritation, holiday grief, a hundred private songs, the small animal thoughts people carried when they believed themselves alone. There had been years when he feared the noise might unmake him. But not now. Now he held the world out gently. Mostly. He boarded the train at Central Station and stood near the doors with one hand curled around the pole, his satchel tucked close against his side. The car smelled faintly of raincoats, metal, perfume, and someone’s paper bag of warm bread. Across from him, a little girl in a blue scarf swung her feet and hummed the same three notes over and over. Marth smiled at the floor. Oceanside Middle School sat in the Docks District, where Calder City loosened a little. The buildings stood lower there. The crowds thinner than downtown. Once Marth stepped off the train, he felt the difference at once with fewer minds pressing at the edge of his and fewer thoughts bumping shoulders in the invisible dark. He let his mind’s eye open just a little. Not fully. Never carelessly. Only enough to breathe. And then he heard it. Marth. He stopped on the platform stairs. Marth. Marth. Marth. His name, repeated with a dreadful tenderness. It did not shout. It pressed. It worried itself against him. Beneath the thought-voice lay urgency, want, obsession, liquor-warm desperation, and a twisted love that made Marth’s stomach tighten because it had once been less twisted. Once, perhaps, it had been only love. Marth knew before he looked. Before he breathed. Before the city made its next ordinary sound. He stepped off the main street and into a narrow alley beside a convenient store, hoping for a breath, a moment, a way to think without the crowd around him. The alley smelled of rain-soaked brick, old waters, and something metallic from the drains. A gull cried overhead like a rusty hinge. He had just reached for his phone when a hand closed around his wrist. For a stunned second, Marth was against him and his damp wool, expensive cologne soured by liquor, and under it all the crude mineral smell of obsidian smoke that always followed Bruno’s teleporting. Little black wisps still curled at the edges of the air, vanishing into nothing like burned lace. Marth’s stomach dropped so neatly it might have been rehearsed. “Bruno.” Bruno held him too tightly, swaying a little. His eyes were bright and unfocused. His handsome face, which had once made Marth foolish with hope, looked fevered with drink and certainty. “I knew I’d find you,” Bruno said, smiling like this was romance and not ambush. “Naturally...” Marth said. Bruno didn't seem to pick up the tinge in sarcasm. “I came to see you.” Bruno was considerably taller and leaned in from above, aiming for his cheek. The kiss missed and landed somewhere near his hair. “Don’t." Marth said. Bruno laughed, soft and wounded and drunk. “You’re always so dramatic now.” Marth placed a hand against Bruno’s chest and pushed gently. Not a shove. Not enough to embarrass him. Not yet. “Please let go.” “Just talk to me.” Marth eased backward when Bruno’s grip loosened by a breath. “This is not a good time.” “It’s never a good time with you.” Bruno followed at once, as if distance itself offended him. “That’s the problem. You keep dismissing me like I’m...like I’m nothing.” “I’m not dismissing you.” “You are. You’ve decided I’m some terrible person when I’m the only one still trying. Do you know how many people would kill to have someone like me come back for them?” Marth looked at him then. Really looked. There was pain in Bruno, certainly. Shame too. Rage dressed up as devotion. Want turning itself spoiled at the edges. Marth could feel the thoughts pressing against his closed mind like fingers against a window. He did not open the window. “Someone like you,” Marth repeated softly. Bruno’s expression flickered. Marth’s voice stayed calm. “Attractive and rich, you mean.” “That’s not what I—” “It is though, a little.” Bruno’s jaw tightened. “I’ve changed.” Marth sighed deeply, his exasperation almost impossible to hide now. “Mhmm.” “I’m drunk.” “Yes, you are.” Bruno reached for him again. “Marth, please. I’m trying to tell you I’m sorry.” “You were sorry last Thursday.” “I mean it this time.” “You always mean it, Bruno...” “That’s not fair.” “No,” Marth said, and his gentleness thinned, just enough to show the bone underneath. “What wasn’t fair was your beautiful penthouse, and your beautiful friends, and your beautiful lies, and me standing in the middle of all of it trying very hard not to understand what happened in your bedroom.” Bruno recoiled as if struck. Marth looked away first. He hated that he had said it. He hated more that it was true. “Please go home,” he said. “Back to the penthouse. Back to wherever else your infidelity happened. I don’t care anymore. Just go.” Bruno grabbed his wrist again. Harder this time and more desperate. Marth inhaled. “Marth, don’t do this.” Bruno’s voice broke open, then sharpened around the break. “I can take us somewhere quiet. Just somewhere we can talk.” “No.” “Just a few minutes.” “No.” “I need you to hear me.” “You’re hurting me.” Bruno’s face changed, but his grip did not. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to...just give me a few minutes to make my case.” A bus groaned by on the street beyond. Someone laughed in the distance. Morning went on, indifferent and bright, while Marth stood with Bruno’s hand locked around his wrist and the faint scent of obsidian smoke at the back of his throat. For the first time in all the time they had known each other, Marth entered Bruno’s mind on purpose. Not deeply. Not cruelly. Only enough to place his voice where Bruno could not pretend the air had swallowed it. You really need to stop. Now. Bruno went still. Marth’s telepathic voice was not louder than speech. It was closer. A hand placed inside the room of thought. Before this becomes something neither of us can take back. Bruno’s breath caught, and then his eyes hardened. “Did you just get in my head?” Marth swallowed. “I asked you to let go.” “Is that a threat?” “No,” Marth said. He kept his voice even, though fear had begun to bloom quietly under his ribs, “Not if you let go.” Bruno stared at him, and the thought came into Marth's mind before he could close the door. I could take us now. Everything inside Marth went quiet. His blood went pale and cold. Bruno’s grip tightened as a curl of obsidian smoke threaded between their shoes. Marth did not yank away. He did not raise his voice. He did not summon the light at his forehead, though he felt the small hidden tide of it wanting to answer fear with force. Marth was so keenly attuned to patience, even of the more unpleasant kind, but his limit had nearly been reached. He only stood there, gentle and frightened, trying very hard not to become desperate enough to use more of himself than he could forgive. “Bruno,” he said, very softly. “Let go of my wrist.” The city breathed beyond them. The alley held still. And neither of them did.

Vanguard: Calder City

M A R T H O L D F O X
M A R T H O L D F O X

^{"There now. That's a little closer to music."}

◈ C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T◈ C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T _________________________________________________________ (FC: Kedar Williams-Stirling; Dialogue: Pale Blue) _________________________________________________________ ◈ S U M M A R Y◈ S U M M A R Y _________________________________________________________ Marth Benjamin Oldfox _________________________________________________________ December 3rd | 25 _________________________________________________________ Single | Male | Homosexual ◈ S T A T S◈ S T A T S _________________________________________________________ Height | 5'9" _________________________________________________________ Hair Color | Black _________________________________________________________ Eye Color | Dark Brown _________________________________________________________ Hometown | Calder City -

H I S T O R Y H I S T O R Y ___________________________________________________________________________________ ◈ His childhood was not unhappy in any simple, merciful way, because it was not unhappy at all in the usual sense. It was loud, loving, strange, crowded, lavender-scented, and full of the ordinary little storms that pass through big families and leave everyone at the breakfast table anyway. Marth was one of six siblings, raised in a house where someone was always singing in the next room, arguing over toast, painting by a window, dancing barefoot through a hallway, or calling for a missing shoe that had somehow found its way into a cupboard. Marth's parents were loving, eccentric, and almost impossible to embarrass. His father was a painter, the sort of man who forgot time when color was involved, and his mother was a dancer who treated music as if it were passing through the body. His maternal grandparents lived close enough to feel like part of the walls. Together, the whole family helped run Old Prue Gables, a grand plum-painted Gothic Victorian manor named after his great great grandmother Prudence and passed down through generations, kept alive as a bed and breakfast. There were guest rooms with old quilts, staircases that complained at night, vases of drying flowers, and mornings full of eggs, coffee, sheet music, paint water, and relatives speaking over one another with great affection. But Marth's gift first announced itself through pain. Not his own, though it felt like his own when it came. His paternal grandfather was dying from a long, brutal illness, and Marth, still young enough to believe adults could keep the worst things behind closed doors, heard him mentally crying out in agony. The voice arrived inside him with no warning, intimate and unbearable, a private suffering that should have belonged to one man and suddenly belonged to a child too. That was the first time Marth understood he could hear what others never meant to give him. It was also his first real grief. After his grandfather died, music became the place Marth put what he could not bear to hear anymore. He discovered his singing voice almost by accident, then learned one instrument, then another, as if every new sound gave the pain a different room to rest in. His family, artsy and gentle and a little hippie in their old-fashioned way, did not teach him to fear his gift. They taught him restraint. They taught him privacy. They taught him that tenderness was not the same thing as permission, and that even love should knock before entering. Now Marth works as a middle school music teacher, which suits him so profoundly it seems less like a profession than a natural extension of his soul. He uses his telepathy carefully, rarely reaching deeper than surface thoughts unless he must, and even then with the unease of someone touching a door that may not belong to him. His life has been, for the most of it, lovely, ordinary if not magical, and kind, which is perhaps why recent discomfort sits so strangely on him. Since ending his first and only relationship after discovering his boyfriend had cheated, Marth has found himself visited by the kind of trouble he has never quite known what to do with: a scorned ex-lover appearing unannounced and drunk at his apartment in the middle of the night, wounded, insistent, and careless with the peace Marth has always tried to keep. It has left a lingering unease in him, a feeling of being watched for, wanted wrongly, interrupted in his own life. Marth is not used to fear arriving with a familiar face. Still, he tries to be sensible. He tries to be kind. He tries not to confuse pity with invitation, or softness with surrender. Most days, he succeeds. Most days, he makes gentleness look like its own kind of music.◈ A B I L I T I E S A B I L I T I E S __________________________________________________________________________________ ◈ Telepathy: Marth is a telepath with telempathic undertones, allowing him to read and hear the surface thoughts of others with buried emotional impressions such as the fear, shame, grief, affection, anger, or calm that arrive to him as tone beneath the language, like hearing the chord under a melody. With focus, he can press deeper to reach into memories, though doing so requires more effort and carries a heavier moral weight. He can also communicate telepathically, placing his voice inside another's thoughts with a softness that can feel like comfort, warning, or trespass, depending on how gently he enters. Through this connection, others can respond to him with their thoughts in return. The telempathic undertone of his power grants him light influence of emotional states through telepathic contact. Marth cannot rewrite someone's heart or fully control their emotions like a true Empath, but rather he can project a kind of emotional tuning and resonance in small measures. When threatened, he can turn that inner voice harsher, bombarding someone with his own thoughts in a sudden psychic rush meant to disorient, overwhelm, and confuse, causing mental discomfort rather than physical harm. The telempathic aspect of this allows his thoughts to interrupt how someone's brain interprets sensations like sight, breath, pain, balance, fear, and numbness. So while the body remains physically intact and unharmed, Marth can use his telepathy to press a telempathic suggestion into someone's mind. He cannot make the body perform impossible damage, only convince the mind of a sensation. The effect only lasts while Marth focuses on projecting it, so it is temporary and completely psychosomatic. The target experiences the sensation as real enough to react because the body obeys the mind's panic. A person who thinks they have gone blind may stumble and freeze. Or a person who believes they are being suffocated may begin gasping and clutching their throat. He usually needs eye contact or a strong telepathic lock to do it well and it lasts only seconds unless he keeps concentrating and even then, he may experience psychic recoil if he pushes too hard or too long because Marth's naturally empathic nature makes him susceptible to feeling some echo of what he inflicts. ◈ Mindlight: The harsher aspect of his gift is a visible psychic manifestation that blooms at the center of his forehead as a swirling, rippling orb of pale pink mindlight, luminous as a small tide caught beneath skin and starshine. It appears only when he summons it, and once it forms, he must choose: hold, fire, or dismiss. Nothing happens passively. The orb must be released and must reach its target for the effect to take hold. A quick fire is rougher and stronger, capable of stunning someone or knocking them unconscious, but it often comes with an uncomfortable psychic recoil against him. A steadier hold allows for cleaner effects, such as sleep or direct emotional influence, while the longest hold can brush memory itself, requiring the most control and the greatest restraint. Because the orb is visible, it gives him away. Everyone can see the moment his power gathers. And because he can dismiss it, every use becomes a small moral trial: the charged, breathless pause between mercy and violation. P E R S O N A L I T Y P E R S O N A L I T Y __________________________________________________________________________________ ◈ Marth is still in the way a room is still after music has ended: not empty, only softly holding the last note. At twenty-five, he has the calm, picturesque manner of someone raised in a loving, somewhat eccentric home, among old songs, strange little family traditions, and five other siblings who taught him tenderness through teasing, fussing, and the occasional merciless correction. He is warm, easy-going, and storybook-classical in the bones, with an elegance that never seems rehearsed. He is not stern, exactly, but he does have standards, and his quiet judgment usually arrives as a tilted head, a gentle “Mm,” or a look that makes nonsense feel suddenly very aware of itself. There is an open warmth in him that often reaches his eyes before it reaches his voice. He laughs easily, sometimes at himself first, with the kind of soft, surprised brightness that makes a room feel less guarded. His care has a sheltering quality to it, old-fashioned and faintly enchanted: a lamp left on, a scarf placed over someone’s shoulders, a hand resting briefly on a student’s music folder before a recital, a half-hummed melody while he straightens chairs after class. As a middle school music teacher, he is patient with noise because he understands that noise is often only feeling before it learns where to go. He notices when a child has gone quiet, when laughter is covering shame, when a wrong note has become the whole world for someone small and trying very hard. He does not make comfort into a performance. He simply comes nearer and makes the room easier to be in. Beneath that gentle composure is a sentimental heart he cannot always keep neatly folded away. Marth feels deeply, though never with much melodrama. A remembered song can make him wistful. An old photograph can still him. A sweet, ordinary kindness can catch him off guard and leave him blinking it away with a little laugh, as if embarrassed by his own softness. There is something mystical about him, too, but not grandly so. More like a man who suspects every house has a favorite hour, every child has a hidden rhythm, and every silence is waiting for the right note to open it. Still, he tries to be sensible. He can be pragmatic when needed, even if his pragmatism often arrives with a teacup, a sigh, and a little too much feeling tucked underneath. He does not need to rescue people from themselves. But sometimes he tries. Not because he wants control, and not because he thinks himself wiser than everyone else, though he can be a little guilty of both in small, harmless ways. He does it because he is soft-hearted, because he believes people are often braver when someone quietly believes for them first. Marth is not tragic. He is not broken. He is simply tender in a world that can be careless with tender things. Most days, he makes gentleness look like its own kind of music. ◈ M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S __________________________________________________________________________________ ◈ Marth has no major goals right now, too busy focusing on his job as a middle school music teacher and helping run the family bed and breakfast to think beyond the present moment. Perhaps future events will drive him toward greater ambitions.◈

Vanguard: Calder City

@Hillan@Melissa@Colonel Sep

Hi Hi, I've finished modifying my character sheet on the first page. Same power, just a different sort of character.