Chapter Text
Lili, frankly, doesn't give a shit about the other Junior Agents.
Razputin is an exception, of course, because he's not really a Junior Agent in the same sense that she isn't- it's just layers of bureaucratic nonsense and half-hearted rules that keep them from being proper agents. Everyone in the Green-Needle Gulch seems to think so, and so does her dad, and so do Sasha and Milla when Raz and her are out of earshot but Harold isn't. Hollis even might think it.
Norma is awful- worse than awful in a lot of ways. Lizzie is nowhere near as bad as her sister, though she's not great either way. Adam is at least usually unobtrusive, Gisu often busy, Morris similarly occupied. Sam was worse before she met Dogen, but knowing that they're all just like that makes her nonchalant, almost vacant stare seem a bit less intentionally uncaring.
They're all a bit too mean, though. Lili is mean- she likes to set things on fire and is a firm believer that the best therapy is when you beat up a cushion until all the stuffing is worn- but she's not cruel. There was genuinely, literally, absolutely no reason to lock Raz in a closet without his clothes.
There technically was a reason to make him do all their work, but certainly not a good one. Back at camp, the other campers were much younger children and often half-heartedly attempting to do their tasks themselves, even if their skills weren't quite up to par. Besides, he looked bored and was practically asking for something to do.
Now? It was just an easy place to shove their duties onto. On top of his work helping who he thought was her dad, and on top of his family trauma.
It's no wonder something ended up exploding. Thankfully, this isn't Dogen she's thinking about, or it'd be heads.
Unfortunately, Razputin is a lot more powerful than Dogen.
The other Junior Agents, last she saw them, were nervously chattering around the entrance to the woods, wondering if they should "chase him." Normally she woudn't give it second thought, but she'd felt a wave of distress come from over here with Raz's flavor- a light breeze, cotton candy and a little like loneliness- and figured they had something to do with it.
She thought it would take some work, but she was wrong.
"We didn't do anything-" Norma's protests are quickly shut off by her sister, who looks both pained and scared. "We were messing with Pooter and we went way, way too far. He ran off into Green Needle Gulch but I don't know if we should follow him."
"I don't think seeing any of us would calm him down," Adam adds. "Also, please don't tell Hollis."
Lili gives them all a glare.
"Trust me, we'll be bullying Norma enough to make up for it," Sam pledges, and coming from Sam that's a hefty promise. "She's the one who started it."
At least it was something, she thought, continuing forward. The rest of them split for her easily, except for Norma, who she shoved aside with telekinesis as she trudged into the woods.
It's easy for her. There's a few people who the Green Needle Gulch has now permanently let in, even without anyone trying to tell it to- Razputin, after Ford led him here, and Lili, because it sees the similarities between her and her Uncle Bob. Milla hates this place, but Sasha has ended up here once or twice due to Otto's insistence that he has to, now that she's back, try Lucy's pastries, they're to die for.
(Those are, of course, thinly veiled attempts to get Sasha to take a break, or maybe not do that definitely unethical experiment he was planning. They work because Sasha cannot say no to Otto out of respect.)
Maybe she should do that sort of thing, too. It'd be no excuse to say her plants like Raz- they like him being around, his energy, even if it isn't always positive. They like how much he cares about her- they can tell, of course, the plants always know- and he tends to run himself ragged, literally.
The problem is, of course, that he also gets stir-crazy easily. Hollis tried to assign him a week-long break and he ended up helping on a rescue operation not three days later.
All this to say that she should have seen this coming. But, really, as she steps into the damp air and allows the plants to tell her what they may, she's expecting news of a crying young boy who ran into some faraway corner to comfort himself with just lanky arms and memories, hopefully.
"You're looking for him?" They ask. "Oh, thank you, thank you!"
"Thank you for what? Was he lighting you on fire or something?" Not that she'd blame him much- she's definitely set something on fire in her anger now and again. More than a few times.
"No, no! Nothing like that. But he reminds me," an old tree says, branches seeming to reach down to her, "Of the miss. What was her name?"
"Lucy," the grass answers, and Lili's blood runs cold. "Her name is Lucy!"
"Lucy, yes, that's the one that he always likes to talk about." The tree says. "He seemed a lot like that one. Run through, you know, much too stressed. It isn't good for the heart or the soul."
"You're right," Lili says, determination in her voice. No one's around to think her crazy for speaking aloud to the trees, not that she cares, and the sound of her own fake conviction helps her believe in the words. "Which is why I'm here to help him."
"Exactly! He needs help. It took Lucy a lot of time to get help- look at what happened. Water, everywhere. Well, now there's not water everywhere. But it stands still where he goes, you know."
"Yeah," she says, and she notices. The water stills when Raz is nearby, as if waiting. Like a serpent hiding beneath the surface waiting to strike.
Like two water serpents, coiled around one form, terrorizing because it's all they have left after the hellish torture inflicted by a man richer than conception could believe.
"He went over there," the tree says, and though it doesn't move she understands the direction. "I lost sense of him a while ago, though, so past that I don't know."
"I can ask the grass," she says, "And thanks."
"Thank you, little lady," the tree says, and she's on her way.
---
The obvious sign, aside from the group of interns at the entrance, that something is wrong in Green Needle Gulch is six of the Psychic Seven are gathered near where the grass says Razputin went.
"Lili," Ford calls, beckoning her to come. Fuck him, she says to herself more as a point of principle than anything, and obliges. "You're here for Razputin, correct?"
"I'm here to help him and then go punt the rest of the Junior Agents," she specifies.
"Oh, I don't know if it'll be that easy, dearie." Cassie O'Peia, a woman she has known mostly in passing, only once in person, says not unkindly. Despite not knowing her, the woman acts as though she's someone familiar, and Lili feels comforted by it. "His mind's in a tizzy at the moment."
"Do you know what, er, happened?" Compton Boole is at least somewhat familiar, in that she's friends with Dogen because of Raz and Sam is just okay. He's a much nicer version of Sam that's not as volatile as Dogen, so the best of both worlds. "Kinda. I know Norma did something, which is like saying the water is wet today."
"The plants're worried about him," Uncle Bob says.
"I know! The moment I stepped in this place a tree came down and asked me to go help him. Like I wasn't going to already."
Helmut Fullbear, back in his body and big as ever, tucks an arm around his husband. "I've been trying to see if I can get close from out here, but no dice."
"Why out here?"
"The water," Razputin's Nona- Lucrecia- Lucy says. "It's so still."
"Yeah. I know."
Ford looks pensive. "If he-"
"He won't hurt me," Lili says with confidence, and charges into the undergrowth.
---
It's damp in here. The water is suspended in the air, like little eyeballs watching every move. She can see the way they tried, at some point, to convalesce into the Hand of Galochio, She almost wishes they would've, because a Razputin that's fighting with the Hand is a Razputin that's distracted.
It's a little hard to breathe. It would be harder if she got angry, though, and the steam it would inevitably create would be a problem, so she tries her best to keep herself calm. The ambient worry of the plants helps to soothe her annoyance at the source of this mess, because the fact that they're not even thinking about themselves means Raz hasn't tried to lash out.
Of course he wouldn't. The trees said he was like Lucretia, but not like Maligula. Lucretia was hurt, and vulnerable, but she had not yet become a monster.
"Raz," she calls out softly. "Are you there?"
The water responds to her call instead. Droplets finally manage to move and form a very, very small Hand of Galochio, which points her in the right direction. She gives it a nod and a thumbs-up and continues.
She doesn't hear anything.
Usually this far out there's Compton's favorite animals- the beavers, deer, birds, anything. Not a sound is made. Likely they've all been spooked by the amount of psychic power he's using, the spike it the area's energy, but unaware of how harmless he really is right now.
But as she continues, the confidence she was pretending to have builds itself into a true, genuine thing. Razputin isn't hurting anything but himself, and she can fix that. He, inherently, is not a problem to be solved, but many of his issues are something that needs resolving nonetheless; the sum of the parts is more than the whole. She'll "fix" whatever is wrong with him at the moment.
If there's anything she knows, for a fact, she can do, it's help Raz. She couldn't find her father's brain, didn't realize it was someone else until it was too late, couldn't do a thing to stop Coach or Loboto or Maligula-
But she could be a shoulder to cry on after everything happened. She could be the one he went to when he was lost trying to figure out why Coach would do something like that. She could be the one to wrap him in something warm on the jet, finally out of the Rhombus of Ruin, and make sure he was safe and sound before they interrogated Loboto.
She will be, now, the one person he’ll be vulnerable around. It is not up for discussion.
Moving aside a bush with more request than physical touch, she spots him.
Lili and Razputin are the same size, roughly, and quite close in age, but from the way they act there always seems to be a little difference. Razputin is always bent down a little, in the way that he’s ready to jump into a handspring or roll away from something dangerous at a moment’s notice; nonetheless, he usually seems a little bigger due to the constant motion.
He seems so small now, curled in on himself, in the middle of a clearing, surrounded by nonsensical drawings made of still water. The Hand of Galochio would stare on if it had an eye.
She still feels the eyes on her.
“Raz,” she says, coming closer.
“Lili?”
“I’m here,” she calls, coming closer still.
“Don’t-”
“No arguments,” she says, rather simply, and tries to close that final small gap.
“I-I can’t-”
“I told you, no arguments.” Maybe on another day, in another situation, it’d sound a bit more petulant, a bit more aggressive. But she says it like she’s stating the day’s weather report is mild, or that the Otto-matic in the Motherlobe is half-functional again, or that Sasha or Hollis or Milla were looking for him.
(For a single moment, she wonders- why didn’t any of them notice a thing? If she could sense Raz’s distress from inside, and he was out in the Questionable Area?, then they must have too.
She pushes it aside as soon as it comes. Raz first, angry later.)
The grass is damp but soft under her skin, kind and welcoming. It’s stiff under Raz, of course, because it fears him. In the same way he fears water, still, in the same way he fears his loving Nona or the call of his name from someone he loves, hoping it’s not to reprimand him again. Familiar, unfortunate, but reasonable.
“What’s wrong?”
“I- it shouldn’t bother me-”
“I don’t care whether it should or not,” she says, noticing the way the water begins to move, ever so slightly. She hopes it’s a halo that it’s forming and not a noose above his head. “I want to know what happened.”
“I- well, Dion and I had an argument. And he ended up calling me ‘some crazed fortune teller,’ which, well, you know.”
“He’s an asshole.”
“I know. And it’s not all his fault.”
“Still.”
“Still,” Raz continues, “Norma made fun of me for being a ‘fortune teller,’ and I told her that was just some old stupid thing that we used to believe, and that real psychics aren’t dangerous monsters.”
“Right.”
“And then she said, ‘Oh yeah? You’re definitely dangerous. And who’s to say you aren’t a monster?’ “
“I’m gonna light her on fire.”
“Don’t-”
“You’re not a monster, Raz,” Lili says, and finally closes the three-inch gap she’d left before. He usually likes contact, likes having someone to hold or hold him or just stay close and warm, but sometimes his skin itches and suddenly everything’s wrong, so she held off. But his barriers, selective like a ticket booth, have decided she’s got a VIP pass, and she can sense the need for something warm from here.
And even if she didn’t, she would’ve hugged him anyway.
“Nona wasn’t a monster. She didn’t want to be one.”
“Your Nona’s okay now, isn’t she?”
“But everything that happened-”
“Will not happen to you,” she says, looking him dead in the eyes. “She left to Grulovia, and no one came with her, and no one checked on her.”
“Ford tried to send letters.”
“He never came by. He never took her home.”
Raz looks away. The water spins- the angel hung by the rafters, painted wings on a corpse that only wanted to do good. It’s both a halo and a noose, she realizes, strung up at the neck from his own powers and hopes and dreams. The angel that does even one misdeed is no longer pure.
“When have you ever done anything bad?”
“I messed up Hollis’s mind. And her trust.”
“We both know you didn’t do that on purpose.”
“Still! She allowed all of us in, and I hurt her.”
“Sure, you made a mistake. Coach tried to put everyone’s brains in a tank, do you think he’s a monster?”
“Well, no-”
“And he was actually trying to be evil.”
“Okay, okay, but that’s not everything-”
“That’s the only thing that really matters.”
His voice drops. “I should’ve known that wasn’t Truman. Or told you.”
“You did what you thought you had to,” Lili says. She still doesn’t like that he kept the secret, but it’d be unfair to hold it against him. Even she herself had only realized it wasn’t her dad when she went into his brain- before that, it could’ve been anything.
“But I could’ve-”
“It doesn’t matter what you could’ve done,” she argues still. “What matters is what you wanted to do, and what you did do.”
“I didn’t convince my dad of anything until camp,” he mutters, and Lili realizes, suddenly, what the glaring issue is at the heart of all this.
His father, ripping apart all his hopes and dreams, abandoning him as his son and leaving him to fend for himself against the hungry wolves that were the rest of his family. Sasha and Milla, busy with their work, vaguely giving him the cold shoulder after he just saved their lives. Hollis, leaving him to fend for himself against the other then-interns, even as she knew they’d perform a hazing on a ten year old.
“Look at me, Raz,” she begs, hoping she doesn’t sound as desperate as she feels. Whether or not she does, it works, as he looks at her. Hope and fear both mingle in his eyes, along with the beginnings of tears.
“I am not going to leave you,” she says, and he pulls her forward and buries his face in her shoulder.
The water all dissipates. Mostly. It scatters into the trees and grass and wherever it was supposed to go, the watery ropes descending far enough away that neither of them get wet.
He doesn’t cry ugly tears, or audibly weep into her clothes, or even get snot everywhere. His tears are simple, fall, and he shakes, but that’s all. Not a sound out of him, like he’s afraid to make any, as if being caught like this is worse than the hurt that caused it.
“I’m sorry,” he eventually says.
“Don’t you dare,” she threatens. “I’m your girlfriend.”
“I’m a lot,” he reasons.
“What did I say?”
“Thanks,” he says.
“That one I’ll take,” she replies with a huff. “And maybe something to eat.”
Raz laughs a little into her shoulder. “Sure.”
“Once you’re done.”
“Right.”
---
He’s mostly okay now. He’s stopped quivering like a leaf, though she can tell in his hands the urge to put on his goggles is there. They’re an easy way to stay away from the world, act like nothing’s wrong because no one can see his eyes. And while he has very good control of his face- of course, he’s a performer, have to smile during the show even when it hurts- his eyes always tell the truth. He’s honest like that.
It’s one of Lili’s favorite things about him. And she doesn’t like them sad.
She tugs him along gently through the path in the forest. One of the shrubs near the entrance calls out before she leaves-
“Wait! Wait, miss!”
“Yeah?” Raz only ever asked one time who she was talking to, when she seemingly spoke at nothing. He has since learned to assume that either it’s plants, or she’s insane and using them as a cover story, and he’ll never know which one it is at any given time.
“Please be careful! There’s so many outside!”
“So many?”
“Yes! There were the people when you went in, but then a lot more showed up! And they all seem like they’re going to fight- he says he remembers how it was, when they fought, and this is like that.”
“He” is a bit vague, but the sentiment is easily understood through the nature of a telepathic link. The trees, of course- one in particular or all of them at once, who knows. “Thanks for the heads-up, but we’ll be okay.”
“Please be safe!”
“We will,” Lili says. Raz cocks his head, but she says nothing. Maybe Sasha and Milla have finally bothered to check up on the overwhelming amount of distress coming from their star protege, and were unwilling to move through a little bit of shrubbery to get to him. Or maybe someone told Hollis.
No, definitely not that one. No one is telling Hollis. Least of all her, because then she might assign him something weird and invasive and definitely not welcome, and she’s been in Raz’s mind once or twice.
He does not like unfamiliar visitors.
The stray rosebush at the entrance moves aside the moment she shows up. “They’re back, monsieur.” It must be talking to her Uncle.
Speaking of which. “Lili! Raz,” the man calls, unsure of how to address him. Still a bit shaky, but his hand and hers are firmly clasped in one another and she won’t let go. If he needs someone to be there, then she will be there, whether anyone else likes it or not. Even her own father couldn’t separate them now if he tried.
“Razputin,” Milla calls, sorrow in her voice. But she keeps her distance. Sasha, next to her, does the same.
Thankfully, no Hollis. Not thankfully, everyone seems to be keeping their distance. Lili doesn’t sense anything from him, and he looked fine when they left- what’s the matter?
“The bushes weren’t kidding, huh,” she mutters under her breath.
Thankfully, all of the Psychic Seven- now with Otto joined- weren’t paying attention. Cassie O’Peia rushes forward immediately, not a wary bone in her body as she crouches down to speak to Raz. “Oh, dearie, are you okay?”
“I’m okay now,” he says, quietly and only to her and Lili. “Sorry,” he also adds reflexively.
“Oh, there’s no need to be sorry. I don’t know what happened outside, but it’s never good to ignore your own emotions, you know.”
“Pootie!” Lucretia- is that improper anymore?- calls, and also quickly rushes towards him. “You’re okay!”
“Yeah. Sorry, Nona,” he says, and it’s like water flowing from a fountain. Easy, practiced, careful but natural. Lili doesn’t like it, but then again, there’s not many things she likes about their family, so it’s not like it’s surprising.
“Agent Zanotto,” Sasha calls. She glares at him with as much vitriol as she can muster. “What?”
“That was extremely rash of you.”
“You’re the ones who completely ignored him,” she says, spare hand on her hip and what she knows is an intimidating glare on her face. “Seriously, I could feel it all the way from my room.”
“A bit, darling,” Milla tries to comfort her. It’s like trying to talk down a man petting a harmless tiger, the kind trained and full of nothing but love for its owners. “But not strongly enough to warrant-”
“Not strongly enough!? Are you insane?” She hopes she isn’t crushing Raz’s hand in hers with all this annoying nonsense. “I just said I could feel it from the Motherlobe! You could too!”
“Yes, but the sensation itself wasn’t very strong.”
Lili squints. Are they serious? “Yeah, if this was, like, Dogen. But that’s what made it past his crazy strong walls. If that’s what you could feel from inside, then-”
“The full thing must have been much worse,” Sasha finishes.
Shock covers Milla’s face as she turns to her partner. Though his expression is covered up by the glasses, they’re not nearly as closed off as Raz is, and she can sense their collective realization from here. “Stupid,” she mutters, and tugs Raz’s hand. He pulls a little closer. “I told you, I should’ve-”
“No, Norma should shut her mouth before I do it for her.”
“I doubt it’s worth the trouble, darling,” Milla says, thankfully taking a step or two closer. “Besides, when Hollis-”
“Don’t tell Hollis,” Raz pleads at the same time Lili threatens it. She continues, “She keeps lumping all of us together even though I don’t hang out with them, and she’s gonna make Raz go to some random psychotherapist who doesn’t know what’s going on, and he’s gonna go stir crazy again.”
“But-”
“Not worth it,” Raz agrees.
“Totally not worth it.”
“What’d she say, anyway?” Asks Ford, who seems the most nonchalant out of the group. He was in Raz’s mind for a while- he probably figured out he was fine once he showed up. Or maybe he just wants to stay out of the way. Not her problem.
“Stupid shit.”
“Lili!”
“I’m right!”
“You shouldn’t curse.”
“Whatever,” she says. “Really stupid stuff. Like, Lizzie called her stupid kinda stuff.”
“And that caused you to...” Sasha asks to Raz, who shrinks a little under his gaze. Quietly, he answers, “Run away like a coward.”
“And?”
Lili, Raz, and the Psychic Seven all look around at each other confused, not really sure what they mean. “...Uh...hide over there?”
“And?”
“What’re ya getting at here, Sasha?”
“The suspended water?”
“It’s practically rain,” Lili huffs. “What’s it gonna do?”
“Still, I should have better control over it...”
“Well, to be honest,” Lucretia says, with a smirk on her face and eyes a little shifty, “That usually is what ‘control’ looks like, with the water.”
“Huh?”
“Even I do that sometimes,” she admits, giggling a little. “Before and after...everything.”
“Manifesting something is just what the mind does, little man,” Helmut says, smiling a little. If he didn’t have an arm around his husband, comforting him though the awkward air, he’d probably have swept Raz into his arms already for a big bear hug, which Lili can appreciate. “Important thing is it didn’t hurt anyone. Didn’t even try, as far as I can tell.”
“Not at all,” Lili lies.
Because it didn’t hurt her. It didn’t even think about it- couldn’t have thought about it. Raz doesn’t want to hurt her, doesn’t want to hurt anyone, wouldn’t have even lashed out at Norma if she had to guess-
But the image of the loop threatening to fall onto his neck makes her think maybe he thinks someone needs to take the fall.
“You’re certain?” Milla asks.
“Yeah, why do you keep asking this?”
“Well, darling-”
“False alarm!” Otto’s voice calls from where Compton Boole is looking at a screen with him.
“False alarm!?”
“Yes, I do believe so,” he calls, “Calibrations were off- Sasha, who did you say you did them on?”
“...You did them, Otto.”
“I did?”
“Yes.”
“...Okay, so maybe it wasn’t calibrated at all.”
“Oh, darling,” Milla says, and immediately rushes forward to crush Razputin in a hug.
“What was that?” Lili demands. Sasha, grimacing, explains.
“Agent Mentallis was testing a new device which records volatility in psychic abilities. In theory, it should be able to-”
“Not relevant.” She interrupts.
Sasha adjusts his glasses. “Right. What is relevant is the subject he first focused it on, which was Razputin, at Milla’s request. Unfortunately, because the device was never calibrated, it showed a wildly increased volatility than it should have.”
“We weren’t sure if you were still in control of your powers,” Milla adds.
“So you were just gonna let him sit there without helping because your machine messed up?”
Milla and Sasha look at each other. The latter answers. “I believe you were correct in saying that Agent Forscythe does not need to hear about this incident.”
“Cowards,” Lili says, still annoyed. “Now let him go, we’re gonna go get lunch.”
---
Hollis approaches them in the middle of lunch.
Do you think someone told her?
Hell no.
“Agents Aquato, Zanotto.”
“Hey, Agent Forscythe,” Raz greets.
“I heard you were in Green Needle Gulch earlier.”
“Yeah,” Lili easily admits.
“You are aware that area is heavily restricted, yes?”
“Tell Nona that,” Raz says with a shrug. “And Cassie. And Ford. And Helmut-”
“May I ask why that’s relevant?”
“Because they’ve all dragged me there at least once individually and made me promise to come back?”
Hollis closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and looks to Lili. “Bob’s my uncle, I’m allowed to be there.”
“I’ll talk have a talk with them,” she says, walking away.
Lili takes another bite of her honey-flavored cake- courtesy of Compton and Cassie, who heard “lunch” and refused to let them go without plenty of food- and smirks. “Man, she has no idea.”
“I’m amazed she hasn’t heard the gossip.”
“Seriously.”
She reaches out to his mind, and the ticket booth accepts her VIP pass, letting her take a quick peek at the show. It’s still a balancing act- everything’s a delicate give-and-take, fatigue and panic in equal measures keeping him awake and alert, doubts and bad ideas playing on opposite sides of the pit, an enabler as the announcer keeping everything together. But it’s balanced properly, and the act is moving along, and it’s functional. And he’s happy.
And that, sometimes, is all you can ask for.