He was crying, and that in itself was surprising. He couldn't recall when it began, or why, really, but he couldn't deny the scalding tracks the tears cut down his cheeks, as tangible as knives fitting under his skin.

Goodfellows did not cry. It was an unspoken rule of the household, taught to them in the manner of one educating a pup not to soil itself on the lacquered wood flooring, through negative reinforcement. Had they cried as children, it wouldn't have been long before they recieved a slap that wrenched their necks around at stiff, unyielding angles, and they would force back the incriminating tears or suffer another blow to their sniveling faces.

So why? became the most pressing concern as he huddled against the frosty glass window, his body contorted to fit snugly in the untouched alcove. Not even the maids made use of the recess, evidenced by its fine coating of dust and the scent of longing that bathed the roof of his mouth.

Why was he crying? For what reason did he weep?

The answer came to him in a frozen flash of memory, back lit by the streak of lightning that submerged the world in electric brilliance, searing his shadow in the burgundy curtain veiling him from prying eyes: Cage.

Where was Cage? Micajah always found him on stormy nights, coaxed him from the nooks and crannies of the house and held him close, speaking loudly of fanciful tales to drown out the crashing of thunder. He usually needn't have bothered; Micajah's steady, thumping heartbeat alone kept him sane when the world outside seemed to go to hell, celestial bodies warring in the charged atmosphere above them.

Without Cage, the gods' crusade shook him to the core.

The boy tore from his place of solitary comfort, shredding the curtain from its hooks in his haste. He moved without care for his surroundings, overhanging limps cracking against furniture, bare feet slipping over the polished wood of the floor, balling up the carpets as he fought for traction, for balance. In the thick darkness of the sleeping home, shadows lunged for him, baring fangs, flexing claws; but for Cage, he imagined them away, seeing only dutiful sentinels in their place, ushering him along.

Was the route to Micajah's room always so lengthy, so treacherous? He hadn't thought so only moments before, tucked away as he was, but in his urgency the path seemed too long, too overgrown with forgotten nightly terrors from his childhood. The face of the grandfather clock sneered down at him as he swept past, chiming with ominous certainty that midnight had passed.

He climbed the grand staircase two steps at a time, the maximum his child-like legs would allow him, hand gliding vainly along the worn banister, fingers searching for a vaporous grip on reality. Something was wrong, something terrible had happened. Why had no one noticed Cage's absence, why was it only him? Why only now?

Cage. Cage. Cage. The name echoed at the pace of his throbbing heart, a chant that spurred him on, begged him, pleaded for him to hurry. He obeyed the call, senselessly and without reason, without any consideration for what might greet him as his clammy palm wrapped around the doorknob, turned it quickly. He shoved inside the room. Vaguely, he registered how absurdly loud the door was as it slammed open, how it wouldn't be long before he was swarmed by the house staff, demanding how he could be so rebellious at such a late hour. His parents would come, awoken by the noise and the chaos, and he would be scolded, perhaps more severely than he had been for some time. Under Cage's guidance, he'd reigned in his troublesome tendencies and lived relatively peacefully beside his rigid parents.

And yet, precisely at that moment, he didn't care what became of him - because Micajah was gone.

The room looked tranquil enough, as though only moments before Cage had been there, pacing in his nightly habit, pondering things he thought too mature for his brother's understanding. Reading, as he always did, in the plush armchair nestled beside the window, sitting as a gentleman would. Curled around his younger brother, protecting him from nature's wrath.

Then he noticed the overturned bookcase, the ajar dresser door. The window was open, the sash drawn, breathing vengeful gusts of frigid air into the room. The boy stepped forward, tentative, trance-like, and something crunched beneath his foot. Glass, ripped free of its place shielding the clock face that had sat coldly atop Cage's bedside table. As the boy paused, carelessly plucking the glass shards from his now crimson foot, he saw that the clock, too, had stilled.

Twelve-thirteen. Not so long after the storm had picked up to its current booming crescendo.

He crossed to the window, peering out into the violent night, his body leaning at a precarious angle as he whipped his head around, seeking all possible vantage points, desperate in his search.

Cage was lost to him, shrouded in the lashing rain and pitch black thunderheads.

Grimly, the boy eased back into the room and slowly, mechanically slid the window back into place, suffocating the wind. The house returned to its endless silence.

Where was Cage?

Taken, he thought, looking over at the dislodged bookcase, skeletal in the dusky grayness of bleeding light let in through the window, its lifeless organs scattered about the room. He's been taken... and I haven't a clue as to why or where.

It would only be a few more minutes, he supposed, until this disturbance was discovered by another, and so he took advantage of these precious pieces of solitude to grieve. His tears were no longer mysterious, no longer untraceable.

Turning away from the window, he walked on trembling legs to Cage's bed and sank onto its unmade covers, exhaling sharply in relief. He felt closest to Micajah here, where they had spent so much time together, laughing, bickering. His own room felt foreign to him after fifteen years of Cage's offer of solace.

He'd gone rather numb since entering this sacred space of his brother, apart from the hollow ache settled in his chest, unreachable for the rib cage that enclosed it. He clawed uselessly at his nightshirt, nails scraping at his chest through the thin fabric. He traced lines across his skin, stinging red lines to distract him, divert his pain elsewhere.

"What now...? What am to do now? I should... I should tell someone." The idea struck him as criminal almost. "No, no they'll know soon enough. They'll come after they've checked the house, after they're unable to find me. I don't... I don't need to leave quite yet."

He tucked his legs up beneath him, twisted and crawled across the bedspread, wanting to curl up among Cage's pillows and disappear from the world until Judgment Day came for him. But before he reached the shadowed mound, his hand struck something... warm. Startled, he hooked his fingers under the blanket's edge, drew back the cover.

A girl.

She was small, smaller than himself, at least, and in her position - knees pressed up against her chest, arms wrapped around her legs - she appeared even narrower, more fragile. She dressed strangely in clothing he hadn't seen before, clothing he thought might be from a country he'd only known existed from his brother's stories. Her hair - red and thick as blood, cut short and ragged - lay splayed over the sheets, framing her head like a demonic halo. She breathed with the heaviness and concession of the damned.

Micajah hadn't had a lover - not that he'd been aware of, anyway. It seemed unlikely he would have deviated from the marriage partner their father had arranged for him years ago, however awfully the two carried on. Still, how else was to he explain why she slept so peacefully in his brother's bed?

He bit his lip. Had she been here when Micajah was taken?

The thought solidified his resolve, and he bravely took hold of the girl's arm; she bolted upright at his touch, suddenly very awake and very agitated. Without even sparing him a glance, she'd freed herself from his grasp and slithered onto the floor, dropped low in some stance that faintly reminded him of a startled cat. Her head cocked, she seemed to register how little threat he posed to her, their eyes meeting over the top of a crumpled blanket.

His a watery blue, hers an unatural rose.

She stood slowly, uncurling herself from her feral bearing. "Who are you?" she asked bluntly.

"I thought to ask you the same question," he replied, easing himself upright to face her, wobbling on his knees across the unstable mattress. "But it might be the gentlemanly thing to give my own name first. Lafayatte Goodfellow, at your service."

She regarded him coolly for a moment, making no move to either flee or attack. He took it as a sign that she was warming to him. "I..." Her expression blanked, caught mid-answer. Her brow furrowed, mouth curving downwards. "I... don't have a name, at least not right now. Dammit, how do you even forget something like that...?"

The foulness of her tongue didn't perturb him; he'd heard far worse from his father. "Amnesia?" he guessed, surprising even himself with the casualness of the conversation. "That could be the cause. Do you remember anything--" His eyes strayed to the wall directly behind the girl.

Framed in the blossoming light of a lightning bolt, a message had been burned into the wall's paneling, the script black and curled with an airy touch: The Devil's spawn are gifted with names, not born.

In the next flash, it had disappeared, washed away with the lengthening shadows.

The girl looked over her shoulder, following his gaze, but upon seeing the empty wall she turned back, lifting a brow curiously.

"You're a demon," he breathed. She flinched at the word. "A demon, like Micajah always talked about. You're here because... because I unconsciously called out to you?"

"Who the hell are you calling a damn demon, kid?!" she spat as her hands balled into lethal-looking fists.

He went on as if she hadn't interrupted. "I should have known! Those eyes of yours, they're as vibrantly pink as Cage descriped! I simply hadn't thought there'd been any truth to those tales, but here you are!"

"Kid," she said again, lower, with less care for her temper.

"Do you know what happened to Cage, demon? Are you here to--"

Her hand struck out, whipping across his cheek; his head jerked to the side.

"Idiot, listen," she hissed as he tentatively turned back to her, pressing both hands to his smarting cheek. "I'm not a demon, got it? I don't know who I am, why the hell I'm here, or anything useful like that, but I now for goddamn sure that I am not a demon." She paused, then, eyes widening as she reached out and brushed aside a stray tear that dangled from his lashes. "Hey... I didn't hit you that hard, did I? Er, sorry, I got a little carried away there... Just a touchy subject for me, I think."

He shook his head, closing his eyes. "It's... it's not your fault. I was... crying before you appeared..."

She nodded slowly. "Gotcha." Snatching an abandoned handkerchief from the night table (Micajah had numerous others in his collection), she dabbed at his trickling tears in a seemingly motherly fashion, as though she held a special fondness for the task. "So who's... Micajah, right?" When he inclined his head silently, she pressed on, "He's why you're crying, I'll wager. Something happen?"

As he recounted his initial discovery of the scene and Micajah's subsequent kidnapping, she appeared to notice the tattered state of the room for the first time, her eyes gleaming with sudden understanding.

"So that's it, huh?" She dropped down beside him, arms folded neatly beneath her chest. "Look, like I said, I dunno what I'm doing here. Hell, I don't even know my own damn name right now. But something... something's tellin' me I'm supposed to be here. To help you." She looked up and he caught the ferocity of her gaze. "If your big bro's been taken, then I'll help you get him back, no matter what. That's what my gut's tellin' me to do, anyhow. 'Sides," she added with a wide grin, "I don't like seeing little kids cry."

He didn't speak, too shocked with her breezy acceptance to string together a coherent sentence.

"How 'bout we make a deal of it, then," she said, offering her hand. "I'll help you find your brother, Lafayette,, and you'll help me figure out what's going on with my freaky amnesia. Oh, and I get to call you Fay, instead, 'cause Lafayette is too aristocratic for me to care about. Deal?"

She's offering to assist me in rescuing Cage. Why should I refuse? He closed his hand around her own, squeezing for reassurance. "It's a deal," he said, and just as the words fell from his lips, something crackled to life between their palms, enveloping their joined hands in ethereal flames that neither burned nor blistered their skin. Golden flames tinged with the red of their shared hair color, with the cobalt blue and morganite of their eyes, reflected in the writhing fires.

They petered out as quickly as they'd sprung up, leaving the boy and girl staring at one another, until the girl asked, "That normal here?"

And Lafayette replied, "No, no not really."

She grinned. "I like it even more now." She pulled away her hand, examined her palm with undue interest. For a moment he thought she was searching the lines of her palm for evidence of seared flesh, but he dispelled the idea as he turned round her hand, displaying the intricate black mark etched into her skin. He checked his own hand, and sure enough the mark was there as well, exactly the same in every detail.

"I'll give you a name," he decided abruptly. The girl, who'd taken hold of his hand and was currently studying it alongside her own, blinked, neither surprised nor unwilling. "You'll keep it only as long as you're with me, or until we uncover your past. Does Rowena Goodfellow sound alright to you?"

Her teeth flashed an opaque, ghostly white as she smiled. "Weirdly, yeah, I love it. Got an air of mystery to it, don't it?"

Now, Fay thought, how will I explain her arrival to Mother and Father?

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