Withdrawal Days

 📅 December 8, 2011, immediately following events in Every Breath Is Mine To Take

【ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ: ᴅʀᴜɢ ᴀᴅᴅɪᴄᴛɪᴏɴ/ᴡɪᴛʜᴅʀᴀᴡᴀʟ, sᴇʟғ ʜᴀʀᴍ, ᴄʜɪʟᴅ ᴀʙᴜsᴇ & ᴅᴏᴍᴇsᴛɪᴄ ᴠɪᴏʟᴇɴᴄᴇ, ᴄʜɪʟᴅ ᴘʀᴏsᴛɪᴛᴜᴛɪᴏɴ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ; + ᴍᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏғ ᴍᴀss ᴠɪᴏʟᴇɴᴄᴇ 】

Clambering into an unfamiliar car should’ve shut Anarchy down. He was used to that, back seat or front, depending on who it was and where he was going and if it was the driver or another passenger who wanted easier access to him. But this was different.
“You can have shotgun,” Kato told Athena when she reached for the rear door; “I’ll sit in back with Anarchy.”
“Of course the one time I want to sit in back,” she grumbled as he ducked into the car.
“Oh well, better luck next time.”

Anarchy clicked his seatbelt and studied Kato, who returned the look of appraisal through guarded eyes. Kato clearly didn’t trust him. The line of questioning at the hospital proved that, and Anarchy doubted very much that Kato was trying to get dibs on pleasant conversation. In all likelihood, he was trying to keep as much space as he could between what he saw as a potential threat and his…friend? Girlfriend? Something, whatever.
Anarchy frowned at him and looked away. He wanted to just out and say, ‘I’m not like that,’ but every addict said ‘I’m not like that,’ and then they copped your shit when the jonesing got bad. Anarchy worried his cheek with his teeth. He wasn’t like that, but they didn’t know it, and he couldn’t claim it without it sounding defensive.
“So y’all live together?” he asked the car at large, instead. “How far is it?”
“Not far at all,” Sethfire replied, adjusting the rearview mirror. “Cypress Hills, just under twenty minutes.”
“Kato just moved in a couple months ago,” Athena added, twisting around in her seat to smile. “Bet he’ll be glad to have company when I’m at school.”
“Oh yeah,” Kato said noncommittally. “I’ll teach him to play guitar.”
Anarchy shot him a glance; Kato gave him a vaguely flat smile in return and raised his eyebrows. “If you decide to stick around,” he added. 
“...Sounds great,” Anarchy said, which made Athena positively beam.
“So. Seems like maybe it’s a good thing I have ‘that’ kind of taste in movies, huh?” Kato asked her.
“Ugh,” she responded, rolling her eyes. 
Kato laughed. “Hey, I bet ’Key here is ecstatic that I like Werner Herzog.”
“Who?” Anarchy asked.
“We’ll watch Grizzly Man later or something,” Kato said instead of explaining anything, and returned to fiddling with his phone.

Anarchy expected the trip to continue similarly and end up…maybe awkward. He figured either it would all be stilted like that, or—more likely—he’d get asked more about himself, and his job, and the heroin, and would have to deal with all that. Instead, Sethfire sympathetically offered, “I understand this is likely very strange to you, and you’ve no knowledge about us. I can assure you, we only have good intentions, and if you’ve any questions, please feel free to ask them.”
“I, uh…I don’t think I even know enough to ask questions,” Anarchy replied, and Athena had launched happily into explaining that Sethfire was a therapist-in-training—“hence the savior complex,” Kato added—and that she and Kato were friends since the beginning of high school, and they played music together: Him, the guitar; her, the drums.
“Small band,” Anarchy joked. “Still, that’s neat.”
He asked her more about the music they played, since that seemed to be what lit her up the most, and asked Seth about being a therapist, because that seemed like the polite thing to do and would keep everyone talking about things other than him. Even with his guard up, though, he ended up…enjoying talking to them. Athena had that same sort of quality that Chey’d had; where she acted as if she’d been his friend for years and it felt so easy that he couldn’t help but start to forget it wasn't the case. She did ask questions, but frequently they came off pressureless—did he like flowers, he had lots of tattoos of them; what was the eye on his hand about? 
“Just looked cool,” he deferred. “The flowers, um…” he hesitated. He felt Kato watching him. 
Yeah, he was trying to keep the conversation focused on the others and their life, only really having offered up of his own accord that he wasn’t in school—but even as everything from his past screamed that other people were threats, that trust was dangerous and his hackles should be raised, Anarchy couldn’t help but find himself focused on the soreness of his ribs and the fact that his heart was beating. His heart was beating and it shouldn’t be; Anarchy was alive and the ache in his torso with every movement impressed upon him that trust had been earned; earned the second that his three rescuers had cared whether he lived or died, earned over again when they’d decided they cared whether or not he slept on the ground that night, earned third-fold when they offered him a place to stay and recover from his brush with death. Earned and earned and earned again.
“The flowers are…for someone, I guess,” he admitted to Athena. “You remind me of him a bit, I think. An, uh…old friend. He was really kind, and, like…fun, to talk with, too. You have the same smile.” Anarchy looked down at his lap, then decided that was too revealing and looked out the window instead.
In the glass, Kato’s dim reflection appeared to relax, more; the appraisal hadn’t left his face, but it’d grown softer, more contemplative. Maybe he’d picked up on the vulnerability; the confessional quality of the statement. Anarchy straightened up but was saved from Athena undoubtedly being about to ask after where his “old friend” was—I don’t know, I wish I knew; everyone says he’s dead but he can’t be, so I can’t tell you, can’t talk about it, I’m not gonna hear it again—by Sethfire saying: “Here we are.” 

Sethfire’s voice brought Anarchy from his musing and drew his attention to the apartment complex they’d arrived at. The doors unlocked with a click and the engine stilled.
“We’ll be taking the lift; our flat is quite a climb,” Sethfire said. “I would not want to risk you overworking your heart, regardless, however.” 
“‘We oughta take the lift, innit bruv?’” Athena teased her brother, briefly adopting an exaggerated English accent as they walked across the parking lot. She dropped it and turned, smiling, to Anarchy:
“Our parents moved here from London just before I was born, so I grew up a red-blooded American,” she explained, “Seth, though, tsk. The accent’s not nearly as noticeable these days, but he still says ‘lift’ instead of ‘elevator’ and spells ‘favourite’ with a ‘u’.”
“It’s a perfectly reasonable term,” Sethfire said, scanning his key fob at the door, “What does it do? It lifts.”
“Yeah. Elevator. It elevates.” Athena gestured upwards with both hands for emphasis.
“If you two have this argument again, I swear I’m moving out,” Kato said with a roll of his eyes. The four of them loaded into an elevator—though maybe it was a lift—and Kato leaned against the handrail, stiffening his arms and raising his feet off the ground. As the doors closed, he tilted his head towards Sethfire and Athena and raised his eyebrows at Anarchy.
“They do it all the time. The other day they were fuckin’ fighting about whether calling it a ‘sidewalk’ or a ‘pavement’ was dumber.”
“Both are dumb,” Anarchy said, sliding his hands into his pockets and watching the small illuminated number over the elevator doors climb, “Sidewalk is probably dumber though, because a road isn’t a ‘centerdrive.’”
“Fuck,” Athena muttered, “That’s a good point.”
“I reign triumphant. Thank you, Anarchy,” Sethfire said good-humoredly. Athena made a face at him that he didn’t get the chance to respond to before the elevator dinged. “...And here’s our floor.” 

They all piled out and Sethfire continued talking to Anarchy, two steps ahead of the others as the group made their way down the hall. 
“I’m afraid we don’t have an enormous amount of space. Our flat is a two-bedroom; all I can offer you at the moment is a pull-out couch. I hope that’s alright.” He looked concerned as he came to a stop in front of the presumable apartment door. “I am sure we’ll be able to sort out a better arrangement eventually.”
“‘Alright?’” Anarchy repeated, furrowing his brow. The ‘eventually’ tripped him up especially, but he didn’t know quite how to address it. “I’ve been sleeping on plywood in an abandoned lot for basically four fuckin’ years. A dog bed would be a step up; of course it’s alright. More than; ‘alright’ isn’t enough. I can’t...I don’t know how to repay any of this as it is.” His voice grew quiet as his sentence ended and he looked down, thrown off by feelings of trust and thanks alike. Sethfire just shook his head.
“It isn’t a debt.”
Anarchy had no response and meekly stepped back to let Sethfire unlock the door, noting—with some puzzlement—the broad, oversized plastic grip of his key and the amount of effort it apparently took to turn. Anarchy didn’t have a chance to offer help or ask questions, though; by the time he’d opened his mouth, Sethfire had pushed the door open and gestured him inside. 

Upon entering, Anarchy became uncomfortably aware that he no longer had a shirt on under his hoodie: The apartment was warm—warmer than the hall, and much warmer than the winter night outside.
“Uh, I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly, “Is there a way I could borrow a t-shirt? Seems I lost my only one.” 
“One of Kato’s would probably fit you,” Athena smiled to him, then turned towards her friend as he crossed the threshold just in front of Sethfire, “Don’t ya think, K-O?”
“What do I look like, a Goodwill?” Kato said sarcastically, shedding his jacket and throwing it over a chair, then offering Anarchy a nod. “Yeah, I’ll grab you a shirt.” 
Sethfire rolled his eyes as Kato walked away, then picked up the discarded jacket and hung it up along with his own. He shut the closet door before turning back to look at Anarchy. “Can I offer you something to drink, Anarchy? Water, Diet Coke, I think we have orange juice…” he asked, tilting his head towards the breakfast bar and heading into the kitchen.
“Oh. Uh, water’s fine. Thank y—holy shit.” Anarchy couldn’t hold back the shocked exclamation when Sethfire rolled up his sweater sleeves before reaching towards a cabinet for a couple glasses; his arms were covered in scarring, wrist to elbow, severe and shocking and sad. The need for the plastic key-turner suddenly made sense. 

Sethfire grimaced at Anarchy’s words and kept his eyes deliberately focused on the glasses he was filling at the sink. “Seventeen was a rough age for me,” he said, “I’m sorry, I know it’s not pleasant to look at.”
“No, I—” Anarchy rushed to clear the air as Athena raised her eyebrows at him; “I was just shocked, sorry. It’s not—I mean, clearly seventeen’s been hard on me, too.” He punctuated his sentence by shoving his hoodie sleeves up past his elbows to expose the true extent of the track-marks and scars that littered his forearms, just as Sethfire turned back from the kitchen sink. He realized that likely they’d already seen everything at the hospital, and an abrupt wave of shame washed over him—but maybe they hadn’t inspected him quite so closely, because Sethfire’s gaze still flooded with concern and it was so unlike the disinterested eyes of johns or any other strangers that it left Anarchy shaken.
“You’re only seventeen, Anarchy?” Sethfire asked, raising his gaze from Anarchy’s arms to meet his eyes, “I thought because of your tattoos, maybe…”
“Yeah, no, I…a friend did those. I’ll be eighteen in a few months. May,” Anarchy said quietly, shaking his sleeves back down to his wrists and taking the glass of water that Sethfire held out towards him.
“You said you’d been sleeping on the ground for four years,” Athena said, “So you became homeless at…” She hesitated slightly; glanced down and twitched her fingers as though she needed to count with them, “...at twelve?”
“Fourteen.”

The care in her voice threw him off; he was a full year out from Chey vanishing and she wasn’t just another indifferent squat kid: Suddenly the protective isolation he’d created for himself had shattered; suddenly someone cared about him again—truly cared, wasn’t just idly chatting, wasn’t awkwardly working up to touching him—but cared, and he felt like he was being smothered by it. Coming on the heels of Sethfire’s concern, and standing in a warm, lived-in, normal apartment, the kindness in her tone was filling his lungs like water and he was drowning, drowning in the pain of Chey’s absence and the knowledge that these potential new friendships were entirely unsustainable: He was an addict, he was a rentboy, he was entirely outside their world and— 
He almost sagged with relief when Kato stepped out of the hallway and chucked a balled-up T-shirt at his head.
“There ya go. You can change in ‘Thena’s and my room or the bathroom if you’re feeling shy. We definitely already saw your chest at the hospital though. The dagger tattoo is pretty cool,” Kato said casually, flicking his long hair out of his face.
It took Anarchy a moment to find his voice again, to break free from the negativity that had started to overtake him—but he managed, shaking his head to clear it.
“I... Yeah, thanks. I’ll change in the bathroom. Thank you. Again.” He set down the glass of water and kept his gaze to the floor as he passed Kato; felt curious eyes on him and caught the hushed question the other boy directed to Athena and Sethfire before he shut the bathroom door;
“The fuck did you two say to him?”

In the bathroom, Anarchy tried to collect himself. Things had suddenly become chaotic, unpredictable; his reality had made a sharp 90° turn over the course of an evening and he was struggling to keep his head on straight. He unzipped his hoodie and tried to sort through things; began a listing exercise he’d started using a while ago when his mind felt blurred from stress or a rough high. Chey had been the one who introduced him to it, so well-acquainted with forgetting; with losing himself, or track of where he was…Where was he? Where were either of them, now? 
My name is Anthony Arland Keystone. ‘Anarchy,’ Anarchy thought to himself, shaking his head and looking into the mirror as if it could provide him with comfort or answers. It offered neither.
I’m seventeen years old. 
His eyes were more sunken than he remembered, his hair longer, skin paler. He touched his fingers to the track-marks on his neck.
I’m a heroin addict. 

Anarchy swallowed hard and tore his gaze from the mirror as he shrugged off his hoodie. His ribs were still aching and the soreness in his torso called to mind the unwelcome memory of his recovery from surgery at age six. The scars on his ribcage from the work to repair his punctured lung had faded to near-invisibility, but he still remembered the vice-grip of his father’s hand, the terror of having no floor beneath his feet, the agony of impact on the metal front stoop stairs and the struggle to breathe. The surge of fear and anger that accompanied the recollection clenched his jaw and stiffened his spine. It hadn’t been more than a couple hours since a needle had met the crook of his arm but he was craving another dose already, desperate to numb out the memory of every hand laid on him, whether they were the rough palms of his father or the sickening, greedy touch of strange men. He’d brushed hands with death not two hours ago but now, when faced with the overwhelm of life and memory, he wasn’t entirely sure he cared about the risk. 
...But he was out of dope: He’d used up his last in the shot that stopped his heart. The plan had been to buy more that night but now…He shook himself off and tugged Kato’s shirt over his head. It made his heart jump to his throat, the way the debts kept accruing; a place to sleep, a t-shirt, a compassionate tone. He made eye contact with himself in the mirror again, noting how the fabric of the loaned shirt hung off his bony addict’s frame. He knew he couldn’t stay; couldn’t justify draining the resources of these people. Definitely not once he got his hands on some smack again; they were uninvolved in that. It needed to stay that way. He sighed and opened the bathroom door.

“Listen, I…” Anarchy’s voice faltered as he walked back into the combination kitchen/living area; Sethfire was placing a pot on the stove while Athena and Kato had taken up seats at the breakfast bar. Both turned to look when he spoke, while Sethfire glanced over his shoulder. Vaguely intimidated by the attention, Anarchy swallowed before continuing, eyes averted awkwardly: 
“...I really appreciate...everything. Being able to stay the night. But I should...I’ll leave in the morning. Go back to the squat. I—yeah. Thanks again for...y’know. Saving my life.”
“What? No!” Athena objected, sounding shocked—and maybe even hurt— “You can’t just leave!”
“What, you’re gonna just jack my shirt?” Kato asked at the same time, raising his eyebrows. His tone wasn’t as hostile as his words, though, and the undercurrent of concern that Anarchy detected came through as he continued: “You can’t be serious. You need to stay put, man, you fuckin’ died.”
Anarchy tried to hold his ground despite his confusion. “I can leave with just my hoodie. I really—Just—Why do you guys care? I appreciate it, but you’ve gotta know I’m a fuckin’ wastoid,” he said, the words in his mouth tasting like ash; like truth.
“We can properly discuss what you want to do in the morning,” Sethfire said from where he stood in front of the stove. “For tonight, I am just going to insist on making you dinner and giving you a warm place to rest. I do want you to stay, though, Anarchy. I’m aware that that will come with baggage. Most people do.”
“But why put up with it?!” Anarchy asked. He felt torn and almost frustrated; like he was being strung along somehow. He wanted to take Sethfire at his word, of course he fucking did—but was entirely unable. “Why bother if you don't have to? You don’t even know me. I should be just another junkie to you.”
“But—” Athena started to respond, her eyes wide and almost pleading, only to be cut off by Kato’s hard-edged drawl.
“I mean, at this point it would kinda really fuckin’ suck for us if we turned you loose and saw your body on the news next week because you overdosed again but we weren’t there,” he said, his tone bordering on harsh and almost defiant; “Look, human emotions are fucked up, and serious shit fucks them up worse, right? You told us your birth name but wouldn’t tell the damn doctor. You can’t fuckin’ pretend that someone standing between you and death doesn’t change how this all works.”
There was a weight to Kato’s words that Anarchy didn’t understand but that seemed to impress Sethfire, who silently raised his eyebrows and blinked.
Athena, too, glanced at Kato before looking back to Anarchy. “...You’re right, we don’t really know you,” she said, “But Kato’s right too. I dunno, maybe there’s some sort of cosmic bond that gets formed when you have a hand in saving a life. A red string of Fate gets tied. Stars align. Something. I don’t know, I can’t explain it, I just care. Sure, fine, we don’t know you, but we want to—and want to help, so at least give us a chance.”

The silence that followed her words hung in the air, weighted and expectant, and Anarchy didn’t know what to say or do. He needed Athena to stop talking about Fate and stars and cosmic bonds, because that had been Chey’s, too. He’d been beaten and drowned in the name of God, but had clung to faith in something, always, and now—despite his own faithlessness—Anarchy felt unwillingly anchored by it. He gave Athena a long look. She was a stranger. Why didn’t she feel like one? Why didn’t any of them?
Once again the dull ache that accompanied every breath he took was pressing it into his mind: This trust has been earned. He swallowed hard, hesitant.
“...I’ve been alone for a long time,” he finally said, rubbing the back of his neck uneasily, “I’m not used to people caring, okay? It feels...It freaks me out; it feels too good to be true. You’re right, though.” He inclined his head slightly, glancing between Athena and Kato. “It’s different. You saved my life. But I don’t know what to do here. This isn’t my, like…world.”
“It could be,” Sethfire hummed from the kitchen without looking up, while Kato half-rolled his eyes and gestured to the empty counter stool between himself and Athena with a pointed raise of his eyebrows. 
“Yeah,” he offered, “So try chuckin’ your jacket on the couch and sitting with us instead of standing awkwardly in the middle of the room like you’re about to bolt.”

There was a beat where Anarchy’s trepidation continued, but he pushed through it; swallowed his reluctance, stiffly threw his hoodie onto the sofa, and took a seat at the counter—though still perched at the very edge of the stool.
“So,” he said, brushing his hair from his eyes and pretending he knew peace as anything other than ever-fragile, “What now?”
“We talk?” Athena said, giving him a small smile; the gentle hint of something teasing in her tone and the tilt of her brow.
“Sure, but about what?”
“Are we gonna have to hold your hand through every social interaction, dude?” Kato asked, his tone something that could almost be mistaken for irritation. He wasn’t unlike a squat kid in some ways; he had the same hard tone, a façade of bravado to be used as protection. If Athena was something like Chey, Kato reminded Anarchy of himself—so he met him on that level.
“I’m not really one for hand-holding, thanks,” he responded dryly, “And sorry about my rusty social skills, but it seems I’ve been focused more on surviving than small talk.”
“Then don’t do small talk. It’s all garbage anyway. ‘Nice weather. Boy, it sure is a Thursday. Any plans for the weekend?’ Fuck off, right? Meaningless suburban shit.”
Anarchy snorted. Kato was less than pleasant; quasi-confrontational and very good at interrupting, but he was right. 
“I couldn’t carry on a conversation that shallow if my life depended on it,” Anarchy said, vindicated by their shared cynicism. He raised and lowered a shoulder in what felt, sort of, like surrender. “Hell, maybe not any conversation at this point, though. Like I said…Rusty.” He went silent again instead of expanding and brooded for a moment; picked a stray string off the shirt’s bottom hem, trying to figure out what the hell he even could offer these people in terms of non-small-talk. Everything was just baggage—vulnerability, shame, something else. They’d earned his name, and his seat at the breakfast bar…but his history? That was maybe a different story. The debts still set him on edge; maybe he shouldn’t have asked for or accepted the shirt. Maybe he shouldn’t have walked through the door at all. 
He opened his mouth again, but the question, “What do you all really want from me?” never made it past his lips, because his phone rang in his pocket.

There was only one person it could be. There was only one number he was allowed to have in the beat up flip phone Mr. Doe provided him. 

He fumbled it open and scurried away from the others, caught off-guard and made stupid by it; failing, in the small and unfamiliar apartment, to manage to put a difference-making amount of space between himself and them. He turned away and faced the silent TV on the living room wall as he pressed the phone to his ear.
“Boss,” he greeted.
“Where are you at, Ari? I need you at Blanca tomorrow evening. 8. Come here tonight and get cleaned up.”
“I’ve got somebody tomorrow?” Anarchy asked, hunching his shoulders inward. He could feel his rescuers’ eyes on him. “Uh. I dunno if I can make it to you tonight…I had a…problem…I had to go to the hospital. I’m fine, but I’m with some people now…”
Mr. Doe made a sharp, teeth-sucking sound. “Are the police involved?” he asked.
“No, I’d have crushed the phone like you told me,” Anarchy mumbled furtively.
“Who are the people, then? Do we have an issue, Ari?” The Boss asked. His tone changed to the one Anarchy hated most; the one that sounded like silk draped over a dagger. “You are not self-employed.”
“They’re not j—they’re not, er, clients, or paying me or anything,” Anarchy stammered. He cupped his hand around the phone to try and muffle his words despite knowing it was fruitless. “It’s nothing, okay, it’s not like that. They just took me to the hospital. I’ll clean up here and be at Blanca when you need me. Any shot I can get a stamp or two upfront?”
“…Fine, then, yes. I’ll have Roxie meet you there with the other boy. And I will find out if you’re being honest with me. We’ll talk more later. If you’re unhappy, you know I’m willing to negotiate.”
“I don’t want your charity,” Anarchy replied, maybe too harshly. He knew what it meant, to accept housing from Mr. Doe. It meant becoming Roxie. It meant no cash, just dope, and doing whatever he said so you didn’t lose your roof and everything else. “I’ll be there. I’m telling the truth.”

He kept staring at the wall for a couple beats after hanging up, not wanting to face the others. He didn’t know what they’d have figured, even if their eavesdropping had only clued them in on his half of the call.
“I do need to leave tomorrow,” he said to the TV, then squared his shoulders and turned around. “I gotta meet someone. You can have your shirt back and everything.”
“I’d rather you stayed,” Sethfire said slowly. His eyes were too analytical. “Who was that?”
“Sounded like a job,” Kato offered. “What kind? They pay you in heroin?”
 “I just do shit, okay? Fuck off,” Anarchy snapped. Kato failed to quail; instead, one corner of his mouth twitched upward and his eyes sparked with intensified interest.
“‘Just do shit,’ alright. I love guessing games,” he said, tapping a finger to his chin. “Hm, let’s see…how’s a homeless seventeen-year-old feed a heroin addiction? Things that involve phone calls like that, the list of options seems short.”
Anarchy clenched his fists, but Kato continued, ignoring Sethfire’s “Stop, Julian,” and Athena’s hushed “Kato!” both: “Maybe you deal, yourself. Maybe you’re a fixer of some kind? But you seem a bit scrawny…Hmm…Prostitution?” He snapped his fingers with the question and Anarchy flinched; he couldn’t help himself. 
“Why didn’t you just say so?” Kato asked, raising an eyebrow; his unbothered air a direct contrast to Athena’s wide-eyed, sharp intake of breath and how Sethfire’s posture stiffened.
“There’s nothing to say!” Anarchy barked back.
“You will not be leaving for that,” Sethfire said; “To go and meet with someone who intends to assault you? No.”
Anarchy bristled; the firm tone—despite being for his benefit—still came across as a command, and he wanted to meet it with something defiant, like, ‘It’s not your fucking call to make, bro.’ Somehow the words got lost on the way to his lips, though, misdirected by the clear, protective distress in Sethfire’s eyes, and Anarchy wound up asking, “You still want me here?” instead of what he wanted to say. 
“Of course!” Sethfire and Athena responded, simultaneously, while Kato tilted his head and said:
“Obviously. Was that why you were like, ‘I’m a wastoid, it’s better for me to leave’? We’re supposed to hear that you turn tricks and be like ‘ew, gross, get out’? Dude, that’s fucked up, but I was right.” Kato’s eyes sparked with something akin to interest—or maybe even respect. He gave a small smile; a curt nod. “You fit in.”
“What?” Anarchy balked. ‘You fit in’? How the fuck does that make any sense?
“We’re not like other people,” Athena said swiftly; “Not like we’re all involved in that stuff—but, we’re not—just gonna throw you out ‘cause you’re—”
“Suffering.” Sethfire completed her sentence.
Anarchy blinked and glanced from each of them to the others.
“Listen,” Kato said, “You’re expecting us to be normal, shitty, judgemental people. But I fuckin’ told you outside the hospital, dude, we’re fucked up. Seth nearly lopped his fuckin’ arms off when he was seventeen, and I mean—look at mine! Athena’s chill but even she got herself into deep shit with an eating disorder. We know vices.” Kato’s tone bordered on excitement, as if he fed off the sharing of secrets; the airing of dirty laundry. 
Anarchy leaned back slightly and studied the other boy. Kato had held his arms outward as he spoke and Anarchy furrowed his brow at the scars that covered the inside of his wrists and ran up his right arm like troubling tally marks. They weren’t as severe as Sethfire’s, but were there all the same; the battlegrounds of a hundred psychological civil wars. Anarchy turned one of his own arms over, feeling that the track-marks that littered it weren’t dissimilar. 

Sethfire assessed the path of his eyes and softly said, “It can all be over with, that.” He peered over his glasses at Anarchy. “Stay here with us.”
“I have a job, I can’t just dip out,” Anarchy protested. He hid his arm again. 
“Why not? Will they find you? We can protect you,” Sethfire said, rather fiercely, starting forward as though there really was some threat for him to defend against.
“I’m fine!” Anarchy took a swift step backwards only to immediately feel torn about it. “The boss doesn’t care enough for that—people disappear. If he gave that much of a fuck I wouldn’t be at the squat.”
“That is a bit crazy, t’be honest,” Kato said, lifting a hand. He was the only one who seemed at all casual. “Like, your pimp doesn’t give you a place to stay? That’s fucked up.”
“He’s tried,” Anarchy snarled. He hated the topic, always on the back foot; he put his fists to his temples. “Just leave it! Why am I even talking to you about it?!”
His rescuers exchanged glances. “Because we can help you,” Sethfire said, taking another step forward, an entreating sort of look on his face.
“Jesus, I know, but why?! You saved my life, thanks, fuck, but what’s wrong with you? What's the angle?” Anarchy asked. He lowered his hands to guard his chest and felt at odds with himself about it; incredibly conflicted with every exchange; more so when Sethfire drew back and a shadow flickered across his face.  
“There is no angle,” he murmured. “Just consider it.”
“Yeah, calm down, Emperor Trajan, you’re freaking him out,” Kato said to Sethfire, who conceded with a nod and offered Anarchy a defusing gesture and a blink.
“We can…return to the matter later, if you’ll allow it,” he said, then apologized for coming across ‘domineering’ and retreated to the kitchen to resume cooking; leaving Anarchy somewhat startled at having his space so readily respected, even if it felt like Sethfire and Kato were maybe speaking a different language than he was. 
“It’s okay…” he said, lowering his hands, and his wariness was already failing on him when Athena caught his eye again.
“I know you’re probably, like, used to people…trying to get one over on you,” she said, her eyes wide, imploring. “But I swear, we’re not like that. Just stay for tonight, and think about it, please—you can’t really want to go…do all that stuff. It’s all up to you in the end; it’s not like we’re trying to trap you! It's just that Kato’s right…we do know vices. Sometimes you…need a hand.”

Anarchy slowly approached the breakfast bar again. Okay, he’d think about it, he told her. He couldn’t help it. She was too trustworthy. Kato was a loudmouth, but apparently now eager to bond, for whatever reason, and Sethfire was—something. Protective, too protective, too fraternal, it wound up painful and made his dog-tags feel heavier. But Athena was a beacon. He didn’t want her to be and he knew he was projecting, but she also just was. She was, and he couldn’t quite keep his guard up. 
“Vices,” he echoed, gingerly reassuming his seat beside her at the counter. 
“Yeah, we know ‘em. Kato also struggles with not railroading other people in a conversation and with not sharing other people’s goddamn business, but…” 
“Hey, that became my business too when my only fucking friend in the world started dying in front of me,” Kato objected. “Didn’t realize it was a secret, anyway. And everything else has been in plain sight, so.”
“Oh, no, you’re right, definitely equal dibs on the business there,” Athena quipped, rolling her eyes. She glanced back to Anarchy, shook her head, and smiled. “I don’t really mind. You’d learn about it eventually. Pasts don’t tend to stay buried, I don’t think. Or, well, most don’t.” Her eyes flickered over to her brother for a split second as a shadow crossed her face, and Anarchy knew instinctively it wasn’t something he was supposed to have noticed. 
“Do you have any food allergies, Anarchy?” Sethfire asked suddenly, his voice again the quiet, measured one Anarchy had determined to be his ‘usual’, but still…it seemed maybe Athena’s words had registered to him and set him just slightly on edge. 
Not my business, Anarchy decided, and shook his head. 
“Nah…I can eat anything. Don’t worry.” 

Sethfire nodded and returned to cooking, whatever tension Anarchy thought he’d noticed disappearing so swiftly that he supposed he could have imagined it. Or maybe he’d misjudged its direction—seventeen really had been a rough age for Sethfire: In order to chop the onion he’d pulled out, he  needed to first put on some sort of black wrist brace and clip the kitchen knife into it, using the downward pressure from where the knife affixed to his sideways palm to cut with rather than gripping the handle with his fingers—the first two of which he pressed against the hard inner front of the brace, while the others curled, emptily and rather claw like, out past the front strap. 
Vices…

Sethfire tipped the diced onion into the pan, and the smell of food drew Anarchy’s attention back to what Kato had said about Athena. He’d heard of eating disorders a little, out on the streets. Not much about them, though, only enough to know that they tended to make you look like an addict and that one of Mr. Doe’s girls had died in a hotel room at some point because her guts burst open from it or something. Or that was the rumor. Athena didn’t look the part of someone with eating issues, though; she was strong, lean but muscular; healthy. He was incapable of being discreet in his silent assessment, and she raised her eyebrows and smirked at him. 
“Stare any harder and you’ll strain your eyes, dude.”
“Sorry,” he said, “I just—you look healthy, like—you had an eating disorder?”
“Yeah. Bit of a weird one, but yeah. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow or sometime,” Athena responded, tilting her head slightly, just barely stressing the last three words. 
Anarchy heard the implied ‘if you stay’ and smiled a sigh. “Alright,” he said, a blanket agreement not just to listen—but, yes—to stay. For now.
Athena’s eyes lit up and she beamed at him; that same Chey-like smile that had made his heart skip a beat back at the hospital, and he dug his nails into his palms because God, he didn’t want to end up disappointing her, and he didn’t know how to avoid it.

The night was a stream of further too-good-to-be-true unreality; Athena nudged Anarchy to take seconds when dinner was served and both she and Kato seemed to be wellsprings of wry humor that made him laugh so hard that he could almost totally ignore the itch at the back of his mind. They shared funny anecdotes about their lives—none of which made any of their parents sound like particularly enjoyable people—and bickered playfully over their varyingly disparate tastes in movies, because Kato apparently had a penchant for “blood, bodies, and boring shit,” while Athena preferred to “actually enjoy things.” Kato objected to the assessment, naturally, and Anarchy was able to contribute somewhat, even despite not having watched all that many films released more recently than ‘08. It tugged at him how excited Athena seemed to be at the chance to “catch him up,” but he just smiled and nodded and tried not to think too hard about it, instead siding with her that his enjoyment of the movie 300 had not, in fact, been dampened by the fact that it—in Kato’s words—“fuckin’ massacred the hoplite phalanx.” As promised, none of them pressed for further details about his past or his work, though there was an implied yet, and after dinner Sethfire smiled like a brother with his gentle, concerned eyes and showed Anarchy how to unfold the sofa bed and got him sheets and probably more blankets than entirely necessary. Kato offered Anarchy a cigarette and pulled him out onto the balcony, laughing when Anarchy coughed on the smoke.
“I’m glad you made it,” Kato said as they burned their way to the filters of their cigarettes, drawing closer to the beckon of bed and sleep, “Would’ve been a pretty shit night for us if you’d died.”
“Oh, yeah,” Anarchy replied, rolling his eyes, “I can’t imagine how bad that would’ve sucked for you.” 

Kato had laughed, then, and Anarchy had smiled and once they’d all bid one another goodnight and Anarchy found himself alone, he realized he was well and truly fucked. He barely knew them; knew only what Athena had been willing to ramble about and what Kato had shared on impulse. Three hours wasn't a timespan to establish trust in, of course not. And yet he had a pulse and a full stomach and a warm bed and as he fell asleep, he felt—for the first time in a long time—some semblance of safe.

📅 December 9, 2011

When Anarchy woke up, he felt immediately that he’d made a mistake in even staying the night. He was nauseous and shaky and anxious; the clock on the wall put him at 10:32 in the morning, just about fifteen hours since he’d last shot up, and he felt like shit. He groaned as he sat up from the sofa-bed, his muscles aching and joining the bruising from CPR in making consciousness outright painful. As he swung his legs off the bed and tried to stand, his stomach cramped painfully and he couldn’t bite back a low whimper.
“Christ, dude, you alright?”

Anarchy looked up at the sound of Kato’s voice; he hadn’t noticed that anyone was in the kitchen, preoccupied by pain and craving, but Kato was sitting at the counter holding a mug of coffee, and now tilted his head with either concern or scrutiny. Maybe both. Anarchy swiftly rearranged his expression into an impassive one and straightened his back.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Slept weird.” He knew his tone still came out strained, but he ignored it and pulled his hoodie into his lap to count his cash. He’d slept with the jacket rolled up under his head and he knew no-one here needed his money, but it was a habit, just like sleeping with his phone still in his pocket. He’d need to buy a bag today, anyway, maybe a couple, even before the job, and he wanted to make sure he wasn’t cutting into what he’d saved for Chey. 
But how would Chey find him here? If he came back…
Maybe this was a good place to be, though. He could just ask around at the squat every so often, and if Chey returned, they could help him here. 
But he wasn’t actually staying long-term, he reminded himself. He had that job tonight, and these folks wouldn’t want smack anywhere near their place.
Anarchy frowned. Maybe he ought to dip out sooner rather than later; it was messing with his head, being here. He was thinking up stupid shit.

“We’re not gonna swipe your cash, man.”
Anarchy looked up: Kato had ventured over to join him and sat down on the coffee table. He jerked his chin towards the money in Anarchy’s hands.
“How much you even got there? Looks like a lot. Why not…I dunno, get a better jacket? Or food, or something? You look like a P.O.W.”
Anarchy stuffed the roll of bills back in his pocket. “I’m saving most of it,” he said. 
Kato’s lips twitched. “Alright. Just don’t tell me it’s for school supplies,” he said cryptically. “You want coffee? You look like shit.” 
“Thanks. Word of advice, if you’re ever out on the streets? Stick to pickpocketing. You’re not charming enough to run a con,” Anarchy said. Kato laughed as he stood up to return to the kitchen.
“Thank you, O Streetwise One. Creamer, sugar, black?”
Anarchy shrugged: His stomach already burning, nothing sounded great, and his experiences with coffee previously had largely been 99-cent cups of shit to tip lukewarm plastic thimbles of prepackaged half & half into. Maybe the caffeine would help with his budding headache, though. “Cream, I guess.” 

He got up and forced himself to walk normally over to the breakfast bar, even though everything hurt. He felt like one of the alley cats that would get hit by a car or something and walk right through the squat, hissing and hiding a limp so that no one would find out it was injured until it curled up somewhere out of sight and died. He wiped his nose, which was starting to run, and bounced his leg. 
“Where are the others?” Anarchy asked Kato. 
“Sick of me already? That's fine, it’s normal,” Kato drawled, tossing his hair over his shoulder and flashing Anarchy a grin. “Seth’s here. He took off work ‘cause of his back, but he’s still gotta do some of his stuff by phone, so he’s in his room and we can’t be too loud.” He unceremoniously set a mug of coffee in front of Anarchy.
“I’m not making any noise,” Anarchy said, blowing the steam off the coffee and taking a small sip. “What’s with his back?”
“You’re welcome,” Kato said. He climbed up on the counter and swung his legs over to Anarchy’s side, then dropped into the adjacent stool. He was kind of insufferable. “...He’s got scoliosis and shitty joints and he carried your dumb ass to the hospital last night,” he explained, raising his eyebrows.
As if on cue, Anarchy heard a door in the hall open, and Sethfire walked in to join them in the main room—or…limped in, more. He had some medical-looking brace around his torso and used a crutch or cane of some kind with support for both his forearm and palm.
“Oh, it’s not so bad as it looks,” he said, giving Anarchy and his undoubtedly shocked expression a small smile. “I just overextended myself; I knew what would come of it. How are you feeling, yourself?”
“I’m sorry,” Anarchy said. He guiltily swallowed and frowned, struggling to negotiate with the fact that Sethfire had been willing to suffer so much for him.
Sethfire shook his head. “Again, I knew what I was doing. No apologies, please.” He tilted his head. “I can’t imagine you’re feeling at your best, either.”

Anarchy wiped his nose again and chewed his cheek. “I’m tryin’ not to think about it,” he said. “But, uh, yeah, not awesome. I was thinking I should probably get going soon.”
“Why?” Kato asked. It sounded like a challenge. 
Sethfire looked a bit sadder behind the eyes. “I would prefer we discussed it,” he said.
Anarchy rubbed his temple. His head really was starting to ache. The coffee wasn’t doing shit. “I don’t think we’ve got anything to discuss. I need a dose, y’all don’t want dope in your place, you know…it is what it is.” He punctuated his sentence by standing up and crossing back to the couch in search of his shoes and socks, ignoring the tug of his heart.
Kato jumped down from his own seat and darted over; stepping in front of Anarchy and pointedly kicking one of his sneakers under the couch.
“What’s your problem?” Anarchy grumbled, crouching down on his sore legs to reach for the shoe.
“Just not super psyched about straight up letting you die after we went to all that trouble of saving you,” Kato replied. When Anarchy looked back up, Kato was holding his other shoe hostage, having grabbed it while Anarchy was rooting around under the sofa. Anarchy scowled.
“I’m not gonna die,” he said, slowly standing up again. “I won’t fuck up again, okay? Just—” his tone had pitched upward slightly, into something strained, so he shook his head and tried to swallow the bargaining note that had crept into his voice. “...Just drop it. I’m grateful, ya know, thanks for everything, y’all are cool, but I do smack and it’s not your shit and I don’t want y’all involved in it either. I said I had to leave today, anyway, so.”
He swallowed and wiped his nose again, an irritating lump having formed in his throat, and nearly jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“It’s not about having illicit substances in the flat, Anarchy,” Sethfire said, having limped over to join them, “It’s about your safety. You are seventeen. I am not letting you do this to yourself. Definitely not on impulse like this. Stay and talk, please.”
“You can’t keep me here,” Anarchy said, and though he tried to summon up the biting defiance he’d felt towards the doctor at the hospital, he couldn’t seem to manage it. He couldn’t parse his emotions; the dopesick desperation fought with the beginnings of trust, with his sense of loyalty, and all he really felt was sick. 
Sethfire seemed to be able to read the lack of conviction in his voice and his gaze softened. “I think we could if necessary, but it would be easier if you just agreed to stay,” he said quietly. “I’ll get you something to drink, alright? What do you want? Tea? Water?”
“I made him coffee,” Kato said, circling around the coffee table with Anarchy’s shoe. “Can I have the key to the closet? I’ll stash this in there, just in case.”
Sethfire made an unreadable expression. “...No, Julian. We’re not trying to force his hand. Clever, though.”
“What, stealing my shit? Yeah, genius.” Anarchy curled his lip. 
Kato laughed. “That’s not what he meant.” He tossed Anarchy’s shoe up on top of the kitchen’s overhead cabinets and Anarchy sat down on the couch with a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Fine. Let’s talk. Say what you gotta say, then I’m heading out.”

“Why must you?” Sethfire asked, also taking a seat. “You’re a kind, genuine young man underneath all this; we saw as much last night. We can give you a place, here, to recover. To escape. Regain your footing, actually own your life. What can we do to help you? You can’t want to remain where you’re at.”
Anarchy kept his head in his hands. His foot tapped out an agitated beat on the floor. He didn’t know what he wanted.
“I want that tea,” he said, finally, dragging his hands from his face.
“Of course. Stay put, please,” Sethfire replied gently, straightening up and heading for the kitchen.
“Don't worry, Seth,” Kato drawled from where he leaned against the back of the adjacent accent chair before Anarchy could reply, himself, “If he bolts for the door, I'll tackle him.” 
“You’re putting in a stupid amount of effort to ‘help’ someone you barely know,” Anarchy said to Sethfire’s back, pretending the words and half-hearted attempt at a defiant tone didn't taste like bitter ash on his tongue. 
“Yeah, no, you’re right, we are!” Kato snapped, quite nearly clipping the end of Anarchy’s sentence short with how quickly he responded. “Like it or not, asshole, we give a shit about you! You’re gonna fuck out of here without even giving it a shot?”

Anarchy tried to glare at Kato but just ended up staring at him; he looked pissed but genuine, something in his eyes saying that he’d truly be hurt if Anarchy left now.
“What do I do, then?” Anarchy asked sharply, “What do I do if I stay? What the fuck do I have without smack? I barely even know you and you’re asking me to ditch the only fucking thing that helps!” 
Kato’s brow stayed furrowed, but he seemed more curious than bitter: He tilted his head and walked over to sit on the corner of the sofa bed. A moment passed where he and Anarchy just looked at one another.
“...Helps with what?” Kato asked.
Anarchy dropped eye contact and half-consciously lifted his hand to Hunter’s dog-tags, searching for the comfort they offered. It didn’t go unnoticed.
“...Whose dog-tags are those?” Kato asked. His tone wasn’t one that could be mistaken for gentle, but it was different, somehow: There was softness or concern behind it; it had lost the quality of forced hostility. It sounded more like what might be his ‘real’ voice and the breakdown of that barrier fed into the foundation of trust that Anarchy had built using his heartbeat and the ache of his ribs, and he answered:
“My brother’s.”

Kato continued to look at him expectantly and Anarchy knew that Sethfire was listening from the sink, and it had been a year since he’d had anyone care enough for him to say his brother’s name. He couldn’t not.
“His name was Hunter. Hunter Michael Keystone. He died three years ago last May—IED. The area should’ve been safe. He was only eighteen.” Anarchy felt his throat closing with grief by the time he finished his sentence.
“...You were close, huh?” Kato asked, and for once he sounded truly gentle. “That’s his gravestone. Your tattoo.”
Anarchy nodded jerkily, not trusting his voice, but then couldn’t bear the idea of not saying anything out loud. “I miss him,” he whispered, “I never stop missing him.”
His stomach clenched painfully and at first he thought it was a wave of grief hitting him—but then he felt the sour burn of bile at the bottom of his throat, deep in his chest, and he realized that no, actually, he was about to reach the sick part of being dopesick.

“I’m gonna fuckin’ puke,” he said, ignoring Kato’s confused expression and pushing through the aching in his muscles in order to stand. If making it to the bathroom hurt, though, throwing up was worse. Emptying the contents of his stomach into the toilet wasn’t just unpleasant, it was painful. His body still ached with the bruising from CPR, and the strain of vomiting did nothing to help. His throat ended up raw and burning and his stomach kept hurting anyway; all together he felt overwhelmingly weak—and frustrated by his weakness. He rested his forehead on the toilet bowl and felt sorry for himself.
“Gross, dude,” Kato said from the bathroom doorway—but despite his words, his tone and eyes were sympathetic. “Is that normal?”
Anarchy lifted his head and grimaced at him. “Puking? Yeah. Dopesick. Fuckin’ please, just let me go get a bag or two—”
“Sorry,” Kato said, “Can’t.” He offered his hand to Anarchy, looking apologetic. “You can crash in my bed across the hall though. Since it’s closer to the bathroom.”

Anarchy wanted to be more pissed off than he was; wanted to be defiant and bitter and biting. Instead he sighed and accepted Kato’s outstretched hand. Standing hurt. Breathing hurt. Walking hurt. Flushing the toilet and rinsing his mouth felt shameful. But Kato acted like it was just a fairly average Friday, and Anarchy felt grateful for that. It wasn’t until they crossed the hall into the bedroom that Anarchy realized he’d—for whatever reason—just asked permission to leave. Something was failing on him, too, because he’d accepted its refusal, as well.
It picked at the back of his brain as they sat down together on Kato’s bed, and Anarchy opened his mouth to say something, anything that might make up for the lapse.
“You know you can’t keep me here forever,” he said. It failed to sound as forceful as he’d wanted it to, but Kato conceded a shrug and a dip of the chin anyway.
“Yeah. I mean, there’s the window,” he said, gesturing towards it, his tone ambivalent. When Anarchy turned to look, he noticed the bed across the room—Athena’s—was empty.
“Where’s Athena?” he asked Kato, who raised an eyebrow.
“She’s at school. Winter break doesn’t start for another couple weeks.”
Anarchy blinked, feeling a bit dumb about having forgotten the fact that normal kids his age did things like go to school. “Oh. Yeah, I think she mentioned school on the way back here last night. You graduated already, or...?”
“What?” Kato snorted; “No. Athena and I were in the same grade, I just dropped out. If I hadn’t, I still wouldn’t be graduating for another year and a half.”
“A year and a half? No way you’re eighteen, then—” Anarchy started, cut short by Kato’s smirk.
“Piercings and the face tattoo fool you? Nah. Sixteen. My fake ID says otherwise, but...nope.”

“You know, I really wish you didn’t have that,” Sethfire said, appearing in the bedroom doorway, steaming mug in hand, “I don’t want to overstep any boundaries and try confiscating it, but I am alarmed by the amount of cigarettes you purchase. Anyway. Tea.” He punctuated his sentence by walking over and offering Anarchy the mug, with a soft, “I am so sorry about your brother.”
“Thanks,” Anarchy replied quietly; accepting the tea with a small, apologetic nod. “I’m sorry for snapping at you before.”
“...I don’t blame you, Anarchy,” Sethfire replied, tilting his head, “I’m asking you to go through quite possibly the most difficult of drug withdrawals. You’re allowed a harsh tone.” He studied Anarchy for a quiet moment, his eyes uncomfortably analytical. 
“...Last night,” he finally said, “you mentioned that you had been homeless since age fourteen, and indicated that your birthday was in May. Three years ago last May you would have turned fourteen.” He hesitated. “...Am I allowed to ask about the correlation between your current situation and your brother’s death?”
“The…what?”
“How the two things are related.”
Anarchy blinked, half-hesitant and somewhat daunted by both Sethfire’s memory and his way of speaking. “I mean...yeah, you can ask,” he said, haltingly, “but how did you even remember—? Like, I casually mention that I’m turning eighteen in May and you just...commit that to memory?”
“Like I said last night,” Kato interjected, “he’s a genius, dude. He just remembers stuff and...puts it together. Fuck, I can barely remember middle school. But man, you know that expression for something being, like, stupid easy to understand? ‘Put two and two together’? For Seth it’s like...2,586 and 719.”
Sethfire’s quiet, “3,305,” came without a pause; Kato narrowed his eyes and opened the calculator on his phone with a whispered “What the fuck” that made Sethfire’s eyes briefly glimmer with amusement. He quickly refocused his attention on Anarchy, though, who suddenly remembered, oh, right. He’d been asked a question. He shifted uncomfortably and held the mug of tea closer to his chest, hoping to draw strength or comfort from its warmth. He’d been avoiding talking about himself as best he could, but now they knew about Hunter, and more than that, had cared. He wore the departing gift from his father on his face, anyway. What ammunition would the story give them that they didn’t already have?
“...It’s a lot,” he said finally, “And I feel like trash. I can’t talk about everything; it’s too much, it would take too long. But I guess both the long and short of my whole life is that my dad’s a piece of shit.”
“Shocker,” Kato muttered under his breath, enough bitterness in his tone to make Anarchy feel that he’d be understood. He offered him a tiny nod, then drew a deep breath and tried to organize his thoughts.

“...My dad hit me,” he said finally, “And my brother. And my mom. Hunter was almost five years older than me and he sorta…tried to protect me. And mom. It wasn’t always possible.” Anarchy paused, feeling sick, to take a sip of tea. It wasn’t heroin and couldn’t numb him to his history, but it was herbal and warm and soothing all the same, and with its help, he pulled himself away from his reluctance. 
“Me and Hunter got pulled out of public school early on, ya know? ‘Cause teachers might notice black eyes or split lips or the fact that our shirts were sticking to our backs with dried blood. Dad was totally fine hitting us with the buckle side of the belt, so.” 
Sethfire’s eyes darkened as he sat down on the edge of Kato’s nightstand to listen. “You should never have had to bear that,” he said. “Neither you nor your brother.”
 Anarchy shook his head dispiritedly. “Sure. But no one was coming to save us. We got ‘homeschooled’ by our mom. She was a fuckin’ mail-order bride from South Korea, though, I mean...She could do, like, normal math, and could speak English—but she wasn’t a teacher,” he continued. “But…as soon as he was old enough, Hunter wanted to get me and her out of that house. Somehow. And the military doesn’t care if you’ve got a diploma, really. So...he felt like it was his best shot.” Anarchy felt his throat tightening with grief again and held the hot mug of tea against his brother’s dog-tags, as if that transference of warmth would create a sense of safety or connection. It didn’t, and he choked back the urge to cry. 
“He got blown up. Because some motherfucker couldn’t sweep an area properly, I guess. Shit all went to hell at home. A couple months after we buried him, dad was drunk off his ass and pissed as fuck and yelled at me to go get the belt, and I just...I could barely function, you know, after losing Hunter, so it took a second or two before the words registered? And it was...a second or two too long.” 
Anarchy looked up and gestured to the scar that carved across the left side of his face. “I’m sure you noticed my face is fucked up. Dad smashed his bottle on the countertop and slashed me with it,” Anarchy said, watching Sethfire’s expression as it went from concerned empathy to something harder; something shocked and protective. His brother already at the forefront of his mind, Anarchy couldn’t help but catch a glimpse of his ghost in Sethfire’s eyes and Anarchy, taken aback, cast his gaze back down to his mug of tea. 
“That’s fucked,” Kato breathed. Anarchy glanced up at him instead, but even Kato looked troubled. He furrowed his brow and blinked at Anarchy with unmistakable sympathy. “I mean…My expectations are low and that’s fucked,” he repeated.

“Yeah, I guess…it was a turning point for me,” Anarchy said. “I was scared out of my mind and didn’t have anything left to lose, then. With Hunter gone. My mom had never stepped in and I knew she never would. So...I grabbed the counter stool my dad had stood up from and swung it into his ribs as hard as I could. He was drunk enough to have to catch himself on the counter, so I took the chance. Bolted.” Anarchy acknowledged Kato’s “shit, man,” with a minute shrug and turned his mug of tea counter-clockwise in his palms, mulling over where to go from there, how to tell his story.
“...Mom had talked about what she’d expected America to be like, before,” he finally said. “About seeing the ball drop in Times Square on TV. Sorta made New York City sound like paradise. It didn’t hurt that it was across the country, ya know? So I set my mind and…hopped freight all the way here from Fresno. Turns out paradise is expensive, overcrowded, and full of heroin.” Anarchy finished his story with a bitter taste in his mouth that came out in his tone. Beneath that, guilt churned in his stomach over his decision not to mention Chey—Chey, who he might never have even made it to New York City without—but Sethfire was smart, a genius, and if Anarchy was certain of anything, it was that he didn’t want to hear again that in all likelihood his best friend was dead, not off the lips of someone he’d believe it from. 
“You should never have had to be as strong as you’ve been,” Sethfire said. He shook his head slowly, looking like he was trying to find the right thing to say; the right way to say it. “The horror you’ve lived…That your brother lived. I am so sorry.”
“For real. That’s fuckin’ beyond…anything; it’s abysmal,” Kato added, his tone equal parts angry and empathetic; “And, like…I can’t get it completely, obviously, who the hell could? But again—you fit in, man. My dad hated my guts too.”
Sethfire inclined his head at the end of Kato’s sentence, but directed his words to Anarchy: “...You’ll have noticed,” he said, carefully, “That Athena and I are not living with our parents. That Julian—Kato—is not living with his. It’s true, none of us can fully understand the degree of your situation—but it’s also true that poor parental relationships are a theme we all have in common. Unfortunately.” He paused for a moment, his eyes gentle to match his tone: “You’ve been through so much. Too much. No one deserves that kind of suffering; you should never have had to endure it all. But you’re not alone, here, Anarchy.”

Anarchy’s curiosity tugged at him somewhere in the back of his mind, and he felt the impulse to ask his rescuers their stories—but it paled in comparison to the lurch of his stomach, the aches and pains, the frustrated craving he felt inside, half-disguised as saliva filling his mouth and an impulse to grind his teeth. Speaking about his past while being forced to feel it in the present—without dope to ease the pain—left Anarchy exhausted and irritable, so he pushed away his questions with a shrug.
“Thanks. Yeah. I don’t know, I feel like shit,” he said. “So if that’s it, then maybe—”
“You don’t speak with any love in your voice about the drugs,” Sethfire gently interrupted, amputating the “...I’ll head out,” from the end of Anarchy’s sentence. “‘Expensive, overcrowded, and full of heroin.’ All in the negative, no? So why return to it?”
“I don’t know. Fuck. It helps, I need it,” Anarchy said, annoyed that he couldn’t keep his voice from sounding strained.
“But you do not want it.”
“I don’t know what I want,” Anarchy replied. His head throbbed; the tea’s warmth had ceased to comfort and he was beginning to sweat. 
“I understand,” Sethfire offered gently. “I must phone another client, but it will only be an hour. Take some time to think about it, please. We’ll talk again afterwards.” He gave Anarchy a patient blink. “Thank you for sharing so much; I know it can’t have been easy. Get some rest. I’ll still just be in the other room if either of you urgently need me.” He inclined his head to Anarchy in unspoken but obvious sympathy, then left; shutting the door quietly behind him. Kato, though, didn’t leave. Instead he just offered Anarchy a nod and moved across the room, threw himself onto Athena’s bed in an untroubled fashion, and started scrolling through his phone. 
“Don’t try and make a run for it,” he said, in the same casual tone someone would use for discussing the weather.
“Weird fucking kidnapping y’all are doing here,” Anarchy replied reproachfully.
“Yeah, low on duct tape, ya know, shit gets used up fast; traps fibers. Better to at least attempt the psychological warfare first,” Kato drawled.

Anarchy scowled. He wasn’t bound, true. Not physically. But something was keeping him stuck. He lay down on Kato’s bed and took in the room. Athena had a Linkin Park poster over her bed; a couple polaroids and printed photos taped next to it of herself and Kato, and one of her and Seth. She kept tripping Anarchy up, and she wasn’t even there. There was just…something reprehensible to him about the idea of not saying goodbye to her. Maybe because she’d kept being like Chey, and they’d always said goodbye. And they’d always promised to come back… 
Anarchy wondered if he could: Leave and come back—but the concept of staggering back up to their door—high, dirtied, with them knowing it—felt equally abhorrent as going ghost. If he left, there was no way he could return. He wasn’t allowed to have their numbers in his phone; he wasn't allowed to call anyone without the Boss okaying it. If he left, he would never speak with any of them again. Somehow that nearly made him as sick to his stomach as the lack of dope. 

Anarchy frowned and stared at the ceiling, trying to think about what he wanted, like Sethfire had said to do. He wanted to shoot up. He wanted Athena to come home, so that he could tell her goodbye and disappear from her life with a fraction less guilt. He wanted to bolt now and disappear from her life without saying goodbye so that he wouldn’t have to deal with the expression she’d make when he said he was leaving. He wanted to stay. He couldn’t; he had to head to Blanca tonight. He didn’t want it, but he wanted the bags. Needed the bags—his stomach was turning; his legs ached despite laying flat on a mattress. He wanted to think about anything else.

He turned his head again and studied Kato while he scrolled unconcernedly through his iPhone. He’d never said what his situation really was. He was Athena’s friend; just moved in recently; no longer at his parent’s home. His dad hated his guts. He had two different names. After a couple minutes, Anarchy’s curiosity got the better of him, despite his nausea and his aching limbs.
“...Why are you staying here?” he asked.
Kato looked up from his phone and raised his eyebrows. “...To make sure you don’t climb out down the fire escape,” he replied dryly. 
“No, I meant—shit, that’s a good idea, actually, but—no. I meant...Why are you living here? Instead of with your parents. Like Sethfire was talking about.”
“...Look, dude,” Kato sighed, clicking his phone screen off, his posture seeming to tense; “You’re sick and the story’s kind of fucked. Can it wait?”
“No, fuckin’ tell me!” Anarchy responded, his physical discomfort making him easily frustrated, “I’ve shared so much shit with you already. I’m still here for God knows what reason! The least you can do is answer one question about yourself—I’m not even asking what’s up with your name, even though there’s clearly some shit there, too!”
Kato rolled his eyes and sat up, throwing his phone to the side. “For you, my name’s Kato. Maybe you’re ‘Anthony’ to someone out there; not to me, though. And I’m not Julian or anything else to you.”
“Not what I was actually asking about.” 
Kato frowned and chewed on his lip for a moment. “Fine, whatever,” he said, the edge to his voice sharpened by reluctance and failing to pass for anger. He gave a small, exasperated-sounding sigh, and looked at Anarchy directly, his gaze piercing. 
“There’s no way to make it simple, but I’ll do my best: My parents didn’t love me but they didn’t hit me. The kids at school hit me. You know black eyes, split lips, a kick or six to the ribs? Yeah, well, me too. My folks didn’t give a shit. My mom’s functionally useless and I was only ever my grades to my dad and my grades weren’t good. I was getting the shit kicked outta me on the fuckin’ reg and dropping out didn’t feel like an option because my dad would’ve disowned my sorry ass and chucked me out on the streets for being a failure.” Kato spoke about his past with his teeth bared, every word almost snarled, but he hesitated and looked away for a moment after his sentence ended. He took a deep breath. 
“...I was gonna shoot up my school, okay?” he said as he looked back at Anarchy, defiance in his eyes but markedly less venom in his voice, “I know I’m a piece of shit already, so spare me the lecture. I didn’t feel like I had a choice, alright, they all fucking forced my hand. I was cornered, basically. Call it an excuse, but...I don’t really know if I need one. Some of the fucking cunts in that shithole would’ve had it coming.” Kato glanced away again but continued, “I didn’t do it, clearly. Or I didn’t manage to. I told Athena ‘don’t come in tomorrow’ one day and she figured out what was up. Seth...talked me down. Offered me a place to stay so that I could drop out. Saved a lot of lives. Including mine.”

Anarchy felt at a loss for words for a few moments; all he managed to do was stare. It felt like too much to take in immediately, and he found himself studying Kato: Trying to imagine him as a killer. It was easy in some ways, but almost impossible in others. The cold fire in his eyes and sharp, snarled tone he used when talking about his parents and those ‘fucking cunts’ could belong to a murderer, sure. But there was a softness that had taken hold of his voice and posture with the words “including mine”, and his half-bowed head was at direct odds with the concept of him being a cold-hearted killer. That aside, there was the gentle tone he’d used when asking about Hunter, and the fact that Anarchy was—at that very moment—wearing a shirt that Kato had loaned him. It all seemed confusing, contradictory.

“...You’d really have done it?” Anarchy asked, still incredulous, expecting the answer to have some degree of uncertainty to it, to clear up the apparent inconsistency of character; an ‘I don’t know’ or a ‘Maybe not’. Kato, though, looked up at Anarchy with raised eyebrows and a wavering half-smile that seemed part pity and part pride. 
“Dude, when I say that Seth talked me down? I mean in the school. With guns in my backpack,” he said. “I didn’t just ‘come close.’ I was there.” He shook his head and looked away, out the window. “Does it freak you out?”
Anarchy went quiet again, turning things over in his head and trying to distract himself from his churning stomach. “...I think it should more than it does,” he said finally, “But like...I’ve known street kids, right? Am one. Most of us carry knives, I’ve known people who have used them. Guns too. Maybe because they had to, maybe because they didn’t, maybe because they just wanted to watch someone bleed out and brag about it afterwards. My wrists are scarred to hell because of…other stuff, but I’ve known people whose wrists are fucked up because they wouldn’t stop trying to wrestle themselves away from the cops arresting them after they got a bit stab-happy while mugging someone.” Anarchy paused, consistently wrong-footed by the messy, too-much-too-fast way he seemed to be bonding with his rescuers—Kato in particular, with his apparent tendency to over-share—but finally Anarchy shrugged off his hesitation: 
“You saved my life, and I wouldn’t trust anyone back at the squat to do that. Or to notice if I died. So...I’m going off of that. Not whatever you almost did in your past. I think you’re probably a decent guy. Just…maybe, yeah, you got cornered, like you said. And I get what you meant about your name, too.”
Kato looked at Anarchy again, his expression unreadable, but maybe impressed, and gave him a nod; an unspoken ‘thanks’. 

They could’ve fallen into a comfortable silence then, or talked more; bonded further and continued to share their pasts with one another far sooner than maybe they should. But withdrawal didn’t operate around building friendships and even just talking about life on the streets left Anarchy feeling shaky with craving—and far too attuned to his nausea, to the aching in his limbs. He dragged a hand down his face and muttered a curse, suddenly overwhelmed.
“You good?” Kato asked, quirking a concerned eyebrow. Anarchy just shook his head and thrust out his hands in some sharp, amorphous gesture.
“It’s impossible,” he said, “I can’t even talk about what it’s like living on the streets because I just remember, ‘oh hey—there’s dope out there!’ Like even when I’m saying ‘oh yeah the people at the squat are fucked up,’ I can’t care about that because fuck it, there’s heroin.” He swallowed hard and pressed his hands against his eyes, resisting the impulse to whine or cry or bolt.

The impulse to vomit again followed, though, and it was not to be suppressed; Anarchy was glad to have been just across the hall from the toilet this time. His stomach was empty already and retching up pure bile only served to make him feel weak and humiliated; he avoided Kato’s eyes when he returned to the bedroom and threw himself, face down, onto the mattress. The shaking and sweating that started shortly afterwards only served to exacerbate his sick feeling of shame and he resolutely refused to complain.
He rolled over and stared at the window. He hadn’t agreed not to leave, but the others had obviously read his relative reluctance to try and were determined to make it difficult for him. He didn't know what would happen if he actually made a real attempt. He didn’t honestly think Kato would tackle him; Sethfire didn’t seem to be in any condition to grapple, either. He figured the reality was that if he actually made to walk out the door? He most likely could. 
He looked at Kato. “You’d let me leave. If I really fought you all on it,” he said. 
Kato looked up and glanced at the window, then back to Anarchy. “I wouldn’t underestimate Seth if I were you, he might fight back,” Kato replied, something troubled flickering across his face. He gave Anarchy a long look. “Are you gonna? Just leave?”
Anarchy rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, a small lump forming in his throat against his will again. “Might have to.”
“Why? What's so good back out there? Cold dirt bed and a heart attack? Dope’s that fuckin’ dope?”

Anarchy struggled internally with the questions: Nothing was good out there. Chey was gone, had been gone, for a year. Heroin…he didn’t know. He needed it, needed it like an infant needed to be swaddled. It wasn’t good. Chey had felt smack different, the way most of the other nodders at the squat had—loved it from the start; felt it as bliss incarnate. Anarchy felt it differently, had always felt it differently. It wasn’t heaven but it was impossible to stop, because the world was hell and had been hell and it made the world not hell. It was terrible and made him groggy and sometimes nauseous and life ceased to make as much sense; everything became a dreamstate—but it was the best thing, too, the best thing in the world, and he hated it for it. Other things in his life deserved that spot—Hunter; or meeting Chey…Hell, maybe even having his neck saved by this weird new trio whose apartment he was crashing at. And instead heroin perched at the top of all great things, wearing a false crown. It was a cocoon; a cradle. It was peace. Peace at the price of more hell, more hell he’d need it to make up for. He despised it. It was the only thing he loved. He clasped a hand over his eyes to hide them. 
“Dope sucks,” he told Kato. “If there’s anything you care about at all in life that you want to keep caring about? Never do it.”
“That mean you’re not leaving?” Kato asked. 
Anarchy dragged his hands from his face. “I don’t know. I have to. I have a job tonight.”
Kato stayed quiet for a couple beats, assessing him. “...It seems like you care about other things. You just gotta figure out how much. And how much you want to,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“...We’re not holding you at gunpoint,” Kato said quietly. “You could shove my sorry ass to the ground and get out the window before Seth could hobble in here and stop you. You don’t have to stay. But you don’t have to leave, either. You haven’t yet. Do you want to? Do you really want to go do that job?”
“No,” Anarchy said. He choked on the word and rolled over to hide his face in the pillow, willing himself not to cry. “I hate the jobs. I hate the johns. I hate the Boss, I do everything I can not to get as stuck in his shit as I could be! I need the bags, though.”
 “How much more stuck could you get? You’re not exactly runnin’ free right now, and it’s not because of me and Seth,” Kato said. Anarchy heard his footsteps on the floor; the mattress dipped. Kato had crossed the room to sit beside him. He wanted to tell him to go away. Instead, he turned over and sat up even though the motion made him feel seasick.
“I could let him house me,” Anarchy said. “But I don’t. He still sort of owns the squat, but it’s his recruiting grounds more than anything. And even though it’s meant to be his turf, other dealers sometimes swing ‘round to poach customers…They know some of ‘Doe’s kids’ will risk buying outside the loop. Boss takes a cut of my pay, but I still get cash right now. If I buy in on a room…that goes. The money turns into rent, food, bills and the rest; and all he gives me is dope. I’ve seen it happen to other kids. After that, there’s no way out. I can’t be that in his grip, I can’t fucking stomach it. What if he wanted me to recruit? I do it or I starve. Lose my steady dealers, lose most of my johns…It would be the end of everything. I can’t rely on him like that. I’d be a goner. This way is still something better.” 
“You’re still reliant, though,” Kato said. “On the drugs. On him for the drugs. Hell, you’re still starving, or it looks it! I get what you’re saying, but it ain’t freedom, ‘Key, just a longer chain. Break it. Break the chain.”
Anarchy bit his lip. It was the second time Kato had used his nickname; the one that Chey used most often. This time it wasn’t in a sardonic tone, it was in an encouraging one. 
“It’ll suck, but then you’re free from it,” Kato continued, ducking his head to meet Anarchy’s averted eyes. “People manage.” 
Anarchy wiped his nose. His eyes watered. His clammy body ached, and with how his intestines were twisting around, if he didn’t run for it? He was gonna have the runs for it. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and avoided Kato’s eyes. “Do they? I don’t know how.”

Sethfire, as if he possessed a sixth sense, walked in then, having brought Anarchy a glass of orange juice without any prompting. “How are you, Anarchy?” he asked, and Anarchy knew from the tone that what he was really being asked was if he’d made up his mind, and if he was going to stay.
Anarchy hesitated. He wanted to say no. He knew if he did that they’d make it hard for him again; fuck, they already were, with the fraternal expressions and the exchanging of stories. He avoided Sethfire’s eyes and sat up.
“I want my shoe back,” he said. 
Sethfire’s expression crumpled in his periphery, making Anarchy’s stomach lurch, but he still waved a tired hand and sent Kato to retrieve it.
“But—” Kato started.
“Please, Julian.”
Once Kato reluctantly vacated the room to go and scale the fridge, Sethfire reached out and grasped Anarchy’s shoulder, so familial a gesture it ached.
“I need you to think very seriously about this,” Sethfire urged. “I can help you here. I want to help you. I will do anything in my power to, whether you understand my motivations or not. But I cannot…enable you.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and screwed his eyes shut for a moment. “I must think of my sister, and Jul—Kato, and I cannot have…you coming and going. Using. If I could tell you I would welcome you back and shelter you however long it took for you to choose the path that will save you, then I would, Anarchy, but I cannot, that is not how it works, and I beg of you now to reconsider.”
“I’m not…I’m not leaving yet,” Anarchy whispered. He was preparing to, yes, but he couldn’t quite commit to it. He was just going to put the shoes beside the bed…in case. He knew he’d have to leave, have to leave tonight, to go to Blanca, to get dope, but it’s not yet. “I’ll…uh…I’m trying to stick it out,” he half-lied. “I’ll decide…this evening, I guess.”
Relief flooded Sethfire’s expression—and pride, too, he was proud, and it hit Anarchy in the chest like a blow. When was the last time someone had looked at him like that? Proud of him, like that? He might have crumbled under the weight if Kato hadn’t returned with his shoe, then, his expression overcast until Anarchy told him, “I’m not taking off, like…right now.” 
Kato perked up, his eyes relighting with purpose; his lopsided smile resurfacing. “Oh, good. More time to convince you not to make stupid fuckin’ decisions, then.”

“And in the meantime, you do need to rehydrate, okay, Anarchy? Please drink,” Sethfire said, again proffering the orange juice, which he’d set next to the half-drunk mug of tea on the nightstand.
It was the overwhelmingly brotherly nature of his tone that managed to get Anarchy to ignore his stomach and accept, and though the interaction made him feel rather child-like, there was some comfort to be drawn from being taken care of—and, obediently, he drank. Sethfire gave him a gentle touch on his shoulder before leaving to make another call, so familial a gesture that it must have been instinctive, and it made Anarchy want to cry—to beg like a child for Sethfire not to go, to stay and keep a hand on his back and let him have a brother again. 
He settled for returning to laying face down in the bed and focusing on the cool metal of Hunter’s dog-tags against his skin. Though silent, the tears came anyway. He pretended they didn’t. 

The hours snailed past, blending together like clouds in an overcast sky; edgeless and undefined. Though Sethfire had told him before to get some rest, it was restlessness that set in. Laying on his back while wringing his hands and shaking his leg failed to cure it, so eventually he took to pacing. He felt nervous and agitated; on edge but directionless.
Kato took pity on him and they moved out to the living room and tried to watch TV with the volume turned down low enough to not disturb Sethfire’s calls, but it couldn’t hold Anarchy’s attention any better than his stomach could anything at all. 
He definitely wasn’t in any mood for lunch, having just gotten out of the bathroom again and retreated back to the bedroom to lay facedown and wallow in self-pity, when Kato walked in with a sandwich, an orange, and an entire pitcher of water. 
“I read you’re supposed to drink, like, three liters of water a day during withdrawal,” Kato shared. “And vitamin C supplements and stuff, but we don’t got any. So…maybe more orange juice, too. I can just get you the carton if ya want.” 
“Why bother?” Anarchy groaned. “You know what would fix it faster than OJ? A fuckin’ bag.”
“Yeah. That’s not very heart healthy though,” Kato said, ignoring Anarchy’s tone. “Might as well drink up.”

In every conceivable way, it felt, Anarchy’s mind and body were trying to fail him. The mood swings set his teeth on edge and concentration was out of reach; no book or show or conversation could hold his attention and he couldn’t stand keeping still, but his back and legs ached in protest at every movement. His nose ran and his stomach cramped; everything ran right through him or came back up and his shirt was clinging to his clammy back with sweat by the time his pain and nausea forced him to abandon taking a smoke break with Kato in order to lay down again, where he buried his face in the pillow and craved dope so badly that his hands shook and his eyes teared up. He needed to get out; needed to be able to get out without having to look his rescuers in their faces and watch disappointment overtake them; without having to navigate all the tripwire of their generosity and good intentions.
He wished Kato would leave.

He got that wish when early afternoon arrived, but it didn’t supply him with the opportunity to escape. Anarchy raised his head when Sethfire pushed open the door to the bedroom, a book in hand, attentive eyes on Kato.
“It’s three,” Sethfire said, prompting and parental, “You should put on your shoes and head down to the station to meet Athena. I’ll stay here with Anarchy.” 
Kato nodded once and obediently started to pull on his boots while Sethfire crossed the room to sit—almost knowingly—directly beside the window that opened out onto the fire escape. Anarchy felt sick and vaguely bitter. Why couldn’t they just let him quietly slip out with his dignity still intact?
“Shift change for those on guard duty already, then?” he asked. He maybe wanted it to come off joking, but it felt too true and it left his mouth half-snapped and rather accusing.
“...Guess so,” Kato replied, casting a shrugged final glance over his shoulder as he left, “See you in a bit.”
Sethfire, too, failed to be offended by Anarchy’s words or their intonation; he offered up a gentle smile and apologetic eyes. “You’re not a prisoner, Anarchy,” he said softly, “More like…a patient, if anything. If it helps to think of it in that way. I am not trying to torture you. I only want to see you get better.”
“I know. Sorry,” Anarchy replied. It still came out rather clipped and tight. Frustrated with his own childishness and his indecision, he groaned and put his hands to his face. “I just don’t know what I’m still doing here. I fuckin’ get it, block the exits so I need to face the lecture first if I wanna dip. But I don’t know what you expect me to do here if I stay.”
Sethfire set his book down on Athena's nightstand and seemed to assess Anarchy. “...I have no grand expectations of you,” he responded. “I would like to see you escape your current circumstances. Get clean, and healthy…What would you wish to make of your life, if you were free of the drugs?”

Anarchy balked, unsure. He needed to think for a minute, and even afterward, was still unsure: He never planned for it. Everything had always been day-to-day before; week-to-week at best. Even with Chey, before the oxy and everything after, there had hardly ever been a plan: They took what they could get, and ran wild and loved it, generally—but there hadn’t been a plan for the future, not a real one. It was about eating tomorrow, or finding shelter today, and every dream was in Chey’s voice, and frequently both joking and fantastical. They’d stow away on a ship and see the entire world. They’d win the lottery and buy The Ritz. A mob boss in Chicago or something would take a liking to them after they delivered him a truckload of china white and would adopt them as his own and they’d become the benevolent leaders of some Robin-Hood-esque crime family. Somehow more realistic dreams were too…unrealistic, to even consider. It was easier to laugh at impossible ideas. 
The closest Anarchy’d gotten to envisioning an actual future had been while reading Hunter’s letters, and he’d been a child, then, imagining his older brother somehow putting it all together and swooping in and whisking him and their mom away to some safe, faraway place of their own…a place like this one, probably; in New York City like mom always wanted, and they’d just be a family, with Hunter at the helm; buying groceries and brushing their teeth and doing all the mundane things without his father’s violence hanging over them all. 

“I don’t know,” Anarchy finally said, almost meekly.
“Have you any hobbies?” Sethfire asked. “Passions, interests?”
“Not really. I drew for a bit. I designed my tattoos…did some for some other kids. But I dunno about passion. It just passed the time.”
“You’re an artist, then.”
“Fuckin’ hardly.” Anarchy rolled over. “I dunno, Sethfire. If I got out of it all…I’d still probably just end up a broke gas station attendant or something. I don't have much going for me: No school, no work experience, no nothing. What’s the point? Just go back to buying smack, but with a real paycheck instead? ‘Bout the only thing to look forward to however you cut it…” He trailed off. He’d told Kato that dope sucked, which was true, but maybe the only thing that sucked more than dope was not having it. Being without it was miserable: He felt like he was drowning inside his own head. His brother was dead; Chey might be, too. It killed him to think it, but who was he even fooling at this point? Bleak fucking world. The people he’d imagined futures of any kind alongside would never see them. And he was supposed to just keep plodding along in the emptiness, with nothing to numb the pain of it? Fuck.
“Could I not sell you on being a sober gas station attendant; free of the heroin and able to enjoy, instead, the small pleasures of life?” Sethfire asked.
“Like what?” Anarchy’s head throbbed when he looked back over his shoulder at Sethfire.
“A warm bed at home, the laughter of friends? Regular meals, independence…”
“Right…and what, you’d just let me live here?” 
Sethfire inclined his head. “...Yes, that is what I’m offering.”
“What's the catch, then?” Anarchy ached.
“There is none,” Sethfire reassured him with a patient blink. “Or, well, of course again about remaining sober, and not returning to your current line of work. But that is it.”
Anarchy frowned. He could imagine a life without the sex work. That part was easy: He’d told Kato how he hated it. He maybe could even imagine a life here with these people: Small pleasures…A spark flickered within him briefly. Small pleasures like Sethfire looking at him with pride; like Kato bringing him lunch and Athena talking to him like a friend. He did want that; how could he not want that? The laughter of friends...His eyes welled up against his will. He knew that sound, missed that sound like he missed himself. Chey had always been so quick to laugh; it didn’t matter how funny any joke was, it was enough for a joke to have been told and he’d light up, laugh to breathlessness. But now that memory burned him; mutilated, like everything the dope touched; warped into a craving. He shivered. He swallowed hard; he felt the sheets wrinkle under his jaw as it tightened with grief. A warm bed…
His heart twisted in his chest. Of course the pipe dream appealed; the idea of staying and being accepted and cared about and safe. But how could he? He wasn’t sure he could imagine a life without dope. He hurt all over; his body felt like it was dying. Hot, cold, sweating. His heart was pounding, at a constant, so hard that sometimes it felt like he was back in Cali, in his childhood home, listening to his dad slam the door coming home from work, and knowing what was coming next. He couldn’t live like this. He couldn’t live like this. Maybe if he could still shoot up it would work, but he couldn’t do this. It hadn't even been 24 hours and he was cracking. He wouldn't be able to manage it—why try? Why blow up what little he actually had chasing a fantasy? He’d need a hit sooner or later and then it would all be lost anyway. It didn’t matter if he wanted to stay—it would never work out, and it would hurt the whole time from start to failure. He should leave. 
But I want to hope, some corner of his heart protested, the same part of him that insisted Chey would one day return. I want to hope. Just for a couple more hours.

 He felt storm-tossed, watching a pendulum swing in his mind’s eye. Stay or go? He couldn’t commit to either. Everything ached, but there was a deeper, familiar pain that he couldn’t attribute to any part of his body. It was inside him but all around him; stabbing, crushing; it felt like Chey had disappeared all over again. Like Hunter had died all over again. Neither of his options soothed it: It seared when he considered leaving, but dope would numb it, so how could he stay? 

“How do I do it?” Anarchy asked. It came out as a croak. “I can’t.”
“What more do you have left to lose in trying?” Sethfire asked.
This, Anarchy thought to himself. “You wouldn’t understand,” he said instead. It was true anyway; no one could understand it—good intentions be damned, no one who hadn’t lived it could ever grasp that going without heroin was like going without air, or water. Fuck, heroin could make going without air or water doable; even downright pleasant. Sethfire wanted to help him, sure. But dope really was the only thing that helped, helped enough to let life be survivable. But what about livable?
“Can you explain it?” Sethfire prompted, jarring Anarchy despite the gentle tone.
“No, I can’t,” Anarchy said; it came out too harsh; an edge to the words from him trying to compensate for how his voice kept threatening to crack, how wartorn he felt inside himself. How much he wanted to leave; how much he wanted to stay. Fight-or-flighting, and he couldn’t choose an enemy. Whatever was going on inside him now, it barely felt like hanging on.
“That’s alright,” Sethfire allowed. He opened his book and a fragile-feeling quiet settled between them.

“...Sorry,” Anarchy muttered eventually, so softly he was unsure whether it would be heard. But Sethfire did hear, and replied with an understanding, murmured, “No need. I know you’re struggling.” 
Though silence fell again afterward, it was an easier silence than before. Anarchy almost wished it wasn’t, wished he didn’t feel safe in it; just as much, he wished he could let it lull him into sleep and that his nose would stop running and his heart would stop racing so that he could let it be peace enough to stand in for the dope. Just for a couple more hours, he thought to himself again, at the same time as: Fruitless. 

Anarchy heard the apartment door open less than an hour later, but even if he hadn’t, Athena and Kato’s arrival home was announced with their raised voices: 
“—It’s been three fucking months since I left, I can’t believe Mrs. Mackenzie hasn’t keeled over yet—” Kato said, only to be cut off by Athena’s;
“I know, right? First day of school this year I thought she’d be dead within the week, if she hasn’t kicked the bucket by the end of winter break, I’m going horcrux hunting, I swear—”
Kato laughed. The pair seemed to feed off one another’s energy, and their conversation was being held several decibels higher than necessary; their voices were clear even a room away. Sethfire left the bedroom to greet them, giving Anarchy a concerned sort of blink before stepping out the door. 
Anarchy knew that the look was one of ‘stay put’, but the window that opened out onto the fire escape drew his tired eyes like a magnet. He could go, now, if he gathered his energy and took the chance; could dip out of his rescuer’s lives in search of dope, could vanish into the early nightfall of winter. Even as the thought occurred to him, though, even as the impulse to maybe follow through took to him like an itch, Athena’s voice broke through and shook Anarchy from his haze.

Sethfire’s hello was spoken at his usual level of quiet, so Anarchy hadn’t heard his greeting—but Athena didn’t match her voice to her brother’s, and her response was easily audible;
“How’s Anarchy? You were with him, right? He hasn’t left?”
Sethfire’s response was again too quiet to make out, but Athena’s footsteps as she walked down the hall were not; she pushed open the bedroom door and her face seemed to light up upon seeing that Anarchy had, indeed, stayed. 
“You’re still here!” she beamed at him, her tone friendly but filled with obvious relief.
“...Guess so, yeah,” Anarchy replied, his voice low, too sick to manage a real smile.
Athena’s face fell as a look of concern overtook her grin of greeting; she walked over to sit on the edge of his bed. “...I know it’s gotta be hard,” she said softly, “I was worried you might leave.”
“I think I would have,” Anarchy managed to grimace, unable to keep the edge from his voice even for her, “But it seems like I’m not allowed to. They’ve made it pretty hard.”
“You’re just not allowed to give up on yourself,” she responded; “You can beat this, you know.” 

Her optimism and earnest eyes were echoing Chey again but nausea had started to win out over nostalgia for Anarchy; he floundered emotionally and looked away.
“I don’t know if I can,” he said, then, “Maybe you should’ve just left me. That might’ve been better than waiting here like this and having to watch you all realize that I’m a lost cause.” The words were heavy on Anarchy’s tongue and he wasn’t quite sure if he meant them, but the mess of emotion in his head refused to become more coherent, more describable. He’d gotten as close as he could.
“You’re not a lost cause. That’s not how it is,” Athena insisted, sounding startled but earnest. She hesitated for a moment, chewing on her lip.
“Kato told me a bit about your dad,” she said finally, in an apologetic sort of tone, as though uncomfortable with having learned Anarchy’s history secondhand—but her voice strengthened as she continued, “The shit people do to us shapes how we see ourselves, right? You’ve been treated bad, and that makes it hard to see what you’re really capable of. But I know you don’t wish we’d’ve let you, like, die, and you can do this; I really think you can! Small goals help. My birthday’s the 17th, maybe focus on making it to there, first. Then to Christmas. Then the end of winter.” She offered him an encouraging smile. “Spring’s coming, Anarchy, I promise.”

Anarchy’s heart lurched like a sailboat in a hurricane and he felt abruptly at risk of going emotionally overboard. Suddenly he couldn’t tell her that he had to leave in just a few hours, like he’d planned to: His eyes burned, his throat threatened to close. It was impossible for Athena to know that she was echoing the words of the boy whose smile she shared in Anarchy’s eyes, but she was—and Anarchy swallowed hard as he traced his thumb over the flower tattoos on his right forearm, Chey’s voice playing like a soundtrack in the back of his mind; “There will be real flowers again soon, but until then you can have these, right? Spring’s coming, ‘Key. I promise.”
“Spring’s coming,” Anarchy repeated, drawing as much from the words as he could, and adding for Athena to hear, “There will be flowers again soon.”
She beamed at him, her eyes and smile all support and faith and hope. “There you go, exactly,” she said, “Flowers and green grass and longer days. You can make it there.”
He struggled against the hopelessness that had taken root in his nausea and aching legs, wishing he could hear her words and take them to heart. Maybe sensing his difficulty, she placed a hand over his and gently squeezed.
“My birthday. I’ll be sixteen. It’s a week from tomorrow, okay?” she said, “Less than eight days. You can do that.”
Anarchy took a deep, broken breath, desperate to be able to believe in her—or believe in himself through her. But he couldn’t; couldn’t risk it, because he needed to leave. He didn’t know how to break it to her. “I’ll try,” he lied. His heart felt like it was crushing in on itself.
Oblivious, she squeezed his hand once more before letting go. “I wanna talk to my brother, maybe get his help on a bit of homework,” she said, “Do you wanna come with? You could lay down on the sofa again and chill.”
Anarchy hesitated, tensed as though to sit up, then decided against it. “No,” he said tiredly, letting himself sink back into the mattress, “My stomach’s been throwing a bitch-fit today: I’d better stay near the bathroom. Actually…I should probably go shower.” He still needed to ‘clean up’ before he left.
“Good plan, I hope it helps! Make yourself at home and all. You can use whatever you want in there. Your place now, too, right?” she smiled at him.
He somehow felt even worse than he had before. “Thanks,” he mumbled. He raised his eyebrows at her and managed something of a grimace as he got up, his muscles protesting as though he’d recently climbed a mountain. “Quick tip: Don’t get fuckin’ addicted to heroin,” he offered. “Withdrawal sucks ass.”
She gave a soft, sympathetic chuckle and stood up too. “I can believe that. ‘Recovery’ is such a peaceful sounding word for something that’s actually hellish.” She offered him one last encouraging nod from the doorway. “I’ll talk to you later, alright? Hang in there.”

Anarchy dragged himself to the bathroom and stared at it. Tidy, comfortable. Clean, thick towels. Soap. Four different kinds of body wash. He cleaned himself up like he was supposed to; washing his hair, scrubbing off the salt and sweat from his dope-deprivation; rinsing the dirt out from under his nails. Then he just sat under the hot water, his knees to his chest, his wet hair draping in front of his eyes; down his back and over his shoulders, like a shroud. He didn’t know what he was doing. He needed to go; what business of his was it if he was using Kato or Sethfire’s cedar-scented soap? (It had to be Sethfire’s; it smelled familiar. Why did it have to smell familiar already? Why did he feel so sure that the Axe was Kato’s? Why did he already know them?) Why couldn’t he treat it like one of the Boss’s hotel showers; a temporary dressing room; something to flee? Why did it have to feel like a home?
Well, it is one, he thought to himself, aggrieved. And they were offering it to him. But he couldn’t have it and dope. He sniffed. His head ached. His heart ached.
A knock on the door made him jump.
“Yo, you in the shower still?” Kato called, cracking the door by a hair.
“Uh, yeah, sorry,” Anarchy stammered, scrambling to his feet; “I’ll get out—”
“Nah, stay there, just keep the curtain closed. I’m bringing you clothes,” Kato replied, shouldering the door open. “They’re on the counter. And me and ‘Thena got you a toothbrush and shit on the way home earlier.”
“Oh. Th…thanks,” Anarchy stuttered again. 
“I’m putting your stuff in the washing machine. Your cash and your phone and your lighter are here.” Kato jumped in the air so that Anarchy could see the roll of bills in his hand over the shower curtain, then set it down and turned to go.
“Wait, I’m gonna need my clothes!” Anarchy protested, sticking his head out of the shower. This was obviously a shoe-hiding situation again.
Kato paused in the doorway and gave Anarchy a hardened, probing look, his lips pressed into a thin, shallow frown. “Then wait for them to dry. Or keep mine,” he said, and swept out, closing the door behind him before Anarchy could say anything else.
Anarchy shut the water off and climbed out of the shower, even more lost than when he’d gotten in. He wrapped himself in a massive towel, clutching it around his shoulders like a shock blanket, and inspected the neatly folded pile of clothes on the counter. Thick, black jeans that looked ripped at the knees, but double-layered, so the “holes” were an illusion. A thin, dark grey long-sleeved shirt with thumbholes in the sleeves; a white t-shirt with “.ʞɔuᖷ” across the chest. Even—and it should have felt weird, maybe, but instead just felt too-considerate—a 2-pack of drugstore socks still on their plastic hook and a rolled 3-pack of brandless, tagless boxer-briefs, in the same rumpled shopping bag as his new toothbrush. Anarchy dried his hair and chewed on his lip. 

Once dressed, he returned to the bedroom and stared at his shoes where they lay next to Kato’s bed, as though they might offer him direction. The early evening of December had already nearly dragged the sun through setting, leaving the room dark. Anarchy nudged his sneakers into the deepened shadows beneath the bed and lay down; torn, antsy. He wanted to join the others out in the living room. He couldn’t face them. It was nightfall; Sethfire would be expecting him to have made a decision…or the decision, the decision to stay, like everyone wanted him to. But how could he? It was hell without dope, even here. He felt hunted and jumpy, and startled when Kato walked back in—though Anarchy supposed he should have expected it, having made the choice not to join everyone out in the main room.
He collected himself and gave Kato a nod. “Back on guard duty?” he asked, less pointedly this time around, which Kato acknowledged with a half-smile and a raise of his eyebrows.
“Sure am,” he drawled back, “You still pissed at us for trying to keep your dumb ass safe?”
Anarchy blinked. No, he wasn’t bitter, now. Now he was tearing himself apart. “Not at the moment, I guess,” he said. He knew it was inadequate and he frowned guiltily. “...You didn’t have to buy me stuff,” he added as a murmur.
“Figured we weren’t at sharing-undies level yet,” Kato replied. “Thought you’d need ‘em. What the hell do you do on laundry day?”
“I have some other shit hidden away at the squat,” Anarchy shared, somewhat reluctantly. “Not much, but enough to have a couple changes. Nothing special enough for anyone to swipe.” Anarchy frowned. ‘Special enough’ was kind of rich: It was nothing special at all, really; the crap back at the squat was as much laundry as it was a plastic bag of trash. Holes, stains. He hadn’t had any reason to upgrade his wardrobe; when it came to jobs, generally he let his boss dress him.
Speaking of which…he needed to get going soon. 

He glanced at the sky out the window. Some clouds had slipped into it, muddling the dark and the city lights; he couldn’t tell if they might yet bear rain. It was an hour across the borough if everything ran smoothly and it was just about 5: He needed to get his shit together; buck up, put his shoes on, even. He sat down on the bed to do so but couldn’t quite work up the nerve. He was still wearing Kato's clothes, anyway. Even if the offer to keep them had been genuine, it would feel…wrong, to do it, to keep them and leave exactly how no one wanted him to. He bit his lip. 
Kato sat up and assessed him. “Hey. You holding up alright?”
Anarchy took inventory of the nausea, the mood swings and memories, the aching, the guilt. Finally he just replied with a tired, “...Shit sucks.”
“D’ya wanna talk about it?” Kato asked, kicking off his boots and sitting cross-legged on Athena’s bed, facing Anarchy.
“No,” Anarchy said, crossing his own legs and leaning back against the wall, directing his gaze to the ceiling; “It’s all too jumbled up in my head anyway.” 
The constant push-pull of restlessness-pain-exhaustion wasn’t just physical; his emotions shifted quickly and chaotically as unpleasant memories dogged him, unchecked by heroin, and with how split he felt, there really was no way to articulate it to anyone else—or no way that he could see. He already knew Kato’s view, anyway.
“Fair enough,” Kato shrugged, settling back to immerse himself in his phone, “You’re cool, though, man. I’m here if you need to bitch about anything.” 
Anarchy huffed in tired amusement. “Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.” He paused, then added, “You’re cool, too.”
Kato raised his eyebrows but didn’t manage to pass his pleased smile off as a smirk. “You saying that ‘cause you mean it or because now you know I’m a fuckin’ whackjob?” he drawled.
“Both,” Anarchy said; Kato laughed, and they lapsed into a brief, comfortable silence, broken when Athena returned to join them, grinning so brightly that Anarchy couldn’t help but return the smile, however weak it was on his lips, however heavy on his heart.
“Sethy’s makin’ dinner,” she said, plopping down on the floor between the two beds and shoving her binder beneath her own. “I’ll do my homework later. It’s Friday anyway.”
“Why even bother?” Kato asked. “You got gum?”
“Maybe I won’t bother. I’m not like you, though, I can’t just ace a test and bring my grade back up,” Athena replied, sighing, and threw Kato a pink Orbit packet.
“I thought you said your grades weren’t good?” Anarchy asked, raising an eyebrow at Kato.
Kato gave an equivocal shrug and tossed the gum to Anarchy, who caught it. “They weren’t.”
“His dad was, like, a GPA nazi,” Athena said, rolling her eyes. “He got As and Bs when he wasn’t flunking on purpose and he still thinks he’s stupid.”
“Cs and Ds in math and gym,” Kato argued. He smacked his gum. “And art.”
“You know two of those don’t count!”

While they bickered over grades and smarts, Anarchy slid down the wall to lay on his side, occasionally agreeing with something he was asked or making a noncommittal sound but not really listening: Instead, he quietly got lost inside his head; thumbing absently through thoughts and memories. Being thrown the gum stirred something deep in his chest and he turned the packet around and around instead of opening it, letting his eyes unfocus. Half due to heartache and half due to having next to no other basis for comparison, everything seemed to come back to Chey. Athena’s bright, open smile and friendly disposition, sure—that drawn parallel made sense. But as strange as it felt…Kato, too, was a reminder: Piercings and too young to have them. Light-colored eyes. And no concept of boundaries. 
“My foster mom mighta been like your dad.”
“We know vices.”
“You can’t judge me, okay? …I run drugs.”
“I was gonna shoot up my school, okay?”

It wasn’t the same lack of boundaries and Anarchy knew it; Chey had simply talked easily, trusted easily, shared his life for the sake of sharing. Kato seemed to share out of some sort of excited compulsion, like he’d be guarded and secretive if only he could manage it. But it was just similar enough that Anarchy clung to the comparison, clung as he did to anything that might fill the hollow his best friend’s absence had left. 
Suddenly he realized that tears had escaped from the corners of his eyes without him noticing, and he swallowed hard against a painful lump in his throat that he hadn’t felt form. He’d fallen down the rabbit hole of rumination and the wave of craving hit him like a train and stole the air from his lungs. He rolled over and buried his head in the pillow as everything in him screamed for a dose, for a needle, for something to fill the emptiness and stop the thoughts and numb the pain. He had nothing, and no easy escape in the two-person-overcrowded room, so he gritted his teeth and resigned himself to having to ride it out. As he lay, sick and shaking, his eyes refusing to dry, a minute blessing came in the form of Sethfire calling Athena to set the table. He choked out a “See you,” when she left, still hiding his face. He couldn’t stomach having her notice him tearful, because surely if she did she’d break his heart with the hope again; that crushing, familiar, naive hope, like an outstretched hand that he could never grasp again. 
He tucked his thumbs through the holes of Kato’s loaned long-sleeve and scrubbed the fabric across his eyes before finally sitting up again. “How long does a laundry cycle take?” he asked Kato. 
“Depends if you use the mode settings or the time settings,” Kato replied. “So yours…hm. Hour to wash, 90 minute dry, I’d say.”
“I don’t have two and a half hours,” Anarchy protested.
“Why not?”
“You know why not.”
“Then wear ‘em wet or take my shit like I said to and live with it,” Kato said fiercely. “Or do the smart thing and stay.”

Anarchy opened his mouth to reply but was stopped short when the door to the hall opened again, allowing warm yellow light and the smell of a home-cooked meal into the tense bedroom.
“Dinner’s ready,” Sethfire said softly as a silhouette from the doorway, “Chicken stir fry.”
“Cool, thanks,” Kato replied from Athena’s bed as though nothing was up at all, swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress and stretching when he got to his feet. He shot Anarchy a brief, furtive, piercing glance. “You comin’, Anarchy?”
Anarchy let his head hang and he put his hands to his forehead, which he found slick with sweat. He couldn’t bring himself to stand up; couldn't stomach going and sitting around the table with them again, and chatting like they did. Even if he hadn’t been dopesick and nauseous, there was no way he could sit there with them and walk out the door right after. 
He was cutting his time close, now; too close.
“I’m not hungry,” he mumbled, “I don’t want anything.”
Kato frowned in his periphery, but it was Sethfire who responded. “I thought you might feel too sick to get up. I brought you a plate anyway; you do need to eat. Speaking of which—Kato, you’ll go eat with Athena and make sure she finishes her dinner, won’t you, please?”
“What?” Kato asked, furrowing his brow and looking almost affronted, “She’s fine, now, Seth, she always-”
“Julian.” Sethfire gave him a look and Kato backed off, albeit with a vaguely insolent shrug and a muttered, “Okay, okay! Christ.”

At first Sethfire didn’t talk after Kato left for the other room, and Anarchy felt vaguely irked at the silent observation.
“I can’t stay,” he said after a few moments, unable to deal with Sethfire’s unreadable expression; with waiting for the other shoe to hurry up and drop while the question hovered, unspoken, overhead. 
“I was worried you would say as much,” Sethfire said sadly. “Please have dinner.”
“I’m sorry, okay? But you gotta let me leave,” Anarchy pressed, his leg bouncing. “I’m sorry, I am, but I can’t do this. I have a job.”
“Eat first,” Sethfire insisted, still so soft-spoken that the instruction ended up paradoxically pressureless.

Anarchy’s frown wavered. He didn’t have it in him to refuse. His eyes kept prickling at the corners while he ate and he willed Sethfire not to comment. A few minutes dragged by, snatches of conversation from the main room audible but unable to distract from the heavy silence.
Sethfire finally spoke. “...What sway do they have over you?” he asked. “You don’t need to leave. You don’t need to go do this ‘job.’ How did you become so trapped in this, Anarchy?” He frowned and swallowed, the sadness in his eyes joined by something between apology and surrender. “You don’t need to go somewhere and be abused and assaulted, I promise you, whatever it is, we can deal with it somehow. What do they have held over your head?”
Anarchy slowly chewed his last bite of food far longer than necessary in his avoidance of response, but the texture did, eventually, become intolerable enough to force him to swallow and sigh, his eyes averted.
“The dope, I guess, but that’s it. It’s not…blackmail or death threats or anything,” Anarchy said. Some part of him wished it was, if only so that speaking it didn’t make him feel so weak. “People are just shit.”
“How did they ensnare you so horrifically, though? You don’t have to tell me anything you do not wish to! But you didn’t leave home and just decide at age fourteen to start shooting heroin and selling your body. That’s not how it works.”
Anarchy sniffed. His nose was running again. “Kids can be good for running drugs,” he sighed uncomfortably; “they draw less suspicion, they’re less likely to jack the product, you can pay ‘em less. That’s how things started. I wasn’t using. I was just...a vehicle.” Anarchy waited for Sethfire to nod, then swallowed hard, steeling himself.
“I guess we—er, I—started getting too old for it. Teenagers get more attention from cops than kids do, and I had a rough looking face anyway. Not that boyish innocence. We—...I outgrew my usefulness, at least as a mule. But people are shit,” Anarchy said, reluctance and bitterness and the struggle against the impulse to include Chey weighing on his voice, “and if they can find a way to use you, they will. Looking back, it’s fuckin’ obvious that it was all set up, but I was fourteen-and-a-fuckin’-half when we—when I first got paid in oxy. Like...I was an idiot kid, ya know? And I started getting paid in drugs more and more often. Addiction’s easy. Once we—” Anarchy sighed exasperatedly at himself. “...Once I was hooked, ya know, the Boss was like, ‘Sorry, there aren’t that many mule jobs these days, what with the internet’ or whatever. But there were other jobs. People were willing to pay for other shit. Fifteen-year-old kids, for instance.”

Sethfire flinched but Anarchy just dropped his gaze to his lap and went on, though unable to keep his voice from taking on a flat, sickened quality: “Once you’re addicted, I mean…it’s not hard to convince a heroin addict into much, as long as you can promise ‘em a fix, right? Fuck us, hit us, cut us up or call us slurs, whatever you want as long as we get dope at the end of it. We just—fuck. I just…fell in.”
“There was someone else with you,” Sethfire said, his tone gentle but unequivocal.
Anarchy froze at first, feeling like a deer in the headlights. “...I told you a friend did my tattoos,” he finally murmured, avoiding eye contact and uncomfortably aware of the lump in his throat, “He’s not...around, anymore. I’m not talking about it.”
Sethfire studied him silently for a few moments, and Anarchy feared that the curiosity in the green eyes behind those glasses would be too much, that ‘no’ wouldn’t be taken for an answer this time. But Sethfire eventually just inclined his head and murmured, “...Okay.”

Anarchy sighed again, hunching his shoulders inward but managing to avoid giving in to the impulse to tuck his knees up to his chest or hug himself. The topic of his life was painful enough, but dodging the mention of Chey’s name had been excruciating, and Anarchy wanted nothing more than the conversation to be over.
“There’s not anything else to say,” he mumbled thickly against the lump in his throat, “It’s all been the same shit over and over. Do heroin. Run out. Sell my body to whoever’s buying. Mostly men. Sometimes women. Doesn’t matter. It’s all sick.” 

There was a beat, a pause after Anarchy stopped speaking where the lump in his throat burned as he awaited judgement, but then Sethfire did something unexpected—he leaned forward and pulled Anarchy into a hug. He moved rather awkwardly; he seemed to be breaking his own boundaries and the stiffness of his outreach spoke to that, but maybe that’s why it meant so much. There was a hesitant uncertainty in Sethfire’s shoulders, yes, but the protective, comforting nature of the embrace was unmistakable. Anarchy stiffened at first, then just leaned into it, then couldn’t help himself and returned the hug; brought his hands up to Sethfire’s shoulder blades and clung to him like he would have to his brother, desperately trying not to cry.
“I’d kill them if I trusted my hands enough,” Sethfire said quietly, the words weighted, protective; “Every person who laid their hands on you.”

Anarchy didn’t have a reply for that, and wouldn’t have been able to say it even if he did; his throat closed with emotion and he just made a choked, gasping sort of noise that felt like it revealed too much. Anarchy didn’t want to be affected by the things he’d been through, the things he’d done. Not in a way that made him cling to a hug or stifle a sob. But it was the mellowing arms of heroin that had allowed him to pretend to be nonchalant and unaffected, and without it—with Sethfire’s arms around him, with the air so saturated with sympathy that it felt heavy—Anarchy felt the truth burning his throat and he couldn’t brush it off. He wasn’t unaffected or stoic or stolid; he felt sick, and used, and young, and broken. His restraint finally failed; the tears started coming and he cried quietly against Sethfire’s shoulder. 
He bit his lip to avoid outright sobbing when he felt Sethfire gently rubbing his back, unaware of the scarring there, not knowing how infrequently the space between Anarchy’s shoulder blades had known gentle touch. It all felt charged and overwhelming and thick with heartache, but it was safety and shelter and comfort, so Anarchy let himself stay there; let himself take refuge in the embrace and cry out some of the pain and hurt he’d been carrying, hidden heavy in his chest, for so long. How the hell was he supposed to leave, now? He choked on his inner turmoil and hiccoughed like a child into Sethfire’s shirt.

Eventually his tears ran dry and Sethfire let him pull away, wipe his face, gather his thoughts. Anarchy felt vulnerable and anxious, afraid that in the wake of their connection, Sethfire might push for details or want to ask more searching questions. Fragile and sick, it was the last thing that Anarchy wanted—but Sethfire seemed to know that. All he asked was, “Are you alright?”, his voice his usual again: Quiet, gentle, kind.
“...Yeah.” Anarchy’s voice cracked when he said it, so he swallowed and shook his head, then tried again; “No, yeah, I’ll...I’ll be fine. Thank you, Sethfire.” 
Anarchy felt like he probably still sounded uncertain, or even somewhat frantic, because nothing was clear-cut anymore, but the sincerity of his thanks must have translated despite it; Sethfire nodded and offered Anarchy a small smile.
“Of course,” he said softly, then got to his feet and picked up Anarchy’s empty plate. “Do you want more to eat?” he asked, “Dessert? We have fudgesicles in the freezer.”
Anarchy shook his head, unwilling to test his as-of-late uncooperative stomach and unsure whether he was more desperate for Sethfire to stay there in the room or to step out and give him half a chance to figure out what the fuck he was supposed to do.
“No, I...I’m good. Thanks,” he said, folding his arms around himself.
Sethfire inclined his head in acknowledgement, then seemed to hesitate. “...I was going to go wash up. Is that alright? Or do you want me to stay?” he asked.
“It’s fine,” Anarchy said, then paused indecisively before swallowing his pride. “Can you give me a couple minutes before sending Kato or Athena back in? I won’t try and leave. I just don’t wanna look like I’ve been crying.”
Sethfire gave him a short, searching look—but instead of suspicion, there was a sad understanding which settled in his eyes. He gave Anarchy a nod. “Three minutes,” he said as he turned to go, then paused and smiled from the doorway, “I don’t think you would be able to make it down the fire escape in that timespan anyway, just for the record.”
Anarchy managed to return the smile, even as he scrubbed his palm over the tear-tracks on his cheek. “I’ll take your word for it.”

As soon as Sethfire shut the door behind him, Anarchy pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them, trying to clear his head and only ending up on the edge of panic. It was like all the rest of the day; indecisive and directionless, but not quite, not enough. He wanted to stay. He couldn't decide if he could manage it, and it was making his heart race, because abruptly—no matter what he chose to do—he would be throwing something away, something huge. He rocked on the edge of the bed and nearly started panting, terrified of the forked road ahead of him. He pressed his brother’s cool dog-tags to his forehead and ended up staring down the daffodils Chey had tattooed on his wrist while promising him spring. Could he do it? Was there any way in hell he could do it?
I want to hope.

Sethfire was true to his word and gave Anarchy time to collect himself, and Anarchy was true to his word and didn’t try to leave—just scrubbed the salt from his cheeks and evened out his breathing as best he could. Kato eventually returned to the bedroom, but if he noticed the fact that Anarchy’s eyes were still slightly red-rimmed and watery, he didn’t voice it. Rather, he gave a casual nod of greeting and tilted his head towards the window.
“Athena will be in in a sec after helpin’ with the dishes; I’m steppin’ out for a smoke. You wanna come with?”
Anarchy didn’t know what to say; the compulsion to ask for advice, or reassurance, or something, gripped him—but before he could bow to it, his phone rang, turning his blood to ice. His hand shook as he answered. He didn’t even bother to turn away from Kato’s burning stare.
“I thought you don't need me there until 8,” Anarchy said instead of a greeting.
“I want you to come here first,” Mr. Doe replied smoothly.
Kato jerked his head and caught Anarchy’s eye, staring into him more than at him. Kato put his fists together and then jerked them downward and apart, as though snapping an invisible stick. “Kill it,” he hissed, gesturing towards the phone.
“Who is that?” asked Doe.
“I’ll call you back,” Anarchy said swiftly, hanging up. His phone immediately rang again. 
“Dont answer,” Kato all but commanded. He gestured sharply again at the phone and swung his hand toward the floor. “Drop it, dude! Smash it, fucking end it here! Tonight.” 
Anarchy struggled; his arms twitched but his knuckles stayed white on the flip phone; a choking noise left his throat and he fought some anxious obedience that had him half-raising the thing as though to answer it, even as he held it out and away from his body.
“Get out of it, man, fucking get out of it!” Kato said forcefully; “You can! Right here, right now! What’s your fucking name?!” 
At first Anarchy stared, wild-eyed, back at him, but the words blasted open the doors of memory and Anarchy couldn’t help but be caught up in it, by it—by what it felt like to get his name, to earn it, back with Chey; whooping and whistling into the night air from a train with the wind in his hair, finally free from his father and beholden to no one. 
He wrenched the phone open and twisted it backwards instead of answering; splitting it in two and throwing the suddenly-silent halves to the floor, his chest heaving. 
Kato walked over and gave the remains of the phone a boot stomp for good measure before dumping them into the waste basket in the corner with all the revulsion suitable for disposing of a dead rat; allowing Anarchy the chance to wipe his eyes.
“You’re fucking free. Congrats,” Kato said, turning around and dusting off his hands; “Now do you want a cigarette?”
“Fuck yes,” Anarchy replied.

The night air was frigid, and despite his anxiety over his decision to snap the phone and the fact that he could feel his dopesick agitation slowly worsening, Anarchy became suddenly aware of how thankful he was to not be at the squat; that he had somewhere warm to stay. As if able to read his mind—but maybe just noticing his shudder—Kato turned to him, eyebrows raised.
“How the fuck were you managing nights, before, dude? How did you not freeze to death?” he asked as he handed Anarchy a cigarette, then retrieved one for himself and dug his lighter out of his pocket.
“Uh, I spent as much time in other people’s beds as I could,” Anarchy said, avoiding Kato’s eyes as he leaned forward for his cigarette to be lit.
“Oh. Makes sense I guess,” Kato said, sparking up a flame. “Nights you couldn’t get work you just had to be cold?” His tone lacked any judgement, and Anarchy felt somewhat safer or steadier as he drew a glow into the end of his cigarette and nicotine into his lungs.
“Pretty much, yeah,” he said with a one-shouldered shrug, his words wreathed in smoke.

They smoked in silence for a few minutes. Anarchy shook like a chihuahua and knew it wasn’t just from the cold night; he’d sat through colder, and Kato’s loaned clothes were warmer than his old ones. Kato did him the courtesy of not commenting, though, and gave Anarchy the time to recompose somewhat. 

 “...There’s this abandoned construction project of a building a few blocks from where you all found me—that’s ‘the squat.’ I pretty much lived there,” Anarchy said eventually, an ambivalent quality to his voice as he tested out both putting it in the past tense and sharing something without being prompted first. “With a bunch of other junkies and pillheads, of course, but...I wasn’t just, like, in the gutter freezing my tits off. For the record.” 
“Naw, you were crouched up behind some fuckin’ flakeboard and freezing your tits off like a goddamn millionaire,” Kato drawled sarcastically, making Anarchy snort in spite of everything.
“Okay, so it’s not that much better than sleeping on the sidewalk. Fuckin’ sue me,” Anarchy said with an eye-roll and a tentative half-smile.

Athena’s voice suddenly rang out from the window: “What’re you getting sued for?” she asked, climbing outside to join him and Kato, “And yo, what the fuck. How come I wasn’t invited to the fire escape party?”
Anarchy huffed in amusement, but his stomach suddenly lurched as if his dope-deprived brain had decided he was having too good a time and needed to be kept in check.
“Eh, don’t be too offended, it’s not much of a party,” he half-smiled, half-grimaced, “Kato’s just making fun of my homelessness while I try not to puke. You’re not missing much.”
“Kato’s doing what now?” she asked, whipping her head around to glare at her friend.
“Anarchy you bitch, I am not,” Kato said indignantly, looking equal parts amused and affronted.
“See?” Anarchy said as innocently as he could manage while fighting back a smirk, “Now he’s calling me a bitch.”
Kato gave Anarchy an exaggerated how-could-you look of mock-betrayal. “I share my cigarettes with you and this is how you pay me back?” he asked, pretending to be wounded, “I can’t believe you.”

It was Sethfire’s voice that cut in this time; he appeared as though from nowhere at the window, but didn’t climb out to join them as Athena had done. Rather, he leaned on the frame and spoke from there.
“I’ve missed most of this conversation, but Anarchy—whatever the payback is? It’s not enough,” Sethfire said in a tone of tired but good-natured half-exasperation, “He leaves this window open every time he goes out to smoke.” Sethfire directed his attention to Kato and gave him a long-suffering look. “What am I meant to do with my heating bill?”
Kato managed to seem halfway to sorry, even as he raised his eyebrows and said, “Have you tried burning it for warmth?”
Sethfire tried and failed to hide his amusement, while Athena and Anarchy laughed openly. Kato gave an apologetic sort of smile and mumbled “Sorry, Seth,” while the apology stood a chance of being covered by the laughter. Anarchy didn’t miss it, though, or Sethfire’s kind eyes and don’t-worry head shake. But it was a moment that was clearly theirs, so Anarchy made no comment—just followed suit when Kato stubbed out his cigarette and climbed back through the window. 

Anarchy’s muscles ached sharply in reminder of his state as he lowered himself back inside, and he suddenly found himself desperately hoping—in the lingering familial warmth of that observed exchange—that he could somehow live up to Athena’s earlier optimism and make it to spring. Could somehow beat the sickness building in the back of his mind, churning in his stomach. Could somehow earn the opportunity to stay, to become part of this perfect, patchwork, ragtag family. 
As if to taunt him, his hands began to shake.
He was “free,” but was he? Of fucking course not—he was an addict. He’d broken his phone, sure, he was to the wind in that way; but even if he had “escaped” the sex work, dope was a different story and he could still feel the chains. And they were only growing heavier. Maybe he wasn’t on a timeline for a gig with the Boss now, but his body put him on one about shooting up. Even as he soaked in the warmth of a home, with friendly, caring exchanges between its walls, the itch at the back of his brain whispered fervently that there was still “a way:” He could find Mr. Doe, make up some plausible reason for why he missed that gig; he had a brush with the cops, he got mugged, he’s sorry…It made him sick to consider, but the thought of the two stamp bags Roxie would’ve been bringing him filled his mouth with saliva even with his stomach churning.
He still might have chosen wrong.

The evening seemed to drag and jump in equal measure, and the disorientation Anarchy felt due to it was nothing like the pleasant, floating unawareness of opiate-induced confusion. Rather, his shaking hands and the persistent presence of a lump in his throat just felt infinite and inescapable, and he had no idea if what felt like an hour of nearly unendurable nausea had actually been a mere twenty minutes.
Athena and Kato chatted intermittently; casual conversations that Anarchy joined where he could, but for the most part struggled to track or focus on. At some point eventually Athena left the room, gave a reason that slipped out of Anarchy’s mind like water through a sieve—though he caught and held onto the words, ‘I’ll come back and say goodnight before bed.’ It wasn’t that much later that Sethfire opened the bedroom door and leaned in, briefly, from the doorway.
“It’s getting late, you two. Lights out soon, okay?” he said.
“Yeah, alright,” Kato replied without looking up from his phone, and Sethfire nodded before retreating back down the hall.

Anarchy prepared to return to the sofa bed he’d woken up on, and winced at the painful protest of his muscles as he swung his legs to the floor and started to get to his feet. A hiss of pain escaped his clenched teeth and caught the attention of Kato, who raised an eyebrow and frowned.
“...and where the fuck are you going?” he asked.
Anarchy tilted his head towards the doorway that Sethfire had just vacated. “...back to the living room? To sleep?” he said, matching Kato’s quirked eyebrow with one of his own.
“No you’re not, idiot, you’re sleeping here,” Kato snorted.
“...But this is your bed.”
“Yeah,” Kato said slowly and deliberately, as though Anarchy were mentally deficient in some way, “And I’m very kindly letting you use it.” He dropped the tone with a snort and gestured vaguely. “I’m taking Athena’s bed, she’s taking Seth’s, he’s got the sofa. We’re all having a grand old time playing a game of musical beds. Lay back down, dude, it’s all been decided already.”

Anarchy wanted to protest, of course; wanted to object to how thoroughly he was disrupting everyone’s lives. But the friendly finality of Kato’s tone had managed to come across as totally inarguable, and Anarchy knew instinctively that any attempted argument would be a waste of breath—and would only be met by a sarcastic smirk and raised eyebrows and all the persuadability of a rather insolent brick wall. So Anarchy just huffed a snort and lay back again.
“You all are fuckin’ nuts,” he said to the ceiling, drawing a laugh from Kato.
“Yuppo. I think I told you we were fucked up, like, twice.”
“Yeah, but I thought you meant, like, fucked up. Not that you’d all trip over yourselves to feed your hero complexes by giving some junkie you just met a bed to sleep in.”
Kato laughed again. “How dare you,” he said, “Seth and Athena might, but I definitely don’t have a hero complex.” He paused briefly before adding, in a more serious tone, “And dude…you’re not just ‘some junkie.’”
Anarchy furrowed his brow but didn’t look over; just kept his eyes trained on the ceiling. “How am I not? How would you know I’m not?”
“You just aren’t. Like—you’ve been sick as fuck today but you still talked to Seth and me, still bothered to ask what my deal was. When I told you I nearly went Columbine, you didn’t instantly label me as a shit person. You’re clearly going through hell but you’re not wrecking shit or yelling at us or anything; you fuckin’ apologize every time you snap. I’ll give it to you as a technicality, but the implications of the label ‘some junkie’ don’t really fuckin’ resonate with any of that.” 
Anarchy heard Kato readjust, as though maybe he’d put down his phone to respond but was settling back to look at it again. “I think it’s the third time I’m saying it, but you just fit in, dude.” The same tone of finality that had been present in Kato’s voice before had returned, but this time it almost rendered Anarchy speechless: He barely managed a touched, half-choked, “Thanks.”
“Yeah. Not a problem,” Kato said, sounding casual and already half-distracted, only lending credence to his words having been true: He wasn’t waiting to see if he’d managed to be comforting, he’d just stated a fact—and moved on.

In the quiet that fell between them, Anarchy stared at the dark ceiling and tried to focus on what Kato had said, on the concept of belonging there, of fitting in. But withdrawal was a symptomatic record on repeat, playing a one-word counter-argument over and over, as nausea and pain and sweat:
Junkie.
Junkie.
Junkie.

Athena checked in as promised one last time before bed; leaned in the doorway and offered both Anarchy and Kato a smile. 
“G’night guys. Enjoy your sleepover. Don’t get crumbs in my sheets, K-O. And Anarchy—” she lifted her chin slightly, her head tilted in encouragement, “Remember: My birthday. Christmas. Spring. You can make it, alright?”
Anarchy wanted her voice and words and faith to pull him from his doubt and withdrawal; wanted to feel as though he was resurfacing from icy water due to her belief in him. But he didn’t. He floundered in his dopesick discomfort and knew his eventual irresolute nod couldn’t match Athena’s tone of conviction.
“You can,” she said again, “Okay?”
“Okay,” he said, and though his voice cracked on the word, it was stronger than his nod had been and Athena’s eyes glimmered encouragingly.
“There you go,” she said, then paused to stifle a yawn. “—Alright. I’ll see y’all in the morning. Get some sleep, yeah?”
“Yeah. You too, ‘Thena,” Kato replied. 
Anarchy gave another nod and a half-hearted smile. “I’ll do my best. G’night.”

Try as he might, though, sleep was a kindness that withdrawal was unwilling to give Anarchy; he was frustrated with tiredness but unable to rest, and if he managed to doze off he would wake up mere minutes later—thirsty and nauseous, aching and agitated. His only solace was that insomnia seemed a vice for Kato, too, who would intermittently offer empathetic tired eyes and mumbled sympathy throughout the night as they both tried, with a lot of suffering and little success, to sleep.

📅 December 10, 2011

The sun rose Saturday morning winter-cold and unforgiving; the hopeful anticipation of spring that Athena had tried to tide Anarchy over with the previous day had vanished, consumed by the unbearable reality of withdrawal. The insomnia, the aching, the nausea that gripped his stomach and throat alike...No, in a knife fight between hope and dopesickness, hope was nothing more than a concept and dopesickness was tangible, as stomach cramps and a mouthful of bile. There was no contest and Anarchy felt nothing less than hopesick.

As dawn peeked through the window, he forced himself up and stumbled into the now too-familiar bathroom to retch, despite having vomited up most of the previous day’s dinner sometime during the night. His clenching stomach didn’t care that all he had left was bile and water; it just demanded to be rid of it. When he got back to the bedroom, he found that Kato must have finally beaten his own insomnia at some point and managed to doze off; he was still propped up at his headboard, halfway to sitting—but his head had fallen limp to his shoulder and his eyes were shut, his breathing easy. 

Anarchy’s eyes were drawn to the right, though, to the window letting in the light of dawn. To the fire escape. Slowly, quietly, he walked across the room and stood in front of the window; just staring at it for a while as he contemplated leaving. Sethfire had taken up residence on the sofa bed in the living room—in theory so that Athena could have his bedroom, but Anarchy knew it was also so that the front door would be harder to use as an exit. 
How cold was it out? he wondered, How light of a sleeper was Kato, once he got to sleep? Would opening the window wake him up? And maybe most importantly—was this really what he wanted to do? 

His hands shook from equal parts craving and indecision as he reached for the latches on the window frame, his mind still not entirely made up. 
Just to see, he thought to himself, at the same time as, to see what?
He was saved from answering himself when Sethfire spoke from the doorway behind him.
“I think we had better move you to the other bedroom, then, Anarchy.” 

Sethfire’s voice was sympathetic but firm and Anarchy felt too sick to argue; his stomach turned and he only barely avoided doubling over. He dropped his hands from the window and allowed himself to be guided across the hall, where Sethfire gently woke Athena and told her she could move back to her own bedroom.
“Is everything okay?” she asked blearily, rubbing her eyes, “Anarchy…?”
“He’s fine, he’s here,” Sethfire soothed, “Just thought that moving him into this room for now would be best.”
Anarchy managed to mumble something between a greeting and an apology, which Athena acknowledged by giving him an affectionate, gentle headbutt to the shoulder as she sleepily passed him on her way to her bedroom. From across the hall, Anarchy could just barely hear her sleepy exchange with Kato and the quiet squeak of mattresses that said she’d insisted on returning to her own bed and sent Kato back to his. 
Anarchy’s shoulder tingled and he felt like crying as he sat down on the edge of Sethfire’s bed. Athena’s concern and affection weighed on him; ripped him; left him cruelly torn between his newfound friendships and the pull of addiction. People cared for him here; somehow he’d accidentally fallen into a life that involved a soft bed and kind words and gentle hands—but still his mind and body betrayed his heart at every turn, screaming for heroin even if it was at the expense of all the care and kindness he’d found. And even if he knew that rationally there should be no indecision, even if his throat burned with how much he wanted to stay, withdrawal knew no logic—just that dope would cure the lump in his throat and the aching in his legs, cure his cramping stomach and shaking hands. 
He made a desperate, despairing sort of noise and leaned forward; put his forehead to his knees and tried not to cry. The fact that tears came anyway seemed to him just another piece of evidence that he was falling apart past functionality, past having any kind of control over himself, and if that was the price of getting clean? He was pretty sure he just didn’t want it.
Could he leave, though? Was he even allowed to? He’d thought he had agency of some kind yesterday, but now some paralytic terror-despair crashed over him and drove his feverishly pounding pulse yet faster, because maybe he couldn’t leave, maybe it was all another cage. It felt like one. He startled when he felt Sethfire’s hand touch his back.

“Anarchy? Are you alright?” Sethfire asked, concern heavy in his voice.
Anarchy couldn’t bear to look up, not with his traitorous eyes refusing to dry, and instead shook his head sharply from where it was, pressed against his knees. “I can’t do this,” he said to the floor, his throat aching. 
He felt the mattress dip as Sethfire sat down next to him, hand still gentle between his shoulder blades.
“What’s going on in your head right now?” Sethfire asked quietly, “What changed?” His tone had no pressure behind it, only concern; he clearly wasn’t looking to put Anarchy on the defensive and the implied I-want-to-help-you in his soft voice was obvious. 
Anarchy’s throat seared and he responded instinctively to that, to the unspoken. “You can’t,” he said, his voice cracking, “You can’t help.”
“Talk to me, Anarchy,” Sethfire said in response, and the outreach in his voice was too much. 

Anarchy was physically falling apart: He had been for 24 straight hours now and it had finally levelled him, even his fight drained out. What could he even do? Stomach-turned by anything other than laying flat, his gut writhing like he was parasitized, even if he got outside he might just end up puking down his front and soiling himself like a drunk. He was fucking done for. He needed a bag, he needed a bag yesterday, but now it’s today, and he’d run the clock down too far. The restless agitation Anarchy had felt before as the impulse to pace had finally truly reached his mind—and Anarchy began to crumble in earnest, at the mercy of his body’s collapse and the chaos inside his head. Sethfire’s hand on his back was suddenly too gentle, too reminiscent of Hunter. The bedroom was too clean, too warm, too welcoming—with his hands shaking for a shot, for a needle, for orange caps and stamp bags and black-bottomed spoons and dope—? A dry sob clawed its way out of Anarchy’s chest.
“It’s fucking torture, I can’t do this,” he gasped out; shame burning his throat like smoke, “Let me get a bag, please—I can come back or not but I need a dose, I need a dose, I’m so fuckin’ sorry but I can’t—”
Anarchy knew what the answer would be even before he heard Sethfire start to shake his head, and anxiety was flooding him before the quiet “I’m sorry, Anarchy” reached his ears. Feelings of trust fought with feelings of trapped, and it was there, where he stopped trying to contain the sobs he’d caged in his chest, that Anarchy really started to unravel. 

Everything that heroin numbed out seemed to be flooding back in; withdrawal had burst a dam somewhere and he was drowning in intrusive thoughts, in tangled, chaotic memories that refused to be pushed back: The pity in the eyes of the man who came with the news that Hunter was dead; the crushing cold of the dog-tags being pressed into his palm; the weight of that flag-draped casket. Anarchy curled up in the fetal position and pulled Sethfire’s pillow over his head, pressed it to his ears, but the sound of his mother sobbing at Hunter’s funeral was inside his head and he couldn’t block it out. 
Sleep was impossible: Even as hours passed and brought tiredness to his body, his mind fought back with flashbacks and memories, with visions of his father’s anger-dark eyes and lamplight shining through a broken bottle. Phantom hands on his body, memories of how his back stung after a beating, the smell of blood on leather. The sight of Chey staggering in, bruised and cut up and pale; the stench of the squat that sickening summer where so many people overdosed or succumbed to the heat. His past swept him off his feet and he was in over his head, fighting waves of directionless anxiety and unbearable cravings that made his throat close and his hands shake. 

Sethfire brought him a breakfast that he couldn’t taste and could barely swallow, that he forced himself to eat only to have his stomach reject it. He’d just barely returned to the bedroom after that last hopeless-feeling trip to the bathroom when Sethfire walked in with a glass of water, and Anarchy couldn’t take it anymore: The dopesickness was worth more than his pride at this point and he was prepared to beg.
“Listen,” he said, the desperation and weakness in his voice making him want to wince, “Whatever you want. I have some cash, please, I fuckin’... I can give you a hundred bucks, a hundred fifty. Just please, let me get a hit.”
“You are seventeen, Anarchy,” Sethfire said quietly, “Please do not think that you are being kept as a prisoner. I’m just not willing to send you so easily back out to die. You’re young, you have a chance—”
“I don’t want a chance anymore!” Anarchy snapped, “It’s not fucking worth it!” He felt his hands shaking again, felt the nausea in his stomach, felt weak and panicked and desperate. “Jesus, Sethfire, what do you want? Anything, fucking anything, I’ll do it if you’ll take me to get some smack. Do you want me to blow you? I don’t even know if you swing that way but God, I need a dose, please—” The offer leaving his mouth made Anarchy feel even more nauseous than he had before, and Sethfire recoiled as if struck and made a choking noise in the back of his throat. 
“Christ, Anarchy, no,” he said, his tone heavy with distress, “That’s not…No. Fuck no.” He was visibly distraught, eyes wide and dark and troubled. “Give me a little while, okay?” he said, “I...I need to figure this out. What to do.” 
“I can’t go anywhere,” Anarchy said in response, eyes averted and burning, but his voice just accusatory enough to make Sethfire flinch as he left the room.

It wasn’t too much longer after that, though, that Anarchy was forced to once again make a trip to the one place it seemed he could go: The bathroom. He had nothing left in his stomach and was forced to painfully dry-heave over the toilet, leaving him with a dull headache that just added to his sense that his body was physically punishing him for denying it heroin. As he stood up, his legs screaming in protest, he heard the hushed sounds of conversation from the kitchen. He hesitated for a moment, but curiosity got the better of him and he lingered in the doorway of the bathroom to eavesdrop. He tuned into Athena’s half-muffled voice:
“...can we even do that, though, Seth? I mean...mom and dad set that account up,” she said, her tone laced with uncertainty.
“It’s in my name, though. They can’t take it back and it’s not my 529–it isn’t locked in as a college fund, or any fund. It’s for medical expenses in concept, but I’ve nothing in writing that say they must be my own. If I want to use some of that money to get him treatment—I can,” Sethfire responded, his tone less measuredly neutral than usual; it seemed fiercer in some way, now, richer in emotion and conviction.
Kato’s usual cynical drawl cut in. “Seth, have you ever considered that your moral compass is fuckin’ whack?” he asked. Anarchy could picture the smirk and the pointed eyebrow raise, even though he couldn’t see it.
“He’s only seventeen, Kato. He deserves a second chance,” Sethfire replied in that same sharp, convicted tone.
Kato snorted. “I'm not saying it’s a bad move,” he said, “I’m just saying that most people wouldn’t do it.”
There was a pause before Sethfire spoke again, the faintest ghost of a smile audible in his voice: “Yes, I’m aware. Maybe that’s part of it. If I am to be totally honest, part of me knows my parents would absolutely detest me spending ‘their money’ like this. And really...I’m beginning to get some enjoyment out of being a disappointment to them.”
Kato barked out a laugh. “You just rescuing us societal misfits to spite your folks, then?”
“No,” Athena was the one who responded, the pride in and affection for her brother warming her voice; “He’s being a good person to counterbalance our parents.”

There was a beat where Anarchy waited for more—but there was just silence for a moment before Athena snorted, the sound halfway between amused and exasperated, and Anarchy knew that Kato must have made some facial expression too cynical to take seriously. The sound of purposeful footsteps snapped Anarchy to awareness, and he realized that Sethfire must have decided the conversation was over, and was coming back towards the hallway to the bedroom.
Anarchy startled, then scrambled from the bathroom doorway and ducked back into the temporary safety of Sethfire’s bedroom. He felt shaken, suddenly; headspun and disoriented. He needed time to process, time to mull over the concept of being offered help—real help, the kind that cost money. Time he wasn’t going to get. 

He was still standing, indecisive and anxious in the center of the room with his back to the doorway, when Sethfire walked in. There was an air of assuredness to his footsteps, his posture. Even the click when he shut the door behind him seemed to convey confidence.
“Anarchy,” Sethfire said, his voice calm and strong and tinged rich by hope, “I have a proposition for you. What if I helped you get medical addiction treatment?”
Anarchy had been expecting the offer and had braced himself for it as he turned to face Sethfire, but he couldn’t keep himself from shying away from the words, the tone, the selflessness.
“I have the money to pay for it, and I want to,” Sethfire continued evenly, not addressing Anarchy’s body language, “Expecting you to ‘just quit’ was unreasonable. It should not have to be—and does not have to be—this painful. I know you said that you couldn’t do this, but I know that you can. You just need stability and resources, and I can get those for you.”

Sethfire’s tone had been one of surety; of his mind being made up, of a decision having already been reached—but Anarchy jerked his head to the side, rejecting the offer on instinct. 
“I can’t let you spend that kind of money on me.” Weakness and irritation sharpened his tone, but Sethfire seemed undaunted.
“I want to, Anarchy,” he said earnestly, calmly, in that damn decided tone that said he’d made up his mind.
“God, Sethfire, what’s the fucking point?!” Anarchy growled, rubbing his palms against his eyes; frustrated to the brink of tears again. “Just let me go back to the streets! Don’t waste—”
“The point?” Sethfire interrupted gently, “...The point is to save your life. The point is that you are not a waste.” He gave a minute, shallow shake of his head. “I am a full-time older brother, Anarchy. That is what I am; my identity is ‘older brother’ as much as it is ‘Sethfire Brookes.’ That’s how it has been since the day Athena was born. I have fallen short before but there is not a single thing on earth I wouldn’t do for my sister, and if I was gone I can only hope she’d find someone else to keep her safe. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?” He paused. 
“...You’re still wearing your brother’s dog-tags, Anarchy. He thought you were worth risking his life for, and the past couple days have left me inclined to trust his judgement. So please...Let me do this.”
Anarchy felt his heart twisting, his throat closing. “You’re not him,” he whispered, “You’re not Hunter.”
“I am not. And I’m not making an effort to replace him,” Sethfire said softly. “But I want to help him save his little brother.”

A soft, choked noise escaped Anarchy’s throat as he stared back at Sethfire. He hadn’t expected anything that had happened in the past couple days, but those words had thrown Anarchy off-balance like nothing else. Sethfire had crumbled the clumsy wall that Anarchy had built in his mind between Hunter and heroin addiction—and the sudden realization that his brother would never want his life to be what it was now hit Anarchy like a blow to the chest; as so tangible a shock that he actually stumbled backwards.
Somehow—without even realizing it—he’d half-quarantined his brother’s memory; had confined his brother’s protection to California and convinced himself that his escape from his childhood home had fulfilled Hunter’s hopes for him; had laid the past to rest. Convinced himself that since he was out of his father’s reach, he would never need saving again.
And he’d held fast to that; to needing no guidance, no protection, no salvation. Held fast to the delusion that he was still somehow in control, or that life like this was better than life like that, and that made it all okay. And he’d dodged ever thinking about the dismay that would have filled his brother’s face upon seeing a needle meet his arm. But Sethfire had brought that image to the forefront of his mind, now, and dopesickness had nothing on the feeling of watching Hunter’s expression crumple in his mind’s eye. 

Anarchy let out a noise that was half gasping and half keening and all pain; a sound that might have started out as the words ‘I’m sorry’ but ended up as just strangled audible heartache. His hand had found the dog-tags around his neck and the metal was biting into his palm with how tightly he clutched them, but he couldn’t force away the pained and pleading “Why?” he’d seen in Hunter’s imagined eyes.
“I don’t know what to do!” Anarchy said to no one in particular, his voice raw and desperate. With his eyes screwed shut in something like denial and his brother at the forefront of his mind, it was almost a shock to be answered not by Hunter—but by Sethfire’s low, accented voice:
“Let me help you.” Sethfire’s hand found his shoulder again and Anarchy couldn’t suppress a dry sob. “I looked up where the nearest methadone clinic is,” Sethfire said gently, “Will you let me take you there, Anarchy?” 

The words and tone hit Anarchy rather like swallowing rubbing alcohol or having one of Kato’s menthol cigarettes lit in his lungs; it was anxiety that burned like ice, froze like fire. He could feel his shoulders trembling and his voice shook with the rest of him before cracking under the weight of the reply he knew he had to give—if only to keep his brother’s death from meaning nothing:
“...Yes.”

Sethfire pulled him into a hug, then, and it felt like the solid support of those scarred arms was all that kept Anarchy from shattering like glass. From there, sick and shaken as he was, time seemed to start to jump again: Moments seemed to go by too fast or tumbled into one another. He didn’t have time to collect himself from the hug before he found himself walking down the hallway with Sethfire. He kept his head lowered around the others in instinctive, submissive shame once they reached the kitchen and was too stuck in his thoughts and fears to hear what Sethfire said to them, but there was no judgement in Kato’s eyes or Athena’s smile when both turned to look at him: Rather, something like relief—or even pride—seemed to dominate. 
“So are we going now, then?” Kato asked Sethfire, while Athena asked no questions—just shot Anarchy an encouraging smile and bright eyes before pulling her jacket from the closet.

There was no reservation or hesitation for either of them, no question that they’d be accompanying him through this—and when Anarchy found himself having missed the elevator ride completely, disorientedly climbing into Sethfire’s four-door with them, he was rendered speechless, too touched to articulate anything of substance. He twisted to look at Athena and Kato, opened his mouth to speak—just to close it and give them a grateful nod that he hoped against hope they would be able to parse. They, of course, could: Kato nodded back while Athena flashed a grin and a thumbs-up.
“It’s an adventure,” she quipped, “You got this!”
Sitting back in the passenger seat, Anarchy barely managed to croak, “I hope so.”

It was a quicker trip than Anarchy wanted it to be—the car ride was too short to allow him to truly adjust; to come to terms with where he was headed, with the help he’d accepted, with all the pressure that that choice entailed. He was still in an uncertain emotional haze when Sethfire pulled into the parking lot outside the small, unassuming clinic building. And as he and the others walked towards the entrance—try as he might—Anarchy couldn’t convince himself that the tremor in his hands now was due only to being dopesick.
Walking through its doors, Anarchy was afraid that the clinic would be like the hospital; rigid and authoritative with staff who wanted too much of his information, dangerous information, who would look at him through judgmental eyes. It wasn’t like that, though; the floor was laminate wood, not glaringly sterile white faux-tile. The woman behind the desk looked slightly overworked, but despite the dark circles beneath them, her eyes were kind. And the people around him…? 
He had, for a long time, somewhat separated himself in his mind from “real junkies,” from the people at the squat who got needlessly aggressive, who stole from family members and mugged strangers and yelled and yelled and yelled. He’d worried that a methadone clinic would be full of them, of the loud, the amoral, the selfish—but instead it was just...people. People who wanted to get better. A middle-aged, motherly-looking woman upended her small paper cup into her mouth and avoided Anarchy’s eyes; a man with graying stubble pulled his trucker hat a little further down, but wore the same tired look of shame that Anarchy knew he himself had worn when Athena had gasped at his track-scarred arms. 
Noticing that parallel caused one of the strangest feelings of hope that Anarchy had ever experienced, but it was there all the same, even through the sickness. The woman and the trucker had lives outside this place; lives that they didn’t want associated with addiction or pills in paper cups. Lives that meant more to them than dope.

The kind-but-tired-eyed receptionist brought him back from his thoughts: “Can I help you all?” she asked with a beckoning wave and a smile. 
Anarchy felt tongue-tied and tense, and was grateful to feel Sethfire’s guiding hand on his back; he allowed himself to be walked forward.
“Anthony needs to begin methadone maintenance treatment,” Sethfire said as he tilted his head in gesture to Anarchy, “How do we start that process?”
The clipboard of intake forms appeared so quickly in the receptionist’s hand that it seemed she’d conjured them from thin air.
“How old are you, hon?” she asked, turning her eyes to Anarchy.
He barely hesitated before deciding to lie; he wasn’t risking any potential fallout of being a minor, of well-intended adult concern sending him back to his father’s hands. “Nineteen,” he answered smoothly. 
“You can fill these out and sign them yourself, then,” the receptionist said with a nod, pushing the forms and a pen across the counter towards him. “Do you have photo ID? And maybe a health insurance card? That I can photocopy for our records?”
“Uh…neither,” Anarchy said, cold anxiety snaking up his spine, “Is that going to…?”
The receptionist waved her hand reassuringly. “—be a problem? No, sweetheart, happens all the time here, and lots of people pay out of pocket…or don’t. There’s financial assistance, here, will you need forms for that as well?”
“It will not be necessary,” Sethfire answered in Anarchy’s stead. 
“Okay, less work for all of us, then!” she replied warmly, then offered Anarchy an encouraging blink. “Just fill out the forms as best you can. A doctor will meet with you in a little while to do your intake. Your friends will be able to go with you, if you’d like.”

Anarchy felt relief wash over him at that, and nodded as he took the forms. Sitting down to Athena’s left and looking at the sheaf of papers before him, though, he plunged immediately back into the feeling of being in over his head, entirely out of his depth. As though able to sense his overwhelm, Athena leaned over.
“The line where it says ‘name’? You write your name there,” she loudly whispered, her gentle teasing managing to coax an amused huff from Anarchy despite his mounting anxiety.
“You should use your legal name on those, however,” Sethfire said with a gentle smile, taking the empty seat beside Anarchy, “I can help you fill them out.”
Anarchy leaned toward Sethfire, grateful and anxious, and pointed directly to the line for his name. “...Will they be able to find my dad if I put my real last name?” he asked in a hushed whisper, his chest tight with fear, “Will they tell him where I am?”
“Not if you’re theoretically nineteen and they are being paid for their services without issue. They will have no reason to go digging,” Sethfire murmured in response. “What is your birth date?”
“May 7th, 1994, but—”
“So now it is May 7th, 1992.” Sethfire’s voice was calm and soothing, but Anarchy still hesitated. 
“...They won’t send me back?” he asked, something pleading and childlike in its fear creeping into his voice. 
There was a beat of silence where Sethfire’s gaze followed the upward sweeping eye movement that Anarchy had memorized over the years as that of people studying his scar.
“They won’t,” Sethfire finally said, meeting Anarchy’s eyes steadily, “but even if they tried, I would not let them.”
Anarchy couldn’t keep a touched, choked noise from leaving his throat, and to avoid shedding tears, he hastily turned back to the forms with a quiet “...Thank you.”

He busied himself with writing in his name and his altered birthdate, though identifying himself as ‘Anthony’ made his skin prickle with discomfort. Staring at the ‘address’ line, he felt at a loss again. He couldn’t put down that of his childhood home, of course—but writing down the street number for the squat seemed an almost equally poor option. As he paused with his pen hovering over the word ‘address,’ biting his lip in indecision, Sethfire offered a reassuring head-shake.
“Just do mine,” he said, reeling off the address and apartment number; “Oh. And the zip code is 11208.”
“Is that really okay?” Anarchy asked incredulously, hating the way his voice wavered.
“Of course,” Sethfire answered simply, with a head tilt and a blink, “It’s where you are currently staying.”
“But…”
“But?”

Anarchy floundered in a feeling of guilty imposition mixed with infinite gratitude, having a thousand half-formed thoughts but no real response. Eventually he ended up giving another mumbled ‘thanks’ and feeling rather like a record on repeat. If Sethfire thought anything of the awkwardness, though, he didn’t mention it: Just guided Anarchy through ignoring the insurance section entirely and reassured him that not knowing his social security number wouldn’t be an issue. 
Eventually they worked their way through to the extent of what information they could provide, and even though Anarchy felt awkward handing the forms back to the receptionist still half-blank, she didn’t bat an eye. Just smiled, thanked him, pointed back to the chairs and promised the doctor would see him soon.

As he waited, Anarchy’s anxiety intensified, and he found himself nervously tapping his foot on repeat. Self-conscious, he crossed his leg to stop himself doing it, only to start anxiously shaking his knee. He clutched Hunter’s dog-tags like a lifeline, gripping them so tightly he feared he’d end up bending them. Athena eventually reached over and gently took his hand, to run her thumb soothingly ran over the red indentations the metal edges had left in his palm.
“It’s gonna be alright,” she said, “We’re right here with you through this.”
She was true to her word. Eventually his name was called—as ‘Anthony,’ which sounded alien to him now—and when he stood up, so did she. As did Sethfire. And Kato. 
“Do you want us with you?” Sethfire asked quietly, and Anarchy nodded, the lump of emotion in his throat suppressing his voice initially—though he finally choked out a “Yeah. Please.”

To the doctor’s credit, he barely balked upon being met with all four of them. His slight eyebrow raise betrayed the fact that it was unusual, but he made no comment and sent no one away—just shook Sethfire’s and Anarchy’s hands and led the group down the back hallway to a private room for the intake session.
Already occupied by a couch, cluttered desk, and two full bookshelves, the room ended up feeling somewhat cramped with five people in it—but Anarchy didn’t want to send anyone out. Not Athena, whose smile had been the beginning of hope’s return; not Kato, who’d given Anarchy a shirt and a bed and a listening ear; and certainly not Sethfire, for a list of reasons too plain and too numerous to warrant thinking over—a list which only seemed to grow.
Most of the questions the doctor asked were ones that Anarchy alone could answer; How long have you been using? How often? How much do you usually inject? Are you using anything other than heroin?, etc, etc. But the second that the question “Do you have a stable place to live right now?” had left the doctor’s lips, Sethfire was the one who answered—with an emphatic, “Yes, he does.”
And even though Sethfire had said to use his address on the intake forms, Anarchy couldn’t prevent himself from turning to search his face for any hint of hesitation or doubt, and was almost blown away when there was none to be found. There was nothing but unwavering certainty in Sethfire’s expression, his voice—and his steady, intelligent eyes remained fixed on the doctor: The answer was honest—not performative—and in its wake Anarchy was left touched and tongue-tied. Fortunately, the questionnaire seemed to be over, and the doctor filled the quiet that would have fallen.

The rundown on clinic function, on informed consent and length of treatment and all the options available to him for the recovery process really should have stuck in Anarchy’s head—but he was overwhelmed with emotion and dopesick exhaustion. He allowed the drone of information to wash past him, and without pressure to answer further questions, he tuned out and let Sethfire’s attentive gaze reassure him that he wouldn’t end up lost or directionless. His focus snapped back, though, when the doctor skimmed back over his notes on Anarchy’s answers and let out a soft, conflicted sigh.
“We normally don’t administer same day, we just do an intake, but…” he trailed off and Anarchy felt storm-tossed and stranded in the heartbeat before Sethfire spoke.
“Anthony has been going through withdrawal for almost forty-eight hours,” Sethfire said, his concerned tone persuasive without pressure, “If there is a way to start treatment today...I feel that would be ideal. He’s been suffering.”
Anarchy glanced between the doctor and Sethfire as the two held eye contact for a long moment, something unspoken passing between them. The doctor finally inclined his head and ran a thumb down his notes.
“I agree, starting treatment today would be my preference for his situation, too.” The doctor turned to Anarchy. “If you all head back to the waiting area, I’ll write a prescription and have Alicia go out and give you your first dose, okay? We’ll be starting you at 15mg because of your history, but it’ll likely need to be upped within the next few days—so make sure you keep your daily appointments.”
Anarchy nodded solemnly to show he understood; that he was taking all he was being told seriously. “Yes, sir.”

The doctor’s handshake and the hallway back to the waiting area bled together in a half-haze of anxiety and dopesick distraction, but clarity arrived as paper cups in the hands of the woman behind the counter—‘Alicia.’
“It won’t be instantaneous,” she smiled kindly as she held out the cups towards Anarchy, “but you should start feeling better real soon after you take that, hon. Give it thirty minutes or so. And you’ll need to stay here at the clinic for a little bit, just so we can keep an eye on you and make sure you don’t get sick. A group session just started, down the hall—how about you take this and then go join them instead of just sitting around in here?”
Anarchy nodded mutely, still too overwhelmed to speak. It felt like if he lingered too long or thought about it too much, then the weight and pressure of this new future he was buying into would hit him like a freight train. So he acted mechanically; he swallowed the tablet by throwing it and the medicine cup of water back like a shot—avoiding not the choking burn of alcohol, but the threat of becoming paralyzed by indecision.

Alicia took the empty cups with her sympathetic smile still in place, then gave an encouraging nod down the hall. “Group really does help a lot of people. Go on. Your friends can all go with you.”
Anarchy felt himself hesitate, his shoulders rising with tension—only to meet one of Sethfire’s gentle, guiding palms.
“We’re with you, Anarchy,” he said quietly. 
It wasn’t a command, a recommendation, even an attempt at persuasion. And that was what worked: They were just with him. Not dragging him through this, not pushing, not forcing. Just walking beside him as he made the choices he knew were right. Trusting him to do that now that he’d begun. 
Realizing it, he felt that trust as warmth in his chest; radiating out to the rest of his body, running through his veins as surety. He couldn’t throw this opportunity away. So he steeled himself; drew a deep breath and said a “Thank you” that he left open and indirect so that it could be for all of them; Sethfire, Athena, Kato, Alicia. Everyone. 
It was Sethfire’s eyes that Anarchy met, though, to raise his eyebrows half-nervously and tilt his head down the hall in an unspoken plea: ‘Come with me?’
Sethfire needed no words; he just nodded in understanding. “Let’s go,” he said, making a ‘lead the way’ sort of gesture to Anarchy—who squared his shoulders, and did.

Anarchy felt awkward walking into the room when the session had already started; turned heads and assessing eyes from the now-silent circle of strangers in metal folding chairs made him feel self-conscious and flighty—but he resisted the urge to hunch his shoulders or lower his head. It was a relief when after just a heartbeat or two, unprompted, the circle opened as people scooted their chairs back and made room for him—and his support crew—to join. As soon as they were settled, the apparent group leader—a greying, glasses-wearing man across the circle—nodded in greeting.
“Welcome,” he said, “Would you like to introduce yourselves?”
As though sensing that Anarchy needed a second to steel himself, but probably just impulsive, Kato responded first. “Oh, nah, we’re just the back-up dancers. Moral support,” he said, gesturing casually across himself, Sethfire, and Athena, before turning and inclining his head towards Anarchy. “You go, man.”
Anarchy cleared his throat and straightened up. “Uh, well. I’m Anthony,” he said to the room, “But, uh, a friend gave me the nickname ‘Anarchy’ a few years ago and…that’s what I usually go by.” He shifted uncomfortably, feeling suddenly self-conscious of his name, of its rather ‘edgy’ nature—but no one in the circle seemed to bat an eye. Rather, there were a few quiet but friendly greetings of “Hi, Anarchy;” some scattered nods of welcome.
“Nice to meet you, Anarchy,” the group leader said, “Would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself? What brought you here to join us?”

Anarchy felt put on the spot, half-cornered with his guard still up. He felt like his story was too much, too raw, too personal. He wasn’t entirely sure he had a right to his discomfort when he’d shared so much with Sethfire and the others—who Anarchy should’ve, perhaps, still considered strangers. But things felt different and less open, here, in this bare room of metal chairs and fluorescent lights and so many unfamiliar faces. So he shrugged one shoulder almost casually, and kept his response minimalistic:
“Yeah. I mean, it’s always ‘a long story,’ I’m sure, but I can keep it short: Shitty home life as a kid. Ran off. Got hooked on oxy at age fifteen and was slammin’ dope before my sweet sixteen. Finally fucked up and OD’ed just a couple days ago. Trying to turn stuff around, now, after that.” 
The ages he’d mentioned had drawn a couple sharp intakes of breath from around the circle, and someone, audibly disquieted, said; “Geeze, kid, fifteen? How old are you now?”
“Nineteen,” Anarchy replied, repeating the same lie he’d told the receptionist.

An older man with a horseshoe mustache, sitting directly to Anarchy’s right, gave him a shrewd, scrutinizing look—and the way he narrowed his eyes and raised his eyebrows clearly said he wasn’t buying that Anarchy was nineteen.
“Let me tell you somethin’, kid,” the man said gruffly, leaning back in his chair, “You’re makin’ the right choice, comin’ in. But this fight here’s gonna be the hardest one you’ve ever fought. You hear me?” The man’s gaze traveled along Anarchy’s facial scar. “Whatever hell you've been through before dope, because of dope, whatever shit threw you into shootin’ up in the first place—gettin’ offa her is gonna be harder than all of ‘em put together. You’re gonna have to fight like a wolf. You a wolf, boy? You a fighter?”
Anarchy hesitated. He felt suddenly unsure; thrown-off by the concept of the path ahead being harder than his past, overwhelmed by the idea that even with medication recovery could be more painful than his father’s belt, his brother’s death, the endless ache of his best friend’s absence. But he felt the warmth of his new, impossibly unlikely, found-family beside him—and he drew strength from their presence. So he squared his shoulders again. Swallowed his doubt. Looked the man in the eye, and said;
 “I’m gonna have to be.”

At that, the older man finally cracked a smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling up. He gave Anarchy a nod of approval and leaned forward. “You fight this, then, boy,” he said, “You beat this now. Don’t you end up like me, almost seventy and still wrestling.” He inclined his head towards Kato and the others. “You got your wolf pack at your back, son. Don’t give in.”
There was a beat, then the man suddenly sat back and clapped his hands to his knees with a laugh. “Went right into lecturing ya without even introducing myself, didn't I?” he said as he stuck out a gnarled hand, “Us Anthonies never stick with our name, though, do we? I’m Tony.”
Anarchy gave him a tilted smile as he extended his arm to meet the handshake. “Yeah, well. Anthony’s a bit of a dweeb name,” he said, a little softly, “We’re too cool for it.”
Tony laughed uproariously, and with that—with Tony’s acceptance of him—the group session began began. And as Anarchy sat listening to the stories told, with Kato and Athena and Sethfire to his left and Tony to his right—he settled into the feeling of being amongst people who really, totally, truly, understood.

An hour later, walking out into the clinic parking lot with the others after the group session ended, Anarchy found himself feeling that in truth everything had only just begun. He knew that one visit, one group meeting, one paper cup of medication wasn’t the end of it. Knew that his syringe stick-n-poke and the track marks he’d allowed scab-picking and infection to permanently scar into his skin spoke to that; he wasn’t out of the woods. He’d have to come back every morning for another dose of methadone, come back twice a week for therapy. And he was convinced that Tony had been speaking the honest truth—that this would be the hardest fight he’d ever have to fight. But exhausted though Anarchy was, walking out of the clinic doors was like walking out of the hospital all over again; once dead and returned to life. 
He was tired, of course; the past couple days could have been a week long for how difficult it all was, but he was alive—and had friends by his side: Athena, who was in actuality unlike Chey in a multitude of ways—but not in grin and vitality, and those alone were by far enough to give Anarchy hope; Sethfire—dark-skinned, bespectacled, and almost a foot too tall to be Hunter, but a brother nonetheless in spirit and smile; and Kato, who raised an eyebrow and offered Anarchy a smirk and a cigarette as they walked back to Sethfire’s car.

“You’re gonna need something to occupy your time, now, huh?” he said, “Well…Me and ‘Thena have been thinking about trying to start a band for a while now, and nothing says ‘rockstar’ like a history of drug use, right? So…D’ya wanna learn how to play the guitar?”
Anarchy laughed—at the comment, at Sethfire’s look of hopeless disdain at the proffered cigarette, at the total and unending absurdity of life. “I don’t know if I’ve got any musical ability at all,” he said, waving off the cig, “And it’s been a long fuckin’ day. I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
Kato smiled and shrugged; putting the cigarette in his mouth and having to mumble his next words around it. “That’s fine, me and ‘Thena will talk you into it after we get home.”
Sethfire sighed with some exasperation and pulled the cigarette out of Kato’s mouth before he got a chance to light it.
“I’ve told you before, no smoking in my car,” Sethfire said, in a tired, chiding sort of way, “And I’m not having us all stand around in the parking lot until you’re finished. Anarchy should be allowed to get home and rest.” Sethfire stressed the last word in a very ‘please postpone all band-starting related badgering’ manner, and Athena laughed openly at Kato’s expression—which was caught between appropriately abashed and vaguely reproachful at having had his cigarette taken away.
Anarchy smiled too, but only half from amusement; rather, Sethfire and Kato’s words repeated in his head.
“𝘔𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 ‘𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘯𝘢 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘪𝘵 𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘦 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘦.” 
“𝘈𝘯𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘺 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵.” 
‘𝘎𝘦𝘵 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘦.’

After they piled into Sethfire’s car and pulled out of the parking lot, Anarchy rolled the word over in his head; tried it out as he watched the buildings pass out the window on the way back to the apartment.
We’re going home, he thought to himself. 
We’re going home.