Chapter Text
I tried to bring back my granddads. I’m sorry that it came to this.
I know that this destroyed me last time. I know that Momboo had to fix me. I know that is not a luxury that I will be afforded this time. However, I can’t let my granddads stay dead when there is a chance I could bring them back. I have to at least try.
Centross, I think I’m in love with you. I’m sorry that you’re finding this out through a note I’ve left in case this magic kills me. I’m sorry about tearing apart your relationship with Fenris. I’d hope that my death would fix it, but I know that you don’t want to get back with him.
Mom, I’m sorry I’m making you bury your son. I’m sorry I died when you came back. Please forgive me.
If this all goes wrong, I’m at my home.
Love, Rae Morningstar.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Rae told Bucket as he set the quill down and blew gently on the writing to dry the ink. Once it was dry, he closed the fresh notebook and set it on the table. The note he had written on the chance that he didn’t make it back from resurrecting his grandparents was written and safe. It was the first thing anyone would see if they opened the book.
Bucket meowed at him.
Rae grabbed his bag from where it hung from the back of a chair and set it on the table, opening the flap. Carefully, he wrapped short white candles and a bottle of lapis-infused ink in paper. That parcel was placed into the bag. Then he packed his notebook and a thin book of necromantic spells into his bag. Food and water were already packed, enough for lunch and dinner, though neither was for him since he didn’t technically need to eat or drink. However, Raemond and Everett would probably want it.
“It’s going to be OK,” he said to himself and Bucket, refilling the cat’s food and water. Then he straightened, raking a hand through his hair and messing up his braid. His fingers didn’t shake as he pulled it out and rebraided it, tying the end off with a thin piece of purple ribbon Centross had given him.
His fingers brushed against the cold metal of the silver necklace resting against his collarbone. Normal people’s body heat warmed any metal pressing against their skin. Rae would always have jewelry that was as cold as a crypt. He would never get the taste of grave dirt scrubbed from his tongue. His lungs would never remember what it was like to not choke and suffocate to death; they would never draw in air again unless he was raising the dead. That feeling—the feeling of fresh air circulating in his clogged lungs and his heart finally beating again—was addicting in a terrifying sense of losing control and finally being alive again. Rae had never realized how much everything wanted to live until he was reduced to a walking corpse. He both hated and craved the feeling of bringing back life—of feeling someone’s heart beat under his stiff fingers—of hearing someone breathe and keep breathing. It made him scared of turning out like the monster who was Lennarius.
Rae sat down heavily, leaning back in the chair. His wrists ached dully from the bruises Lennarius left behind just a few days ago. Those were ugly, angry welts of black and blue skin where rotting blood pooled right beneath the surface of his skin. At least the blackened skin that covered his fingers and started to spread across his palm was one color, with only the yellow-green undertones visible when he held his hands up to the light. Rae knew his hands were ugly and monstrous. There was no point in denying that fact when the proof was attached to his body. The skin of his wrist was broken where he had dug his nails into the bruises and pulled them through dead skin, leaving red welts and drops of blood behind. For some reason, the bruises and welts didn’t fade like most injuries did as his magic healed them. Maybe his magic had finally understood that the wounds he continuously caused to himself weren’t worth healing. Maybe his magic understood that he deserved the pain. Centross would be disappointed in him.
“Fuck…” he whispered, tears suddenly burning his cloudy eyes. Rae sniffled and tilted his head back, wiping at his eyes. “I have to bring them back. I can’t just bring you, Centross, and Mom back without giving them the same chance. What kind of grandson would that make me besides a shitty one?”
Bucket meowed, his tail flicking from where he lay in a puddle of sunshine spilling inside the library from the rising sun. It was a nice day outside, though the morning air was still chilly. The sun was shining, melting all the snow from the previous week and turning the ground to mud. It was a nice day to die, Rae decided as he got to his feet and grabbed his bag. Bucket trotted after him, meowing louder, his tail twitching in annoyance.
Rae stuck out his shoe to keep the cat from leaving the library, gently pushing the animal back. “No,” he chided with a soft, sad smile. “You can’t leave the library right now. I know you want to lie in the sunshine, but you have to do that inside.”
Bucket screamed at him.
“You have food and water,” Rae said. “Centross is supposed to come over this evening.” Then his expression fell, and he leaned against the doorframe, his voice soft as his shoulders slumped. “He wanted to spend time together tonight… he said he had a surprise for me. He’ll—hopefully, I’ll be back by then with my granddads. If not, he’ll be here to take care of you, so there’s no need to scream like that.”
Then he grabbed his cloak and left, closing the door behind him. Rug was waiting for him in the stables at the inn, head lowered to niddle at the grass starting to grow again after the long, cold winter. The horse looked up as Rae approached and then went back to eating.
“Sorry,” Rae said, patting its neck before getting its tack on. “It’s not that far, and you can go back to eating grass there.”
The horse huffed at him as he tightened the saddle and bundled his cloak into a roll to attach to the back of the saddle. Then Rae mounted and guided it out of the pen. Its hooves clacked against the stony paths in Lodestar Grove. He passed Icarus’s house. It was dark. It was always dark. For a person who turned everything they touched into gold, they shied away from the light like a startled dog. He passed Athen and Jamie’s house. Their house was also dark, but the two young people were out. Rae rode into the forest, guiding Rug down the road cutting through the forest towards Westgrove, Westville, the graveyard where the Morningstar family had been buried, and the dusty Morningstar house.
The graveyard didn’t have headstones for Everett and Raemond. Thanks for that, Enderian. Rae didn’t bother stopping there when there was nothing but cold graves, a single headstone, and a lonely oak tree for his family. His granddads’ bodies might have been there, but it wouldn’t matter when he brings them back.
Rae stopped in front of his childhood home around noon, his lungs burning as he stared up at the overgrown front yard and run-down building. The paint was chipping, the windows were dusty, and it was nothing like the home he was used to for the first twenty-something years of his life until Lennarius fucked everything over. He had seen it twice (first when he went back the first time and found Bucket and second when he brought his mom back), but that didn’t make it any easier. It still made him want to cry. It made him want to punch Lennarius again. Rug snorted as Rae guided him around the house and to the shed-stall in the garden. The last time he had been there, it had been blanketed in snow. Now, there was green in the garden as plants started to grow again. Maybe it hadn’t just been a few days of good weather (that would quickly turn into snow and ice again) when Lennarius came to visit. Maybe spring was truly here.
Rae dismounted and got Rug settled into the shelter, patting the horse’s neck. “Stay here,” he said, like the animal would go anywhere. “I’ll be right back.”
Like this wouldn’t turn out as it had with Isla. Like he wouldn’t end up truly dead instead of a walking corpse. Rae pulled out the house key from where it hung around his neck and unlocked the back door. It creaked slightly as he entered the house despite Fenris oiling it, but that had been nine or ten months before, and Rae had only visited the house once since then. It had sat empty for so long—too long. It was dusty inside. The air tasted stale but, thankfully, mercifully, nothing like the dirt that filled his lungs. He stepped into the kitchen, sat down in his chair, and dropped his bag onto the floor. The kitchen was a bit more faded… a bit more sun-bleached… a bit more dusty and cold… a bit less of the house he remembered. Rae didn’t dare go upstairs. He didn’t want to see the dusty, empty bedrooms nor his granddad’s study or library. He didn’t want to hear how out of tune the piano had become or see how much the paintings had faded. Were they even still there?
“Fuck,” Rae said softly as he got up again and opened his bag, pulling out the stuff he had brought. He didn’t bother lighting a fire; it wasn’t freezing in the house, and it wasn’t like the cold could hurt him. He was, after all, dead.
Rae got to his feet and opened the book on necromancy, flipping to the last page. He used a candle to keep it open on the table. Then he opened his notebook to the pages where he had adjusted the spell’s rune slightly so it used less of his magic, which hopefully meant he wouldn’t die. He knew it would still work. He had tested it enough times on smaller creatures with and without their bodies. It would work. It had to work. He didn’t know what he would do if it didn’t work… if he failed.
Rae moved his chair to the side to make enough room on the floor for the spell. Carefully he traced the spell’s circular runes across the faded floor, lapis-infused ink glittering a deep blue-black in the sunlight: protection, strength, and safety forming the outer ring, with life and health creating the inner ring. Magic sparked across the ink where his blackened fingers cracked and dripped rotting blood onto the fresh wounds. He set the candles between the outer and inner circles, one at each of the four cardinal directions. Then he sat in the middle and opened the necromantic book. It was heavy and burned his bleeding fingers with sparking magic.
Carefully, he unbraided his hair, letting the long black strands hang like a curtain around his face. All it took were a few strands pulled from his scalp and set on the sun-bleached floor in front of him with a few drops of blood taken from his already cracked and bleeding fingers. He lit the candles with small sparks of magic.
Then he recited the spell: “Revenite, vivo, respiro, dic cor tuum ad pulsandum, te requiro, te amo, revenite.”
Death magic rolled in his chest like stormclouds rolling down a mountainside, trees bending under the weight of the raging storm just like his ribs creaked under the weight of magic. It choked his lungs with dirt and filled his heart with decades-old blood. Rae choked on bloody mud.
It hurt. Everything hurt. He was drowning under six feet of dirt. He was choking on grave dirt and thick blood. And— and for a moment his lungs burned, not from the death magic eating away at them, but from the need to breathe. He sobbed in pain, tears dripping down his cheeks.
For a moment, Rae was alive. For a moment, his heart beat rotting blood through his veins. For a moment, his lungs screamed for air. For a moment—
The world wavered around him, blackness sneaking closer to fill his vision. And then—
Rae blinked up at the sky. There wasn’t a cloud nor bird to break up the empty blue expanse. The grass under his bare feet was cool. The dirt was slightly damp. It smelled of rain, yet when he looked around, there wasn’t a hint of any weather except sunny warmth. He stood on the front steps of his house, staring at the purple-painted door surrounded by huge pink roses. With a shaky breath (in the warm summer air of his childhood home, he needed to breathe because there was fresh blood in his heart and no dirt choking his lungs), he pushed open the front door and entered the house. The hallway was free of dust even as the rooms off to the side wavered with the smoke-like quality of the very edges of people’s personal limbo-afterlife.
He was dead. He wasn’t in his own afterlife but his granddad’s, slipping through the veil between life and death to guide them with him. He was Orpheus, his necromantic magic the music that let him pass by Cerberus unharmed, where anyone else would have been torn apart by Hades’ dog.
Rae walked down the hallway, drawn to the backyard by the low rumble of voices. It smelled like fresh bread and roses. The backdoor was freshly painted purple with little pink and blue flowers painted around the window and handle. He pushed it open and saw—
Everett sat on the low stone wall that formed one boundary between the garden and forest. His hair was gray-brown and messy, his redstone-stained fingers curling around a mug and a book open in his lap. Raemond, with his long silver hair braided out of his face, knelt a few feet away from him next to a plant bed, hands buried in the dirt as he planted flowers. They were talking softly with each other, smiling and laughing like they had never died—like they had never lost each other.
“Poppop?” Rae asked, his voice thick with tears and trembling with each shaky breath. “Grandpa?”
Everett looked up first, setting his mug and book to his side as he got to his feet. “Rae?” he asked softly, forehead creasing with worry. “What are you doing here?”
He ran across the garden to hug his Poppop tightly, shoulders shaking as he started to cry. “I—”
He hugged back. His voice was soft as he hushed Rae gently and stroked his hair. “I’ve got you. You’re OK.”
Raemond got to his feet and brushed the dirt off his hands. “Sparrow, what’s going on?”
“I—” Rae lifted his head from where he had hidden it in Everett’s shoulder, looking at the man he had gotten his name from. “I miss you.”
The necromancer who had taught him half of his magic reached out with his steady hands to rub his back, cloudy eyes (his eyes had always been cloudy; that was the mark of necromancy that passed down through the Morningstar line) full of worry and love for his grandson. “It’s not yet been a year since you left.”
“I’ve come to bring you back.”
“To life?” Everett asked, exchanging a glance with his husband.
“I can do it,” Rae protested quickly. “I did it to myself. I did it for my friend. I did it for Mom.”
“Ah.” Raemond nodded. “So that’s why she left. How is she?”
“It’s only been a few months, but she’s good. We’re living with some friends I made.”
“And are you safe?” Everett asked.
Rae paused before shrugging. “They got rid of all the necromancers they could find, so the hunts aren’t going on anymore. I suppose that makes me safe.”
“Do people know you’re a necromancer?” Raemond stepped closer, cupping Rae’s face in his hands and turning his head like he was searching for any evidence of harm that came to his grandson.
He sobbed, his sight blurry with tears that dripped down his cheeks, snot dripping from his nose. “Yeah.” His voice cracked, and Rae started crying harder. “They’re kind. I promise.”
Everett held him tightly. “It’s OK,” he murmured into his grandson’s black hair. “It’s OK. We’ve got you.”
“I—” He choked on an ugly sob. “I’ve missed you two so much.”
“Oh, Sparrow,” Raemond said, his voice soft. He carefully wiped at his tears. “I’m so sorry.”
“You can come back, and we can be a family again.” Rae sniffled, his throat burning with tears. “Mom will be delighted to see you, I won’t loose you to hunters, and I—” He wiped at his nose. “I really missed you.”
There was a moment of silence before Raemond shook his head, his voice gentle but firm. “No.”
“No?” he asked, his heart aching where it beat desperately against his ribs like a bird trying to fly back to its flock. “Grandpa please—”
“No,” he repeated, his touch gentle as he wiped away a tear and tucked a strand of hair behind Rae’s ear. “We lived long, happy lives.”
“Please—”
“We’d only die after a couple of too-short decades if you brought us back,” Raemond said. “Neither of us wants you or Isla to go through the heartbreak of losing us again. I have no desire to be buried for a second time.”
Everett nodded. “You grieved us once, Rae. It would be cruel to make you do it again.”
Rae shook his head quickly. “No—”
“Yes,” he insisted gently. “Some people aren’t meant to be brought back to life.”
Like Orpheus, he would return empty-handed.
“We’ll be waiting for you when it’s finally your time to die,” Raemond said, hugging him. “We love you, Sparrow.”
Rae broke down in his grandpa’s arms, sobbing into his shoulder. Raemond held him close, shushing him gently.
“I’m not going to remember this, will I?” Rae asked when his tears finally dried.
The smile Everett gave him was kind but sad. “No,” he said gently. “No, you won’t. You’re just going to wake up without us.”
“Oh…” He sniffled, wiping at his nose. “OK…”
“I don’t want you to blame yourself, Sparrow,” Raemond told him. “This is a choice that we made, not because of something you did or didn’t do.”
“I—”
Everett laughed sadly. “We can’t change what you feel when you wake up alone, especially since you won’t remember this.”
“I’m sorry,” Rae whispered, his voice hoarse from crying as he rested his head on Grandpa’s shoulder.
Raemond kissed the top of his head gently. “Don’t be. We love you.”