the many-world theory of quantum mechanics
(five things that never happened to lance bass, magus)

res primum

Tomorrow his mother will come to take him home.

It's cold; Lance is always cold, these days. Sometimes he catches himself trying to use the magic to warm him, but then he remembers, he isn't allowed to. There's too many other things for him to be using the magic on.

A year ago he'd been worried about American history and whether or not he'd make the choir when he got to high school. Then they'd come for him: three men, one woman, all dressed in drab and inconspicuous clothing. His mother had knelt in front of him and put her hands on his knees, looking up at him, trying to smile, and said it wouldn't be long, she'd come for him soon.

It's not bad. No, it is, but it's not unbearable; they don't want to hurt him. They do, sometimes, but they don't mean to; it's like the euphemisms he used to hear on the evening news. Collateral damage. Something like that. He needs training, that's all. Needs to know how to use it. They tell him that, every night after his four hours of Hebrew and Greek, when he's standing in front of them and reciting passages he memorized from texts so ancient he has to wear gloves to turn the pages, read them only in darkened rooms. It's for his own good. He can't risk not knowing what he's doing. That's how he'll get in trouble.

They tell him stories, about why they do it this way. They never used to; years ago they used to let families take care of the training, but one too many gave up or went bad or walked off, and they had to do something. He's heard them talking, when they think he's not listening, when they think he's too exhausted to hear. Psychiatric jargon. Emotional isolation. Dependency. They never say the word "brainwashing". They don't have to. He's always been smart for his age.

He falls into bed every night, past midnight, and draws the covers up over his shoulders, shivering so deeply until the heat of his body warms the bed enough for him to sleep. He feels sometimes like he's being worn thin, ground down, but he's not giving up. He'll say what they want him to say, do what they want him to do. It won't be much longer. He's almost stronger than they are, now. And they worry about that, too, in hushed tones, and he doesn't think about how the one book, the one he wasn't supposed to be reading, said the only way to make sure of a mage who's more powerful than you are is to win him thoroughly to your control or to kill him.

Tomorrow his mother will come to take him home. She has to someday. She can't just leave him here. It's easiest if he thinks of it as tomorrow, perpetual tomorrow, leaving every morning to be another hope of freedom.

res secundum

JC wakes with the sense of being watched. It takes him a moment to struggle awake -- he'd been up for three days straight, on the front lines for two of them and healing the wounded for one. One of the malakhim, one whose name he'd never been given, had finally caught his wrist as he moved on to the next hospital room and sent him to a bed of his own. "You won't be any good in the fight if you fall apart now," he'd said. "Go. Sleep. You're still mortal."

The hospital bed is nowhere near the most comfortable thing JC's ever slept on, but it isn't the worst, either. Not by a long shot. And he's lucky to have the room to himself; they'd kept a few free, even if it meant putting the wounded on stretchers in the halls, for the healers to have a place to sleep. He opens his eyes reluctantly, and finds Lance sitting on the foot of the bed, watching. It's quiet outside, too quiet really, and the moonlight turns Lance's skin and eyes into shades of sepia and grey.

"I wanted to say goodbye," Lance says. No preamble. They'd dispensed with the niceties around the time of the first breakthrough.

JC pushes himself up on his elbows and squints in the darkness. The clock by the bedside tells him he's only slept for three hours. He can feel the bond between them, stretched and strained but never snapped, feel Lance's exhaustion as deep as his own.

"Where are you going?" he asks. His voice is still razors in his throat. If it all ends, maybe they'll be able to heal it. Someday. He won't give up hope until the end.

Lance turns his face to look out the window. "We've got word from Cleveland. There's been another breakthrough. It's bad. They're pulling half the units out of here and sending them to see if we can do anything."

JC closes his eyes. "Do you think they can?" They've already lost Manhattan, and Paris, and Shanghai. Are losing L.A. and Alexandria.

Lance ignores the question. "I'm so tired of this, Jayce," he said. "So damn tired." It's written in his voice, in the lines of his shoulders. He holds himself still, as though he can barely spare the effort to move. "I wanted to say goodbye. And I love you. And I'm sorry."

"Let me come with you," JC whispers. It isn't hard to figure out what Lance is planning. Not once you know him. There isn't anyone left who knows Lance as well as JC does.

"I need you to stay," Lance says. "To hold the line. I need you here. I'm sorry."

Later, when the word comes, not from anyone who'd been there because there's no longer a there there, but handed down through rumors and whispers and the secret network that's their only way to carry news anymore, five days after JC feels the bond shift, crack, and break him apart from the inside out; later, once they hear the reports, hear the myths that are already starting to rise, of the way Lance walked right up to the portal and walked right through, without stopping to think twice, without stopping to say a word; later, once the last of the breakthroughs have been dealt with, after the last of the portals have been closed, after the last of the Others have been ferreted out, destroyed in the way that had not been possible until the main gateway was closed -- later, so much later, JC can still feel the touch of Lance's lips burning on his forehead, and wonders if there were anything he could have said to make Lance agree to let him follow.

res tertium

They can't stop looking at him, out of the corners of their eyes, when they think he can't see. But he can see a lot more than they think he can. And it hurts; it hurts worse than the sixteen-hour days, worse than the German winter, worse than the ache and scream of his muscles, worse than the way Lou looks at them all.

It's nothing he can point at. Nothing he can ask them to stop. They all say they're okay with it, that of course nothing's going to change, that they're glad he trusted them enough to tell them about it. But Chris never stops asking questions, like he'll catch Lance in a lie if he only asks enough times, and Justin follows Lance everywhere with his eyes, like he'll turn into something else when Justin isn't looking, and Joey's started wearing his rosary under his shirt, like it can save him from something he doesn't even really understand.

And JC -- JC watches Lance too, but there's a hunger there, a determination. They're in St. Hedwig's, in Berlin, on one of their days off rarer than gold, when JC catches his hand and says, so low and urgent and rapidly that Lance can barely make out the words, "I want you to teach me. I want you to show me how you do it."

He puts JC off, because he doesn't like what he sees in those eyes.

They've got it wrong. They've been watching too many movies, reading too many books, thinking they're familiar with the concepts of it all from TV and Hollywood and it's not like that, it's never like that. They think they know what he does, what he can do, and they're young enough and tired enough and working so hard, so fast, that all they can think of is how it can benefit them to have Lance on their side. But they're scared, too: scared of what he can do, scared of what he is, scared of what it might mean to them and for them and sometimes all Lance wishes is that he hadn't listened to his mother, hadn't sat them all down and told them.

Maybe it would have been easier if he'd tried to keep it all a secret. Maybe then he could have been part of them, instead of always the outsider, always the thing to be wary of.

It wears him down. They wear him down, bit by bit, piece by piece, asking him for help or coaxing him into assistance or just talking about how it would be nice if this or that happened: first it's a healing, Chris's twisted ankle, enough to get them back on the stage. Then a finding-spell, Justin's favorite shirt that disappeared at one of the shows. From there it's only a little while longer until it's leaning on management to schedule an extra day off or making that girl Joey has his eye on willing to look twice at him or adding in a touch of the magic to make the audience listen, really listen, and like what they hear. Buy the record. Turn out for the show. Throw them some money. Enough to let them eat. Enough so they can slow down, just a little, can catch their breath.

And really, they aren't bad. They're good guys, all of them. They just don't think, sometimes. They didn't grow up with it, not the way Lance grew up with it. They don't know the rules. He tries to explain it, but it all keeps coming out wrong, and after a while the arguments start to sound reasonable. What harm will it do? It's not like he's hurting people. Just influencing them, that's all. They don't even know it's happening to them.

Eventually, they all show up at his doorstep. Chris has papers in his hand, shoves them at Lance: the contract they never really read, the contract that took them to Europe and back again. Lance reads the highlighted sections and can feel the bottom of his stomach wrap itself around his spine.

"You have to do something about this," one of them says. Even later, Lance can't remember which one it was. He's tired enough, worn enough, that he's not surprised to hear himself say yes.

res quartum

John's got a rag tied around what's left of his hand, filthy to begin with, now matted with blood and pus. He sticks a fag in his mouth and fishes out his lighter, lighting it left-handed, awkward and fumbling.

Lance crouches down next to where John is slumped against the building's wall, ignoring the puddle of God only knows what beneath his feet. "You could have let me do that."

With his good hand, John takes the cigarette from his lips, turns his head, and spits. It's stained pink, even in the neon lights of the alley. His teeth flash in a grin, though there isn't much of amusement in it. "Didn't want to trouble you, mate. You being busy, and all that. Any sign of them?"

Lance stands up again, walks to the edge of the alley. London is burning down, but he barely notices. It's not real fire, anyway. "Nothing yet. They'll be here soon, though. Let me heal you before they do."

"No point in wasting it on me," John says. "Only a few minutes left now. Here. Something for you."

Lance turns around. "What do you mean, only a few minutes left?"

John tosses the cigarette into the puddle. It hisses as it soaks through, extinguishes. "They've got me marked. You're still a free man, though. Take it; take it somewhere safe." He fishes in the pocket of his trenchcoat, awkwardly, reaching across his chest to pull out the silk-wrapped box. "Take it somewhere far from here."

Lance can feel the way the pages inside the box radiate, even through the silk, through the wood; four pieces, fragments really, of the Book which holds the records of all Creation. It burns his hands, the way London is burning, the way the whole world is on fire. Naked I came to Carthage, he thinks. O Lord, thou pluckest me out. "I will," he says.

"Not like that," John says. "You'll lose it." He takes the box back and presses it against Lance's chest with his good hand. "Hold on tight, mate," he says, and presses it through the skin, until it catches root and holds.

res quintum

Lance has never been here before. Funny, really, when you think about it, but he'd never asked and Mal never offered. It's not bad. Nothing like what he expected; it's bright and sunny, and the gate opens up on a meadow, rolling hills dotted with flowers and low stone walls and the occasional puff of white, in the far distance, that Lance thinks might be a sheep. It looks like Ireland, like the one time he was there. He'd always thought he'd like to go back, someday. Never got the chance.

The gate isn't what he expected, either. It's made of wrought iron, and it's more of an arch, spiraling up over his head proud and strong. There aren't any bars stretching across it, just the words, in small neat script: Death is swallowed up in victory; O death, where is thy victory? O Grave, where is thy sting?

"I thought it was supposed to be 'all hope abandon, ye who enter here,'" Lance says, and sticks his hands in his pockets.

Beside him, Malachai -- no, not Malachai, not anymore; Helel Ben-shachar, Star of the Morning, radiant and shining and burning from within -- rests a hand on his shoulder. It's a comforting touch. "Only if you need to see it. For you, never. Was it worth it?"

"You know," Lance says, "I really think it was," and it's a freeing thought, a liberating thought, and he throws back his head and laughs. When he steps through the gate, it's a little bit like coming home.

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