Felix groaned. He was getting used to it again, the waking up and dreading the next day to come. Thing is, he wasn’t sure if he should be thankful for it.

How long had it been? He didn’t know the answer. All Felix knew was it was the same guys, with the same contraption, doing the same thing. The only reason Felix let them do it was so that he could keep Rosie and Kenji safe. 

He smiled at the thought of them. How brave, his little herb. She had grown so much- she was already six. Started learning at Arthens, and came back to the tower every day bouncing and talking about something… it could be a teacher, it could be a kid, it could be that she saw Auntie Amalie walking around in the hallway and got to give her a hug. It was a gift, really, to hear her day after day. 

The hum of the air conditioning, though, brought Felix back to where he was. Back to the cold and dark dungeons of his childhood, just now under a new circumstance. 

Felix quickly found, though, that he wasn’t alone in the room. There was a boy, looking around 16 with dirty blonde hair that was sitting against the wall. 

The kid wasn’t one of the normal ones that came in here, they were usually older and more tough looking, but this one looked…. Vulnerable. Maybe a little scared. Felix didn’t get to study him long, though, before the boy looked over and saw that Felix had sat up.

“You’re awake.” The young kid said, scrambling to his feet. Felix stayed on the floor, though, and just leaned against the side of his newest glass cage. 

Felix nodded. “I am.” he agreed, wondering what the boy wanted. 

“I-I-” The boy stuttered as Felix used to, and fiddled with his hands just the same. “...you’re Felix, right? Felix Hargrove?”

In the containment, Felix cringed slightly at the use of his last name. It always brought up the one person he didn’t want to think about, and it had already been so long since he had heard it. “That’s correct.” He responded, and after a short pause. “And who are you?”

“Ethan.”

“Ethan who?”

“Ethan Vigil.”

Vigil…. Felix searched his mind for any familiarity, but he couldn’t completely trust his thoughts. Maybe, though, somewhere… he remembered hearing about a Vigil, although where and when escaped him. 

“It would be nicer to meet you, Ethan, under different circumstances.” Felix gestured around to the glass container he was in. It looked like one you’d keep disgusting little beetles in, or slimy herbs.

Ethan looked down. “I’m sorry you’re here. I….” and he trailed off.

“I’m sure it’s not your fault,” Felix said quietly. “Besides, even if it was, I’m sure I would have gotten here anyways.” It’s always just my luck.

The kid nodded, but Felix could tell that he still didn’t believe him. “They’re looking for the answer.” He said simply, looking up at Felix.

“I know,” Felix replied. The ‘answer’ was to a question no one asked, bringing people back from the dead. And, for some stupid reason, they (they being the new generation of dark wizards) seemed to believe that Felix’s father had the answer. “What I don’t know, though, is who they plan on using it for.”

There was a pause, long enough to where Felix could guess the answer to.

“Periculo.” 

Felix let out a sigh as he stared up at the ceiling. What was it with wanting to bring the demons back? Periculo was never Felix’s big battle, Amalie was the one to finally stop him, but that man- if you could even call him a man- caused everyone their pain. “I should have guessed.”

“Is it true?” Ethan asked. “I mean, is it true that you guys defeated him the first time? You and the other one that came in with you?”

“Well, really, that was Amalie.” Felix chuckled softly at the idea of him and Kenji stealing her fame. “But me and Kenji were there, we just died halfway through it.”

Felix looked over to see the kid had sat down again, and was leaning in slightly like Rosie wanting one of Kenji’s classic bedtime stories. 

“Did it hurt?”

Felix shrugged. “Maybe for a second, but it didn’t last long.”

“Did dark wizards strike you and Kenji down?”

Alas, that would be the exciting answer. It was only really an accident, though, they were just at the wrong place at the wrong time.

“No, it was the roof. While Amalie was facing Periculo, we were in the room over. All of their magic strained Arthens, and soon enough the roof was crumbling. I-” Felix said, losing himself in the memories of his last few moments. “-was the first to leave, a big chunk of the ceiling fell down on top of me.” his mind jumped to where he was standing above, above the scene and above the earth, watching over Kenji and what he did next.

“Kenji could have ran,” Felix felt his voice break slightly, remembering how he felt as Kenji stayed. “He was fast, he would have gotten out in time. But, like the stupid idiot he is, he stayed. He held my hand, the only part of me that wasn’t underneath that rock, and stayed.”

Silence filled the room. Felix knew he was going on about stuff, but it wasn’t something they talked about much, and just with the waterfall of emotions on that day Felix couldn’t help but get carried away.

“How old are you now?” Felix looked back at Ethan, who asked the question. 

Felix had to think about it for a second. “...I’ll be 46 this December.”

Ethan’s eyes widened. “Wow…..”

“Yea...” Felix agreed, feeling old himself. “But I wouldn’t change any of this for the world, even if it means being dead and looking like a teenager for eternity.”

Ethan chuckled a little, but it got quiet quickly. “How?” was the question that broke the silence. “How are you able to wander around as a ghost, and not feel the overwhelming need to live again? How are you able to make death… happy?”

Felix had to really think about that question. There were days, especially in the beginning, when the separation was too much. He had Kenji, sure, but he couldn’t live again. He couldn’t walk out on the street, eat at a restaurant, or do any normal people things without worrying they’d be caught. Jeez, he and Kenji couldn’t even get married without the priest running out of the church.

“Well….” Felix started, “It was hard at first, but you adjust. I mean, I know Kenji was stoked about keeping his ‘handsome’ and ‘youthful’ face forever… and I didn’t feel any physical pain.” The scars didn’t hurt anymore.

“The real thing, though, that has made every bit of this amazing is that I now spend all day, every day, with the people I love. With Kenji, with my daughter. I never thought I’d get all of that, y’know? And yet…..” Felix gestured, not to anything in the room but to the things that weren’t there. “I seem to have struck out.”

Ethan looked down on the ground. Felix watched the young boy’s bright green eyes as they wandered across the floor and elsewhere. The only sound that could be heard was the breathing of the two of them, until eyes darted up and asked another question.

“The way you talk about Kenji… do you love him?”

Then, silence. A pause, a faraway smile, and Felix responded with words. “Yea… yea, I do.”

The boy on the floor almost didn’t know how to ask the next question. “After everything?”

Felix looked at him as he struggled to respond. Words were formulating then disappearing, until Felix heard the boy manage to say it.

“I mean- I’ve seen the memories, I-I’ve seen your dad,” Ethan swallowed, “I just… how do you leave that in the past? How do you get away?”

There was almost a pleading, a faint beg in those words. He was looking away, but even then Felix would know that the eyes would show the same thing. Felix would find the marks, the scars, the fresh bruises and old cuts. The boy reminded Felix too much of him that it made his insides hurt, and despite not feeling anything physical in years, (except Kenji and Rosie) he was reminded of the marks of life.

“Well… it wasn’t quick,” Felix started, “And it wasn’t free. It was an accident, really.”

The rustle of leaves outside filled the gap in Felix’s story.

“I was originally sent as a spy to Arthens. Keep your head down, stay invisible, get what you need and done. That was what I had planned, but Kenji….. Interrupted that.” Felix chuckled. “He was my roommate, and he was the loudest and most reckless kid there. And, being the social butterfly he was, he naturally wanted to make me his newest friend.”

“He got in some trouble at school, I was there to pass him over, and although I would have never known or admitted it, I started caring. It felt unnatural, it felt wrong, so I continued with my mission.” Felix fiddled with his hands as he continued.

“Then, the quest started. Kenji, along with Amalie and a few other kids, all of us were crammed into a tent and sent loose in the woods up on Greyfall Hill to hunt the wizards. It was stupid, really, to send teens out into the real world with no help. They gave us education then instructed us out like little soldiers, just pawns in the big game. I think we got farther than they expected,” Felix smiled slightly out of spite, “ For a rag-tag bunch of teenagers we got pretty far. We got hurt, and my father….. He did some stuff that I still feel guilty for.” 

Felix continued, while Ethan silently listened to him sigh. “My father somehow got ahold of Kenji, and dark magic can make people do things that they don’t want to do. I had stopped spying by then, but it was too late at that point, there was enough information and enough words written to entangle Kenji up in it. That idiot…. For some reason, he still managed to care. I couldn’t understand it, after everything, and there are parts of it I still don’t.”

“Time moved on. It got to the point nobody could sleep, and so many of us had permanent scars. I had a cane, before I died,” A faint picture of the cane appeared in his mind, “It was annoying, I remember, and I thought it made me look incompetent. I carried on, though, as we all did. Eventually, we got ordered back to Arthens, but the story was far from over.”

“To get to the end, though, was the battle at Arthens. It was bloody, and painful, but I was free. My father was gone, I was free.” Felix closed his eyes as he let the emotions wash over him. With Kenji in those few moments, when the background noise faded, that was all he could think of. 

I’m free, I’m free, I’m free~

There was a tapping somewhere that brought Felix out of the light, and he continued. “I told you about how the ceiling came down, and how Kenji stayed. I still kind of hate him, for staying,” Felix admitted, “and I felt guilty, a long time after that, that I had stolen his life from him. It wasn’t until about 3 years after we had passed that Kenji and I had a real talk about it. We grieved our lives together, and despite not having much to grieve I still sat there on the roof with him, talking with a wishful mind and a hoping heart. We talked about what we would have grown up to be, what we wanted our futures to look like, and by the end of it we figured out the only real thing that mattered to us was being together. Kenji, by some power, had managed to make me forgive myself. Not just for dying, but for how I lived. And, without a question, I forgave him for things he never had to even apologize for. 

“And so, we stayed together. One day, Kenji brought home Rosemary, and by some miracle we have been able to raise her. She’s six now, and will be seven in a little over three months.” The fatherly smile came back, imagining her running around the school with a flower she had just found, or a book. Felix was finished with the story for the kid, all he wanted to do in this horrible place with sit in the memories of Rosie and Kenji until it consumed him. 

However childish it might sound, he didn’t want to be here anymore. He wanted to go home, to a hug and a laugh. When was the evil ever going to be defeated? Or at least, when was it going to leave him alone?

“Felix?”

“...yea?”

“I’m sorry.”

Felix looked at the boy with a tired smile. “...I think you’ve already said that.”

“I’d get you out if I knew how…” Ethan droned off, guilt written in bold all over his face.

“If you did, they would only manage to get me again, and keep Kenji and Rosie this time… and you would get in trouble.”

The boy shrugged. “I wouldn’t care.”

“Do you care enough about getting out?”

The question struck silence, and a look of confusion appeared on those bright green eyes. 

“Getting out?”

“Yep,” Felix exhaled as he started to stand. He may be stuck here for now, but this kid needed a way out. “I grew up in these walls, so I’m going to help you out.”

Ethan scrambled to his feet, almost tripping over himself in the process. “But.. how? They’re everywhere, and if I get caught they might connect it to you and-”

“Stop,” Felix interrupted, “Just stop. Now, do they know about the servant passages? The hidden hallways within the walls?”

“Yea.”

“How about…. The secret rabbit hole out in the garden?”

The confused look was back. “The what?”

“Great, they don’t.” Felix said, thinking back to the layout of the house. “Ok, so, here’s what you’re going to do. Find a way into the garden, you can think up an excuse or if you’re allowed to wander just do so. There’s the giant hedge right next to a tree, and there should be a section of the bush that’s worn where you can squeeze through. You’ll find a hole, one that looks like it was dug by a common rabbit, but if you step in it you’ll be teleported to the middle of the forest.”

Felix looked up. “Now, you’re going to go to Arthens, and ask for Amalie. Explain it all to Amalie first, Kenji’s not always reasonable when he’s emotional and he might want to strangle you. Amalie will keep a level head. Say whatever you want, but make sure to add that I sent you, and the words floor cake.” Felix had to hold back a smile. “Tell them that it’s a message, and that that’s your proof on how I really sent you.”

“Floor cake?”

There was a nod. “Yes, floor cake. It’s something Kenji and Amalie know, you could say sprinkles or Tangled as well but if you remember anything, just remember floor cake.”

“But-” Felix heard the uneasiness in Ethan’s voice. “I’m supposed to leave you here? Alone? What if you get hurt? What if they don’t believe me? What if-”

“Hey, hey. Stop you mind from thinking about it, and just remember what I said.” Felix stared at the boy. “They’ll understand, and I know how to handle myself. I’ll be fine, ok? Now, go, I want to give you enough time.”

The boy hesitated, looking at Felix with a worried expression, but if you looked far enough you could see a grateful glint in his eyes too. 

“Thank you-” was the last thing whispered to Felix before the kid took off, and when his steps had fainted into nothingness Felix sat back down with a sigh

As much as this place drove him crazy, for a split second it was worth it. It was worth it, to give that boy a way out. It was the way out that Felix needed, and that he got after everything, but being able to pass it along… how could you describe that other than full?

Kenji would know he was alive, hopefully Amalie has found him and Rosie a safe place to be by now… the way she was she always had new tricks up her sleeves. 

As long as they were fine, and understood that he was, he could stay in this glass cage a little longer.