Tea and a View PV Sylvain I. Finished

Hexcode= #507091

Another Monday meant another patrol by the lake. His prefect duties didn't actually include the Great Lake's perimeter but he learned to enjoy a brisk walk with some crisp air to help distract him from his thoughts every now and again. What ice that had managed to gather on the grounds tended to stay clumped together and as Sylvain made his way along the shoreline, he was sure to bust up chunks of the stuff whenever he could. Breaking the ice figuratively in conversation was never as easy as it was literally at the edge of the lake.

Pulling the brim of his hat down to deflect the winterized gusts, and wrapping his wool coat a little tighter had helped to stave off the onslaught of the elements. As his boots crunched the lightly packed snow beneath his feet, the lad pulled out his wand and produced the umbrella charm. The wind and his attire were muffling his voice a bit, but creating a translucent umbrella to protect him from the fresh and oncoming precipitation proved simple enough on his own. It was only because he had been keeping his head down that he noticed the footprints in snow. Whoever this person was, they had light-feet.

He thought it most peculiar that someone else was up early and taking a walk by the Great Lake on such a cold day. Syl knew more than a few students who were likely up and jogging even in the cold, he couldn't help but notice these tracks looked more calm and controlled than a jogger's pace. He began following the footsteps, and stayed frosty, his mind presently absorbing his surroundings in case he needed to recall them later.

The woods were pretty dead and dry looking this time of year. Leaves had been plastered to the ground beneath the cold compress of winter's whitest blanket, and no doubt the wriggliest earthworms had been drowned to death by what melting was already taking place. The sky's beautiful dawn had faded now, it was morning in earnest and the sun hid behind the clouds as he trudged alongside his evasive quarry's tracks.

Though the air burned his lungs, it was fun to see his breath take visible form in front of him. He would at first pretend he was a dragon like he had when he was an even smaller boy. Breathing clouds of steam on his "enemies" and afterwards, he began to puff like a steam engine until running out of breath and focusing on the path ahead.

Minerva was not far behind as evidenced by her occasional screech which meant she was busy. Likely chasing an unlucky rat to its doom. Sylvain didn't envy her appetite for rodents, he was certainly proud of her prowess as a hunter.

When he saw the pained revenant sitting before him, the black of his turtleneck providing a stark contrast against the paleness of his skin and the white powdery snow, Sylvain almost gasped while his heart raced with fear. It was shocking to see someone so far out from the school so early in the day, and the footprints led directly to him. At first he was worried the boy might have recognized him, but let go of the impulse to turn around and retreat.

At least the tea smelled inviting, he probably wouldn't have had the courage to say something had it not.

Sylvain took another step forward attempting to gain the attention of this boy in black, attempting to push his fear of being isolated to the side, but it stayed. Nervously, he would wave and then nod as if to say "may I bother you?" without uttering a word. It was all he could think of to try and break the ice. So he stood there just waving. His heart filled with fear, his head filled with questions, and his prefect badge beneath his coat.

Mentions @Selim Faust

"And those that were seen dancing were thought insane by those who could not hear the music. - F.Nietche"

That was not a whisper, whispers were never polite.

The boy looked up to see another his age, bundled up and dressed appropriately, unlike Selim. Steam wafted from the taller boy's mouth.

He breathed.

The snake's eyes glinted in the morning sun, looking wrong in some unexplainable way. The lower half of his face was buried in his violet scarf, but the sallowness of his cheeks could not be hidden. The smaller boy said nothing, staring at the other for a few moments, but seeming to not really see him.

Then the child looked back out to the lake absently, lifting the teacup to his covered face and 'drinking' it. The hot liquid poured down his front, he didn't seem to notice, instead lowering the cup and swallowing dryly as if he had sipped it.

He continued to stare off into the distance, eyes flickering to seemingly nothing for long stretches of time.

He was watching as ghouls and fiends waltzed on the lake, moving unnaturally, as if there was nothing beneath their grey skin and hollow eye sockets. They were dressed nicely though, in ball gowns and tuxedos. Selim wanted to join them, but his legs were numb and he couldn't stand.

The black sun continued to rise, making the shadows longer instead of shorter.

Dead ravens cawed on the branches beside him, beaks open agape, eyes non-existent.

The flickering, eerie entities continued to dance, spinning around each other to silence, bending, their skin folded like empty clothing as they moved. The unknown beat was getting faster and faster as the whispers grew louder, a cacophony of the dead.

The ravens spoke as the entities jerked about unnaturally, making Selim's skin crawl.

"Hisoka."
"Hisoka."

"Hisoka."
"Hisoka."
"Hisoka."

"Hisoka."

"Hisoka."

"Child..."

Hisoka looked up. There was one of the ghouls, staring at him with solid black eyes.

"Join us."

Selim watched.

Hexcode= #507091

The way the turtlenecked mage looked through his form put Sylvain's skin to pins and needles. Something felt wrong, or rather it felt like something was worse than wrong, but Sylvain couldn't even begin to fathom what was going through his mind. Still, he managed to falter out a greeting though his voice carried the same wariness his heart held onto. "Hello...?"

As the tea spilled down the child's frontside, soaking into his scarf, Sylvain grew even more concerned for their safety. His own hands were nearly numb from the cold but the chill that came from watching Selim's apathetic, distant stare put him at unease and made him uncomfortable to say the least. "Is everything alright?" It was sort of obvious that everything wasn't, but the only clues he had were the ones in front of him.

As the sun rose and the shadows grew shorter, Sylvain's wariness began wearing him thin. It was freezing, and this boy was clearly out of his mind, but what should I do about it. Now that was an answer that evaded him. He first thought of dragging him to the infirmary to have his head checked for bumps or lumps, but remembered that he often had trouble carrying his books up the tower, let alone another child. No, that wouldn't do.

He thought of running back to grab an adult. Someone who might be vastly more capable of helping the fading youth in front of him, but the glint of the lake in his eyes made Sylvain wary of leaving him for even a second. He knelt down in the snow next to Selim and did the only other thing he could think of.

Sylvain took his coat off, and wrapped it around Selim, the boy's prefect badge shining from the top of his robes as he cloaked the tea soaked stranger in the warmest wool Diagon Alley sold to Hogwarts's students as he crossed his arms to ward off the cold. "What's your name?" He said trying his best to put on a brave face. "I'm Syl."

Mentions @Selim Faust

Selim Faust

"Forgetting is Difficult. Remebering is worse."

That voice again, the one who is not a whisper, a lie, a fragment of his mind.

Hisoka didn't listen though, he was too enraptured by the figure in front of him, it's pale face was attention-grabbing, the eyes, hollow socket that extended down, as if tears had eaten through its skull long ago. Its mouth was agape, unmoving, but a voice came out of it. It was dressed in a lovely tailcoat, one Hisoka wondered if he would wear to the next event in Hogwarts.

The boy thought he'd look very nice in one, it brought a smile to his face, one that was hauntingly child-like. The whispers were screaming in his head, they never liked it when he was in control of the vessel, they much preferred having him buried deep, deep down, forgotten.

The figure before him had pulled him out of that darkness, if only briefly. Already Hisoka could feel those shadow fingers pulling him down, down into the depths of his psyche.

But he didn't want to go back to that darkness, he wanted to stay in the world at least a little longer.

Surprisingly, the Cruel One was letting him stay, probably not out of kindness, but at that moment Hisoka didn't care.

His fingers curled out, dropping the saucer and teacup in his hand as if it had never been there. Slowly, he reached out to the offered corpse-like hand of the figure.

But he was interrupted again by that one voice that was not a whisper.



The shadows rippled with the words, everything he saw fading in and out revealing the hidden picture beneath it that had been warped into something unrecognizable. The smile faded slightly, and his hand pulled back a bit as a vague flicker of confusion crossed his face.

For a while everything solidified, until Hisoka felt something or someone move beside him, the snow crunched and the blanket he partially sat on dipped. Everything was unstable again, and the boy's heart spiked in fear, he didn't know what was going on. All the other voices did but he didn't, he wasn't used to reality(?).

His figure flinched, something was placed on his shoulders, warmth the child hadn't known he didn't have slowly creeping through him again.

Everything shifted in an indescribable way, and suddenly, it was bright, there were no shadows, no dead birds. The figures on the now-normal lake had disappeared, and the entity before him slowly faded as his mind realized nothing was there, nothing beyond what was truly real.

A shape intake of breath, the boy looked around, frightened, were the voices going to drag him into the depths now?

"No, child, I'll let you stay a little longer. Let's just say this situation piques my curiosity."

The Cruel One hissed in his ear, making him curl slightly into himself. He didn't like snakes much anymore, they were mean.

The boy's eyes landed on another boy, who spoke again, softly. They were the same age, but for a brief moment, Hisoka felt like he was in the presence of his older brother. The taller boy looked cold and was absent of a coat. Hisoka realized that he, was in fact, in the possession of the stranger's jacket.

The raven-haired boy noted another thing, a shiny badge was pinned on the tall boy's robes, it looked very smooth, and he felt an urge to touch it, to feel something like that again, but the words sprawled across it stopped him.

Prefect.

The voices grew subdued, afraid as Paranoia curled around them.

The raven shrunk back slightly, eyes trailing away to the snow that now glistened with soft oranges and pinks instead of bloody reds and blighted violets.

Why was the prefect here?

They spoke, voice still soft, something Hisoka was not used to.



'Name.'

The foreboding word echoed in his head, and everyone grew silent, the Cruel One's dark interest piquing.

His breath caught in his throat, wariness of the other stranger holding his tongue, Paranoia's whispers still tickling his ears despite it going silent upon hearing that one-syllable taboo.

"Well, child? Don't dally, rather unsightly of the Heir to the Faust Clan." the Cruel One spoke in tainted amusement.

The raven opened his mouth, and forced out an answer, the truth.

"Hisoka."

The word felt like acid scalded his tongue. In a jerk of instinct, the smaller boy clasped his hands over his mouth, feeling sick to the stomach.

It was the truth though, he wasn't Selim Faust at that moment, no, he was Sohma Hisoka.

Selim Faust was different.

Selim Faust was strong, he had a presence inside his head and outside in the real world. He was a boy with an established, if mildly unstable identity.

He was smart, he was older, in terms of their mental age.

Hisoka wasn't. Hisoka was weak, he had no presence, he barely had an identity beyond the boy who was crushed under the heel of the real world until he was forgotten. Hisoka was six.

The raven curled into himself, face buried in his arms and knees.

Turmoil was all he knew. The child didn't know if he'd last much longer, soon enough the others in his psyche would dismantle him, for he was useless to the vessel, he was just a liability.

Perhaps the Cruel One was letting him out this one last time because he was about to exist no longer. The Cruel One knew, so he taunted Hisoka with a hint of what life would be like if he was in control, what life could've been like, what he could've experienced.

His last glimpse of a life he'd never get to live.

Salty tears trailed down his cheeks, making them tingle with a quickly-fading warmth. The snake in his head let out laughter at the tears. No sobs accompanied the tracks of water though, just glassy eyes staring out at a fantastical world he'd never be a part of.

All he had left was his name.

A name his father had forbidden him from revealing to those outside the clan.

A last act of desperation to be remembered.

Hexcode= #507091

The pale, gaunt skeleton of a boy's name was Hisoka, and Sylvain didn't think he'd be forgetting that name any time soon.

"Hisoka it is then," he said sheepishly. Half-nervous, half-genuine. As snow and ice chilled his bones, the warmth of Syl's coat seemed, to him, to snap Hisoka out of whatever grasp confusion still had on this poor unfortunate soul, but even now he seemed to be getting worse.

Tears trailing down his face, with hands clasped over his mouth as if to hold back a flood, the boy seemed libel to wretch on the pair of tea partyers. Syl didn't think twice about giving him the coat, vomit or not. Though his writer did .

When saw the lost soul's tears, Sylvain's confusion only grew more and more profound. Poor Hisoka, what should have been childlike eyes were instead mournful. Like they were letting go of something important.

"Hisoka..." he started cautiously, unsure whether or not the boy might follow his directions. Directions from a complete stranger that he had only just gaspingly shared his name with. "You look like a mess, let's go inside and shake off this cold together."

It wasn't just empathy fueling his decisions anymore, but his own self-preservation. The weather was wretched, and it was an awful day for a walk in the park.

"I know where we could find a secret stash of chocolate and play a board game in peace."

Mentions @Selim Faust

Selim Faust

"The monster was the best friend I ever had." - Boris Karloff

Hisoka looked up as the boy spoke, eyes wide as he had curled into himself as if protecting himself from an unseen enemy. For a moment the boy couldn't process the taller one's words, but when he did, he slowly nodded, and stood stiffly, as if he had been sitting in that spot for longer than it appeared.

The thin child then looked down at the picnic blanket and tea that remained on the ground, and slowly gathered it up, pouring out the tea into the snow before storing the set in his book bag and resting the folded cloth in his arms.

With unsteady legs, the boy walked to the prefect's side, looking up in the direction of the school in apprehension.

The Cruel One observed this all, not saying another word as Hisoka's gaze took in his surroundings, seeming to drink them in as if this would be the last time he'd see them. Likely, it would be.

The gaunt, ghost-like child was pulled into himself, body language speaking of his discomfort and uncertainty. He looked afraid, finding himself to begin to desperately want to be pulled back into the depths of his mind to be forgotten for the rest of Selim's life.

He didn't want to experience what life would be like if 'That Night' hadn't happened, he didn't want to yearn all the more for freedom from his own psyche, he wanted to painlessly slip into oblivion.

He wasn't being allowed that.

"L-let's go..." Hisoka spoke quietly, reluctantly.

The Cruel One wasn't going to let his depart in peace.

The boy continued to wordlessly cry.

Hexcode= #507091

Tears flowing down the face of his new ward, Sylvain's proverbial wing spread over the boy as they made their way up the flight of stairs. His thoughts were racing and he had a million questions, but now wasn't the time for the poking and prodding of curiosity. There would be time to understand later. Right now, all he wanted was to comfort the other child and help him let go of whatever was hurting him. He hoped that Hisoka would forgive him for the accidental deception, as up until then it had slipped his mind to tell the boy he fully intended to take him to see the nurse. He just hoped @Kelsey Brumby still had that retort full of hot chocolate at his disposal.

Thinking ahead to how thankful he would be for getting out of the elements, Sylvain forged a path from the front and opened the doors leading to the Great Hall, holding them so his frostbitten duckling could continue to collect warmth inside the coat he had given to him as protection. Hopefully by now the warmth was returning some sort of reason to him. Having heard about hypothermia once before, and even though he'd never been subjected to it himself, the thought of being alone in the cold for an unknown amount of time must surely have been suffering for the gaunt figure before him.

In the short few moments since he had met Hisoka, his concern had grown to worry, and in the worst of the worry Sylvain did what he thought was the best he could to help him. He went looking for an adult.

"Hey Hisoka," the lad muttered in a whisper while lagging just a bit behind as they rounded the corner to the Infirmary. "I won't let anything happen to you, okay? I'll stay right by your side the whole time promise." He hated moments like these. A "but" would have to be interjected into his speech to soften the blow of his inability to speak his mind, "but I can't help you on my own." His grin faded a bit as he concentrated on Hisoka's face, hoping to find some measure of understanding before moving on.

"Nurse Brumby gives amazing hugs, and his hot chocolate is simply to die for." He once again held the door open for the lost soul he had found washed up on the shores of the Great Lake. And although he was a bit out of breath and cold to the bone, he looked no less glad to see him than someone who had just invited a long lost friend inside their home.

Mentions @Selim Faust @Kelsey Brumby

Moved to the hospital wing.