Chapter 62- Why'd you Only Call Me When You're High?
My earliest memory.
Blood
The rain came down sideways.
Dominic Walker sat on the edge of the Walker estate's roof, his legs dangling over the side, his expensive shoes getting soaked through. The water plastered his dark blue hair to his forehead, ran in rivulets down his neck, seeped into the collar of his shirt until it clung to his skin like a second, colder layer. He didn't move. Didn't flinch. Just sat there, fifteen years old, watching the storm batter the manicured gardens below.
"I should go inside."
He didn't move.
The rain was loud. The kind of loudness that drowned out everything else, mother, father, the endless, gnawing pressure that lived in his chest like a second heart.
[I'm supposed to be an heir. A prodigy. I'm supposed to be the one to lead the family.]
His fingers found the edge of the roof tile, tracing the groove between one shingle and the next. The motion was automatic, practiced, the same motion he'd made a thousand times at the piano bench when his hands needed something to do while his mind raced.
[Bullshit. The youngest in a century. They printed articles about me. They held parties for me. I remember father smiling for the cameras, mother holding his hand for the photographs, I hate this]
The rain kept falling.
He remembered the first time he'd made his fingers bleed. He'd been eight, maybe nine. His father had stood behind him in the training hall, his voice flat and patient.
"Again."
Dominic's hands had been shaking. His arms burned, his lungs ached, and there was blood under his fingernails from where his father's wooden sword had slapped the skin raw.
"Again."
"Again."
He'd fire. Missed. The stream of blood splattered across the floor, and for a long moment, there was only silence. The rain outside the training hall windows. His own ragged breathing.
Then his father's voice, soft now, almost gentle.
"The Walker bloodline goes back four hundred years. Through wars, through purges, through everything the world could throw at us. Do you know how many Walkers survived the witch hunts?"
Dominic had shaken his head.
"Seventeen."
"Seventeen Walkers, out of an extended family of three hundred. And do you know why they survived?"
Dominic had waited.
"Because they were the best. Because they could do what others couldn't. Because when the hunters came, the Walkers were too strong to burn, too useful to kill." He'd knelt, bringing himself level with Dominic's eyes. "You understand what I'm telling you?"
Dominic had nodded. He hadn't understood. Not really. But he'd learned to nod when his father asked questions. Learned to nod and smile and be whatever they needed him to be.
[The prodigy. The heir. The one.]
On the roof, the rain was slowing. The worst of the storm had passed, leaving behind a gray, dripping world that smelled of wet stone and ozone. Dominic watched a crow land on the garden wall below, shake water from its wings, and take off again.
"I wonder what it's like. To just... be. Without someone telling you what you're supposed to become."
He'd been ten when they started the advanced training. Eleven when they introduced the tutors. Twelve when they stopped letting him play with the other children because "distractions weaken the blood."
He'd had friends once. A boy with messy hair who'd taught him to climb trees, Edward. A girl who'd shown him how to skip stones across the lake, Neila. A girl that always talked to him even during his lowest, Seraphina. They'd disappeared, one by one, until the only faces he saw were tutors and trainers and the occasional relative who visited to measure his progress, nod approvingly, and leave.
[We are the Walkers. We do not fail.]
Her voice was firm.
Mother'd been the one to find him crying, once, when he was seven. He couldn't even remember why, some childhood slight, some small grief that seemed monumental at the time. She'd knelt beside him, wiped his tears with a handkerchief that smelled of her perfume, and said.
"Dominic, don't cry. You're a man, cry one more time and I'll beat you."
He'd stopped crying. He'd learned to endure. And somewhere along the way.
[I had forgotten how to want things for myself. I only wanted what they wanted me to. Like some puppet]
[But I did want things. I wanted to be good enough. I wanted to make them proud. I wanted to be the heir they needed, the prodigy they'd made me into.]
He'd trained until his hands bled. Studied until his eyes blurred. Practiced techniques until his body moved without thought, until the blood in his veins responded to his will like a loyal servant, rising and shaping at his command.
And it had worked. He'd become what they wanted. Level seven at twelve. Level eight at fourteen. The youngest in living memory, they said. The one who would restore the name, carry the bloodline forward, be everything they'd lost and more.
[Then I began to stagnate.]
The rain had stopped completely now. The clouds were thinning, patches of pale sky appearing between them, and in the distance, the first birds had begun to sing again. Dominic didn't move.
[Sophia Miller.]
He'd heard the name before. Everyone had. The Millers were old blood, older than the Walkers, older than the Academy itself. But they'd faded, over the centuries. Grown comfortable. Complacent. Or so they'd said.
Then Sophia had appeared.
He remembered the announcement. He'd been in the training hall, as always, his hands wrapped in bandages from the morning's session. His father had called him into the study, a rare thing. The television was on, the screen showing a press conference he didn't understand.
"The Miller girl," his father had said, his voice strange. "This is bullshit."
Dominic had watched.
On the screen, a girl stood on a podium. She was small, smaller than him, with coffee-brown hair and golden eyes that caught the light like something alive. She was speaking, but the words didn't matter. What mattered was what hung behind her.
Weapons. Dozens of them. Swords and spears and things he didn't have names for, floating in the air like leaves in a current, their surfaces gleaming with a light that seemed to come from within. And beneath them, a crowd of reporters, officials, dignitaries, all staring up at this girl with something that looked like fear.
"Damn it! A Walker is supposed to be there for fuck's sake! Dominic, you're useless. Drill that into your goddamn peanut brain!"
He'd felt it then. Not jealousy. Not anger. Something worse.
[Emptiness.]
Because he'd spent his whole life being shaped into something.
Sophia was a ceiling.
And he was far too short to ever reach it.
He'd turned to look at Dominic, his eyes searching with hatred in his eyes. "Why the hell do you have to be so useless, after all we've done for you. After all we've invested in your growth, completely out of the trash!"
Dominic had nodded.
His eyes staring at nothing.
[What's the point?]
The question had followed him ever since.
On the roof, the clouds were breaking apart, shafts of late afternoon light cutting through the gray. Dominic watched them move across the gardens, watched the shadows shift and reform, watched the world go on without him.
[What's the point in anything? What's the point if there's always going to be someone better? Someone who far outclasses you no matter how much effort you put in? If only I had been born more lucky, if only I tried harder]
He bit his lip.
His stomach growled.
He blinked, the sound pulling him back from wherever he'd gone. The light was different now, golden, slanting. The rain had stopped completely, and the air smelled of wet earth and clean stone, and somewhere in the house below, someone was cooking dinner.
[I should eat.]
He didn't move.
[What else is there to do? I don't want to be hit again. I don't want any more scars. I don't want any more pain. All of that effort, just to be beaten by raw talent. God damn it. I hate this world, this unfair, putrid, evil world. What if I went back? What would I even say? That I was going out for a walk?]
His stomach growled again, louder this time.
Dominic looked down at his hands. The skin was pale, almost translucent in the fading light. The calluses were thick from years of training, the knuckles slightly swollen from old fractures he'd healed badly. These were the hands of a prodigy. The hands of an heir. The hands of someone who had been shaped, and shaped, and shaped until there was nothing left underneath.
[What do I want?]
The question came from somewhere deep, somewhere he'd been trying to bury for years. He sat with it, let it sit in his chest like a stone, heavy and immovable.
[I want to stop. I want to walk away. I want to run from them. I want to cry.]
A gust of wind swept across the roof, cold and damp, making him shiver. His clothes were soaked through, his hair plastered to his forehead, his skin goose-pimpled and pale. He'd been out here for hours, and his body was beginning to complain.
[Maybe I don't want this. Maybe I don't want to be strong. Maybe I don't want to fight at all]
His father's voice. His mother's voice. Four hundred years of dead ancestors, all speaking through him, all demanding the same thing.
[Endure.]
Dominic stood. His legs were stiff, his joints aching from sitting too long in the cold. He stretched, feeling his spine pop, his shoulders crack, his body protesting the movement after so long without it.
[I don't want to be a witch]
Below him, the gardens stretched out in neat, manicured rows. The hedges were trimmed, the paths raked, the fountains still flowing despite the rain. Everything in its place. Everything controlled. Everything exactly as it should be.
[I could leave.]
The thought came unbidden, unwanted. He pushed it down, the way he'd been pushing it down for years.
[I could walk out the front gate. Take a train somewhere. Disappear. Become someone else. No one would find me. No one would look.]
He knew it wasn't true.
[They have connections, even if I wasn't the strongest witch, I was still the first in line for the head. I don't want to be the head. They'd just find me anyways]
And even if they didn't, even if he somehow escaped, what then? What was he without the training, without the title, without the endless pressure that had shaped him into something that might be human?
[I don't know. I don't know what I am without it.]
His stomach growled a third time, insistent now.
[This would all end if I had just… killed myself]
"But I don't want to die, I want a new life, I want to be human for once. I want to live to experience being human."
Dominic sighed, the sound lost in the wind. He climbed down from the roof the way he'd come up, his fingers finding holds he'd used a hundred times before, his feet finding purchase on the wet shingles. It was easier than walking through the house, easier than facing the servants' questions, the tutors' expectations, the endless weight of being watched.
He dropped onto the garden path, his shoes squelching on the wet gravel. The house loomed above him, its windows dark, its walls blank, its doors closed against the storm.
[I don't want to go inside.]
He went anyway.
The kitchen was warm.
Someone had left a pot of soup on the stove, the smell of vegetables and herbs filling the space with something almost comforting. Dominic stood in the doorway for a moment, watching the steam rise, listening to the faint hiss of the pilot light.
There was perfectly cooked steak on the counter, fresh, the crust still warm. A knife beside it, the blade gleaming under the soft kitchen lights. A note, in his maid's careful handwriting
"Don't forget to eat."
[It tastes like nothing. No matter how much seasoning, no matter how perfect it was. It felt empty]
He ate anyway. One piece, then another, standing in the doorway of the kitchen, watching the light fade from the windows. The rain had stopped completely now.
[What do I do tomorrow?]
The question sat in his chest, heavy as stone.
[Train. Study. Practice. Be the heir. Be the prodigy. Be what they need me to be.]
He finished the steak, wiped his hands on his wet pants, and walked toward the stairs. His room was at the end of the hall, as far from his parents' as he could get without leaving the house entirely. He'd chosen it when he was ten, when he'd first understood that space was something he needed.
The door was open. Inside, his bed was made, his desk was clear, his clothes were folded and put away. Everything in its place.
A camera watched him.
No privacy.
He closed the door. Leaned against it. Let the darkness swallow him.
[What's the point?]
No point.
Dominic pushed off from the door, crossed to his desk, sat down in the chair that was too small for him now, that he'd been using since he was twelve. The books were stacked by subject, the papers were sorted by date, the pens were arranged by color.
[In a few hundred years, no one will remember me. What's the point?]
He didn't.
Instead, he sat in the dark, watching the last light fade from the window, listening to the house settle around him. Somewhere above, his father was in his study.
[But I'm not. I'm just... this. Whatever this is.]
His hands were in his lap, the fingers curled, the palms up. He looked at them for a long time, at the calluses and the scars, at the shape that training had given them, at the things they could do that no normal person's hands could.
[I could leave. I could go somewhere no one knows my name. I could be someone else. Anyone else.]
The thought was familiar now, worn smooth by repetition.
[But I won't. I'm a Walker. This is what I was manufactured for.]
His stomach was full. His body was tired. His mind was... somewhere else, somewhere it went sometimes, when the pressure got too much, when the questions got too loud.
He stood. Crossed to his bed. Lay down on top of the covers, still in his wet clothes, and stared at the ceiling.
[What do I want?]
Dominic closed his eyes. The rain had started again, he could hear it on the roof, soft and steady, a rhythm that matched something in his chest. He lay there, listening, letting it wash over him, letting it drown out the questions for a little while.
[Endure.]
[Endure.]
[What's the point?]