Sanctuary - 11. Chapter 11 - Aki

“I don’t know what you want me to do, Hel. I can’t just keep taking time off work to look after you!”

He stood and watched as the teenager turned his back on him and stormed upstairs, shouldering roughly past Ishca as he went. There was the characteristic slam of Hel’s bedroom door, and Aki wondered vaguely when he’d be forced to replace the hinges. The big ceramic technician clenched his fists, and resisted the urge to punch something in frustration.

“Aki?”

“I don’t bloody know what’s wrong with him!” Aki snapped before Ishca could get further than one carefully phrased word. “He’s a moody little pain in the arse!” Aki turned and stomped into the kitchen, banging things about to make breakfast. The slightly destructive noises made him feel oddly better. “He doesn’t want me to leave him here alone; but I have to go to work!” He nearly threw the milk back into the fridge. “Teenagers! I don’t know what he expects me to do; it’s not like I asked for this.”

“Did it ever occur to you that he’s bored?” Ishca asked with one eyebrow raised. Aki glared at his lover, and gritted his teeth.

“He’s a teenager: they’re always bored.”

“And you’d be perfectly fine locked up in a house by yourself all day?” Ishca sighed. “Come on Aki, be reasonable. The only company he’s had since you took him to the park is you and me, and we’ve both been out at work every day.”

“Ah, fuck…” Aki dragged his fingers through his permanently messy hair and sighed. From the moment he and Hel had waved James and Peter off to catch their train, Aki knew he had been seriously, and almost deliberately, ignoring his guardianship duties. Hel was his ward, legally as well being his responsibility from the moment he’d claimed sanctuary, but Aki hadn’t done so much as cook the boy a decent meal since the day Ishca had arrived.

“He’s a kid used to doing things and being out and about. Of course being stuck here all day with nothing but the TV for company is making him irritable.” Ishca began laying out items on the kitchen surface that part of Aki’s mind recognised as belonging in a packed lunch. “You’ve heard how he talks about playing cricket, or running, and you saw how pleased he was the day after you guys came back from meeting Peter and James.”

“Crap… well what am I supposed to do with him?”

Ishca rolled his eyes and flicked his hair away from his face. Though he’d been sharing Aki’s bed nearly two weeks, Aki still hadn’t overcome how incredibly beautiful his lover was. He’d wanted to apologise to Ishca for what he’d said that morning in bed, but the young man had returned with a job and a smug smile. Aki’s apology had taken the form of a very successful blowjob which had made Ishca stifle his groans by biting the pillow: it had been a good evening, and afterwards Aki hadn’t said anything and simply lain around enjoying the afterglow.

“You know, you could do what normal people do with their teenagers.”

“Huh? What?”

Ishca stared at him as though he was being deliberately thick.

“Send him to school?”

*

Aki had already taken far too many ‘personal days’ for his department’s liking, so he phoned in with an imaginary migraine, knowing it was going to need to be the last time in a long while that he let the university down. The post of Rectory Officer might’ve come with a house, but the job didn’t pay the bills, the council tax, or buy groceries, and Aki needed to retain the salary that accompanied Head Ceramic Technician if he was ever going to keep up with Hel’s increased need for a better fitting wardrobe.

Hel’s bedroom door was still shut, and Aki could hear the boy pacing up and down, but still on two feet, grumbling indistinctly under his breath. He left the young spirit wolf to his sulk for a little while longer, and spent ten minutes with the internet trying to find out where he could send the boy, and how long it would take to get started. The results were pleasing, because Zoe at The Forgery had provided the new Hel Thorn with not only new identity documents, but also mock transcripts, educational records, primary examination results, and transfer forms for whichever new school Aki chose to send him to. It was slightly uncomfortable for the quarter-demon to realise that pretty much everyone had more forethought about his role as a guardian than he did. The moment they had signed all the papers, Hel had become his ward and official responsibility: Aki hadn’t watched the little blue wolf scamper away with James across the park, because he had been staring at the sleeping figure of the boy he had just become, in a very real way, parent to.

Forms from The Forgery in hand, Aki knocked on the door.

“Go away.” Hel sounded miserable rather than angry, and Aki wished his abilities stretched further than making things warmer: it would be much easier to deal with a teenager if he’d shared Ishca’s empathic abilities.

“Hey,” he wrapped on the door again with his knuckles. “Open up bud; we gotta talk.”

The door cracked open a fraction and Hel blinked at him through the gap. Aki smiled at the blue gaze, and Hel let the door swing open and frowned at him.

“What?” he barked petulantly.

“School.”

“Huh?” Hel arched a pale eyebrow at him, like he was stupid.

“School,” Aki repeated, “I was thinking you should go.”

Hel’s total confusion shouldn’t have been a shock, but Aki saw his outline blur ever-so-slightly. The boy had still only controlled his shifting consciousness twice, both times in the park under James’s werewolf-tutelage, but Aki wanted to keep him present and in control. As Hel’s jaw quivered, a noise beginning to become a whimper issuing from his throat, Aki did the only thing he could realistically think off, and wrapped his arm around the boy’s narrow shoulders, pulling him close to his chest. Hel vibrated against him, quivering softly, but his body stayed rigid and the blue wolf failed to appear.

“Whoa there, bud,” Aki stroked the boy’s hair and felt the tension in him crackle against the warmth in his own body, “it’s all OK.”

“B-b-but…” Hel stammered, “I c-c-can’t-!”

“Yes you can. Shhh…” Aki petted his hair in nearly the same way he’d done the day Hel had first arrived and lain passed out on the sofa, and felt the boy’s heartbeat slow back to normal levels. “Come sit in the studio with me. We need to talk.”

More than the fact that he had allowed Ishca to take over Hel’s physical needs, and James his emotional ones, Aki was disappointed he had left it so long to explain to Hel his current situation. As far as the boy was concerned, people were looking for him, and even with a new name, he would be easily recognisable as a teenage runaway. But it wasn’t so. The spirit wolf had found him by instinct; some feral unconscious part of his mind knowing where to go, knowing help would be there, and knowing what to gasp on Aki’s doorstep before hypothermia had set in. Instinct was a powerful thing, a useful tool that had allowed Aki to use more heat and fire than he ever normally was able to when it had been necessary, but instinct didn’t tell useful stories or teach you the lessons you needed later; Aki was going to have to explain everything including the most basic principles of sanctuary to his ward.

Hel still hadn’t spent any time in Aki’s studio, and since his, and Ishca’s, arrivals, Aki hadn’t spent much time there either. He took up a small lump of white clay pretty much by habit, re-wrapping the larger block securely in its plastic cover, and began to pinch a shape without thinking. The boy watched him, head to one side, and shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably. Aki remembered what he’d first said about art being ‘for nerds’, and realised the boy had probably spent very little time in any kind of creative setting. He handed another piece of clay to Hel, about the size of a golf ball, and merely smiled at the confused spirit animal.

“When we went to The Forgery, you got a new name, but really you could have gone to school the day you arrived – if you’d been up to it, and strong enough that is. No one who is looking for you is ever going to be able to find you.”

“Huh?”

“Not even if we took you back to your old school. They would recognise you sure enough, but they’d have no idea why, and no one would be able to link you with the wanted person and your old name.”

Hel looked up from his lump of clay, and frowned at the difference between his unrecognisable shape and the tiny canine being formed in Aki’s skilled and dexterous fingers. The boy squashed his material with a growl and started again.

“I don’t get it.”

“Use the pad of your thumb and your two other fingers,” Aki explained softly, knowing it wasn’t really the question Hel needed answered. “Cradle the shape with your other hand and let it come to you; you’ll see what it’s supposed to be.”

“Uh-huh.”

They worked in silence for a moment, and Aki took up a little metal tool from his bench to start adding detail to the little wolf which in his mind was already tinted blue.

“You were protected from the moment you claimed sanctuary. Not even a team of wild horses could drag you from this house against your will.”

“Really?” Hel sounded shocked.

“Shelter and protection for all the creatures not of God,” Aki spoke as though quoting. “No priest may harm you, no screaming mob with pitchforks can burn you at the stake, no one can force you to do anything you don’t want to. Sanctuary will keep you, feed you, clothe you, help you.”

“But for how long.”

“For as long as you need it,” Aki smiled at the boy. Hel was too young to even be thinking about life alone. Aki couldn’t have imagined being away from his mother at barely fourteen. “Forever.”

“I can stay here forever?” Hel was surprised, and Aki wondered if he’d been too aloof in his attempt not to crowd the rebellious teenager. Even though he was Hel’s guardian, the boy still didn’t seem to know that Aki cared about him. The Rectory Officer placed the near-finished sculpture of Hel’s other shape on his desk, and reached out a hand to the boy who stood in his studio, still looking permanently scared.

“Forever. This is your home now Hel, you have my word.”

Hel seemed to consider this for a moment, and with his head on one side, Aki could almost see his wolf-ears twitching with a question.

“Does that mean I can paint my room?”

“We’ll see.” Aki wondered how his budget was going to stretch to re-decoration as well as the inevitable expenses of school books, uniform, and sports gear, but he smiled. “How about we find you a school to attend first?”

“In a minute,” Hel bit his lower lip, concentrating on the clay in his hands, “I wanna finish this.”

Aki smiled, and watched the boy for a moment before turning back to his long abandoned work bench. He had enough figures finished to fill a little kiln at the university and they had dried out enough to be fired. Aki didn’t like the standard method of double firing for all his work, and so he dipped his dried raw clay pieces into a tub of glossy white under-glaze before wiping their bases clean and beginning to add detail with a variety of colours, speckles, and brushes to stipple and texture the otherwise smooth finish. No two were completely alike.

By the time Aki had wiped the dusty clay remnants from his desk, Hel was sitting on the floor behind him, spine against the wall, and turning his creation over and over in is fingers. Aki frowned at him, but he didn’t need to ask the question.

“It’s you.”

“Is that right?”

“It’s not very good.” Hel bit his lip, but he held out the clay model to Aki, and the young man took it carefully. “Sorry.”

“Never be sorry for anything you make, Hel. It’s beautiful.”

The figurine was basic, just recognisable as a person, but Hel had used one chewed thumbnail to texture the surface into a web of cracks like dried mud on a desert riverbank long after the rains had gone. Hel had said he looked different as a spirit, and Aki was left wondering just how much of his grand-sire was really in him.

“Aki?”

“Yes?” Aki could feel the weight of whatever it was Hel was going to say, and wished, not for the first time, that there was some kind of handbook he could give the boy, explaining everything in terms much clearer than Aki felt he was able to.

“Are there lots of… us? I mean, people who aren’t… human?”

“Well, that sort of depends what you mean by ‘a lot’; and also on what sort of ‘not humans’,” Aki replied vaguely. “There are quite a lot of what you might call gifted humans, like Ishca, who have abilities far beyond the norm; they tend to go in for spiritualism and wicca, and aren’t generally very good company, though of course that depends on their talents and personalities. Sometimes their abilities aren’t really passed on to the next generation, which is how you end up with guys like Peter who understand the world of the supernatural without actually having any special talents at all.”

“Oh,” Hel frowned, “but Ishca said that I was a spirit because of my parents?”

“That tends to be the way. Spirit guides are rare, very rare, so probably both your parents were spirits.”

“But what happened to them?”

Aki sighed heavily.

“I don’t know, bud. You’ve been in state foster care… I dunno if we’d be able to find out.” Aki felt he was squashing Hel with every word, so he shut up.

“They wouldn’t have left me though… unless they had to?”

Aki exhaled, and was suddenly glad Ishca wasn’t around, because you couldn’t lie near an empath, even if it was for the greater good.

“No,” Aki wrapped his arm around the boy’s narrow shoulders. He really hoped what he said was true. “They must have had a good reason.”