Chapter 16: Consequences of Trust II
Chapter 16: Consequences of Trust II
Gaius was already awake when they burst through the door. He always seemed to be awake. Alex had started to wonder if the old man slept at all, or if he simply existed in some permanent state of being one bad omen away from working.
"Bed." Gaius said immediately, no questions yet, just pointing. "There. Now."
Alex and the guard lowered Oseka onto the nearest straw bed, with Spartacus standing just behind. He’d seen them dragging Oseka, and tagged along.
Oseka had gone quiet somewhere in the corridor — not better, just still, his head dangling slightly, blood dried dark and flaking at the corners of his nose.
Gaius crossed the room fast for a man his age. He crouched beside the bed, two fingers at Oseka’s throat, eyes narrowed in that particular way that meant he was counting something only he could feel.
"What happened." He didn’t look up. It wasn’t really a question. It was a demand wearing the shape of one.
"I don’t—" Alex’s voice came out wrong. Too fast. He tried again. "I don’t know. We were talking. And then he just... he started screaming. Holding his head. And then the blood."
"Talking about what?"
Alex’s mouth opened. Nothing useful came out.
"Nothing." He said. "Just... nothing. Just talking."
Gaius’s eyes lifted from Oseka’s neck and found Alex’s face.
He held the look for a long moment. Long enough that Alex felt it crawling somewhere under his ribs, worse than any wound Gaius had ever pressed his fingers into.
Then, without a word, he turned back to Oseka.
He checked the boy’s eyes, lifting each lid carefully, watching something Alex couldn’t see. He pressed two fingers along his jaw, then his temple, then behind his ear where the blood had dried thickest. His hands moved with the same clinical efficiency they always did, but slower now. More careful. Like he was reading something in Oseka’s skin that wasn’t written in any language he fully trusted.
Spartacus stood near the door, arms folded, saying nothing. But his eyes moved between Gaius and Alex, and back again, and Alex could see him filing it away. Adding another line to whatever column he’d been keeping since the shit pit.
He didn’t ask. Not yet.
Oseka’s chest rose and fell. Slower than before. Steadier.
Gaius pressed two fingers to his wrist and held them there, counting silently, his lips moving without sound.
The room stayed quiet long enough that the torches seemed loud.
Finally Gaius sat back on his heels and exhaled through his nose.
"His breathing’s normal." He said. "Pulse is steady." He looked at the dried blood on Oseka’s lips, on his chin, on the collar of his tunic, and something in his expression didn’t match his words. "He’ll be fine."
Nobody in the room quite believed the second sentence matched the first.
Gaius stood, wiping his hands on a cloth at his belt, and looked at Alex again.
"Go. Both of you. Let the boy sleep." Gaius didn’t look up again as he spoke.
"I’d rather stay." Alex said.
"You’d rather." Gaius repeated, not unkindly, but without room for argument. "He needs quiet. Not an audience."
Spartacus’s hand landed on Alex’s shoulder. Light and steady. "Come on." He said. "He’s in good hands."
Alex looked at Oseka one more time — at the slow rise and fall of his chest, at the dried blood still dark at his temple — before he let himself be turned toward the door.
---
They walked back through the corridor in silence. The torches threw long shadows that stretched and shrank as they passed. Alex’s feet moved on their own. His mind was somewhere else entirely.
’This is my fault.’
’If I hadn’t said anything.’
’If I’d just kept my mouth shut, like always—’
He could still hear the sound Oseka had made. Small. Sharp. Wrong. He could still feel the blood, warm against his hands when he’d gripped his shoulders. He pressed his eyelids shut.
’I’m not asking out of curiosity,’ Oseka had said. ’Please. Make it make sense.’
And Alex had made it make sense. And it had nearly killed him.
"Alex."
Alex blinked. Spartacus was looking at him, had stopped walking, had apparently said his name more than once.
"Sorry. What?"
"You’ve gone somewhere else." Spartacus said. "What’s the matter?"
"It’s nothing." Alex said, too fast. "Just— worried. About Oseka."
Spartacus studied him. Didn’t move yet.
"What happened?" He asked. Quiet and direct. "Not the half answer you gave Gaius. What actually happened."
Alex’s mouth went dry.
The flashes came uninvited — the system window flaring red, the warning text, ’violation of disclosure protocol’. the blood. He thought about trying to explain it. About what might happen if he did. Would it be the same? Worse? Would Spartacus end up on the floor of that room too, blood running from his ears, while Alex begged a silent system for an answer it would never give?
He couldn’t risk it. Not again. Not with him.
"Talk to me." Spartacus said. Not pleading. Just steady. The way he always was. "Whatever it is."
Alex looked at him for a long moment.
Then he looked away.
"Everything’s fine." He said.
Spartacus didn’t believe him. Alex could see that much in his face — the slight tightening at the jaw, the way his eyes held on Alex’s a beat too long before he let it go.
But he didn’t push.
He just nodded once, slow, and started walking again.
Alex followed, the lie sitting heavy in his chest, heavier than anything Gaius had ever wrapped in bandages.
---
---
Alex hadn’t slept.
He’d lain awake through the daily tasks, through the cold sweat after, through every grey hour before dawn, replaying the sound Oseka had made over and over until it lost all meaning and became just noise, just a wound in his memory that wouldn’t close.
The moment the sky began to lighten he was already moving, sandals slapping against stone, past sleeping guards, past the courtyard, straight to Gaius’s door.
He didn’t knock. He just went in.
Oseka was sitting up.
Alex stopped in the doorway, his chest seizing with something that felt dangerously close to relief breaking him in half. Oseka looked pale, a thin scab forming along one nostril, but his eyes were open and clear and looking right back at him.
"You’re awake." Alex said stupidly. Like it wasn’t obvious.
"Apparently." Oseka said, a faint, tired smile pulling at his mouth.
Gaius glanced between them from his table, set down whatever he’d been grinding, and stood without being asked. "I’ll leave you to it." He said, already moving toward the door, his eyes flicking once toward Alex in a way that wasn’t quite a warning but wasn’t far from one either.
Then the door closed, and it was just the two of them.
Alex crossed the room fast, dropping onto the stool beside the bed.
"Oseka, I am so sorry." The words came out in a rush, tumbling over each other before he could organize them properly. "I shouldn’t have told you any of it. I knew it was dangerous — I mean, I didn’t know, not exactly, but I should have guessed, the system’s done worse for less, and I just— I wasn’t thinking, and you nearly—"
"Albius." Oseka said.
"—and the warning, the thing that flashed right before you started bleeding, I think it was punishing me for telling you, I think it’s some kind of rule, I don’t fully understand it myself but—"
"Albius." Oseka said again, more firmly.
Alex stopped.
Oseka was looking at him with an expression that wasn’t confusion exactly. Not yet. It was something more like polite patience — the look you give someone who’s clearly upset but isn’t quite making sense.
"What are you talking about?" Oseka asked.
Alex blinked. "The— the thing we were talking about last night. Before you fell. Before you started bleeding."
"What thing?"
"The system." Alex said slowly, carefully, like the words themselves might be dangerous now. "I told you about the system. Where I’m from. The timeline. Everything."
Oseka’s brow furrowed. Genuinely. Not performing it.
"I don’t remember that." He said.
Alex’s stomach dropped somewhere below the floor.
"You don’t—" He swallowed. "Oseka, we were in our room. You asked me to explain what happened with the lion. I told you everything. You were sitting right there, and then you started screaming, and then—"
"Albius." Oseka’s voice had gone gentle now, the way you talk to someone who might be sick. "I remember the lion. I remember Gaius’s ward. I remember waking up here." He paused. "I don’t remember any conversation. I don’t remember asking you anything." A beat. "I don’t even remember falling asleep last night."
Alex stared at him.
"You’re joking, right?" He said, chuckling. His voice had gone thin. "Come on. Stop fucking with me."
Oseka just looked back at him, confused and a little concerned now, clearly more worried about Alex than about himself.
"Albius." He said quietly. "What happened to you?"
Alex didn’t answer.
He couldn’t.
He just sat there on the stool, staring at the one person who should have bore this burden with him, remembering nothing at all.
His own horror reflected back at him in Oseka’s confused, gentle, completely untouched eyes.
’What the fuck have you done?’
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