greatamazingfeelingsboy

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daniel arlington

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Sunday mornings are a good, quiet time to go for a run. He's even got a halfway decent route mapped out. He jogs from Candlewood, straight down Mulholland, and once he hits the park entrance, he grabs a path and runs. He alternates his speed as he goes, and occasionally even dodges into the trees to get some different terrain under his feet.

He's slowed again to a jog when he feels familiar emotions, and he slows, then follows them to their source. Daniel Arlington is jogging ahead of him, and Caleb picks up his speed to catch up.

"Oh, hey," he says. He's smiling, because even as he draws closer he can feel that something's different. Daniel isn't upset or disappointed. He's happy. He's delighted, under the focus that usually comes with running for exercise's sake.

It's a far cry from how he'd looked when he'd approached Daniel that day in the museum. Caleb is wearing jogging sweats and a hoodie, face pink from the chill, but his eyes are lit up, grin growing the longer he's standing next to him.

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"No— hey, no, it's, it's okay," he says. "Don't, don't do that, it's my own fucking damage. I'm sorry."

"You know, if Alex was here, she'd tell us both to stop apologizing before we sprained something," he says, and as though on cue, he feels the faint vibration of his phone in the pocket of his sweats. In deference to Caleb, he doesn't take it out--and tries not to think about the possible tenor of the message.

Maybe he should turn back before too much longer.

"Were you a runner back home?" he asks after a minute, trying to readjust their conversation. "Or just something you picked up thanks to Darrow?"

"Not really," he answers. "I mean, not like this? I play football, so I need to be able to run, obviously, so I'd do a little back home. But here, it's like. It's nice?"

He shrugs. At first, it had been an escape from the Home, so he could clear his head before school, or at night with the hope that people would be sleeping when he got back.

It never worked, of course.

"It is nice," he agrees. "I had a couple standard six-mile routes back home, it was..."

He trails off, already expecting Caleb to pick up on another, brighter twinge of nostalgia as he thinks of the way he'd run all over New Haven, how he'd mapped the city he loved with every footfall: from East Rock to the train station or the now-vanished Coliseum; the trails and bridges of Edgerton Park and the crisscrossing paths of the New Haven Green. His adoration of the place was deep and devoted even now, separated as he is from everything he'd once known as familiar.

"Yeah, it's a good way to spend the time."

Caleb's quiet while he sorts through the feelings Daniel's giving off. Feeling someone's nostalgia is always a little weird for him. It's like getting an insight into a part of them he has no right to, and even though Daniel knows about his empaty, it doesn't make it feel less like an intrusion. It's different from sadness, different from happiness, but somehow both. It's not something people carry on their faces.

It's only belatedly that he realizes he hasn't answered him, so after a moment he clears his throat.

"Jesus, six miles. That's pretty impressive."

Though he keeps his focus mostly on the path before them, the prolonged silence has him glancing over at Caleb before too long. Darlington's always preferred being the one to watch others, to take them in as they are or present themselves to be, and somehow knowing about Caleb's ability makes doing so now just slightly more fascinating. Even in those brief glances, he can see the way he's almost working through whatever he's picked up, the shifting expression on his face as he weighs and quantifies.

Darlington doesn't say anything, just lets him process in whatever way he requires, and when Caleb speaks again, he nods. "It's a habit now, but you're not wrong."

Caleb huffs a little laugh. "I'm not that interesting, Dude," he says, and it could be a non sequitur to anyone who doesn't know about his ability. But he can feel Daniel's fascination, poking and pulling at him like a dog seeking attention. "Seriously, just ask whatever you want, you'll find out I'm really boring."

"Alright, alright, point taken," he says, shaking his head as he grins. "I've just...being part of Lethe showed me a lot, but never anyone with the abilities you have."

He thinks a moment. "It looked like you were filtering things, just then. Sifting through whatever you were getting from me."

"Yeah, I guess that's a good way to put it," he says slowly, as he thinks about it. "Sometimes, I get a lot of input at once, or I'll feel something I'm not familiar with, and... I need to kinda figure it out."

Some feelings can sort of overwhelm him if he doesn't understand the feeling. Stress can do that, and so can anger, if he doesn't understand the source. Fear does it, too.

"Nostalgia is just... so weird, though, like. I know what it is. And I usually know why someone's feeling it. But it's so weird, right? Because it's happy and sad. It's bitter, but it's also, like, reassuring. It's this sorta perfect contradiction of feelings, and it never makes sense the first time I feel it."

"That's exactly what it is," he says. "The contradiction of nostalgia, the warring feelings that ought to be opposite. That's all a very poetic way of putting it."

Darlington lets out a breath, watching as it swirls away from him in the cold morning air. "This, I don't mind talking about so much," he says. "Those runs, back home, were as much about keeping in shape as they were about trying to understand New Haven a little better. What drives it, what makes it work, or not. And why, out of anywhere, it's where magic gained such a foothold."

"That's so weird," Caleb murmurs. "New Haven, that's Yale, right?" He doesn't technically need to ask. Adam's favorite thing to talk about is Yale. "It's definitely not magic where I'm from, but it is for you. That's so fucking weird."

"It's more than Yale," he says, automatic in his loyalty to the town itself. His birth certificate may be from New York, but all he's ever cared to know and the only place he's ever truly loved is New Haven. Lethe would have sent him anywhere in the world, given him opportunities and open doors--and according to Alex, they hadn't waited until graduation--but in the end, Darlington knows he'll always return to where he's meant to be.

"But in this instance, you're not exactly wrong." They pass another pair of joggers and Darlington waits until they're out of earshot again before he continues. "Does your...version of Yale, and god, if that's not weird to say, does it include the senior societies? Skull and Bones is the most well-known of them, to their delight, but there's others."

That's something Adam would know, Caleb thinks. He wouldn't even need to think about it. He and Annabelle had gone to Yale together so many times, so they could tour the campus. She'd wanted Adam to fall in love with the place, and she'd succeeded. Unfortunately, most of Adam's rambling about it had fallen on... mostly deaf ears where Caleb's concerned. He'd loved listening to Adam talk, loved feeling his excitement, his enthusiasm, but... he'd definitely tuned out the finer details more than once.

"I have no idea," he admits.

If he'd had even a passing familiarity with them, it might have eased the way a bit, but Darlington can hardly judge him for the lack of it. "No matter," he says, then takes a breath, getting ready to explain. "As with any school, there's lots of traditions and organizations, clubs and groups and all of that. For the most part, they all operate with their own rules and aren't really Lethe's concern. But the Ancient Eight are different. They're the oldest societies on campus, the ones with generations of alumni, many of whom are or have been extremely powerful in their chosen fields. Presidents and CEOs, actors and writers, even a journalist or two."

He glances over at Caleb, checking to make sure he's following along. "The question of where that power comes from has fueled conspiracy theories and conjecture from almost the first day of their existence, but the reality of it, at least in my world, is that each has access to a nexus, some source of magical power that allows them to conduct the rites for their particular types of magic."

Caleb isn't sure he's following along, but he nods just the same. "So, what, are they, like... using the magic to get ahead? Isn't that, like, cheating?"

There's an indignant note to the question Caleb asks, a bit of naiveté that Darlington can't help finding quietly amusing--even as he respects the kid all the more for it. He'd have made a challenging, if worthwhile, Dante. Much like the one Darlington had been given. "Call it cheating, or luck, or privilege, as you wish. Much worse has been said about them, and they're all still here."

"Hm," Caleb says with a little bit of a frown. He thinks about how his ability doesn't shut off when he's on the field with the team, how he can tell when someone's getting nervous, and knows they're about to make a risky play. But that's not really cheating, is it? It's not like he knows what play they're going to make, just that he should pay extra attention.

That's totally not the same thing, he decides.

"I guess the people at the top are there for a reason," he says. "Still kinda shitty, isn't it?"

"Oh, it's still shitty," he agrees, that rare profanity--well-earned, in this case--hanging in the air for a moment. "Lethe, the organization Alex and I belong to, or belonged, now, was founded to mitigate that, as much as possible. We monitor the rites of the other eight societies, making sure nobody's unduly harmed, whether they're students or residents of the town."

Darlington likes to think they've succeeded, that he's succeeded, for the most part. There had been hiccups and errors along the way, things Lethe had needed to smooth over with funds or promises or even threats, but they'd learned from each and that's what mattered more.

"It doesn't correct the imbalance completely, but if it's kept someone safe who otherwise wouldn't have been, that's enough for me."

"Is that how you guys met?" Caleb asks, glancing over at him. "You and Alex, I mean. In that... whatever, Leafy place."

"It is." He doesn't correct Caleb's pronunciation outright, but Darlington's certain he can feel the effort it takes to hold himself back from doing so. "Every three years, Lethe selects an incoming freshman to serve as Dante." He tilts his head a bit to the side, knowing that's likely to mean nothing to Caleb, depending what Alex had told him already. "They're...I call them our offices, Alex prefers code names. The senior representative, me, is always Virgil. Alex, as the new first year, was Dante."

The path narrows again, and this time Darlington cuts ahead, waiting to continue speaking until they're running side by side again. "Usually, there's a vetting process. The Virgil makes a few selections out of the files on the incoming class, which are presented to the Lethe board for a vote. With Alex, it was a decision made out of my hands. A unanimous choice."

Uncertain whether Alex has shared her own ability with Caleb, Darlington doesn't say why.

"It's because of the grays, isn't it," he says, when he knows no one is going to overhear them. "She can see them, in full color, and no one's ever done that before. So Lethe just... what, bypassed the usual steps, and picked her?"

He thinks he gets it, but it still seems a little unfair — to Alex, mostly, though if Daniel, as a Virgil, was supposed to pick someone, then it also makes it a little unfair to him, as well, doesn't it?

"Also, what's with the Dante's Inferno shit? Is Lethe trying to say that the world is Hell and we're just trying to get through it?"

"Never took you for a cynic, Michaels," he says, though the comparison is--obviously--more than apt. "Each society has their own particular traditions in naming given offices. It happens that, at least for the Dante and Virgil roles, Lethe's happens to be Inferno, and fairly tame, considering. You should hear some of the ones Skull and Bones came up with." Darlington shrugs. "Frankly, I've always enjoyed the irony in the fact that we're the ones who force the rest of them to remember, while being named for a river of forgetfulness."

The rest of what Caleb's asked takes a little more thought, finding the best place to begin and the right balance of how much to say. That he already knows about the Grays, though, comes as no small relief. "It is, and she can," he says after a moment. "The only person I've ever met who can see them in full color. I envied her so much, when I first heard." Even now, there's still a faint tendril of that envy present, a lingering wish to be just as extraordinary, despite the cost that's become all too clear to him. "There was an opportunity there, and Lethe took it."

There's more to the story, far more, but much of that is Alex's to tell.

"Did she even want in?" Caleb asks.

He knows Alex never felt like she belonged at Yale, whether because of her ink, or her past, or whatever else. But she'd never really told him about the Lethe stuff. Had she wanted to be involved? Had she been given a choice? Or had she been voluntold, forced into an ultimatum that left her feeling like she'd had no choice at all?

The question is sharp and insightful, of the type he would've expected to hear from Alex, and somehow that makes it all the more difficult to answer. Had the opportunity been presented to her in any other way, at any other time, he doesn't know that she'd have accepted it; Lethe and Sandow had needed to come when she'd already lost everything she'd known in the world and when she was in danger of losing far, far more. They had tracked her for years, their radar picking up a CPS complaint here or a school psychologist's evaluation there, but they hadn't come until they needed her--and when she had no other way out.

"Alex is the only one who can really answer that," he says at last. "I'd like to think she wanted to come, that she wanted...something different than she'd had in California. But I also know how convincing Lethe can be." Darlington lets out a harder huff of breath. "I won't say they made me the same offer, but I was given a similar one."

He shakes his head with a little frown. "Creepy," he says succinctly. He looks over at him for a moment, then back to the path. "I dunno, it just sounds like some sci-fi thriller bullshit, like... here's an offer you literally can't refuse. Sounds like bullshit."