How lovely the silence of growing things

[Raphael Malai]

Oh Prince Bee... Prince Bee... Even in his last moments, his thoughts were to keeping Rip safe. So truly selfless and self-sacrificing... Raphael's vision swam again but he was too tuckered out to bawl again so he just silently curled into Rhys and clung around his neck, resting his head against Rhys' shoulder. Occasionally he sniffed as a sob threatened to get out, but the majority of his uncontrollable crying seemed to have abated.

For now.

"If it's Prince Bee's last wish," he whispered, even though probably no one except Rhys could hear his hoarse voice, "then we have to honor it. We have to make sure Rip is safe and Keith doesn't get his hands on him."

Even though Rip caused Brayden's death, Raphael couldn't find it in him to truly hate or even blame him. Rip did as he was told; he had no choice in the matter. It wasn't really his fault, was it? Raphael didn't see it that way and he hoped that Jack didn't, either. Hurting Rip was not what Brayden wanted.

"I-I'll keep watch over Rip. He can stay with me over at..." Raphael trembled. "Prince Bee's place..."

From the bedroom, Ken emerged. And he was frowning darkly as he strode briskly over to the kitchen area and removed the bottle from Niall's hand. "Have you gone out of your mind?" He asked as he wrapped an arm—tightly, it looked like—around Niall to haul him away from the general area.

[Niall Gallagher]

"We'll have to put wards on him," Rhys said. Niall could hear them discussing what to do with Rip the Jack clone but all Niall could see was death. It lingered everywhere around him. Although he hadn't known Brayden long enough to be super close with him, it didn't matter. He'd come to like him and couldn't really imagine a person that couldn't like him. Not a lot of people were patient when it came to Niall, and he knew he was an annoying person to deal with.

Alcohol wasn't enough, but the cabinet didn't have anything but alcohol in it, unfortunately. Niall needed something better than alcohol. Like... drugs. Like the good stuff. Magic stuff, the kind that actually sent him on blissful trips and pushed the real world far, far away.

Aha. A stronger booze. Whiskey. Niall grabbed it and he was just stumbling back to his feet when somebody came up behind him and promptly took the bottle right out of his hand.

"Hey!" Niall protested as he was bodily removed from the kitchen. He couldn't even really stay steady on his feet, his head was swimming from the last bottle he'd mostly consumed in short order.

[Kenneth Branagh]

"Sit," said Ken sternly as he deposited Niall onto the couch beside an obviously stricken Raphael and a highly perturbed Rhys. He had left Jack in the other room to take care of Brayden's body, letting him arrange him on the bed and to have a few moments alone to grapple with his grief. And when he came out here, it was bedlam.

"You too," he said to Rip, gesturing to the loveseat nearby. "Sit down. We need to talk about what to do next."

Ken stood beside Niall, his thigh brushing the armrest. He leaned lightly against it but didn't commit to sitting—he had to make sure he was on his toes in case Niall made a run for the liquor cabinet, which he had kicked in when he found it locked. And Ken was not happy about that at all, but he could voice his concerns in private.

"What's going on here? Why have you all decided it was the end of the world?"

[Niall Gallagher]

Everybody (except Ken) was sitting but Niall wanted to get back up. When he attempted to, though, the world swam and he flopped back against the couch with his head still spinning, grasping onto the arm of the couch on one side and some part of Rhys with the other, since Rhys was sitting in the middle and was closest to him.

"Hey," Rhys said indignantly, swatting his hand away and moving closer to Raphael. Niall rolled his head to the side and he had to laugh through his tears at that one. Who knew that all it took to get Rhys to move closer to his lover boy was an accidental grope from Niall? Come on... he couldn't be the only one that thought it was absurdly funny right now.

"What... was the question again?" Niall asked, looking up at Ken. Even when he was pissed off serious-faced, he was still so handsome. Niall reached a hand up to brush his fingertips against his face but he was way off point and ended up stroking his arm instead.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Rip said, "I know a celestial."

"Huh?" Niall lolled his head over and up to look at Rip--what a name, right!--and eyed him funny. Why was he saying that out of the blue?

"I know an incubus," Niall said back. "And some vampires, a couple of witches... and all these fairies in here... met a goblin once. Pretty sure. Not a nice one, though generally I hear goblins aren't. Nice, that is--"

"Will you just--shut up?" Rhys said, rudely interrupting him. He pointed to Rip. "One, what does a celestial have to do with anything? And two, when did you meet a celestial? Are you talking about the one..."

Rhys trailed off and Niall looked over at him, waiting for him to finish.

"No, that would be too much of coincidence," Rhys said. But Rip was shaking his head.

"It's not. He's the youngest prince and he's powerful. That's what his mean friend said."

[Kenneth Branagh]

Very gently, despite his mask-like stony expression, Ken eased Niall closer towards himself and away from a highly offended Rhys. Raphael was still clinging to him in silence and... it looked like fighting hard not to burst into tears at the slightest provocation. That level of emotional outburst was not something Ken was accustomed to, even from Niall who could be temperamental on a good day.

He kept one arm around Niall and lightly rubbed his shoulder. Ken wasn't as awkward at comforting people but there were far more important issues at hand than Niall having a breakdown, as difficult as that was for him to have to admit. Niall was his first and only priority but that meant keeping him physically safe first, by getting to the bottom of what happened back at that motel room.

Rip was the obvious white elephant in the room. Ken disliked having to bring him back to the apartment but Rip also had a wealth of information, particularly with regards to Keith. And it was Brayden's last wish to keep him safe with them, which he had to respect.

"...you might have mentioned that earlier," said Ken quietly and disapprovingly. After all that, Rip knew a celestial? A young and powerful one? He looked down at Niall—obviously sloshed—and sighed. Another little shoulder rub, in lieu of more comforting gestures (as there were far too many eyes on them at the moment).

"Where do we find him? I thought they would have all been hunted by now." That was good news for Jack, wasn't it? And for Brayden.

[Ripper Nightshade]

He didn't want to say it but he had to. That he knew one. A celestial. That was what the mean friend--Lieve--said that he was. And that his mother was. He wasn't fully celestial but nobody said that he had to be. Just powerful, right? And Lieve said that, too. He was strong. Stronger than anybody he knew.

Rip knew this to be true as well. The way he learned how to use magic as quickly as he did... He was powerful. Maybe scary powerful but Rip thought it was okay. Cori was not a bad person; if anybody should be so powerful, it was good that it was somebody so pure-hearted and innocent.

But he felt somehow like a traitor for bringing him up. The last time he saw Cori, he was frightened--of himself, of his abilities. To go rushing at him now felt wrong. But... letting Brayden Smith die so young also felt wrong. Nobody else was talking about it; about celestials. And this guy, Ken, said they had to decide what to do next. The only logical step seemed to find a celestial. And instead of wasting time hunting for one...

Rip still didn't feel good about it.

But he honestly didn't feel good about anything right now. There was something inside him that just wanted to be left alone and another part that wanted to feel warm and safe, held close and lovingly, like everybody here. But he was alone now, wasn't he? He would never have his own soul mate because he wasn't his. And Mik...

But Mik did make him feel warm, if not safe. But Rip never really felt safe, not in all his existence. Certainly not now, that he had been weaponized to kill somebody close to his soul. He didn't even look at the others as he said, "I don't know where he lives but Mik probably does..."

"Who the hell is Mik?" Rhys asked. Because he wouldn't know who Mik was; he was after Rhys disappeared on them.

"They're all friends. Mik and Lieve and Cori. I only know where Mik lives. He's not the prince."

"Yeah, I got that," Rhys said, sounding annoyed as usual. But there was something softer in the prince that Rip never noticed before. He was sitting really close to Raphael, for one thing. And he even seemed to be voluntarily touching him, with gentle pats to his shoulder.

"I'll ask him where Cori lives," Rip said, pulling out his phone, which Rhys eyed but didn't ask about. Clearly things had diverged a lot since they last saw each other.

[Kenneth Branagh]

Mik, Lieve, Cori, none of those names sounded familiar to Ken so they weren't hunters. Good. Ken finally eased himself onto the armrest to sit, in order to pull Niall closer to his side. They were sort of coupled up—Niall and himself, Rhys and Raphael. That left Rip in the solitary love seat, looking decidedly like the sore thumb sticking out. It was uncanny how much he looked like Jack; his creator was incredibly skilled.

Ken had come into contact with golems before, but only in the context of hunting them down or deactivating their creators to sever the bond. He had never seen one with so much autonomy before. Certainly he never saw one defy its creator, which begged the question—how was Rip helping them now, when his creator wanted to see Brayden Smith dead? And had accomplished that...

He was suspicious, of course. Anyone sane would have been. And while now wasn't the time to voice those concerns, he did glance at Rhys and Raphael, who appeared to know Rip. Later they needed to have a long talk about next steps. He didn't mean resurrecting Brayden, though—he meant assessing the current threat level posed by having Rip amongst them.

But it didn't hurt to have him bring a celestial in... if that was what he was doing.

"Rip, you made friends," Raphael said tearfully, apparently overwhelmed by pride. He wiped a hand over his red eyes—Raphael looked like a rabbit, honestly, with those eyes—and smiled weakly. It was a watery kind of smile but it was a smile nonetheless. "I'm so glad you found nice friends!"

[Ripper Nightshade]

"...yeah."

Rip looked down at his hands again, then curled his fingers inward. Friends he didn't deserve. It felt like Lieve was right to be suspicious of him from the start. Maybe it hurt at the time but... Lieve was just protecting the people he cared about from something like this. He picked up his phone again as a new message came through.

He couldn't be more plain about his feelings but it felt like Mik didn't want to believe him. But he didn't know what this felt like. To kill somebody with his own bare hands and his soul's soul mate, at that. Rip could only imagine that this was the smallest shred of what Jack felt right now.

Once he got the okay, from the sounds of it, he said, still looking at the phone, "He said he will bring Cori here. Where is here? He needs to know."

[Raphael Malai]

"A celestial is coming here?" Raphael's eyes were wide. Celestials were like... myths, almost. They were so rare! He had only heard of them and he had seen pictures, but he'd never seen one in real life. Well... being a Fallen, he was almost guaranteed to never encounter one, unless it was corrupted. But those didn't count in Raphael's books—they were devils, not angels.

Ken gave Rip the address with, it appeared, some misgivings. Then he fell silent and retreated into thought while still keeping a hold of Niall. His face slipped back into an unreadable mask; it seemed as though he had a lot of thinking to do.

"Rhys? Do you think the celestial can heal your corruption too?" He turned back to Rhys since everyone else was being all quiet. There was something kind of off about Rip too but Raphael couldn't put his finger on it. He seemed... depressed...

"Rip said it was another Prince, too. They're all here! All of your brothers! I wonder what he looks like..."

[Rhys McCabe]

"Maybe," Rhys said. He hadn't given it any thought, what with the sole topic being Brayden's... death. And he thought it would be selfish of him to ask for the celestial's help--his half-brother's help--if it meant that energy couldn't be expended on Brayden instead.

"Maybe later, though."

He wasn't going to get his hopes up too high, either. But he supposed if Cori was their brother, he might want to help Rhys eventually, too. They just had to be patient. Living with the corruption wasn't killing him, since the fixer had halted the growth. At least it wasn't getting worse, and that was about the only consolation he'd had about it since it happened.

"And he probably has dark curls and hazel eyes, like all the rest of us," Rhys said, eyeing Rip--Jack's golem--and Niall. They did all seem to have that part in common so he could only imagine the young celestial fae also shared those traits. But maybe he took after his mother, this one. Who knew? (And why was it when he thought of celestials, he automatically thought of golden hair and blue eyes? Damn media.)

[Raphael Malai]

Reaching up, Raphael stroked the dark curls very affectionately and gazed up into those hazel eyes. All princes may have had dark hair and hazel eyes but his prince was the best prince in his eyes. They had been together for almost all of Raphael's life; he swore he knew every curl, every eyelash, every tiny freckle. Every expression was known to him, although lately Rhys was surprising him.

He was being... comforting. The light pats on the arm and shoulder didn't go unnoticed. The way he sat close to Raphael and attempted to give him support was noted and appreciated. In moments like these when Raphael needed him, he stepped up and that meant a lot, whether he realized it or not.

"I hope he's nice. I think he is, if he's Rip's friend." Raphael rubbed his eyes—they were finally dry now and he didn't feel like crying every other breath. When he glanced over at Rip, he noticed Rip texting with someone. Maybe that other prince, or one of his other friends. Who gave him the phone? Did they buy one for him? That was nice of them, if they did...

"Maybe they'll be our friends too, Rhys." They could do with some nice friends, like Jack and Niall and Ken and... Brayden... Raphael turned back into Rhys. It still didn't feel real that Brayden was dead, and that Keith had killed him while they were all here, innocently thinking that nothing was wrong.

"I wish they'd get here soon... Do you think someone should check on Professor Jack and let him know?"

[Rhys McCabe]

"Well," Rhys started but wisely decided not to finish his thought. Rip's closest "friend" was Keith and he was probably the meanest bastard he had ever met. Cold, selfish, greedy, cruel. Rip, despite that, absolutely adored the bastard but really... could he be faulted for that? Keith was his creator and golems were meant to at least respect their creator. Hardly surprising that a golem with emotions could fall in love with his creator, even if he was the most disgusting and despicable person Rhys had personally ever met.

"Celestials are generally nice," was what Rhys ended up going with instead. When did he become so... soft? Normally, the scathing words were easy to dispense with. Now he couldn't really bear the thought of making Raphael start crying all over again.

Something was definitely off about Rip, though. Even Rhys, with his newly budding relationship with emotions could tell. Rip could be quiet for long periods of time but not like this. Even now, after he presumably sent the address to whomever he was texting on his new mystery phone, Rip set the phone down, face down on the table next to the loveseat.

"I don't know. Maybe we should leave him alone. He seemed pretty... upset."

[Raphael Malai]

Oh, good. Meeting a mean celestial might send Raphael over the edge right about now. He needed hope; he needed something to hold on to in a moment when everything seemed to have gone straight to hell. Not only could a celestial bring back Brayden, he could heal Rhys too! Nothing was guaranteed in this life but Raphael could at least hope, couldn't he?

"I guess you're right. He'll meet them when they get here..." Raphael sighed. He wanted to tell Jack some good news but... if the celestial prince couldn't do it, then it would be too cruel to get his hopes up only to have them crash and burn again. Raphael touched Rhys' jaw gently.

"You're being very nice to me..."

[Rhys McCabe]

Not that Rhys had a whole lot of contact with celestials but their reputation preceded them. They were supposed to be nice and despite Rip's... questionable taste in people, he might have met somebody nice for once. After all, he somehow had a phone now, which was new. Somebody must have given that to him. And it looked like a nice, new phone, too. How he got away with it under Keith's nose, though, he had no idea.

Maybe he'd gone rogue. Before the thing with Brayden? Rhys had no idea; he didn't normally even bother giving much thought to Rip. He was just a golem and everybody knew why he even existed. He wasn't offensive or anything by nature and Raphael and Rip were friends. Probably because Rip was the only one who got excited about Raphael's collections.

Rhys turned his gaze to Raphael, effectively distracted by the touch to his jaw. He blinked. Oh, was he? He... supposed he was. Before he even really thought about it, he said, "I don't like seeing you cry."

Which was true but he wished he hadn't been so blatant with his words. But it was true, so why was it embarrassing to admit?

[Raphael Malai]

"Ohh...!"

Raphael's head spun dizzyingly for a moment. Did that mean what he thought it meant? Well—the words were self-explanatory. Rhys didn't like seeing him cry. But the implications of that! It was a very... sentimental thing to say! A very nice, sweet, loving thing to say!

...unless he meant that he found Raphael ugly, when he was ugly crying into the armrest, with his face red and his eyes swollen and snot running down over the crest of his upper lip. Raphael was a real mess earlier and he had no doubt that presenting a splotchy red face to Rhys was highly offensive to a prince's sense of beauty and aesthetics.

But! Rhys didn't shove him off or tell him to go wash his face! He came over and held Raphael and let Raphael dampen his shoulder with tears. So he couldn't have found Raphael that repulsive! And that meant what he said was honest in a very nice way, and he disliked seeing Raphael cry because he found it emotionally distressing.

"I'll try not to cry too much again," he said stupidly, smiling.