Camillo, asleep on the couch with a book open on his lap, is very abruptly awake on the couch.

He doesn't quite remember the transition from the couch to the floor, kneeling by Valentine's side, taking his pulse, yelling Cato Cato Cato at the top of his lungs.

Valentine's eyes crack open, just barely,

and then he shuts them again.

"Please, not this. Not him, not again."

Cato bursts in in his pajamas and one sock, leveling a crossbow.

"What—"

When he sees Valentine on the ground, he freezes in place.

Alive. Conscious. Lucid, or almost lucid, or something like it anyway.

Cato's armed already. Good. "Cover him," and he's running off to the kitchen, fumbling for the cruet of oil from Jerusalem olives that isn't for cooking, the canister of Morton salt that sometimes is.

When he returns, Cato hasn't moved. He has the silver-tipped bolt pointed at Valentine's chest, knuckles white on the grip of the crossbow.

"Do you think it's him?"

Valentine is lying still.

"Anything else. Please."

His shirt has been meticulously mended in a dozen different places and bleached almost threadbare. The pale brown edges of bloodstains haven't quite washed out.

There's no possible answer Camillo can usefully make to either of them.

Camillo's thumb smears oil on Valentine's forehead, salt on Valentine's tongue. Camillo whispers old words of blessing, casting out demons, invoking peace and protection.

(There's still sleep unrubbed from his eyelashes. His book lies, spine broken, on the floor.)

At the last word of the incantation, Valentine scrambles onto his hands and knees and vomits black bile onto the floor.

It coalesces haphazardly, in a few places, into fat worms and lopsided, many-legged insectoids that skitter madly for the dark corners of the room, curses suddenly devoid of a host.

Cato takes it upon himself to stomp them.

It's not even proper magic, really. Certainly it's not the kind of thing that Valentine himself could marshal, in better times. But with Valentine gone as long as he has been, these four walls know Camillo as the head of the household, and he has some authority, here, to bless and to curse.

The first round of precautions observed, Camillo pulls Valentine up to his knees, starts unbuttoning his shirt to check what exactly has been bleeding. "Cato -- when you're done -- bread and water, I want him to eat something from here, make sure he stays..."

Valentine doesn't resist.

"Please don't."

It's not the same scattering of slashes and tooth marks and burns as before, not just fights and accidents. There are deep, uneven pockmarks all over his torso, some as wide as a dime, in clusters and constellations – a long, straight scar flanked by little angry red marks, winding up his torso like a millipede — a stretch of shining, featureless skin that drips down his side.

There's a ring shoved through the skin just under his heart with a little silver charm dangling from it, the one he used to wear around his wrist.

Cato smashes the last bug, grinds salt into the smear on the carpet with his heel before he takes off for the kitchen almost at a sprint.

None of it is actively bleeding or festering. None of his questions matter right now. None of Valentine's objections are material, because Valentine fucking disappeared for months on end and has now forfeited as many as several rights.

Camillo drags Valentine up to his knees, wraps his arms tight around his bare scarred chest, rocks him back and forth and whispers blessings too small to have any force behind them, childhood bedtime blessings, little nonsense verses.

Valentine is tense to the point of trembling, breathing shallowly, waiting for something.

His fingers curl into Camillo's shirt anyway.

Cato comes back with a slice of sandwich bread and a glass of water.

He drenches the bread in the oil that isn't for cooking, for good measure, before he hands it off to Camillo.

Camillo pulls back from Valentine just enough to hold a morsel of bread to his lips. 

He closes his mouth, sets his jaw, squeezes his eyes tightly shut.

God damn it. "Eat. Valentine. Valentine. Look, it's not..."

Camillo eats the bit of bread himself, to demonstrate, breaks off a new fragment.

He shakes his head and tries to back away.

"Valentine. Dad. Please..."

It's not working. He lets him back away, just a little.

"...Cato, I think he's scared of me, can you...?"

Cato kneels down next to them.

He gasps, when he sees Valentine's bare chest, bites his tongue and looks away.

He opens his eyes, sees them both together, makes an anguished sound and shuts them again.

"—fine. Fine. All right."

He holds out his hand, palm up. The skin is textured with hundreds of little pinpricks.

It's so unfair. It's all so unfair. Valentine's back and he's not here to save them, he's a horrible frightened tortured mess who doesn't know them and it's the middle of the night and he's tired, okay, he's tired.

Camillo drops the stupid oily fragment of wonderbread in Valentine's palm and he tries not to cry.

Valentine eats.