Nothing from Rebecca yet. She'd warned him that she might take a while, not being sure exactly where she'd exduct given her particular circumstances.

Orion exducts at the last possible second, looking like he's just had some kind of religious experience, and says he saw Rebecca hit the gate.

Oh thank fucking GOD.

”- and she didn’t, like, look super badly hurt -“

"I wasn't mostly looking at her? I don't think so though."

“... okay. Thanks... you. Thank you. Thanks.”

Rebecca manages to send out an email about an hour after graduation, CC'd to Zeke, Raleigh, Shannon, and about forty other people who agreed to write their email addresses or a care-of address down for her, that she is SAFE and HOME and CLEAN with PIE and HUGS. She includes a selfie of herself in her sister's clothes, a pink tank top and jeans that are a little big on her because the Scholomance isn't good for being curvy; she is still wearing her amethysts from Zeke and her tiara she made in Shop and she is holding a plate with a slice of pie in the hand that doesn't have her phone. The email adds "P.S. tell me you're okay or I drop your if-I'm-dead letter in the mailbox no takebacks!"

He takes about ten seconds to write a reply.

i’m okay i love you a lot i’m so glad you’re okay. i love you. jasmine and antwon died

<333333! julio and alaina are okay though?

yeah they’re fine probably. i hope stuff is going well with your family and stuff. do you know when you wanna come to New York. also i still dunno if i’m a religious person but i told god that i would go to church if you were okay so we should do that

Awww!

I do wanna come to New York but don't know if my family will want me wandering off any time soon

if they wanna come too we can super pay for that! i could cover an airbnb and stuff. if not that’s fine too, you can spend as much time in chicago as you want i love you i’m so glad you’re safe

Love youuuuu! I can probably talk them into a trip to NYC like next week even though Beth is real grouchy that she won't be able to see in the enclave

okay cool i love you! i’m gonna try to calm down talk to you later

His parents hadn’t planned on him sprouting all the way up to  - 6’6, 6’7? - when they’d preemptively bought clothes for his return, but a few things still fit; he changes into them. There’s a vial on the table when he gets back.

”... what’s that?”

”Well, Ezekiel,” says his mother, “you went through something very traumatic, graduating, so you should take a potion for that, and then something for all the nutrients you haven’t been getting and - everything, you know -”

”I don’t really wanna take a trauma potion.”

”... they don’t work as well if you don’t take them right away, Ezekiel.”

”Then I guess they’re not gonna work as well.”

She hesitates.

”I... understand that you’ve been through a lot, and all, and it’s completely up to you, but I’d like to hear your thought process? You’re not going to make anything better by making yourself feel worse.”

“I just don’t want to.”

”... your older brother didn’t want to either, when he came out, and you know how he can be.”

”I’m not gonna be like Damien, mom, I’m just - I tried a trauma potion one time and I didn’t like it. Or something. Did you guys, like, wanna hear about how school was.”

”... yes, of course.”

He spends a few hours rambling at his parents, and then at his eleven year old brother, who runs in after a while and is VERY EXCITED to see him, and he picks away at extremely expensive food, and he emails a few dozen friends, and he curls up in his too-small bed and stares at the ceiling for hours until he falls asleep.

The next morning Rebecca emails him a link to her new Instagram, which she has populated with several selfies with various family members and a picture of her breakfast (eggs and toast and yogurt with granola and blueberries, captioned "Mom thinks I need to eat more if I'm going to keep up my workout routine!").

Zeke likes all of her posts and comments under three of them - ‘<3’, ‘you look really good in this one and all the other ones!’, and ‘nom nom nom’.

His comments get heart emojis on them!

Eventually she informs him that her parents have consented to travel to New York as a family, though her parents think it would be weird for Zeke to pay for it and have booked the flight and AirBnB themselves.

That’s fine. Is there, like, a specific story that they’ve been told that he needs to stick to?

They know that I went to what my brother's been calling Hardcore Hogwarts (you can say "Scholomance" though). They don't know about mals since I don't want them to get eaten, just that a lot of wizard kids go to it and I went by mistake and couldn't come out till I graduated and that learning magic is dangerous but I'm past that part now. I was trying to give them the impression that it's mostly shop and lab accidents and not having a doctor in there. Also that they aren't supposed to look right at me when I do anything they haven't already seen work like the lullaby. So like maybe don't talk about people who died too much or mention how but you can talk about classes and whatever.

cool, can do, i’ll infodump about old persian and not about toothless wrigglers or whatever.

when you told them about me were they like ‘give me my gun at once, we must go a-hunting’ or like ‘we will embrace him as our own’ or like ‘hmmmmm’ or what

strong hmmmmm but I think they'll like you!

woo!

I told them that you helped me a lot and that I would've been in really big trouble without you and stuff! so that should help with avoiding the gun thing.

you helped me a lot too because you’re very good! my parents are also pretty ‘hmmmmm’ but they’ll agree that you’re very good once they meet you, i dunno how anyone could not

Huh, what are they hmmming about?

i dunno, i just got a ‘hmmmmm’ and a ‘that’s nice sweetie’ kinda vibe of them. they’ll be fine

Okay! My dad wants to take your family to dinner. He was thinking ramen but I don't know if you guys like ramen?

ramen would totally work!

great I will forward you the reservation info!

should i meet you at the airport or the ramen place or another time and place that exists

ramen place!

cool! see you then i love you

love you!!

Zeke is wearing a tailored black suit and an orange tie; it makes him look like he’s being 6’7 on purpose, suddenly elegant and formal. He seems simultaneously much healthier and much more sleep deprived than his scholomance median. 

His father is only a few inches shorter than him, and looks very athletic for probably-fifty-something; his mother is nearly six feet tall, and a bit alarmingly thin. His older brother, Damien, looks like he just stepped away from a high fashion photo shoot where a mal ate his puppy; his younger brother, Lincoln, is eleven years old and SO EXCITED about everything.

”Rebecca!”

Rebecca is wearing reasonably practical flats - she refused pumps - and zips right up to him for a hug.

Hug! Lifting-her-up-and-spinning-her-around-only-a-decorous-and-appropriate-amount! More hug! 

“You look so pretty I love you I missed you!”

"I missed you!!! It's always very weird to go a long time seeing people every day and then NOT see them for DAYS in a ROW!" she squeals, giggling when spun. "You don't think I went overboard, with the hair and the everything? -"

“Your hair looks super nice! Did you use - a hair growth thingy, or something?”

"Pff, no, it's a mundie thing, I don't have a spell for growing hair."

“Oh! Like makeup except for your hair, cool.”

"Yeah, exactly! These are my parents, Dan and Cass, and my sisters Beth and Judy, and my brother John -"

"Hi!" says Beth.

“Hi!” says Zeke to the tiny cute child. He had sort of forgotten what tiny cute children looked like. “I’m Zeke, this is my mom and my dad - they’re Warren and Edna - and this is Damien and this is Lincoln!”

”Charmed,” says Damien.

”It’s lovely to meet you!” says Edna.

"Are you WIZARDS," says Judy. "I want to see magic. Rebecca won't show me ANY magic except the one where when she does it I fall asleep."

“We ARE wizards! But magic is super shy around people who, like, aren’t wizards, so we can’t show off the really flashy stuff.”

"Well show me SOMETHING," insists Judy.

“What is a rose? But a petty flower,

Bred with thorns that merely hiss;

A hint of a massive, faded hour;

A rose? No, merely - artifice,” says Damien, drawing a rose from his sleeve and presenting it to her with a flourish.

"Ooh," she says, and she tucks it into her collar and bounces back into her chair.

The Bannisters settle down into the chairs that look like they should be thus settled.

"So obviously Rebecca's had a lot to cover and not enough time to go into much detail," says Mr. Dillard. "We know the, ah, broad strokes, but what can you tell us about yourself, Zeke?"

“I can figure out spells in twenty languages if I, like, have a dictionary, and my affinity is for layering spells, and my mana handling isn’t great so I don’t usually do big stuff all at once? Right now I wanna learn this one thingy for really short-range teleportation, where the range gets better and better if you cast it a bunch in a row, but I’m definitely not gonna learn it in time for - I guess that doesn’t have a deadline anymore actually, I’ll just finish learning it whenever.

I like - clouds, and trees, and the sun, and whatever? Kinda missed those. And having a gym that’s just a regular gym is cool. And I like Rebecca a lot, thank you for making Rebecca.”

"I told you he was a sweetie," Rebecca tells her parents.

"There should be a tree in your school. Like at least one tree," says Beth.

“There are, like, magic bonsais and stuff, but they’re not really the same.”

"There are magic bonsais? I didn't see any magic bonsais!" says Rebecca.

“I knew a guy with one, he brought it in for mana storage! It was cool.”

"Oh neat! I still have my shell, I should probably get something else figured out at some point for that now that I'm not just hooked up to Sacramento."

“We have a directory of people who sell that kind of thing, if you want to take a look,” says Zeke’s father. “Doesn’t come up often, handy when it does.”

"Oh, that would be good! A bunch of kids had stuff their parents made out of synthetic gems - the girl I passed Vanya's guitar to wore huge emerald pears everywhere - so I was thinking I'd do something like that if I didn't have a better idea but I'm not really an artificer."

“It’s important to specialize,” Warren/Zeke’s father/Mr. Bannister says, gruffly. “Work with you’ve got. You’re a singer?”

"Yeah, that's my affinity! I'm thinking maybe I will apply to Julliard - not sure about this year but the next at least."

“It’s best not to rush into anything too quickly,” advises Edna. “Take your time, figure out what you want outside of that horrible school, let your hair down a little.”

"That's the plan! But Zeke said I could get Manhattan Prep letters if I want."

“Of course, dear,” says Edna. 

"Thanks!"

"That's the school wizards pretend they went to? What if someone tries to find it?" says John.

“We have ways and ways.”

“There’s no need to be so ominous, Damien - if they call that one office that pretends to be seven different offices they’ll find everything in perfect order, their GPS won’t work correctly if they go to the listed address, all that sort of thing,” says Edna.

"What are the other six?" wonders Mr. Dillard.

“Oh, financial this and that, something new for every sort of form or reference, you know,” she says, making a dismissive gesture.

"And you have to have a wizard doing that, and not doing magic?"

“Not always, but most of the time. There aren’t, really, all that many mundanes who know the whole of everything, and there are always lots of wizards who’d like a good word with New York.”

"I want to know the holy everything," says Judy.

“Are you really very sure?”

"YES," says Judy. Rebecca pats her on the head.

“Well, if you’d like to know one holy everything, if not the holy everything, I expect that you’re going to live a very long and healthy life, with hardly anything wrong with it at all, and that you’ll be very happy with it.”

"That is not a holy everything," mutters Judy.

“My condolences, then.”

The waiter chooses this moment to come by and take their orders!

Warren, Damien, Lincoln, and Zeke all order ramen and a few different sides and appetizers; Edna asks for a small salad and a glass of tea and nothing else. 

Rebecca wants ramen! She agrees to split tempura with Beth and John, and threatens to steal edamame from her mom.

"I have gained five pounds already," she says, when the waiter's gone. "Real food is AMAZING. I'm switching to more of a like, actual workout routine with a gym and everything, instead of just planking constantly, so hopefully that'll level out in a bit."

“We should work out together! Or, like, in the same gym, next to each other. Real gyms are so good! - also also ALSO, I listened to playlists from a ton of theater things that are open right now, and I thought that you’d like Jesus Christ Superstar and I got tickets for after dinner if you wanna! Also we still need to go to a church so god doesn’t think New York reneges on deals or whatever but that can happen later probably!”

"Oh wow you got tickets for tonight? Amazing!!!" she squeals.

"Did you get everybody one?" asks Beth.

“I wanted to get us box seats and stuff, and there were only, like, two seats in a box, but if the rest of you wanna come and see if there are tickets left you totally can!”

"Oooh, a box," coos Rebecca.

“It’ll be so cool!”

"Yeah! We'll be in town for a while so maybe we can see some stuff that came out recently that I haven't even heard of too."

“We can see ALL of the stuff!”

"It is SO GOOD to be OUT."

"They should fix that school," mutters Mrs. Dillard, "so it doesn't take children unexpectedly - we had no idea, for a year -"

“Terrible business, that,” says Warren.

“Rest assured that the incident was investigated to the greatest possible extent,” says Damien, darkly.

"What did they find out, I haven't heard anything."

“Chicago janitor wanted a slot for her kid, figured she would kill an entire enclave for it. She’s been handled.”

"Jesus!"

“Enclaves are supposed to be safe.”

"Yeah, no kidding. Who's her kid, anybody we'd know?"

“Eliza Godfrey.”

"Oh... I think I met her once but that's all." Also Rebecca is pretty sure she's dead but she's trying not to clarify the death rate to her family.

The waiter chooses this moment to arrive with appetizers!

Zeke tentatively picks at his tempura, without really eating much of it at all, in a way that strikes anyone who’s ever seen him eat before as being extremely uncharacteristic.

"...saving room for ramen?" wonders Rebecca softly.

“... uh. Yeah?” says Zeke, quietly and unconvincingly.

"Are you sick or something -"

“I’m, like - I don’t super wanna talk about it right now?”

"...okay." She pats his arm and eats her own share of the appetizers.

Everything is fine. He is so fine and cool and fine, look, now he’s eating his appetizers in a much more typically-Zeke-ish fashion.

Reassuring! Something you can snap out of is less likely to get you eaten less concerning than something that keeps happening even after somebody asks if you are okay.

The appetizers are finished off; the ramen gets brought in.

Zeke gets through about half of his ramen and then excuses himself to go the restroom. 

...oh right, yeah, it's okay to go to the bathroom alone, now.

Why does EVERYTHING still taste like BLOOD. There definitely isn’t still any blood in his mouth. It’s been, like, a week.

He leans over the bathroom sink and stares in the mirror and he looks - kind of pale, and nauseated, and exhausted, and he is definitely not allowed to be any of those things, if he is any of those things he’s going to die and his girlfriend is going to die and everyone is going to die probably. Or he’s going to die alone and his girlfriend is going to be just fine without him because nobody needs him anymore and half of the people who did need him very urgently a week ago are already VERY DEAD. 

When he returns, looking slightly like it wasn’t okay to go to the bathroom alone after all, he would like the rest of his ramen to-go please random waiter thank you random waiter.

This is a Zeke who needs the emergency chocolate stash except they have graduated so presumably this is a problem arbitrary amounts of chocolate could be thrown at without making a dent! Oh no! She hugs his arm and eats one handed even though that's kind of difficult with ramen.

He is no longer trying to eat anything and a Rebecca is hugging his arm and this is almost like an emergency chocolate stash! He continues to look kind of pale and exhausted but the nausea fades and he perks up a bit. 

Pet pet pet. "You still okay to go to the show?"

“Yeah.”

"Okay. If you're sick or something they probably have a great healer in New York, right?"

“Uh. Definitely?”

”We have the very best healers in the world,” mutters Damien, in Latin, “for everything that you never ever want to fix.”

”Ezekiel is still recovering from a very traumatic experience,” says Zeke’s mother, also in Latin, “and I am very proud of him, and he can take all of the time that he needs, and he is still never going to anything like you. I love you, Damien, but sometimes I get tired of how very you you are. We were having a perfectly nice dinner -“

“- Damien, Edna, I don’t believe everyone here can understand that,” says Zeke’s father, in English, glancing at Mr. and Mrs. Dillard.

”- oh, my apologies,” says Damien, with an excellent impression of sincerity.

"Was that Latin? Rebecca knows LATIN now," says Beth.

"Yeah, that was Latin," says Rebecca, smiling a little uncertainly.

... everything is so terrible. Zeke is going to try being very quiet and leaning on his girlfriend and maybe this will keep any other terrible things from happening. 

"Rebecca what other languages do you know now again?" says Beth.

"I mean, I'm not super great at any of them," Rebecca says, "I just learned enough to do spells in them, but Latin and German and Spanish and Italian and Hindi and Russian and French."

They keep making small talk. John and Judy want dessert.

Lincoln - who has been preoccupied for this entire dinner by thinking about dinosaurs and their tiny little arms, entirely oblivious to the world around him - would LOVE dessert. 

Zeke does not want dessert, thanks no thanks random waiter, goodbye random waiter.

Rebecca is full of ramen and will split something with her mom. And pet Zeke's arm.

Rebecca is so good! Pale exhausted smile.

And then maybe Zeke will be cheered up by Jesus Christ Superstar after they have made their way to it?

Jesus Christ Superstar is really good! Box seats aren’t great for actually getting a good angle on the stage, apparently, but they’re very romantic and made moreso when he fetches chocolates (which he is not going to eat) and flowers (which he is also not going to eat). He’s visibly perked up by the time they walk out of the theater.

Good! Perky Zeke is best. Rebecca can chatter about the show and all their musical direction decisionmaking all the way to her family's AirBnB.

And then they are at her family’s Airbnb! 

“That was really cool I’m super glad we did it I love you!” he says, hugging her.

"I love you too!" Smooch. "Thank you so much for taking me, it was a great show!"

“It definitely was! Sorry for being a downer earlier and for my family being awkward and stuff.”

"It's okay, no big deal. It was really sweet of your brother to give Judy a rose."

“He can be really cool! Do you wanna see another thingy tomorrow?”

"I would love to!"

“Cool, I love you!” he beams, and he hugs her and picks her up and spins her around and says goodbye and leaves.

He heads back to the New York enclave, sits down in his bed, and spends an entire hour casting his set of italian warding spells over his room, over and over again. The words had stopped sounding like words a few months into freshman year - they feel like he’s hugging the teddy bear that he owned when he was eight, or like he’s saying ‘safe safe safe I’m gonna be fine Rebecca’s gonna be fine safe safe safe safe’ - but calling out to the holy trinity for protection does feel slightly different after watching an entire musical about the Apostle enclave. If they had even been an enclave and not some weird mundane equivalent? He’d picked up some scattered religious stuff from language lab and Rebecca but there had obviously been a few gaps, like, it had seemed pretty clear from the musical that Judas and Jesus and Mary had been dating and he’d definitely never heard about that before. Where even is Apostle, is it in the Middle East, he doesn’t feel like googling it. 

He takes a sleep potion, after a while, and wakes up from a nightmare about two hours later. He could, technically, start taking a potion of specifically dreamless sleep, but he has the very strong sense that it would be - cheating, somehow. He doesn’t want to take trauma potions to blur away all of his negative emotions like they’re not about real things that really happened, real things that are going to keep happening, and he doesn’t want to act like Jasmine and Antwon aren’t even important enough to mourn, and if he has to wake up from nightmares twice a night then he has to wake up from nightmares twice a night, too bad, maybe the world could try sucking less next time. 

He sends Rebecca a message, in the morning.

hi! do you wanna see hadestown or the phantom of the opera tonight?

PHANTOM

like hadestown also looks great but I looooove Phantom

it's the one with the "anywhere you go let me go too" line, I must've sung that bit for you at some point

christine, that’s alllll iiiiii aaaask oooof yooou - cool, i’ll get us tickets and stuff for 7:00!

Are you gonna pick me up? Should I eat first?

i can pick you up, yeah! if you wanna eat first that’d be good

OK see you like 6:30?

SO EXCITED

THE PHAAAANTOM OOOOOF THE OOOOOPERAAAAAAA

6:30 works! 

AAAAaaaAAaaAaaaAaAaAAAAA - actually I dunno that you can communicate the cool high note riff over text without just sounding like you’re yelling, nevermind. i love you!!!

LOVE YOU

❤️❤️❤️!!!

He drinks a nutrient potion instead of eating breakfast or lunch or dinner; it’s slightly less weird and terrible for potions to taste like blood. If everything keeps tasting like blood he’ll just live off of nutrient potions indefinitely, it’ll be fine. 

He arrives at 6:30 in a snazzy black limousine.

"Ooooh a limo!" She hugs John goodbye on the doorstep and then pops into the backseat next to him.

“A limo!” Zeke agrees. 

Has Rebecca considered that one important feature of limos is that you can make out in them? Zeke thinks that this is a very important feature of limos!

Oh that's a VERY good feature. She has not made out with Zeke properly in like a whole week. Also, hypothetically, if they were to get really carried away, they could skip off to Vegas or something, so she doesn't have to keep catching herself and starting over. Though in practice the limo arriving at its destination will interrupt her.

It’s very frustrating when the limo arrives at its destination; very rude of the limo driver to actually do their job and not just drive around in circles so he can have sex with the best person in the world continue to make out with the best person in the world and respect her religious thingy that’s really important to her for reasons.

The phantom of the opera is: the phantom of the opera! 

He's there! The phantom of the opera!!!!!

They can make out at intermission. Just a little.

They CAN! How is Rebecca so correct about everything. Is it because she’s pretty and perfect and the best person in the world??? Zeke thinks that it’s because she’s pretty and perfect and the best person in the world; he verbalizes this thought process out loud. 

"Awwww thank you I love you and you are ALSO perfect and," mwah.

They’re eventually interrupted by - “MASQUERAAAADE, PAPER FACES ON PARADE” - and then they should probably actually watch the Broadway musical that’s in front of them, or something. 

Yes. But with her head on his shoulder and her hugging his arm.

He leans both for head-on-shoulder positioning reasons and also because leaning on Rebecca is inherently rewarding.

When the show is over Rebecca is BOUNCY. "That was SO good, I am SO glad I can see shows again that aren't, like, me personally singing all of it for you and Jean and a handful of random other people."

“Those shows were still really good but you didn’t have an orchestra and stuff! I think that you should have an entire orchestra.”

"My life ambition is still to be a Disney princess! Then I get an orchestra and also a score by Alan Menken. Once I've decompressed and caught up with the world existing and stuff."

Could he hire an orchestra for her as a present, he has no idea how much orchestras cost, also maybe it wouldn’t even be a good present, also maybe ever spending money at all is unethical and he’s doomed to be a horrible person or a hermit in the woods? -

“There’s so much world to catch up on! Like, even just the small stuff is still so cool, like, the sky, I dunno that looking at the sky is ever gonna get old.”

"The sky is good! I also haven't gone swimming yet, and I still need to go to a karaoke place, and there are so many movies we missed..."

“Do you wanna go to the movies tomorrow?”

"Yeah! I mean we can't see any of the biggest stuff because it's all series we aren't caught up on - I guess we could see them and catch up later - but yeah movies tomorrow!"

“Cool, I dunno what else is playing but I bet there’s stuff! Do you wanna do another Broadway thing tomorrow too or would that be, like, a lot?”

"It would be a lot but like in a good way!"

“Then we can totally do it!”

He also hired a limousine for the ride back; he is occasionally distracted from making out in the back of it by the impulse to burst into spontaneous phantom of the opera duets. 

These are both great activities to divide their time between.

"Hey can I see in the enclave at some point?" she asks toward the end of the limo ride.

“- yeah for sure! Do you wanna also do that tomorrow, I could show you around pretty early in the day and then we could do the movie and hadestown or newsies or whatever later?” 

"Yeah, that sounds great! There's no way for my folks to see, right - it'd break the entrance?"

“Yeah. Or it’d, like, drain a ton of mana to keep the entrance open, maybe, I dunno exactly how that works.”

"Judy'll be mad, i bet, but oh well, I wanna see anyway."