Fall term finals are coming up. She bombed all her midterms and has just barely been scraping by with passing grades in most of her classes. If she fails — she won't, but if — well. She won't. So it doesn't matter.

Jeremy is slightly pale when he shows up to breakfast.

"What's wrong?"

"Scratcher attack last night. Drove them off, obviously, but I had to burn through most of my spare mana."

"I can give you some of mine. —You can do my Intro to Probability midterm in exchange."

Oh, thank fuck, she doesn't suspect anything. "Yeah, for sure. Can you pay me up front?"

If it were, like, a random person, that would obviously be a bad idea. But he's basically her brother, it's not like he's not going to not do her math final.

"How much do you need?" That would also be a bad idea with a normal person, but she doesn't want him to get killed by a mal or something.

How much can he reasonably ask for? It's not like her final can be that hard, maybe worse than her Remedial Algebra final but not by a lot. "...A week's worth?"

She nods and holds out her hand.

He takes it.

He is suddenly very acutely aware that he could just — tug a bit —

(He doesn't. He's not an idiot.)

She smiles at him and drops her hand. "Let me know if you run low again."

Nod.

She makes it through finals.

Her grades aren't good. If she's being honest with herself, they kind of suck. But she didn't actually fail anything, so it could be worse. Next quarter she is not letting the school put her in two math classes.

But she makes it through.

(She's barely building mana with all the time she's spending on her classes, and she's getting Ds now as a freshman and her classes are only going to get harder, and Jeremy's been acting weird and the weird maleficer kids all hate her and— she's going to make it, she has to make it, some of that might make things harder but it can't mean she's doomed—)

She made it through finals. She'll be fine.

He makes it through finals.

Objectively speaking, most of his classes aren't hard, per se. But every essay takes time, and he's also doing two finals for Briar, and — he knows he needs to be building mana, he knows it's stupid not to —

By the time he reaches the end of finals he has less than half of what Briar gave him.

Jeremy isn't stupid. Deliberately ignoring your situation is a good way to die, and a bad way to do just about anything else.

The fundamental problem, the problem he noticed during fall midterms, is that no amount of being-willing-to-malefice will save him if he gets jumped on the stairs and doesn't have enough mana. If he wants to survive, he needs a plan that's actually sustainable.

It's a risk, to put it mildly. He's tanking his chance at a graduation alliance with an enclave, and especially at an enclave spot afterwards. But his graduation alliance doesn't matter if he dies before he even has the chance to graduate. 

(Briar's going to hate it. He— doesn't care what she thinks. She's barely staying alive. She doesn't get to drag him down with her.)

The third time he pulls malia, he looks at his reflection afterwards and realizes that his pupils are wrong.

He— isn't sure he's ready for everyone to know. Which is a great fucking time to be realizing that, when it's already too late, but it's not like he's going to pull malia from people, that's a great way to die before graduation. 

There's a kid from the Vienna enclave who runs a little shop with all kinds of random things. He knocks on her door first thing in the morning.

"Do you have sunglasses."

"What the fuck."

"I'm not going to hurt you, I just want to trade, do you have sunglasses."

"-yes. Do you have anything to offer me, I'm not taking tainted mana." She doesn't actually know if that would even work but either way she's not going to risk it.

"I have a magically reinforced belt from shop class last quarter— it doesn't do much but it's worth more than non-magical sunglasses."

She is pretty sure that sunglasses are worth more to the creepy maleficer kid than a slightly magic belt is worth to her, but not having to interact with a creepy maleficer kid is worth an awful lot. "Deal. Get the fuck out of my room."

He's not even in her room in the first place.

He takes the sunglasses and goes.

"What's up with the sunglasses?"

She has a bad feeling. She's not entirely sure why, Jeremy doesn't look hurt or anything, but something about— sitting next to him?— feels really uncomfortable.

"They're enchanted. Designed to protect your eyes during shop, but I bet they're not just good for that."

"Oh. Cool! Hey, want to trade math for Greek lit—"

"Yeah. Sure. That sounds great."

He finishes breakfast as fast as possible and finds a group leaving for his first class.

Briar's an idiot but she won't stay an idiot forever.

He really wants an excuse to just not talk to her for a bit, but even if he says he's busy with a project and can't study with her, he still needs to worry about meals.

(Maybe if he's a little more conservative about pulling malia, it'll take longer for her to notice?)

(He knew she'd be angry. He's fine with her being angry. Delaying doesn't actually help him.)

(Why does she get the useful scary affinity that she's barely even using. It's not fair.)

He goes to classes. He eats lunch. He's not planning on pulling malia tonight anyways. It's not like he's going to get any more obvious.

It's not until the end of that week that he notices he's building mana more slowly, and having more trouble drawing it out again from his storage.

He— knew that would happen eventually. He wasn't expecting it to happen already. Everyone knows the risks of using malia, but— 

Complaining about how unfair it is won't make it not true. If he wants to be sure he can respond properly to threats, he needs to either start carrying around mice with him, or start drawing more malia, more often.

He spends half an hour trying to figure out if there's any reasonable way to carry around mice in his backpack that'll still leave them accessible in an emergency before he gives up. (In hindsight it was stupid waste of time, he should've realized it sooner— but that's not helpful.)

(The pair of mice in the tank he goes for scurry away from him.)

This time, pulling malia feels more like turning a spigot than anything else. It flows into him, and for a moment he's unequivocally confident that everything is going to be fine. Then the mouse stops breathing, and he wants more— there's another one in the cage, and its mate is already dead— no. He's not stupid. He's not taking more than he needs to to top up his reserves.

He feels a little less sick. He hadn't even noticed he was feeling sick in the first place.

(In the morning, he feels sick again.)

Two weeks after the term starts, Jeremy misses breakfast.

It doesn't have to mean he's dead. 

Most of the other things it could mean are still bad, though.

She's trying to figure out if she knows anyone in his classes when she practically runs into him on the way to her second class.

He's wearing a pair of leather gloves.

"Oh! Hey Briar, sorry, I need to get to class—"

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

He glances at his hands. "I don't know what you're talking about."

(It was the aura, not the hands, that clued her in. Not that she's going to tell him that.)

"You— you can't just be a maleficer—"

It's not a good argument, and she knows it. Clearly he is a maleficer. But— what do you even say to that?

"Leave me alone, Briar. I said, I need to get to class."

She grabs his wrist. "Fuck no! You— you're going to get yourself killed—"

(and it's evil, and I never thought you of all people would do something like that, but you know it's evil, how can you not—)

(The rest of the hallway is giving them a wide berth at this point. Anyone they were walking with has moved on; it's stupid to randomly abandon someone you're walking with for no reason, but that doesn't mean you stick with them while they're getting into a screaming match in the hallway.)

"Let go of me!"

He starts an incantation, the fastest one he knows, just to push her away from him.

What is he doing to her— she, she does minds, she has to be able to do something—

She staggers backwards. It's a fast incantation.

Lots of mals aren't very smart. They'll avoid prey that's obviously a lot tougher than them, or that's obviously not worth the effort, but they can't tell the difference between two random people with similar mana capacity.

Other mals are smarter than that. Smart enough, for example, to identify when two tasty bags of mana are distracted.

He sees it before she does. It's some kind of iridescent yellow pearl, with no visible eyes and too many mouths—

He shouts the incantation again, this time directed towards the mal.

It doesn't even seem to notice. Psychic mals are fun like that.

She's slicing at it with her knife the moment she sees it, and it's not doing anything—

He has a spell that he knows will work for it but it's not an efficient one, it costs more mana than he has, probably even before the two force-blasts but definitely after—

"Give me your mana now—"

Does he think she's fucking stupid— the knife isn't working, she starts to run through one of her more complicated spells, it probably won't help but it's better than nothing—

He grabs at her while she's distracted and pulls, as hard as he can.

He shouts his stupid mana-intensive invocation, and the mal vanishes into a yellow smoke.

"Are you an idiot, you almost got us both killed."

As fast as she can, she starts reciting an incantation. It's a mental one, and nasty, not the sort of thing she'd use if she thought she might be able to save him— but she has to stop him from doing this to anyone else— she probably doesn't even have the mana, not after what he did—

He doesn't know what she's casting but he's sure as hell not letting her finish. He grabs at her mana again. Stops before he kills her, if he fucks up his anima that badly he'll be dead before the year is out. (and, and, she's an idiot but he doesn't actually want her dead, even though she just basically tried to kill him, but you can't let that sort of thing guide you—)

"I need to get to class. If you run, you might still make it before the mals get you."

He leaves.

She has to warn someone. Everyone else has scattered, she needs to— she needs to— she needs to— focus— needs to get to class—

She has a spell for alertness— doesn't have the, the mana— she needs to get to class—

She shoves herself upright and runs, or tries to. It's hard— needs to warn, warn someone—

(She does, actually, manage to build up a little by running. Not enough for anything substantial, but for something small, something in-affinity— she casts her alertness spell, the one that's a little like coffee—)

She needs to get to class right now before a mal eats her, and then she needs to warn someone about her maleficer brother before he kills someone.

Yeah, no, you're not making it to class alone while essentially out of mana.

He makes it to class just fine. He feels— great, actually, in a physical sense. He's more awake, more energetic, than he's been in weeks. Maybe since he got here.

(He's one of the last to make it into the room, and when he sets down his backpack multiple people move away from him.)

The recorded lecture drones on about something he could not possibly care about right now. He needs to care about it anyway, if he wants to live. He takes out a piece of paper and tries to stop letting his mind slip away.

(He glances at his reflection in a shard of glass. His hair is very, very, short, but he doesn't think it's ever been quite this light. It's not supposed to change that quickly, not all at once, not if you're being careful.)

He writes down something about poetic devices in German poetry. He can't afford any more stupid mistakes.

Briar isn't at lunch.

It's stupid to be upset about something that was going to happen no matter what he did. It's especially stupid to be upset about it when it was her fault.

Aren't maleficers supposed to not care about this sort of thing—

People give him a wide berth. 

That's— really bad, actually. Malia or no malia, he's not making it through three and a half years with no trading partners, no allies, no one he can swap homework with. Maybe it's the useful kind of fear where people will be willing to do things for him?

Useful or not, it keeps everyone away from him for the rest of the lunch period.

Right. Well. He's not walking to class on his own.

He goes up to a group of kids in his next class. Indies, not enclavers, he's not stupid.

"I'm going with you to class."

"—okay."

Right. Okay. This could be worse.

She's not at dinner either.

Yeah, he was expecting that.

He knows her room number. After dinner he cleans out her dorm room. 

He should build mana. It's not like he can get any from Briar anymore. (Maybe he should've tried harder to keep her alive— but he did try, and she was stupid about it, he saved her life and she was still trying to hurt him. What else was he supposed to do?)

He does twenty pushups. Trying to store the mana is like trying to store water in a ... in something with holes. He's pretty sure there's an expression there but he doesn't actually remember what it was. Like trying to store water in a colander.

He feels sick. This— it shouldn't be happening like this. He's been sticking to mice, he's been careful, you're not supposed to lose this all at once like that— he didn't even kill Briar—

He didn't even kill Briar but his stupid useless anima can't tell the difference, apparently, between pulling malia to save someone's life and pulling malia because you want to hurt them.

He needs a plan, a way to make it through the next four years, only right now the entire concept of a long-term plan feels out of reach.

Three-and-a-half years. Three-and-a-half years, and then he can— figure something out. He's going to need to be conservative, but maybe, maybe he can still recover from this. He doesn't have enough mice for this to be a good plan, but if he just gives up he's definitely going to die.