Absolute Zero

Chapter Seven

7

Mordecaii was the most humble, most selfless (mostly) human being Michael and all of the angels in his garrison had ever seen. "Are you sure this is what you want?" He asked the teen, placing a hand on his shoulder.

Mordecaii smiled sadly. "Of course not. But hey, 'the needs of the many outweight the needs of the few', right? My happiness doesn't matter, I mean why would it all of a sudden start now?"

Those words punched Michael hard in the gut and stung more than the pain of a thousand demons. Rubbing his face with his hand, he took Mordecaii's hands into one of his own and sighed sadly. "Hang in there, all right, buddy? I don't want to see you back here until your time."

The expression on Mordecaii's countenance should have only been on that of a widowed Army veteran whose children have all died and lives alone in a retirement home with cancer; bleak, hopeless, but trying too hard to show happiness and only making the sadness that much more obvious. "I'll try." He replied, bottom lip just barely quivering and hollow eyes watery. Michael lowered his face to the floor and he closed his own brilliant blues as tears tried to fall. Mumbling something in what might have been Hebrew or Enochian, he brought Mordecaii out of his coma and himself out of his head.

~

Edmund felt a presence beside him; not malevolent, but still very much there. He opened his eyes feebly and tightened his grip on Mordecaii's hand. His heart momentarily stopped beating in his chest when the hand squeezed back. With a start, he sat up straight and his eyes widened at the sight of his adopted son stirring and his eyelids lifting. "Mordecaii! Oh, Mordecaii, you're awake! Uhh, DOCTOR! DOCTOR!" Edmund cried.

"Hey, Mr. McAvery," Mordecaii greeted with a empty smile.

"Oh, it is good to hear your voice again, and please do call me Edmund."

"Alright, Edmund."

By now, Emilio was beginning to stir, and at the sound of an Mordecaii's voice he shot up and almost his hand in his grasp. "Mordecaii! Minha querida! You are awake!"

Mordecaii flinched at hearing Emilio's voice and feeling his hand in his. "Emilio." He hissed low in his throat. Carefully, he wrangled his hand out of Emilio's and hid it beneath his thigh. "What do you want?"

Emilio's expression fell. "To see you! To make sure you were OK!" The Ecuadorian teen answered. Edmund frowned at Mordecaii's reaction to Emilio, but said nothing.

"Why do you care, you put me in here." Mordecaii spat.

A heavy silence filled the air at those words. "Excuse me- Emilio did this? He drove you to-" Edmund didn't finish his sentence, as he already knew the answer.

"No, I was trying to help you, I would never-it wasn't-" Emilio began to back away, and then bolted out the door.

"Stop! Stop him!" Edmund stood to run after the fleeing teen, but Mordecaii stopped him.

"Don't. He needs just as much help as me. When you can, tell CPS that you suspect him of being abused."

Edmund nodded. "Yes, all right. And, since we're on the subject of CPS, there is something I must tell you..."

~

Edmund's house was very large considering what he was paid as a teacher, but anyone who knew him knew that he had received a large sum of money when his grandmother had died and had invested part of it in expanding his house to accomadate him and the other people he lived with.

At the house, Edmund helped Mordecaii carry his things into the main hall, and then called out, "Rafael! Evan! Come down and meet your new brother!"

"Yo, he's here, Raf! Come on!" Mordecaii heard someone shout excitedly, which was followed by stampeding feet and then sliding as who he guessed was Evan came sliding down the handrailing to the main stairs, and not far behind actually taking the stairs the other one, Rafael. Upon seeing said teen, Mordecaii had to blink twice; he had blue hair and eyes like his own. At Rafael's reaction to him, he was thinking the same thing. "Evan, Raf, this is Mordecaii, your new brother." Edmund introduced with a bright smile.

"'Sup, Mordo?" Evan grinned, showing all of his white, kind of pointy teeth, which made Mordecaii's cheeks feel warm. He was tall, taller than him though not by much, had chocolate brown hair spiked up in the front and dazzling hazel eyes which were currently more green and gold. His lightly tanned skin was covered in freckles, and the bulk of his clothes gave Mordecaii the impression that he was very muscular and strong. He was looking at him with a strange expression that made Mordecaii only feel warmer.

"Good afternoon, Mordecaii. Welcome home." Rafael greeted kindly, hands clasped in front of him. He had an accent like Mr- Edmund's, so Mordecaii guessed he was also from England. As mentioned before, he had blue hair and one hot pink and one rainbow eye, except his hair was lightly curled and medium-long instead of straight and styled up. He had light brown skin, but it matched his hair somehow and didn't clash. About the same height as Evan, he also gave the appearance of being strong and fit, though not as big as Evan and seemingly more mannered. He had a nice, polite smile that made Mordecaii feel calm.

"Well, don't just stand there, boys; show him to his room by Evan's. Run along!" Edmund told them with restrained joy.

"Thanks, Edmund." Mordecaii thanked his teacher.

"Of course, Mordecaii." The man replied with twinkling eyes.

"C'mon, Mords! You got the room by me." Evan took Mordecaii's hand and led him up the stairs to the hallway that wrapped around the second floor and ended on the other side of the house on the opposite side. There weren't that many doors, as all of the rooms were very large and the doors were widely spaced.

Mordecaii's room was in the middle of the second floor, to the right (our left) of Evan's. Inside, it had a large bed, an armour, a big window, a desk, and a walk-in closet that had a connecting door to Evan's room. To the newly adopted teen's surprise, his new brothers helped him put his clothes away and arrange his few knick-knacks on his desk and atop his armour. They then proceeded to show him around the house and the backyard, which had a pool and a tree that they had built a super-sick treehouse in.

In the treehouse, Rafael and Evan told him about how they'd come to be Edmund's foster sons; Rafael's parents had died, and he had lived on the street for a while until Evan invited him to stay at his place, and they'd lived together for a while until CPS had come and taken Evan away from his parents. "Again," Evan put in with an eye roll. Anyway, he and Raf were taken to a foster home, where Rafael awaited to be sent back to England the next day. Of course, Evan refused to let him go anywhere without him, so the social services people were forced to send Evan with to England, whereupon they were promptly adopted by Edmund and flown back to America with him to live in the house he'd bought beforehand over the phone as he was to be a teacher in a secondary school the next couple cities over. "It all worked out in the end," Rafael shrugged, a habit he'd picked up from Evan. At that time, Edmund called them in for dinner, which was delicious and gourmet and afterwards they all helped clean up and rinse the dishes to be put in the dishwasher while Edmund prepared pudding (dessert) which was a bowl of vanilla gelato with two Nutella cookies and after that they all sat down and watched Hot Fuzz and then was read a bible passage and they all held hands and prayed before Edmund sent them up to bed so he could grade papers and because they had "home school tomorrow, you know!" and as Mordecaii laid down upon the impossibly comfortable bed he sighed because he'd never been this happy in his whole life and prayed desperately that it could always be like this.

That it could never stop being like this.