To Ally with the Guardians

Chapter 16: Unrecognized

When Bunny had dragged Matt to the others and explained what had happened, Angelia started sobbing and Duran just stared in horror. Mallory's eyes bulged from his head, Whisper's glazed over, and each of the Guardians wore a different unreadable expression.

"The curse is permanent?" North said. "Then everyone must stop using it."

"But my daughter, she's..." Bunny began.

"Your daughter would not want you to be a Fearling like her." North's eyebrows lowered like his mouth, frowning, though not in a hostile way.

"How would you know?" Bunny spat, taking a step forward. "You've never had a daughter. If this was Katherine or Ombric we were talking about, then..."

"We'd still have to let them go," Tooth said, her face forming an expression similar to North's.

"Come on, you're not gonna give up hope now, are you?"

"There has to be another way to save Haven," Matt said. "And Bunny can still save Vivian, and Whisper..."

"I'll find another cure," Mallory spoke up, and he took one of the books the Prophecy Person was holding. "Whisper's going to translate this for me, and I'm going to see if there's anything the Guardians missed while they were trying to create a Fearling cure. Maybe this remedy would also work for Haven."

"How would you find something new when you don't have as much experience with Fearlings as we do?" North asked. "We've spent years studying them."

"I'm not exactly stupid."

"And neither are we."

"Everyone makes mistakes."

"That includes you."

Whisper walked in between them and raised her hand, silencing the beginnings of an argument. She then turned in a circle, looking at each person until she reached Matt. "Where did Angelia's scythe come from?" Well, that was certainly an off-topic question.

"The cave," Duran said before anyone else could.

"Then we need to go there." Whisper lowered her hand and stared with desperate pleading eyes. "I still don't think that Indicator of yours is a Monitor, but I can tell that that scythe is from The, now that I've gotten a good look at it."

*}{/*}{/*}{/*

Everyone who had gone on the mission to the workshop stood around the L.E.R.'s cave, including Mallory, who had to bend his head over in order to stand upright. With what he could see, the area looked pretty suspicious. There were maybe hundreds of names written on the wall in some sort of cursive, a faded design on the ground with a hole in the middle where Matt had said he had found the Indicator, and the adjacent room was a mess, with pages and broken furniture everywhere.

"I don't recognize this handwriting," Whisper said, rubbing her fingers over Annabeth Polly Howard's dark-inked name. Mallory could've sworn that she had seen the scythe before the Nightmare attack, but he guessed that she just hadn't been paying attention to the others' weapons before then.

"What about this?" Matt rushed into the other room and picked a piece of paper off the floor. "Do you recognize this?" He flashed it in Whisper's face. "There were books in there, too, before the Fearlings destroyed everything because they didn't want us to have weapons."

She took it from him and turned away, her brows furrowing before she shook her head and looked back at everyone. "No."

Mallory suddenly caught sight of something on part of the wall. He blinked for a second, unsure if he was seeing straight. The letters didn't change when he did so, however, so he walked over to them. He felt everyone's eyes on his movements, watching as he stared at three words: Mallory Philip Bennett.

"What is it?" Matt asked, stepping toward him.

"My name's on the wall." A shiver went down Mallory's back, and he felt almost disconnected from everything. He lived several states over and was only involved in this whole war because of his kids, and yet he appeared to be bound by the same words and item as everyone else in the room except for Whisper. Being a part of a dream that a Prophecy Person doubted meant anything was one thing, but this was another. He should've suspected this with the whole dream thing, though.

But somehow, the very event that had wrenched him out of his slowly-improving life was a part of something bigger that he didn't know about. He didn't like not knowing. He didn't like not being in control. Mallory was supposed to be with these kids and their curse, and he didn't like it. Yes, he was trying to help them in order to protect his children, but he didn't want to have to protect them. If he was bound to the L.E.R. and the Guardians, did that mean that whatever controlled the Indicator would keep up his motivation by making his kids be in danger all the time?

"Oh," Matt breathed, looking at the cursive script. "I wrote down all of the names a long time ago, but I guess I forgot that yours was one of them." He gave the blond man a light pat on the back. "Welcome to the Lunar Eclipse Resistance."

"If he wants to be," Duran said immediately. "Just because his name's on the wall doesn't mean he's either a Guardian or one of us. Howard wanted nothing to do with it, and Garvit's name wasn't on the wall even though he was a part of the L.E.R."

"Garvit left." Matt gave Duran an incredulous look before turning back to Mallory. "So, do you want in?" His eyes bore into the man as if they would shoot lasers if Mallory gave the wrong answer.

"No." Mallory didn't want to tell the kid this, but he was an adult. He had a job to work- if he hadn't been fired yet- and children to visit. Skipping off to help people who society probably considered lunatics wasn't an option. He would assist them while Jamie and Sophie were in danger alongside them, but once everyone was safe and went back to their normal lives, that would be it. He had a life to rebuild, and ghost hunting wouldn't help him do that.

Matt glared at him with ferocity, and Mallory almost wished he had lied. Almost. He wasn't going to return to his teenage years again, no matter how much he wanted to avoid negative reactions from others.

As Matt stalked away, Mallory wondered what the teen had been like when his girlfriend hadn't been in danger like this. The man had certainly been different while manipulating people out of grief.

Whisper returned from the demolished room, apparently having searched in there while he had gawked at his name on the wall. "I don't know who put everything here. There are no clues, and I don't recognize anything. The scythe must have been stolen somehow."

"Do you want it?" Angelia asked, offering it to the Prophecy Person.

"No, I never had one, so it's not something I feel I want. You seem to need it more than I do, anyway."

"We should go, then." North made for the exit.

"Matt, can we visit your grandpa and tell him to try to explain everything to my parents before we leave?" Angelia asked.

The boy didn't respond for a second, his eyes glazing over with visible fear before anger flashed across his face and he punched the cave wall. Everyone jumped back, and his eyes widened as he stared at his fist. The curse.

"Fine."

Mallory watched Matt with a wary eye as the kid spun around and headed away from the cave, carrying his jacket like everyone else in the summer heat, following the creek at the bottom of the ravine. How many Fearlings would Mallory have to cure before he acted on new impulses, if he got there at all? Would he go back to telling lies and manipulating people? He had to find a new remedy. For his own sake, for Matt, Angelia, and Duran's. For Haven, Vivian, and the Prophecy People's. He had to.