Author's Notes: For romulanholiday, who requested Doctrine of Labyrinths fic. I feel bad about how little this has a plot, but Felix was being a little bit of a brat (what else is new) and not making things do what I wanted them to. Which is how I ended up with this.

Connected, loosely, to your not!present last year, "The Boy Is Doing Fine", at least in terms of showing what Felix was up to/like in the years before everything went to hell. (Next year I'll write you something with a plot. I do so swear.) I also really really hope I didn't fuck up any canon details, because I am due for a reread, boy howdy. Eep!

At this distance, Felix knew the familiar smell of the city was a sensory illusion. A memory of a smell rather than the thing itself. It still made his stomach twist with suddenly nervous uncertainty. If Mélusine was his mother city, Felix mused, she was about as good a mother as the one who'd birthed him for true. And yet here he was, crawling back to her skirts.

No, he amended. Not crawling. Returning with his head held high, to show what he'd become in spite of her. He'd left this place as a Lower City whore. He was returning as something else altogether. No one need know he'd ever been less.

And if he should come looking for you?

Let him come, Felix thought, with almost frantic ferocity. I'm not his cur.

Not anymore, at any rate.

He rapped at the forward wall of the coach in which he was riding. "Is there a road to the Mirador that avoids most of the Lower City?"

"Yes, my lord, though it's a bit longer-"

"Take it."

Felix thought suddenly and queerly of Jolene. What would she say to see him now? Would she even know him? He pushed the though brutally aside. What if she didn't? So much the better. No one else would. If anyone he had known was even still alive.

Felix Harrowgate, come from the north to make his debut as a wizard of the Curia. That was all he was, and all he (upjumped whore) ever had been.

~.~

The room he was directed to was beautiful. Not that he had been staying in hovels, but with too little money to his name and frequent travel…but this. Almost dizzyingly lush. Best of all, even straining his ears, he couldn't hear the river. It might as well be another world, here.

The bath was enormous. He began running himself one, as hot as he could stand, sat on the edge and put his feet in the water. He held his breath until he adjusted to the temperature change, and let it out. The heat of the water made it safe. Made it unlike enough that he could…

And he needed something to ease uncomfortably stiff muscles. Coaches might be better than riding, but the one he'd been traveling in, at least, was significantly less than comfortable.

He felt good. The fluttery nervousness that began low in his stomach was easily subdued, and looking around his surroundings…as a wizard, he could live in a place like this. Read and study and no one to tell him to do otherwise.

His shoulders twitched, as though he could shake off the memories that closed in at his back, and he slipped into the bath as it began to fill, stretching out nearly fully and closing his eyes to indulge in a bit of a dream.

He did not think of Malkar.

When he got out of the bath, there were a few letters that had been slipped under his door, each neatly sealed with wax impressed with symbols he didn't recognize but didn't doubt were important. Well, he was a quick learner. He leafed through the letters – invitations to dinner, mostly, a few simple polite inquiries, and dropped them on the table beside his bed.

After looking at them for a moment, he began to laugh. There was, perhaps, a faintly bitter edge to it, but Felix hardly noticed.

He chose three of the invitations at random and threw the rest of the fire, scarcely looking at the names.

~.~

Stephen Teverius disliked him nearly on sight. Felix probably should not have been amused by it, but he was, and even more so by the way his half brother Shannon's eyes had brightened when they'd been introduced, his quick and assessing gaze more than just slightly intriguing.

Felix found him again once the formal introductions were completed. "Lord Teverius," he said, with a formal bow and a slightly less formal smile. Shannon turned from his conversation and a brief expression of startled pleasure crossed his face.

"Am I to call you Lord Harrowgate, then?" Shannon said, beginning to smile, and Felix felt a giddy rush, the kind of delight that he was still not quite used to. No one telling him to stop.

"Felix suits me," he said easily. "I feel no need to stand on too much formality – unless you prefer otherwise, of course."

"Then you must call me Shannon," he said, smile growing a touch. "Don't turn now, but I think my half brother is watching you."

Felix sidled a little closer, and leaned in, lowering his voice. "Shall I give him more of a reason to?" he asked, and felt a little thrill when Shannon shivered, just a little.

"You are not a very good man," Shannon said on the same tone, after a moment. "Though I can't say that I necessarily…mind. Though perhaps…" Shannon's hand – on the opposite side from Stephen, Felix noticed – brushed his arm. "Later?"

"I wouldn't dream of refusing your hospitality," Felix said, and Shannon looked, oddly, as though he wanted to blush. Felix couldn't resist at that, and leaned in, stomach fluttering a little, to kiss his cheek. "Until later, then," he murmured.

Shannon's eyes were faintly wide. Felix felt a faintly hysterical urge to giggle and held it in in favor of a smile that felt strange on his face, turning to glide away. He could feel eyes following him and wondered what they were thinking, what they imagined he'd said.

Whore. The faintest whisper at the back of his mind, and Felix brushed it away like a cobweb. His choice. He wondered if that would ever not make him feel giddy with relief, that he had a choice, that it was his. No one else's.

And that was good.

As he moved through the crowd, he heard a sudden smattering of Lower City speech and whirled, only to see a small gaggle laughing heartily at one man's imitation, apparently of a servant he'd once had. His heart still raced, though, for a few moments.

Don't be a fool, he thought, a touch angrily. It's not going to come and – drag you back. You're free of that now. As free of it as you are of him.

That was the trouble, though, wasn't it? Sometimes he wondered. Sometimes he woke up sweating in the middle of the night and had to wonder if he was free of him after all. If he ever would be.

~.~

Felicia fluttered like a slightly inebriated, nervous butterfly. "Did we take a wrong turn?"

Felix had not been paying attention, rather more interested in the way Shannon's hands kept trying to wander somewhat less than subtly. The little group they were with were Shannon's friends, not his, though he supposed with time, perhaps. He glanced up sharply at that, though, and looked around them. Inhaled. He stopped. "We have."

Felicia turned around, giving him an odd look. "Why, Felix dear, you've gone all pale. Whatever's-"

"This is the Lower City," he said. Shannon straightened up a little, the expression on his face decidedly curious.

"Oh, really? I've never-"

"We should turn around," Felix said tightly. "Find…"

"Oh, don't look so worried," said Bennett, looking around them with that same curiosity. "It's only the very fringes, and I hardly think anyone's going to give us any trouble." He raised his voice. "Is anyone going to give us any trouble?"

"Bennett," Felix said tightly, trying to shake Shannon of his arm. "Don't." He felt a strange quiver starting in his bones, as though if he stayed too long here some ghost from his past would jump out of the shadows and point accusingly, there, you, weren't you a boy at the Shining Tiger- "I'm hardly in the mood to have my throat cut tonight, thank you-"

Julian turned and grinned at him. "Is this why you never come into the city with us, Felix? Because you're frightened of-"

"Let's turn around," Shannon said, to Felix's surprise, his voice clear and assured. "It smells down here, I don't want it getting into my nice clothes." He tugged at Felix's arm. "Come with me, darling."

Felix followed Shannon's urging willingly. He glanced back to see the rest of their company beginning to trail after them. He felt nervous, tense, still half expecting someone to leap from the shadows and name him a fake, a pretender, drag him back down (to the river) and- "You were almost trembling back there," Shannon murmured, low enough that no one else would hear him. "I've never seen you look like that."

Nor ever will again, Felix thought fervently. He felt bitterly ashamed. "One never knows what might happen," he said, finding a casual smile. "In such a place as that…I hear such stories, you know."

Shannon's eyes lit with curiosity again. "Stories?" he said, intrigued. "Such as," and for a fierce, vicious moment, Felix hated him for his curiosity, his hunger for grotesque details to shudder at in safety. He thought of Jolene dying slowly in a side street, of the water of the Sim in his lungs, Malkar's smile, imagined telling Shannon I knew a boy once who tried to leave his Keeper, what happened to him-

A moment later the rage was gone, submerged. That wasn't his world anymore. That wasn't his life. Well behind him and there was no need to think on it.

"Don't be morbid," Felix said, chidingly, and leaned over to kiss Shannon's cheek.

~.~

He'd put the lights out, but taken a bit too long to return to bed, it seemed, because Shannon crept up behind him, resting his hands lightly on Felix's waist. "What are you doing?"

The hair on the back of Felix's neck stood up, acutely aware of having someone at his back. The sudden feeling of vulnerability caught him by surprise. "Impatient, darling? I was just about to-" He cut off as Shannon's hands slid to his back and began to run up toward his shoulders, only to stop almost at once as he hit the ridge of scar tissue.

"—what's-"

Felix whirled, caught Shannon's hand and kissed his fingertips. "A terribly dull story." He could almost see Shannon's frown in the dark.

"Felix…"

"Shannon," Felix echoed on the same tone. He didn't mean it to be mocking, necessarily, but it came out a bit more that way than he intended. Shannon's eyes in the dark flashed hurt and he tried to draw his hand away.

"If you didn't want me here tonight-"

"I do." Felix pulled Shannon's hand back up to his mouth and lightly kissed each finger. "Just…"

Shannon shook his head, the movement just barely visible. "Sometimes you're so very strange."

Felix felt a little thrill of fear, and raised his eyebrows, voice casual. "Do you mind, darling?" He let his tongue flick out and just brush the tip of one of Shannon's fingers. He made a soft, faintly pleased sound.

"No. I suppose I don't mind." Shannon frowned. "Robert of Hermione was saying the most vulgar things about you tonight."

"Out of earshot, I notice," Felix murmured, though thinking of Robert made him wrinkle his nose. "Robert of Hermione is a pompous fool, to keep to more polite phrases."

"Influential, though," Shannon murmured. "With Stephen…disapproving, perhaps you should…there is your reputation to think of."

"I don't care in the least about my reputation," Felix said, releasing Shannon's hand only to pull him in and kiss him on the mouth. "You ought to know that." Shannon laughed, a little helplessly, and Felix kissed him again, a little more soundly.

Robert of Hermione could say what he liked. He had no proof, and his hatred only made him a less credible speaker. He guessed. Threw darts in the dark. He didn't know. It was safe. He was safe.

Felix listened closely. No sound of the Sim.

"Come to bed," Shannon said, hands sliding down his arms, over his tattoos. "It's cold without you."

"Yes," said Felix, and smiled, shucking off the worry like old skin. "Of course."