Fic: monsters & men (Comfortember)

[csi_sanders1129]

Title: monsters & men
Chapters: 1/1
Author:csi_sanders1129
Genre: Drama.
Ratings: K+
Word Count: 692
Pairings/Characters: Nobody Owens, Silas
Synopsis: In which Bod does not remember his time in the graveyard until a familiar face appears in need of aid.
Comments: Written for Comfortember 2020, Prompt: Flashbacks. Set some time after Bod leave the graveyard. Might or might not add to this later on, but for now calling it done. Comments and kudos would be awesome. Enjoy!

Bod doesn't remember.

He remembers waking up one day with a small leather suitcase. It contained what seemed to be his precious few possessions – some clothes, a handful of books, a small model of the Golden Gate Bridge and a couple of other small trinkets. He also had, on his person, a battered old wallet with a scant amount of money and a passport in his name, Nobody Owens.

He knows very few things about his life before that. He knows that he had a family, a mother, a father, an older sister, and that something bad happened to them when he was very young. He knows he had a second family who loved him just as much as the first one did, even if it had been a very different sort of family.

But, now he is alone in the world and he has to figure out how to live that way.

It takes some time, but he finds a safe place to stay, a place to go to school. As the years pass, he gets himself a job, gets himself into university, sees as much of the world as he can manage. He makes friends, makes passing attempts at girlfriend and boyfriends. Everyone finds the amnesia surrounding his childhood baffling – which, to be fair, it is.

Still, it's not like he can do anything about it. No matter how many questions they ask, no matter what questions they ask, the memories do not return to him.

Until they do.

He's walking home from a friend's place late one autumn night. A few of them had been working on a project together for one of their classes and now he very much would like to get home and get to sleep – tomorrow's classes start very early, after all. But, something stops him when he turns onto his street.

There is a stranger lurking outside the door to his flat. The man is absurdly tall, dressed in absurdly dark clothes, and if he had been anybody but Nobody Owens, he would have found the stranger made him quite absurdly uncomfortable. But, as he was, in fact, Nobody Owens, this particular stranger could never be anything but startlingly familiar.

"Silas," he says, the name comes to him from some hidden part of his mind – from deep in the place where the dreams come from. Strikingly vivid dreams of a sprawling graveyard, calm and peaceful instead of filled with the nightmares one would expect of such a place. The dreams of witches and ghosts and hounds of god, and something else, something ancient, living in the hills of the old land. And of Silas, who was something else entirely.

"Bod," his ex-guardian greets, and it's then that Bod realizes that something is wrong. Silas is leaning heavily against the brick wall, cradling an arm against his chest as if bracing some type of injury. And he looks so tired, a bone deep sort of exhaustion, like it's a miracle he's ever still conscious and standing.

"You told me to come to you if I ever needed help," Silas explains, a promise Bod now has a vague recollections of dragging out of the man before they'd parted (even if the reasons for that parting have not quite caught up to him just yet). "I'm afraid I find myself in rather desperate need of your aid now, Nobody Owens."

He remembers, then. All at once, like someone flipped a switch in his head. Those enchanting dreams were not dreams. They were the last echoes of his memories and now they've returned to him in full force. The freedom of the graveyard. The Owens' taking him in and raising him after his family was murdered, even though they themselves had been dead for centuries. Ms. Lupescu and Liza Hempstock and Scarlett Perkins. The Sleer and the Jacks of All Trades. And his honorable guardian, Silas.

Silas, who needs his help.

Bod approaches, unlocks the door to his home, and gestures for Silas to follow him. "Come in," he says, knowing full well what the words mean to someone like Silas, "And tell me what I can do."