I Hope the Eldritch Horror Learns My Name (And Other Good Ideas): Other Good Ideas

 “You are lovers?” Karla asks, point blank.

Chapter warnings: Realistic depictions of neurological, physical, and bureaucratic trauma. War. Grief. Death. Mental illness. Regular illness.

Text iteration: Midnight.

Additional notes: This storyline (2026) was cut from Aftermath. It was a tough decision to remove it; there was a lot to like about it, but there’s a certain recursive forward/backward one-turn-deeper rhythm to Aftermath that has to create an effect when read linearly, and this was hard to get right. Ultimately this story was trimmed for Aftermath’s strange loops to land correctly. A conversation Hermann has with Mako in Aftermath 2028 originally came from this story. Other fragments of this arc were distributed into other places. I had to go back to my early drafts of Aftermath to find this and reconstitute it as a single piece.

Other Good Ideas

Dear Hermann, Karla’s message begins. You have not yet responded to the invitation mother sent regarding the winter holidays. I understand, I think, some of your reticence. Father is his usual self—but if you were to come he would make an effort to be civil. And, if he doesn’t, I promise to personally kick him out of the house. You’ve never been much of one for social gatherings, but I hope you can make it this year. I have missed you. I could not be more proud of my youngest brother! I didn’t understand the science behind your televised talk at UC Berkeley, but I did understand very well (I think) the importance of your contribution. I don’t share any of father’s sentiments; I never have. I hope that you will write to me, and tell me how you are. Perhaps, if you’re not inclined to come home, we could come visit you? Just myself, Erik, and the boys. Or if not the whole family, just me? It has been months now. If I don’t hear from you soon I may show up on your doorstep one day so you cannot avoid me! The children send their love to their “most famous uncle,” as do I.

Hermann returns from work in the early evening, his thoughts flitting between Riemann zeros (after the afternoon colloquia), what to prepare for dinner (spätzle?), Karla’s looming request (which he has, to his shame, been sitting on for eight weeks), Newton (who has a head cold that had better not go to his lungs), Jacob Patel (the graduate student bent on joining Newton’s lab before there’s a lab to speak of—strange), and, again, Karla.

Hermann has avoided her, much as he has avoided nearly everyone, for the past six months. His mind and life feel unsettled, fragile, prone to shatter beneath the slightest stress. Newton is only now beginning to tackle the daunting process of setting up his lab. Hermann thinks if they can just make it through the winter with no disasters, then maybe their lives will settle into something of a reproducible pattern. Newton will stop staring at the Wall, Hermann’s anxiety will relax its terrible stranglehold, and he will, occasionally, have the luxury of thinking about a life that he might want, rather than trying to hold what little he has in a death grip. 

Karla cannot come this year. They cannot go anywhere. That much is clear. Newton is trending toward a sustainable trajectory, but he’s not there yet. His sleep remains grossly abnormal, he’s emotionally labile, and his propensity for epistaxis continues to the point of impacting his stamina. He’s already fighting his first upper respiratory infection of the year and it’s only October. A plane ride during flu season could be catastrophic. Hermann has no idea how Newton would react to his family; he has no idea how his family would react to Newton. He’s never discussed his sexual orientation with either his parents or his siblings. He suspects it will be a non-issue but it won’t come without some attendant surprise. His father may not approve—his father doesn’t seem to approve of much that involves Hermann. 

Newton hasn’t texted him all day, which is somewhat unusual. Hermann hopes this means the man has been resting. With enough tea and aggressive hydration it’s possible this will remain a head cold. Things are different now. The pace of life has slowed. They’re not laboring under a countdown clock. Newton can take a day off. He can take two in a row. 

Hoping to find the man asleep, Hermann unlocks the door as quietly as the door will consent to being unlocked. 

He does not find Newton asleep. 

The man is curled on the couch, staring at nothing. His skin is waxen, hair damp with perspiration. He’s wearing sweatpants and a white dress shirt, which is inside-out and unbuttoned over a backwards, blood-stained undershirt.

“Newton?” Hermann deposits his bag on the table.

Newton doesn’t turn in response to his name.

Hermann approaches cautiously and slides onto their coffee table in what should be the man’s direct line of sight. This time, Newton looks at him. 

“Newton?” he asks again. 

“Hi.” The word is slow and unfocused. 

Hermann tips the other man’s chin up and studies him carefully. Newton makes no protest, barely reacts at all. His expression glazed, he yields to Hermann’s handling of his jaw, which is terribly unlike him. There’s dried blood on the man’s neck and shirt. At some point, he’d wiped most of it off his face. 

“What happened?” Hermann brushes a thumb across the man’s cheekbone. 

Newton looks puzzled by the question. “Don’t know,” he admits, the words coming slow. “How ‘s your day?”

“Getting worse by the minute,” Hermann mutters, feeling Newton’s forehead with the back of his hand. His skin is warm to the touch. A fever, yes, certainly, but that alone is not enough to explain his current demeanor. Hermann is reminded strongly of their flight from Hong Kong—this misted look, his quiet pliability. 

“Do you think you might have had a seizure?” Hermann asks, flipping through his contacts to locate Dr. McClure’s number. 

Newton angles his head, considering. “Myeah,” he decides.

“’Yeah’?” Hermann repeats, sharply. Newton flinches, one hand coming halfway to his head, as if to physically ward off a distressing thought. Hermann immediately regrets his tone.

Newton, already distracted, contemplates his own hand as though he’s never seen it before. 

“It’s all right,” Hermann closes his fingers around Newton’s wrist, pulling his hand down. “Newton, he says, “do you know where you are right now?”

“Right here,” Newton replies. 

“Yes,” Hermann says. “True. But where is here?”

Newton swallows and looks at the walls of their apartment, as if hoping the answer might be written somewhere. “Tokyo?” he asks. It is an interrogative, no doubt about it, and not a terrible guess; the newness of their apartment does suggest their housing circa 2023.

“San Francisco,” Hermann says gently, dialing Dr. McClure. 

Hermann stands at the window, looking out over the bleak landscape from the seventh floor of the UCSF Medical Center. 

In the distance, he can see the Coastal Wall. Misguided monstrosity, he thinks. It blocks the view of the ocean from his current vantage point. He hasn’t looked at the city with a discerning eye for months. To his surprise, he finds it taking on some of that precarious glass glitter that once it had.

Silicon Valley rebuilds, and rebuilds courageously. Profligately even. 

He crosses his arms and leans against the ledge of the window, spends hours in that pose, reflecting, recalling, making resolutions.

He hasn’t left the hospital in thirty-six hours, despite multiple offers from those who would take his place. What is Jacob Patel, for god’s sake, going to do if the PPDC shows up? He’s a child. David Starr? Not better. Likely worse. Dr. McClure has offered, and she—she, Hermann would trust. He believes without hesitation that the woman would, if it came to it, physically stand between any one of her patients and any kind of harm. However. She cannot control whether or not she is called away to a clinical emergency and he will. Not. Risk. It. 

He knows his behavior isn’t rational. 

He finds he doesn’t care.

It has been a hellish day and a half. 

The drive to the hospital, Newton’s second seizure and subsequent intubation for “airway protection,” these interminable hours of waiting that have followed—it feels to him like reaping something sown half a year ago. It was too much to hope that they would escape all of this unscathed, without long-term sequelae. 

That first evening, when Dr. McClure had outlined for Hermann her plan of attack, exuding consistent confidence, sketching synapses and neural circuits on recycled paper towels, Hermann had been struck by a peculiar sense of unreality.

How odd, he’d reflected, that any of us are alive at all.

“And as for you,” she’d said, turning to Newton, one hand on her hip. “You need to cut it out. You’re stressing me out, man. I don’t like it. Neither does Dr. Gottlieb. We don’t like surprises. We are not surprise people, okay? Please respect that. Surprise pneumonia? NOT OKAY. Multiple surprise seizures? Also NOT OKAY.”

“Tell him that when he wakes, won’t you?” Hermann had asked her wistfully. 

“You bet,” she’d replied. 

She has spent hours in this room, examining Newton’s EEG tracings. Occasionally, some pattern in the noise strikes her, and she begins a furious spate of scrolling and tapping on her tablet. Watching her, he thinks, at times, she tries a bit too hard. 

But then, he’s spent his whole life trying too hard, surrounded by such people. 

Without her, this experience would be intolerable. He’s convinced of that much. She’s a constant source of information and reassurance. She tries to send him home, but when he won’t go, she convinces the nurses to make up a cot for him in Newton’s room. 

He speaks to Mako by phone so many times over the course of the day that he ends up introducing her to Dr. McClure by video conference call, who, charmingly, seems a bit star-struck. Mako quickly puts her at ease. Hermann has forgotten how powerful Mako’s smile can be; he’s seen it so infrequently over the past half-decade. Hermann, feeling her effort, wonders when, exactly she developed such skills. They must be new. Mustn’t they? Perhaps they only seem new because he’s taking the time, now, to learn her thoughts, her moods, her manners. 

If he is honest with himself, Newton’s offhand supposition that, in another place and time, Mako might have been paired with Hermann—as a Jaeger pilot—this has sharpened all his thoughts of her.

Newton wakes in the early afternoon of his second hospital day and manages to carry on a conversation, even if it is, at times, nonsensical. He reliably responds only to simple interrogatives, slurs his words, takes direction when he can focus long enough, which is only about half the time

“Dr. G, cheer up,” Dr. McClure says, in a half-whisper, when she sees Hermann’s face. She pulls him into the hall, closes the door so they won’t confuse Newton, and gives him a stern look. “He’ll be fine.” She regards him earnestly, her helix earrings dangling, flashing blue beneath fluorescent lights. “Now that we’ve got the pneumonia under control, he hasn’t seized in—” she looks at her watch, “—a solid sixteen hours. He makes it another eight? Wakes up a few more times? He can go home. He’s a little out to lunch right now, but that’s okay; it won’t last. He’ll renormalize to baseline.”

“What if this happens again?” Hermann asks. 

“Hate to break it to you, but it might. It’s been, what, about six months since the pair of you did that thing you did?”

“Yes,” Hermann says.

“Unfortunately, our cute little friend in there has demonstrated he’s provokable, meaning that with the right trigger, even with the prophylactics on board, his cortex is excitable enough that it’s not above producing coordinated epileptiform discharges. If it happens once, it’ll probably happen again.”

“His EEG is normalizing,” Hermann protests.

“True.” Dr. McClure taps a pen against her hand, considering. “But that normalization rate has been plateauing for a while now. This is probably something he’ll be dealing with long-term.”

Hermann sighs, two fingers pressed against the space between his eyebrows.

“Don’t take it so hard,” Dr. McClure says gently. “Nothing about this is surprising. This was always in the cards. As triggers go, fever is common. It’s one of the easier ones to manage. When he gets sick, we up his meds. When he gets better, we taper down. Easy enough. It’ll take a bit of time to optimize, but this is something that can be managed. It’s not like he’ll precipitously develop surprise pneumonia every year.”

Hermann grimaces.

“What’s that face for?” Dr. McClure frowns and tucks a lock of hair behind one ear.

“When the PPDC sent you his medical records—how much did they send?”

“Ugh, Dr. G, I hate it when you ask me things like this. I really really do. They sent what I showed you. Nothing before 2025. Why do you ask?”

“His lungs are terrible. He inhaled Kaiju Blue through a respirator in Manila in 2015. Since that time, he’s gone into respiratory failure on multiple occasions.”

“Respiratory failure?” Dr. McClure asks, incredulous. “Like intubated? On a ventilator? That kind of respiratory failure? He’s not even—he’s in his thirties.”

“Yes,” Hermann says. “I’m acutely aware. He falls ill often.”  

“Of course he does,” Dr. McClure says, incredulous, half laughing, her hands over her face. 

Newton, alert enough to be cooperative, steady enough on his feet to cross a room, is released from the hospital after three days. Dr. McClure sets him up for an appointment with a pulmonologist in a week’s time. She tells Hermann she’s inclined to err on the side of caution—strong drugs, slow taper. Newton has not yet regained enough mental footing to put up any real argument. 

“Any last questions?” Dr. McClure asks, as they are about to depart.

“Yes,” Newton says with overly careful diction.

They look at him, eyebrows up.

He sits on his hospital bed, fully clothed down to his boots, feet crossed at the ankles, arms crossed over his chest. Sunlight streams through the window, and Hermann feels a surge of intense emotion. Pure acuity, unparsable.

“Shoot,” Dr. McClure says.

“My question, Hypothetical Rain,” Newton says, still over-enunciating, “is I think you’re spending too much time on my EEG.”

“Not a question.” Dr. McClure smiles and perches on the end of his bed. 

“Can you give me a minute?” Newton asks, speaking with a peculiarly precise testiness that Hermann finds infinitely adorable. “I’m getting there.”

“Sorry.” Dr. McClure holds up her hands.

“Have you considered there’s not anything to find?” Newton asks. 

“What do you mean?” Dr. McClure asks him.

“I mean,” Newton says. “It’s not worth the parsing. It’s just a mess. Sometimes? There’s no signal in the noise. Sometimes? ’s jus’ noise.”

“So—your question is do I really think there’s anything to find?” Dr. McClure asks.

“My question is no. There’s nothing to find. My question is why you’re doing it.” Newton clarifies.

“Your question is why am I looking at your EEG?” Dr. McClure restates, trying to understand him.

“So much,” Newton emphasizes. “Why are you looking at it so much?”

To Hermann’s surprise, Dr. McClure looks taken aback, as though she’s unsure how to answer. Hermann thinks there may be an aspect to Newton’s question he hasn’t fully grasped. Something, no doubt, that relies on a biological insight he’s not yet made.

“I’m trying to help you,” Dr. McClure says finally.

“Yeah,” Newton inflects the word as if it had been “obviously,” instead of “yeah.”

“You trying to liberate me from a pointless task?” Dr. McClure asks. 

Newton, relieved, nods, uncrosses his arms, and makes a bilateral gesture that mimics shoving something away. He drops his hands.

“Ugh.” Dr. McClure pushes her hair back with one hand, looking up and away from them, struggling to overcome a rush of emotion that seems to surprise her. “You two; I swear to god.” She takes a breath. “Newt.” She regards him sternly. “Until you can produce a mail order medical degree, you do NOT get to tell me what I can and can’t do with your EEG. I’ll look at it as much as I want.”

Newton smirks, raises an eyebrow, and directs a skeptical look at Dr. McClure. He says nothing.

“Thank you for your concern,” she continues. “Turns out you’re a goddamned little heart breaker. Anyone ever tell you that before?”

Newton shrugs, bored by the question. He looks at Hermann.

“It’s been mentioned,” Hermann says, amused. 

When Newton walks through the door to their apartment, Hermann feels some of the appalling weight of anxiety he has been laboring under fall away. He helps the other man shower, change into fresh clothes, and eat lunch. Newton continues to be wholly too tractable, following Hermann’s directives without argument. In the early afternoon, Hermann settles him on the couch, gives him his next dose of Dr. McClure’s medication cocktail and perches on the edge of their coffee table. 

“You’re very quiet.” Hermann brushes the man’s hair out of his eyes.

Newton nods, battling against sleep, his eyelids heavy. Hermann strokes the man’s hair, which he reliably seems to find soothing. If Hermann’s ministrations serve to exacerbate his already spectacular bed head, well, that’s a secondary benefit. In less than two minutes, the man’s eyes definitively close.

“I find mastering your near infinite collection of quirks very satisfying, you know,” Hermann murmurs, as Newton’s breathing deepens. “But over the past six months you’ve introduced a new repertoire.” He traces the line of the man’s brow with his thumb. “This is hardly fair.”

No response.

Hermann sighs. He’d begun sharing a bed with the man the night of that ridiculous math department party, and he’d finally gained some ground when it came to normalizing the man’s sleep/wake cycle. This will ruin all his progress, he’s certain.

“Should I be trying to keep you awake during the day?” He runs his thumb over Newton’s lower lip, and the man doesn’t so much as twitch. “I doubt that’s a viable option. Look at you,” Hermann rubs his upper arm briskly and gets no reaction.

A few hours later the apartment is clean and Hermann has put a soup on a slow simmer. He’s tidying the kitchen when he hears a knock at the door. Frowning, he glances at Newton. Still asleep on the couch. He looks through the small door viewer, his heart hammering, half expecting to see someone from the PPDC, half expecting to see Ms. Mori.

He sees neither.

Flinging the door open, he stands frozen in amazement. The woman on the other side of the threshold regards him with an uncertain expression. She’s years older than he remembers her. Her blonde hair, cut to her chin, frames her face. She’s nearly as tall as he is—but, somehow, shorter than he pictures her in her mind’s eye.

“Karla?” Hermann asks.

“May I come in?” Karla asks. Next to her is a small carry-on bag. 

“I—” Hermann stammers.

“I am happy to find a hotel,” Karla says. “I—you have not been writing—it’s been so long—” she stops. Starts again. “I wanted to see you. To make sure you were all right.” Her face is tentative, full of concern. “You don’t look all right.”

Hermann feels as though he might break down weeping and has no idea from where that impulse might hail, other than his whole life up to this point.

Karla, teary-eyed herself, enfolds him in a hug.

And then Hermann does cry, into her shoulder, in the middle of the hallway. 

“I knew I should come,” Karla murmurs, her arms tight around him. “I knew I should. I knew it.” The familiarity of her voice, his native language, the obvious sympathy in her tone, the fact she’d made the trip at all—left her family—he’s overcome with gratitude.

He’s overcome in general.

“Please let me help you,” she whispers.

Hermann nods, miserable, and re-opens his door, ushering Karla inside. His thoughts begin their watercolor bleed to German as he takes her wet coat and hangs it in the closet. He wheels her suitcase into the hall, deposits it in the guest bedroom where Ms. Mori and Mr. Becket stay when they are here, then shows her to the bathroom where she can freshen up. 

Outside the closed bathroom door he stands alone, one hand pressed to his face, all his thoughts in pieces.

Beyond the closed door he hears the sink. Running water.

Recalling himself, he returns to Newton, seating himself on the coffee table, stroking the man’s hair.

Newton doesn’t stir.

Hermann has the urge to prevent Karla from seeing him, to prevent him from seeing Karla. He’s not sure they’ll like one another; he worries that neither his tenuous relationship with his sister nor his fragile relationship with Newton, terrifyingly new, will survive the collision of disparate worlds.

But it is too late to prevent it. He must make do.

He straightens Newton’s blankets, smooths his hair a final time, and resolves not to prioritize his past over his present. His prime concern is lying right here, on this couch.

He stands, moves to the kitchen, fills the kettle, puts it on the stove. 

When Karla enters the living area and sees Newton, she stops to study him.

Hermann wonders how he strikes her, whether she even recognizes him without his trademark glasses, with his mussed hair and his tattoos concealed beneath a long-sleeved shirt.

“Not Dr. Geiszler, surely,” Karla says, soft and startled.

“The one and only,” Hermann replies.

“My god,” Karla murmurs. “He’s so young.”

“Thirty-five,” Hermann says, crisp and accurate and minding the tea.

He’s forgotten how Newton strikes people. It’s been some time since anyone had occasion to comment. But Karla’s right. The man looks absurdly youthful at the moment, his eyelashes and hair thick and dark, his skin pale, one hand curled against his chest. 

“You are lovers?” Karla asks, point blank.

Hermann is startled by the question, though he shouldn’t be. Karla has always been a particularly robust example of German bluntness, forcefully applied. 

“Yes,” Hermann says. 

She smiles, and he catches a hint of approval in it. Hermann suspects that approval has less to do with Newton than it does with his boldness, matched to her own. “Should we go elsewhere?” Karla asks. “So we don’t wake him?”

“If we collapsed the china cabinet, we wouldn’t wake him,” Hermann says. “He had a seizure a few days ago; he’s recovering. You aren’t catching us at our best.”

“Maybe not,” Karla says, “but maybe ‘not at your best’ is the best time to catch you.”

“Touché,” Hermann says.

The tea kettle whistles.

Karla winces, looking at Newton.

The man doesn’t so much as twitch.

“I told you,” Hermann says.

Karla absents herself to the kitchen while Hermann tries to wake Newton as gently as possible. It’s a slow process, and he doesn’t rush it. Ripping Dr. Geiszler into the realm of the conscious was a recipe for disaster before the Drift; it’s now an even riskier prospect; Hermann suspects that if Newton is not eased into meeting Karla he is likely to be confused right up until he realizes what’s happening, at which point there’s a high likelihood he’ll start crying because he doesn’t feel like himself in a high-stakes setting. It’s happened twice already with Dr. McClure.

“It will take some time,” he tells Karla. And it does. 

“I’m sorry,” Hermann murmurs at intervals, watching Newton struggle toward awareness, his lashes flickering. 

Finally, Newton opens his eyes, blinking heavily. 

“How do you feel?” Hermann asks him.

Newton considers this. “Everything hurts.”

“Well, nearly every muscle in your body contracted maximally, and sustained that contracture for quite some period of time.” Hermann says. “I’d say they’ve earned the right to protest a bit.”

“More than ‘a bit’,” Newton grumbles.

“I’m sure you’re quite right.”

“You want me to get up?” Newton asks.

“We have an unexpected guest,” Hermann says carefully. “My sister Karla has decided to pay us a visit, because I’ve been remiss about returning her letters.”

“Karla?” Newton smiles faintly. “Wish I were wearing my fancy sweatpants.”

“You are up to meeting her?” Hermann asks, smoothing his hair. 

“What’s to meet? I’ve known her your whole life.”

Hermann can see the moment Newton first charms Karla. It doesn’t take long, it takes, in fact, a single sentence of poorly articulated German detailing Hermann’s cooking abilities, described with an unusual and flowery adjective. Karla’s face changes in a way that looks foreign to Hermann while simultaneously striking a deep chord that’s terribly familiar. He hasn’t seen Karla since her children were born, and this, he thinks, is foreign element. There’s an echo of his mother in the way she agrees with Newton, speaking gently, as though she senses his terrible, terrifying vulnerability.

In his memories, his older sister is brash, blunt, bold. But there is kindness woven into her, more than any of his siblings. Of course there is. She’s the one who’s come.

Karla isn’t someone he needs to guard himself against.

How strange, that such things can be forgotten.

“I’m surprised you like him so much,” Hermann says, two days into her visit. They sit at the kitchen table. The day is gray and the tea Mako brought at her last visit fills the room with the scent of jasmine and citrus.

Karla gives him a nonplussed look. “What’s not to like? He’s cute, he makes no secret of loving you, and he saved the world from certain destruction.”

Hermann snorts.

“He FaceTimed with the boys,” Karla continues, “they loved him.” And then, with a sly look from under her strong brows, “He’ll be a hit next Christmas.”

“Karla—” Hermann says warningly.

“You can at least think about it. 2027, maybe?”

“Maybe.”

“He’s great with children,” Karla continues. “It’s odd, no? It sounds to me like he never got the chance to be one himself.”

“Hmm,” Hermann says. “I haven’t spent much time considering his facility with children. It strikes me as wildly improbable.”

“Your Dr. Geiszler has a straightforward quality. Children respond to that. And dogs.” Karla smiles. “Before I was a mother I couldn’t see it. It makes sense you wouldn’t think of it. Not too many kids or dogs running around Shatterdomes, I suspect.”

“Actually,” Hermann says, “there were usually several. Mako Mori, for example, grew up in Shatterdomes.”

“Mako Mori? Oh wow,” Karla says. “She’s so cool.”

“Newton was a particular favorite of hers. In fact—” he stops himself.

“No no no,” Karla says. “Hermann! Keep going! I’m desperate to know.” She smiles. “All of it. The real stuff. Not the tabloid story.”

“She was rescued, in Tokyo, by Stacker Pentecost,” Hermann says, who was, at the time, injured himself. But he set down the hand of Jaeger, and he picked her up, transferring her to the cockpit, then returned to the Shatterdome. Newton and—” he pauses, “Newton went in with the extraction team to unbolt Pentecost from the rig, and he came out carrying her. Despite the fact that he spoke no Japanese and she spoke no English, he had somehow learned her name, and she had learned his.”

Karla grins. “I’m not surprised by this at all.”

“She was adopted, formally, by Marshal Pentecost, but for half a decade she was a constant fixture in Newton’s lab. She idolized Dr. Lightcap, but Newton—Newton she loved.”

Karla, silent, sips her tea, urging him on with a nod of her head.

“I believe he spent approximately ninety hours of his life watching Blue Planet with her. It was, in large part, how she solidified her English. Every night for almost a year.”

“I adore that story,” Karla whispers. “Why isn’t that one in any of her profile pieces?”

“There are things she reserves for herself. She’s always been that way.” Hermann wraps his fingers around his warm teacup. 

“There must be more,” Karla says. “I will not be satisfied until I have a whole handful of things to pick over later.”

“Hmm,” Hermann says. “For her thirteenth birthday he bought her roller blades. She skated all over the Shatterdome. I remember a particular time—Newton and I stood at a corridor intersection, arguing about something, as usual.” He traces a diagram for her with a fingertip on the tabletop. “Mako was skating this way,” he draws his fingertip along the table, “while Pentecost and Hansen were walking this way. Mid-sentence, Newton realized Mako was preparing to round the corner, with enough speed and momentum that she would end up on a collision course with Hansen.”

“Oh no,” Karla says, laughing. 

“He grabbed her as she was making the turn. Didn’t even break the flow of his argument. And she—she realized instantly why he’d done it. Newton set her on her feet, she whispered a thank you, then sped along her way.”

Karla sips her tea, coaxing him on with her expression alone.

“Strangely,” Hermann continues, “I got to know her best during the nights we spent together at that idiot’s bedside,” here he shoots a glare at Newton, who is sleeping behind them on the couch. 

“He does seem the type who’s too smart for his own good,” Karla says sympathetically.

“Lightcap sent him out in Seattle, after Reckoner was taken down by Crimson Typhoon.” Hermann frowns at the memory. “She couldn’t go, injured as she was, and she relied on him for everything during that time. But he—she shouldn’t have sent him; he shouldn’t have consented to go. His lungs were already irritated by the turbidity in the air, and in 2015, he’d inhaled Kaiju Blue, it had nearly killed him then, and his lungs never fully recovered. For her to send him out in that—not just out, but to the actual site—” Hermann makes an effort to cut off the memory before it can grab him from either side—experiencing it as Newton or witnessing it as himself.

“You didn’t like her much, did you?” Karla asked.

“I hated her,” Hermann admits. “Even after she died I hated her. Sometimes, I hate her still.”

“And other times?” Karla asks.

“My heart breaks to think of her,” Hermann admits. “The way she lived, the way she died. I think if she had survived she might have saved us all—better, sooner, without so much lost along the way.”

Or. She would have prevented Newton from his first, and desperate Drift. No. That’s not right. He wouldn’t have told her before he tried it. But after it was over, she would have gripped his face in her hands and she would’ve screamed at him, like a fairy queen, something out of folklore, pitting her anger against his inventiveness. He can practically see them there, in his mind’s eye. Newton, on the floor shaking. Her, kneeling atop him, livid with rage but crying, her terrible fear etched into her face, shattering the will to continue on that course straight out of him with her voice alone.

“Hey.” Gently, Karla touches his arm. “This isn’t the way forward. Keep your mind here, little brother. There’s something we must discuss.”

Hermann sips his tea. “What’s that?”

“How we are going to protect Newton from our mother, who, when she meets him, will instantly love him more than any of her own biological offspring and tell us all so. Loudly.”

“I’m sure you have ideas,” Hermann says. 

“Not a single one,” Karla replies, smiling.

Hermann watches with trepidation as his mother takes in Newton. He forgets how strong an impression the man can make with his appearance and bearing alone. Now, Newton is almost painfully uncertain. He has not spent much time outside, he has not recovered fully from his most recent illness, his expression is fatigued and faintly anxious. He looks, in short, like a cherubic waif who doesn’t match his resume. He stammers through a passable German greeting, but Hermann’s mother cuts him off.

“Ah—” she tuts, tears brimming in her eyes as she cups Newton’s cheek in one hand. “My lost one.”

Newton, famous for his talent for sympathetic weeping, begins to cry himself. 

“My lost one,” she whispers again, pulling Newton into a warm hug. “Welcome home.”

After a beginning such as that, it can do nothing but go well. 

Over the course of the visit, Newton’s German improves dramatically. More than dramatically. It improves exponentially. After a few days he’s regained his fluency but his improvement doesn’t plateau. He gains timing, rhythm, and the complexity of his sentences explodes. In short, he becomes himself, in German. His family is incredibly impressed, and Hermann feels an acute satisfaction, knowing there is something of the man’s brilliance that they can see and understand. 

Hermann must field endless questions from his mother. How old is he really because he cannot be thirty-six? Why is he so pale? Where is the man’s mother now, does she not care how remarkable he is? How much, in general and specifically, is Hermann feeding him? When did he learn German? How many PhDs and from where? Why is he so short of breath? Do they not have sunshine in San Francisco? Is he working too hard? How many times has he been ill this year? Has Hermann tried giving him walnuts; all the fitness blogs are focused on walnuts. How much does he sleep? Does he take special medicine of some kind after that terrible business last year? She sees their matching rings; did they get married and not tell her? What is Hermann thinking? Perhaps some fresh air is all Newton really needs? He’s so good with Karla’s children, has Hermann taken note of that? Is he likely to have a seizure? Why does he get nosebleeds? Does he like traditional German cooking? Has Hermann made him spätzle? Would he like to see the river? What is his clothing size, perhaps some of Gunter’s old sweaters would fit him? He seems like he would be good with animals, is that the case? Does Hermann tell him that he loves him?

“What?” Hermann asks, flustered. 

“Do you tell him you love him?” His mother repeats it pointedly. 

“Yes,” Hermann says. “Indirectly.”

“No,” his mother says firmly. “You must use those words. For him, you must. You have always had this problem, Hermann. You feel too much. You keep things to yourself so others won’t hurt you.”

“Mother,” Hermann sighs.

“I know you didn’t ask for my advice, but it’s a good idea. I have others, but I’ll save those, since you are in a mood.”

“I’m not in a mood,” Hermann protests. “I—”

His mother interrupts, stern, even while stirring cookie batter. “That one cried when I gave him a hug.” She looks pointedly out the window to where Newton helps Karla’s boys build a structure from found sticks. “He’s not quite sure of something. He has not relaxed the whole time he’s been here. He tries too hard.”

“True,” Hermann admits.

“Say it enough times and it becomes very easy,” she counsels.

The kitchen smells of clove and nutmeg and orange peel. Mulled wine and a childhood he’d been too eager to escape. He can’t recall the last time he’d taken his mother’s advice.

“I worry.” Hermann shifts, and his wooden stool creaks. “I worry it may make him anxious.”

“Anxious,” his mother repeats. “Anxious? About what?”

Hermann rests his elbows on the counter and covers his face with his hands. 

“Hermann.” His mother slides onto the stool next to him, pulling his hands free of his face. “My little treasure. What is it?”

“He thinks he ruined my life,” Hermann confesses to her. 

His mother’s eyes are the color of a northern sea. She searches for something inside him, as though she can read the data architectures of his thoughts, find all that’s happened to him somewhere behind his eyes.

“Did he?” she asks, as though prepared to hear either answer.

Hermann looks at her in astonishment.

“He’s adorable,” she says, “but I can see the other too. He, like you, will shred down days of his own life against an unattainable grate if he believes it’s the correct thing. Others will follow him. Perhaps you did. Perhaps you stayed too long. But perhaps, if you hadn’t done so, our lives would all be over now.”

Hermann nods. It’s all he can do, with a lump in his throat.

“And so,” his mother continues, “his is my guess. You hesitate to tell him with words what your actions already say? You are thinking he will react badly because he’s afraid he’s wronged you? Love would be unacceptable to him? Too much?”

“Maybe,” Hermann says.

“You know him better than I,” his mother replies. “You could be right. But think on it.”

Hermann nods and grips her hand. 

Later that evening they play a trivia game. His mother claims Newton for her team and they crush the opposition so thoroughly that they require a handicap for the next round. Hermann and Karla manage to beat them in a rematch, though the game is quite close. They don’t adjourn until well after midnight. Even then, Newton can’t sleep, but lies in bed with a German edition of The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann. The light of the bedside lamp is dim, and Hermann watches him for some time before Newton realizes he’s awake.

Hermann clears his throat.

Newton looks up. “Is this keeping you up?” he asks. “Because I can—”

“I’m in love with you,” Hermann tells him, flushing.

Newton smiles at him, and Hermann can see he’s wildly happy in that moment. His inner tension cracks, dissolves away. 

“It was the Trivial Pursuit, that inspired this, wasn’t it?” Newton asks. “You’re so predictable.” He shuts his book, sets it carefully on the nightstand. He kisses Hermann gently. “I’m in love with you too, Dr. Gottlieb. But I,” he says, smiling, “was first.”

“Consider the record clear on that point,” Hermann says. He could contest it, but it seems a pointless exercise. Maybe, one day—

Newton straddles his hips, letting his full weight rest on Hermann, then leans down and kisses him deeply. Hermann, acutely aware of the thinness of the walls, has the instinct to stop him but doesn’t act on it, would, in fact, rather wake the household than act on it.