Riordan’s little cabin awaited him and he collapsed into his bed’s embrace gratefully. A moment later, he became aware of another’s presence by a feeling of being watched. He turned his head, cracking one eye open and looking at Daniel.

Riordan half-expected Daniel to launch into a litany of questions, having sat at home while Riordan went out to fetch his corpse, but the ghost just joined him, sitting quietly on the edge of the bed. Riordan noted the way that Daniel hovered over the covers slightly, no trace of his presence on the physical world except what was seen in Riordan’s eyes.

Sunlight still streamed through the aged curtains, casting patterns upon the room and catching the dust in hazy beams. It felt too bright, too peaceful, for their mood and yet Riordan found himself relaxing into the moment. There was no need for either of them to say anything.

Eventually, Daniel broke the silence. Or perhaps just eased it, the quiet thick as a blanket in the cabin room.

“You look tired.”

Riordan gave one of his snort-laughs and let his eyes fall shut again. “The agents were tiring. I’m not good at holding my temper.”

“What are the new agents like?” Daniel asked, curious.

“They’re more like Ahlgren than Quinn. Two of them are mages. They feel seeped in the culture of it, that formality of magic and sense of superiority. The third is their paperpusher. He’s efficient, but strikes me as a bit of a dick. Hell, all three of them are a bit dickish in my opinion, but that’s probably because I’m a shifter and a death mage, neither of which is going to impress a mage.”

“Well, then they are poor judges of character.”

Riordan smiled to be so defended. “Not necessarily. I’m a dick too, you know.”

“You certainly have one anyway,” Daniel quipped back, his humor rising up in hard times again.

“Dicks are useful for peeing while standing,” Riordan replied. “Other than that, eh. I could take them or leave them.”

“I’d say that’s a waste, but it’s your body and your right to decide what to do, or not do, with it.”

“Gods, if only all the other fuckers were that sensible about it. I just want to be left alone long enough to get my head on straight and my life sorted out.”

A chill sensation pressed into Riordan’s shoulder and he shivered. Opening his eyes, he saw Daniel had laid a comforting hand on him, his face full of sympathy and devoid of pity. Pity would have put Riordan’s fur up in an instant, but Daniel wasn’t like that. He could feel empathy, placing himself in another’s shoes, without concluding that the suffering of others was too much for them.

“Have you made any progress with figuring anything out?” Daniel asked, accepting that change of subject for the moment.

“Not really,” Riordan replied, trying to dredge up the truth from his own confusion. “I’ve got a handful of things I know about myself and a couple things I know I don’t want to be, but no idea what I should be instead or how to get there. I just know I need to stop running from responsibility and actually do something with my life, you know? It’s an insult to everyone I’ve let down before, the people I care about, and myself to do otherwise now.”

Daniel hummed thoughtfully, considering this statement. “I get it. I feel like I’ve been stuck in a mire of self-discovery for years now, between the usual college stuff, my crisis over my major, and now… this.” He gestured at his translucent body and then at the cabin in general, which Riordan took to mean his death and the whole messy situation.

“I’m sor--”

“If you say you are sorry for not saving me one more time, Riordan, I will go on an epic quest to become physical just to smack some sense into you,” Daniel warned in a tone that brooked no argument.

Riordan snapped his mouth shut, looking awfully sheepish for a badger. He shrugged, because he really did still feel sorry for the failure.

“Look,” Daniel tried again, “Rather than dwelling on what can’t be changed and how you failed me, consider what you can do for me now and into the future. My aunt once told me that if you live in past regrets or future possibilities, then you miss the present. And the present is the only moment in which you have any influence. If you want to shape your own path, learn to be present.”

Riordan pondered that strange bit of wisdom. He would have dismissed it as new age bullshit if not for his more recent realization that he had spent his exile wallowing in past memories and not actually doing anything to make up for it. He had mentally beat himself up, but it hadn’t improved him or anyone else doing that, just made him feel less guilty because he was appropriately miserable inside.

The moments Riordan felt most proud of in his life were the ones in which he acted, taking control of the situation and trying to make things right, whether it worked out or not. The more passive Riordan was, the less meaning there was in that time. He became an observer in his own life, moving to someone else’s flow and avoiding all responsibility.

Which meant that Daniel was probably right and Riordan needed to stop thinking himself in circles. He groaned, hating the need to act even as it also filled him with relief.

“You’re a third of my age,” Riordan complained, “What makes you so wise?”

“You’re a slow learner,” Daniel quipped before continuing, “Seriously though, I’m not really that wise. I’m just as stuck in my head, unable to do anything or reach conclusions. This is just a state that I’ve been collecting experience with recently. My last attempt to act on it resulted in my fight with my parents and my ill-advised attempt to hitchhike to my aunt’s place. Which, as you know, I never reached.”

“If you hadn’t been killed on the way, do you think you would have regretted the action?”

Daniel stopped to think about that one. “No, I don’t think so. Telling my parents that I didn’t want to be a doctor was hard, but I’d been miserable, feeling trapped into years of a future I didn’t want. It was such a relief to be able to express what I didn’t want, even when what I wanted in exchange was still fuzzy. I liked journalism, but I’m not sure if that’s what I would have ended up with. I just knew that whatever path I took, it wouldn’t be doctor.”

That felt sloppy and half finished to Riordan, like trying to move ahead with only half an idea. And yet, if he locked himself in thought and pondering until he magically figured out everything about where his life would go next, he wouldn’t act at all.

Gods, life was messy.

“Ugh, right. I guess I really should start cutting my problems down to size rather than trying to solve it all in one neat go,” Riordan forced himself to sit up straight again.

“Here, talk it out with me,” Daniel offered, settling into a cross-legged position hovering in front of Riordan. “What are the most important things you need to settle? Or maybe just the things that need to be settled first?”

“Let’s start with getting the ‘most urgent’ settled first before I get myself stuck trying to rank importance,” Riordan said with a snort.

“Alright, then lay it on me. What are the most urgent things, in any order?”

Riordan tried to marshal his thoughts while not letting himself get caught in ranking the importance of the urgent tasks. “Fuck, uh… Talking to your aunt. Fixing my magic. Not getting dragged off by federal agents.”

Daniel winced at the first one, but nodded. “The pack is protecting you from the agents currently, which gives you a short term solution. Longer solutions require more personal power, right? So that means working on your magic will help that, especially since you don’t like people poking around with that while you don’t have a handle on it. And I know I asked you to tell my aunt, but… what happened with the, you know, today?”

“Today went fine, aside from the agents being dicks and the tree spirit being territorial. Your… Your body was taken by the morgue. You still had ID in your wallet, so identifying you wouldn’t be hard. I don’t know how the local police handle informing people of deaths, especially in a messy investigation like this.”

Riordan could tell Daniel was trying to be objective about that information, but that it was hard. No one normal could just get over being dead like it was nothing. Daniel was still in the early stages of grieving his lost life, honestly, but he had a strength of character that let him cope well during a crisis despite it.

Daniel really would have been a good doctor in terms of skills and charm, even if it would have crushed him to work in an environment like the medical field for too long. Too many people suffering that he wouldn’t be able to help. Daniel had a way of putting other people first at cost to himself that led Riordan to expect some sort of breakdown was impending eventually, once Daniel couldn’t put it off any longer.

Daniel sighed, “Well, at least that means the thing with my aunt can wait a bit. I still would like you to talk to her, but the police can be the ones to tell my family about my death itself. I just… I would like some closure with her at some point.”

“And I will get that for you,” Riordan promised.

The smile Daniel gave Riordan said that he believed that promise, but he turned back to the question at hand. “Anyway, that means the priorities for the most urgent things are fixing your magic, which can help you prove yourself to the agents, which then frees you up to go talk to my aunt. Proving yourself to the agents, and having better ability to protect yourself in general, will likely help with longer term goals, like finding out what is being done about the cult members or what you are going to do with the rest of your life.”

It sounded so simple when Daniel laid it all out like that. Which, Riordan supposed, was the point.

Simple, but not easy.

Frankie had given Riordan a couple techniques to help Riordan begin dealing with his magic, but he’d barely managed any real attempts at them. His mind had been too full of everything else and well, Riordan reluctantly admitted he’d been avoiding it as well.

It unsettled Riordan to have death magic inside him. He’d internalized more prejudices about that magic than he’d realized. Having felt what existed beyond the Veil, if only the smallest portion of it, and having seen death and spirit magic mingling in the tree spirit, Riordan knew intellectually that death magic wasn’t evil.

Death was natural and important. Most endings were also beginnings. Rot broke down items to feed the next generation of plants, which fed animals. He killed for food or survival. One day, he would die. It wasn’t death itself that scared Riordan.

It was the insanity, that loss of self that could turn him from a protector into a threat. In his mind, death magic and death corruption were inherently linked. Part of the reason he was pissed at the agents was because he also felt that they weren’t wrong to be suspicious of him, even though he knew that it was more nuanced than that. Hell, Riordan trusted Quinn, a fairly corrupted death mage, over the rest of the agents.

Fear held Riordan back, fear of what he might find if he really looked too closely inside. And damn it, wasn’t that what he told himself he’d stop doing?

Riordan sighed, scrubbed a hand over his face, squared his shoulders, and nodded. “Right. I guess I better get started then.”