Infinitus | Prodigiosum Sequel

ii - here's to love and beauty; markus

* pov: third person (markus) *

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It's hard to be proud of your best friends when they achieve your mutual goals and you don't.

He was still pretty okay with it, at least. Alizia had the goddess of fortune as her mother. Not a surprise. Then Yvonne and Yzonne had Nemesis for a mother. Sure, why not?

But it still got him thinking. Thinking hard.

How do I deal with the news when it comes around?

He tried not to focus on claiming too much. There were still three of them left in the Unclaimed section of the Hermes cabin, sectioned off like a litter of puppies up for adoption. With three remaining unclaimed in their circle of friends, Markus decided to try to make the most of his time left with them every second of the day.

He was lovable, at least that's what people claimed about him. Part of him assumed that that was why he could easily persuade people into doing things. He once managed to talk his older sister into permanently giving him her bottle of extra-softening hair conditioner, and that was a huge achievement, considering the fact that she was very greedy when it came to that.

His family was, surprisingly, the easiest to talk to and persuade. They were happy, just him and his older sister, even if both children never knew their mother. He would talk his father into buying both of them their favorite toys and he still wouldn't mind.

That was before his two younger sisters were born.

One night after the youngest one turned five, their father suddenly took one too many shots of beer and came home mumbling some batcrap crazy things about magic and beauty and how one was odd. Markus and his older sister had asked, and Markus still had a red mark from when his father had punched him, yelling the six-letter 'f' word.

Things started going downhill for the two eldest children as the youngest ones grew older. They would slowly manipulate their father just like how Markus had once convinced him with a simple sentence. They purposely put all these weird things into his drinks and blamed it on the one male child of the family. It worsened to the point where their father started breaking down in tears for no reason, and that whenever Markus tried to comfort his beloved tatay he would immediately fling him to the wall, deaf to anything his formerly favored child would say.

And that was when Markus and his older sister decided to run.

Just thinking about it made Markus feel like puking all over someone's face. It was all a blur now, for he didn't want to remember who exactly caused him to lose the one family he had, so he managed to forget his sisters' and father's names. He only remembered their initials — 'T' for the youngest one, 'C' for the second, and 'M' for both his father and older sister.

"You're awfully quiet today."

Markus swiveled around to see Justin's feline-like grey eyes staring at him from behind. He flinched and sighed. Tristan's brother sure was a hard code to crack when it came to his motives, and he was even kind of sketchy and creepy at times.

But, hey, Markus was used to it.

"Yeah. Just thinking. You know, when the most tolerable people of the group are gone, it's truly a miracle that none of us have killed anyone. Like, I don't even need my persuasion skills to talk you out of stuffing calligraphy markers into Clara's nose," said Markus, keeping a generally polite front but also eyeing the pack of markers in Justin's hands.

Justin blanched and hid the pack of markers up the back of his shirt. He sighed and leaned back against the bench, staring into space.

Tristan then came back from her adventures in the toilet, all pumped up to do something. When she looked at the two of them sitting down, looking more bored than she'd ever seen them, she asked what was wrong.