Julian Marie

The metal walls around you are sweating condensation from the cold outside. The air is astringent, reeking faintly of antiseptic, like adrenaline that hasn’t finished leaving the bloodstream.

You feel the constant noise of the quinjet in your teeth more than your ears. You can taste metal on your tongue, like pennies thrown into your mouth, and every inhale chatters against the soreness layering behind your ribs.

Sam is cracking some joke in the corner and Natasha’s smirk is sharp enough to slice the tension in half, but no one laughs too loud. Everyone’s voice is dipped in that tired kind of calm, the one you only wear after the gunfire stops but before the bruises bloom.

You shift in your seat. The fabric of your suit still smells faintly of smoke, of something burnt. There’s a line of fire along your side where the bullet carved skin but not life, a neat little warning branded into you. The medkit says it’s fine. You say it’s fine.

Bucky doesn’t say anything.

He is sitting across from you, three feet away. Or maybe it’s three miles. Hard to tell with the emotional distance between you that just continues to stretch.

He is hunched over with an elbow braced on his knee, flesh hand covering his mouth as if he’s holding his jaw in place. His steely eyes are fixed on the floor as though there are answers written in the rivets. You want to tell him you’re fine, really fine, better than fine because you’re alive and so is he, but the words get blocked in your throat, too clumsy, too simple for what happened.

His head does not once lift off the floor. Not even to glance at you.

And maybe you should be grateful. Because if he looked at you, if he head-on looked at you, you’re not sure if he’d scream or shatter.

Natasha eyes you from across the cabin, quickly, as though she is measuring the damage and cataloguing your foolishness all in one glance. It makes you sit up straighter even when your body tries to collapse in exhaustion. Her gaze snaps once toward the man in front of you, the one who hasn’t said a single thing since you boarded.

He is sitting so still. His jaw is locked, rigid, a muscle ticking like the echo of gunfire he can’t outrun. He doesn’t even move when a turbulence shivers through the jet. He is galaxies away, orbiting his own fury.

Tony tosses a protein bar at you. It lands in your lap. “Eat. You look like a corpse cosplaying as a superhero,” he says.

You roll your eyes, peel back the wrapper. The sugar tastes too sweet. Too human. Your tongue rebels, but you chew anyway.

“It’s just a scratch,” you state, casual, careless.

A chorus of scoffs follows. Familiar. Frustrated. Almost affectionate.

But not him.

Not Bucky.

He is still silent. Still folded into himself, hands clasped tightly, flesh knuckles white. There is a tremor running up his arm. The sound of leather groans under the strain of his grip.

You know he isn’t ignoring you. He is holding himself together with threads that are fraying by the second.

“A scratch is a papercut,” Sam pipes up, scoff in his voice. “That was a bullet, sugar.”

“She’s walking. That’s a win,” Clint muses, throwing you an encouraging smile you try your best to reciprocate. But you can’t force your gaze away from Bucky for too long.

He doesn’t flinch when Sam talks, doesn’t respond to Clint, doesn’t rise to Tony’s jab. He sits there with his hands curled too tight, a silent sermon of outrage and fear. You watch as he presses his trembling fingers hard into his thigh as if to ground himself here, now, instead of where his mind is replaying the scene.

You want to reach for him. You want to link your hand with his, take him into your arms, and tell him that you would do it again, ten times over, a hundred, because the thought of him falling while you stood still is unbearable. But the words feel heavy in your chest, and his silence is heavier still.

Steve’s gaze switches between you and Bucky. It lingers on him a fraction longer. Like he knows. Like he always knows. But he doesn’t say anything either.

You can feel Bucky growing roots in the corner. The air between you is threaded too tight, pulling every breath thinner. He’s trapped inside his head, and you’re the one who put him there.

Not the bullet. Not the shooter. You.

You think about the moment again - how fast you moved, how instinct overtook thought, how your body was already in front of his before you even realized what you were doing. The sting. The heat. His face, right after. The kind of pale dread that makes time stop.

And now this.

Natasha leans back in her seat, eyes half-closed, but she’s watching. Always watching. “The scar will look hot on you,” she says casually, like she’s talking about what food you’re going to order when you’re back.

Someone chuckles. Maybe Clint. Maybe Sam. You don’t catch it.

Because Bucky finally looks up.

Just for a second.

And he is not fixed on the others, but finally, finally on you.

And it’s too much. The devastation. The terror. The rage building dark and boiling behind his pupils.

His eyes are not gentle. They are not soft. They are not melting the way they usually do when he looks at you. They are wild and desperate and hurt. A thousand words bitten down to silence.

And you know.

You know the fight is already waiting for you on the other side of the quinjet door.

Because it‘s all there. The way he is replaying the moment in his mind, the way he saw you step in front of him, the way you flinched when the bullet kissed your side. He is watching it again, again, again. A loop he cannot find his way out of.

And you are left wishing you could reach inside his skull and silence the reel.

But for now, he just sits there, broken and furious and so impossibly quiet.

The quinjet tilts. It lowers almost in a reluctant way, as if it doesn’t want to come back down to earth. There is that gradual drop in your stomach, the kind that says home is near. The kind that says everything dangerous is technically over, but not really.

The engines whine softer, softer still, until the rumble becomes a heartbeat underfoot. The floor vibrates through your boots in a way that feels almost human - like the jet is alive and exhausted and glad the night is nearly over.

The others unbuckle in a choreography you know too well. Tony first, impatient, muttering something about a hot shower and an ice-cold drink. Clint following, stretching like his spine is a bowstring. Sam trailing after him with clipped movements, the kind of gestures people make when they are trying not to look at what actually bothers them. He gives Bucky one last glance, and it’s a glance you feel, something unspoken between them. But Bucky doesn’t even seem to notice. Or care.

Natasha stands too, graceful as always, rolling her shoulders, and she lets her hand brush your shoulder as she passes. You can’t make out the intention behind the move, but you hope it’s meant for comfort, because that’s what you need right now.

Steve lingers. Of course he does. One hand gripping the edge of a seat as though he’s not sure if he should play mediator or ghost. His eyes swap between the two of you again - Bucky’s still form, your restless hands. He looks at you with that kind of concern you never ask for, but he’s been alive long enough to recognize when not to push. So he just sighs, presses his lips together, and finally goes. The sound of his boots fades down the ramp.

And then it’s just you. And him.

The silence with the others gone is too large, a silence with elbows and knees that bruise if you bump into it.

You don’t even hear him breathe, but you see the way his chest heaves unevenly.

He hasn’t moved. Not an inch. He still sits hunched forward, elbows on his thighs, flesh hand dragging across his jaw. His metal hand stays clenched, the dull silver gleaming under the overhead lights. But they are dimmer now.

You swallow against the knot in your throat. Try his name once, softly. “Bucky.”

Nothing.

Not even a twitch. He’s carved himself into stone across from you, shoulders rigid, jaw locked, eyes fixed on the floor like it’s the only thing keeping him from spinning off the planet.

You wait. You give him a moment. Two. A whole eternity stretched wide.

Still nothing.

He doesn’t breathe differently, doesn’t blink in your direction. He is an unmoving photograph, locked in grayscale.

The pain in your chest sharpens. You sigh, a sound heavier than you want it to be, and push yourself upright slowly. The motion makes the cabin shift beneath your feet, your body pulling against gravity like it doesn’t quite know not to fight against it. The wound pulls at your side when you straighten, and you wince, but it’s nothing compared to the way he won’t look at you.

You take a step, just one, because you don’t know where you’re supposed to go when the space between you is so wide and so small all at once.

“What the hell were you thinking?”

His voice. Rough. A scrape of gravel across the floor. The question is a demand, a plea, an accusation. All three at once.

It stops you cold.

You turn, and there he is - finally looking at you. Not blank. Not silent. Alive with fury that isn’t really fury at all, that’s shaking, ripping, cracking open. His hands are fists, his chest is rising too fast.

He’s looking at you and it feels like standing on the edge of a cliff with no railing. His eyes are sharp, wild, too wide, and too wet. And you are the storm he’s trying to survive.

And suddenly the fight you’ve been tiptoeing around is no longer waiting. It’s here.

Bucky leans forward. Blue eyes darker than usual, fractured into pieces you can’t put back together. Not just like that. He stares at you as though you’re both the answer and the problem, as if you have stolen something from him and he doesn’t know how to take it back.

You blink, say his name like it might put the fire out. “Bucky-”

But the match has already struck.

He’s already shaking his head, not giving you room to start, to soften it, to explain. His hand scrapes down his face again, metal fingers clinking against his stubble. He looks wrecked. He looks furious. He looks like someone who just crawled out of a nightmare and hasn’t realized he’s awake.

“No. Don’t” His tone cracks. His voice is hoarse, low and harsh. Ashes in his throat. And he keeps shaking his head as if to shove away the memory. “Don’t even- don’t give me some bullshit answer. Don’t tell me you’re fine. Don’t tell me it doesn’t matter.” His fists are shaking on his thighs. “Do you even get what you did?” His voice is rough, wearing thin. “You just- you jumped in front of me. You took a bullet that was meant for me.” He laughs, but it’s not a sound of joy or anything like it. “Do you even hear how fucking insane that is?”

You straighten your shoulders, though you can feel the sting at your side where the bandage presses too tight. “It barely grazed me.”

He is on his feet before you realize it, breath ragged, chest heaving. The shadows under his eyes are bruised with exhaustion and fear, but his fury is louder than either. “That’s not the point.” His voice cracks, then hardens. “That’s not- Jesus, you don’t get it.”

You cross your arms, defensiveness piercing your chest. Your throat is dry. You try again, softer, but it comes out sharper than you mean. “I didn't think, okay? I-”

“Yeah, that’s the fucking problem.” The snap in his voice is loud enough to echo against the metal walls, then it collapses into something quieter, more vulnerable. “You didn’t think. You didn’t even give me the chance.”

The quinjet might as well be a cathedral now - all cold metal and echoes and saints made of anguish.

Your pulse is in your ears. Your side is throbbing. Your mouth is full of rust. You meet his eyes, and wish you hadn’t.

Because Bucky isn’t just angry. He’s wrecked.

“I was supposed to protect you,” he grounds out. Quiet now. Barely above a whisper. “That’s the deal. That’s always been the deal.”

His voice folds around the words as if they’re used to having a meaning. As if they’re vows etched into his bones.

“You don’t get to just- just take it for me, doll.” The petname is a tremble. Like it hurts to say. He always uses so many pet names when you’re caught in an argument. It’s as if he tries to remind himself every single time that he still gets to call you that. Gets to call you his. That he hasn’t lost you just yet. But a fight between the two of you never escalated the way it seems to be doing now.

And then he moves - too fast - pacing like a storm in a cage.

One hand scrapes through his hair, the other clenches so tight you hear the metal whine.

“You don’t get it,” he says again, voice breaking in the middle. “You don’t get what it did to me- watching you go down. Watching you bleed. Watching you-” He swallows it. Chokes it back. “I couldn’t even move. I couldn’t breathe.”

You’re shaking now. You didn’t mean for this to hurt him. Didn’t mean to tear open every stitch he’s sewn shut. But this fight is different. This one is real. This one cuts somewhere neither of you knows how to bandage.

“You always do this,” he mutters. “You always- throw yourself in front of the fire. God, baby, it drives me up the wall.” His voice climbs higher.

You feel like a child again, being scolded for touching the stove, for chasing puddles, for running into traffic, and saying you were chasing the moon.

You want to be calm. Rational. You want to explain that it wasn’t a choice, that it was instinct. But frustration rises inside you, choking. “What was I supposed to do, Bucky? Just watch you get shot?”

He turns to you, eyes slashed open, burning wild. “Yes! Damn it- yes. You should’ve let me take it. I can take it. I’ve taken worse. A bullet wouldn’t have done a damn thing to me.”

Your throat goes hot. “And if it was worse?” Your words spill too fast, too brittle, louder now. “What if it wasn’t just your arm, or your shoulder, or wherever the hell you think you can take it? What then?”

“You think I can’t handle a gunshot?” His laugh is bitter, hollow, empty. “Do you have any idea how many times- how many times I’ve been shot? I would’ve walked it off. But you-” He gestures at you, wild, helpless. “You can’t. You’re not-”

“I’m not what? Not you? Not indestructible?” You hear the bite in your own voice and hate yourself for it, but you don’t stop. “I know I’m not you. But that doesn’t mean I’m just going to sit back and let you get torn apart in front of me.”

“I can take it,” he snaps, desperate now, his eyes piercing and locking on yours like if he stares hard enough you’ll finally understand. “That’s the difference. I can take it.”

The words hit harder than the bullet did. Heat burns your throat. The anger sparks before the hurt has even settled. “Wow.” Your laugh is bitter, breathless. “So that’s what you think of me? That I’m some fragile little liability on the field?”

He shakes his head instantly, quick, desperate. “That’s not- doll, that’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?” The question tears out of you, hurt and harsh. “Because all I’m hearing is that you’re built to take it and I’m not. That I’m- what- breakable? Fragile? Disposable?”

“No, baby, that’s not-” His voice stumbles, rough edges colliding. “That’s not what I’m saying.” With a groan, he drags his hands down his face, flesh and metal both. “I’m saying I can take it better than you can, and you damn well know it.”

You freeze. The room tilts a little. His words slice in ways he didn’t intend, but the cut is real all the same. You can feel the wound at your side throbbing, sharper under your anger. “Look, I know I’m not some special kind of superhero, okay? I don’t have powers, I don’t have some serum running through my veins, and there is nothing explicitly great about me, but don’t stand there and tell me I can’t handle a goddamn graze, Bucky! I’ve had worse.”

His shoulders tense, his whole frame falling inward.

“God, that’s not-” His voice rasps like something splintering under pressure. Then it hardens again, lashing out in panic disguised as fury. “That’s- I don’t-” It falters mid-breath as though his lungs don’t want to carry the weight of the sentence. He catches himself with a fist clenched too tight and a jaw that looks like it’s been grinding down a scream. When he speaks again, it’s serrated and sharpened anguish. “I know you’re strong, baby.” His voice is worn. Throaty. “Stronger than anyone gives you credit for, hell, stronger than me most days. But this- this isn’t about that.” His breath cuts short, chest shuddering, and he looks at you with eyes that are all storm, no shore. “This is about-” He stops. Stutters. “You could’ve-” The word wilts on his tongue. He swallows profusely, like it burns going down. A tremor rushes through him. He rakes his hand through his hair, breath half-held, whole body trembling like he’s standing barefoot in a blizzard. “You could’ve died, doll.” The words crack like ice. “And you don’t even-”

You step forward, something molten rising up your throat. “But I didn’t.” You throw your arms out, as if to show him the whole inventory of your body, bruises and all. “I’m fine, Bucky. Look at me.”

“Fine?” He spits the word as if it tastes like blood. His voice lifts again, strong with desperation he can’t mask. And then his metal hand slams into the armrest of the seat beside him with a violent clatter, the sound a boom in the belly of the quinjet. The chair jerks sideways, bolts groaning in protest. “You call that fine?” His voice is scraped raw from the inside out. “Sweetheart, you’re bleeding under that damn bandage and you almost didn’t-” His words collapse on themselves. He breathes like he’s chasing oxygen that won’t stay in his lungs. He is visibly fighting the tremor in his throat.

Silence. A silence that isn’t really silence, because his breathing is jagged and your pulse is thunder in your ears.

You want to tell him you acted on instinct. You want to tell him that it wasn’t a decision. That your body just moved when it saw him in danger. That fear has a language all its own and yours always spells save him. That the image of him falling, broken, is worse than any pain you could imagine.

But he’s looking at you like you pulled the trigger yourself. Like you opened your chest and aimed the bullet at your own ribs just to punish him. Just to rip the ground out from under him.

You glance down at the torn fabric, the dried blood that crusts around the bandage. “I’m handling it, okay?” you tell him, and your voice is strained, stretching thin against the silence. “It’s not a big deal.”

The sound he releases is a scar, twisted and hollow and painful to hear. “Not a big deal?” he echoes, voice incredulous and so, so wounded. “You could’ve been dead. Do you get that? Do you understand what that means? One inch deeper, one second slower, and I’m holding your body instead of your hand.”

The silence after that feels too big, too swollen to hold.

Your arms wind around yourself, because his words keep finding the softest parts of you and keep pressing down. You exhale and it hurts to let go of the air.

He looks away, hands on his hips, head bowed as though he’s just emptied himself out. His shoulders rise and fall in numbed, uneven lines.

“Can’t you see what it does to me, Bucky?” you whisper, the words hitching in your throat. Splintering with weariness. “Watching you go headfirst into danger every goddamn time? It kills me, Bucky. It kills me to picture you not coming back.”

He scoffs. Rough. Dismantling. The sound of something breaking. His hand flies out, gesturing wide, as though the whole world is a mess he can’t control and he’s trying to hurl it away. “That’s different!”

“No, it’s not!” you shout, heat boiling in your chest, heart hammering. You step closer, refusing the distance he’s trying to put between you. “Why is it different? Because you’ve been through hell? Because you’ve survived it before? That doesn’t mean it should always be you taking the fall. You can’t expect me to always just stand behind you while you get hit.”

“If it keeps you alive,” he says, voice low and lethal, “then yeah. That’s exactly what I want. That’s exactly what you’re going to do.” The words are a blow. But you don’t flinch. You fire back.

Anger tears through the cracks of your ribs. “You don’t get to decide that for me.”

“I do when your life’s on the line!” His voice booms, ricocheting off the metal walls as though looking for a way out. His body is shaking. He is pacing again, shoulders rigid, breath stormy. His hands are firecrackers, bursting through the air, erratic. “It’s not noble, throwing yourself in front of me like that. It’s not- it’s reckless. It’s fucking reckless. You don’t get to make that call, not when I-” He stops, swallows audibly, shakes his head as though he is choking on the words. His fists are clenched at his sides.

Your side pains, wound burning hotter, but the fury blinds you to it. You throw his words back at him, icy and fast. “Don’t talk to me about reckless,” you snarl. “You’ve thrown yourself into worse for all of us. You don’t hesitate when it’s your body on the line. But the second it’s mine, suddenly it’s a crime?”

He turns so fast it shakes the air. His head snaps toward you, eyes blazing. Searing. Sorrowful. Fury and devastation are wrapped so tight you can’t tell them apart. He takes a step toward you, and then another, until there’s barely air between you.

His voice drops, rough and shaking and dangerous. “You don’t get it. You don’t get what it felt like- seeing you drop, seeing blood on you because of me.” He closes the last distance between you in two quick strides. His eyes are oceans mid-tempest. “You were on the ground, and I swear to God, I stopped breathing. I saw you hit the floor and I thought- this is it. This is the moment I lose her. And if that happens- if you’re gone- if I lose you-” He bites down hard. You see the pain stretch across his face like glass cracking under pressure. “I’m done,” he breathes. “You hear me? Done.” His voice is gravel and grief. “There’s no coming back from that.”

Your chest caves in, slowly, painfully. But your voice rises anyway. “And what if I feel the same?”

He freezes.

“What if I can’t survive watching you die? What if I’d rather take that bullet every time than live in a world without you?”

His face breaks, and for a second you think he’s going to fall apart. Say something raw and unfixable.

But then he turns away. Fast. Hands in his hair. His metal fist curls, clenches, presses against his mouth like he’s trying to stifle the sound coming out of him - a noise you’ve never heard before.

It’s not rage. It’s not grief. It’s terror. Strangled and trembling.

The sound makes your wound flare, a hot, twisting pain, but you bite down on it, refuse to wince. Refuse to show him one ounce of weakness.

“It’s not the same,” he grits out through harshly clenched teeth.

“Yes, it is,“ you shoot back, frustrated.

“Goddammit,” he mutters, voice scraping bottom. “Why don’t you get it?”

You step closer. Close enough to feel the quake in his shoulders. “Why don’t you?” you throw back, chest aching. You’re not yelling anymore. You’re just breaking. “I made a choice, Bucky. My choice. And you don’t get to tell me it was wrong just because it scared you.”

He whirls on you with a snarl of disbelief, eyes wild.

“Scared? You think that’s all it is?” He steps forward, and you swear the jet shrinks around you. “It wasn’t just wrong,” he claims, “it was stupid. Suicidal. You gambled your life like it meant nothing.”

“And I’d do it again.” The words rip from your throat, vehemently, tears stinging behind your eyes. “A thousand fucking times, I’d do it again.”

His face crumples as if he’s folding under the strain of every second that’s passed since the bullet tore through you, heartbreak and grief colliding until he looks almost unrecognizable. His hands fall to his sides. His mouth parts, shaking. Silent. His eyes glisten as if he’s seconds from drowning.

“You’re gonna drive me insane,” he whispers, defeated.

And the silence after that feels like it’s been held in the mouths of stars.

The wound in your side pulses again - no, not a pulse. A bite. Teeth, dragging. Sharp. Cruel. Hungry. You press it down like you’ve been taught to do. Like the pain owes you obedience. But it doesn’t. And he’s looking at you as if you’re a stranger in your own skin.

And God, you’re too deep in the fire to pull back now.

Your voice is soft when it finally comes. Paper-thin. A whisper trying not to tremble. “You’re not the only one afraid of losing someone, Bucky.”

He exhales like he’s coughing up a wound. A sound so raw it cleaves the air between you. His chest stutters. Caves. Fights to lift again.

“Then stop putting me in a position where I almost do.” His words are not loud, but they land.

Your hands curl into fists, your nails digging crescents into your palms. Your side is screaming now. Screaming. Not a throb anymore. Not even a burn. It’s a hurricane. A tidal wave. It climbs your spine, presses sweat through your skin, swirls around your lungs and tightens.

You feel lightheaded, but you dig in. Dig deeper. Because anger is easier than fear. And you’re too stubborn to give the pain permission.

“You don’t get to tell me how to love you,” you say, and your voice has a raspy note. But there is a certain confidence in the way you speak to him. “I won’t apologize for saving you from a bullet wound.”

He flinches.

It’s small - almost nothing.

But you see it. You feel it.

For a moment, it is quiet again. The air between you quivers, explosive and tenuous. Everything but peaceful.

Just two people breathing hard enough to unnerve the walls, hearts banging like warning sirens against ribs too shrill and too bruised to carry them.

You don’t even realize your breathing is too shallow until the world shifts. Just a tilt. Just a smear of light. The overheads cloud, lengthening into halos you can’t quite reach.

You blink. Once. Twice. Mouth pressed tight. Trying to glare at him. But your vision is molasses now, slow and honeyed and dangerous. The wound - your whole side at this point - is a furnace. A pulse that spikes, hot and penetrating. Like someone driving a nail under your skin. At first, you think it’s nothing - just your body’s reminder that adrenaline always runs out. But it is expanding. Deepening. A slow burn blooming into fire.

You tell yourself that this is what a graze feels like. But the air doesn’t enter your lungs the way it should anymore and the lights overhead are suddenly a single sting behind your eyes.

You don’t remember when your knees began to give, only that they did. Just a slight buckle. A warning shot you try to keep to yourself.

Bucky doesn’t miss it. Of course, he doesn’t. His eyes snap down, sharp as knives, then back up to your face. His expression changes, sharpens in a different direction. Like a tide pulling out. Like a cliff eroding in fast-forward.

“What is it?” he asks, voice low, croaky, unstable. It sounds as if his throat is lined with sandpaper.

“Nothing,” you bite out too fast. Too curt. You straighten. Or you try to. “I’m fine.”

But the pain is not fine. It’s surging now, like the wound has been waiting for the argument to end before it demanded center stage. As if summoned by your lie. It grabs hold of you now. All at once.

The bandage feels wet. Your side feels like it’s trying to tear off your body. The edges of your vision grow fuzzy for just a moment longer - enough to make you catch your breath, enough to make your body sway.

“Hey-” Bucky’s voice is urgent now, sharp and thick with alarm. And he is there in an instant, too close, too fast. His hands are on you before you even register him moving, one warm, one metal, both steadying you before the ground has the chance to steal you.

“I said I’m fine-” you grit out, trying to shove him away with hands that don’t quite do what you want them to. Your words are clumsy, just like your movements. You try to straighten, but instead your body sags against his grip. Your body doesn’t cooperate. Your muscles slur. Your spine folds. “It’s nothing,” you gasp, “just-”

“Nothing?” The word snags in his mouth. His eyes flash down and he sees the blood. The bandage soaked through. The way the red spills across your side like it’s writing a warning in ink. His face goes slack with horror. Then it tightens. Hard. Like a door slamming shut behind a scream. “Jesus, Y/n-”

“I can handle it,” you exclaim stubbornly. But your voice trembles, shivers, betrays you. You’re trying to stay upright, trying to fight the proof of your body’s collapse. Trying to win, even now. To prove him wrong, to prove yourself right. “I told you, I can handle it.”

His arms shift again, cradling you like you’re already slipping through his hands. His metal arm hooks under your legs without hesitation. He’s trying to hold you without hurting you, panic in every movement.

“Handle it?” His voice pitches up, hoarse and fierce and broken. “You’re bleeding out on me.” His words are a tremor. A truth too loud to ignore. “You’re white as a sheet, you can barely stand - don’t you dare tell me you can handle it.” His voice is pulled straight from the center of him.

You stumble again, and this time there’s no denying it. Your whole body lurches. The pain spikes - bright and feral - and a gasp slips from your mouth before you can stop it.

Your hand flies to your side. Hot. Wet. Sticky. The bandage is gone. Useless. You’re losing too much, too fast.

Your knees crumple, and your body pulls you down despite your mind’s insistence, but his arms are already catching you with a curse under his breath. His body braces around yours with the force of something terrified. You feel his heart pounding where your head presses into his chest. A thunderous rhythm.

“Shit- shit, hold on, I’ve got you,” His voice has no rhythm now, just pieces - pointed, breathless, all jumbled together like falling debris.

He clamps one hand to your wound, hard and fast, like he’s trying to hold the blood in, like if he just presses hard enough, he can undo it.

His breath is coming in stutters. Not clean. Not measured. Just labored little gasps, broken fragments pulled too fast into his lungs.

His arms - one flesh, one metal - tighten. Not gently. Not delicately. Desperately. Scared you’ll slip away if he loosens his grip even for a second.

You want to tell him to stop. You want to tell him you can walk, that this isn’t necessary, that he’s overreacting and this is excessive. But your tongue feels plushie, your mouth tastes like copper, and the air won’t sit still long enough for your lungs to catch it and shape the words.

He’s moving too fast. Too fast for someone with a heart that’s breaking.

“Hold on,” he utters. Two words. Strained. Snapped in half. Laced with dread and too many maybes.

He shifts you against him, pulls you closer, your weight drawn easily against his chest, one arm under your knees, the other anchoring your back, as though you’re breakable and already broken. His warmth, his solidity - it’s too much. It makes you want to collapse entirely.

You shouldn’t feel this safe. Not when everything hurts. You don’t even notice him taking off, the ramp of the quinjet groaning and moaning under his weight.

Your head lolls against his shoulder as the corridors rush by in a haze. Too heavy. Too hollow. The vibrations of his boots slam into your spine, and travel up, up, up. Too fast, too hard. Each step proof of how close he is to breaking.

You feel him everywhere. The heat of him. The tremor in him. The wild, frantic, unsteady beat of his heart crashing against your ribs, against your ear.

“Bucky-” Your voice is a whisper, a thin wire strung between your teeth.

“Don’t.” One word, but it lands like a plea. Gruff. His breath catches like it's snagged on something sharp. You feel his jaw flex against your temple. Hear the way his voice fractures. “Don’t talk, baby. Don’t waste your strength.”

You almost laugh - because wasting your strength on words is all you know how to do - but pain is a cruel thief, and it steals even the sound of a smile.

You catch the tremor in his hands. Not the metal one. The other one. The human one. The one made of skin and scar tissue. The one that remembers how it felt to hold hope and lose it. Fingers press too tightly at your shoulder.

“I should’ve seen it.” His voice is quieter now, almost to himself. “Should’ve known. I was too- too wrapped up-” The rest dissolves into another language. Russian, maybe. Sharp syllables. Soft fury.

You try again, your voice thinner now. “I told you- it’s not that bad.”

But you’re lying. And he knows it.

He lets out a sound you’ve never heard from him before - something guttural shredded with disbelief. He jerks his head, eyes burning down at you, and the expression on his face is something you’ll never forget. Not anger. Not this time. Just naked fear. “Don’t you dare say that. Not one more time. You’re bleeding through my shirt, baby.” His voice hitches. Shatters in the middle. You feel the break. Taste it. “That’s bad. That’s fucking bad.”

And you realize he’s right. You can feel it now - the consistent warmth soaking through layers of fabric, the pain sharpening into something blinding. Your skin is clammy, your head spins harder, your breaths grow weak. You feel the way the world spins like it’s on the verge of forgetting you.

“Stay with me,” he grates out, the syllables wrecked. He sounds out of breath. He’s never out of breath. “Don’t close your eyes, baby. Look at me.”

You try. You do. But the world is softening and there is nothing you can do about it. Each step he takes sends another sharp pang through your side, the ache sweltering and radiating.

You gasp, eyes fluttering, and the pain sings its jagged lullaby.

He adjusts his grip, faster now, speeding down the corridor. “Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you- god- baby-”

You blink, slow and stupid. You swallow as best as you can, words slurring in your mouth. “We were busy.” It sounds like a joke. And maybe it is. A terrible, unforgivable joke.

His face contorts like you’ve struck him. He looks down at you as though you’ve just ripped his heart out. “Busy fighting?” His jaw tightens. His voice drops to a choked whisper. “You should’ve told me. You should’ve told me. I should’ve seen-”

You hum something in return. Maybe agreement, maybe apology. But the world is a merry-go-round now and you’re slipping off the edge. Your eyes close for just a moment. Just one. The dizziness is inviting.

“No. Hey.” His voice spikes, piercing and raw. Loud and terrified. He jostles you lightly, desperate, hysterical. “No, no, no- eyes on me. Look at me, sweetheart. Look at me. Don’t even think about it, baby.”

Your lashes flutter, the hallway tilting again. His grip tightens, trying to hold you inside your own body. His face is a watercolor now, smudged and moving.

“Almost there,” he gasps against your hair, but the earthquake in his voice doesn’t get muffled. “Almost there, baby. Hang on.” He bites down on the next words, his jaw hard enough to crack. “Don’t do this to me. Don’t- please, baby-”

You want to reach for him. To cup his face and tell him he’s being dramatic again because he always gets dramatic when it’s about you and your health. But your hands aren’t working. Your body is sinking. Your bones are tired of holding you up. Your tongue is sluggish and your mouth won’t work the way you want it to.

The med bay doors loom ahead, too far and too close all at once. He shoulders them open without slowing, the slam of metal against metal echoing behind you.

“Somebody-” His voice cracks through the room, loud, panicked. “Somebody get in here!”

You try to tell him to stop yelling. To stop making a scene and that it’s not as bad as it looks and that others might be doing worse. But the ceiling is spinning and your words are gone.

“Stay with me,” he breathes, voice breaking down to almost nothing as he lowers you onto the nearest bed. His hands are everywhere - pressing at your side, brushing hair off your face, shaking, steady, shaking again. “Stay awake,” he pleads again. He’s trying to hold all your pieces together, but they‘re slipping through his fingers. “Stay with me, baby, please. Please, I can’t-”

The fight is gone. The fury is gone.

All that’s left is fear.

Your eyes flutter, heavy, and you whisper his name like it’s the last coin in your pocket.

And the look on his face when you do - the panic engraved so viscerally, the desperation rasping through every line - is enough to keep you tethered, just barely, just enough.

The med bay fills too quickly. Footsteps hammering, voices swinging through the air with urgency. Dr. Cho’s commands come clipped, efficient, the language of someone used to patching up gods and soldiers alike. A tray clatters, gloves snap, lights blaze white above you.

But all you see is him.

Bucky doesn’t move from your side, not even when Cho snaps at him to give space. His hands are sticky with your blood. His eyes are frantic, tearing over your face as though he can will you to stay awake just by looking hard enough. “Easy, doll. I’ve got you. Right here, I’m right here.” His voice is wreckage.

Your fingers twitch, searching. Blind. Weak. They find nothing but air.

Until his hand is there. Big, calloused, trembling. He links your fingers and you grip with what little strength you have, your palm slipping against his. He clutches you with deeply rooted desperation.

His breath catches audibly. He bows his head close, closer, forehead nearly touching yours, his hair falling forward in a curtain that hides you both for a heartbeat.

“I’m here,” he croaks, broken into pieces. “I’m not going anywhere.”

You believe him. You always do. You should. You can.

The medics are talking around you, about pressure and blood loss and IV lines, but their words aren’t registering. You focus only on his voice, the gravel and quake of it, the way it buckles against your skin.

You squeeze his hand. Hardly. “I’m sorry,” you whisper. The words are frail, wobbling things. “Bucky- I’m sorry.”

Bucky’s face crumples. His whole body folds. His reaction is immediate, violent in its tenderness. His hand grips yours tighter. His forehead presses to your temple, his lips moving over your hairline, your cheek, your brow, your knuckles - feverish kisses, despairing, wherever he can reach in the chaos. “No- no, don’t you say that.” His voice shreds as he speaks. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, baby. It’s okay. It’s all gonna be okay. You don’t get to be sorry. You don’t-”

Another wave of pain sears through you, sharp enough to make your vision go white. You gasp, your body arching, your grip on his hand faltering.

He squeezes tighter. His thumb rubs over your knuckles, rushed and intense. You see the wet shine in his eyes. The tears breaking loose, tracking down his face. And your chest clenches because you’ve seen him bloodied, broken, beaten - but never shattering like this.

“I can’t-” His throat locks, helpless and human. He shakes his head, presses another desperate kiss to your hair. “I can’t lose you. Don’t make me, please- please don’t”

You want to answer. You want to promise him. To tell him again you’re fine, or will be fine, or something that might sew his fear back together. Something that might make him stop crying. But the room is melting into darkness and it is opening its mouth for you. You’re already halfway inside. The sounds around you are dimming into a single hum. Your body feels heavier, every heartbeat slower, slower still. You don’t even know if you’re present anymore.

“Stay awake,” Bucky begs, voice crumbling as his tears hit your skin. He shakes your hand, gentle but miserable. In demise. “Please, sweetheart, stay awake.”

You try to hold on, to give him one more word, one more look. But your body is slipping. Your hand slackens in his.

The last thing you hear is his voice breaking open against your name as your eyes fall shut.

The last thing you feel is the heat of his tears falling into the hollow of your throat as the world disappears.

“We loved with a love that was more than love.”

- Edgar Ellen Poe

As it often was, the manor was silent. The staircases lost their breath long ago, the floorboards coped with the expected and constant weight, and the doors fell into disuse to the point that they faded into the walls. Altogether, even the rats were too spooked to enter those abandoned hallways, for fear of exciting ghosts or ghouls from the mist. Nothing went in, nothing went out. 

And that was just how Dark liked it. Society had moved too fast for him, leaving him in the dust as some poetic punishment. Some part of him had always been alone, another part abandoned, and the last part dictated by it. He didn’t want any part in a thing that would only work against him, so he was content to stay in the confines of the manor, not that leaving it was ever an option. If he could, he would have by now; he would have escaped and found some quiet shelter where the memories of his actions couldn’t haunt him. 

From time to time, he would be reminded of the events all those years ago by three simple things. Or, rather, people. The first of which was anything but simple – Wilford ‘Motherloving’ Warfstache had not visited the manor in quite a while, instead, roaming both space and time, looking for his next interviewee. Dark had heard about a robot he constructed, or stole, that he used to get his next, for lack of a better term, victims. He knew of one person that had already perished from the faulty wiring, and he was not planning to be his next, the fact that he couldn’t die notwithstanding.

The second was someone less dramatic. In fact, despite him definitely being around, Dark never saw hide nor hair of him. Benjamin was an elusive creature, skulking around the corridors and making noise in the kitchen at the most random of times. When he had first arrived, he went about making meals and snacks for the ‘new masters’, but what with Wilford never being there and Dark not needing to eat, his habits were just that: habits. The faint smell of baking cookies was ever-present though, which made a venture by the kitchen a pleasant treat on a hard day. 

And, as he passed that room, it was indeed needed.

Because, for the third and final reminder, not only memories lurked around the corners, but consequences, too. Cruel, despairing consequences that almost had Dark turning tail and rushing back to his office. His still heart was in his throat as he moved through a hallway, unnecessary breath quickened when he glided under an arch, and, when he stepped foot into the foyer, he felt as though he would pass out then and there. 

At the side of the entrance, as it always had been, was a mirror, one that he had never touched or looked at in the last hundred years. Just the thought of it made the room seem colder, if it were possible, because one thing was undeniable; this one was his fault. He had trapped a dear friend in perpetual darkness for nearly a century, acted as though he had no knowledge they still existed, and went about his business. 

He wondered if you could ever forgive him. 

Although he would never know if he didn’t do the one thing that struck fear into his heart like lightning igniting the ground. He would have to talk to you. That was, if you even wanted to talk to him, because – despite Dark’s lacking social skills – he knew that conversations had to be a two-way street, and he wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want to cross that line. 

But first things first.

Heaving a dramatic breath was harder than the 12 labors of Hercules, but Dark managed it anyway, if only to get over the first hurdle, and carefully brought his fist to the corner of the mirror. If this went well, he could finally get that nagging part of him to quieten down. 

One knock was easy. Simple. Almost instinctual. The second was much less so. The brief pause between sounds was empty of condemnation or acceptance, but the quietness that followed his next knock was damn-near painful. Was he doing something wrong? Had he already messed everything up? 

He supposed he did that when he locked you in the mirror in the first place. 

“Hello?” he spoke numbly. Some part of him wanted you to come right out and yell at him, curse him, do whatever just to show that you were open to confronting him. Another part perished the thought. It couldn’t bare you emerging from the darkness with unquenchable wrath towards him, a thirst for vengeance that he couldn’t manipulate his way out of – so give him the calm you, the one that would listen to him when he apologized, probably scold him some, and then let your relationship build back up again. Notably, that was the part of him that reminded him of what had happened every time he crossed the foyer. And then there was the smallest section of his heart, nestled at the very bottom and buried beneath years of guilt and denial… that didn’t want you to appear at all.

But that would negate his reason for being there in the first place, and fleeing with his tail between his legs was not Dark’s forté. So, crossing his arms over his chest and digging his heels into the floorboards, he stood his ground. 

“Hello?” he repeated, confidence creeping steadily into his tone. “We need to talk.” 

Technically, that was a lie. You didn’t need to talk, nothing bad would happen to you if you didn’t show up, but there had been a steadily creeping feeling of distress for Dark that urged him to take some action. Obviously, you wouldn’t be doing much initiating from behind the glass, so that left him standing before you. Hopeful, hesitant, alone. 

“I have matters to discuss with you.” He reasoned to himself that he could communicate, if not as a friend, then as a business partner. The cold logistics were his strong suit, after all, and it negated the risk of developing an emotional attachment. It did mean ignoring a large part of him – the part of him that wanted to make that connection – but it was better than the alternative. 

However, as he waited, it became apparent that he didn’t have to worry about that struggle. You weren’t going to appear, it seemed, the seconds ticking by on the grandfather clock behind him. The damned thing taunted him, and he was sick of it as soon as he noticed. If you didn’t want to talk in that moment, fine, but you wouldn’t be getting away with the silent treatment that easy. 

Besides, it wasn’t as though he had gone into this interaction with any kind of plan, and that was what he was good at, planning. So, the only reason why this hadn’t worked first try was because he hadn’t thought it out well enough. Tomorrow, then, you would talk, he would make sure of it. He couldn’t fail twice in a row?

He failed twice in a row. The next day, after Dark had knocked again at the wooden edge of the mirror, watched the glass in the frame shiver ever so slightly, you didn’t appear. You denied giving him even the slightest hint of recognition. 

“We need to talk,” he insisted, acutely aware that he was repeating words from before, but what else could he say? He wasn’t one for patience, and you would find him dead thrice over before he begged. No, you would have to take what he gave you, accept that he wasn’t going to throw himself before you in desperation. 

It didn’t make this any easier on him, though. The seconds that shuffled past him felt like wading through mud. They grated on his nerves, pulled at his skin, his hand leapt to his jacket to fiddle with the edges. Normally, it was enough to ground him and keep him from acting out, but, as before, Dark was not one for patience. 

“I don’t know why you’re acting like this,” he started, relatively soft in comparison to what he could be, “but we don’t have time for it. I don’t have time for it.” 

He understood that creating false urgency was somewhat backhanded, but he really did have to speak with you. Perhaps overexaggerating the situation, if it was needed, was something he was prepared to do. 

He pressed on, “I came here to talk to you and that is exactly what I’ll be doing. You’re not going to get me to stop just because you’re acting like a child—” nothing, “—because you are! You are a child, and, right now, you are not helping anyone by staying silent.” Still nothing. 

The air around him flexed and popped as Dark grew more and more agitated. Red and blue bent around each other like oil in water, droplets and sparks and smoke that curled over his shadows. He was racked with indecision, the three parts of him threatening to tear him apart, drawn and quartered, just to have their own way. He hated not being able to make up his mind, because that left him not entirely focused on the thing in front of him. In such an important moment, he had to be, lest he say some undesirable things. 

“What are you doing?” As such, it was unfortunate that he was indeed undecided, “Are- are you throwing a tantrum in there, are you sulking? I don’t understand why you won’t talk to me!” A crack spiderwebbed itself in Dark’s little bubble. The sound of a sharp fracture echoed through the manor’s halls. Despite Dark straightening his back, dropping his shoulders, adjusting his grip on his suit jacket, the crack remained. “Okay,” he huffed, “I accept that I’ve made mistakes, but they weren’t horrible. This was for the best, and, frankly, I believe you’re being selfish. Three lives are more important than one, and, yes, I admit that our method was… backhanded, but that doesn’t give you the right to ignore me for it.” 

He gave it ten seconds before squinting his eyes. Goading hadn’t worked, pseudo-apologies be damned, what else was he supposed to do? He refused to stoop so low as to concede his wrongdoings, far more there were in your opinion, leaving him with nothing. He stared at himself through the glass, clear as day, practically crystal. 

“Fine. Act like that,” Dark muttered, “You’re the one who’s trapped, not me.”

A beat passed. The glass didn’t change. Just plain indifference.

“Oh, be quiet.” With that spat towards the mirror, he turned on his heel and marched back to his office. 

Four times. Four times. When the clock struck nine for the past four nights, Dark would make his way towards the mirror in the foyer, disregard anyone and anything in his path, and knock on the wood, never to receive an answer. Four times over. 

And it wasn’t as though it was getting any easier to wait; self-restraint was being exercised more than patience, because it was all he could do to keep himself from shattering the glass even more than it already was. The other mirrors were not as safe. Those in the bathrooms, library, and two of the bedrooms fell victim to Dark’s frustration, leaving messes of shards and splinters where they used to hang. They were disposable, your mirror was not, nor the one that met his eyes across his office. It was cleaner, less fancy that the one in the foyer, and he found it the only one that he could handle being in the presence of, and the only one that could handle being in his presence.

Although, one living being did manage to hold his own in the same room. 

“Oh, Dark! I’ve been looking for you.”

Wilford had been flitting in and out of the manor recently, more rapidly than before but just as unreliable. Dark didn’t know what he wanted, but he wasn’t going to waste time asking him outright. The man could straddle a fence all he liked, he had more important things – not that they were working out any better. 

But now that Wilford was confronting him directly, he didn’t have a choice in talking to him. If only you saw it the same way…

“I’m where I’ve been for the past century, Wilford,” Dark responded, eyes not moving from the documents in front of him. 

“Hmm—” he pulled himself onto the desk, “—Is that so?”

He didn’t bother to hide his sigh as he dragged his glare up to his friend’s face. The look on his face spoke more words than he could be bothered to say. Confusion, annoyance, a general ‘get on with it before I kick you out’ sort of tone. 

Wilford was unaffected. “Well,” he drawled with that unpinpointable accent, “I’m just saying that there’s been a few times I’ve popped in when you haven’t been here.” His hands darted for the pen stand on the desk. “Though, the mirror was definitely a surprise.” 

Damn it. If there was one thing that Wilford and Dark had in common, it was a certain omniscience for things in the manor. Whether he had actively seen his attempts to talk to you didn’t matter, he would know either way, like a nosy child. He was quickly growing tired of childish antics, but that could have just been the permanent mood for the week. 

The weariness not only had Dark pushing his chair away from the desk to swing one leg over another, but it also halted his reaction time, if only for a millisecond – unfortunately for him, that was all the time Wil needed to notice. 

“What were you doing, anyway? You haven’t spoken to our friend in the entire time we’ve been here, and you weren’t there to worry about your appearance.”

His permanent sugar-coated smile turned sour, the edges pulling taught and his teeth sharpening. The knowledge of everything and everyone in the building doubled into annoyance at not knowing a secret. Wilford liked to be in on the joke.

Dark wouldn’t let him in that easy, not when his attempts had gone wrong every time. “We were only,” he paused, “talking.”

“You certainly were!” Wil’s chortle came out boisterous, clashing with the shadows of the room. “I can’t say the same about them, now, can I?”

Dark never liked giving in to his more dramatic urges, but rolling his eyes at his friend’s antics was the very furthest he would go. Always turning things into a joke, stripping them of severity and seriousness. Sometimes, on the very oddest of occasions, he could understand it. He’d seen his mental break when he stole your body, and he had accepted his denial for the next month or so, but there was a point when things had to matter. Getting you to talk to him mattered. 

Wilford looked over his shoulder at the mirror. His smile barely softened as he raised one hand to send you a wave. You hadn’t fully appeared, you never did in Dark’s office, but there was the faint outline of some shape that hinted you were at the very least listening in. Of course, you didn’t say anything back. Wil thought you were both similar in some respects - for instance, you were both as stubborn as a mule. You’d decided to look into the office, so you were interested in what was going on, and Dark’s last week of trying to talk to you proved his persistence. Another thing you shared was a hatred for Mark – and, no, he wasn’t going to censor that man’s name in his own train of thought, he was a big boy – so if you both agreed to work together, Dark might actually make some headway in his search for the criminal. You could finally put that combined pig-headedness to good use. 

“I’m trying to get them to respond, but they steadfastly refuse to.” Dark’s fluid complaint had Wil swinging his head back to him. 

“I can’t say I blame them.”

Alarm shot over one’s face while the other looked pleasantly calm. Siding with someone you refused to even look at him was a surprise, but it shouldn’t have been so shocking; the manic time-traveler was the definition of a wildcard, he always had been.

As he spoke, Wil snatched a pile of papers from a semi-open drawer to rifle through. “From what I’ve heard,” he began, “you were being quite rude last time. Calling them a child, really, what did you expect?”

“I was expecting some kind of answer.”

“Ah, so you were goading a response out of them. Not at all releasing any pent-up aggression, eh?”

Dark didn’t like this. He didn’t like the sudden turn of the tables. Wilford had gone from the eaves-dropping child to the parent giving their own a scolding. He didn’t like the loss of control he had over the situation. But what he disliked the most was the idea that he was lying about his intentions. Too many people had been accusing him of that, neither straightforward, and it was becoming an unfavorable pattern to him. 

“I don’t like what you’re insinuating, Wilford.”

“Oh, but I’m not insinuating anything! I’m only suggesting that this was not the most effective way of getting them to talk. If you wanted them to play nice, you’d better do so yourself.”

“I am playing nice.”

The words came out with his namesake in mind, a volume walking the line between a growl and a yell. His ashen knuckles became as white as snow against the edge of the desk, Wil was surprised he couldn’t see inactive veins underneath his skin. Although he didn’t meet his eyes, they were sure to be glaring daggers at whatever he was looking at. None of this worried him. Noisy neighbors, stray dogs, the occasional estate agent who thought this looked an easy sell – they all were topics of Dark’s anger. This, though, was something a little different. 

The blue and red that echoed around him fought against itself in a desperate attempt to both stay close to Dark and throw distance between the colors. The dangerous aura of power surrounding him was getter less and less stable with each passing day, and he had some theories on what could be causing it – undoubtably, it was you, that much was obvious. However, he didn’t know whether it was him going near you or staying away that created this unpredictability. What he did know was that he would have to sort it out soon, or risk something happening that was out of his control. 

The least he could do for now was rein himself in, so, almost begrudgingly, Dark straightened out the lapels of his jacket and contained himself to his chair. Wilford watched him all the while, not scared, but with a knowing look on his face that made Dark want to kick him out of the manor entirely. 

“I’ll try again in the morning. Now, I have business to attend to, and I would appreciate no distractions.” The excuse was not subtle, but it worked in getting Wil to slide off the desk and ready himself to leave to whatever time period tickled his fancy. Dark, meanwhile, immediately dropped his gaze to the paper in front of him, not sparing him a second glance. 

Wil called as he began to strut out, cheery as if nothing had happened, “And don’t forget your manners, Dark!”

He merely huffed in response. Pale acknowledgment he was known to give even in times of calm, though, a thing he lacked now was attentiveness. He directed all of his focus to ignoring Wil, meaning he also ignored his next words sent towards the mirror. 

“The same goes for you, old friend. It’d be nice if we all got along,” he spoke. Both his tone and expression were imploring, something you had not seen for a good while. Hell, any emotion beyond crazed carelessness was a rarity, so it would be a lie to say you were going to disregard the change in behavior that easy. 

You don’t say anything when Wil passed by, nor when he lets the office door fall closed. Normally, you would leave the second he did; you weren’t a fan of being in the same room as Dark for longer than entertained you, and, without someone who knew you were there, it became boring. Why this day was any different, you didn’t know, but your subconscious urged you to stay behind. Watch. 

You nearly laughed at yourself, even though it would give your position away. You yourself were practically a subconscious, a physical body long gone thanks to the very person in front of you. You couldn’t interact with the world outside the mirrors, you couldn’t leave the manor, you couldn’t do anything, that was his fault. 

The very faint lines of a figure dispersed like a cigarette’s smoke as you left the room, a single thought that sent you fleeing. 

Why did it feel like you were trying to convince yourself?

Nine o’clock. Wilford had tried to get him to come earlier, but a routine had been established, and Dark, although he would never admit it, did find himself using the time to mentally prepare himself. That, and his space-faring friend had only appeared ten minutes before to see the interaction through. 

Speaking of which, that very man was standing a few feet away from him in the kitchen’s archway, an encouraging and pleading grin marring his face. He hadn’t asked why it was so important to him that you get along, his sudden interest seeming suspicious, but he wasn’t about to try and get an answer out of two stubborn mules. 

His fist met the wooden frame three times. His feet shifted on the floorboards. He waited with bated breath. 

“I would appreciate if we could have a civil conversation.” 

One, two, three. 

“I’m sorry, but my mommy told me not to talk to strangers.”

It had been such a long time since he had heard your voice that Dark flinched at the sound of it. It was bitter and hostile and mocking and a part of him damn near blushed. He quickly shut it down with a swallow and grab of his lapel, but, for a brief second, he couldn’t deny that he was happy. You showed up. Progress.

But the look on your face didn’t suggest there was going to be much more. It was his job to fix that, and, from Wilford clearing his throat somewhere behind him, he was going to have to do that without getting into an argument. 

Dark thought for a moment. Just like before, it was difficult not having his full attention on something. He couldn’t lose this opportunity to talk to you, but it would help to collect himself. The best he could do that was by talking slowly and clearly, and under no circumstances could he lose his temper.

“I apologize for calling you a child. I had planned to talk to you, and it,” he sighed, closing his eyes, “annoyed me that I couldn’t do that.”

Good news: you were still there when he opened them again. Bad news: you looked expectant at best, still pissed at worst. 

“And what else?”

Dark squinted, back tracking the lecture he had given you and your history together. “I apologize for calling you selfish.”

“And what else?”

The corners of his lips tugged downwards harshly into a frown, the most he could do while he resisted rolling his eyes, but he managed to choke out, “What else? I apologize for everything I said last time I spoke to you.”

He wouldn’t deny that he felt smug. It wasn’t a look he liked for himself, but it was a good feeling. Knowing that you had outsmarted someone was enjoyable, and that someone being a person you’d recently got into a disagreement with was even better. 

He did not feel smug when you repeated for the final time, “And what else?”

In fact, he spluttered, a fish pulled out of water. What else could there possibly be? He hadn’t spoken to you for nearly a century, he can’t have done anything to insult you without ever interacting with you, could he? Or were you trying to outsmart him back? That sounded like you, you were the district attorney, after all. You were probably hoping he would admit to something that you didn’t know he did. Well, he wouldn’t play your game. 

“What else is there?” Dark asked, staring you dead in the eyes. 

You stared back. 

There was something about the mirror that made it impossible to look at you. Every second, the image of you was switching out between your hazy form and his own face. Both equally ashen, both equally annoyed, both equally inhuman. In one hundred years, the pair of you had gone from friends sharing a cup of coffee, talking over that one unenviable case, to bulls waiting to see who would make the first move. Neither dared move, not for fear, but for displaying weakness. 

Your pupils were the first to shift. While the rest of you remained stock-still, they dragged up and down his body. From the face to the suit to the legs, it was almost as though you were cataloguing everything that he had changed from what you used to look like – until you brought your eyes back up to his. 

“Well, thank you for apologizing for that.” 

That sentence had his shoulders relaxing somewhat. You had taken his olive branch, it was the second step in constructing a partnership that would, hopefully, turn out to be mutually beneficial to you both. Dark could move in the manor, sure, but you had the void, a place where he spent a lot of his time. Maybe he left some clues, or even a body—

“I don’t forgive you.”

You snapped the olive branch between your cold hands. 

“What?” Dark hissed, practically outraged, “I’ve already apologized for everything I did, what else is there?”

A strange sort of enragement flashed over your eyes at his words. You kept your cool, but there was no doubt that, had you the option, you would have strangled him. Although he didn’t know what he’d done this time, the snarl beginning to curl over your mouth and the flexing of your hands gave more than a hint. When you moved them to gesture wildly around the void, Dark thought you were going to give it a try anyhow. 

It didn’t make him think any deeper about it though, him simply answering to your silent point, “I’ve covered that.”

You let your arms drop to your sides. “Yeah, and then you had to apologize for it, so you obviously didn’t do a good job.” 

What was meant to be a helpful little chat, maybe that would grow into something else, was rapidly collapsing in on itself. A snake eating its own tail to satiate its hunger. Except, this time, it satiated nothing, save for the want to have the last word in an argument. Both of you suffered from that fatal flaw. Stubbornness ran like a virus through inmoving veins, without mercy or pity. Maybe if it had been only one of you, you could have gotten along, but that was not the case.

“I’ll reiterate, then,” Dark began as he straightened himself out, “Mark stole Damien’s body and one entity of this house commandeered Celine’s. That left three spirits wandering the void: Damien, Celine, and the remaining entity. Are you keeping up with me?” He needed to slow down. “Good. Now, and I feel the need to emphasize this, it was coincidence that your body was left unoccupied when you were shot. We didn’t plan for that.” He really needed to slow down. “We didn’t plan for any of this, but it’s what happened, and we took it in stride. The next course of events is simple. We appeared to you, you agreed to let us occupy your body, and so we did.” Pump the brakes, pull the plug, slow the roll. “Don’t talk because I know what you’re going to say. Two spirits in one body is pushing it, three is dangerous, but four? It’d be a waste of a perfectly good host; it would self-destruct as soon as the brain caught up.” Stop talking! “So, I’ll ask again. What else is there?”

Had he been alive, Dark’s heart would have been beating so hard that you might have been able to see it through his suit. Of course, he wasn’t alive, and neither were you, so he wouldn’t have been able to see yours trying to force its way out of your ribcage, either. If there ever were a chance that you would feel sympathy for this man, he had wiped it out just like that. His little monologue might have felt nice at the time, but you promised that you would make him regret it. Talking to you like a child, who did he think he was? 

“For someone so high and mighty, you sure are dumb,” you spat back. Explaining it in a more courteous sense had crossed your mind, but it was stamped out. 

An annoyed “What?” was the only response you received. 

“Do you think that I’m mad at you for stealing my body?”

“I wouldn’t call it stealing, but yes, I do.”

You scoffed. All that preaching and he wasn’t even right on what you were pissed at. “I don’t care that you, fine, inhabited my body without me—” Even giving that little leeway was painful to you, but you struggled through it, “—I’m mad that you left me in here.”

That gave Dark pause, something that no one had been able to do for quite a while. Sure, they could get him to quiet down, mostly through annoyance in Wilford’s case, but it was an achievement to get him to stand and contemplate someone’s words, genuinely. He didn’t understand what you meant entirely. 

“I couldn’t do anything else,” he settled for saying. 

“Of course, you could.” Your voice had fallen quiet. Where that had been fire and fury and blinding stubbornness, you seemed to have slipped into a smaller volume. Simple. If he didn’t know you any better – and after such a time, there was a chance he didn’t know you at all, anymore –, he might have said there was a hint of pleading. 

“Like what, for example?”

“You could have spoken to me, you- you could have stopped to look at me, for once!” You were rearing up again, the collapse of the walls hadn’t lasted very long, making Dark wish he hadn’t asked for that example after all. But even though you were on the offensive again, once the dam had broken there was going to be no fixing it. Going without anyone to talk to for so long completely disregarded all of your social skills, and, apparently, keeping your emotions and real opinions to yourself were some of those skills. “It’s been terrifying being trapped in this mirror, alone, in the dark, without anything to do but think. The number of times I’ve had to recount the night we died or else I’d do insane is too high for me to count.”

If you lost track of the events, you might end up wrongly forgiving some people and wrongly villainizing others.

Despite you showing a bit of weakness in admitting you were scared, Dark was not an emotional man. Hell, the only person he’d spoken to was an insane murderer, so give him some slack if he didn’t pick up on every feeling you showed. Thinking back on it, he would have accepted some of the blame instead of shifting it to others with a snarky, “I’m not the only one here, I hope you know.”

You bit back, “Wilford and Benjamin, how could I forget? Except Wilford actually has gone insane from denial, and Benjamin has said one thing to me since I’ve been in here, and it was an insult to my clothes. Neither of them is around enough to talk to anyway.” The last bit you muttered quieter to yourself, but it didn’t slip past Dark. 

“How would I be any better?”

“Oh, cut the self-loathing. It’s not a good look on you, and it’s pissing me off.” He had half the mind to ask what didn’t piss you off at this point – decorative language that you’d picked up from real estate agents notwithstanding – but he held his tongue. “I thought we were in the same situation, victims of Mark, together. Apparently, we’re not.”

And, with a shift of your attention to the edge of the mirror, you followed it up with, “You’re less like me and more like Mark.” 

That set Dark’s red and blue waves alight like a rabid flame doused in gasoline. The crack from before splintered itself along his frame even more so, sending high-pitched squeals into the air. All parts of him were having different reactions, from outraged to regretful to accepting, leaving the final physical output a frigid glare. Your own eyes flitted around him, watching the energy strike out of control, and, for a brief moment, you wished you had stayed silent. 

It was an odd feeling to see someone you once considered a friend – whom you knew fully well wasn’t that same friend – respond in such a way. The visage that used to belong to Damien sent your subconscious wanting to comfort him, but, the logical part of your brain knew he wasn’t the same. Trying to be kind to him now would be fruitless, and an insult to your past together. 

You let yourself sigh the smallest breath that you could when he managed to corral himself. The waves of light returned to the surface of his skin. He blinked.

“I suppose a century is bound to do some damage—”

“A fucking century!?”

That was the last straw for you. 

“You’ve been avoiding me for a century!?” 

You knew that you couldn’t force your way out of the mirror, but this delightful news threw all reasoning out of the window. The glass barely flexed with your shoulder pressing against it, nor the fist you chucked, or even launching a foot into it. With no clue, no night-day cycle, no nothing, you had no way to tell how long you’d been abandoned for. Only your shattered view to the outside world helped, and even then, nothing in the manor would change for you to tell how much time had passed. A vague internal clock was no help either, leaving you to a guessing game. A month, a year, maybe a decade or so. 

Instead, a goddamn century had passed with barely a word from this man who stood in front of you, wearing your friend’s skin and using your bones. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Pitiful. An entity with so much power that some part of him could help bring someone back from the dead. 

“You’re a coward, Dark.”

He was starting to dislike how he looked – not for any insecurities, but because whenever he was looking at it, it only meant that you were not there. His reflection tried to goad some spat out of him, but the only thing there was an emptiness that was quickly spreading to consume all the anger and resentment that had been there before. The voice that had originally urged him to talk to you was silenced, sure, but he didn’t feel any better. He felt worse if that were possible. 

A whistle broke the silence behind him. 

“That was quite the fit you two had.” 

Wilford stepped beside Dark, both gazing at the mirror, and just the mirror gazed back. It felt wrong. 

“Do you understand what I said before?” He punctuated his question with a twist of his heel.

“Oh, but you got an answer out of them this time,” Wil slapped a hand onto his shoulder, “that’s progress, friend!” 

“Progress is arguing to the point of storming off, then?” 

Walking away from the mirror felt, to Dark, too much like giving up. Having indeed received some kind of response, regardless of whether it was positive or negative, just made it more of a failure to leave without succeeding. At least when you hadn’t appeared entirely, he could blame it on you not wanting to talk – this time, though, you were there, and you had spoken, and, because of something he did, you left. 

Approaching the staircase closest to his office, he fought back the thought. 

“Progress is getting a verbal response,” Wil called after him, rushing to catch up, “and you can make more if you so choose, which I highly implore you to do.” 

With a huff, Dark caught hold of the banister. “Why don’t you try? They might be more susceptible.” 

Wil practically chased him up to the landing, refusing to let him go and sulk in his office that easy. “I spoke to them within the first year. The only thing stopping them from coming out to play more often is you.”

Having just rounded the corner and with his hand hovering over the doorknob, Dark found himself wishing that he were ever-so-slightly quicker. Maybe if he had skipped the last step, not paused at the bottom, or simply sprinted for his door – maybe he wouldn’t have had to hear that. Wil’s tone may have been sugary and light, but he wasn’t dumb. Saying such a thing had him struggling to maintain a cool exterior. Was what he did really that much of a problem? He assumed that your outburst had come from him finally showing to you, but had you gone so long without any interaction?

He twisted the handle. 

“Does it matter that much to you?” 

“Of course! The manor could use a little activity, I’d say,” Wilford spoke as though he’d already won the battle, and, as Dark stepped over the threshold, he had. 

A brief pause, in which he looked around his bleak office – the desk, the bookshelf, the mirror – and then he answered, “Alright. I’ll try once more tomorrow.” 

Wil practically erupted into fireworks. He clapped his hands together, spun around on the heel of his shoe, and announced, “Splendid! It’s a date!” 

He was gone a second later, leaving Dark to himself. The minimal amount of light that had breached the room was dispelled with a closing of the door. He had a lot of work to do, but, for once, it had nothing to do with tracking down Mark or keeping the authorities away from the manor. No, because this time, it employed the quant, little library that Celine had made for herself when she lived in the place. With no one having gone in or out in the past century, there wasn’t even dust along the shelves, nor disrepair of the books. Everything would be pristine, just how she left it. And, matched with the knowledge of where everything was, Dark knew that this would be a piece of cake. His plan would go off without a hitch.

Although, that had been his belief when he had prepared to confront you, and look how that had turned out.

Surrounded by darkness, listening to darkness, seeing darkness, you had a lot of time to think. For most people, the ennui of an eternity might soften them up, or make them think differently. Not you. In fact, you were certain in any and all of the convictions you had at the very moment of your death. Resentment built up under the surface of your skin like rot, and, without the ability to leave the void, you were never given a chance to clear yourself of it. 

There were the odd opinions that barely hardened, but there was also a good amount of them that solidified into steel. Kings of them all were the reasons you were trapped in the mirror in the first place. Though, as said before, you didn’t begrudge Dark for keeping you there, only that he ignored you. 

Mark, on the other hand, you would gladly beat with a stick the second you saw him, or even your bare hands if you lacked anything else. The thought of touching him made you grimace, but you would struggle through it, if only to see that monster of a man dead at your feet as he should have been years ago. 

That was the worst thing about the void, beating out the loneliness and the silence, was the fact that – if you were to look at a very specific place, your head placed just so and tilted within a fraction of a degree, you could see the familiar and infuriating face of one man. He was still dressed in a satin robe, splayed on the ground, arms held out like a false idol. 

Mark’s body had long since gone cold, abandoned just as you were, to the place in the mirror. When he had taken Damien’s body, he’d left his behind, a literal shell of a man. You would see it sometimes when you moved your head quickly. A flash, a strike of lighting. It was still there to this day, but you’d never gotten the bravery to get any closer to it. It wasn’t as though you could trip over it, so why bother?

Between reliving the memories of your demise and thinking of how much you hated those two figures, you wondered if this was a punishment. The body was placed there to remind you of your loneliness, while the mirror taunted you with a glimpse of freedom that you would never reach. It gave you the only sense of direction in the void; a roughly 3 by 2-meter screen with decorated edges that just hung there. You had once tried to knock it down, but that just served to dent the corner. 

You had… mixed feelings about the window. On one hand, it let some light in. It let you see your hands, your torso, the body at the edge of your vision, your legs. You could appreciate that part. And, although not overly effectively, it gave you a sense of self. You existed, you were present in time and space, you hadn’t just disappeared, as much as you were otherwise convinced – which led you to the other hand; it mocked you. Constantly. You could see out, people could see in, but it was rare that you acknowledged one another. Wilford waved at you a few times, and Benjamin had insulted the outfit that you’d died in. The one to give you the most attention overall was Dark.

Your head snapped to the mirror.

Dark. 

He said he would try again tomorrow, didn’t he? Was it tomorrow yet? You weren’t good at keeping track of time, it seemed, but the draining and filling of the light outside that you, for once, stayed awake long enough to notice, gave you some indication. Shadows danced from the windows, the rise of a sun, and the fall of a moon. A day had passed, it had to. Timing always got finicky after six o’clock, when you couldn’t discern when it was getting brighter or if clouds were just passing through. Just to be sure, you decided to watch the screen for a bit longer. He normally appeared when it was darker – you sometimes laughed to yourself about that kind of thematic symbolism – but maybe today would be different. 

The next minutes were not different, which was to be expected, so you sat yourself down for a little longer. The next hours were not different, but you had waited a century, you could wait some more. The rest of that day was not different, though you could assume that he was just busy – stuck in that suit all day, talking of nothing but paperwork, he had to be busy. 

But the day after that was not different, either, nor was the next. Flittering between the few remaining mirrors didn’t help, because, for once, Dark was not in his office. He had to be somewhere that you couldn’t access, and, for a moment, you wondered if this was his plan. Questions about his real intentions stuck into your mind like darts on a board; had he meant to trick you, had he wanted you to get your hopes up? The idea that it was all for fun briefly topped your theories, but it couldn’t be right. You didn’t think that fun was a part of Dark’s vocabulary, regardless of the nature of it, so you knocked it down to the bottom of the possibilities. 

However, after yet another fall and rise of the sun, you stood before the screen of the void. A prisoner staring out at the world through their iron bars. Only one notion remained, a small, simple notion that you had harbored since the beginning. 

He was a liar. He was a coward and a liar, and he never cared about you, not one bit. Everything was fake, he wasn’t sorry about anything he said, and he didn’t care about you being alone. He threw people to the wayside the second they weren’t useful anymore, and whatever he needed you for had solved itself, so there you go! Brushed to the side like an inconvenient pile of trash, because he was Dark, and that was what Dark did. A selfish, lying coward, he was worse than Mark—!

You lifted your foot. Glass littered the ground. You didn’t hear the mirror smash, and yet, the evidence was there. A slice of the screen carved out hastily and let fall to the floor of the void. The space it had occupied before was now empty upon you putting your hand through it. 

“Huh,” you muttered to yourself. You still weren’t full comfortable with the sound of your own voice. Too scratchy from disuse. 

The couple of shards of glass that were somewhat intact on the floor reflected something back at you as you moved. Carefully, you crouched down to cradle one, and then promptly fell backwards.

You couldn’t remember what you looked like when you were alive. When you thought of yourself, all you could see in your mind’s eye was a blank slate of a face and a line downwards, like a stick-figure. Staring into the thing in your hand, you questioned again if this were a punishment. 

Smoke. Smoke in the vague shape of a person. That was all you could see, and, no matter how you tilted or twisted the glass, that was all it would show. The billows of gas threw themselves around over one another, cascading down along the side of a face and then shoulders, like waterfalls creating a path with no end. A misty hand brought to your face conflicted with the image. It felt like there was something solid there, your hands felt solid, as well. You didn’t know what to trust, but that was the same age-old story, wasn’t it?

The tears looked like smoke, too. 

Nine o’clock. The day had passed painfully quickly. Normally, that would be a godsend, but it only reminded you of the hiatus when things actually happened. Not anymore. It changed very quickly back to what it had been before, like your mind was trained to accept abandonment. 

You weren’t mad anymore. At least, you didn’t think you were. The office had gone uninhabited for the past four days, so you didn’t have anything to direct your anger towards. It was more as though you were frozen, back to spectating the manor through a sheen of frosted glass with your legs crossed. You’d give anything to feel the snow again, or any change in temperature at all. The void was completely neutral – maybe 15 degrees if you paid close attention. It didn’t matter to you anymore.

You were drifting. Your train of thought kept straying from the subject, and reliving the memories gave you no satisfaction, no sadness, no fear. Frozen. To the point that you barely registered that someone was standing in front of the mirror. 

You wouldn’t admit that you clambered to your feet, nor that you jogged closer to the mirror to strengthen your image. Did you look like smoke to him, too? You shook your head, that didn’t matter. Attention roving his body, you inspected Dark for any sign of what had taken his time up so much. You got your answer quickly when your gaze landed on two books, one in each of his hands, though only the right was open. The other’s cover, meanwhile, was exposed to you. ‘The Lady in the Lake’ it read, in a striking, slightly yellowed font. On a positive note, you felt some sort of coherent emotion stirring within you. The bad news on that front was that it was anger that was returning. Had Dark ignored you, again, for a fiction book?

“Hello to you, too?” you risked speaking. No reaction to you; instead, he began muttering something that you couldn’t make out, not for lack of trying. You suddenly found a blockage between the words he was saying and your brain, as though he were speaking complete gibberish with English intonation. You struggled to rationalize anything until a mass of gray and red and blue flocked to the fiction book. A smoky substance danced around the cover, under and over Dark’s hand, like a swarm of flies. It wasn’t long before they drifted to the ceiling, leaving an empty space behind. 

And then something in the void changed. For once, something new was added, and it was right at your feet. You weren’t going to question what his book did – you were trapped inside a mirror, after all, less explainable things had happened. You damn-near cried again when your hand brushed the paperback while your heart went while in your chest. Had you been able to, you would have lunged at Dark to hug him, but you couldn’t – for one, the mirror, obviously, but you were still somewhat annoyed with him. You schooled your expression as best you could from awed to simply appreciative.

Dark, meanwhile, didn’t bother trying to hide his smugness. 

Tentatively, you drag your attention away from the gift and ask, “What is this?” 

“A book.”

Your chest instinctively cramped with a bark of laughter. Short, solid, and, to someone on the other side of the mirror, sweet. A grin spread over your lips with such a reaction that you hadn’t felt in years. That someone preferred this look to your spiteful sarcasm. 

You looked down again, finger spreading across the indented title, and then your eyebrows furrowed. You didn’t want to break this already brief moment, but you just had to know…

“What do you get out of this?”

Dark’s shoulders set straighter. “Excuse me?”

He didn’t sound defensive, just confused, which helped to settle your concerns, but it wasn’t enough. So, you prodded, “What do you want?”

“I don’t want anything.”

The conversation may have been over, but the interaction was not. Dark stood there with his hands now clasped behind him and his book resting on the side table. A subtle smirk played on his mouth, though it didn’t exude the sadism you’d come to expect from it. This time, it just looked natural. He stayed unmoving as you looked him up and down, once, twice, before you let your own shoulders sag. Your posture bent and your eyebrows flattened. 

This was all reversed when Dark whirled on his heel and started to walk. 

“Where are you going?” Keeping your voice stable took all the energy in the world from you. 

“I’ll be back in a moment,” was the answer you received, alongside his disappearing steps as he took himself away from the foyer. 

You didn’t like that. It left a foul taste in your mouth – not for him leaving, but for the way that you felt about it. It stirred something in your gut and squeezed your heart with a vengeful vice grip. The next few minutes that Dark was away you spent arguing with yourself.

One side of you reminded you of how things had been for the past hundred years; you hated that man because he left you alone, he trapped you in this mirror, he stole your body. Without him, you would be dead and buried, allowed to rest, finally. And, with him, you were here. An endless void, eternally missing and ignored by the world. You should hate him. 

But the other side of you pointed out that you should hate him. But you didn’t. Dark had apologized, he’d given you a book, he was trying to atone for the pain he had caused you. Why go to all the trouble of ignoring him when he could be your only viable interaction? You were here to stay, so it would be a waste to disregard him that easily. Besides, you had another person to be mad at, one that was more deserving than someone who was also a victim of his actions. 

Weighing the options, you asked yourself if this was what Dark went through every time that he tried to make a decision. If it were true, well, you should have been grateful that he’d agreed on talking to you. It was difficult, and your conclusion definitely upset some part of your brain, but that didn’t stop you from making it concrete in your mind. 

That you would give Dark some time. 

Your body jolted in alarm at the knock that broke you free from your thoughts, but the shock was quickly remedied when you focused on the return of Dark at the front of your mirror. Likewise, he was brought to the front of your mind, and the choice to trust him was left to settle. 

“You’re back,” you stated. 

“No need to look so surprised.” 

Your eyes searched him efficiently as he situated himself. Though, it didn’t take long for you to see what was different. The most glaring thing was that he had retrieved both a chair and a new book from who knows where. He laid the seat surprisingly gently on the planked floor but did not actually sit just yet. Instead, he stayed standing, almost awkwardly, as if waiting for permission. 

A curious look you sent him bid him explain. “I thought we could read.” He cleared his throat, barely met your eyes. “Spend some time together. I think it would go better than talking, given our record.” 

Huh. You hadn’t expected that. You appreciated the book, you really did, but offering to read withyou? Briefly, you wondered if Dark had been replaced in the time he’d been away, it would explain all the weird personality shifts, but you weren’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

As you flopped to the ground, one leg crossed over the other, you hissed at the part of your mind that whispered that you should. It took you all of one minute to get it to quiet down, and, from that second on, you were engrossed in the book that you and Dark now shared. 

Nothing amazing happened during that first session. You read, he read, he asked what you thought, you told him it was good, and then you both parted ways. Such a pace was set for the next few nights. Nine o’clock became a very cherished time, not that either of you entirely noticed it. On your part, you didn’t even notice any of the times of day. Dawn, noon, evening – those were what you measured the passing of time by; now that you had a reason to do it down to the day, you paid more attention. Dark, meanwhile, had made it a habit to leave his office at 8:50, make it down in five minutes, and always be slightly early for the meeting. Maybe it was residual mannerisms from the 1920s, or maybe you were both still warming up to each other, but you didn’t start before nine. 

It was the fifth night that a little thing changed. A subtle volta in a poem that you would only understand if you looked hard enough, and, by now, it was definite that Dark was. He’d read this book before, he knew what was before, what was happening, and what was to come. He enjoyed rereading things in his free time for just that reason, but this was a new experience that added something else to the matter; you. Being aware of the plot meant that he could spare some of his attention to send your way. That attention was used to watch the corners of your mouth crease at a part you enjoyed, to watch the flickering light in your eyes flare when there was a twist, to watch your nose scrunch if you took in new information. Pride coursed through his abandoned veins whenever you expressed any kind of emotion, but it was what you said after finishing the most recent chapter that made him react differently. 

“I don’t like Eddie.”

Dark paused, a thumb brushing against the corner of a page. “Me neither.”

And that was it. That was all that was said before you drifted back into a white noise of flipping paper and shuffling. You continued to read, but Dark was caught at the start of the next chapter. His hand hovered over the edge of the pages, he willed it to move, but it steadfastly remained there. He tried to at least skim the ink printed words, nothing stuck, and his pupils ran in circles around the irises. 

You had agreed on something – together. Feelings about one person were the same. You matched. 

For the first time in a hundred years, Dark was hopeful.

It took a month for something substantial to happen again, not that Dark was complaining. He rather enjoyed having someone to talk to that wasn’t insane or his employee. He rather enjoyed talking to you, whether it was about the book or something interesting that had happened outside the mirror. It gave him a grim joy to see those sparks fly in your eyes when he mentioned how an aspiring real estate agent had tried to evaluate the place. You liked hearing about people the most, but they were few and far between. Most of the time, you settled for listening to him about the family of raccoons that lived in the wine cellar that Dark refused to touch. It got you laughing, and that was good enough for him. 

You had just wrapped up the third to last chapter of ‘The Lady in the Lake’, the theories you muttered under your breath as Dark marked down the page number had him chuckling to himself as he drew his chair back to the wall. It was originally from the library, but there wasn’t much point in dragging it up and down the stairs whenever the clock struck nine. 

After placing the book on the arm of the chair – thankfully wide enough that it wouldn’t topple off the side – he reeled back the eternal business at the back of his mind to the forefront. Something had gone wrong with his latest research, meaning he had to start again from photo-evidence. He didn’t like doing it, but he took it upon himself as a duty to the manor, to himself, to… you. If he knew where he was, he could protect the things he cared about. It didn’t help when he had to do it all over, but it was undoubtably better than giving up. He had made it this far, after all. 

However, the second that he was angled away from the mirror, your voice punctured the finality of the moment. 

“Hey, Dark?” 

He turned again with a curious hum. 

You were standing, as you always were after you finished for the night, but your hands were held cautiously together in front of you. Your pupils flitted about in your eyes, avoiding him, his now-concerned stare. You took in a breath and then made two, simple statements. “I just wanted to thank you, for the book and for spending time with me—” you briefly looked him in the face, as if to gauge his reaction, “—and I’m, uh, well, I’m sorry, for being so cold to you when you first spoke to me.”

His concern melted into understanding. “You had your reasons.”

“And so did you,” you rushed to continue, “and, and I ignored them because I was angry. A hundred years passed for both of us, I can’t think that it didn’t have some of the same effects on you as it did me. I assumed that you were just being petty when you didn’t come and see me, but… you weren’t, and I’m sorry for treating you like you were.” 

“I’m sorry for leaving you alone.”

The apologetic intent hung in the air between you for the next few seconds. Your eyes met, Dark willed the sincerity to cross between the glass, and it seemed like it did when you risked a tentative smile. He gladly returned it. 

You offered half-joking and half-genuine, “A truce?”

“If this last month hasn’t been a truce, I’m eager to see how you act when there is one.”

“Oh, be quiet.” 

Another agreement, even lighter than before. Dark couldn’t help but feel giddy, a jolt of adrenaline running through him. If his veins weren’t so vacant, a blush might have revealed more than he wanted to in such a peaceful time. Luckily for him, the fear of that escaped him, but, unluckily, it was because he wondered something else. 

This sounded an awful lot like a goodbye. 

“Is everything alright?”

Despite the grin that had grown on your lips, you cocked your head to the side in confusion. “Of course, why wouldn’t it be?”

Another pause. 

“No reason.” Dark shifted an inch forward, like it would help him see past a disguise. It didn’t do anything, save give you a chance to poke fun at him. 

“Well, go on, then,” you gestured behind him, “go commit tax fraud or whatever it is you do in your study.”

Ah, much better. The feeling lifted from him as fast as it had come. 

“I’ll have you know that my paperwork is entirely sound and legal.”

“Hmm, keep telling the IRS that, you might just get away with it.” Your amused laugh faded into the void with your body, leaving the clean reflection of Dark himself behind. He was still smiling as he pushed a curl of his hair away from his eyes, an image he hadn’t seen in a good while. When you weren’t present, the mirror looked just that. A mirror. Nothing special about it, just a slab of glass in a frame. Not that it wasn’t, and he hated to say it, a very pretty mirror. Ornate, he would say. The glass, not as much, but the wooden border was. Nonsensical designs carved into the flesh of an oak tree, swirls and sparks and curves reaching around it like a snake. Whoever had been commissioned this had put in enough effort that it looked impossible to recreate. 

Dark brought a finger up to trail one of the indentations. A gorgeous cage for a gorgeous bird. 

Oh.

Oh.

He wasn’t sure if anyone had ever run in the halls of the manor, but he had already broken three norms, what was one more?

The manor hadn’t heard the rapid click of shoes for quite some time; leisurely walks or a slightly rushed jog, sure, but downright running through those halls was near impossible. Dark had done so on his way up to the library, and he was now doing it again to go back to the mirror. It had taken him fourteen hours, two glasses of wine, and reluctantly recruiting Wilford to find what he was looking for, but they were sacrifices he was willing to make. Even if it didn’t work, it was a step in the right direction. 

Maybe he was acting irrationally, and maybe he should have spent some more time making sure this had a sliver of a chance of working, however, he didn’t care. Cautiousness be damned, this could help you, and he was willing to do whatever it took to do that – he made sure that he sped up his pace so that he wouldn’t have to ponder the implications behind that. Rounding the banister, hope overtook him and propelled him forward away from certain important conclusions. 

“Darling, I have great news!” Skipping past that one, too. “Now, I know we’re not scheduled to meet until this evening, but this is more important.” He was too busy dodging the archway to the foyer to think about that, either.

He practically skidded to a stop in front of the mirror, only able to stabilise himself with one hand against it. The other was occupied by a book, but not one of fiction this time. No, Celine had left this one on a different bookshelf, the top section, at the edge of it. It seemed to thrum with energy in his hand, power growing underneath the leather binding the closer that he brought it to your prison. 

When he had properly calmed himself down – or, as calm as he could get when excitement lived in his heart – he knocked once, and then twice, and a third time when he couldn’t resist another. Nothing happened at first, but that was to be expected. It was barely midday, and an enthusiastic Dark was not a common sight. You were right to give showing yourself to him a little thought. 

“Darl—” he caught his word before it could throw itself out of his mouth. Clearing his throat, he fixed his slip-up. “Old friend?”

An unabashed grin spilled across his lips when he saw the faint sign of smoke rising from the void. It was sometimes hard to make it out against the background, he thought that he was getting better, anyhow. Though, it would do him some good to practice if he couldn’t make you out after a few seconds. 

He stepped forward to look closer. If he’d taken his glasses down, it might have been easier, but it wasn’t supposed to be this much of a struggle to see you. The smoke had all evaporated now and yet he couldn’t see anything. 

All it took was another inch forward, the smallest step, for him to see what had happened; all it took was a second for him to get angry. 

You hadn’t appeared, but something else had. ‘The Lady in the Lake’ was laid out on the ground of the void, the title almost blazing with light on the inside cover of the book. A sombre idea that you were trying to give it back without confronting him crossed his mind, though it didn’t stick with the knowledge that you wouldn’t be so cowardly. Instead, it was pure rage that took its place at the sight of the next page over. Where it had used to be blank, slightly stained with the effects of time, it now had a hideous, taunting, crimson name besmirching it. 

Mark’s signature. 

Anyone else might have acted poorly, impulsively, and dangerously. Dark was not anyone. He didn’t act poorly as he inspected the view of the mirror for any more clues of what had happened, he didn’t act impulsively as he stalked from the foyer to his office – but, oh, did he plan to act dangerously. 

The wooden handle of a desk drawer splintered with his white-knuckled grip. He drew it open with trained coolness. Slowly, painfully slowly, he retrieved the map and rolled it out on the surface. The edge that he pulled his hand from was marked by a slit.

He was going to be dangerous, but he wasn’t going to be stupid. Not again. He had thought it a mistake. The hotel a few streets away from the manor wasn’t the place Mark would associate himself with. It barely passed the mantle of motel, let alone the fancy, ivy tower places he frequented. Knowing he wouldn’t be caught dead in such a place had him brushing the destination off as a fault in his research. Dark was a fool to believe he knew the man that made façades and disguises his life’s work. 

But that didn’t matter anymore. Whether he truly understood him or not, it didn’t matter to him, because he did know one thing. 

One hundred years was far too long, and he was going to make it up to you, even if he had to slit Mark’s throat himself.