𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐓 ╱ 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃

You’re trembling now, when the storm rolls by and you’re stranded in the woods heel deep in snow. A part of it was your reckless foolishness — You’re on your last flame flower corolla and you’d shut your radio off, missing the usual report to stay indoors. Now you pace past the dip and over the snowbanks, trying to find the way back to the main road. The snow has blanketed the stillness around you and has covered away your old trail and the crisscross of your footprints.

You do not know where the main road is. You grip your corolla a little harder, feeling it’s fading warmth over your fingertips. 

The woods seem to have closed in around you ( it’s gotten denser, darker, darker still ) and its trees loom over with its rustled whispering. There’s nothing else to hear — just the wind buffeting past your bare face and the ebb and flow of the little lake a few sprints away as it kisses its shoreline. You could be watched between the shadowed edges. You could be dragged deeper inside its hollow body. 

( It certainly feels that way, the more you walk. The suffocation comes with an angry buzz in the air. You’re not welcome here, it seems to say. You are not welcome here, it seems to insist, as it wrangles out the breath in your lungs. )

When you realize that, it sets off an old fear inside — a familiar sinking panic that throws you deeper into that pit. You’ve ventured a ways off from familiarity. This isn’t Nasha town anymore, or the pale blue of Hiisii Island. This isn’t the surrounding countryside within the safer limits you’d wandered.

Are you going to die here? You think. A bitter taste stays on your tongue. It’s acrid, hard to swallow. You feel stupid. Foolish, stupid, reckless. There’s nothing to trace your steps back to. You can’t pick out the shape of the path in front of you. You’re tugged in too deep till you run around blind to the world you’re stumbling past and now, now you’re lost. 

( And the woods, it still rustles and it still whispers, and it still veers and goads you in deeper and deeper with its malice slickened like blood over steel. )

You want to go home, you think then. You’re weakened from walking in circles and the cold only spikes as the residual warmth fizzles out in your fingertips. The corolla is pressed to your cheeks as you try to reach out and pick into any lingering remnants just as the whistling in your ears pitches to a deafening loudness. You want to go home, to your little house and the worn-down walls you were surrounded by. You want home, and its shuttered windowpanes and the plants by the wayside of your kitchen.

Home, and even that is seized by some unwelcome, edged grimace barely a moment later. Even that doesn’t quell the ache that keeps building up in your chest.

You mustn’t stop moving. You think you could find something. Shelter, a shack somewhere. Nod-Krai is populated. There were a few scattered oddballs who lived far away from the main town and maybe just maybe, just maybe there’s a place that could let you in —

Your knees buckle. You’re on the ground, coughing.

The locals had their own horror stories to share over counter tops. Hikers going missing, who had grown too cocky and ventured too far and too deep into places they probably never should have crossed into. Nikita, who managed the library had mentioned, off hand, that sometimes the land itself seemed to persist with an old scar that refuses to fade. That the beings that lay within it could steal hearts and voices and people and return mangled corpses days later.

He had shown you the faces who’d gone missing. Obituaries upon obituaries that listed old newspapers and an even longer line of missing posters that dated decades ago. All of them smiling. All of them so seizingly alive in those photos. All of them, perhaps grieved for and loved by a family.

( “But those are fairy tales.” you had told him then, pulling the book you’d checked out to your chest. Nikita considered you, keen blue eyes raking over the spine of your book and picking into the foolhardiness that you must have exuded.

“You’ll do well to respect it, no less.” He’d said, settling for a simple warning. “It’s always the mouthy ones that get picked off first.” )

You try heaving yourself back up. Your limbs feel heavier than usual, sluggish, clumsy and slipping over and falling again and again till the panic sputters into hopelessness. You manage to haul yourself a few feet forth, leaning against a tree trunk to catch one raspy, icy breath in, then another. 

There’s no sensation left in your hands. You see white around your eyes and white everywhere. White and blurs of black swimming past your field of sight with splotches intermixed between. Your next few breaths are pained, slow. It feels like dying.

You’ll probably end up as another unfortunate instance in the end. A name on that register that could be written off and forgotten.

You wonder who’ll feed the remaining cats in the neighbourhood. One of them is expecting a litter soon. She’s taken residence at your neighbours and comes to you for her dinner despite your attempts to drive her off. Sometimes she used to nap by the overhanging roof near the shed, rolled over to the side with her small, soft face tucked beneath her paws. 

A moment passes. You try one last time — and you’re waddling through the rising layers of snow with the scraps of strength you had leftover. You’re spared a few more steps till exhaustion crushes you down. You sit back, fist deep in snow and stare up at the cloudcover. The mist coalesces, thickens, swallows you in its canvas.

It’s so cold. It’s so, so cold. 

You press your palms over you eyes and stave back the tears. Then you gather the air in your lungs. 

“Help!” you call out and it’s a soft, feeble thing. “Help!”

There’s no answer. 

You sink into your jacket, trying to huddle into the heat of your body. You can hardly see past the condensed puffs blown out from your mouth, shaking off some of the snow in your hair and staring straight ahead. There’s nothing to see past the thicket in front of you. Just more lines upon lines of trees growing closer and closer together.

Then you hear something past the wind’s howling. You brush it off at first.

And then it comes closer. It’s just a little louder. 

A crunch, crunch, crunch.

Footsteps, you jolt and sit up a little straighter. You nearly fall forward, keenly stretching out to the source of it. It’s there, masked beneath the white noise in your ears. You open your mouth and push back that lump in your throat. “Hey!” you yell out. It breaks halfway and you cough. It hacks through your body, and it aches. 

You don’t pick up on any more sounds. Then the crunching closes in, faster, a little more urgent. A thought betrays any notion of hope — that perhaps you had called on something that you probably shouldn’t have and —

Blue cuts past your line of sight. It’s bright enough to have you reel back, hissing a little against it. You could barely make out the black of the person’s boots in front of you and archons, archons, archons, the beat of your heart spikes and strays and spirals. What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.

“Are you one of the living?” a voice speaks up. Your head swims at the strange question. 

A person. Another person. It’s another person. The floodgates batter, so dangerously close to breaking and it’s nearly too much to bear. You’re quiet for a tense few moments, clawing away at your throat to get a word out. The man paces closer. The light shines even brighter and you…you can’t sense warmth from it. You shudder and twitch away, raising a hand up to cover your eyes.

“Am I…” you start. “Y-yes. Yes I am — ” You wobble, forcing your body up till you stand a little taller. You’re still unwieldy, arms snapping up to balance yourself out and your weight tips over and you’re sent hurtling back into the snow again. The man doesn’t flinch, sucking a breath in as his hand rests on your shoulder and he takes a knee next to you. You feel the burn of his gaze against the top of your head. 

“So you are.” he muses, sounding pleased. “For a moment I assumed you were one of the graveyard’s residents…apologies, if I came across the wrong way...one can never be too careful.” You shake your head, at this point, desperate enough to blow past the unconventionality and the macabre lilt in his wording. The lights lowers, casting itself across his face and you make out the shape of a lantern and a gloved hand holding it. You squint up at him.

A pale face looks back, the kind often painted in pictures of storybooks about princes and princesses and noblemen and women. Despite it all, it’s his eyes that stick out the most, half obscured beneath his windswept hair. The stuff the colour of minted gold and marigolds.

“It’s you!” you blurt out, because you know this man. You’ve caught glimpses of him in town, slipping past the doors of the Flagship during weekend nights and skulking by the shelves of the stores with his groceries under arm. You’ve caught him at the tram lines, so easy to spot against the height he stood at. As strange a man as he was, according to some locals, you let your relief show at the corners of your eyes and the sag of your head.

The man blinks a slow, careful blink, searching you as well and he smiles ( a buttery sort, a little disarming in its sincerity ). “I could say the same.” he muses. “But this weather is hardly ideal for any conversation and…” he trails off, appraising you with a sharp look. “My residence is close by. You may warm yourself up there.”

You nearly weep. “That…yes. Yes, that would be nice.” you nod, bumbling about like a newborn. You feel bogged down like dead weight, but he pays little mind to it, easily tugging you along with him as you both trek through the building storm. Maybe it was the delirium speaking, but you think the woods slowly loosened its hold around you, making way for a route you’d missed out while running past.

“What are you doing this far from Nasha Town?” he asks when you spot a flicker in the dark and a tall, dark outline in the distance. The overhanging fog clings to the both of you, but he seems unbothered by the lot of it, his lantern held aloft. 

You chew on the inside of your cheek. You will not answer that. The idea of it makes something stir in the depths of your guts and bite into the tender flesh of it. It refuses to let itself settle past the trembling steps it tracks. The crackling from the branches makes you flinch and stumble over to keep close. You spot the man staring from his periphery.

“Hiking.” you lie. 

“Hiking?” he echoes, half scolding. You feel the weight of something settle on your shoulders. “That was a very foolish choice on your part.” he adds, but he staves back the mockery for consideration, pulling a bit of dark fabric a little past up your chin. His coat, you guess. It sits on you, heavy weighted but perfect for staving the freezing winds off.

You spy the shirt and the thick sweater he had on underneath. It still felt wrong in all sorts of ways, how exposed he looked momentarily. “You’ll get cold.” you protest. 

The man waves it off, his focus trained ahead now. “We’re close to our destination.” he assures you, hips tugging up at the corners. You’re a little taken by how awfully pretty he is. “I think I can manage. The worst of it is yet to come anyway.”

You let yourself be lead, craning your head back to catch the shadows prowling the treeline when you step out of the cover. There’s a glint behind it, a smattering of pale eyes peering over at the two of you, cast by the shadowed light of the moon peeking through the clouds every now and then. The deer do not advance any further. You see them creep over the borders and throw their antlered heads back.

Inhale, hold, exhale. You bundle yourself under the jacket, guilt chewing at your insides. It makes its home there, and a meal out of the deluge.

"Thank you." you croak out. His smile simply widens.

( And with it comes the click. A manacle you don't see, a shackle you don't hear. "Look, look, look." the chittering in the trees seems to echo then shift into laughter. "She has no clue at all, the poor thing."

You are none the wiser.

None the wiser to all of it, save the absent warmth of his body. )

The-Man-Who-Saved-You is named Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins.

“Flins, is just fine, of course.” he finishes smoothly when he turns up the heating and sets a kettle to boil. You curl up by the hearth, bitten fingertips grasping at the swelter around the grate’s edges. Some of the tension in your shoulders start easing and you turn to him, feeling a little pathetic over intruding into his space. 

( Said space is worn away, like the rest of Nasha town and its older streets. Metal walls and metal doors and patchwork panelling held together by dogged spite. But you can’t quite put your finger on the ‘something else’, a disconnect, as if it were shrouded so thick in it’s isolation, even the sun can’t quite reach it.

You’re suddenly aware of the fact that you’re in the middle of nowhere, with a man you barely know. )

“Mr. Flins…” you test carefully. You still have to grasp the way some letters here are pronounced, but you think you got this one right, at the very least. You tell him your name in turn, playing with the well worn corners of the blanket he’d provided ( hand knit from white and blue wool. It’s a pretty thing. You wonder where he got it from ). 

He tilts his head, testing the way the syllables rise and fall against his tongue. Your cheeks flush and your traitorous heart, amidst the strain and tire, still lets itself speed up for just a second ( and then it aches, it aches, it aches ). 

“I hope I’m not causing you any trouble.” you add, sheepishly as exhaustion tugs your words loose. Flins glances over, sharp, searching and huffs out through his nose, the dulled yellow of his eyes raking over your form with something incomprehensible. If you’d been a little more awake, you’d have been put off, perhaps. But that churlish, scathing side to you scolds the flicker down and stamps it out. He’s been helpful. He saved your life, you ungrateful thing.

“Hardly. I’m actually quite embarrassed with myself…” He gestures around the little living area, lit by low watt bulbs and panelled with wood and odd trinkets. You don’t see any photos, like some of the houses you’d been to. Flins probably isn’t the type to set his history on display — or perhaps there is little need to. “I’m afraid I do not receive guests often, save for the occasional shipment of supplies. I’d have cleared the room up a little, otherwise. I hope you don’t mind the untidiness…?”

Oh that…does not stave away the guilt. You’ll be eaten alive at this rate, as you brush the heel of your palm against your cheek and wipe away the melting snow. 

“It’s fine…It’s fine…I just…” your words peter out. It feels like grabbing at water, at this rate. You can find yourself thinking straight under the dizzy haze you sink into with the passing tick on the clock. “Mr. Flins, do you know when the storm will die down?”

Flins pauses, in the midst of straightening out the table. “The storm…” he intones. “In a few days, I'm afraid.”

Wonderful, you think to yourself viciously as the consequences start tearing your throat out. Swell. Simply swell. 

You muster up a defeated “Oh.” and feel that gnawing intensify and core your insides hollow. Your clothes have dried out, thankfully and your head wafts against the howling outside. Black spots start flooding into your line of sight, clearing out only when your weight starts tipping forward and you catch yourself in time.

You yelp, sputtering back. Flins considers you, his expression blank. “Well…” he speaks up, schooling his amusement. “I’ll get a room ready for you.” 

“Alright.” you sigh, defeated. You should have stayed home. You chew over it, slowly, steadily, the aftertaste leaving behind iron and bile on your tongue. “Though I’ll do just well on the couch…” And you glance over at it. You could, if you tuck your legs in. The thought of treading further into his life seemed an awful idea now, and you feel uneasiness swell up in your chest and fester around that open wound. You’re still too on edge to let yourself settle into your skin and wait out whatever was outside. 

“Nonsense. That would be improper, on my part as a host.” he states, a matter of fact finality edging every syllable. You have no more strength to argue, trailing his footsteps while he ducks into the hallways. He almost seems to melt into the shadows licking the walls, save for the occasional flicker of his shape by the dim light from the windows. You hear a switch flip and the lights flicker on.

You swallow that cloying terror and manage a wobbly smile. “Come along.” he urges, though not impatient. “You look like you’ll collapse.”

A heaving sound escapes. It rattles your chest. “I certainly feel it…” you mutter. 

“And we certainly cannot have that either.” he agrees, a droll lift to his voice. You listen for the brush of his footsteps against the wood flooring. “Here.” he stops, the door creaking open. “It isn’t much.” he admits, and some of that sheepish embarrassment trickles in. It’s disarming, the sight of it on a man dripping with platitudes and you rub at your shoulders. 

“It’s more than enough.” you shake your head, drinking the room in. It’s small, a little downtrodden but the sheets were freshly laundered and looked so soft you think you could sink right in and never want to wake. “Thank you again, Mr. Flins.”

The indescribable look in his eyes returns, keenly basing in it. It’s so stark yet so missable you wonder if you’re going mad at this rate. Your stance falters. “I should…” you mumble. “I should turn in for the night, I guess.”

“You should.” he complies quite placidly. “Do let me know if you are in need of anything. I’m making myself a pot of tea and if you’d like a drink before retiring, I’d be happy to bring a cup in.”

“Maybe tomorrow.” you shut your eyes, your lip wobbling as you sway in place. No more talking, your mind whispers. Rest, you need rest. It’s cold enough as is and even with the heating whirring through the vents, you’re still struggling to retain some of that warmth. Your fingertips are still cold when you touch them to your ears. The lobes are empty and your mouth purses ( of course they are ). 

Flins bows his head and steps back. “Good night, Mr. Flins.” you whisper through the crack of the door, staring up at him with a tired smile. 

“Goodnight.” he returns it with one of his own. You shut the door and lean your head into the old wood, taking one breath in, then letting out, then taking one in again. You pace each breath, as you’d taught yourself over the years. There’s nothing to fret over for now. You’ll need to leave the moment this storm dies down and get back into your own routine and the comforting motion it brought you.

It tempts you, that near future. But your house…

It feels a foreign thing now. You cannot imagine living in those walls, picking up the shattered glass from your broken windows. You can’t find what old fondness you had for it anymore, when you’d surveyed those walls the first time and taken it in, as small and modest as it was.

( You cannot taste that freedom it once held. You cannot taste anything. )

Your vision blurs over a bit and you pad over to the bed, slowing down when you pass the mirror by. It’s a small one, small enough to be held by your hands with the most beautiful ornate frame laid atop a small table. Flins seemed to like old things, shiny things, much like ravens flock to coins. He’s done you plenty of favours so far and you know better than to leave a deed like this unpaid. Maybe you could treat him to food at the Speranza. Would he like a Lackaberry Madame?

There’s a creeping feeling that cuts through the air around the room bit by bit. Then the temperature plunges, and you double over, head spinning as you grip the edge of the table too tight. Your lips part when your sight starts clearing out bit by agonizing bit as you feel hands pull you back and they’re cold, cold, so very cold over your shoulders and an incessant thumping over your temples. 

You cannot scream.

You try to call out, but it rams into your guts and batters your ribs. You cough, that invisible grip tightening against your heart and archons, archons archons were you dying what’s going on —

Something shifts in the mirror. You take a step back ( and oh, it’s pained agony, like you’re being stabbed at the soles of your feet ), ears ringing louder and louder as the wailing slowly starts to hitch into an agonizing chortle. You feel torn open, bloodied and flayed alive just as the alarm starts to spill into sheer anxiety-inducing panic like you’d been pushed headfirst into the freezing depths and held there flailing and drowning in sea water. Your hands jolt. Your face peers back, frozen in apathy as the undercurrent brims just beneath your skin and in the way your brow twitches.

Someone else peers back with you, pale faced and dead eyed. His hands hold you in place and dirt cakes the underside of his broken finger nails just as his gaze widens with some inexplicable manic to it. You feel cold breath against the shell of your ear, the ghost of something brushing your hair. 

“Don’t eat what he gives you.” it whispers, sharp, hoarse, cracking at the corners like his vocal chords had given way. It’s debilitating, the memory of desperation imprinted and seeped into every half whispered syllable. Then he’s gone, with the cold he brought and you drop to the floor, your voice returned to you and wailing into the floorboards like you were shot.

You can’t quite guess for how long. Time seemed to have bent and blurred it’s segments. You could make out the shape of Flins by the door and the way he eases you up as the weariness crunches down at your throat and you claw away at him with incense, then with a defeated, helpless series of warbling “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry — ” You also don’t register him leading you out of the room and tucking you into warmed sheets with practiced ease, pressing his hand over your eyes with a soft sigh. 

“It’s alright.” he soothes. “You’re quite alright.”

“I didn’t — ” you choke out, panicked because you saw something in there. You saw something in there. Flins draw his hand back and you look up at him. His hair shadows the glow his eyes held. He offers a kind smile. “I saw…I could have sworn I — ”

“I shouldn’t have hauled you up so unceremoniously.” he muses, more to himself than anything else. You’re pressed beneath the weight of a throw pillow. “Rest for now. You’re exhausted.”

You shudder. You can’t sleep. You don’t want to, if it meant seeing whatever that thing was haunting your dreams. He shakes his head. “You are safe.” he reiterates, firmly pressing your palm. You’re trembling, you realize. You’re trembling like a damn child and you bury yourself into the pillows, weeping into the sheets and your shame. 

The exhaustion was what took you in the end, quick as a flash, right into its yawning mouth. Outside, the storm still moans through the shutters.

You have another nightmare that night. 

( A person with hair like flaxen gold is seated atop your stomach with a too-sweet smile. They’re beautiful, beautiful in ways that scare you, that makes your insides hurt. It’s a haunting look on them, tragic as water drips down steadily past your cheek and into your hairline and over your eyes. You suck a breath in, insides twisting.

“I’m sorry,” you barely get to whisper as they lean forth, nose to nose with their long lashes pressed to their cheeks.

Their touch trails over your collarbone, over your chest. Then they peek at you through the locks shadowing their face, mischief on their lips, in the forest green of their gaze. The flash of a mirror shines in their hands and the shattering follows, sharp and loud. Broken glass tears your chest open with a sickening, messy crunch.

In the visceral aftermath, you can feel the blood soaking your sheets and the way your ribs are broken into your lungs and the last persistent thumps of your weak, beating heart.

You wake after that, in cold sweat, the lingering aftermath of her laughter still fresh on your mind.

And outside, the storm still moans through the shutters. )

The man named Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins liked to people-watch.

It’s the leftovers of curiosity that still pulled him back onto the streets of Nasha town during his free time, where he pored over Tarno’s wares and sorted out the pretty trinkets that caught his fancy. It was also the leftovers of curiosity that let him linger post shopping, to let his gaze rove the by lanes and the bustle at the ports.

The man named Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins knew the ebb and flow of humanity and the faces that came and went with it. He’d counted the generational lines he’d lived past and the graves bearing his familial name, for every dead father and mother of Poor Kyryll and Poor Chudomir who lived within the lighthouse. 

He’d learned the routes the tram lines traveled when they were first set down decades ago. He’d walked past this stop every new moon and caught a ride to the edge of the town where the port lay winding down a few feet past the teetering housing. This was where he’d take the ferry to Paha Island and the cemetery off-shore and his residence and its isolation.

He’d waited by the stop that day. The sun was up, dim as it usually was and the residents had thrown on an extra layer to greet the encroaching lull of winter with. His line of sight followed the people who’d walk past. And then he saw gold, on the ears of a foreigner, gold so openly displayed in a place like Nasha town and he almost laughed at the absurdity. They were a lovely set of earrings, though, he’d deigned to admit it. The metal work was delicate, and the product itself small against the centerpiece; a little white pearl embedded in the middle.

How pretty, how pretty, how pretty. The impish side of him chants and sings and giggles away with all that hidden snark. Had he been younger, a little less tempered by human touch, Flins would have followed and magicked it for himself. How pretty, how pretty, how pretty —

And then it stopped when you turned your head to lean against the stanchion by the entrance ( so tired, with your taped fingers and that half-asleep slouch to your shoulders. ). You seemed to have caught on to it and you looked around you, back a little straighter and your stance wearier — till it landed on him. You froze, swallowed nervously and you waved his way. It was a small gesture. An innocent one. And oh foolish, foolish you — you with all your blissful ignorance hadn’t a clue of what you’d done then. 

Flins blinked.

Oh.

Hello. 

“Have you slept well?”

You’d awoken in his room, you quickly learn. Flins is plain with that admission when you asked, and brushed it off as he usually did when he set your tea down next to you. You draw your legs to your chest, the after-image of gold still burned into your eyes and you fight the urge to tear your hair from your head as the shudder between your ribs grows to a rampant, hungry thing. 

You shutter, when Flins repeats his question carefully and you bite your cheek bloody for being so rude. “No…not really.” you rasp out, feeling more and more like a nuisance. It’s his room, and it repeats in your head and rattles and rattles till it festers into something deep seated and annoying. 

“Was it a nightmare?” he probes.

You swallow. “I…I guess.” It’s a slow admission and you feel stupid saying it aloud. When you’d graduated, you assumed adulthood meant growing up and casting away the childish things. The fairy tales and the anxious nag of something stirring in the shadows of your bed. The old fears that let you run to your parents’ room with babbling, warbling cries. “Nothing too bad and all. I’m just…easily flustered.” You laugh it off and lay your sights on the tea, feeling your insides shift with nauseous protest. 

Flins taps his chin. “And yet you’re distressed.” he retorts with a hasty followup: “I won’t pry. Will the tea help? Or a meal?”

No, you sound out in your head. That pale face flickers back and forth, death-like, corpse-like with its grip digging into the flesh of your upper arms. Don’t eat what he gives you. 

It’s strange, the familiarity of that warning. Nikita had uttered it once in passing when you’d checked another book in. Then there’s the bile stinging at your throat and burning your insides out. The last thing Flins needs — even as some old, dulled instinct screams at you to run — is a sick resident ( and oh, how like you, you coward to unearth the ugliness that is your own loathing ). “I…I don’t think I have the stomach for anything right now.”

The corner of Flins’ lip twitches and that was that.

Strange. Strange. Strange.

He dips his head down, collecting the cup. “Alright. A little later, perhaps” he hums, sliding the saucer into one hand. How graceful, how proper; you’re admittedly a little enthralled by the action. “I have my own duties to attend to now. If you wish, you can amuse yourself and look around. You’ll be here a while, after all.” And that smile returns, all buttery warmth against washed out marigold. 

( You want to flee into your blankets — but these ones aren’t yours. They’re unfamiliar, and you tell yourself this over and over because you are, for all intents and purposes, something alien disturbing this little corner of Nod Krai. You should never have been here at all. )

He hasn’t asked about the previous night yet. You shake your head a little before offering him a smile of your own. “I could help out around the house.” You state. “Actually, I think I will. It’s the least I could do.”

“There’s no need.”

“I must.” you insist, a plea creeping into your pitch because you can’t be dead weight, you simply cannot. “Again. I’ve barged in with little thought or care for your space. It’s only right…”

“You were freezing to death.” Flins intones, a gein hiding away rather sneakily as he speaks. “Now I doubt there’s any room to protest ill manners in a situation like that, don’t you agree?” You mouth purses and you clench your teeth when a grin threatens to pull at your face. You see what Katya meant when she spoke of him now. He’s polite, easy to talk to if not a little off. Then again most keepers like him are, living so far out in isolation.

“Do you step out often? From this island?” you ask, sneaking a glance around you. The walls are bare here too and there are more shelves, more boxes and a large desk with days worth of papers upon papers stacked atop it. Flins follows your gaze.

“Reports.” he waves off. “A nasty thing to deal with. You don’t have to bother with those.”

You huff with a quiet, “I don’t think I can help with that.”

“Pity.” he comments. “Would you like to head down to the living room?”

You shouldn’t linger and you know this. Still, given what you’d seen, leaving felt like something horrible and maligned. You…you could hear the thump-thump of your heart at the thought. But you could have been hallucinating ( you tell yourself this over and over. A figment of your imagination. That boy was never there. His grasp on you never existed. You saw nothing in that mirror; just the flayed mind of someone who has to eat her terrible choices ). Were the last few hours easy on you at all to begin with?

He helps you up and you rub salt on your wounds, hissing at yourself for it. How pathetic. 

“I can manage, Mr. Flins.” you pipe up and it’s a reedy attempt at sounding bigger than you were. He shows you the bathroom and you run some hot water for yourself, scrubbing away the stale stench of sweat off of you. You almost expect to catch a pair of eyes peering at you through the mirror or past the parting the curtains provided. There are no eyes. There are no shapes hiding away past your vision.

You still feel watched.

You hate every second of it.

But you lay your anger flat and leave it in some corner to rot into itself. Flins provides you with spare clothes while yours are put away for washing. You accept them, your cheeks burning from behind the door ( he wasn’t looking at you; and you had stifled a weak, awkward giggle; it comes out more a strangled croak ). They’re too big on you, and you’d folded the sleeves of the sweater and trousers a few times so that you could walk around with them with little issue.

He says his usual, “Call if you need me, yes?”

“I will.”

( Something is burning into your shoulders when you turn away from him. That same voyeuristic hunger, that same uneasiness lighting up and gagging you. )

You make yourself useful, as the itch compelled it. clearing a few tables out when he allowed it and washing any used dishes. The morning beat on that way, as he disappears off, probably to see to the reports and keep the lighthouse running.

From your knowledge, as limited as it was, you doubt he does leave this place as much to begin with. You can make out a few of the graves; the closer ones poking out of the haze of grey outside your window. That and the faint outline of trees bent over against the gusts that rattle by. In Sumeru, you only knew the rainstorms and how the palm trees bent over till some snapped against the sheer force of it. It was a rare moment of you facing the cold back then.

Now it’s…common.

You feel homesick, putting the washed dishes away. You miss the basking and the green and climbing the trees you did when you were young. You missed peering over walls and sorting jasmine with your grandmother. You miss the smell of the earth when the rains ceased and the momentary cool and then the sweltering heat that followed. You miss Sumeru, as infuriating as it got and you miss your family and the messiness they brought with them.

( You can’t face them anymore. Not after this. )

He has nice ceramics. The hand painted kind, locked away in a cupboard. Your grandmother loved to hoard away her good cutlery too — the nice plates, the nice glasses and when fanciness permitted it with fancy guests, the nice cutlery ( but never family, because that ease and casualness seemed to magically brush aside the metal plates passed around ). 

Your eyes land on the knives and their sharp edges ( and you remember the feel of skin and you remember the way it divots ). Your mouth runs dry and you tear your eyes away from them, pushing away those memories — all of them into a locked corner. 

You dry your hands like clockwork. They’re numb and you move to the hearth, reaching out for the warm flicker within it. The fire swells, burns. You watch it, transfixed, perhaps intent to curl up beside it like a cat and think about the sun you miss so much ( and the sun itself and nothing else even at s tails after you like a restless creature so intent on being noticed ). Maybe you can make a few games up on the spot to pass the time.

Then it sputters and the lights around you flicker off.

You almost crumble then and there, sitting upright. It’s dark, save the warm orange behind you, and even that casts its ominous shadows over the wall. And they shift, they twist, they morph and blend and melt in together and you stay stock still, bells tolling in your head as you wait and watch and wait and watch and wait.

You retreat back, closer to the light and heave a breath in. Nothing yet. Nothing too alarming. You watch the dark and you watch it hard till you feel some of your nerve start to splinter and calm. Your head hangs down and the drumbeat in your chest starts easing just a bit. 

Look at you. This is getting ridiculous.

It is, you agree, palms to your cheek. You give them a firm smack. You need to pull yourself together. You haven’t seen any sign or sight of Flins yet and you wonder if he’s trying to manage the shut power. You have no clue how the lighthouse even has electricity, given it’s so far removed from any notable settlements…

“Mr. Flins?” you call.

No answer. He’s probably a little too far to hear you. You weren’t very loud to begin with.

Your face feels bitten, pulled taut against ice water. You draw your legs back, exhaling sharply.

Then something grabs you. It holds fast to your ankle and pulls. You brace yourself as you skid into the wall, freezing in place for a bare second like a deer in headlights. You feel the way it batters against you and the white hot searing swallowed up by numbness and the blood roaring in your head. You scramble to your feet, slipping once, twice and run. There’s a scrape and scramble and the heavy footfalls that follow till it feels like they surround you and echo past the and down every turn and every bit of cramped space you squeeze by.

( Thump, thump, thump goes your heart, loud enough to mask the scratching, the soft undertone of hurried whispers echoing from the floorboards beneath you. They grow louder and louder till you fear them reaching between the spaces of wood and hauling you down thrashing and screaming. )

That chill settles fast and you push yourself off  to one side, meandering into one narrow hallway till you ram right into a snowswept Flins holding his lantern aloft. He’s shaken a moment, just as you press into the space beside him, only just catching something retreating back farther away, as if terrified of the blue light that cuts across the dark. “Did — ” there’s hysteria there and it drips out of you, in trembling, shaking gasps. “Archons what was that — ”

Flins looks eerily calm. “The neighbours.” he replies. 

“What?” you swallow, grimacing. “What?!”

“The neighbours. I do live next to a graveyard after all.” he repeats firmly. “We have residents on the island who often linger past their time. They’re rather loud today…”

Oh. Oh. You slump back, back hitting metal as you press a hand down and rub it over your face, your breaths erratic. Flins’ clothes rustle and he hovers, his presence still so cold against the emptiness of the hall around you. “I’m…What I saw yesterday — oh god I'm being haunted — ” When his touch brushes against your arm, you draw back as if shot and he takes a step away. “Sorry. Sorry I didn’t — ”

He shakes his head. “They must have given you a scare.” he notes, brows pinching just a little. “Given how they’re usually so docile, I didn’t quite expect them to lash out as much…” He pores over you while you inch into him, following the timbre of his voice and screwing your eyes shut. “Are you hurt?”

The burning on your back is starting to smart. Your nose twitches and you shake your head. 

“You’re certain?”

“Yes.” you tell him, a little too hasty, you think. “Will they keep…” you stop, eye stinging just as you dare to sneak another glance out, jumping against the slow rock of the lantern and the shape of the space seemingly distorting. “I don’t want to keep seeing them — ” Flins looks at you with something akin to sympathy, gently meandering you back to the living room.

“If you are scared, you can stick a little closer to me.” he offers. “They tend to steer clear my way…”

You sniffle. “Why?”

He offers a dry smile. “Why indeed? I’m under the assumption that I put plenty of people off.” You’re seated down on the couch, where you absently nurse your shoulder blade and hope he doesn’t notice the way you wince when you press down a bit too hard. The lantern is set down on the table and you turn your attention to that, and the blue flame dancing inside it ( it shrinks, then swells and shrinks again, dimming and brightening all at once ).

“People in town call you ‘odd’.” you concede, the pads of your thumb smoothening over your knuckles. 

“I’m aware.” Flins laughs a little. “Do you think I'm odd?”

What a question, you shake your head. Is there a correct answer for this one? Flins is expectant though, even if he turned it over as a joke. He’s leaned forward a little on his seat and there’s a prickle there that you…you can’t quite put your finger on. 

You mull over it. You’d met his gaze a few times already and you meet it now; dull yellow against the lamplight and the ghostly paleness of his skin. “A little.” you mutter. “But when it comes to speaking to you, it just…comes out…? I don’t know how to say it but…” you shrug, cheeks starting to burn a bit. You haven’t lost the taut set to your jaw. You still duck just a little when something seems to move in spots. “...It just is.”

Flins hums, seemingly satisfied and you’re left to the silence filling the space between the two of you for a little time after. The rattling outside seems to grow wilder, wilder still till you almost fear the window flying off of the hinges. He waves it off. “It’s quite normal.” he says, bent over a book. You open your mouth, nearly commenting on the poor lighting ( “your eyes will strain.” Your grandmother would say. “And then you’ll go blind!” ).

You keep quiet. It would be very rude. You barely register him saying something about fused wires, and power outages, as if he sensed your unspoken query and you wither a bit from embarrassment. 

The pelting slowly starts to slow. “It’s stopped?” you squawk out, wide eyed, a little hopeful. 

“It’s slowed.” Flins corrects. “Which is a good thing. I may not have to keep clearing the windows of the lantern room over and over…” He pauses, considering your frame, curled up on his couch. Your heart leaps; you’ll have to be left alone again at this rate and given the last instance? You shrink a little, too much of a coward to speak up while you pull against the hem of the clothes you’d borrowed.

No more ghosts, you want to wail. No more ghosts. But you ask too much of him as is. It feels like you’re digging yourself too deep into a pit to really climb out of at this rate.

“You could come with me.” Flins offers. “I’ll need to refuel the lantern again while at it and an extra set of hands could be of some help.” 

You blink and look up. “Could…could I?”

“It’s nothing too complicated. Just pouring some kerosene in and handling a hand pump.” he states, dipping into the halls. You follow him as he ventures back to his sleeping quarters, fishing out a spare coat and scarf from the cupboard after some rummaging. “It is still quite cold out.” he reminds you just as you shoot him a distressed glance. “We don’t want your tongue to freeze off. You don’t deserve a liar’s omen, hm?”

You sputter a little, your own coat clutched against your chest. 

“That’s not going to keep the cold out.”

“I’m aware.” you mumble, securing yourself beneath layers upon layers of heavy fleece. Flins circles you once, hiking your scarf up a moment then passing you a curt nod. “So all I have to do is pour the fuel in?” You run over it again, still so uncertain with yourself. He leads you a little further into the house, opening the door at what you could surmise was the edge of it. A circular room lays beyond, iron walls and all with a single stairwell spiralling upwards.

Flins ascends first and you test your weight on a step before scuttling after, stopping by the windows to watch the ground slowly plummet below the two of you. He finally stops at a circular room, walls bare and a chair or two strewn into the shaded parts. You catch a table here too and the vague scrawl of a weather report streaked across it as well as a few white shavings. “Pay that no mind.” he says, as you shift and bounce on your feet. There’s a terrible mix of nervousness and excitement welling up — heat and cold turning over and over and upheaving itself through the space between your ribs. 

He wheels a barrel over to you, patting the top of it. You pull your mittens off and stuff them into the pockets of the jacket. “Two of these into the vat.” he instructs, clipped, precise as he taps at the little tank. Then he points to something vaguely shaped like a bicycle pump. “And I’d mentioned it before, but you’ll need to pump this after pouring the oil in. twenty should do just fine. The needle should point right here and stay there.”

He taps at the gauge and turns to you with an encouraging smile. “Could you manage that now?”

Your lips purse. “Seems simple enough.” you jerk your head. “Fuel in tank, and then pump…right…right…”

“I’ll be up in the lantern room.” Flins continues on. “Don’t worry too much now. You won’t be bothered by any spirits up here. I’ll be in the next room over as is.” And you keep that bit of comfort close, as greedy as you were for it at this point. There’s far too much going on as is. The nightmare struck that match and burns your insides out and you’re stuck tripping over every corner like some quivering child.

Be useful, you tell yourself and it starts tasting bitter in your mouth. It stings into delicate skin and it lingers in its aftertaste. You vaguely hear Flins climb the ladder up as you get a grip of the handles. You’re not unused to manual labour, but the container is still heavy, nearly jerking you forward. The oil nearly tips and spills over and you throw yourself back just a bit to salvage it and straighten yourself up.

You try a second time, staggering and angling the neck of the barrel straight into the feed till you’re left with an empty vessel. Rinse and repeat and the repetitiveness offers just a little comfort as your mind shuts off and you lose yourself and your thoughts and the feeling of drowning.

You hadn’t noticed the light, the shape of it muted initially when you had deigned to glance out earlier. You were momentarily caught off guard by the clinking of machinery and a chain slowly lowering itself down, followed by an apology from Flins. By the time you hear the sack hit the bottom of the stairs, you’re done with the pumping, and turn your attention to the ladder. You can hear the winds slowly starting to pick up once more and the storm slowly gathers its battering weight. 

You’re starting to feel the iciness in the room and the mittens are slid back on to spare yourself. 

Outside, a dark shape hurtles past the gallery deck. It disappears down below.

You jump, glaring at the window in stunned silence. “Mr. Flins?!” you call out right after, alarm scratching at your throat, at the prospect of him falling. 

“Yes?” he answers, his voice far away and slightly muffled.

You heave a breath in. You were probably just seeing things at this point. Pinch at your cheek and square your shoulders. “Nothing. May I come up?” you ask.

He sounds a little closer now, answering with an absent: “If you’d like.” So you pull yourself up there and slow yourself down, a little wide eyed at the sight of the lenses slotted in the center of the room. There’s glass slid into place, turning over and into each other in a display you’d call beautiful ( and it is, the sight of it makes you a little dizzy over the intricacies ). Blue light filters through the glass, so glaringly bright and so pretty in how it dances against the edges of it. 

“Apologies.” Flins calls out, clearing the last bit of snow out. He takes a walk round the lens, his eyes a little wide as he gestures at you to follow. A knob is turned, and you watch the little bulb and the wick inside slowly light up and the room bathes itself in buttery gold. “Don’t look at it directly.” He breathes. “You’ve helped me with half the work here already. I’d have been up here a while, I think.”

“It’s quite cold. We wouldn’t want your tongue falling out.” you crack a small smile ( he narrows his eyes in a cheeky display, an unspoken “oh really?” ). “But archons this is…” You can’t find the words for it, every smart little bit of vocabulary you know, crushed underweight by something so big it wells up inside and walks against the edge of exploding. “I…I’ve never seen this before. Just in textbooks.”

The lens turns and you try to crane your head up a bit to catch the world outside from over the surrounding wall. Flins huffs, holding a hand in a gesture that is delightfully chivalrous. “I’ll have to warn you beforehand to brace yourself.” He advises,his hand hovering by your arm. You flinch when it accidentally brushes at your back, aggravating the faint ache from your bruise. He bats his lashes, looking you dead in the eye and you clear your throat.

The door creaks open. You pull the scarf up to your face ( it smells of nothing, conveniently stripped away of any sense of use or history ). The beam of light cuts into the fog before you, tearing through like a blade, like some kind of homing light that seems to span on and on till forever. “How far does it go?” you let out that hushed question, looking over to him.

“Far enough to see it till Hiisii island on clearer knights.” He replies. “It’s an old lighthouse…perhaps not as good as what one would find back in the port of Nasha town. But it does it’s job well, no less.”

“It does.” you whisper, the expanse of grey in front of you suffused in a soft glow. “And you see this every night?”

“Every night.” he whispers back. “I’ve grown used to this view…you on the other hand seem taken by it.”

“I’ve mentioned it.” you play with your fingers, tap-tapping them against your knuckles like you had too much to do and let out and it builds and builds and builds inside. “We’ve only studied them in passing in textbooks back at school. Port Oromos, back in Sumeru has one of its own but it was decommissioned before I was born and well…we just tend to pass by the outside of it.”

“And you’re from there, then?” Flins asks, looking mildly interested. It feels a little sudden as you wrestle with the door and try pulling it shut ( he steps in to, help, an amused lift to the corners of his lips ). 

“I am.” you bob your head. 

“Interesting.” 

The two of you make way downstairs, and you melt into the warmth of his home. “And you’re still not used to the winters here, it’s safe to presume.” He glances back your way, while you pull the jacket just a little bit closer to your body. You catch a few graves down below poking out of the mist’s line. It’s a strange spot to build a lighthouse. Or perhaps the lighthouse was here first?

It’s still pitch black inside and Flins guides you over back to the living area, where he nestles the lantern close to you. “Lunch is due.” he says with a small smile. “Are you hungry?”

There’s an emptiness in your stomach that has spread its teeth back while you worked. You nod. “I am…” you admit, even as the rattling warning starts up again. Flins straightens up, something akin to a hungry delight set ashine in his eyes.

“Good.”

You should have said no, something inside protests, angry. You keep it quiet, too tired and too famished to give it any sense of concern or comfort in the thick of it, letting yourself pry its gnawing teeth from your shoulder. It’s just a few days. A few days, nothing more and nothing less with a kind man — a strange man, yes — but a kind man.

You eat what he brings you, some smoked meat with a side of pickled vegetables that you carefully take a few forkfulls of, all too aware of the way he watches you as he urges you to have some of the soup as well. It’s a bit much, the attention and you reason that he’s anxious to see your reaction to it. “It’s really good.” you speak up. And it is; well seasoned and well cooked. You wouldn’t mind having more if you’d dare to ask for it. “Won’t you be eating though?”

His side of the table is empty. Flins rests his elbows on the armrest, leaning his chin into the heel of his palm ( so disconcerting yet so sweet lipped ).

“I don’t have much of an appetite.” 

“No?” you parrot, dubious. It doesn’t sit well with you. You can’t put a finger on why.

“No.” he finishes, a low, steady hum trickling into the silence. 

“Oh. Okay.” you look down, stirring your soup. “You’re a very good cook though, Mr. Flins. I’ll have to steal away a few of your recipes, I think…” Another mouthful, another spell, another wave of humming that you can’t seem to wrap your head around. You shut yourself off, too far away, maybe, to take in the almost mechanical way your body bends its joints and feeds itself. All you could feel is the cotton fogging up every inch of your head and layering itself over like molasses.

You were hungry, and somehow satiety curls its claws inwards.

( It’s nice enough to feel a hint of dazed contentment seeding itself deep, deep inside you. A whisper, a suggestion, a quiet lull. What if you stay, what if you stay, what if you stay? It’s a captivating thought, something you would have wring your hands at in any other instance. 

Stay, stay, stay. It keeps insisting and you close your eyes, swaying a bit. It sounds so far removed from the speech you know and yet, yet, yet, you know it in a way you know an old friend. Stay here.

Stay forever. )

Flins tilts his head. “I’m glad to hear that.” 

The man named Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins liked to visit the library.

He knew the man who checked the books out — old Nikita who’d once fought in the army with him, who knew better than to nod along and wave away his seeming agelessness. Nikita, who had a sharp eye and a sharper head; and perhaps that had delighted Flins with the very novelty of having a bit of push and pull and knowing acknowledgement.

He’d asked for recommendations that day, then perused through notes on modern art and photo albums littered with pages upon pages of pictures taken by those newfangled handheld kameras he’d heard so much about. He’d stalked the quieter shelves and picked out a few novellas that had gone out of print years ago, with those inky little drawings scrawled in between pages and paragraphs of stories. 

The man named Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins liked to visit the library, and on that day, he spotted another familiar face that had pattered right past him. You hadn’t noticed his presence this time and he had let himself linger about a little longer as you had tucked a light novel close with a collection of other books, so hurried and everywhere and nowhere all at once while you pulled your hat over your face and moved on to deliver your packages. 

Quaint little think that you were, with your silly taped fingers and that perpetually anxious furrow to your brow — Flins had noted the harried feeling about you being edged with something brutally desperate. It came with that sharp scent; the fear that would nestle in the ribs of wild animals cornered. He hadn’t meant to try and pry as deep into the details of it, but he’d still gone to Nikita after you had left and asked a few questions. 

Nikita was weary. He’d told Flins to turn his gaze away. You weren’t something to be toyed with and Flins knows this. He wasn’t a cruel man, by any means. Nikita knew this too and reiterated that statement — that you were a little too spread thin, too easy to knock over and break. Flins had soaked this in, and those little attempts to try and appeal to gentleness. 

He smiled at Nikita and thanked him. When the old man had looked away for a mere moment, Flins’ gaze happened upon the register perched atop, listed with library card numbers. Your collection was a little list of odds and ends and titles some of which he vaguely recognized. One made him pause.

On Folklore: Snowland Fae and other Snezhnayan Legends.

A passing fancy, he mused. Snezhnaya’s legends were legends with reason. People knew of the truth that would come with every little story uttered by the bedside and the warnings that would accompany every single one. Flins looked away when Nikita’s attention slipped back to him, probing, almost accusatory. 

( He’s whispered under his breath, that you were getting curious. Nikita had people as about old stories, but the way you had taken to him, scared, as he’d described it, was enough to set off that sense of trepidation that had haunted his own old heart for years. )

He asked Flins if he was responsible for it. Because to Nikita, Flins’ ilk were the dangerous sort. He had good reason too — he knew well how the revelry of the fae would often drive one to near madness. He also knew well that even he, and his body sewn together with flesh and viscera and the blood and face of a human man couldn’t quite shed the core of him.

Flins also, however, spoke nothing but the truth. He told Nikita he’d barely entertained your presence, if conversed with you at all. And Nikita bowed his head and sighed ( he was tired, from a lot of things ). Flins offered his regards, gathered his material and left for the tram stop. His assigned day off was coming to its close and he had his work to see to, in his isolated little territory.

Then he slowed.

Ah, he had realized then, rather belatedly — and it sparked a string of pity there when the uncertainty you had held yourself with stricken his field of sight. Your earrings were gone too.

( They are back in your dreams. 

They pull you into the deep end of it, curtailing their breezy laughter as they take your hands. The water — and this is when you notice the lake, comes to your knees and it rises higher and higher the further out they lead you. They don’t speak to you, an analytical shine sparking in their gaze, as if cutting you apart and baring you naked before them. And you hate it. You hate them. You hate, hate, hate.

You try to pull away but their nails dig into your wrists. You gasp; it’s a deep, rasping cry and it strangles at your chest when it lets itself out. The trees around you start to blot into itself, nothing more than spurs of inkblots speckling out amidst the grey and white and this person — the creature only smiles wider when you let that terror be known. It’s all wrong, your thoughts slur. This is all wrong.

You stretch on till it’s up to your hips, then your waist and they go on deeper and deeper still. Your feet dig into the mud. “No — ” you hiss out, eyes stinging against the cold that pinches at your cheeks. You feel how the blood starts rushing into your face, into your stiff limbs and the creak and rattle of your joints as they start freezing over. “I’m not going there.” You speak up again, you assert, snatching yourself back.

The creature’s expression shifts to contemplative blankness. The apathy makes you pause just before you turn and try to wade out, breaths falling short just as your body starts shutting down. You’re pulled back and you catch the gold of their hair by your cheek for a speck of a moment. Then you’re under, water rushing into your lungs.

You flail against the ironset of their grip. It’s inhumanly strong, dancing close to breaking bone. You scream, scream and scream and fight and bite and scratch against the pale expanse of their skin and they only push you deeper and deeper till your vision starts to fade out.

You caused this. You caused this. You face it.

Then you are pulled back up, coughing and limp and all you can see is blue — blue everywhere as you’re cradled by too-cold hands. You feel lips slant upon yours in a way that’s starved out and wanting and you know the dread that claws its way in all too well. Push back, push back, push back And you try to as the sting in your eyes turn to tears. The newcomer doesn’t budge.

You aren’t drowning anymore, you hush. So you let it be. )

“I still can’t radio anyone from the mainland.” Flins tells you after breakfast, his hair tied up after clearing away the bits of frost that had stuck itself onto it. You’d taken residence on his couch now, worn down and pulled taut — just in view of the outside world and the storm that still beats on. “The lines must still be down given the state of things and the weather. Maybe when it clears a little more…”

You hold fast to the pillow, taking it in with a sinking down to the very pits and in-betweens of you. “Are you disappointed?” he asks, a half-tease testing the silence. 

“No…well, yes.” You bury yourself into the pillow, feeling fatigue gnaw at you till you start teetering forth. Flins reaches out, steadies you and gently pushes you back against the couch ( and the gesture comes so naturally. You’re honestly a little abashed with a lick of defeat edging itself in ). Your back stings in protest and you right yourself up into a position that is a little less painful. “I feel like i’m overstaying at this point, and you’ve been so good to me.”

“And…?” Flins urges, plucking away at the ties and buttons of his coat. You have far more to say and he has an uncanny habit of knowing. For a man so isolated, Flins scrutinizes the world around him with an uncanny amount of veracity that puts you off. Or maybe you have let yourself steep in assumptions — and you’re more inclined to the latter.

You trace the hem of the pillow. “When you come to town next time, you can come visit me at the library Nikita runs.” You tell him. “I need to buy you lunch. Many lunches, in fact.”

“Next time.” he repeats, an odd look in his eye. “And will there be candlelight?” he asks after, the ghost of a smirk playing into the impassivity on his face. 

You sputter. “Not unless there’s a power outage.”

Flins hides a chuckle behind his hand. “There won’t be any need for that.” He says with a heavy kind of certainty. “But it is a kind offer…what other plans do you have once the storm clears?” And oh that has you blinking over at him, a little jarred by the suddenness that enquiry brings about; or rather, your inability to formulate any other coherent thought. A part of you, something so quiet and childish curls up. It’s a stationary creature and it clings on fast to the disjointed routine you have started here.

“I’ve not thought beyond that.” you say it before you could stop yourself. You feel punched in the gut. “It’s not been long, I know but — ” you struggle, cheeks starting to burn. It’s so foolish, this attempt at grabbing at things like a petulant little brat.

“That’s alright.” he flicks his head up a bit, his gaze luminous. You can’t tear away from it, or the sinking in your gut. 

After a while, you prod again. “Won’t you be eating, Mr. Flins?” you curl up, knees to your chest. “You didn’t seem to have breakfast today either.” And he didn’t. Last night, on your request, you’d moved a pillow to the couch to not inconvenience him any further ( even if the rest of the  night was restless ). His rest is important, and the room was the closest to the stairway and when you’d awoken and eaten what Flins had offered, he made no moves to join you at the table, save for watching.

It doesn’t sit well.

He’d seated himself down on the chair across you, something of a silent watchman and he’s bent over with a carving blade in hand, chipping away at a small white piece. “Hm. I ate what I needed to eat earlier.” His eyes shut and his breaths are low, almost missably quiet. “Please pay it no mind. My eating habits are a little jarring and unreliable at the best of times.” And there’s a matter of factness in how he says it.

“Okay.” you mumble. “And what are you doing now?”

Flins holds the object up. “This?” You eye it, picking out the smoothness and its shape as it presses into the palm of his hand and the clasp of his fingers. You couldn’t quite put a finger on it, on what it was at first. Not till you push past the sleepiness to rise from the couch and pad over to him with a sheepish little “may I?” His gaze crinkles at the corners and he complies.

“This is…a bone.” you blurt when he hands it to you and you test the weight of it. There’s one side to it that opens up into a hollow curve and a faint resemblance of a skull. 

“It is.” Flins nods. “When you walk over the beach, you often find fragments of whalebones washed ashore. Some of them span larger than the boats that occasionally pass by. While I do let those ones be, there are some that are just the right size to make something new out of.”

“I mean…” you reason, handing it back to him. “I’ve known people who collect twigs and acorns and make little people from them.”

“Then I suppose it’s just a difference in material.” Flins finishes, enjoying himself a little too much, you think. 

“This doesn’t look like a whalebone though.” you note. It’s too small and much too light to be one.

“Oh no.” Flins shakes his head. “This one is an Ibis. You can see where the beak was over here.” He shows you a chipped away part, filed down carefully till the cracks had given way to a somewhat sleeker finish round it. “It wasn’t a whole skull when I found it. The rest of it must have been taken by the dogs.”

Despite yourself, you find yourself asking, “What else do you have?” It keeps your mind off of things, and the looming that traces your footsteps and shadows your movements. You’re a little too soft hearted and scared to tell Flins that you couldn’t stay here, not when the dead are turning in their graves and deriding your very presence.

( And the nightmares too, and the way they come to weather down and erode the corners of you bit by bit till you lose your sleep and you lose your senses. You want to tear the skin from off your arms, to gouge your eyes out as the phantom feel of your lungs collapsing into your chest continues to persist. )

“Hm.” 

You didn’t expect the collection to be as expansive. Flins has a little work station dedicated to displaying his bone puzzles, some of them a mismatch of species slotted together to make new ones and others bearing carved models of birds and animals trapped mid-flight. And all of them, every last one, were whittled down from bones.

He places his lantern down and points to a few, ever so polite, ever so proper with explaining things. A couple of them had ornaments decorating them. Little bits of metal flicking their feathers or small gems in their ribs ( you are admittedly a little smacked at the sight of a pair of brilliant sapphires; just a little bigger than a ball bearing, affixed in the eyes of an eagle ). But strange hobbies in isolation aside, they’re well made, well crafted and you balk at the detail put into it. 

What a strange, strange man, you muse to yourself. It explains some of the antiques and the plethora of odds and ends that lay scattered across his shelves and tables. “Do you collect gems too, Mr. Flins?”

“I often do, yes.” He shows you another. This one simply holds a chain round its neck, more a display than anything else. “Have you come by Tarno? I often go to him to occasionally buy myself a thing or two when I receive my monthly salary. You can find all sorts of things on his shelves. Books, showpieces, uncut gems, jewellery…” 

Tarno. That name guts you, and your smile freezes into the shape of your face. You can't bring yourself to say it, while Flins seems lost in his own thoughts; his touch sweeping over the wood surface and past another line of carved pieces. You know about the shop he’s talking about. You've been inside. You've walked out with that pocket of grief, lodged deep into your heart. But Flins is Flins; and you've never met him in person. He wouldn't know.

“Can’t say that I have.” you slowly work away at some chance to move away from this conversation.

Flins however, seems intent on keeping it up. “I recently bought a few things.” He continues, pulling away at the drawers to produce a little casket. You can’t bring yourself to look at his face, catching the rustle of fabric and the faint clink clink clink of metal and beads. Then you feel his touch on your chin, soft, deliberate as he holds something to your ear. “I’d noticed they were pierced.” he tells you and there’s a hushed sort of tremble buried deep down. “These suit you well.”

The lantern light seems to swell into a brighter glow and when you blink, it shutters and dims. He draws his hand back. You see gold-work, twisted into a loop, a circle encasing something round and small. A pearl.

The floor falls away. There’s the feel of a yawning chasm eating yourself through from the inside, something so akin to numb emptiness and your jerk back, nails digging into the flesh of your palms till you feel wetness crest into the pads of your fingers. “It’s lovely.” you force out.

Flins watches you, silent, waiting. You tell yourself he couldn’t have known ( he couldn’t, he wouldn’t. You can’t be certain if this would count as betrayal but that gesture would have shattered you and left the fragments to rot away in some dark space ) and you lie and lie and bite your tongue and call yourself a stupid thing for lapsing so easily. “It is.” he agrees. “Tarno told me they were cared for.”

They were loved, he seems to say. They were loved. And they were, you want to nod. You’d treasured those earrings, you’d treasured them and the memories they came with. You treasured it in every instance, with how you kept up maintaining its shine for years. And now it’s bitter fruit and something, something that makes you sick the longer you stare at them.

Why does he have this. Why does he have this. Why does he have this. Why does he have this.

“I’m tired.” you whisper to him, as the room starts to shift in and out of sight. 

“Tired?” he echoes, his voice distant, dipping down to a staticky baritone, his stare flickering, searching. “You do look exhausted.”

Flins lets you go. You didn’t sleep all that well the previous night anyway and he stays behind to put the jewellery away. You can’t shrug the burning on your back; both the bruise and the way he surveys every little shift in your muscles ( or at least, you think he is ). But it’s Mr. Flins. The same Mr. Flins who had taken you from the cold. The same Mr. Flins who let you stay.

You’re being rude. You shouldn't have snapped like that, like some wounded dog, like some unresolved idiot.

But the earrings. Oh the earrings. You’ve had them since you were a baby, bought for your first birthday with your grandmother’s savings. It’s such a materialistic gripe, but it’s also the love that had littered itself into the years you’d spent wearing it. They were all you had till you were in your teens. They were all you had when you came to Nod Krai, so naively insistent that you could live on your own.

They were all you had of her. 

( And then those greedy eyes had set their sights on it and kept trying to snatch, snatch, snatch till your cupboards were overturned and your face and neck bruised and bleeding. Nostalgic sentiment, you quickly learned, was not worth your fracturing sanity. You’ve come to regret it since. )

There’s an eerie chill that you don’t quite register, with white noise flooding in and your lips being bitten raw. And then you see that ghost again, watching from a corner. There’s no accompaniment of fanfare or the usual violent terror, save for him wafting in and out of sight, his features diffusing further and further into obscurity. You can only make out the shape of his scarf and the messy state of his clothes.

He brings the winter cold with him. And then a despairing absence of it after, ribbing you of sensation for moments at a time. Cold then not, cold then not. 

And he seems to be watching you. Watching, empty eyed as if he could reach into the spaces between your ribs and perceive that swell there, that unhealed cut, that puss ridden centre that keeps you awake and hurting and empty all at once. His garbles are nothing more than muffled distortions, like he was trying to call in from a badly tuned radio. They peak into urgency, then stop with a helpless lilt.

And you watch him back, waiting. You wait for the voices, for the mounting weight. You dare him too, wound up, ready to fall apart and break your skull against something because lords about there's too much to think now. There's too much to think.

The boy draws back as if shot. He dissipates and you breathe.

You’re tired. And it comes down hard when you slip back onto the couch, holding your head against the rise and fall of your chest. You see the dozens upon dozens of shapes drawn out into the mist and the way they seem to dance against the wind and the snow’s pelting. And you see how it circles, how it comes in closer and scurries back.

Your mouth twists to a grimace. 

You sleep a few hours, your dreams disturbingly empty. When you wake, Flins brings you dinner, content with the silence and the seeming layer of tenseness it runs thick with now. You could liken it to rotten fruit or stale honey and you eat the food with that hysteria slowly starting to clatter against your insides. 

Flins doesn’t touch his food. 

The man named Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins liked to buy antiques.

He wasn’t picky on what kind — so long as they held weighted sentiment and a story engraved into its body. Rusted coins, old shoes, bracelets and stones and stamps and books and cowry shells strung together with string; Flins would set his sights and pass his mora over the table. He’d decorated his lighthouse with it; spruced up what Illuga and Nikita called the perpetual doom that clung to the walls and ceiling. 

Sometimes he came across particularly beautiful pieces. Watches, for one, that had stopped at certain times ( Flins took to collecting ones that had stopped at every different hour. He’s yet to acquire a few but it was a growing collection he was pleased with ), and lovely looking cufflinks with silver finishes that glowed like moonlight. He would fuss over them like a magpie with its horde and he’d survey the shelves for more till he’d satisfied that itch.

The man named Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins liked to buy antiques. This time around he’d found a few gramophone records, all of them tunes once played in the old courts of the Belyi Tsar ( as monotonous as the droning of cocktail parties were, Flins had come to see how easily history would fragment and die away with its passage. Plenty of music had failed to survive past the Tsaritsa’s ascension decades later ). 

He didn’t have a proper player but on the occasion that he did come across a working model, he would be delighted to listen to some of those songs again. Tarno packed away the discs and in the meantime, Flins counted his mora, till his prying eyes laid upon one of the displays with its multitude of jewellery. 

Tarno must have smelled a new opportunity for a sale and brought a few of them out. Some of them were Liyuen hairpins plated with gold and jade. Some of them were brooches worn by ladies in the Fontanian courts. But he zeroes in on one that Tarno produces. Earrings with the gleam of pearl slotted in a cradle of gold. 

Now that he could take a closer look at it, Flins could pick out the way the gold was worked into the semblance of a flower. He didn’t quite know how you’d come to acquire them; Tarno told him that they’re well past a decade old, from what he’d gleaned. And Flins could imagine you growing into these. Something whispered in with so much love he could taste it on his tongue. They’re well cared for, Tarno had said with a pleased look. And they were and they were lovely.

Flins turned them over, and marvelled at they way they caught the light, at how small they were and how his heart beat with a visceral sort of greed that he’d often chided away into silence. He wasn’t something the wild had spat out; not since the dregs of his youth where mischief came so much easier and so much more viciously as Kyryll the Azure Flame. 

But he could have this at the very least. He could have this piece of you here, and the thought of it was, in a way, an exciting one. It took more mora out of his pocket, and he reminded himself to budget a little better next time — no more impromptu buys, Kyryll and he tucks those earrings and the little velvet box they were housed in into his coat pocket.

He’d often stared at them, trying to rummage through the noise that layered itself over the years upon years it had. Sometimes he could see the afterimages of you and the smell of summer and the crinkle of a smile he never quite had the chance to see and oh, oh, oh, that greed would return and bite away like a rabid animal till he’d shut that lid and cut away those traces. 

He couldn’t imagine why you’d sell something like this. But that child, perhaps could have danced a bit too far past a certain line, with that same reckless passion that sparked in the midst of his flames once. You probably didn’t like their games, with how your fear had muddled the aftertaste with sharp iron on his tongue. 

But oh you were so warm too, so very warm. Kyryll could drink it in; every moment of it. But for now, the earrings stay here, locked away with the rest of his treasures. In a fantasy, he could return them to you and you’d be pleased with it and Kyryll could live with that instance locked away in his heart forever. 

The storm starts slowing over the next few days ( and so do your nightmares ). 

It’s come to a point where you can catch glimpses of the cemetery outside, with its snow-capped graves and the scattered budding of frostlamps just beneath the windowsill. For once, you tug away at the fogginess clutching in your head and the perpetual ache your chest thrums with, just to press up against the glass ( you count the minutes in between every spurt of snowfall with bated breath. They’ve started stretching out longer and longer ).

And with the fog clearing, you had come to see, are the shapes sputtering in and out of view. Some of them are solid. The blurry, stiff figures of woodland creatures who tease around the edge of the island itself. You see how a few patter up the straight from the Maroon Basin, curious, oh so curious. And then they run; every single one of them, like this place itself compels the very stench of fear.

It’s the deer who are the most cautious. You often catch how they corral at the border and simply watch, too far for you to really see the look in their eyes. But you think it to be wide, a little lost, a little scared. You don’t understand why that is. 

( A lie. Yes you do, you do, you do. You’ve seen this before, with the cats back at Nasha town and how they meandered away from you one day. You’ve seen the terror in their little faces and the taste of heartbreak so strong on your tongue. None of them ran to you, anymore. None of them save for the mother cat who’d curled up by your shed with pathetic eyes.

By then, all you could do to spare yourself, was drive her off. )

It’s not the ghosts. They peer up at you from the outside too, shifting in and out of view with haunted looks on their faces. The animals do not run from them. They draw close, as if to find a scent they can’t quite match to the still, human figures that linger on by and dot the beach and the space between the tombstones. And the ghosts throng in and around the lighthouse like moths to a flame, locked in their soundless screaming.

Flins has already started taking rounds, collecting fuel and tools from the shed and a spare lamp that he gives you when the night starts to draw. The thousands upon thousands of gazes in the dark would disappear under the blue flame he carries.

“Just in case,” he says, when he steps inside and sheds his coat. “It can keep you company, if you get scared again.”

You wrinkle your nose in a gesture that’s tired but playful. There’s still an air of awkwardness hung heavy between the two of you. You don’t quite know how to break it down any more, even after the shamed apology you had given him a few hours after the incident. But Flins, ever gracious and a bit too sweet-hearted, let it be. 

Flins, Flins, Flins. A strange man, a distant man and you can’t quite look at his face anymore. It’s the most foolish, most stupid thing you’ve felt so far with how unfounded and unnecessary it was. It’s just nerves, it’s just panic, it’s just you slowly going mad, it’s just you imagining things that aren’t there at all. “...I’ll keep that in mind.” you call to him as he passes you by. “But I hope this won’t come across as too jarring, sir but…” you stop. Your tongue twists itself into knots and you wince. “Well I — I…I wanted to ask — ”

“Yes?”

Don’t ask, a raucous, angry thing hisses. It tries to steal away your voice until the thought dissipates. “Since the storm is starting to clear.” You continue, and you curl your fingers around the lantern handle a bit too tight; tight enough till your knuckles start to pale. “I — I think I should leave.”

That snatches his attention back to you. Flins turns and stares, face dappled in blue. “Leave…” he echoes. You can sense something unspooling in the way he said it, furrowing his brow as he glances outside. He seems to be taking it in; the receding whiteout and the earth unfurling beneath it. You play with your fingers, and you feel a wrongness all over. 

“I know.” you mutter, gathering yourself together. “It’s quite sudden but I can’t keep staying. You’ve entertained my presence for long enough and well, I think I’m starting to come off as more a nuisance than anything else…”

Flins gazes at you, unblinking and there’s a stirring that you can't keep ignoring. It scratches at the edge of its cage. It warns you to run. “Is this about the earrings?” he asks carefully. “Or the ghosts?”

You jerk back. “W-what? No, no of course not! I’ve been out for long enough. Heavens I have a job to return to, too! They probably think I'm missing or dead — ” Who, who precisely? You aren’t sure if you last in Nikita’s memories, or anyone else’s for that fact. It’s simply a facet of you; someone who knows all too well to disappear in and out of obscurity. You don’t like the way that hesitation slips past his expression, or the tightness round his jaw. 

“There’s still some time left before it calms.” Flins finally says, clipped and sharp. “Rest, till then.”

You take a step forth. “I’ve just woken up.” you point out. Your hands are trembling. “It’s fine, we can talk about…” you swallow, shrinking away from him. “...whatever it is you want to, right now.” It’s that stubborn insistence that makes you want to twist yourself up inside out. But you cannot falter now, even if he’s acting so strange. 

“And simply running off into the wilds won’t bode well,” he says. “The waters are still choppy and the mist still hangs overhead. Sending you out now would be far too much of a risk.” And you can see the reasoning behind it all. Of course he’d worry. Of course he would, even as you feel that tinge of dread creep in. There’s a buzz in the air you can’t quite name but oh, had you missed the signs? Had you missed the little tells?

So you try to be gentle about it. “...I’m honoured to know I’m worth your concern, Mr. Flins,” You start. “But I barely know you as is. I think I've far overstayed my welcome. I must go soon." 

It’s just Flins, you remind yourself. Just Flins, who had taken you from the storm. 

Somehow even that is slipping away into a darker, messier state. There’s a finality there, steeply simmering in the yellow of his stare. The tightness melts and he’s soft cheeked ease all over all while he closes the space in between. The gifted lantern is set aside and his hand sweeps up, lifting your chin with just a slight touch. You shiver against the cold tingle it leaves behind.

He speaks with that same levelled, cool tone; your name whispered in the tail of it. “You’re still exhausted.” Your eyelids start to droop and you feel your senses start to clog as if you’re strummed to some inaudible tune. “Ah, look at you. Sleep for a while; we could think about everything else a little later now…” 

You’re guided to the couch and you’re there but not there. You curl up, back to the backrest and Flins brushes against the healing bruise with a click of his tongue. You passively try to push him away and he complies, still watching with his silence as your limbs seem to be pulled tight against inaudible strings and your body crumbles to a whistle in your ears. 

Teetering off into dreamland comes easier. 

( Flins often told you stories to pass the time through the past couple of days. Folk legends and fairy tales, some of which were tersely macabre with their endings. He often delighted in your questions, his voice lilting to something lighter, airier when he would recite the spectacle in the old Tsar’s court and the revelry that would sweep away unsuspecting mortals from their homes. There were spirits too, spirits who threw windows open to abduct sleeping children from their beds.

“You can guess which ones the parents were fond of telling their children.” he added in between, stirring some tea in for you. 

You laughed. “Did yours?”

Flins simply smiled, pouring a single cup. He’d settled for some wine for himself after offering you some — which you politely refused and you watched the way the deep red of it turned translucent when he’d held it up against the dim light outside. “Alas, bedtime stories were not a staple in my youth.”

You took a sip. And you thought there’s something lonely that had taken its roots inside Flins, when he’d peered out into the expanse of white outside the window. Yet, you think, he seemed happiest this way; content with his distance and with being the singular resident on this island with nothing but the waves for company. Then you can’t think of anything else past that, entrenched in a sea of cloying tartness and cotton wool.

How nice, you mused to yourself, shutting your eyes to this singular memory. “Did you have someone staying with you, once, Mr. Flins?” you asked. “Given there is a spare bedroom.”

“Lighthouse keepers often came in pairs.” He confessed. “I suppose it was built with that in mind.”

“And the graves outside?” you did a little tap-tap against the rim of your teacup.

“Previous residents. They’d often be buried here as well.” You must have made a little face then with how he hid away his humoured smirk. “To be fair it’s a lovely burial spot around early spring. The frostlamps would glow a most lovely shade blue and you could see them stretch on till the cliff edges in whole swathes.” He takes a sip of his wine after twirling the glass. “And the auroras would streak across the skies above it. Have you seen them yet?”

“I only moved in recently.” You admitted. “And there’s too much light pollution around Nasha Town to really get a good look at them. All I saw were bits of grey…” The lantern sputters. You could see how the dark around you licks closer still, teasing the heels of your feet and your periphery. 

“Ah.” there’s a distorted blanketing in his speech. There’s a thump in your ribs. A wrought whisper freezing the shell of your ear. “Then I ought to show — ” he’s cut off by that feel of being immersed underwater, of your senses shutting down bit by agonizing bit till the panic lilted garble turns to clear words. Flins is nothing more that a disjointed, muffled call in the background.

Wake up, wake up, wake up.

Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up.

There are a thousand hands pulling you farther and farther away from the memory and it’s fizzled out outline. Wake up, wake up, wake up it continues the resolute chanting and there’s something pulling at your teeth, at your jaw, trying to coax something out of you. It starts fragmenting, the aftermirage of old festivity and the grasp of something tugging away at your mind. 

You struggle and struggle and struggle.

And you wake. )

The boy is hardly noticeable when you see him. Your nerves are set alight and you stumble past, nails to your cheeks when the effects of whatever had compelled sleep into you, forced it into your body starts to dissipate. There’s still the fallout in how you feel close to collapse, some parts of you still yet to catch on to your wakening. 

Breathe in, hold, breathe out. Your grandmother’s voice cuts in this time. You’re close to drawing blood and breaking skin and you sit up a bit straighter with a pained sniffle. It’s an awful sort of drop in your stomach, the kind that follows the tail end of something so dopamine inducing and then being left to recover from that plummet when the world settles around you. You shut away the sweetness on your tongue.

You fix your focus on him and how he blurs in and out of the walls. There’s so little detail left to garner; just the shadow of a face and a few wisps of hair catching itself the way the sun would have if he were solid. A bowl knocks over, then a plate and you could tell the fury in every gesture. You flinch at first, then square your shoulders and grimace.

“What do you want?”

It’s not a brave demand. It’s strained. You feel like you’ve been drugged; but you know you’re not. It is something that runs so much deeper — so, so much deeper.

You know it. You’ve felt this once, before. The shutting away of sensory input, the euphoria encroaching spaces it shouldn’t. 

Flins, Flins, Flins who never ate, who never seemed to sleep, who seemed to roam against the wilds as the animals cower away from the very presence of him passing through and the cold he carries under his flesh. What the hell is he? You’re gutted by that awful feeling, a mockery, a chortle so perverse it drives that statement deeper still. You know the answer to that.

The boy steps closer, urgently dancing just shy of the hallway. And you follow, beholden, perhaps by your slow realization. When you pass the kitchen by, you slip in and out, knife in hand, the feel of it heavy and familiar. The lantern is held up, heavy and debilitating in the other, lit up with yellow fire. The boy lingers, stepping out then down the halls. He disappears and you startle, chasing after. 

You can vaguely hear the pull of chains. Flins is up in the lighthouse.

You suck some air in through your teeth and speed up, weaving down another turn. The boy stands stark by a door. His study, you recall belatedly. You’d been inside it for a fraction of an instance to help sort past a few old files. It’s where he did most of his bone carving and most of his gem polishing. But the boy is insistent and the death in his eyes seems to glow like a pair of lamps.

“What if he finds me?” you ask.

He speaks. You cannot understand the fuzzy static that he tells you. So you follow him, past the door. It’s dark and the walls are cold against the brush of your shoulders. You grasp the handle of the knife just a bit tighter. It’s the same as it always was when you pore over the sight of it. An old table, a chair, a few bits and pieces of half finished projects and the starched white sheet that was spread over the tabletop. 

The boy leers and you question yourself, if trusting him was ever a good idea.

Then again, you trusted Him.

You feel so foolish. But you cannot scream that frustration out.. You cannot shed your tears. You’ve eaten his food, you’ve given him your thanks and if he were, if he was one of them —

You find yourself reflected against the glass of his cupboards. Faces stare back, ashen, dead, in wait with their pale fingers tangling and pushing you along and away, deeper and deeper inside. The boy circles around one spot, as if possessed by a feverish daze and then he’s gone, with the shine of his hair and the last few imprints of his scarf round his neck. 

You stumble forward. You can hear the beat of your heart in your ears. You can hear that rush of blood.

You come down to your knees, lantern set down and you drive your knife through the floorboards, puppeteered by some unseen force that whispers its suggestions and carefully directs your hand. You can feel all those presences, all of them patterns d crowd closer and closer and closer still and you can sense a pressure throw itself over your shoulderblades.

The wood comes undone after some tugging. Your nails scrape against the surface, and you pull as hard as you can. It shutters and falls back into place, nailed hard. You try again, pulling, pulling with all you could muster and there’s a crack. It falls apart and you are met with a finish of packed dirt underneath.

Dig.

Dig, dig, dig.

There’s fervour there. Your veins burn hot, like you’re being boiled from the inside out. You dig, catching the mud beneath your fingers and scraping your knife against loose rocks. You dig and dig and dig through, even as your wrists chafe against the wood and your digits grow numb. Your face is flushed, a hot-and-cold sensation that seeds itself in and flowers into being.

You unearth a bone, caked in dirt. A tibia, then the remains of the skull and the rest of the fragmented skeleton just peeking out of the damp earth. Your lips part, brushing away some of the soil to pull out the tatters of a knitted scarf and the worn down, mud caked bits and pieces of clothing. The crying around you, the audience to all this hitches up to a deafening howl.

Then comes silence, the lingering notes of panic and the stuffiness of the room is replaced by heat.

Flins takes a knee beside you. “I must have missed this one.” he eases. ‘And you…” he observes you, how you turn your neck to stare with twisted horror. “You were certainly not supposed to see this, silly girl.”

Not you, you want to cry out. There’s instinct biting into your core and it tells you to scramble away, and there’s terror that tells you it’s pointless because you know, you know how strange magic moors you to this spot and keeps you still. “It’s him — ” you choke out and the knife comes up, barely held in your shaking hands. “What did you do to him?!”

He looks hurt when braced with your strangled shriek and at the sight of the weapon, as flimsy as it was. It’s all you had against him and it feels all too little in the face of it. “I did nothing. Vasily…yes, Vasily, if I am not mistaken, threw himself off of the widow's walk of the lighthouse.”

“And why,” you grit out, “Is his body under your fucking floorboards — ”

“When I buried him,” Flins smiles. “There was no study. I simply must have missed out on this one while moving a few graves.” There’s a reasonable enough explanation it seems but you’re still seized by that persistent, stumbling thing on your shoulder. You’re still edging away.

“That’s the truth?” you eke, every bit a cornered animal with your hackles raised at him. “The whole truth?”

Ah, and there it is, a shine in his gaze. There’s an unbrokered wideness to Flins’ smile when he gazes down at you. “Your questions are awfully direct.” he murmurs. “You’ve found out, then?” There’s no suggestion, no place to argue otherwise and you want to empty your insides out onto the floor. Flins fixes that gaze of his to your knife and the hurt, it seems, has given way to amusement. 

“A knife won’t be enough to kill me at least, you know.” He supplies helpfully. 

You falter. “Shut up.” you hiss, as he shifts closer. The sharp end of it hovers just over his jugular and he tilts his head with a curious lightness in his expression. 

“Put it away. It’s dangerous running amok with that.” You drop the blade, to your shock and your body quietly complies to his touch when he winds his hands round your wrist, almost fixated on the pulse thrumming there. The fight in you has dissipated into flimsy embers and you push back, clawing at him, trying to scrape away at some modicum of control.

“Let me go — ” you don’t recognize the creature that screams it, or the force it comes out with. “Let me go. I won’t tell anyone, I swear so please, please — ” you descend down to wet sobs, pushing away the weight of him till your elbows start bruising from knocking against the floor one too many times. Tearing your body asunder just to escape hardly seemed daunting at this rate. 

Flins purses his lips, the luminosity in his eyes nearly swallowing you whole. “I won’t hurt you.” he says, carefully navigating through your panic as he reaches up and tucks your hair behind your ear. “Oh I wouldn’t dream of it and you know well that we can’t lie.” Bare fingers press against your cheekbones, knuckle white and gentle. You flinch back, teeth borne like some wounded dog and Flins coos. 

He’s fae, you think and it reeks of betrayal and it aches, how he touches you with a hint of twisted reverence that makes you reel. He’s fae.

( You’re at home, picking up broken pieces of glass. The little patch of earth you’d grown your plants in were upturned and the flowers were missing. )

“The same cannot be said about the others though. If you leave, should you leave.” he drolls on, lifting your boneless body up. Your hands are caked with dirt and he inspects them with a click of his tongue. “Let’s get you cleaned up, hm?”

( The cats started turning up dead on your doorstep when you’d set the bells up against the fence. Their insides were torn open. You recognized one you’d fed earlier that week. More and more start showing up, some of who you’d only deigned to look at in certain instances. )

“What?” you manage to say, your tongue weighed down like lead. 

“A wash.” He repeats. Then he huffs, his eyes but yellow crescents. “Oh you mean the rest of them? Dear one, you’ll be torn apart if you venture too far out of my grounds. Or have you forgotten the way the woodlands ensnared you so?” 

( There are greedy hands tearing and scratching at you, at every inch it could find. Some of the jewellery you’d had is gone now from the safe. Your grandmother’s karimani and the anklets you were gifted. Gone, one by one. And it, with a prideful voracity, demanded more. )

Your head swims and the tears hitch through. Flins wipes them away, patiently taking you to the basin to scrub off every bit of skin and the underside of your nails. A few of the splinters were carefully removed. “I saved your life.” he reminds you. “You’d have been carried off into their snare. They’d have made you run till your feet bled and they’d have stolen every piece of you for themselves. And now they’ve asked to keep you here, given how you’ve angered them so.”

“Why?”

You bat at him, still trying to muster together a little more fight. Flins straightens you up, bending to your level. You can see your scared reflection in the mirror, glassy eyed with horror and him behind you, his hands curled round your shoulders. 

“You know why.” He reminds you, blankly. 

( And the misfortune had built itself like a festering wound. When you saw them, the cause of it streak past your window in peals of raucous laughter, you had surged, dragged them back with every bit of vicious intent you could muster then. They fought. You fought. And at some point you’d begged, begged for a reprieve. To let you be, let you live. You had precious little to offer but it could be anything, anything but this.

“But it’s fun!” they had laughed at your battered form and the scratched up state of your arms. Something in you, a fundamental lock and chain, had snapped open and fury dulled the rest of the world out.

When you came to, they laid there, silvery blood twining with the gold of their hair and your hands soaked in it. )

No, no, no not that. You jerk away, trying to make a break for the door and he pulls you back. “Was it you?” you ask him, voice shaking because he knows — and it’s the possibility of how much that tears you out on the inside. “Did you send them — ”

“Of course not.” Flins shakes his head. “The one you killed was young, a foolhardy thing.” He addresses it with a disconnect that you can’t begin to fathom, a lack of sympathy peeled down to the very roots of it. Perhaps it’s what they’re known for, their kind with their morals so far removed from the tiny flashes a human life had to give. “Do you regret it? What have you done?”

You skitter, squeezing your eyes shut while he watches through the mirror. The chill is seeping into tissue and muscle. “No.” you spit out against your better judgment. 

Flins’ lips twitch. “Liar.” he whispers, fondly, gently. “Oh, don’t cry now.” He soothes when you start to shake. “I’m not the cruel jailor they’d expect me to be. I’ve been good to many; to Maria, to Vasily. There’s much you’ve lost here, I do agree but you’ll be treated well. I’ve come to be so terribly fond of you, after all.” You think this is a sick, cruel joke. You think you’ve stumbled right into the pits of some horrible dream. 

“Yes, and I'll have to restock. You need your food and you need a decent enough space to rest in. The couch, as comfortable as it is, is hardly feasible at all.” He threads his hand with yours. The coolness of his palm presses against yours and Flins flushes. 

“But I can’t — I can’t stay!” you try to argue, even if there are so many other worse things that lay in wait.

Flins takes you to the guestroom. To the same walls you’d run from that first night. “You don’t have much of a choice.” He confesses, sympathy touching his features. It’s a cruel thing, how they’re all so pretty yet so viciously inhumane in a way. 

But honestly, are you any better? You’ve killed one of them. Their body is somewhere in that lake you’d immersed them into, undecayed, unchanged like the underbelly of bedrock and you;re still here, alive and yearning to forget about any of that. You’re cut open and raw and bleeding and Flins lowers you down against the sheets, removing your shoes and socks.

Your breaths begin to shake. Flins shrugs off his coat and sets aside his scarf. There are no more ghosts scraping their hands to the walls. Just you and him and the weighted silence this room has to offer the two of you. He kisses the back of your hand, just above your knuckles, then the tips of your fingers. 

“Stop that.” You mumble. “You do not know me. You do not care for me.”

Flins reaches out and pinches at your cheek, feeling the softness of it between his forefinger and thumb. “But I do know enough,” he insists with that odd smile. “I know the shape of your breath and the way you scraped your knees climbing trees too high for you. I know why you left your home and the dogged insistence of your family. I know how you like cycling down by the docks where Hiisii island comes to view during your deliveries and how you pout when you write long letters.” He presses a finger to your lips, a little hungry, a little expectant. He breathes in, unfurling your hand to press it against his cheek, his own flattened over it. 

“You’d be mad to think I'll feel anything for you.” you tell him, venom dripping through every enunciated consonant. 

“I have time.” he sighs. “Plenty of it, and I can wait for you, I think…” Flins dips his head down and kisses you, testing the way you give beneath him and the feel of your lips. He pulls away, the tips of his ears running red and you stare up, open mouthed. “Oh.” He breathes, the makings of a laugh stirring under his tone. 

A flush betrays you, burning your cheeks. He presses his lips to the corner of your mouth and when the tears spring forth, he kisses those away too. 

You did this to yourself, some miserable part of you rattles. You shutter in your sniffles, and close your eyes to the sight of him. Flins down not mind, pulling himself away just to leave a slow stroke over the line of your jaw, up, up up to your earlobe. You shiver against his touch. 

“It won’t happen.” you repeat. “It won’t.”

Flins hums, straightening you up and bundling the pillow beneath your head. You could laud him for the imitation of sweet faced love he wears so plainly. You could believe him. Maybe it is real. But Flins himself seems to distort and bend into the air and you only remind yourself of his inhumanity and the mess you’re in now. 

“Stubborn creature.” he comments with affection. He steals another kiss from you, chaste, gentle but so, so hungry beneath the surface of it. “I ought to return your earrings to you too.” Another kiss. “You always looked so lovely in them…”

You think about the woods outside and the chanting promise of death. You think freezing over from the cold would have been a far better mercy than this. 

When Flins shifted that line from host to jailor, he lets you fall into the simple routines of lighthouse keeping with him. Keep the lamp running, keep the motors clean, wipe the lenses down and clear the windows out. He helps you put your earrings on and marvels at the sight of it. “You were wearing them when I first saw you.” He says.

Oh, you think, bitterness light in your mouth.

The storm finally dies out a few days after and he manages to get the generator running after a few calls in to Ms. Aino. When the lights blink back on, you still can’t find any bit of comfort in the hallways past; even when he comes to walk with you to the kitchen and back. He’d played some music to celebrate, dulcet tunes reminiscent of the classics and the waltzes they’d go with. 

Flins offered to dance with you. There’s little need to use your name, to pull on any strings; the hours seemed to have scraped by slow enough for you to consider it. When you fall into step with him, he is patient and he is kind about you stepping on his feet, first by accident, then the next few times out of pure spite. 

He did not flinch in the face of it. There was only a quiet coring, a tender display of affection and a kiss to your cheek and Flins would gaze upon you with an affection too inexplicable for you. The stuff that makes the treasures in his collections, the quaint oddities he liked to collect. 

When you left Sumeru, you left with the hopes of burying away old grief, to tell your family that your helplessness isn’t something to tail after your shadow when they’d started treating you as such. When you left Sumeru, you couldn’t let yourself fall into the patterns of a show piece, even if the intent of it, as cutting as it was, is drawn in by love.

And now look at you. Look at you, spooled into the webs of something inhuman that lurks behind the visage of a handsome man. 

Perhaps, in the end of it all, you did deserve it. You had thrown away any instance of the fae who came by your house and unravelled every facet of your life. Every reminder, every part of you that could behold any form of recollection and the consequences were something that was bound to come along and tear you apart.

Yet, “Is it fair to call it love if I’m trapped here?” You tell him, your voice an echo in the hallways. Flins gently undoes the tie of your scarf, a newly knitted thing he’d commissioned just for you. He slows his movements, contemplative. 

“I am confident in what I feel,” he states. “It may not be love, from the view of what most mortals know. There’s little affection in the idea of wanting to hide away and covet every visceral inch of their lovers but…” he lifts you up by the chin and you think you see how his eyes settle, marigold yellow to the lamplight. His knuckle presses over your pulse and he smiles a secret smile when it quickens. “...It’s love to us and it’s love no less, no?”

“But I’m not you.” You mumble. “You scare me.”

“You don’t have to be.” Flins takes your hand, and the two of you start the waltz once more. “You are safer here.” And you know it’s true, even as the call persists to something frenzied, even as it compels you to throw the doors open and escape. If not the angered fae, then Flins himself would reel you back, stubborn and covetous as he was. He’ll reel you back in, back into his collection of shinies and keep you squirrelled away.

So you patter around the house. Your first winter here in Nod Krai comes and goes.

When spring comes along, the thicker coats make way for lighter ones. Flins visits the lighthouse a little less and the windows are thrown open to let the breeze in. You aid in sorting out his fuel then keep count of his bones and you have him buy a sewing kit just to keep your thoughts together as you embroider in your free time. Then one day, when you were tired out from wandering over the uneven crags of the island and the way the land seemed to shift and bend itself and your path back to the lighthouse, you called him by his first name. 

“Kyryll.” Not Flins. 

He freezes up. “Yes?” he returns it, eagerness slipping in so easily. You could have loved this man, perhaps and it’s a thought that starts to haunt you in the wee hours of the night. You could have loved his willing silence and his gentleness if he’d come to you in Nasha Town with flowers and a willingness to know you.

“I’d like to head back inside.” 

His lips press up against your forehead. “Alright.” And Flins leads you back, hand held tight in his, like you could be blown away by the passing winds or slip back and melt into the receding snow. You can taste the way the air around him shifts; electrifying, sudden and all too much at once. He doesn’t say all that much after, attending to his tasks down to the minute detail till dusk comes along and the clock calls him back down for dinner.

That night, after setting the lantern down by your bedside and you’re half wrapped under the mound of blankets, he whispers to you, “Say it again.”

“What?” you blink. Flins draws a layer back. 

“My name.”

You look at him, really look at him. His gaze is bright. “Kyryll.” You test it on your tongue. He closes his eyes and knocks his head against yours. 

“Again.”

“Kyryll.” you repeat, feeling yourself dig a deeper and deeper hole.

The weight of him rolls over onto the mattress. His touch is a slow, deliberate thing. “I could eat you up.” he mutters, nose pressed into the apple of your cheek. “Keep saying it, dear one.”

“Kyryll.” you whisper it, quiet as death in an instance where you should have shut up completely. His eyes snap open and he watches you, and listens to the thumping of your heart. You’re doomed, you realize, plummeting far past that point of no return. The sheets come loose, pulled down to your knees. 

“I’ve overestimated myself, I think.” he murmurs into your neck, teasing you just shy of your pulse. He comes close to testing the straps of your slip. “May I have you, dear one?” and you witness the greed, the affection, the twisted up echo suffused into the thing he calls love. You can’t bring yourself to say no. Maybe in the midst of this madness, you could let yourself forget. You guide his hands to your hips, slow, steady, and his breath hitches to mild shock. He probably didn’t expect it, your affirmation. 

“You are certain?”

“This is the last time you’ll ask me.” you warn him, gripping the sheets a bit too tight below you. “And the last I'll bother saying yes.”

He peppers kisses over your forehead and cheeks. “Oh you spoil me.” he murmurs. “You spoil me so.” He slides the hem of your slip up, up past your thighs. His breaths are laboured, heavy. “Could you lift yourself up just a bit?” he asks, prompting you with a nudge. You comply, lips pursed as nervousness peels itself into the workings of your bones.

“Easy now…” he whispers, kissing the pulse at your neck, then down further and further still. The fabric comes to bunch just below your chest when he settles between your legs, and he keeps his hand pressed over the softness of your thighs. 

You curl your fingers into the wool of his sweater. Flins fixes his gaze on you. “Scared?” he asks.

You swallow. “A little.” you admit, the tenderness of it all feeling so out of place. Flins hums. 

“It makes the two of us.” He admits. “It’s been years since…well…” and that statement alone strikes you — reminding you that he’s so much older than he makes himself seem. You try to ground yourself against something, anything, wincing against the shock his colder touch brought to your bare skin.

“But you know how to start at least, right?” you peep out.

“I do. Right now, let me see what I can test out, yes? The act would be terribly one-sided if you don’t enjoy it…” he trails his forefinger up your torso, tracing a line till your slip. You stop him, teeth drawn into a snarl and Flins faces it with a tilt to his head.

“Just…I don't know! Do something! Anything!”

“Anything?” he intones, raising a brow. “Well I was attempting to — ”

You shake your head and it feels like you’re going to fall apart. It’s all too visceral, too embarrassing and somehow, you wanted it to be put to rest. “Not like this. It’s not enough. I…” your grasp on his clothes tightens into a fist. “Kyryll, Kyryll, just make me forget it all. Please.”

“Ah.” he closes his mouth and you feel the way his hands grasp and shift your body further up his thighs, just shy of the part between his legs. Your face is on fire and you try to sink yourself down into the mattress, just as his prodding touch returns. It’s everywhere, slipping beneath your slip, over your shoulders. One travels up to your face, and you let out an exclamation when his digits slip between the seam of your lips, testing your teeth against the pads of his fingers.

There’s a fascination, you think delirious. A fascination he has with your pulse in particular, just as the air becomes a little hotter and a little heavier. Flins can’t quite stop himself from touching. “It’s the warmth.” he smiles, rubbing his cheek against yours like a cat. “You are so warm.”

And then he kisses you. 

“And you are mine,” he concludes. There’s no possessiveness, or jealousy. It’s stated with a sense of knowing and matter of factness. 

He tests the space between your legs, pulling your underwear to the side to run a finger over your clit. Your lips part and you press your face to his shoulder with a keen. There’s a clumsiness in his movements at first, before Flins eases himself to the shape and the rhythm of your body and he’s slipping a finger in just as you try to gather your senses.

You can’t quite keep up. One finger, then another and you want to tip yourself over and sink into it. It feels wrong, it will stay that way and you still curl up and buck into him and to the whispers in your ears spun in another tongue. You curse at him in your dialect and he laughs at the spunk.

“Are you still with me?” he asks as the pleasure starts its steady build. You nod, lips parted. “Words.”

“Yes!” you force out. 

You can’t even step away and deny the hunger in how he takes you apart, spreading your legs just a bit more to fix a single charged look down at you. The heel of his palm presses up against your clit and you’re reeling once more with the inside of your cheek bitten raw. “Kyryll.” you whimper. “Kyryll.”

His teeth nick at your shoulder. “You test me.” he mumbles. “You’ve been plucking me apart, my beloved, playing me like an instrument. Have you any clue of it?” No and it’s awful and it’s so much, your eyes starting to sting. “A sweet thing like you, a poor, sweet little thing.” he keeps nibbling, finding new spots, new places, just shy from plain sight to hide his bites. He lays his teeth just over your sternum, your heart. 

Flins groans, restraint hitching itself further and further off. When he finds that spot in you, one that arches your back and blots your vision out, he bends over your frame and keeps you still, grabbing and touching and grabbing with so much fervour you fear he might just lose himself in it. But it comes with a sharp toothed vexation, the feel of it not quite whetting his own appetite in any way.

He tweaks a nipple, starting a slow grind against your bundle of nerves and you squirm under him, hooting softly. “There you go.” he whispers. “There you go, my sweet thing, all mine…” He keeps his promise; there’s so little your mind could properly formulate, even if there is the barest hint of fear tinging certain spots in your ribs with how he probes and prowls over the shape of your curves. 

“It’s…strange — ” that buildup starts it’s crest. Flins snaps his head up, intent on watching and that has you attempting to hide away. The pillows are pushed aside and you twist your body, ears starting to burn. “Wait — ”

One last thrust of his fingers, one last brush against your clit and you release, panting helplessly. Flins looks struck, a little awed as he takes in the sight of you, a little sweaty and very unravelled and he sets you closer to the crook of his arm, where you stay clinging on for dear life. It’s all wool and fuzz and the blurry outline of the room. 

You could vaguely make out the rustle of his clothes, of his clothes slipping off. When he winds your arms around his shoulders, they’re bare and your hands splay out over his back and just past his shoulder blades. He moans into your throat. “Relax.” he directs. You try, you really do till you feel his tip breach in through the stretch makes you want to cry.

Flins murmurs his comfort and something in that pain guts a sick sense of satisfaction in. You revel in it, nails scraping at his back, and that draws a gasp from deep inside his chest. 

“You.” he murmurs, watches the way your flesh divots neath his fingers, and how you curve up to met his shallow thrusts. He soothes your bitten lips, lidded eyes searching, searching, searching and you try to goad him on to move just a bit faster. “Not yet.” he mutters, words slowly running into melded slurring. “It’s not enough…hardly…”

What more could he want, you think, half there, half not. He pushes your legs up, up to your knees and you think you see the sun in the horizon. What more could he want from this; a timed surrender and your mind undoing itself over and over through, purging the venom, shading the anger, letting that whiteout glare against the breadth of it till it’s just less thought and more sensation.

But there’s always something there that Flins never quite fully states. It comes with that interest in bones, in his attention to your heartbeat, in his honey dipped insistence when he hovers his hand just over your stomach. The pink flushing against his pale cheeks aside, he’s digging into you just barely and there’s a look in his eye that stills you, even through the daze of pleasure.

Like he wants to tear you open. 

He swallows back a pool of saliva. “Dear heart.” he says, pleasant yet roughed by the shake and the stutter of his hips. He’s hardly up to the hilt and you start to push back against him, letting more sink in. You want some of that sweet friction, and the buzz staticking just below your skin. “Forgive me but if I may…”

This kiss is deep, demanding in how his tongue intrudes and coaxes your mouth open. There’s a debauched rawness burning itself into your ribs and Flins slants his lips, silently drawing out more and more and more.

And more, till there’s a lick of blue and you feel something cold and hot shift through skin and bone and tissue to cradle into your insides. You gasp, and it times with his first proper thrust, something inhuman phasing in and out of his visage — and afterimage of a monstrous face and so much blue. Blue, blue fire, blue like his lantern, and it moulds itself, not quite burning, not painful but strange.

Flins shudders, euphoric. 

“This, yes, this.” he whispers, awed. He steals more kisses from your lips, all while the feel of those hands, one dipped into your chest and the other cradling your neck, with the tease of claws to flesh and the burn of azure light stifling back the yellow-orange glow from the bedside table. That steady warmth starts to build, the feel of him cupping your heart, moments away from fraying something asunder and then him, dragging against your walls with a jerk of his hips.

He quite literally holds your heart now. You try to wrap your head around it, the feel of fire, the stirring and its terror and a traitorous sting of pleasure disturbing the stagnancy. Flins strokes the line of your ribs, raking his fingertips through the expanse. Then there’s him, the transfixed fever that burns ever so slightly against the flickering glow of his stare. Every bit of him, strung up. Every bit of him oozing a sense of want.

It’s want that has him still and steady your hips when you start to move away, that alien feeling making your face burn and your world start to stutter. You feel like you could be tugged loose, body and soul, like you’re on the verge of blinking out of existence and falling underwater. It’s panic, but not quite, in how it’s immersed in something else altogether. 

( You can’t be enjoying this. You can’t. )

And then he draws it back and they dig into the sheets and spot a few scorch marks onto the surface. You’re drawn in, tugged by some spectral leash and your start to warble against his pace and the taste of his satisfaction biting at the crook of your neck. 

It feels like a wave, something that descends upon you like a battering crash, marked by a desperate mewl from you; a jumbled string of “Kyryll”’s sputtered out in the wake of the moment, as you come undone and feel every part of you fall into that pitching height of pleasure circuiting every instance of you.. 

Flins sucks a breath in. “Oh you’re perfect. Perfect…” he mumbles. Your nerves are still alight and you’re still all too aware of every small move he makes. He pulls himself out after he empties into you and you whine, whine at the emptiness.

The cold he leaves behind on your skin is fast fading. Flins fusses over you and you start to recover from the blankness and the haziness prickling at your body. It’s a shroud pulled over your eyes and you let him work away, oh so thorough in cleaning up the mess.

“You did wonderfully.” he coaxes, spreading your thighs to wipe at the white residue at the inside of them. The mattress dips under his weight. He gathers you into his arms, and you could barely pick out what he’s saying after that. But the adoration is there as it always was. 

It only dawns on you, the next day when you stir awake and take the sight of Flins fixing his attention on you, taking in the way you breathe. Last night had happened and you clutch at your chest, as if you could still feel that phantom sensation haunt your body. “What did you do?” you warble.

Flins smiles. There’s no answer from him and you don’t expect it. “Will you be going outside?” he asks when you throw your slip back on and teeter off to find your underwear, then your coat and socks.

“Yes.” you mumble, and you are. You cannot stay in this room much longer. You cannot stay in his presence. You feel the edges of yourself start falling apart, blurring against the starched edges and you fall back against the feel of him weighing your back down as you pull your boots on.

He lays his lips on the nape of your neck, gentle, loving almost. You break away from him, nearly running out, out of the house, out into the open. The aurora burns overhead and the lighthouse cuts past the faint mist cover and into the endless dark sea. You stare up, mouth agape and then you look forth. 

When you walk a little farther out, you note how the fog thickens over and shies away from you just till the strait to the basin across the waters. You see the shapes of things dancing along the beachside, lost in the taste of revelry and wine and merry tidings. They call to you, try to coax you farther, closer even as some fall to deathly silent and distort their shape and form.

You take a step forward. Your boots sink into wet sand. Come here, they ring out. Come here, come with us!

I really shouldn’t, you tell yourself rather tightly. Then you turn and leave and you can hear their mockery ring against the air. You’re dizzy and you feel some kind of consuming emptiness start expanding and collapsing into your heart. The ghosts are now mere faint outlines. You’re the only living, thinking thing breathing in the too-chilly air. 

Slowly, softly, you make your way back to the lighthouse. Your line of sight blurs and you’re crying halfway through, clawing at yourself, disgusted, angry and so, so strained and spread thin. You want to burn it off of you, that feeling. You want every single inch of you scrubbed clean of that decision, that damned decision and —

That last shackle clicks in place. And you know you’re never leaving, with the paths winding themselves to and away and back again. You walk past and circle every inch of the beachside and you watch the ocean lapping at the shoreline, spreading a hundred white fingers across the sand and evening the ground out beneath it.

( There, you whisper your last few goodbyes. To Sumeru, to your family, to your old life and the forgotten details through the bustle you’d been caught up in. )

The quiet continues to follow when you stumble back up the cliff face. It’s getting colder, even with the sunwarmed rocks radiating the last few vestiges of their heat. Pulling your coat around you tighter, you draw past the shed and over the dirt path, up the slight incline and the scattered frostlamp buds. 

At the threshold, Kyryll waits with his lantern, fully dressed. He holds his hand out when you come closer. You take it.

The door swings shut behind the two of you.

you spread your legs in your seat, take a thick drag from your cigarette, and immediately curl your lips in disgust at the foul taste. it is a thin, cheap thing and far too poor for a place like this. this beautiful opera house that is filled with the faces of hundreds of little cherubs looking down on you as you sit at the front row of the auditorium and watch her sing. there is nobody sitting beside you, of course. in fact, the entire auditorium is empty, except for you.

because if you wanted your angel in white to sing for you — and only you.

then by god, the people of this city knew better than to try and keep you from what you wanted.

you knew what they all said, what they whispered under their breaths when they thought you were not listening. oh, how their beloved angel, their poor and blind opera singer, was now marked with the black ink of death that was spelled out in the shape of your name. who painted it on her perfectly pale skin? was it by your hand or your enemies?

cigarette smoke slides over your face as you mull over the answer.

you truly did not know.

did it matter, really? she was yours and you belong to… everybody and nobody at all. you belong to the stone and brick of st. petersburg’s streets. definitely not its people, no. they had chewed you up and spat you out back out on the streets you were born in like old, tasteless tobacco. the ugly people of this city had decided to abandon you a long time ago. not that it mattered much, you had returned the notion tenfold. you presence in this place was one of absolute control, and its people hated you for it. you didn’t see the point in even trying to hide the fact that you loved power more than trying to do what was good and right for the people. and so, it would not be out of the ordinary for your enemies to want to take out anyone and anything who caught your interest for more than five minutes.

(your lady sings an octave higher.

you swear you see the lights flicker, glass humming in tune to her voice, a translucent, violet tempest roaring around her figure.)

and yet, and yet.

a desperate desire seizes your bones, makes your fingers shake, and you almost drop your cigarette onto your pristine slacks. why are you thinking about this? why now? your solitude had never bothered you before. because your solitude belonged to you. you bathed in it, smothered your skin and lungs with it and called it another name that sounded a lot like salvation. and it was of your own volition that you indulged in it, and it was you who owned it and wielded it like the gun sitting right against your heart.

you think far too much.

you shift uncomfortably in your seat.

but… you would not mind a little piece of yourself belonging to her.

your perfectly pristine columbina.

columbina, who had never seen your face, and never would because she could not see. but that didn’t matter. you would be her eyes, and she could be the voice to sing about all the things your cold heart might have felt a long time ago. she might not know you now, but she would in time. because you wanted her to know you, and you always made sure you got exactly what you wanted. she would be your picture perfect doll living inside your opulent mansion, dripping in crystal jewellery and fur coats and bathing in blood money that you showered her with.

you could give her anything she had ever dreamed of.

not that columbina struck you as the type to want for money or power. you were a good judge of character that way, you had to be in your line of business in order to play the game properly. but… you don’t know what it was exactly that she did desire. columbina’s game of life was obviously going to be very different compared to yours. the things she needed couldn’t compare to yours. you knew that she didn’t struggle all that much for money, but neither did she make a lot. that she had a decently sized and fully furnished apartment, and it took her thirty two minutes to walk from there to the opera house. that she seemed to love what she did for a living, and she seemed to enjoy indulging the whims of those who enjoyed her singing.

hmph! a true artist… she creates for the people.

nevertheless, you still needed to know how she played.

columbina finishes her song, trailing off on a piece about the tragedy of… something or other. murder or love, perhaps both. you can freely admit to yourself that you were not truly listening. you were more transfixed with the way columbina’s lips moved, her dark lashes fluttering against her cheeks, the way you could see her eyes moving beneath her closed lids. you wanted to trace your thumb over her eyelids, kiss each one with a gentleness you didn’t think you possessed anymore.

you put down your cigarette, and clap your hands together twice.

(a vision flashes across your eyes —

of a coffin, made of blackened wood, being lowered into a burnt patch of earth.

the sky is gray, but not weeping.

you do not know if it is yours.)

“bravo!” you exclaim.

and all columbina does is bow, rather solemnly, and asks. “would you like me to sing again?”

this makes you frown.

“no. come down to me here, so i may speak to you more closely.”

she shakes her head. “i must remain on the stage until the performance is over.”

“is that all this is then, only a performance?”

columbina hesitates for a moment, glossy pink lips parting for the words growing behind her tongue. you smile, crossing over your legs and leaning your body back into your chair, ignoring the urge itching behind your fingers to shoot her for disobeying you.

“for you,” is what she settles on, an air of detachment in her voice. “because you wanted me here.”

“and i enjoyed you very much.”

“i’m pleased to hear that.”

“did you not enjoy performing for me, my little damselette?”

you watch the way her breath hitches, how a slight blush spreads across her cheeks, and the way she bites her bottom lip ever so slightly. a grin spreads across your face, and you put out your cigarette.

“o-of course i did.”

“are you sure? your face is one of such unhappiness. perhaps i did not pay you enough for the inconvenience my men caused from rousing you from your bed in the middle of the night.”

“you have paid me more than enough, madam.”

your face falls.

“do not call me that.”

your blood begins to boil.

madam? did she not see you not more than that to her? you thought she had been able to see you as more than who you were. that she had seen beyond all the blood and violence and murder painting your soul black, black, black. you thought she had been smart enough to know better than to treat you like the woman you are.

“how dare?…” you mumble beneath your breath, fingers shaking as you light another cigarette. “fucking.. fuck!”

“i apologise,” columbina says rather coolly, and you wonder if she even really meant it. “i did not mean to cause offence.”

you wave a hand in dismissal that you know she cannot see, thumb rolling against your lighter, and try to focus on coaxing another cheap cigarette to life.

“would you like me to sing another song?”

you huff, closing your eyes and throwing your head back against your seat as you take a long, thick drag. “no.”

“then… how can i make you happy?”

you groan.

a slight tingle spreads between your legs, traveling across your thighs and running down your legs to make your toes curl.

what would make you happy?

the sunlight trickling in through a sheer, white curtain onto your bed, and columbina is there. the rays of light as caressing her bare skin, her pale breasts bare as the blanket slips down her body as she rises from the bed. and she begins to sway to the sound of the voices of angels in her head, tilting her neck each way like a swan, flashing the love bites littering over her skin that you had given the night before. you would smile at her, tell her to come back to bed so you could make love to her again.

(a ghoul cries

on the roofs of st. petersburg —

liar, liar, liar. soon, i shall feast on your belly.)

“columbina hyposelenia.”

for once, you tell the whole truth, and not something covered in a half lie.

she sighs, “but you do not know me. you have only met me twice.”

“i want to,” you say far too quickly, desperately. and then, you ask. “do you want to know me?”

you hate how vulnerable you sound.

oh, how you undo me completely, my angel in white.

“of course i do.”

and then columbina begins to sing again.

your bones begin to melt to the sound of her voice, racing heart slowing down like a train coming up to its final stop. you don’t recognise where this song is from. perhaps it was something of her own making. this time, you make sure to listen to the words.

(foul, foul, foul

words plucked straight from hell itself.

a stone tablet inscribed with all the ways that you shall suffer in the deep, dark depths.

flesh ripped from your bones

from the hands of your enemies and

unholy beings alike.)

you close your eyes again.

you do not see columbina open hers.

you do not see her reach behind her dress. you do not see the gun she has in her hands. you do not see her point it straight at your head with absolute clarity of someone who could not possibly be blind.

oh, my love.

i did not know you could be so—

BANG!

and as the ghoul begins to howl with delight at its feast, the lady in white stares at the hole between your eyes from her place on the stage.

There were never any faces to your clients. They had hands, ringed, tattooed, scarred. Some had suits. Some stank of iron. And they all had guns, or bats, or rusty crowbars and attitudes that were knife edged and brutally coarse. This one is much like the rest. He tells you he was shot in the waist and his voice is static and white noise and discord leaking out of your ears in droves till —

“— will you get moving?! It fucking hurts.”

“Yes.” you choke out. “Yes of course.”

It comes easily to you now, after months of repeating it over and over with varying degrees of perfection and prompt. Find the shrapnel, pull it free, clean the wound, suture it. Find the shrapnel, pull it free, clean the wound, suture it. Find the shrapnel, pull it free, clean the wound, suture it. Find the —

( Your thoughts unravel and they’re a mess in your hands like several bits of coloured petals. The scent has washed away. They almost seem to wither, bit by aching bit. )

You step away. “Done.” you tell the suited man and ask for no payments. Your receptionist does not either when he strides outside and it’s smart because patience was a whim when you reeked of viscera. That brazen naivete was drilled out of her a long time ago ( and you too ) and the rules were set forth, rules that must never be broken. You’d seen too many zipped up body bags scattered in the gutters to dare to. You do not want to be one of them.

( Coward, that spiteful half of you snarls and you know it’s right. )

Only he does reach in and throw some loose notes against the counter. You shuffle up to her, nails crusted with brown and red and count fifty kaas. It’s peanuts. It will do.

You were a doctor.

Or at least you’re certain you were. You’d spent the better part of your decade rooted within a small university where standard IPC dialect was taught as a secondary language and the fans hadn’t been replaced for the last thirty years. It was torture during the summer and the hospital adjacent had patients who spoke in tongues you didn’t quite understand. But you manage. You tried, you graduated.

You were a doctor. Your license reads you specialised in paediatrics. Children were all you needed to deal with, some too loud to listen to their parents' chides for silence. Some so young they were small enough to fit in your desk drawer. Some of them liked to talk too and ask questions during checkups and vaccine appointments ( nerves, you reason and you answer the questions ). It wasn’t much. It was peaceful. It was alright. This is your clinic, something you'd built from sleepless nights and mountains of referral literature.

Then you’d see less children and more of those suited men as the streets grow with a cacophony you can’t call safe after this. The carpet was worn down by blood and heavy footfalls, over the thread work and your mother’s faded name in the bottom.

You weren’t treating children anymore.

Still, you hold it together. This is yours, all of this. This is yours and it's a feeling locked away in your beating heart.

When the man returns — and you know it’s him because the birth mark on his hands were hauntingly similar — he brings company. The company in itself would have seemed unassuming, and they were, lingering by the doors speaking in words too fast to comprehend till the gunfire rang out and the windows shattered.

A part of you is thankful that it’s so late, where the streets are silent and the bustle is calm. The files you were rearranging fall to the floor. You duck beneath your desk and stay there, enclosed within tumult, within chaos, within something you wanted no part of ( and you grip your hands tight, quietly wondering if that persistent cat would be fed, if your father would care to know what happened to you ).

You hear glass break, fall, fall and hit the floor with a sadistic sort of tinkling.

You hear frantic footsteps thundering up by the door.

You hear the screaming.

( You hear your heartbeat. You want it to stop. )

Something crashes into the storeroom. It was large, heavy, clothed and it let out a strangled cry before iron clogs up your nose and heat and cold fizzles up and hammers into every crevice and pore and turns your chest inside out. The man tries to shift, to get up and out of the way, shoulders knocking against the shelves in panic that feels painfully palpable. He’s crying. You see that when you bundle into a corner, eyes burning.

His body jerks and is dragged to the door.

“Don’t,” he begs till the desperation chokes his reasoning and it meters into panicked threats. “You’ll be torn apart by this, I swear, you’ll be hunted down — ”

He’s pulled at again, his limp form slipping out of sight. You hear a sick sound — a squelch, the dripping of blood and viscera and the gamey crack of bones. Your teeth dig into your cold fingers. The stinging is numbed, dim and distant, while you press against the wall and try not to wail.

There is only a single set of footsteps now. It paces like a starved animal, like a caged beast. Leave, your thoughts scramble and correct themselves. Just leave. And it repeats, over and over like a maddening chant. Please leave, leave, leave. The footsteps stop at the door followed by a slow scrape against marble. A shadow falls over the doorway. That’s when you see him.

You think he could have been pretty. But there's terror beneath that veil of frozen numbness. You don’t think he’s pretty now, when he’s stalking into the room, bloodied sword in hand ( it’s mired and cracked and mended like kintsugi but twisted and terrible ). He walks like a man who’d been broken and sewn together and he reeks of death and a sickening sweetness.

His gaze meets yours for that fleeting moment.

( it felt like that throbbing helplessness. Of everything going wrong. )

One of the suited men had not died. Not yet, in some inane act of stubbornness. He’s tackled down immediately and you flinch back and finally scream, watching the writhing pile of bodies smack each other down with ease. The swordsman ends it. There’s a chilling disparity in strength with how his bare hands tear into flesh and rips his opponent’s arm off. He’s laughing, laughing like a madman and the insane hysteria sparks a primal instinct nestled in your mind.

You’re moving before you realise it, when you spot his fingers twitch for his fallen sword. Your hands close around metal. You’re surging forward, taut at the edges. That part of you screams into the void, stripping away morality, reason, the simpler parts of shame that could have stopped you then and there.

When your fractured mind pieces together and lets the spinning room rest into clinical stillness, you’re aware of the hysterical laughter that man trembles into. He slumps against your legs, weighted, boneless. He’s still laughing, like the world had whispered a funny joke into his ear and left him to rot.

The dislodged pole slips out of your hands. You watch him crumple down onto the floor, staining the tiles. A swing, a hit to the back of his head, a break to the vertebral artery, a medullary haemorrhage, a stroke, neuron death —

You spend the next hour tucked away in that storeroom, watching the swordsman’s body convulse, then his breathing still and his body run cold.

II. NEWLY DECEASED

Once upon a time, you told yourself that you could get by. You could get by and let yourself think you were a good person despite the ugly cracks tucked away and the bated disappointment breathing down your neck. It’s the human experience, a conditioned way of convincing yourself, a way you wish to live in the quieter corners of you.

It’s a lie. A lie. A lie.

The body does not move, as dead bodies usually do. As a frame of reference, dead bodies don’t do much to begin with. You stand back up and feel nausea coat the back of your throat, then wordlessly stumble to the man. Your fingers press against his pulse. Nothing.

A part of you wants to laugh at yourself for hoping.

The police take it all away. They don’t know what you did. Or maybe they do and care so little they swat that detail aside. Death is so natural here, so common and where is the sympathy for the damned when the damned were everywhere and your kindness wears thin?

( You’re left to pick up the pieces. The cracked photo frames, the toys and magazines salvaged, the bowl of tamarind candy tipped over. Bits and pieces gathered together and sewn back together. There was a heart in these walls. The pain was always there, but a dogged part of you loves this place. )

You answer what questions were asked and let them walk away, knowing they’ll do nothing about the situation to begin with. They never do. Most policemen were tucked up in the pockets and played dogs to gang members. Some lost themselves to apathy. Money could buy loyalty in droves. It was an open secret.

You get back home and let the hot water run into your bucket. You feed the visiting cat. You wipe the counters down and unearth some food from the previous night. You turn the water off. You bathe. You eat.

( “I’m fine.” you lie to Aleena when she calls you, frantic, scared. More frantic and scared than you present yourself to be. You don't tell her you’re a murderer.

“I don’t think you should go back tomorrow. I’m not saying this to get off of work or anything but after all that?” she falls silent.

“Maybe. But I need to keep the income coming in somehow.” )

Walking into the bedroom feels harder than it should. Lead bleeds into muscle as you patter along and try to keep yourself steady against the walls. For a moment, you stop and lean your forehead against it and tell yourself not to cry ( because cowards cry, and idiots cry and it was a pointless endeavour anyway because nothing — nothing about this would change ). Your degree falls into your line of sight, framed up against the wall.

You are a doctor. You are a doctor. You are a doctor.

That guilt knocks you in the knees. The guilt, the disgusted guilt that comes from killing a man.

( It’s engulfing, like tar and cloth pressed up against your face. The breathlessness, the storm rattling against the window, the messiness of it all. You’re screaming at the pillow. You’re clawing at it. You swipe till your arm bleeds and the cacophony dies down. )

The veneer shatters and the frame is clenched and thrown to the floor. The casing cracks. You heave, look at the mess at your feet and think to yourself :

What were those eight years for?

You killed a man.

You killed a man.

You killed a man.

A gasp tears through. It's painful, heavy and it's glass and shrapnel. The voice in your head whispers. Nothing. It's all for nothing.

Another one crackles through the muffled distortion, straining and rattling. A clear “I told you so.” grating past the chaos, disappointed, smug, knowing.

You shut your eyes and dream of jasmine and marigolds.

( You listened to Aleena when you passed the register and took a day off in the end. It’s the one kindness you let yourself have.

You did not eat for most of the day. Your gut gnaws. Your limbs feel weak. But food, as delicious as the thought seemed, invoked a visceral response. Of corpses and blood and things that you thought yourself too far removed to disgust you. A caved in skull did all this. A caved in skull made you retch and empty your stomach out into the toilet.

You think you deserve it. )

Your watchman stops you when you head back out again a few days later for a grocery run. "Are you alright?" he asks, peering through sleep. The cat curls round his legs and he gives it a gentle pat. You can hear the content purr it lets out from where you stand, and you venture a little closer.

"A little." you reply, smiling a little. The watchman tilts his head in consideration. You'd lost count of how long he's been here. Some of the older tenants mention he'd settled in over a decade ago, when the building still had four floors instead of five and a little more space to park out back.

"You still seem scared is all." he glances over at you again. It's the worry in his furrowed brow that makes you give pause. He reminded you of your grandfather then, strong jawed, stern eyed before that softness pervades through when he'd let you scoot over next to him to sneak a look at the newspaper ( cricket scores and stock prices were all he looked at. And the Sudoku ) .

You shift in place, tugging at the hem of your jacket. "It was a little jarring. The sudden attack, that is." you admit. You don't tell him about the death, the way deceitful monsters do.

The watchman shakes his head. "Horrible thing to go through, I agree. Especially for one as young as you." The cat slinks pat his legs and under the bed. he leans forward, tire heaving at his bones and his joints. A decade. One would assume he'd retire at this point given his age. "Try not to let it wear down on you, is all."

"It's easier said then done." You mumble.

"It is." the watchman snorts. "I told my daughter about you though. She's taking medicine too…Oncology. I scraped together every Kaas I had to pay her tuition fee off." he flexes his arthritic hands. You keep listening, that sliver of curiosity winning out. "She hasn't met you…but she knows about your clinic. The children you're helping…suited men aside. It gives her a bit of spark at least. So you keep going too."

You feel gutted, eyes stinging a bit. He puts too much faith in you, you realise. But there is a small touch of warmth against the rattling cold. "Thanks…" you nod. The watchman leans back.

Keep going. What a mess, really.

You return to your clinic, the day after. You decide it's the last time you'd let reckless hope bar the instinctive tearing in your gut.

There is a woman sitting on the waiting room chairs with a dangerous smile. She’s dressed well, like those elegant omen-bringers or dapper businessmen. She’s dressed like the coming consequences and it’s there, that sadistic delight, hidden behind that lazy tilt to her head.

“Good morning.” she greets, like she hadn't broken into your clinic. “Hope we’re not intruding.”

You look to her companion next to her.

The dead man ( and he was dead. He was supposed to be — you were certain ) stares right back.

“Do you have anything to drink?”

“There’s a coffee machine…”

“Hm, never mind. I was never too fond of the instant stuff. What do you think Bladie?”

'The man named ‘Bladie’ does not respond. You’d have laughed a little — if your nerves weren't frayed. You’d have laughed over a silly, inconsequential nickname slapped onto some scary looking man, then gone on your way. But the scary looking man was a murderer. And you were certain, so certain, that he was dead.

( His blood coated your hands days ago. You can’t have imagined it — not something so innately ingrained within your psyche like some sadistic firebrand.

How is he alive? How is he alive?! Why is he — )

“I could pick up some tea.” you suggest, because playing meek was the way of a coward and you were that in the end. You still had to open your clinic in another half hour. There are still parts of the storeroom that need cleaning and a window that needs replacing. The woman laughs. She looks at you like you were an adorable specimen. A pet…or perhaps a bug to be stepped on.

( It’s a cruel sort of beauty that edges her face. You’d hate to admit you were staring a little longer than you should be. )

“There’s no need for that.” she looks to the side for a moment. “Bladie was here a few days ago, you know.” you flinch, perhaps knowing the ugly scene to follow. “Got into a bit of a tussle. Of course, I wasn’t worried…he’s got a knack for seeing things through, you know…” She’s staring straight at you now. “And he’s good at not dying, one could say.”

“That’s nice.” you mumble, shifting uncomfortably. Your cheeks are cold. Don’t look at me, you try to tell the should-have-been-dead swordsman. Like that would have worked ( he keeps staring ).

The woman continues. “It's funny though. After that affair at your clinic, I had to pick Blade up at some hospital’s morgue of all places. Quite the detour if you ask me.”

You still.

She knows.

Fuck. She knows.

“I…I see.” you play into stupidity, wring your hands a bit and force a far away smile. “I wonder how that happened.”

“Yes.” she nods, solemnly flicking dust off of her velvet coat. The playful lilt to her tone is back, delicately poking and prodding away and you feel the walls close in bit by bit. You can see the man tilt his head. You want to disappear. “I’d think you know though…so how about you tell us?”

You don’t look at her. You can’t, with that horror filtering through and spotting your vision.

“Now….listen to me.” she stands, saunters up to you and you stay rooted. Your mind fogs over with cotton wool and the aftertaste of wine blooms through your mouth. There is consideration there, her pointedly dragging her eyes across your figure and taking a sick pleasure in the fear that trembles at your fingertips. A tiny part of you that still remains too torturously aware recoils. “Were you the one who killed Bladie?”

“Yes.” you reply and it isn’t you. You wouldn’t have said that. You wouldn’t have.

Her lips curl. “How did you kill him?”

“I hit him on the back of his neck.”

Her face glows. “Good girl.” she pats your cheek. “We have a favour to ask you. How about you hear us out?”

She gives your shoulders a squeeze and you’re gasping for air. “That wasn’t so hard.” she grins. The cotton wool strangles and is caught at the edges, whisping, grasping, stubbornly trying to stay. You still pull at it incessantly while you back away from her touch. It burns. What did she do to you? What did she fucking do to you —

You’re pulled closer. It’s just a tug, a simple coil of her fingers round your arm. “I’m sorry.” you blurt out. “I’m sorry. I never meant it.” There are cracks against the surface, a spiderweb and it keeps going and going and going the more you talk ( you need to shut up ).

“There there.” She coos. “How about we sit down, hm? Bladie, think you could make some space?”

You don’t want to sit down with them. You try to pull back, to run because that’s what you should have done in the first place; instead of entertaining a pair of strangers with that stupid, naive hope of safety. She pulls back. Bladie catches your wrist when you try to squirm free and you’re half dragged onto the seat between them. “Honestly. A drink would have been nice. Oh don’t worry. I could hardly blame you for that.”

The woman fixes her sleeve. “I take it you don’t know who we are?”

“No.” you admit.

“Ah. the IPC influence here isn't as deep, huh? I heard there was an overhaul a few decades ago. The revolt drove most of them out…I wouldn’t count on it staying that way.” She passes you a measured flash of her teeth. It’s all good manners and etiquette you can’t return. “But we’re not here to talk politics. I’d like you to babysit Blade for a while.”

Blade seems to be expecting it. He does not mirror your dismayed shock.

“Why — ”

“Can’t say. It’s all a part of some very important work.” She holds a finger to her lips. “Would you be a lamb and do it?”

You grip at the metal armrests hard. The room is a blurred scape, a watered down stain ( ink tracked against damp paper ). “I won’t.”

“Come now. After that stunt you pulled with him, it’s the least you could do.”

It settles hard. “I told you I didn’t mean it.” you snap. “I didn’t mean to kill him. I didn’t mean to kill you.” Your unravelling seeps into something dangerous. You try to step back. To keep it together. It tangles, knots, frays and snaps and tangles again and the foundations crumble. You cannot think despite the clarity slowly creeping and the fog metering out. You cannot think because the man you killed is alive and right next to you and dead men don’t just come back to life.

The woman forces you to turn her way. “You didn't mean it?” she repeats, inquisitive, amused. “Doctor please, any normal person would have gone for the head. You made a very calculated move there…and I'm sure that pretty little brain of yours knows the consequences that come with it.”

It’s a coveted part of you that dies there, withering, burning, clipped away and cast aside and you shake your head as you’re retrained. “Don’t touch me!” you scream. “Don’t touch me!”

Because humanity despises the naked truths in the world. They’ll deny, deny, deny what stares them in the face for those fleeting, selfish little comforts skewed in ignorance. Better the downy coverlet to the thin blanket, better the sweeter lie that bitter sincerity. You’re no different. Not really. You’re not different at all.

And that woman was not a liar.

III. DISTENSION

Aleena doesn’t take well to a strange man lurking within the backrooms. Her eyes always flit to the doors and her shoulders stay tense as she directs a few straggling patients to the waiting room and updates their details into the salvaged computers. “I don’t like the look in his eye.” she whispers hurriedly. “Doctor. Have you seen him?”

“Yes . I have.” you reply simply. “Could you pull up the files from a month ago? We have a follow up due today.”

She hums, and you nod to the messy clattering from the keyboard. “He’s not from here, is he? His clothes aren’t local.” her voice dips. “Is he an outworlder?”

“Yes.” You flit through a case history. The ink has run a bit, the edges flicked a dirty red. Bile and acid sears the edges of your mouth. You don’t think throwing up here and now would be professional. And your receptionist has a very nice shawl on. “Have the police called?” you add, helplessly rubbing away at the browned stains.

“You know they won’t.” she clicks her tongue, wrinkling her nose to the injustice of it all. You bite back your tired humour. She might descend into an angry little ramble then curse those men in three different tongues. You were guilty of listening in ( it’s amusing, and she had plenty of anger for the two of you, and then some more for the smaller things ). “They’re too busy sipping cha at the local angadi.”

She keeps tap tapping away. “Do you want me to send a soft copy? Or will you directly look into the logs?”

You cease flipping through the files. “Just send me a PDF.” you mutter. “You still have a few cases to input from yesterday right? I won’t hold you up.” Another report is pushed your way. Two more patients, two more medical histories to pore over. The throbbing in your forehead is incessant and stubbornly clinging on.

Gang activity in your neighbourhood has stifled from its initial raucous to a cautious thrum. There were still glimpses and the ignored nods, and that delicate rope-work still standing strong despite men from their brackets dying some terrible death. They don’t suspect you. It would be stupid to ( because you could hardly hold a gun in their eyes, or fight back. Your claws are chipped and your fangs blunted. It’s not a mystery ).

It does not stop the occasional loitering goon up front as parents grow a little braver and a little more desperate to bring their sick children in.

You settle with your work email, tapping your foot against the faint buzz from the streets outside and the waiting area. There is the occasional loud call. Kids being kids, shushed by mothers and fathers with warnings of naughty ones being fed the nastiest medicines for bad behaviour. You’re not cruel enough to do so maliciously, but it quiets them down amidst the worried ogling.

A ping pulls you from sinking further into your pit of thoughts. The document pops up in your inbox and Aleena slows her typing to two finger taps. “Can I take a week off?” She pipes up, nervously picking at her fingers. “Next month, that is.”

“For the agelu?” you guess, a new sort of weariness settling. “I suppose you can.”

Aleena stifles away a relieved smile followed by a : “You're not going?” She looks a little surprised, then lets her eyes sweep across the clinic. “I mean…yeah I guess you won't, given the state things are in right now…”

You wince. Your father had sent a text in. He asks for you, in his own, distant way. Maybe he misses you. Maybe you miss him beneath the hurt and the anger. But feelings were messy, scary things and it was better to look away and stick your head into papers and books and words that could be read. “I’m not sure.” is the soft admission. “It's a little early, I think, for me to make a proper decision.”

( Going home feels like a fever dream now. You’d almost come to loathe the smell of marigold and incense smoke. )

That and you can't be certain if Kafka would pick your guest up any time soon. She never gave you a timing, or any sense of clarity and control in this mad scramble. Blade was to lurk in his little window in the backrooms with all the year-old files for as long as he should.

“Besides.” You finish with a hint of good humour. “I'll take full responsibility for any ancestral hauntings after. Maybe my great grandmother could make a nice home on my couch.”

Aleena purses her lips. It’s says enough. A little more if you squint hard.

“Okay that wasn’t very funny.” you admit.

“No. It wasn’t.” She tilts her head sympathetically, pressing the pads of her fingertips to the edge of the desk, half pushing up against hardwood and paper. “I have plenty to say…but you’re my boss and that would be unprofessional.”

You bite back that twitch to your lips. “A wise choice. Take care of yourself now…and don’t forget about the rest of the reports.”

Primal fear rear its ugly head and scrapes at the bars when you meet Blade’s gaze.

“I have two patients due in the next hour.” you manage to pull out, turning your heel immediately after. Any inch for a quick escape, really. “So don’t come out. You’ll scare them.” you add for good measure, like he’s a child himself, or a feisty dog muzzled and chained up.

( The kind of dogs who bite at anything and everything. The kind who quietly bare their teeth at cruel hands and kind. You aren’t certain of Blade’s stance here and now, if he was pleased with his arrangements — stuck in a room too small for him, with someone who clearly didn't want him here.

Because you don’t. There’s something about you and your face and the way it’s a traitor. It gives away your thoughts, your heart, the things you want to keep tucked away at the back but seep under the doors and stain the carpets. And your displeasure seeing him is on full display.

His corpse comes to mind. Still, dead, cold took the touch with the beginnings of rigour mortis settling when he was hauled over the stretcher and wheeled away. )

He says nothing back, unsurprisingly. He didn’t even bother speaking out as much when Kafka came in and dropped him off with all the unceremonious sneaking and threatening. You think he’ll carry on with his silence, letting whatever this delicate little semblance of distant amiability stay within its stagnant state. An untouched web.

You turn. Keep walking. You really don't want him here, you think miserably. The paradoxical warmth in his body now, when for a moment there was none. His gaze, unsettlingly intense. You don’t want him here at all.

Still, you turn once more. You speak. “Is there anything else you need?” be polite. Be polite.

Blade considers it. He looks at you. You fool yourself into believing the hunger simmering beneath harsh vermilion does not exist.

“No…” he finally relents. His voice is coarse, heavy, the whisper of a growl.

( You leave faster than you should have. )

He follows you home after the day is done ( you wish he didn’t ).

Blade keeps you within his line of sight — just within reach and just close enough to feel that faint prickle of body heat against the back of his neck. It’s an uncomfortable itch. It’s unwelcome. So you turn your head back to his silent figure and test your fingers against your bicep.

“Could you walk in front of me?” you ask.

Blade seems to consider it. “No.” he finally decides with finality edging every word. “You might run.”

“I don’t think you’d let me get very far to begin with.” you mutter under your breath. His footsteps are heavy, kicking aside loose concrete you avoid. Blade still stays an unwanted spectre behind you, treading in a way that is too soft to be human.

“I won’t.” he agrees, sounding sure of himself. Bored even. There is a scuffing sound, cloth against cloth. You’re tense again, anticipatory ( and yet, you don't dare to look back, to look at him ). “It saves inconvenience. That is all.”

You decide you’d like to be an inconvenient annoyance. That should drive him back to wherever he came from.

“I still don't think you should walk behind me though.” You repeat. Your fingers curl. You wish you had a taser. Your last bottle of pepper spray was spent as is on a few other thugs the past couple months. “You look like a creep. And a stalker. You might mug me.”

“I won't.”

“How do I know that?” You keep rambling, hysteria trickling down. It's a leaky tap, that anxious mess in your chest.

Blade blinks. “Kafka told me not to.” ( like it was the most obvious thing. You might be imagining the heavy condescension oozing through ).

That does not make you feel better. Kafka seems as reliable as a tsunami, or a flood, or any natural hazard creeping into its first few stages of utter destruction. It shows on your face, that muted mix of disbelief and horror. Blade's gaze is sharp, not quite the disconnected distance it held before. Kafka was suffocating as is but blade feels like rubble bearing down, down, down. You hate it.

“And it would be pointless, trying.” He continues. “Killing you would change nothing.”

You wordlessly rub at your knuckles, at the pulled skin of your hand. You do not talk to him for the rest of the walk. You should be more polite, you tell yourself. Be more polite. You killed this man, watched him die as his brain slowly collapsed in on itself. The least you could do after those fifteen and a half dumpster fires is extend some basic human decency, right? Be polite.

A scream ringing out gives you another thing to focus on. They're normal to hear, even as it wrenches open your viscera and leaves something sick on your tongue. It continues, growing increasingly hysterical, then stops.

( You almost run for the source, You want to. You do not. )

By the time you slip into the parking lot of the apartment and head for the elevator, you’re half hurrying Blade along. There’s nothing glamorous about the place — a standard five storey tall building just like the other projects lining most lower middle class neighbourhoods. The watchman was found out back, half passed out from his shift and stinking of beedi smoke, leaving the dog that frequented the neighbour's doors to rip into any intruders.

You don't think Blade is wholly impressed as he nudges at him with his foot. The watchman jolts with a huff and a startled snore, then passes out, head lolling to the side a little. The dog does not bark, simply trotting up to accept a few pats on the head. And indignant annoyance flares up. You sharply tug at the hem of his sleeve.

Blade jolts. The vermilion of his stare burns you.

"Leave him alone." you warn, giving his sleeve another tug for good measure. Blade's lips purse, his displeasure a quiet shift on his face for the most part, burying away immediately into the corners and crevices where things were never brought up again. "I hope you like cats." you add. "I have one who visits sometimes. She's a terror and a half…"

He grunts, stepping to the side as you fiddle with your keys, pulling away the string from your key chain and getting your door open. It’s a welcome ritual, feeling the cool breeze from your apartment filter in after a while. The cat is passed out on the balcony floor, cracking open a single yellow eye in greeting when you shuffle forth to take a peek.

“Hello, pretty girl.” you coo, feeling that heavy warmth in your arms and the softness of her fur against your palms. It eases you just enough to face Blade again.

Be polite, you tell yourself because you killed him, because he could snap your neck in two, because you think that the last thing you need is pissing off a pair of seeming psychos. “You won’t mind tea, right?”

Blade leans against the wall, maybe trying to make himself as small as possible within the cloistered rooms. “It’s a waste.” he replies, ignoring everything else; the hum from the streets below, the occasional flicker from the lights, the cat settling on the couch and sleeping an arm’s length away.

“Okay.” you mumble and set down two cups anyway.

You do not like Blade’s silence. His silence means he’d rather think about something and him thinking could involve certain death. There is a disturbed sheen glossing over his gaze. He does not look wholly there, the less he talks. Most conversions your parents had with guests were about the weather, then delving headfirst into some obscure gossip about a family three kilometres away.

Another fleeting glance at Blade has you reason that he’s not one for gossip.

( You let this silence settle in. It’s still a suffocating thing, an unwanted presence and an unwelcome guest. You think of the suited men and the gangs amok in the dirty corners and you think the silence looks like them. )

“So…our first meeting wasn’t…wholly ideal.” You speak up after a while, handing him his tea. Blade looks vaguely surprised when he takes it. “I don’t think ‘ideal’ would be the right word for it…”

“You killed me.”

You swallow. “Yes.” your voice shakes. “I killed you.” Your legs are drawn a little closer to you before you talk and you lower your voice, all that shame and guilt subduing the last bits of that cocktail of fear and tumult and annoyance. “I’m sorry for killing you. Even if you’re still alive…somehow…it wasn’t the best course of action, to be fair — ”

Blade’s lips twitch. He takes a sip of his tea, letting you stew there with your fumbling, your shame. It still goes unspoken. That damning ‘how are you still alive’. You don’t bother asking it. He can’t stay dead — Kafka said so herself. The very notion feels like an existential terror moulded to the shape of a man and you want it to stay far away from it.

“Four days.” he finally utters out, inspecting the last bit of tea staining the bottom of his cup. “I was dead for four days.”

Oh. Oh that stung.

“I’m sorry.” your voice cracks and your eyelids start to prickle. Stupid. Stupid stupid, you curse at yourself, claw at the offending load inside.

Blade snaps his head towards you. There is a twitch in his hands, slow, dog-like in the way strays jolt in alarm. You do not comment on it, awkwardly pressing at the surface of your cup while the tears are quickly wiped away and smudged against your cheeks. There's no use crying over it, you scold yourself. Grow a spine.

“Spare yourself the pity. It is not an uncommon occurrence.” is his uncomfortable dismissal. The words are nonchalant and his forehead crinkles to match the perplexed hitch to his shoulders. He probably wants to say more, speak more, tear you apart. Or he was just too put off by how pathetic you are.

“You’ve been killed before?”

“Yes.”

Horror stirs deep in your gut and a small sliver of morbid fascination shunting beneath the murky waters and glimmering up in those seconds of resurfacing.

( Can he not die? He’s still here after dying from a stroke. Does he regenerate? How does he do that? Do his cells simply have a faster metabolism? That means his neurons can too despite their limited replication in most normal people. Does he — )

The tear tracks are drying. Your face feels stiff.

“I was trying to protect myself.” you even talk like a guilty person ( it does not help. It’s subdued, the way you speak. Beaten down, half hearted. You wonder if you even want to protect yourself at all ). You don’t want to look at him anymore.

“I don’t blame you.” he replies. It’s soft, missable, sympathetic and you know that can’t be the case. Blade blinks slowly, setting his cup aside. “Would you do it again?” he asks solemnly. His hands twitch again, out of its usual bent stiffness. Beneath the dim lighting, the paleness of his skin is a corpse like macabre; greyish, sallow. He seems starved. “Would you kill me?”

Your lips part. Bile and acid burn your throat. You shut it again and shake your head and the desperation, you assume, is enough. No, no never again. You don’t want that nausea. You don’t want any more of the griping aches in your stomach and the incessant pound of your capillaries.

Blade straightens up and gives you a long, thoughtful look. He steps back and returns to his stony silence without a word. The air is restive, poisonous in how it melts away the peace.

You really should pray to that nameless god, to soften that blow. You really should pray because nothing good ever comes out of this. There’s that brush of scale against your foot, the shrinking courage when faced with dour vermilion. It’s wolfish; its jaws bear down. The cat cracks open an eye again, letting out an annoyed mewl.

No, never mind that.

IV. EXUDATION OF BLOOD

You should have prayed. The questionable existence of a god or not, maybe you'd have given yourself that tiny bit of assurance.

Even your ancestors would have done well enough. What would your grandmother say?

( Her old spirit's possibly disowned you, if she hasn’t already. She must have burned your seat in the afterlife and spat on the ashes. Bringing a man into your home, no matter the circumstance would have incited all the wrong reactions. )

You learn quick enough that Blade never sleeps. The third night after spent between lurking within the stuffy storage space and wedged next to old folders, you’d spotted him sitting upon the couch in the middle of the night. “What are you doing—” you croak out after the initial scream. He scrutinised you with clinical indifference, sweeping over your bare legs to your face. You tamp down the urge to pull your shirt down, cheeks burning.

“Thinking.” he says. There is no further elaboration to it. Blade turns to peer outside your window and the dead streets below. There is a faint echo of the strays barking trailing behind the occasional hum of a passing car. Your little town was far sleepier than the cities, where the traffic continues on, long past the morning calls and the reedy music from 24-hour bars.

“You scared me for a moment.” you purse your lips, picking at your hands. Blade blinks. “I mean, you're just standing there.” You try to justify it, fumbling a bit and coming across as far more slow than anything else. Blade tugs at his sleeve and smoothens over the damp spots.

“I'm not trying to kill you.” he reasons.

You dig your thumb down into the thicker skinned parts of your palm. It reeks of iron. He always reeks of iron. “Startled me, then. I thought you were asleep.”

Blade considers it. “I do not need sleep. Not more than what is necessary.”

Uneasiness filters in. Your throat bobs with it, unsure. “Everyone needs sleep.” you stumble out. Blade shifts, tracing along his nape with a purposeful look. His regeneration. Yes, his regeneration. Tissue rest and repair would be unnecessary with that, wouldn't it? Sleep, food perhaps, the little necessities taken for granted — peeling that away and pulling back the blinds to peer down that gaping hole, it's strange.

The grislier parts of his curse seemed to strip away those human needs. It likes to gnaw out any sense of humanity from his bones, in fact, scavenging away the bare ligaments and swallowing it whole.

“So…you’re just going to stay there then...” .

“Yes.”

Blade’s shoulders are set into its perpetual hunch. There’s something unfettered about him, roiling within deeper confines with a sense of wildness and entropy. You take your cautious step back and steel the nerves you have left ( there aren’t many to begin with — you still try ). It’s far from the moodiness he usually holds himself with and the cyclical introspection. “Could you be less…disturbing, then…?” you ask.

Silence. “Disturbing.” he echoes, tasting every breadth of the word on his tongue. You feel metal coming to rest in your mouth and dig into the insides of your cheeks. There’s a flicker from the apartment across and sterilised white shines upon the side of his face. He looks worn down, worse for wear. The darkened spots on his clothes are dyed red round his torso and dried blood crests across the rim of his fingernails. Red. Red on his clothes. Red on the floor. Red on your couch. Red —

“Did you leave this room?” it’s not a question. You’re not asking questions.

“No.”

You don't quite realise it, the scrambling and the frantically locked doors till the cold nip from your room settles against your skin and your shaky hand holds up your phone. It takes a moment for the buzzing numbness to fade to a tumultuous undercurrent and for you to dial down that emergency contact, seconds away from calling —

— a notification.

It's an unlisted contact, and a single message.

Unknown. I wouldn't do that if I were you.

A moment of pause. You don't move, balking at the sight of it.

Unknown. There's a good girl. I hope Bladie isn't giving you any trouble. If he's made a mess, just help him get cleaned up, please.

You. Is this Kafka?

Unknown. Look at you playing detective! That's cute. It is, by the way.

You. How did you get my number..

Unknown. Oh I have my ways. And I wouldn’t call the police. I can’t say I’ll stay quiet and pin the blame on you. It would be easy, hiding a few bodies in your storeroom. I like Bladie, you know. Can’t have him getting arrested and all.

It feels like you’re grasping at ice, with the way it feels cold. Cold, so cold and uncomfortably harsh against your cheeks. You want to tear into something, into your pillow, into yourself. You want to throw your phone across the room and scream till your lungs are hoarse. You want to call the police anyway and shove that into Kafka’s face. You want to cast them out into some forgettable void and be done with this fear and this painful grip in your stomach and…

…you do none of that.

Some small defeated part of you whispers its comfort. You ignore it, cast it aside, call it a fool. You’re gutless, maybe a little brainless and honestly, you half consider going back to your hometown and — no. You will not think about that. Not now. Not ever. You broke that life apart, stepped over the fragments and let your bloodied footsteps lead you here. All that hurt is not worth the quiet defeat.

The door creaks open. You peer back out at Blade. “Sorry…” you mumble. He glances up at you. “I just…i was shocked…there’s blood all over you.” You think about what you should say next. You chose your words carefully. “Did you…”

You don’t get to finish. Blade leans back and shakes his head. “I did not kill anyone.” A wry little tug twitches at his lips. “Not now at least.”

It takes a tentative step, then another for you to exit the room completely. Blade doesn’t look bothered, content in his solitude where sits. You look down at the tiled floor trying to summon forth whatever blind insanity you had. It takes a special sort for this, for this specifically where the cracks fissure into the sides and down down down to the foundations. “What happened?”

“Nothing.” A lie. There’s blood on him for crying out loud.

Still, you do not pry. “Should I…” you stop. It takes some struggle, reaching down deep and wrenching the words out into something stringed and legible. “Do you want to clean up?” you offer softly, motioning to the bathroom. “Just…a shower, I guess. I can get those washed.. Blood’s really hard to get off after all and they’re nice clothes…from my personal experience at least…”

Blade watches you, tilting his head a bit. He does look a little like a dog now, one with a wrinkled muzzle and dark, serious eyes. “Fine.” he relents after some consideration, impassively getting to his feet. He follows you to the bath, delicately sidestepping your frame to enter. You let the water heat before letting it run into the bucket, offering him a pitcher and some soap.

“You’ll have to make do with the towel…I might have some spare blankets around.” you add, because you will not have a naked man walking around your house. There’s so much your ancestors might allow at this point. This would be toeing the line from possibly being dragged into the afterlife.

He spares a grunt in response while bandages come undone. You chew against the inside of your cheek, inhaling stale metal and collecting blotched brown linen from him. He’s hesitant, letting you close, but it takes a quick turn of his wrist for you to pick out the worst of his wounds. These ones do not heal away the rawness and the sick pink of flesh. These ones still bleed.

“Can you manage?” you peep out. Blade stares at his hand, at yours grasping his.

“Yes,” he says after a while. His fingers brush against the inside of your palm as you let him go, and you take that shaky step out of the bath, leaving behind a clean roll of bandages and antiseptic at the door.

V. PUTREFACTION

The woman beside you looks tired, worn away at the eyes and around the edges of her face. “Stay still.” she whispers hurriedly, stuffing her phone back into her purse as she gathers the skirts of her seere.

The boy on the bed does not stay still, tapping his fingers away at his lap as you shoot him a reassuring smile. There’s plenty of nervous energy stuffed away in the cracks and crevices of that tiny body of his, and it barely abates with the ticking second hand from your analog clock. “Are you nervous?” you offer, taking a knee beside him. The boy purses his lips, brown eyes focused wholly onto the floor below.

“No.” he decides to be brave and squares his shoulders up. You appreciate the effort as you press at the inside of his arm.

“That’s nice.” you nod. “But it’s okay to be scared sometimes. I know how scary needles can be.”

“I’m not scared.” he insists. He challenges you, looks at you dead in the eye with the most determination he could pluck away at his reserves and gather together. “Last week I chased a ghost away from my room. I turned the lights on and screamed at it.”

You crack a smile. “Is that so? Did it try to come inside?” you entertain the thought, poke away at his imagination till you find the faint blue of a vein. You see how his mother bows her head down, looking a little sick. The boy doesn’t seem to catch on in the way his eyes light up and he draws himself up. You don;t think she wants him to see. Sometimes there are instances where you see parents squirrelling away those bits of childish innocence like uncut diamonds; biting down at grimy hands that try to snatch it away.

You cannot fault her for wanting him to be happy. He was only four.

“Yeah. I was all GRAAAAAHHHH’!” you flinch at his spirited demonstration. He’s pleased with the audience and the invoked emotion as his mother winces and tries to pull at his ear to keep him quiet. It’s too late given his excitement, ducking down to continue his babbling. “And it went ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH’! Then it left and I went to see if amma and appa were alright. They were and I hugged them to make them feel better.”

“That is brave.” you nod. “You be careful out there, okay? Don’t stop hugging your amma and appa. I’m sure they love your hugs.”

“After this, can I have the chocolate at the desk?” he asks, batting his lashes. He flashes you a cherubic grin, and you might have caught yourself smiling a little wider. It’s a rare instance of silly happiness after the mounting strain on your shoulders and the urge to rip your eyes out bloody and raw. “The one in the big bowl.” he adds for clarity; because adults, he might be thinking, needed plenty of that.

You look over your shoulder to the door with a thoughtful little hum. “It’s not chocolate. It’s tamarind candy. The sweet kind. But it’s sour too.” You admit. “Do you still want some?”

The boy draws his lips back. “I’d still like some. I like tammy-rind.”

“Well, listen to your amma and stay still, okay?” he does, his small hand reaching out to grasp at her seere’s pallu. She holds her hand out and he takes it, tugging at her fingers, then her thumb as the nervousness slowly trickles in and scrunches away at his brow and nose. “Don’t get all stiff. Deep breath in…deep breath out. You can tell me about things you like if it helps…what games do you like playing?”

“I like football.” he offers. “My cousins say I'm a baby so I can't play with them. But I'll grow big and tall one day and I will kick their legs and show them.”

“Don’t start there.” his mother warns. “You’re not kicking anyone.”

The boy makes a face just as you give him his shot, then yelps a moment at the pin prick. His eyes squeeze shut for a second, his grip white knuckled till you finally pull the needle out and pat his cheek. “Done. That’s his DTP vaccine done with. He’ll need to get his booster next year as well so keep a reminder on for that.” His mother nods, handing in the little booklet as you scribble away the recommendations and mark away at the sheet.

The boy grumbles, poking at his arm. “Do I get the tammy-rind now?”

“Of course. The brave kids always get an extra one too.” you appease, walking them out.

“Great.” he’s mollified at least, wiping away any residual tears with a discreet turn away. “And i think you’re brave too. I saw a ghost here. In the door at the back.”

You freeze up a bit. “Did you now?” you’re feeling your voice crack a bit at the end of that question. Even the mother glances over, unsettled. You shake your head and the reassurance returns. It’s nothing, nothing at all, you try to say.

“Yes. He looked super scary. But he just looked at me and told me to go back to amma.” the boy sighs.

“I’m sure that was just one of the boys who helps the doctor.” his mother reasons, her words taking a sterner edge. She’s bustling him out, putting away at his back as she straightens her pleats and fixes her pallu. “It’s not nice saying things like that now. You’d better apologise to that man if you said that to him.”

“I didn’t say anything.” the boy insists as you pause by the door and see them off after handing him his hard earned candy, ( “thank you, doctor. Say thank you to the doctor auntie.” the mother urges. The boy echoes it drolly then slips back into his stubborn insistence, pulling at her arm ). Their voices fade into the faint music playing at the lounge and the chatter in the waiting room. Aleena turns to call for the next person, peering down at the files.

A hush filters through. One of the men stands over the row of seated people. They draw some of their children closer, muted shock and fear splayed across and you feel flayed open. “Tell the clients to leave.” you mumble. She nods and sends the word out. Some of them seemed to catch on quick and pack away their folders and gather their companions. A line of men and women mill out, leaving that sole frame standing, arms crossed in wait.

You keep your eyes down as you motion to the doors. Aleena hides away as she usually does ( you’d torn into her when she’d gotten too mouthy, too brave the last time ).

“Is something wrong? I’m sure I paid off the fee two weeks ago.” you test out.

The suited man doesn’t reply yet, sinking into the backdrop of static and the panicked thudding in your ribs. You vaguely remember Blade hiding away within the archives and hope he doesn’t wander back out again. He takes his time, dragging out the seconds as he idles past your framed degree and a few photos from your childhood home.

“A few weeks ago there was an…altercation in your clinic, correct?” he states more than he asks it, rubbing at his chin.

Oh shit.

“Yes…” you nod when you sense his wait. Your nerves wither away and you lose your sense of touch.

“Some of the men on my side died here. I was sent in to get to the bottom of it all.” His narrowed gaze settles on you. “It’s funny. We know there’s a third party involved but his body went missing from the morgue before he could be ID’d. Any footage of him? Wiped clean, and aeons forbid the police trying anything when it comes to getting witnesses to speak a consistent story.” His footsteps are an echo in the back of your mind, too loud, too distracting. Blade, dear lord, his presence here is a mistake. “Now, I'm here to ask if you had a hand in it, doctor.”

“No.” you choke out. “I don’t.”

“Were you working with that man who killed them?”

“No — ”

“Did you see him?”

You're too slow to respond and it takes him grabbing a fistful of your hair to rattle it out faster. “No I did not!” you insist, squeezing your eyes shut. You recall what you tell the boy, and the empty words about bravery. You feel like a liar steeped in bitter hypocrisy. It makes you want to rip your insides out and claw at your viscera.

Nails dig into the softer parts of your cheeks as your face is slammed into the wall. It draws out a choked, gasping wheeze from your ribs and white hot pain screaming at your skull, your muscles. The small, scared animal in you is crying, crying, crying away into bleak emptiness. It tries to run, eyes blown out and mouth hung open. It tries to make you run before you’re gutted clean through. “Are you lying?” the man asks quietly.

“No. No I didn’t.” You stutter it out, pressing your fingertips into the chipped paint. “I was hiding…I-I was hiding till t-they took the bodies.” The pressure against your head builds, builds till you yelp and struggle, terrified of him digging down hard enough to cut away at your airflow and snap your neck in two. For a moment, you wonder if he’ll do just that when he finally, thankfully, lets you go…

( Your eyes flit up, desperate, moving things and you look at him, actually look at him and the cold death in his gaze. You never assumed someone could look like that — empty and scooped clean of any humanity lingering at the edges. He’s hollow, and angry*.*

You made your mistake. )

…You’re slammed back in. The scream in muffled into your wrist. “You saw nothing?” he repeats, guttural in how he addresses and enunciates every word. It’s like reasoning with a man eater. You nod, nod because it’s all you had. “Nothing at all? No faces?” another nod and the man slips back and lets you crumple to the floor with that warning.

“You better not be lying.” he tells you, slipping to the speedy notes of your local tongue. “There will be hell to pay for that.”

You’re lucky, you think, for getting off that easily. The buzz in your mind builds and smothers you against your spot and you shift a bit when Aleena presses a hand to your shoulder. Blade is right behind her and she’s flattening her lips.

“You’re a nuisance.” you tell him, annoyance and anger and all that frustration meandering and stubbornly oozing through the cracks. Blade fixes you with a glare, drawing his mouth back to a half sneer.

“Who did this?” he asks, voice dipping to trembling danger, entropy brewing underneath all that. “Who did this to you?”

“None of your business.” you snip in turn, wobbling to your feet. Your coat is blotched red around the collar and the shoulders. You didn’t realise you were bleeding till your fingertips came away sticky and wet ( you feel like you’re careening off of the edge of a cliff, in a car you have no control of ). “You’re more trouble than you’re worth.” you add, croaking through your words and the buzz and the annoyance. “So just leave. Leave, tell her I can't babysit you if this…this is what I have to deal with.”

Blade narrows his eyes. “I cannot.” he states and leaves no room for argument as his hand grabs you at the scruff and half tugs you alongside him. You’re not spared any more dignity around him, and he treats you like a wet cat nipping and scratching at his arm. “You.” he adds, turning to your receptionist. “She needs to be tended to.”

Aleena mumbles something under her breath but seeks out the first aid kit. She swats Blade’s hands away once she approaches you again. You appreciate it. You don’t want him touching you and the crawling chilliness of his body invites an ugly sort of desperation that blocks away your throat and nudges at all the parts of you you’re less than proud of.

Blade does not leave. He never does, on that bitter note, looming over the two of you by the wall, that beast twisting in his eyes like a snake.

He unsettles you with the way he stalks the emptiness of your apartment rooms, pressing his body to the wall with shaky breaths. You watch him from the crack of your door and wonder if this is what unravelling sanity looks like. If it is the face of a man ripping open his chest and screaming through the guts until that beating heart is carved clean from the cavity.

Blade is more animal than human in how he walks. The room smells strange too. You do not know what it is, in its pungent notes and the unpleasantness of it all. It’s not rot, you’ve smelled rot before, and tasted that stench of decay lain thickly on your tongue.

This is more rancid, like regurgitated food and butter. You spot a single leaf on the floor, fan shaped and dipped in sunlit gold. Then more at his feet.

His form flickers by, rustling past your door. He’s at the balcony, then he’s not. You pad out and scan the dark streets, spotting his hunched frame nestled within the alleyways tucked at the side. There is a glimpse of purple from Kafka’s hair as she presses her lips to his cheek, whispering something to his ear.

Blade seems to melt and you watch on, half transfixed from the scandal, cheeks warming when Kafka leans to the side and waves, a playful grin curling on her face. She whispers something again and has Blade turn too, and you think you’re almost drawn in, dizzyingly close to the edge of your balcony rails till reason snaps you back and you return to your apartment.

( “Bladie…” Kafka coos at him, her gloved fingers pressing up against the seam of his lips. Blade tries to hide away the dry hunger in his stomach and his mouth. “Do you like this one?” she asks.

He thinks about it. The release of death. The warmth of your hands. The tears. He thinks of the man sawed apart on the concrete, down to tendons and bones and muscle and flesh. He thinks of the scattered limbs and the bruise and your blood.

Her hands press to his cheeks. “Listen to me. Push the mara down…we don’t want to keep upsetting her now do we?” she asks, teasing in how her teeth flash. Kafka feels like a dream lost in the haze of it all. He leans into her touch and lets the flowering roots in his chest rupture and decay.

“No.” Blade admits, surreality dragging him under. He does not spare her a reply to that question. Kafka already knows. )

VI. DISCOLOURATION AND DESICCATION

“Tell me who did it.”

“No.”

Blade looks annoyed, scraping and haunting the walls of your apartment as he follows you through the kitchenette like a ghost. The brewing…whatever it was…from the past couple of days seemed to have cowed after that visit from Kafka, nothing more now than a placid beast ( as placid as a rabid mutt could be ). You clench fist into your knife’s handle a little harder than you should have.

She could have taken him back, her little lover boy guard dog and his strange balcony crawling ass —

Blade hovers close, so close. There’s an absence of heat beside you. He’s always cold, colder than a man, warmer than a corpse. That in-between he seemed to linger in. His limbo. “He hurt you. He will do it again. Tell me who it was.”

“Absolutely not.” You state, voice flattened against bemusement. “You'll just kill him.”

He stills, his eye letting out something of a neurotic twitch. He might just strangle you now, carve you open with that sword, eat your insides…maybe. “He suspects something. He must die.” He says it slowly, irritation budding through the dryness of his countenance. Your nose wrinkles at this.

“That's nice and all but you stink of death enough, and ‘enough’ is still far too much.” You angle your knife, pressing into the tender outer layers of the onion till you slice through it. The blade shudders against the impact and your hand strains into it. You bite back a curse.

( You're thinking about too many things.

You're thinking about Aleena turning in her resignation letter, and her apologies. A marriage, she'd said. And how could she turn down her parents’ demands after everything? They care. Despite the pain, you knew that too. It's that painful kind of love where you'd hurt and hurt and keep hurting them when the choices seemed so sparse. Better a bloodied knife, they'd try to say. Better a few cuts than being torn apart.

She only just found out, she admits. There was an uncomfortable shift in her body. She looked ready to crumple into herself and shatter into a million pieces. She's meant to meet him during the agelu. It's been arranged for.

How did you? you'd asked. You were afraid to ask. You shouldn't have asked. That meant looking ugly things in the eye through to the nauseating technicalities. Aleena swallows. She looks more distressed than she should. You let her weep a little and nurse those gaping cuts. Your bruises don’t smart anymore. You’d forgotten they were there.

She shows you a newspaper. And you stare on with an empty kind of apathy as you spot her details within the bridal adverts, down to her college degree and the colour of her eyes. )

( You were reminded that there's a kind of love fuelled by bitter hate. You were reminded of the sight of her shrinking back and fading into the walls of your clinic, like a collapsing black hole. It's how daughters and duties were here, a little better than the north but broken in a way where broken things couldn't be fixed.

You've seen it in a mirror once, hollow and void and dead in your eyes, and your mehendi stained hands tearing apart the the jasmine in your hair. )

Blade tilts his head and angles the knife just a bit before you could cleave a finger straight off. “I’m being reasonable. He won’t hurt you if you let me.” he tries to reason, playing clumsy diplomacy. But Blade still pauses between his words with that perplexed unsureness. He didn’t know what to tell you when you were sobbing on that couch. He doesn’t know what to say now, when your insides were burning away your peace.

You brush him away and viscerally visualise grinding him to a bloodied pulp with your grandmother’s mortar. The violence in your head helps a little.

Blade keeps watching you, turning his head away from the spattering chillies and the sour notes of tamarind staining your hands. The onions are still a bother. You think it can't quite get worse at this point, with stubborn tunicated bulbs and a dull blade. The over-stimulation you're half subjected to feels like claws on a chalkboard, gratingly demanding every bit of your attention.

“Give it to me.” It's not a request. He takes the knife before you could really mutter out sneering ‘no’. He slices through the onion, passes you a pointed look and keeps slicing ( why does he make it seem so easy? Why??? ).

“Give it back.” you try.

“No.”

“Please…?”

He nudges at your shoulder, towards the stove. Your shoulders sag and a frustrated lump gathers at your throat. At least he’s helping, you reason. You shouldn’t be so angry over this. A normal person wouldn’t want to throw a fuss over a stolen chore and a stubborn wraith. You light the stove and gather what you’d prepared. Blade was done with onions. It’s only been a minute.

…You decide to not question that.

( Please don’t kill me, you add in your mind for good measure. )

There’s something therapeutic in indulging with this familiarity. Your old home smells like this, like comfort and nostalgia in the idyllic sorts of memories. They’re the ones you lock away in a box, nestling that key deep inside your ribs. Even so, that horrible weight swells up like a tumour. It could burst any minute. It’s wearing you down and frying the ends of your nerves.

“Aleena is leaving.” you blurt out. Blade blinks. “My receptionist.”

“She told me.” Blade nods.

“She’s getting married.” you continue.

Blade considers this. “She is…young, yes?”

You nod. “Twenty four.” you swallow. Your throat is parched. “Some families do marry their children off at this age. Not all of them, of course…and not every arrangement is all that bad…I've seen some good ones.” He keeps listening, you know it in the way his head tilts ever so slightly to you. Your senses are clumped together, messy, messy, messy. “It’s none of my business.” you add feverishly. “I shouldn’t be getting upset.”

“...why aren’t you?” the question is sudden. You feel your confusion knock away reason. Blade tries again. “Married. Why aren’t you married?”

“That’s a very impolite thing to ask.” you reply quickly.

“I see.” he struggles, pondering over his next few words. “I will not push further.” You purse your lips, the conversation delicately fraying and fading out. You let the silence stagnate, hovering by the stove with your vessel-full of coconut milk.

Something inside you tugs.

“I was supposed to be.” you mumble. “He was a nice guy, was working for a stable job and had plans to buy a house close to the beach. The kid you’d see in movies, you know?” you laugh a little. “And maybe I was a little swept up. But then we talked and we both realised that…we had dreams of our own. Things we weren’t willing to let go of, a relationship he was serious about.”

The chicken goes next, as the gravy settles into a shade of brown-red. Blade is staring, something in his face set in an odd way. He looks off putting. Hungry, like those night spent pacing through your living room.

“We parted ways. There weren't any dramatic rejections…he seemed just as pleased with it, to be fair. I hear he’s settled nicely with his boyfriend…good for him.”

“So you came…here…” Blade works it out.

“Quite. Those choices weren’t wholly supported by my family. They kept trying to find someone and I kept pushing it away…I was scared I guess, and people got angrier and insistent and I started feeling less…human.” you take a deep breath in. “So I left one day. They never contacted me. My father only started again after my grandmother died. And I opened this clinic up…”

The room is blurred out. All you see are splotches of colour and a blemished, dark blue whee Blade stands, rimmed by the sunset.

You wipe the tears away.

“It’s all I have now.” you whisper, a painful crackle coating the peaks. “All of it. And it’s a nice place…I used my grandfather’s photo frames in the reception…my mother’s carpet too. It was a souvenir from the north. And…and some of the toys were my own. It took some digging and cleaning and repairing but they’re just as good as any other…” It’s flaking at the surface. You aren’t a strong person. It’s always been so easy to crumble with the weight ( like a paper doll ). “So please…please just leave before you make it worse.”

Blade regards you. He always is, watching, watching, watching, like there’s nothing else that could tug him away, take up his mind when he’s not snapping necks till they shatter.

“I cannot.” His brows are set, pulling together just a little.

“You can.” You insist, feeling stupid, childish. Its pointless trying to convince him otherwise anyway, Not without feeling hacked down and near helpless beneath his looming shadow. “You can leave. You and Kafka can, it's not that hard.”

“We have work to do and it must be done.” driven finality settles deep. He feels so far away, repeating words like a robot. It's hard to think of Blade as human in times like these, where he's either too robotic or too animalistic. It feels scripted, all wrong, all twisted up and chewed apart. “You wouldn't understand it. Leave it be.”

“I won't, if it's my business you're intruding on.” You set the coconut milk down, the steel vessel striking polished granite with a sharp ring. Your teeth grit together ( you hate feeling angry. You hate the cloudiness that comes with it ). “What if I run then?”

Blade's glare is cutting. “You will not run.” He asserts, scruffing you so easily, tugging you just a little closer. You fight back the urge to swat at him. At least you could think a little. At least you still had a tiny hand digging it's claws into your self control. “I'll drag you back. I will keep dragging you back till you cease this foolishness.”

( How were you being foolish? All you have are fragmented snapshots, the lingering sense of dread, the knowledge of something sinister brewing beneath the surface. You have a man in your house, a murderer. You have a man in your house you swore you killed. You have a man in this house who doesn't die.

How were you being foolish? You want to scream at him till your vocal chords fray and your arytenoids collapse. But Blade has probably never felt fear. You can't imagine his sympathy.

And you still killed him though. You stop. The guilt is back, and the anxious Turn of it, and the seething edge of your rage burning, burning, burning. )

“Did Kafka tell you to do that too?” poison burns holes into your words. You and Blade are sinking deeper and deeper beneath it, boring holes through your skin.

( You need to stop. You need to stop talking. )

“She wouldn't be as kind.” He asserts simply, rolling his eyes at the mention.

Defeat comes for you from the corners. You huff. “Let go of me.” your arm is shoved back, elbowing his ribs. Blade doesn't flinch, but his grip loosens and he dips his head down in acknowledgement. “Are you ever going to leave me alone?”

“When we collect what we need, yes.”

“...get it over with quickly then.” You mutter, stalking away from him. “Tell me when the chicken is cooked. Leave me alone till then.”

Blade takes a moment. “Alright.”

“Bladie, you're upset.”

Is he? Blade doesn't quite see it. But there is an ache where his heart should be. It's been there since you'd locked yourself away and he’s left to stare at the curry bubbling at the edges. Kafka laughs from the other end of the line, light, airy; she's probably wiping blood away from her swords.

“You are. Has the doctor been softening you up?” She's playful, prodding, poking, stringing along her words. “Cute. Is she why you’re calling?”

“She’s asking questions.” he steadies his phone. It’s so easy, how it slips between his fingers. It’s not the firm immovability of his sword hilt and it’s slippery, almost unusable with his twitching. Blade hears Kafka hum against his ear, kneading away at the issue before her voice picks up again.

“You know you can’t give too much away, right? We need to follow the script and if she meddles too much…”

“I know.” Blade cuts in, apathy sinking deeper. The script, yes, the script. There’s that flash of familiar awareness. The script is something to be followed, right down to the bare details. If pinstripes needed to be worn, then pinstripes must be worn and if Blade must cut a hand off, that hand must go. But even he knows of the variables being difficult, breaching at destiny’s thin skin.

“And she’ll only get hurt, Bladie.” Kafka coos it out gently, placating the tenseness building in his shoulders. “It’s unfortunate how scared little things tend to bite more. Listen to me, try appeasing her a little, yeah? I’m sure a treat or two should keep her from stepping too out of line.”

“How much longer do I have to stay here?”

“You want to leave so soon?”

Blade does not. He can feel the roots tugging at his feet, fixing him down here, leeching, leeching, leeching. The fluttering ache in his stomach has grown worse. Blade fears never slipping away and that won’t do. Wolves aren’t to be leashed. That fractured memory, the writhing ocean in those eyes…there is no place for him here.

( Destiny, destiny, destiny. The unattainable, the inescapable…Kafka whispers something else. He wants to break his wrists. )

And still, Kafka knows. He can practically see the cheshire curl to her lips. “Cute.” she repeats, drawling the word out. “I’m almost done. Just a bit of the usual…we’ll have the stellaron collected in no time and we can head out. Till then, lie low and be a doll for me before I come to collect you, okay?” he can hear the faint echo of her footsteps echoing past empty hallways. She might spare a visit soon, he realises. “And again. Try not to upset the doctor too much, yeah?”

Blade dips his head down, mollified. “Alright.”

The phone cuts away. You’re still in your room, cut away from most of his conversation. The chicken looks cooked so he turns the stove off and gropes about absently till he feels a plastic handle. Then he knocks on your door.

It takes you a moment to open it for him. “Is it done?” you ask. Blade stares down at your wide, tired eyes. “Yes.” he replies, dizzy and blotted out in the centre all at once. He can’t quite stop it, the rapid undergrowth, the rustling call of mara, that need to seize you by the face and tear into the softness of your cheeks, to bite, to taste blood, to break your bones and devour you. To feel the dig of your nails against his arms, something sharper, you scooping out his chest, his ribs and his heart till it’s beat ceases and he curls into your warmth —

“Do you hate me?” he asks quietly, unwavering. Its swelling. “Do you want me gone?”

You swallow, halfway out of your room. Blade wants to grab you, taste —

“I do.” you mumble.

Appease her. Kafka’s echo fades out once more in the back of his head. Blade presses the knife to your hand, holding its edge just over his stomach, pressing till he feels its prickle numb out. It’s where the fluttering was, unfettered when he tore his intestines out upon your couch and let the blood seep into the fabric ( you hadn’t liked that, so he stopped ).

He stops, gripping you just above the beat of your pulse. It speeds up, vivacious, so alive ( Blade is used to his steady thrum, slow, so slow unlike that of a human ). “You can kill me then.” he tells you. “If it pleases you.”

There’s a shift. The handle slips away and you snatch your hand back, face twisting to what he recognises as distress. Then you look angry, slamming the door back shut. “Don’t talk to me.” You scream through, muffled by hardwood.

Blade feels empty. He collects the knife and turns back into the kitchen, temptations spilling out when he lingers a little too long and thinks of sweet oblivion.

He muzzles himself as most dogs should be. His teeth are blunted, his claws filed.

He doesn't want to scare you.

VII. SCAVENGING

Aleena hasn't spoken much since she'd told you about 'the arrangement' ( you make it sound like some cold business deal. A travesty. Maybe you were being far too pessimistic with this whole ordeal, putting in too many chunks of those ugly memories into that basket. You could be wrong. You could be wrong about it all ). It's an all too familiar disconnect, a silent misery that you'd watch every day after. She's letting it fill out her whittled spaces, and it worries you. Worries you in the way your heart twists and your insides turn.

( Won't you be coming, he'd asked again over a messy phone call. There's a lot of things to catch up on. We'll lay off the insisting, we'll let you choose the groom this time. That would be far better, right?

And your father's words meter out to warbled static, spilling through your ears and onto the floor. )

Maybe you should put something out in penance. Let those ghosts keep to themselves and continue their silent vigils. You're not superstitious, and rituals like these feel more a far away dream since you'd moved away.

"Aleena…"

"Yes?"

"How about we go get some cha during our break?" you offer a kind smile, tired, a little neurotic but you think it will ache a lot more if you say nothing at all. That wound up and coiled-away thing in her, pulling at the set to her jaw and the firm stoicism she displays — it slowly lapses. She looks down at her feet, back up at you and blinks a long, slow blink.

"That sounds nice." she croaks out, pushing aside a stack of papers. You check the analog clock above the two of you. A lunch break was due in another fifteen minutes and there a few checkups and medical records to fill in for school diaries. You could finish soon enough."Is it at the local place? I like the one with the cardamom."

"Sure you can."

Aleena seems to think a thousand thoughts all at once. "Thank you." she whispers when you step back, trained down to the keyboard. She's not typing, tracing the plastic frame itself . You leave her be, let her stew a while before gently gathering her up and leading her to the closest stall.

( Blade was cornered in the stores. You tell him not to stir up any trouble.

"Where?" he asks.

"None of your concern. I'd like some time alone with her, please." He reaches out, curling his hands into the sleeve of your coat. His eyes look like smelted iron. You tell yourself not to flinch, to skitter away because you will not be a rabbit. For once you will not be a rabbit. "I'm going." you repeat with more purpose. "You can't tell me otherwise."

Blade lets you go. )

It's crowded as is, and you try not to let yourself be pushed out by the squeezing throng. Not until you and Aleena leave with your tea and a packet of glucose biscuits to sit by a roadside ledge beneath the tree cover.

She takes a few bites before she starts talking again.

"Sorry about the suddenness of it all."

"The marriage?"

"Yes." She picks away at some of the crumbs.

"It's okay." You pat her hand in assurance. "I was wondering if you were doing alright

Aleena seems to ponder over it. "A little. I know him. We went to the same school…so it's not all bad." She drains the last of her tea, throwing the Styrofoam cup into a dustbin. "I'm just…angry I suppose."

"At your parents?" You guess.

"Yeah." She swallows. "They've been pestering me since my second year in college. I had to keep telling them that I wanted more stability…a job. Something. I can't just keep relying on my spouse for money and all that, you know…my parents said I could do that after. That I was being selfish for putting it off."

You purse your lips. "It's good to be stable." You agree. "Sometimes it's easy to point fingers and blame it on unnecessary worry and paranoia…but from my experience, marriages like these are a gamble. You can't be too sure, even with people you think you know." You must be rambling. Embarrassment floods into your cheeks. You have the grace to look a little sheepish.

"Right! And I told them that and…" She shakes her head. "They don't get it, I guess. I mean…I don't mind settling down, really, but they keep pushing me and rushing into it and then they just put up that advert without saying anything and..." Her wide eyed hysteria is palpable. You might want to hug her, steal her away. Familiar pains tend to do that, stinging at your soft insides.

"Am I not a good daughter?" The fragility spotting it aches, unfurling, spreading forth. You shut your eyes.

"I'm sure you are." You tell her honestly. And she is. You know she is.

Aleena's face stretches, pained. "It feels the exact opposite. I might be making it all more difficult…I should be grateful, shouldn't I? They care about me, I know that and…this…" The words are turned over, thought upon. Her hands twitch, gesturing at the air with wild frustration. Aleena is shrinking by the second, cracking at the corners. "What do I do?"

Your throat dries.

"I don't know. I ran away from mine and now my family refuses to talk to me." You tell her. "There's a lot of different ways this could go. Parents react in different ways…all I can say is…you need to trust your instincts."

"I don't want to lose them." She admits shamefully, wiping away a tear. "I'm a coward."

You purse your lips. "I think we all are." You sigh. Your tea has cooled against your fingertips. “But…but I'd say it's better than being miserable the rest of our lives. It's selfish, I agree…” you feel defeat trickle down — defeat, hopelessness, a cocktail of too-many-things-at-once.. “it could work out too. It could work out and it will be alright after that. But there's a lot more before it all as well…I'm sorry. I'm not very good with advice.”

Aleena shakes her head, rubbing at her eyes. "It's better than people telling me that I'm being a nuisance."

"You said you knew him too." You add.

She scoffs. "He might have changed. The most I remember is him pulling at my hair and calling me ugly."

"Oh. Hopefully for the better, then."

Aleena rubs at her knuckles, humming softly as a trill of birdsong echoes above the two of you. "Thanks for taking me in." She says, and it's spoken so softly you almost miss it. "I learned a lot working under you.and you were good to me. Better than some other bosses I had…hopefully I should still be able to work after…" She breaks away.

A gooey sort of warmth trembles inside. It's the sort that cracks you open. "You're welcome."

She kicks out her feet, letting her footwear flap shutter against the balls of her feet, then stands back up. "We'll head back then? I don't think I'd want to leave you with unfinished work on my last day…"

"That would be terrible." you agree, cracking a grin.

Aleena veers the subject away to the common pleasantries. She talks about the weather, the new park in the better parts of the city and the flowers there. She talks about the old lady who invites her to feed the pigeons. You listen as you do, till you slip back into the clinic and start the afternoon shift again. Clockwork, familiar clockwork. Still, you ache. It's selfish.

"Blade." you call out when you step back into the stores. You're greeted with silence. You're greeted with emptiness.

"Doctor? we have another checkup!" You straighten up, smooth away the frazzle, the jumbled nerves and the frayed ends. There is a time and place for panic. Not now. Not when you have work to do. So you work. You work till the minutes and hours bleed in and the sun spills past the concrete rises. You work till the night falls and you realise the silence in the storeroom seems to have grown past the occasional rattle from the shutters and the wind.

You heave in a breath. Aleena has left, pulling you into a final hug. You find yourself looking for him.

( Where is he? )

It's Kafka who drops by after closing. The anxiety nips at you, your face, your hands, everywhere, between Blade still not making a reappearance and now…this.

You hadn't met her face to face in a while and you've almost forgotten the weight she carries. She'd turned you around before you could walks away any further, her gloved hands snaking round your waist and her lips brushing against the shell of your ear. "Sorry for the visit, doc." she speaks out, like you're old friends. "Had some work to look into."

You hunch your shoulders, cowed of any initial annoyance. Something in you draws back, scared around her. It's the cat-like preening, the way Kafka smiles so emptily at you. "Right." you mumble.

"Bladie's been treating you well? I told him to be on his best behaviour."

"He's…he's alright. If you're here to pick him up…well he's been missing since this afternoon. I…i swear I didn't — "

Kafka shakes her head. "Oh no, I sent him on a little errand." she assures you, sitting down in the waiting room. She pulls you down next to her. "I've noticed he's been doing his best around you too…granted I'm sure some of his habits are a little…of putting." That smile is back, razor edged.

"It's fine." You try to say.

"Mhm. If you say so." Kafka crosses a leg over the other. "I've been souvenir shopping between work and all. I might pack up a larger haul after this final matter is dealt with. So many things to do…" She trails off, drumming his fingers against her chin as if deep in thought. "Have any places you recommend visiting? I've heard the silks here are to die for."

You hadn't known that either. "That's…nice." You lower your head, that far away beeping growing louder and louder against the chills clawing up your spine. You breath in, feeling the point of her nails press up against your cheek and turn you around to face her.

"Oh dear. I don't think you're very happy to see me." she coos. "Bladie hasn't been very good to you, has he?"

You open your mouth.

"You don't have to say anything." she cuts in with what seems to be kindness. You were almost fooled by it, set adrift, running straight into that tangle of webbing. Kafka feels predatory the way Blade does, and in ways that doesn't feel like him either, spinning you around and around in circles for those simple little amusements.

"He scares me." you blurt.

"Is that so?" Pity weighs in her sentence, cloying it together like resinous amber and sundew. She looks delighted.

"He does." you nod, feeling helplessness undo your seams. Kafka leans in close, close enough for the warmth from her breath to spill over your jaw. You want to push her off — you should, given who she is. But she clings so close, drinking it all in with strange euphoria. She's still holding your face, and Kafka was far stronger than she presents herself to be.

"You poor lamb. I hope he didn't bite you too hard." She smiles, caught in a trance as you sink further into magenta and pink and the smell of her perfume. "Then again, Bladie's always rough with the things he likes. I'm almost tempted to take you with us."

You shutter, blank out, flail about internally before all reasoning bears down with the impact of a comet. "I don't want to go with you though." You squeak, the words sinking in so quick and it shocks you.

Kafka considers you, tilting her head with assured grace. "Are you sure?" She asks again, thumb pressing up against the apple of your cheek. "It complicates things quite a bit for you. I'd say you'd be more miserable staying here than giving in, no? For one…" She's enjoying herself, her lazy gaze scanning the clinic again. "…you'll be loosing all of this."

You seize up. "…What — "

"This." Kafka repeats. "All of this. It'll be gone soon enough. Bladie and I have dipped into businesses that most should keep out of…I'll spare you the details, really…though you might just have more popping up in that little head of yours." She taps a nail against your temple.

"What are you talking about." You croak out, falling into a gaping bit. The vestiges of horror start taking root in your lungs. Kafka bites her bottom lip, playing coy.

"Oh dear, I've said too much. May as well let you in on it then." She croons. "The IPC don't have much of a hold here, do they? No wonder…granted it made going through this operation far easier." Kafka lets you go. You lean back, back away from her, sputtering. "To keep it simple, we were here to collect something. A very important something…and out of all the possibilities we had…your little route happened to give us the least amount of grief to deal with."

You grip at the armrests hard. "I don't…I don't understand…" You choke every syllable out with a tongue that feels like lead. "I don't understand." you repeat, the mania arching your higher notes. Your clinic, this clinic, the only thing standing between giving up and going back and…Your clinic ( You remember the money, the scraping together and the loans upon loans and that less naive part of you still folded into the walls and corners ).

Kafka shrugs. "I don't expect you to. You've been a tucked away and coddled into this peace your planet has blanketed you with. There's plenty more in this universe you can't quite comprehend; and there are plenty of big bad things out there that Bladie and I could hardly hold a candle to…" She grins. It's a vicious, predatory thing. Your fear is a feast to her, one lazy bite after the other.

"I don't want this. You're lying — "

"In another five minutes…" Kafka begins. "Bladie will come back , dragging a little friend of ours along with him. He'll have sustained a hit to his head, half healed. The hem of his coat will be ripped off." Her gaze darts to the clock. "Tick tock. I'll be busy after that so you'll need to be quick with what you have to say."

You're stunned to silence. Blade. An associate. It's a nightmare in the making. strangling every bit of air from your lungs. Kafka seems terrifyingly sure, watching the way you move, scramble, feeling disjointed and not all there or all quite present in your body.

"I don't want this." You tear up.

She kisses your cheek. "I know, sweetie." Kafka gives your shoulder a condescending squeeze. You may as well be stabbed in the stomach too, revulsion burning your throat, jerking you away from her. It makes you want to grow claws, to make her hurt somewhere, anywhere. "It's too bad, really. Maybe if you were a little braver, a little more gutsy, we might have struck you from that list." She laughs. "Honestly, I find it adorable. You're like a scared little stray…"

A sickening thunk suddenly echoes out back, soft against the tile, and moving trough whimpered struggles. Kafka's eyes narrow. "That seems to be our cue." she comments lightly. You look at the clock. Five minutes.

Your voice is stolen away, a failed note against the hand crushing your windpipe. You feel dizzy, dizzy, dizzy, almost stumbling over the chair. Kafka is drunk off of it, shoulder brushing against yours. It's just her, those footsteps, the smell of her perfume. "So…" she whispers. "What's it like?" Her touch sears at your wrist, edging higher. "Being scared?"

Blade steps between the two of you. His hand coming to grasp at your arm, smearing a brown, bloodied stain against the expanse and dwarfing your wrist ( he can break it so easily ). He stinks of iron and rot and you don't dare to face that monstrous view of him, just like that first day, feeling his pulse recede and the massacre he left behind under the fading colour of his eyes.

( And still, you feel guilty. Because Kafka is right. You are a coward. )

"Kafka." Blade utters, a warning stained against his stressed inflections. "Leave her be."

Kafka's lips pull at the corners, serene, seemingly innocent. She doesn't even try to hide the deception. "Jealous much?" she snickers, letting you go. Blade feels agitated, the beginnings of a riptide streaking beneath a still surface. He yanks at you, fingertips pressing at your cheek, the spot between your ear and the column of your neck. It's the most he's touched you.

( Has she hurt you, he wants to demand. Has she? )

"Don't touch her."

Kafka holds her hands up in surrender. "Okay." she relents, content and entertained with the way things seem to be. From the corner of your eye, you see a mass…something close to human, move. A scream is lodged in your pharynx. Your nails dig into Blade's hand, a hoarse, wheezing sound heaving from the depths of your lungs. The mass stretches, tries to move away. You see red plaster the white tiles beneath it.

Blade's gait shifts to awareness, sharp eyed, watching the man try to escape.

"You didn't break his legs?" Kafka asks.

"I did. This one is stubborn." Blade snarls. He looks dog like, wolf like, fangs borne between a drooling muzzle. Your eyes sting as you try to tug away, away from him as Kafka stands and saunters over to the body, that elusive little smile still present.

"Well, we have plenty to ask of him. He still has a few details to give away now, doesn't he?" She hums a little tune, yanking the man by the hair till his broken whimpers turn to miserable screaming. "Come on Bladie, I need help. And you…" She fixes that stare on the man. "Listen to me. You can't speak anymore, or scream, or cry. Not till I tell you to."

The man's cries fade out into open mouthed gasps, his face a bruised and bloodied mess of tears and snort. Blade was not kind in handling him, not with his torn tendons and the unearthly jut his legs were angled at. Your skin crawls at the sight. You reach for your bag, your phone, shaking past the initial terror to give a final call for help.

Blade looks at you. It's enough to completely shatter it, unwinding, undoing, pressing down harder against the fragile cracks in your walls and letting that mess slip away past the desperate grasp of your arms and down away on the floor.

You shut your eyes and tell yourself you saw nothing.

VIII. SKELETONIZATION

You don't hear much of the man, save for Kafka's questions muffled behind the walls. The whats, whens, wheres and hows that you can't keep track off without giving too much of yourself up ( you're afraid you do, a thousand different things will split. You tell yourself there's nothing there ). You focus in the clock instead, watching minutes after minutes pass beneath the incessant sound of it ticking, ticking, ticking.

Minutes after minutes after minutes.

There's a final exchange of words. You hear a tumble, a body hitting the ground. Kafka walks out, hardly bothered in the slightest and pristine save for that dampness of her gloves. She shoots you a charming smile, taking in how you'd tucked into yourself. "Well you're a sight for sore eyes. Scared, lamb?"

You're scared of a lot of things now, of the woman in front of you and the man outback and the man whose words they stole and the impending aftermath predicted. You're trapped in your own burning house, doors jammed shut and the window too high to take a jump. You'll suffocate in here, choke till your lungs collapse and your organs scream and fragment.

Kafka cups your cheek. "Hm, a pity. Scripts have to be followed though…sorry about that doc." She draws away and you let out a wet little sob. "Don't be too sad about it." She coos, patting your cheek. "On the bright side, I'll be leaving soon. Stay close to Bladie, okay? Can't have you running off and throwing a fuss now."

Dear lord no. Not Blade. Not Blade after all this. It feels like a joke and a half, an empty attempt at drawing out any laughter from an unenthused crowd of blank eyed faces. You stay seated, wide eyed and insistent. "No." you choke for good measure. Kafka's expression glows.

"No?" she echoes, a hand resting against either side of the armrest. You try to make yourself small, edging away from her farther and farther till her knee slots between your legs and you nearly cry out and kick her off. "Come on now." She coaxes, hand tugging at your waist, sitting you up proper. "Don't be too difficult. Bladie's not half bad."

You shake your head, blanking out through her crooning as your struggle intensifies. "Stop it." you repeat, shaking your head, seized and maniacal till your nails dig in. Kafka doesn't flinch. She's still smiling. "Don't you dare tell me I'm being —" You sob. it's messy, so messy and that pain in your chest only grows, spreading across like blooming rot. " — that I'm being difficult." You spit. "After all this, I'm allowed to. You're both insane, you fucks, I — "

Kafka presses a thumb over your lips. You bite, hard.

"Listen to me." She keeps talking. She won't stop. "Stop crying."

You stop crying. Your mind is empty white and fuzzy static stretching out like elastic. You feel her laughter against you. "Good girl." She praises. "Now, go on along with Bladie, okay? He'll do a good job looking after you."

You claw at the walls, trying to protest as your body lifts, padding out back, trapped within the long winding of corridors that didn't quite look like that once. "Kafka." you hear Blade echo again, his hands resting heavy on your shoulders. It sounds exasperated? Why? You're fine. You think you're fine. You see a magenta blur flutter around you and words spatter apart and stitch back together into nonsense and noise.

Blade takes you by the arm. You're half leaning against him, the soft, shaky breaths against his ribs and his heartbeat ( it's a slow, faint sound ). He seems to linger in place, letting you be as your nose screws against the smell of blood spotting his clothes. Then, he's leading you along the less crowded roads, shuffling past the harsh blaze of streetlights. Vaguely, you remember where this route takes you and you try to join the pieces — the memories feel so far, far away.

The mass tucked under Blade's arm moves. You look the man straight in the eye and do nothing. Your mind, your ribs are barren spaces.

You smell salt, hear the sea, the waves, the wind. The man in his arms struggles ( you're not here ). You see the panic stretched across, the way he pales to what looks like ash grey ( you're not here ). You watch Blade turn your face away, annoyance sparking in his eyes ( you're not here ). You look on anyway, as his fingers claw at his throat, so easily tearing apart soft flesh and tendon and muscle till his hands are stained warm red ( you're not here ). You're lain bare to those death throes, a wheezing from a broken windpipe, the yellow of subcutaneous fat and the ruptured arteries ( you're not here ).

"You should have looked away."

Blade's voice pulls you out. You finally breathe. Take it all in again as the cotton and the fuzz and the silk web is untangled from your notches. The man falls to the sand, nothing more than dead weight at this point.

( This could be you. )

You take a good, long look at him, at that tear stricken, marred face, that distended jaw and the awful angle to his limbs. The sand is already soaking up beneath him — he was alive once. You didn't know this person, you'd never met him and…

( You let him die. You're a doctor and you let him die. )

Blade's brow furrows when you take a shaky step back, two clear words; 'do not'. You look around you, spot one clear rout of escape amidst that hopeless need to collapse, the world spinning faster and faster and fraying and burning away at the far extremities. You try to run.

He doesn't lie when he says it's easy to catch you again.

You're drawn close, your back practically colliding against his chest before you could make it too far. That rabid, scrambling beast in your snarls and you sink your teeth into his wrist, kicking wildly till your foot connects with his shin. Blade grunts, and you slip away just a little, an inch, one more. But he's bigger, bigger and stronger and it takes a moment for you to fall to the floor, swiping into the buzz and feeling his heaving chest pressed against yours.

His hold closes round your throat. "No — " You burst out,. "No, no don't — "

Blade doesn't move as much against your kicks, face drawn to stony apathy while you try to pry his fingers away, vision blurring against tears and snot. His thumb presses down against your thyroid, breaths unevenly paced to an animalistic rhythm. He doesn't seem all there with how he seems so steeped in madness and…

…fuck it, you're terrified.

Your hand gropes to the side, closing round the uneven surface of a stone. You drive it into the side of Blade's skull, a faint crack ringing out. He falters, wide eyed as one hand presses against the wound and comes away wet. You take a gasping breath in, pushing yourself up but Blade drives you down hard, down to your back till it hits something soft, and still and dead —

( No no no nono no no no NO NO. )

The vermilion of his gaze burns you ( just like all those nights ago ).

It's already started to heal, collapsed parts of his skull scraping and pushing itself back out, repairing damaged bone and muscle. And Blade looks half drunk, sunken into rapture and starvation, his hand sliding up from your throat to press at your cheeks. You freeze, ceasing your assault to his chest and stomach.

He curls over your form, shrugging and swatting away your hands to pin you down proper. There is a wet squelch against your arm pressing against that open wound. "Stop…" You whine, trying to tug him back. "Blade. Blade stop — "

He presses his lips to yours. You slam your fist into his sternum, tasting his blood in his mouth. His teeth come next, biting against your bottom lip, taking, taking, taking. It feels infecting, like a disease, like something that shouldn't be there and you squirm. Blade's fingers tangle into your hair, giving it a sharp tug. You feel your back press against the corpse's shoulder, practically crushing you against it.

He's not gentle. Blade can't be gentle with the violence that comes with him. It's too deeply embedded into the crevices of his bone and marrow and in his veins and blood. It's the oxygen he breathes in, the lead that poisons his alveoli and files away at the pliable parts of his abdomen.

His tongue peeks through, pushing past your lips to take a taste. There's that heady taste in you, disgusting, curling in your guts and just about threatening to batter out. You kick him again.

His eyes flash, dyed more red than orange. He comes away with spit and blood smeared across his lips. You heave, staring up at him, then break down, sobbing openly. Blade keeps you still, bending down to kiss you another time, just at the corner of your lips.

"Enough." You beg him, sounding small. You feel defeated, the load wearing down the bones of your shoulder till you're crushed and collapse. "Please."

Blade blinks. He sits up and sits you up with him, nestled between his legs. You look behind you, the man's larynx having come turn free from your struggle, hanging out a hairs breath and cushioned by fat and crushed muscle fibres. You croak, tipping your weight over and emptying your stomach out onto the beach; till all you are retching out is acid and bile. He pulls your hair back, halting your mess from getting caught in it.

"Done?" he asks, drawing you back close to him, his gaze lidded. You shut your eyes.

"I want to go back home." you whisper.

"Alright." Blade promises you, putting you back down on the sand. "Don't move." You don't think you can. Your limbs weight down more and more with the passing minute. Blade drags the body out into the ocean, for a moment, disappearing beneath the surface. He returns, of course. He can't drown, or die ( He's not human, never will be ). "Come." he tells you.

You allow it, him gathering you in his arms. You don't make a fuss, or shout. "Keys." he reminds you. You hand them to him, leaning your head into his shoulder. Your tears prickle beneath your eyelids.

He takes you back home.

You don't know how he'd avoided the security guard's questioning, or the neighbours, But Blade sets you down on the little stool, pulling the bucket beneath the tap to let the hot water run. You draw your legs to your chest, thoughts collapsing into each other, fracturing and splintering as your trembling grows worse. All you can think of is gargling till the taste of blood is gone and the memory of that kiss is gone.

Blade fixes his attention on you. "You need to bathe." He says, taking a knee. You're exhausted, too exhausted to protest, trembling when he pulls away at your jacket and your pants, letting it pile up by the door.

"I can do it myself." You mumble. You question the necessity of it. He won't listen, after all.

He unhooks your bra and tugs down your underwear. "You're tired." He states. "Your attempts will not be as effective."

"Does that matter?"

Blade hums. "Kafka mentioned the need for hygiene. You could fall sick. Besides, you are a doctor." Not anymore, you nearly snap. He moves on to himself next, unbuttoning his jacket. "Detergent?" he asks when you squeeze your eyes shut and refuse to see any more. The sound of his belt buckle is next and his trousers being pulled down.

"Cabinet under the kitchen sink." you mutter. Blade steps out and you lean up against the bucket, watching the water steadily fill till it reaches your fingertips. You hear the beeping from the washing machine and Blade's returning footsteps. He settles behind you

"Turn around."

You turn. You do not look down.

He spends a moment regarding you, then empties a pitcher-full of water over your head. It's warm enough and you let your eyes slip shut as he works on scrubbing away the blood and sweat from your hair. That rotten thing curls in your belly, ringing round like a centipede crawling.

Blade's thumb wipes away the smudge on your cheek with sandalwood soap and he tips his chin up. "Don't fall asleep yet."

"Okay." you passively reply, opening your eyes. he hums and continues to wash you, treating your body with clinical indifference. You don't know what's worse, the hunger or the distance. The act of being viewed as anything but human leaves a sour taste in your mouth. "What about you?" You ask, filling the empty space. You don't want to think about tonight. You don't want to think at all.

Blade hums. "You can help." He shrugs right after. "We will be done sooner at least."

"Okay." You echo, reaching for the soap. You come to realise that he does need the help. Pulling the bandages off of him was a hard enough task. They were messily strewn on, almost cutting away his blood flow and he sweeps it aside. His wrists and his forearms are next. You don't undo the one on his thigh, furiously washing the dried fluids off of him.

What are you doing?

A part of you laughs at the obscene humour. A few hours ago, you'd have dropped dead at the very idea of doing this, if the hopelessness wasn't torn away from you the reins and left you on the backseat of a crashing car.

"You can…turn around."

Blade grunts and turns. you spurt too much shampoo into your hands. Some of it spills over. "You're scared." He says.

"I am."

He bends down a bit. It's easier to reach his head this way. "You should be. You should have killed me." He states, severity weighing his words.

Your shoulders slump, fatigued. "Please. Just stop." Your voice dips into a whisper. "Just stop. I want to rest, alright?" Blade falls silent, knitting his brow together. He nods wordlessly as you rake your fingers through his hair, undoing some of the knot building up against the shampoo suds.

( Blade thinks you're still too gentle with him, in how you trace one of his scars. But he feels the shudder, the roiling beat under your skin, the fear. He sees how easy it is to bring the tears out again and turn that mind of yours off.

He turns a little, pressing his fingertips to the softness of your thigh, just in case you try to run again. )

When you're both done, he has you swaddled in your blankets and deposited on your bed, clothes in tow. It's horrible, this tenderness. You don't think he's used to it either, in how he shuffles and cautiously pads at your arm like you're a fragile little thing, like he wasn't the one who took the mallet to it in the first place.

"Will you hurt me?" You ask, dead eyed.

Blade's lips part ( sometimes he does, when the mara blooms forth florets in his chest and stomach and he wants to break something that breathes beneath his hands ). "Will you run?" he asks.

"If I do, will you hurt me?"

"Yes." he replies bluntly, his hand resting on your calves. You know what that means. You squeeze your eyes shut and nod, laying down on the bed and curling up into yourself.

"You're a monster." you tell him with a shaky, illegible slur. All this for a preordained destiny, for convenience, because you're a coward. All this and you'll be left with nothing tomorrow. You think of your clinic and what you'd salvaged before opening it. It's foundations and the grey walls of the empty rooms it once had. Your heart poured into it all. "Both you and her."

Blade lowers his head. "We know."

IX. DISJOINTING

You did not sleep at all, last night. Blade still stalks the hallways at the unearthly hours you wake at ( five thirty on the dot ). A man is dead, a man you barely know, whose body now below the ocean's surface. Maybe the sharks ate him. And your clinic…you curse it all, and you curse that compulsion that has you reaching for your phone.

It doesn't take long to find it after browsing the local news network. A few live footage of the collapsed interior and the busted furniture. Years of work torn apart ( At least Aleena quit. At least she doesn't have to see this ).

"Do you know why they did this?" you ask, your voice scratchy when Blade comes to linger by your door frame. He'd washed his clothes last night, having pulled his trousers back on with a loose fitted tank top. Kafka must have dropped by.

Blade looks away.

"You know." You spit out, fury bubbling up, clouding your eyes, painting it all red. "You know, don't you? Look me in the eye and tell me you do, you little — "

"The man." Blade cuts in. "The man who hurt you."

You grip the sheets. "What did you do?" you whisper, numbness taking foot and taking away more and more reasoning.

"I killed him." he passes you a sharp look. "Letting him live would have put both of us at risk."

You let out a mirthless laugh. "So it's your fault then. You…you come in and just assume I would be fine with you just…" You laugh. You laugh and laugh and laugh till your ribs hurt and your sides ache because it was so unnecessary, all of this. He must be sick in the head, him and Kafka, to twist apart your livelihood and step all over it. Monsters, the lot of them. Monsters.

"Oh god you're a fucking riot. Now what should I do? I have no job…should I go back? Maybe you could get a kick out of me being sold off again, right?" You flash him a bright little smile, mania at it's finest, and anger. So, so much anger it boils your body alive.

He narrows his eyes. "You will not be leaving. They'll come after you next."

You giggle. "Of course they would." You whisper. "Of-fucking course they would. Then I'll just die. Let my father douse my ashes, if there's even a body to cremate because that just seems the best way to go." You lay back down, tugging at your hair with frustration. The mattress dips as he lays next to you, lips drawn against your nape.

It's possessive, demanding of every little thing and every little part you had to offer.

"I won't be leaving." You snarl, feeling all that spite gather. "I can't because of you. remember?"

"I know."

You press your cheek against your pillow. You're tired again. You want to sleep. "You may as well just kill me at this point." You state flatly. "There isn't much use keeping me alive. I've served my purpose right? What was it, some glorified shield?"

His grip on you constricts. You're pulled closer to his chest. "You will not die." He tells you, his nose pressing up against your neck. Blade inhales, tangling his fingers into your hair. "And I won't kill you."

You bare your teeth at him. Then you stop, and press your face to the pillow again. "Enough." you tell him, feeling angry and tired and empty and more. You try to push Blade off of you, the small of your back brushing against him. Blade lets out a hiss, nails digging into your forearm and you freeze.

He's pressed up, half hard against you.

You throw yourself away from him.

Your eye sockets burn as you flinch and struggle. "Stop." He rasps his order, pressing you stomach down against the mattress as you curl over the edge, letting out a panicked whimper, a migraine searing through your forehead. It turns into an ugly sob, into cries that bleed into the sheets, tracking saliva down as you're dragged back.

His weight bears down hard on your back, his mane curtaining your line of sight. You try to elbow him off and he wrestles your hands down, pinning them behind you. He's panting, letting out a stray growl every now and then. The edge of his nails dig a little deeper into your wrists, just as the other hand fixes itself firmly against your thigh.

You shake. You don't try to hide the glassy eyed look. You only shake.

Blade's annoyances seem to mount, his forehead pressing against your temple. ( Appease her, Kafka's voice whispers to his ear. Blade feels too much of you beneath his palm, and it stokes a selfish hunger that comes down violently ).

He trails his hand upwards. You lay slack, surrendering to it with a tense form. It tugs your nightwear down, spreads your legs a little more. You cry a little, then give up on it, his fingers exploring the softness of your thighs and slipping to the inside. He lets your hands go and you come to grasp at the pillows, nipping down at your bottom lip.

"Blade…?" You whisper, unsure.

He traces the seam of your cunt, dipping a finger inside to toy at your clit and you squeak, grabbing his arm. "H-hold on that's — "

Blade turns you over, draping your legs on either side of his hips. You look at him, pupils shrunken down at the sight of him surveying you, his lips pressing over the curve of your knee, then further down. You squirm beneath him, movements stilled by a firm hand on your belly. Blade bites hard, tearing into the skin of your thigh, breaking capillaries and drawing blood.

He pulls away to witness the bruising and the wet wail you shudder out, soothing you with his tongue brushing over the wound like a dog. You slam your foot against his shoulder. Blade simply grabs it and hoists it above his shoulder.

"Let me…" he mumbles, groaning up against your skin, spacing your thighs apart some more. You're squirming, and he roughly pulls you closer. "Stay still."

You can't, you want to say. You can't when he's touching you like that and —

He stills. "You haven't done this before, have you?" he guesses. You want to sink, sink down into a place that was far away from here. Blade's eyes are unnaturally bright, burning like coals against the dim lighting.

"Shut up and get this over with." You rasp. There's nothing here, nothing between the two of you. Maybe a few sick feelings from his side. You want it to be done with and let the maggots eat away at your body after ( if that makes it easier for him in the end ). Blade huffs, vague amusement flitting past his expression. His cheek is smushed against your thigh.

"Your first…" he mumbles, a vague story playing out in his eyes. Your legs are pushed back, and he sits himself down before you, teeth grazing through soft flesh till he latches his mouth to your cunt and presses the expanse of his tongue over your bundle of nerves. You mewl into it, jolting under his touch as his hands come to massage circles at your hips.

You stay steadfastly quiet after that, as the assault continues and he licks a strip up your slit while gauging every little shift and twitch on your face. You could have fooled anyone else with the forced apathy, fooled Blade with you looking at anything but him. He suckles at your clit, rolling it over the tip of his tongue and you twitch, bucking your hips into the grind.

Blade demands. He demands and keeps demanding, eating you out half starved and at a pace you couldn't keep up with; feeling that appendage slip into you at some point of it all. You moan ( this doesn't feel good. It shouldn't. How fucking pathetic are you?! ) trembling at all the new feelings blurring out your mind.

You tell yourself to take it. Take it and let him leave you be after that taste of satisfaction. Blade nuzzles into your cunt, smearing your building slick against your outer lips till smelted orange meets the fatigue in yours.

"You're being stubborn." he comments, pulling away for a moment. You grit your teeth, open your mouth to snap back. Blade dips down then, a finger slipping into you, massaging your insides and pacing himself with more gentleness than you'd expected. Gasping and grasping at the sheets, your narrowed gaze fixates on his, fuming, fuming.

You push his face away when he leans in close and he persists, teeth latching over your neck, licking a delicate strip up the column of it. His chest seems to vibrate — it's not a purr. It rattles at you, it's unnatural.

"Make it quick then!" you sob. "Please."

His finger curls inside you and you curl your toes into the sheets, keening into his hair. You hate this. You hate this. There is a warmth in your insides that stirs and seeps through the cracks. Blade seems to notice and takes it in with a hunger that terrifies you. He presses his pads against that sweet spot, a thumb returning to your clit. You whine, shake your head.

"Good?" he asks. It feels like a taunt.

"Shut up." you grimace, rocking your hips in pace with him. It's little jolts of that buttery feeling that has your mind sink further and farther away. Blade kisses your neck, grinding up against your ass through it all. It's awful. It's all wrong, this facade of gentleness.

You mumble, grinding at his hand as another finger is added and he stretches you out a little, testing your limits with rapture. That heat grows, grows, grows bit by bit, tuned to the way his finger curls into that spot. A moan spills out, then another and you spa a hand over your mouthy, shaking your head. You want it to stop. You want this to stop now and —

Blade's digits nudge against your cervix and he bears down on your clit hard.

It snaps, that warmth. You tighten round his gingers, clenching, sucking him in deeper and his lips part as he watches you fall apart with a jumble of words and begging. You fall back into the sheets as he pulls his hand away, laving at your mess while he undoes the buttons of your shirt. It spares a peak of the sweet of your breasts, the soft expanse of your stomach. He's seen it before. There's nothing new to it.

He bites again, not as deep this time as he pulls his pants down. You spare a glance, snapping out of the afterglow when you catch sight of him. "That won't fit." You whisper.

Blade shudders, his cock resting at your stomach. It's hot, an angry res that makes you feel uneasy. You half expect pain when he slides down to breach you entrance, you expect tears and you expect it with hunched shoulders. Blade is slow instead, thoughtful, almost. He keeps his progress slow, watching you wince against the stretch before he thrusts in deeper, finally nudging his tip to your cervix and staying there a moment.

Somewhere between all that, his hand finds yours, pressing down at your palm in awkward assurance.

You can't take it.

"What are you doing?!" you demand, whining against how full you felt. It's strange, so strange and you think you see the mad ramblings from friends and gossip over how good sex felt sometimes. But this is Blade. Blade, with his violence and his slashed wrists and the way he stank of death.

Blade pushes some of his weight on you. "It's your first time." he replies.

Your first time. A rare consideration. An emotion that bud out too late for your tastes. "Why should you care then?!" You snap, grabbing his tank top. "For fucks sake, stop treating me like I'm your lover! I'm not! You're not doing this to me because you have feelings do you?!"

The question was wholly rhetorical. It's a harsh accusation, mounted by everything else he'd done wrong. Blade falls silent, eyes wide. You leer up at him, then chortle with disbelief. "Oh god, you are." You choke out, feeling violated in a way. Feeling more violated than you were already. Blade keeps staring at you as you cover your face, cackling. "Oh god, oh god this is just unbelievable! You like me? Me?!"

You feel venom drip into your words. You feel that ache, the urge to tear his eyes out then and there. Boys will be boys. The words keep echoing through and it makes you physically ill to think of it.

"You're pathetic. You're absolutely fucking pathetic!" you cut through, grabbing his hair and pulling at it. Blade grunts, annoyed. You don't care, ripping at his face, his neck, his shoulders. "Fuck! Fuck you! After all this bullshit, fuck you!" Blade hisses, trying to shift a bit, move some more but you kick out at his thigh.

"Do not." he grits out, his voice low and angry. "Your anger is an inconsequential thing. I've seen far worse."

"You think I want your guilt, you ass?!" you demand. "You think I want you begging and grovelling for forgiveness?!" Blade thrusts. You dig down, fight against it and the sweet burn it brings. You feel that storm brew in your chest and you spit at him, jarring Blade enough with wide eyed shock ( it's a satisfying thing to see ) to slam your weight into him and roll the two of you over, your hands grabbing at his throat.

He nudges deeper into you and you cry out, feeling his tip coax into your g-spot. Still, you hold on.

Blade still watches, gauging the sudden shift, waiting to see you move. When you take a moment to gain your bearings, he grasps at your hips, guiding you down his cock and you almost falter, feeling his free hand tweak your nipples. sputtering a little, you persist, your thumbs coming to press against his Adam's apple.

Blade lets out a gasp, snapping his hips up again, drawing himself out then back into you. You feel him grind against those sensitive spaces he'd gauged out earlier and a few flustered cries sputter out before your grip tightens round your neck.

He sets his speed, increasing that pace to a faster rhythm, grasping at what parts he could, letting you take from him for a moment. You double over, teeth tearing into his cheek. "I despise you." You tell him. "I hate you for taking everything away from me. I hate you for ruining my life." You pour it all in, all the vitriol and the fury. Blade's eyes shut.

"I know." he grunts, feeling you clench down on his cock.

"I wish you'd stayed dead." You add, feeling it all pile up into a raw mass that eats you alive. "Do you hear me?"

"I know." He repeats.

"I hate you." You sob out, your tears splattering against his jaw. Your thumb presses down harder. Blade moans, his tempo increasing and catching you in it's midst, hitting your sweet spot over and over till it tumbles through to make a mess between the two of you, the baggage and the tucked away harshness. "You're pathetic. Absolutely fucking pathetic."

It feels so fuzzy, the heat, the faint warmth from Blade, blocking out his airflow. His movements grow frantic, almost, his grip on you bruising your hips till finally, you find you release again, legs weakening below you. Still, you hold fast, dragging yourself over the expanse of his body as he keeps up with thrusting faster and faster to a brink of near over-stimulation, all of it animalistic grunts and grows and teeth nudging at your chest.

You press down hard enough and Blade finally cums, his release coming in spurts inside of you. The cartilages in his larynx give out and you feel tissue collapse into itself ( just like that man on the beach with his throat torn out, poetic in a gruesome sense ). You watch him struggle to breath and you push down harder, hysteria bursting as you bare your teeth and drive him closer to another death.

Blade goes still below you. He's cold as a corpse.

You sway a bit, lifting yourself off of his cock, falling into a haze of cotton wool and sick satisfaction, tipping into the space next to him. He's dead. He's dead.

You shut your eyes, and you feel nothing.

You have better to do now, the unsaid and the undone. The empty buzz of pleasure slowly recedes and you grasp your phone between your hands, tapping at the message app. You let out a soft cry, shoulders shaking. There was a life once that felt far too distant. Where you'd been tugged away and folded into silk and gold till you were shackled down and told to stay quiet. 

( There are many things you want to tell them. Many angry things, many quiet, introspective things. Many with a little more love lining your words, a little more longing. They still wait for you, even after shutting their doors. You know this too. )

So, you start to type.

Dear Appa…

Blade wakes when the sunlight filters in, and his arm winds round you in the silence, listening to the rustle down below and the coming commotion. Then, he rises, buttoning his pants up proper and drawing the blanket over your head. "Stay here." he tells you.

You listen to the angry voices and the encroaching footsteps from the staircase outside. Blade summons his sword, stalking out of the room, dog-like, wolf-like, his violence returned to him after briefly being cowed by your venom. 

The doorbell rings ( you know who it is, through the ringing metal and the acrid voices ) and you draw into yourself.

You are not here. You tell yourself. You close your eyes and open them back up, petrichor seeping through and your feet sunk into damp soil. You let yourself stay there, in the garden in front of your childhood home, away from torn flesh and the building agony.

You are not here.

📼 — AUTHORS NOTES + ETYMYOLOGIES //

MANY MANY THANKS TO MOTH FOR BETA READING THIS.

this fic was something that took me months to write ( and honestly it shows with the mess and the rush XD ). either way, tda does touch on a few cultural topics and reflects on some of the good old desi trauma when it comes to the arranged marriage scape, something i wish i could have explored more in depth. but with a fic nearly hitting 20k and my own set deadlines...perhaps another time. so here are some of the stuff i mentioned that were picked straight off of my own experiences :

the newspaper adverts listing out bride and groom details amongst other stuff is a pretty common sight here. within my own personal experiences, arranged marriages are a gamble to say the least, considering i only knew two within my immediate sphere that worked out pretty well. add in the stigma surrounding divorce and hooooo boi.

needless to say, there is a lot of shit to unpack with arranged marriage culture ( specifically down in the south where a lot of women and men are given the illusion of 'control' but are still heavily pressured into it ). it's not as overt or obvious to be fair, nor as deeply touched upon.

there's also the weird dynamics within our families where children cannot wholly cut themselves free from their familial unit, disownment and distancing aside. due to how community takes center stage here, family plays a pretty heavy handed role when we're raised. this is mostly due to assumptions of familial disownment being tied into 'questionable behaviour' in a sense. one of my friends was turned away during job hunting solely because some employers were unnecessarily quick to judge.

add in the sheer dependancy you grow into and how tight social circles tend to be and hoooooo b o i. ( you're dead if you live in a small town ).

the reader here does exist within these two spheres, half pressured into arrangements and a duty to be a 'good daughter' by proving financial stability. the clinic isn't just a ways of keeping her away from her family and the matrimonial expectations they have on her ( and trust me, it's not just the parents ) but also her own little act of rebellion by showing them that she can manage just fine.

some of the stuff are more in line with my own community's practices. the agelu is a feast laid out to pay respects to ancestral ghosts. cha is our way of saying 'chai' within my language.

blade in this fic was also initially supposed to be very unhinged. maybe a little more out there with far darker scenes. there was an instance where the reader was actually married prior but had a difficult relationship with her husband. the divorce was what incited the disownment.

she was also a liiitttlle more involved with the stellaron hunter's plans, but i thought the sheer disconnect and the painting of the hunters in this shadowed, unclear light made more sense XD. that and how i was sadistic enough to write a whole scene depicting aleena's marriage and a few unsaoury aftermaths.

anyway, thank you for taking the time to read tda!!! this fic took a WHILE to write out given my busy schedule so i appreciate it so very much!!!

TAGLIST ノ join the taglist. — @silentmoths @meimeimeirin @sleepynoons @vourfrede @endursent.

@jessamine-rose @ofoceansandtombsanew @chiyoso @4acoffee.

One plot point constantly asserted since the debut of Dan Heng IL's companion quest, The Dragon Returns Home, is the assertion that the changes done to the Transmutation Arcanum resulted in the Semi-Draconic Abomination's uncontrollable creation, and while it was a failure after Jingliu had to put it down, Yingxing does display some hints of "inheriting" its properties. While the means that Yingxing assimilated with it is unknown, as a monstrosity that contained both the essences of Permanence (Dan Feng/Long) and Abundance(Shuhu), it affecting him is incredibly likely.

In DHIL, Character Story III & Jingliu, Character Story IV, we're painted a sketchy if interesting picture that led to this occurring.

During the Sedition, after this transformation, it's highly implied that Yingxing not only transformed before the Semi-Draconic Abomination's death, but that he engaged in battle with Jingliu to the point that she was previously injured from their duel while Yingxing protected Dan Feng. Following this deadly battle, Yingxing likely had been transformed simultaneously as the Abomination had been made, his elevated strength level is consistent with the Draught of Draconic Surge, a medicine that combines Long's blood with that of subjects who imbibed it, especially when it's combined with Abundance-affected Long-life Species like Xianzhou Natives.

This is better detailed in Pharmacological Studies on the Draught of Draconic Surge, Disciples of Sanctus Medicus: Collection of Exhibits, which describes experiments that seem to mirror the unique properties of Ren's immortality. In addition, the de-aging that Yingxing underwent is identical to what a scholar named Bernini underwent centuries later.

As expanded on in the Shredded Notes of Scholar Bernini, another aspect of Ren's immortality possibly derived from Abundance and Permanence is the fact that it's constantly asserted how it's only by the power of Long that the Ambrosial Arbor, the pinnacle of Yaoshi's manifested power, which highly suggests the possibility of Abundance being connected to Permanence in some way to create a "balanced" immortality that materialized in Ren.

According to the Adventure Mission Venom Brews, Immortality Looms, Dan Heng IL, Character Story I and Dan Heng's companion quest, The Dragon Returns Home, there exists something known as the "maddened and frenzied dragon," called the candle (or torch) dragon, tied to the Ambrosial Arbor. Whether an actual being or a metaphor, it strongly implies the connection between Abundance and Permanence, as only a High Elder is capable of sealing the Arbor, which is also true of the High Elders for the Hexafleet ships that carry similar Plaguemarks.

As can be read in Pharmacological Studies on the Draught of Draconic Surge, Disciples of Sanctus Medicus: Collection of Exhibits, Ren's immortality is both the result of Shuhu amalgamating to him that made him spectacularly more powerful than the average Marastruck whilst this Mara may have been tempered by Dan Feng's essences that caused him to both de-age to be much younger than he was and prevent the Mara from overtaking him completely, like it most Marastuck.

A cage of Voracity

With the curious amount of ties between Abundance, Permanence and Voracity, perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that Voracity would be able to both contain/temper an Emanator of Abundance (Shuhu), to outright consuming it. This was revealed in the 4.3 MSQ, The Lethe Below the Living, Primeval and Other Times .

While this says nothing specifically of tempering Abundance, what it does speak of is the ability to contain it, if in a grisly fashion that speaks more of an attrition than true disposal, let alone termination.

In a way, this "attrition" makes sense. As Ruan Mei explains it in Arcadia Of Mystery And Terror, in an unknown period after the Swarm Disaster when Oroboros was said to have disappeared, like cutting off the heads of the mythical hydra, AHA personally sealed countless vestiges of Oroboros' body, suppressed it with Voracity, and powered it via the Path of Voracity.

In Primeval And Other Times, Ren makes his plan clear: Oroboros will serve as the furnace, Abundance as the iron, and their endless undying would be the hammer that culminates in a cage that will contain Shuhu for all eternity.

But you stay on your island, adrift this sea of melting thought.

Because it’s still yours. Your island in this tempest, where the screaming twines with the wind and the sky itself is made of a tangled mass of thrashing limbs. It’s still yours.

And in the end, it’s all you have left of that stubborn strain that anchors you here. An ache, that remnant of grief.

( The smell of home. )

Lady Hanya stands above you when you awaken. Your mouth tastes of oil and you swallow the last few drops of something viscous, slickened that coats your tongue. The wine of oblivion clears away what remains in your head. Your mara calms. You are empty, mind scraped clean of rot and sentiment till you nod into the void sleepily and nearly buckle and fall back into your coffin.

“Designation.” She speaks up.

You stare up at the vaulted ceiling. “Warden 145629, Lady Hanya.” The reply comes to you like a dream, like clockwork. Lady Hanya says nothing. You vaguely recall she doesn’t speak much at all to begin with, unless she is standing by Lady Xueyi’s side. “Have I been assigned a mission?” you ask. 

Lady Hanya shakes her head, her gaze absently tracing over the chains round your wrist. You feel an inch beneath your skin. A primal kind of hunger that longs to tear them off. It’s what you ought to be feeling — so you keep your lips sealed. “Warden no. 145629.” she repeats. “Do you know why you’re here?”

What a strange question, you want to say. Why would you ask that? Because you shouldn’t know.

Yet your eyes still choose to sting. That urge to bite shows its face with the way your nose wrinkles and your lips pull back into some half-formed snarl. For an instance, the haze of the wine clears and you see a few stark shapes in the fog. A red sky. A bloodied scape of uniforms. His eyes fading from blue to red. It stays there like a persistent tug at the back of your head. 

You listen to Lady Hanya’s sigh. “So you still remember.” she remarks. You feel like you’ve failed at something. 

“I do.” you confess. “I remember a little.”

She reaches out, the ink of her brush settling on your seals. One by one, they fall away. “Do I have a mission?” you ask again, cold fear nailing itself against the column of your spine, with something that tastes like desperation choking at the back of your throat. You try sorting through it all as that thing inside starts to unfurl and rear its ugly maw. 

Lady Hanya blinks, slow and steady. “It’s the waxing moon tonight.” she tells you. “Warden no. 145629, you are relieved of your duties for today. As per the request set in by General Jing Yuan half a century ago, it is your ‘mandated day off for leisure’.” 

“Oh.”

A pause. 

“I remember that now.” you comment mournfully. The last chain falls and you test your hand against the edge of the coffin. One, two, three, you count the beat of every second with a squeeze of your fist. You finally hoist yourself up, taking a moment for feeling to rush back into your legs, enough so that it doesn’t feel like you're walking on needles anymore.

A few sways after, you manage to straighten up and breathe through the nausea. You look down at your white robes. The same heavy cotton. The same crossed collar. They’re still pristine, and your trousers still bunches at your ankles. “Will I be allowed outside?”

Lady Hanya lets out a hum, casting a cursory glance at her notebook. The spectral envoy — and you only just notice it now, falls back and tucks its fans back into its belt. “You always were.” she states. “You have twenty-four system hours. Use your time well.”

You nod. The gesture feels less sincere and more mechanical, more weary. Twenty-four hours. You flex your fingers, one by one, feeling the way your bones crack and grate against disuse. Twenty-four hours to think. Twenty-four hours of sun. 

“So there’s no mission.” You ask again. And you ask because there’s something incomprehensible in that singular statement. It doesn’t weigh down the right way.

Lady Hanya looks faintly exasperated, and amused all at once. “None.” she assures you, her voice soft and steadily gentle. She, like most people stuck within the walls of the Ten Lords Commission, find themselves tiptoeing about some in-between of lost and found. One, two, three — you manage to tap each finger against your left wrist. You do the same with your other hand. 

“However.” She speaks up after. You snap your gaze up to meet hers. “I have a favour. If you will be perusing outside, could you escort Lady Huo Huo to Fyxstrall Garden? She has a few stray heliobi she’s been designated to corral back into the furnace.”

You let the request settle. “Lady Huo Huo.” you echo. “Lady Huo Huo.” you repeat. A fuzzy face plants itself into your vision. A slight wisp of a girl with bandaged knees and terror caking her scent like molasses. And of course, that annoying spectre who insists on tailing after her like a leech. “Ah yes. She’s been promoted to a judge…I will honour your request, Lady Hanya.”

Lady Hanya shuts her eyes. There’s nothing there to discern in her expression; her face so vividly pale and siphoned of anything remotely human. A walking corpse, no better than you were. “Thank you.”

You bow and follow her footsteps. The floor is cold beneath your bare feet and the halls stay as dark as they usually were; metal and stone lit by the occasional blue from a lantern strung up at the tall ceiling. The Spectral Envoy tails you for the first few paces, lulled by it’s programming till it deems you safe enough.

For now, you decide, you need a change of clothes. 

White stuck out as a colour of mourning amongst the Xianzhou, even if there were no funerals to be had here. Grief still shapes itself in their beating hearts. People will stare. So you take your trip to the storage closet, where Chiyi hands you a few robes from the cupboards. You wore these ones the last time too. They’d been washed recently.

You should thank Lady Hanya later.

There’s nothing too fancy about your attire. You could live an illusion of normalcy in them; in the softness of the fabric and the absence of metal and bracers around your wrists. There’s a shock of resentment that gutters through your body, like the aftereffects of electrification and the pain it brings in its wake. A single name stays there, burned in your thoughts to an almost obsessive degree. 

Yuan. 

No. Something else hisses, and you erase it, down to the last traces. Your throat burns and your mouth tastes sour. 

You’re halfway past straightening your cross collar when the light from the door is encompassed by shadow. When you lift your chin, you spot Lady Huohuo hovering by the doorframe, clutching her paper talismans a little too tight. “Good day.” you greet and she lets out a little jump and squeak.

You count a whole minute before she gathers herself and patters up next to you. “Good day.” she greets in turn. She looks ready to faint when you do not reply. “Lady Hanya said you’ll be my escort?” she asks after a beat of silence that stretches out for a bit too long. You realise you should have said something ( even if you weren’t certain on what to say ). Now the situation feels jarringly awkward. 

“I will.” you affirm. 

Lady Huohuo passes you a distressed look. “Uh…right.” You blink. “She said it was your day off today too.” she adds. “I…oh I'm so sorry if I’m taking up your free time. I-I remember the last time I got a day off and it was ages ago. I’d be so upset if someone told me to work that day. Ha ha ha.” The laugh comes out strained, catatonic almost. Lady Huohuo passes her talismans to her other hand, bouncing on the balls of her feet. 

You spare a glance to the doorway, then affix your stare dead upon her face. “Lady Huohuo.” you speak up. “Do I scare you?”

Lady Huohuo flinches. “What?! No!”

“Yes, you do.” The heliobus tail of hers pipes up rather reproachfully. “You and that witch, the both of ya. Snake tongued, dead-eyed hellions on the Luofu.” 

“I didn’t ask you, heliobus.”

There is a sputter and a flash of green flame. Lady Huohuo slips out a shaky yelp and smacks another sealing talisman on. “M-Mr. Tail, please do not go around picking fights with my coworkers.” she demands, even if her voice is a soft, easily flustered thing. “It’s horribly rude!” And to her credit, he does shut up, settling to glower a thunderous green amidst his silence. 

You tilt your head. “Shall we?” you offer.

Her fingers twitch and flutter. “R-Right.” You slow your pace and let her keep up with you, and you keep to your silence through this walk. 

A part of you is thankful that Lady Huohuo doesn’t speak. Words had too much to remember by. Words hurt your thoughts. Words hardly masked that resurfacing memory. It comes to you in a blink, slow like tar, like oil and cold — a bone deep cold. 

The last thing you wear, after your slow ritual of clothing yourself, was the blindfold.

He takes you in after coming across your attempt to steal away his ores. 

The man with the periwinkle eyes had a thunderous look on his face when he snatched at your wrist. You can’t recall much of the aftermath, or the conversation he’d had with you — but you recollect his shattered image with a painful fondness. Shifu, you had called him then. Shifu, because he’d taken you to his forge and showed you how to mould gold thread. He showed you how to whisper the language of swords into every strike of your mallet. 

Shifu, your shifu, was a man who wanted to shine. He was even harsher with you — and you knew in some quiet sense that there’s little place here for fleeting sparks. Better strike a bonfire, a forest fire, than be forgotten, in his words.

And out of all the apprentices who cycled in and out of the forge, you remained. You and him — a pair of mortals in an unaging ship, in an endless war, in a yawning chasm with no clear tomorrow. And you watched, you watched him burn and burn and burn till his embers fell and you were left with the ashen aftertaste. 

You watched the way his remnant still walks with none of that drive, and how the mara mirrored itself in your eyes. In how the beast reared its ugly head and screamed its murder into the earth he bled into.

Shifu, your shifu. Your stupid, foolish, shifu.

And a fractal of something else. Silver hair. A gold gaze. 

Him.

“This is far enough.” Lady Huohuo declares. She is even jumpier now as she edges at the borders of the delve. You hear the shuffle of a Cloud Knight standing by the dock with the hum of a skiff at the ready, and you escort her to it. “Thank you so much, Ms. Warden.” she says as she boards the boat, turning to you with a grateful tremble in her voice.

You don’t move an inch, only doing so to wave off the thanks with a tilt of your head and a hurried gesture. “It’s alright. I’m only following orders in the end.”

You could imagine she’s smiling a wobbly smile. “Of course. Lady Hanya really does worry about me, I suppose…I wish I weren’t such a nuisance. You’re usually so busy and…and…” you can see the faint shape of her shift and meld with the shadows and the light through your blindfold. “I never quite caught your name all this time either…” she adds.

Something seizes. It rattles against you with the maw of a violent beast. “I have no name, Lady Huohuo.”

She falls silent, the realisation settling in. How bold, you almost want to tell her — but the scent of her is thick with enough shame to last her the next decade. She’s still a child in the end. You’re not needlessly cruel to children. “Right…right.” she echoes after a swathe of silence, panic edging her tone. “I really didn’t mean to offend — ”

“I’m aware.” you cut in. “Take care. Lady Huohuo.”

That heliobus tail of her crackles when her expression wilts a little. Did you say something wrong?

You tell yourself to forget about it, as the skiff pulls away from the dock and shutters away farther and farther to the next delve. By the time the roar of its engine is faint, you turn and leave — you have twenty two hours of holiday left to while away. Twenty two hours to wander the Luofu. Twenty two hours, a time that felt too long and too short all at once. 

( A faint voice nags at you, of the sheer absurdity. People like you aren’t meant to have holidays. Not after what you’d done. Not after —

— The angry hiss would always cut off at the peak of it, cresting into some nameless revelation that made your chest pang despite the haziness that takes it apart. ) 

You consider your options. You could visit the hubs, the busy street of Starskiff Haven, where a faint memory nudges you to the gardens there. You can taste still-water on your tongue, and clean air. Yes, you could go there with some tea. You could sit and listen to the bustle outside the walls. You could live with the silence, after the endless wailing the Sea of Souls came with. 

How nice. 

It’s a tired, almost longing statement. How nice that would be. How surreal. 

You start counting down the seconds as you make way to the Port delve. Your index finger taps against your knuckles as you do — one two three one two three one two till you breathe in radio static fogging against the back of your eyeballs. The driver, you notice from your periphery, moves too much in his seat by the navigation compass. 

“Is something the matter?” you call out. 

“Oh no, no.” he replies hastily. He sounds terrified. “Nerves from age, is all.”

“Age?” you muse drily. “You sound quite young to me.”

He makes a choking, gasping sound. “Nerves then. Just nerves. From stress.” 

“Ah.” What a liar. Your lips quirk.

Your little ritual goes without much fanfare. You de-board, buy a flask of tea and a clay cup from a local shop and navigate the busy streets and the connecting bridge to your hopeful destination. You only sit when you feel overhanging shade shrouding your form — and you settle at the banks of the pond, pouring yourself a glass-full.

“Mh. How does one enjoy free time…” you muse, testing your words against your tongue, testing the shape of your voice and the thoughts coming to form. It’s not the slippery, distilled liquid you’ve grown accustomed to in rest. The waking world had far more form to it and an indistinct solidity that sits heavy on your shoulders.

You take a sip of tea, basking in the aroma. What does one do to enjoy free time? Your tea flask will only last you a little while. Napping felt counterproductive — it felt treasonous. 

By the time you’re on your second cup, you start to notice it.

The air is oddly still. You’d expected a little more activity in the vicinity; at least around the sitting area a few paces off. The silence sets off an alarm; a loud, insistent scratching in the back of your mind that only grows more desperate, more viscous with the passing seconds. You sniff the air. No telltale signs of sickly sweetness and bitter ginkgo. 

No Mara, you tell yourself. No Mara. 

You test your fingertips against your chest. You do not feel the tell tale signs of budding shoots, no roots systems spreading beneath your skin layers, no blue poppies threatening to bloom within your airway and mouth. 

No Mara, you repeat that chant over and over. It starts to run stale as that tightness in your throat grows painful. You slump against the tree trunk and take a sip of tea. It’s cold. 

“Fancy seeing you here.”

You flinch. The voice is deep, dulcet and warm. It idles at your periphery and haunts you. You bite down at your bottom lip and stamp out the desire to cry, grasping at the clay a little tighter. “Careful,” he speaks up. “You might wind up breaking it.”

You turn to the source. “Pardon me. Do I know you?”

The man who addresses you with such fond familiarity pauses. 

“Do you not remember?” he manages, his tone searching. You stubbornly refuse to indulge in any responses and look away. “Ah, you have your blindfold on.” he reasons after. “I suppose it’s for the best.”

You fight this strange, alien urge to get back to your feet and pace away from him. He puts you off in ways you can’t name, in ways that crawls within the spaces of your ribs and sets off many unspeakable things. You don’t want to let your presence hover here any longer than it probably should. 

The man sits down across from you, and with him, the clinking weight of armour. Your head spins. A Cloud Knight? “Well, I won't force you to recall anything.” he reasons. “I’m just happy to see you here. Is it your day off?”

“Yes.” you affirm stiffly. You wonder if Lady Xueyi will break your hands and legs if you were to stab him. 

( She will. )

He laughs. “You still regard me with such disdain.” The rest of it is muffled behind his hand. “Granted when we were younger, it was all for show. You’ve always wanted to be, and I quote, ‘Just like your shifu’ — even though you’d turn your head the other way and cry for every hurt finch you’d come across.”

There’s a stirring in your guts. You draw your knees back, biting at the inside of your cheek. You should leave, that voice screams, as you feel the start of a headache coming on. You should leave, now.

The man hums, blissfully unaware of how your limbs lock in on themselves and the way an instinctive part of you starts baring its teeth his way. “How are you?”

“I don’t see why I should answer that question.”

“The waxing crescent is the only time you’re allowed out of the Shackling Prison. I’d think that a month’s worth of work and criminal-hunting must tire you quite a bit.”

You consider him. “You don’t say.” you muse lowly. “You know an awful lot about me.”

The man scoffs playfully. “Of course I do! I demanded your right to a day off. Stress isn’t good for blood pressure, they say.”

That final piece slots into place. You jolt and scramble to your feet, the shuddering disconnect returning. The very human trepidation weans away into the sleek cut of protocol. Your heels click together. Your back straightens, then you bow low. “General.” you greet. Because General Jing Yuan must be treated with respect. It’s a lesson drilled well into you.

( Your mouth still forms words unsaid. You almost called him by his given name, with a half hitch in the midst of it. You almost said it in a way that speaks of intimacy. Your insides churn. You smell the sharp notes of poppies and the shadows behind the blindfold start blurring a dangerous red. )

The man — The General does not respond.

“So you don’t remember.” he repeats. 

“Apologies.” You recite. “I hold no recollection of any orders.”

He laughs. It’s a little empty, yet morbidly humoured all the same. “No, no. I…” he trails off. A sigh follows. “Never mind that. Stand at ease, you’re not on duty.”

Your shoulders rise. “I was disrespectful.”

“I won’t tell Lady Hanya.” You crane your neck up, sensing a ‘but’ in his statement. “Of course, if you won’t mind taking a walk with me.”

Turn him down.

“Yes sir.” you blurt out, shocking yourself with how it comes so easily. After collecting the flask and cup, you trail at his heels like a lost little puppy, sinking into the crowd behind him. General Jing Yuan takes a long breath in and slows his steps as you keep pace. 

He takes his time to think over the details. “We’re going to have something to eat.” he decides with a flourish.

“To eat?” you parrot. You did not expect that.

“To eat.” he affirms. “I take it they’re rare to come by with your job description?”

You listen to his movements, the way he schools every minuscule shift in his body and attempts to throw off suspect by taking up less space. Then you wonder why you could hone in on the pretense. It starts pooling into dangerous enough territory that you scrub your train of thought and stare off into some far-away place. 

“We have rations for longer missions.” you say, bluntness scraping against every recited syllable. “A meal is more of a luxury and distraction. There isn’t much need for it, is there?”

The General coughs. “Well I beg to differ.” he seems offended by the very thought. “It seems I have much to prove, hm?” You’re led past the streets and into the smaller bylanes that crisscross and break away from the main road. It’s far enough in that the high pitched keen of the starskiff engines is more a distant buzz humming away at the back of everyone’s minds.

“May I know where we’re headed, General?” you ask aloud after a moment spent meandering.

He rests a hand on your shoulder, turning you into a small establishment. You smell food cooking amidst the sweltering heat on your cheeks and your nose gives a twitch. His touch stays long enough for you to turn your head to him. He’s warm, swelteringly, jarringly so and you feel an itch in your teeth, a desire to dig your claws in and devour it with a bloody sort of greed. 

One hand takes your own and he guides you to a table. “I can manage." you whisper.

He hovers behind you, the warmth retreating with his touch. “Alright.” he relents. 

A low whistle starts picking up in your ears, louder and louder as he sits himself down across you. You don’t hear him order and any questions directed were incomprehensible — garbled words sewn together then unravelled again and again and again ( “The usual?” the waitress asks ). You still answer, your throat dry. 

( There is a boy’s face behind your eyes. Silver haired with a smile too bright, too soft. He helps you tie the last knot of your brace together, thumb resting stark over your pulse. You can’t make out the rest of him. His eyes are a smeared mass of colour and his face is an inkblot. 

Still, you lean into his shoulder with tired familiarity, counting the seconds down. )

The General snaps you out of the pit with a pat to the back of your hand. 

“Are you alright?” he asks. 

You open your mouth. You have a sudden urge to tear the blindfold off. You were not fine. “I am.” you heave out, your eyes starting to burn. The General keeps his silence about him and hums. You hear his weight move and ease into his seat. You, on the other hand, keep your back straight, as is customary. 

“You can relax.” he points out. 

“It would be very rude of me if I were to lounge about with terrible posture. Especially in your presence.”

He chuckles. “And are you implying my posture is bad?”

You hitch your shoulders higher. “I am blindfolded, General. I cannot see how you’re seated to make such a judgement.”

He wheezes, covering it up with a polite throat clearing when the waitress arrives at your table with the food. You reach into the bamboo steamer and pick out one of the bao, tearing into the filling. It’s spiced and it settles hot over your tongue. Just the way you like it, whispers some old ghost and between the fluffy texture of the wrapper and the fullness it brings to your stomach, you vaguely realise this — you enjoy eating more than you cared to admit ( it feels a little like a warmth. A nostalgic kind that hurts, hurts enough to have you still mid bite and savour every instance of flavour that leaves a lingering pleasantness in it’s footprints ). 

The General does not speak all that much through this slow ritual. You’re a little clumsy with your chopsticks, and he occasionally snickers at your folly behind his bowl. The only instance he does speak up is when you’re mulling over a second helping of rice and stir fry vegetables with a rather smug; “Would you like some more?”

You jerk your head. “A little.” you confess. He gathers your dish and you wait till he hands it back to you, now notably heavier. “Thank you, sir.”

“Sir.” he repeats. “You really don’t have to be so formal.”

“General?” you prompt. 

“That’s hardly any better.” he sighs. 

“Milord.” you tilt your head.

Silence. “Absolutely not.” he states, his tone flat. 

You hum. “Sir, then.” you decide, lips pulling back in some allusion of humour. The General huffs, as if conceding to a long suffering argument ( the allusion is obvious — it’s a singular victory for you; and you preen in it ). You remind yourself to keep formalities about you. He’s still your superior in the end — indirect or not and the illusion of human company is…not an indulgence you could bare to afford yourself.

The wine, in the end, will just strip this meeting from your memories. 

“I’m happy to see that the quality of the food hasn’t changed much. I've been visiting this place a while since its opening...” he says. “Though they seem to have decreased the portion sizes. Hmm.”

You wipe at your mouth with a napkin. “Stagnancy is commonplace here, is it not? I don’t think there’s much room for change to begin with — save for the flux the seasons often bring with them.” you test the air. “Speaking of, which one is it now?”

The General hums. “Summer. The overhanging trees are quite green.”

“It explains the heat.” you admit. “The cold is what I’ve grown accustomed to.”

“I suppose there isn’t much to be said about the ambience of the shackling prison,” he admits. Then he adds something else, a little quieter. “You’d be happier out here, I take it?”

You purse your lips, digging your fingers a little harder on your chopsticks. The embarrassment digs in sharp as a knife now. Clumsy hands, sluggish reflexes, frayed fine motor skills ( this isn’t something feasible for an artist. How could you bend wire and slope your wrist the right way while carving? How could you run your brush in any steady proportion at all? )

“That hardly matters, sir.” you reply. “You must know well enough why I am here.”

“You were complicit in an act of sin.”

The quick response has you raise your chin. “Yes.” 

“Would you consider it harsh all the same?” 

You look down. All you see is the light and the shape of shadow. “I think I deserve it.” you mumble softly. 

The General sighs. “I think it is.” he murmurs. It’s mired with a thick weight to it, and he speaks as if his voice drowns beneath it all. You’re a little amazed at how childish that glimpse comes across. 

Once the bowls are emptied and the bill is paid for, you gather the canteen and cup and turn your head to the exit. The General’s presence hangs over your shoulder, distinct with its heat. You could liken him to a furnace or those fancy heated blankets. You could mistake him for one if it weren’t for his practiced breaths. 

“Leaving already?” he asks, escorting you out. 

“Yes. I’d hoped for a quiet afternoon.” Twenty hours left, you count. The simulated sun burns against your cheek and the General hums. 

“I’ll take you to the main road.” he offers. 

You turn him down. “I cannot accept that.” It comes out jumbled, panicked. “I wouldn’t want to take any more of your time, sir. I fear you may be recognised as well.”

He trails after you, following your footsteps like a languid cat. “I’ll be fine. You’d be shocked to see how little people recognise with none of the armour on.” you are dubious at that. It shows on your face. “You don't believe me?”

You chew at the inside of your cheek. “People hang photos of you in their establishment.” You admit. “Lady Huohuo carries a portrait of you in her pocket as well.”

The General chortles. It’s deep, chest deep and runs sweet and thick like molasses. You turn to it, something softer blooming inside. “Is that so?” he prods, still at your tail, still following your tense strides. You stay close to the walls and follow the trail it travels through, closer and closer to the main road of Central Starskiff Haven. 

“Yes.” you assert. “She’d said so herself. It’s in a portable case, for good luck — ” the words die in your throat. A cold, cold stab tears into your viscera, deep enough to rupture flesh, deep enough plant and fester a freezing chill that shutters to your peripherals. 

When did she say that?

You sift through your memories from this morning. Lady Huohuo’s voice whispering in your ear, small and terrified. Lady Huohuo keeping her distance during the walk. Lady Huohuo skittering aboard the skiff. 

( Lady Huohuo beside you, crying into her hands as the stench of ginkgo burns in your mouth. )

They start to fragment and blend and your head starts to hurt, hurt like you’d been run through with an iron pole, hurt like you’ve been shocked and jarred into this state of nausea and absence of…anything. Memories, memories, memories and amidst the screaming deluge, you surface and gasp. 

“The wine — ” you choke out. 

The General starts. “Wine…?” he mumbles. 

The wine isn’t working anymore. It feels treasonous to say. You want to tear your limbs off as your hands start to shake and the sense of sinking cuts off your airflow. You’re knocked over your feet, seated atop a crate with something heavy on your shoulders. There are things burning into your mind that you shouldn’t remember and you desperately paw away at the cracks spider-webbing past that little hole. 

“Leave.” you hiss, batting away his touch.

The General does not. 

“I wouldn’t leave you here on your own. I’ll stand by the bend — ”

“I said leave!” it comes out hysterical. The voice torn out from your chest sounds more animalistic than human. You try to measure it back, you try as much as you could but the world seems to be disintegrating. When you don’t hear the clinking of armour, you want to tear someone apart. 

Your movements are inhibited. You lash out. His hands pin yours down and you scrape your legs trying to throw him off with every workable bit of muscle in your body. The wind is knocked out of you when he twists you around, restraining your arms to your torso. You try to turn the violence against the soft flesh of your stomach. You almost do, your ears pounding. There’s a thirst for it, an awful, awful twisting deep in your viscera and it would be so easy to rip it clean out of you —

His grasp circles your wrist. You slam your head into his chest and muffle that acrid scream into his collar, digging your teeth into the fabric of his clothes, rabid, and ravenous and wrong.

The General goes still before you feel blinding pain against your neck. A blow to your carotid artery; hard enough for black spots to dance against your vision. You sway and stutter, shaken from wolf to lamb and he steadies your body before you tip forth, bile in your throat. The General catches you, and you could only just comprehend the notes of sandalwood about him.

He takes you to places; all sorts of lovely places during your breaks.

He is someone you care for, you know this. Your shifu would drive him off and you’d bring him back, as if he were a lost kitten clinging to the crook of your arm and basking in your attention. You tussle with him often, knocking your shoulders against his frame and pushing him against the grass, your laughter hidden away and sneaking past the darker corners far away from calculated eyes.

You could follow him too, in a wing-beat. He had a smile that made your insides ache, and your teeth ache, and your cheeks ache. He had a smile you greedily wanted to treasure into your heart of hearts.

Then one day your shoes are ruined by fountain water. He gives you his military boots and you shuffle about in them awkwardly, while he escorts you back barefoot. Your shifu was inside; you could see the light to his office was on. When you linger up on the threshold, you do the single bravest thing you’d done then — you, young, foolish, recklessly naive yet so, so hopeful. You kiss his cheek goodbye. The look he gives you has you still. His eyes are set ashine, liquid gold on a dark countertop with the most beautiful hunger you’d seen.

Like you’d hung the stars in the sky for him, one by one.

( Master Yingxing casts you a cursory glance when you enter. You can feel the welling levity in it, sided with his judgment. Your smile though, was enough to appease him and he tells you to eat the dinner he’d prepared. )

Lady Hanya stands above you when you awaken. Your mouth tastes of oil and you swallow the last few drops of something viscous, slickened that coats your tongue. The wine of oblivion clears away what remains in your head. Your mara calms. You are empty, mind scraped clean of rot and sentiment till you nod into the void sleepily and nearly buckle and fall back into your coffin.

She shuts her eyes. “Designation.”

You open your mouth and all you could force was a pained whimper. You feel pinned down, taxidermied and surveyed. And the memories, aeons the memories. It bears into the crevices of your mind and breaks away those hidden pieces. You’re left with its rubble and the gaping holes and the raucous madness you could drown in. Peeling the skin from off of muscle and bone feels far more merciful.

“Designation.” Hanya repeats.

You sway. “Lady Hanya. The wine.”

She bows her head down, her hair casting a shadow over the side of her face. “What a mess.” she utters. You blink through the dim lighting and shiver against the cold. You’re the apprentice and the warden melded into some unholy creature. Your body feels like something supplanted onto you, alien in how your heart beats and the way your curse beats with it. 

“Lady Hanya.” you repeat. Your vision blurs into tears. 

“I heard you.” Her voice is more soothing. “We may need to up the dosage, if push comes to shove…” she trails off. 

You crumble. Lady Hanya takes a step back. “You have a visitor.”

“I — ”

“It’s alright.” she doesn’t believe what she says though. “You have a few hours left of your day off and you have your right to turn him away if you so wish.” The dialogue is stilted. If I had it my way, she seems to say, I’d have driven him off at the door. 

You have a sinking feeling you know who it is. “Send him in.” You finally tell her. “Please.” 

She isn’t pleased, Lady Hanya. It’s in the terseness of her nod. You count to three, each number whispered under your breath while you watch the lanterns above swing. Mycelium stays rooted in the confines of your ribs and tangles into the spaces that let you breathe. You swing your legs over the edge and test your balance. General Jing Yuan walks in just as you take your first tentative step forward.

You’re not blindfolded this time. 

He looks at you.

You look at him. 

Ah.

You can’t find your voice for this. 

“I hope there won’t be any more flareups.” Lady Hanya speaks up. Jing Yuan — and you know it’s Jing Yuan with the same messy hair and the same tired gold eyes — turns his head to her with a small bow. “This is the last time we’ll consider bending any rules, General.”

“Of course.” he replies graciously. You clench your fists when she leaves and he focuses on you now, his gaze appraising. It slips into this raw desperation that hollows out the colour in his cheeks and when it starts to bleed out and spill over too much for it to be considered appropriate, he draws it away and schools it. 

“I don’t think she’s wholly fond of me.” he breaks the silence. 

You tremble. “Why,” you start, a scared, cornered animal stripped past any form of culpable dignity or courage. You, ironically, feel bare. A little like a ghost yourself. “Why do you keep haunting me?”

Jing Yuan freezes. His expression lapses to a bitter smile. “You’ve been a bit of a nagging presence yourself.” He hits back, though the statement is half hearted in its bite — if you could even say it had bite at all.  

You can’t stand it, seeing him anymore. Your head wrenches and the mycelium tightens. From the scraps you could gather between your youth and the meetings in-between, you know that benign smile he’d wear. You know it so well, down to every twitch and missable nuance and him — Jing Yuan. Your Jing Yuan. Your Jing Yuan and the recklessness he wore chasing you even now.

You suck the air in through your teeth. 

“How much….” he starts. 

“Enough.” you snap. “I know enough.” 

He tilts his head, the corners of his lips tugs against an invisible string. “I’d reasoned you’d be upset.” he expresses, a sense of defeat lade in his tone. “Well. This…is harder than I’d thought.”

Hard.

You could throttle him. You could. You could lap up that violence and this unspeakable, unnameable grief that eats you alive with this horrific voracity. You drag your nails down and mar every instance of his face bleeding into your mind before its image grows clearer. You could forget him and show him your anger and he could see what hard was in the grand scheme of things —

( Oh you love him, you love him so much, you love him and the wine took that away from you. This place took that away from you. Who are you? What are you? Where is your shifu? Where were the others? No Dan Feng had done something — you had done something and — )

“I’d assumed you’d have a lick of sense then.” You can taste the blood in your mouth. You’d bitten down on your cheek too hard amidst that storm needling its way in. “Following me around like…like…” you swallow. “You know better to, don’t you? You do.”

Jing Yuan turns his head to the side like a scolded child. “I do.” he agrees. 

You grimace. It’s the first twinge of real emotion you’d expressed so openly, the first instance of your facial muscles — dulled in sensation and movement — scaling back to show teeth and ire and every namable, conceivable emotion that singes the insides and the linings of your flesh. 

“Then why did you think this was a good idea?” you demand. I need you to stop tormenting me, you want to say. I need to forget you. I don’t want to forget you. I need to forget you. You’re not human. You’re not the apprentice. The apprentice is some forgotten story, a disgraced name under a roster of disciples and…

He looks right through that lie. Jing Yuan, ever perceptive. “It’s you.” he laughs. It comes out a broken gasp and that first crack mars that distance he puts up. It comes out wrong. “I’ve thought of you for seven hundred years. We’ve met and dined and I've watched your memories wither again and again and I've never stopped, reckless as it may be.” he licks his lips, his shoulders drawn taut. “And it is reckless, and it is foolishly sentimental but after everything else, I…”

You’ve rarely seen him so speechless. Jing Yuan had grown in your memories, changed and lived with his melancholia and the mischief he’d tucked into the corner of his mouth. Words came to him as plentiful as the Arbour cursed. And yet, yet, yet.

“I’m not her.” you state. “Stop. Stop joking about it now.” 

His smile dies. He tilts his head and takes it with that dipping sombreness and you could feel the buzz grow louder and louder, entropies within entropies in your ears and with blood in your mouth. 

“I never mentioned I was joking.” 

You clench your fist. It shakes. “I am not her.” you reimburse, your syllables running dry. It’s painful, scraping it out of your lips. It’s petulant and you sound like a broken record stuck within a loop of bland repetitions. “You’re a general. Cavorting about with a criminal in broad daylight — It draws eyes, and you…you…”

Jing Yuan pins you down, quiets the hysteria with a look. “Should I regret it, then?”

Your voice gives away. The enormity, the many, countless unspoken wants from him feel far too heavy to bear. You feel breathless, in a way, gasping for air. Jing Yuan’s expression, blank faced and contemplative, does not falter. “Should I regret it, then?” he repeats, taking a step closer to you. He draws in, his fingertips inches away. “Should I regret you? Meeting you, chasing you, lov — ”

You slam your hands over your ears. Jing Yuan sighs and pries them off, and he squeezes them in his hands, gently, fondly. 

“Because I cannot. I haven’t the heart to, selfish and greedy as it may be.” his chuckle is deep, soft, bitter. “Not after everything. Not after struggling to grant you and the others a modicum of dignity. Not after these seven hundred years of waiting.”

You grit your teeth. “Stop-”

“I’m not lying to you.” he says it with feverish earnestness. “Aeons knows how much I’d gut myself if I did.”

“That’s not the point!” and then, “You shouldn’t be here.” 

Jing Yuan straightens up, his brow pinched. “Lady Hanya made that apparent.” he remarks, threading his fingers through yours. You cannot pull away, beholden by some force rooting you to the floor in front of him. 

“Then you must leave. Please, you must leave. Forget about me, about everything.”

He looks at you, his face clouded over. You slowly, slowly draw yourself back and you feel some small, wretched part of you scream into the emptiness. Jing Yuan instinctively reaches out again, then retracts his hand, his teeth pressing up against his bottom lip. 

He whispers your name. It’s pleading and that damned word has you stop. 

“When we were younger, I promised you and Yingxing something. Do you remember that.”

The mara stirs. It’s less vengeful and more sleepy, cowed, slow acting. Jing Yuan waits. “I do. There’s little to be done there. You know why I’m here. You know what I did.” 

He finally smiles again. “So stubborn. Just like him.” he mumbles. “I could still see it through. I could arrange for a shorter sentence. I could petition for your release.” Something, anything, anything for you.

There’s a crackle, a clawing at your stomach. It sounds like a far off, unspeakable dream. Still, still a part of you, battered and worn, it knows better. It will come with its own private consequences. It comes with a side to Jing Yuan you don’t want to burn into your memory. “General, I appreciate the sentiment. But what would stop you from confining me to your estate, after?”

Jing Yuan stills. “Precious little.” his fingertips press up against his elbow, tighter, tighter. "If it means you stay…but…ah, you wouldn't want that, would you? It would break your heart." he pauses. "It would break your heart." he repeats.

“I’d best stay here then. And you’d best keep your distance. You can’t keep holding onto ghosts…” you start. “They’ll be increasing the dosage. I’ll forget this ever happened after and…I doubt the charioteers would appreciate you so foolishly running after me now.”

“Fu Xuan has had her share of headaches.” he admits with a wry chuckle. He breathes. Every drawn out instance of it brings out a shake to his shoulders. You know the ultimatum is hardly an easy one. You know this, but the silence that hangs over the two of you after makes you want to rip your eyes out. 

He reaches out and you let him. It’s warm and you hunger, hunger, hunger, resisting the urge to turn and press your teeth into the curve of his thumb. “I had to convince her of course. It took a while but I annoyed her enough with stories of our childhood to let her turn the other way for a while. Like when we’d gotten caught in the rains once after sneaking out.”

You close your eyes, leaning a little into his touch. “Shifu and Lady Jingliu were upset.” you remark. 

“And furious.” he adds with a hitch in his tone. “She had me do a thousand pushups for the rest of the night, then started sword practice early. But it was worth it. You were so upset about that hurt little finch you’d found after all and I hated seeing you so upset.” he reaches up. A thumb rakes over your cheek. 

His forehead knocks against yours. “You’re all I have left.” he mumbles. “What am I to do with you?”

You stare into his eyes. “Jing Yuan.” you sigh. The lantern behind him swings and you could see the blue casting on his shoulders and how the gold of his gaze cools to ombre. “You have far greater things to worry over than someone like me.”

Jing Yuan’s fingertips press against your jaw and he bends, his lips grazing and pushing again the corner of your mouth. His exhales are shaky and laboured. One kiss, another against your cheek, and finally he presses one to your lips. There’s little fanfare involved in it, and it’s chaste, quiet, desperate and it tastes of a bitter load of feelings you’re too scared to unpack. 

But it’s your first with him. You savour every instance till he pulls away. 

“I’ll do as you wish,” he concedes. He places another over your palms. “Take care” he ends it with your name. Your name. After dismantling the last facets the apprentice holds over you, you doubt you’ll be called by it again. Jing Yuan holds a tire curve on his lips, a bitter one. 

“Good bye.” you nod. “Good bye, Jing Yuan.”

He almost reaches out to you, before thinking better of it. All that’s left to his exit is the sound of his footsteps, then Lady Hanya trailing back in after. She holds out the wine and you cradle the cup in your hands.

I don’t want to forget.

You press the bowl to your lips and drink.

To be a short life species is to know grief like a bedfellow. Your shifu knows this well. He tells you how to carry out the funerary traditions from his home planet, down to the incense he wished to be lit. it’s a small request and it looms over your figure — one inevitable loss for you to deal with as his hair turns from a dark blue to grey.

If you were to die, you wonder, what would Jing Yuan do. Death scared you then, scared you more than you’d wished to admit. Perhaps a selfish part of you would have gone over to test the possibility of immortality, for a wish to live as long, to see to it that your shifu’s grave would be washed every year. It’s such a greedy want and after mulling over it the next few nights, you discard it.

Master Yingxing besmirched the idea of immortality. If you must die a spark to Jing Yuan, a quiet footnote in his early years in his ascent to greatness, you must allow it.

You cannot be a selfish person.

Then one day, you had burned away the last of your shifu’s letters to Master Dan Feng. Every detail, every document, every diary entry detailing their plans with the arbour. Because foolish as he was, hypocritical as he was, and as angry as you were as you watched it all turn to ash — you cared for him. You cared for him enough to scrape away any evidence of dishonour.

He was still the man who’d taken you in. A father, a mentor, some indescribable label that hung over the two of you. 

You cannot be a selfish person.

When the last few embers died out and you head out, out to the arbour for some desperate plea to convince him otherwise ( you needed to, you must even if you had to show him your teeth and show him your anger and beg on your knees and plead at him to stop ), you ruefully wonder what Jing Yuan would make of you. If he’d be disgusted. If he’d turn away from you. The thought is shoved back before the nausea could settle.

What a curse, love is. You think then.

What a curse.