Red

You breathe, taste copper and something burnt, like popcorn left in the microwave too long until the smell coats the back of your throat. A strip light overhead, half of its housing torn free, swings slight on a wire in a draft you can feel against your cheek. Dust hands thick in the air, particles moving in slow orbits through the light like the whole corridor is underwater. 

You try to move your left arm. It doens’t move and you try again. 

Something shifts above you and the weight across your shoulder increases with a small grinding sound, compresses the air from your chest, forcing a thin, broken sound out of your mouth and you stop. 

Okay.

Okay. Don’t do that. 

Your right arm barely moves, fingers scraping over concrete, nails catching in grit, palm slipping in something warm. You press it flat and use it to push carefully, until your head lifts an inch. Two. The room tilts sideways and you hold very still until it stops, until the ringing in your ears turns from one high pitched sound into many. 

Your vision pulses, the corridor tilting in and out of focus, emergency lighting flickering red and white and red and white and- across the ceiling in slow, nauseating intervals. Somewhere far away, alarms are going. Somewhere farther than that, people are shouting. Or… maybe they’re not. Maybe those are just echoes in your skull, trapped there by the blast and circling with nowhere else to go. 

You turn your head, cheek dragging across the concrete, grit biting into your skin, hair sticking wetly to your mouth. The room greys at the edges and you wait, teeth pressed together, eyes fixed on the ceiling strip light and its slow swinging arc until the grey retreats and the edges come back sharp and you see him. 

Eli. 

Eli on his side, half curled a few feet away, shirt torn open, soaked dark down one side. Dust has turned his hair grey. There’s blood on his face. Blood on his mouth. Blood under him, spreading in a slow uneven pool that keeps finding the little cracks in the floor. 

No.

The word doesn’t make it out of your mouth, it sits behind your teeth, useless and childish.

No, because Eli does not get to be still. Eli does not get to be quiet. Eli does not get to be a body on concrete with the alarm painting him red every other second. Eli is supposed to be barking at you. Dragging you. Ruffling your hair with one heavy hand even though he knows you hate it. Swearing under his breath about reckless fucking pop stars who think barricades are decorative. Eli is supposed to be annoyed and alive and telling someone on his mic to move their ass before he moves it for them.

The room blurs.

The black comes up soft.

You don’t mean to close your eyes, they just close, without you realizing it and the world fades. 

Not all the way, not like before, with the white nothing of the blast. This is more like a dimmer switch, the light dropping by half, the ceiling retreating, the strip light blurring into a smear of white above you.

“- eyes open.”

The words reach you with a half second delay, stripped of their beginning, arriving mid sentence and flattened by distance. The easy drawl has been pressed out of them, voice left rough, dragged raw. 

“Stay- eyes open. Don’t- “

Your eyes flutter, one opening wider than the other, vision rolling towards the voice, towards Eli, who is moving. 

Towards Eli who is moving. 

He shouldn’t be moving.

Everything about the way he looks says he should not be moving. His arm drags forward against the floor, palm smearing through dust and blood, fingers clawing for purchase. His body follows, a brutal, stubborn haul across the concrete. His injured side leaves a dark trail behind him. His jaw is clenched so hard the muscles in his face jump every time he pulls himself closer. 

“Don’t- “ His voice comes in clearer now, closer. “Don’t you close your eyes. You hear me? Keep- “ A breath, sharp through his nose, followed by a grimace he can’t quite hide. “Keep your eyes on me.”

It’s an effort. Your eyes want to drift. Wants to go soft at the edges and let the ceiling blur back in, wants to follow the strip light in its slow arc and let that be the last thing. White. Swinging. Quiet. Simple. 

Eli makes a sound low in his throat, almost a growl.

“Oi.” His hand slaps weakly at the floor beside you, once, twice, loud enough to cut through the cotton in your skull. “Don’t start being quiet now when you’re always so loud, always making noise. What would Ghost say? Price? Can’t let that bastard have the last word, can you?”

Your mouth moves. 

Nothing comes out. 

“Yeah, I know.” He drags himself another inch and his face goes tight with pain. “You’ve got a complaint. You always have a complaint. File it when we’re not underneath half a fucking building.”

That should not make something in you want to cry and it moves through your chest so tight it becomes a cough, becomes pain so bright and complete your vision whites out at the center. Your body curls around it as much as the weight allows, instinct trying to protect injuries they cannot accurately locate because every part of you hurts. Something wet fills your mouth. You swallow before you can think about it and taste blood all over again.

“No, no, no.” Eli’s voice snaps sharp. “None of that. Look at me.” 

Your eyes snap open and he’s close enough now that you can see the little things. Dust caught in his eyelashes. A thin cut splitting his lower lip. The way his left hand shakes when he plants it. The way he keeps shifting his weight off his left side like something there has gone very, very wrong. 

He reaches you and his hand closes around your wrist, fingers clamping hard enough to hurt, hard enough to anchor you to the room and him to the proof that you are still in it. His thumb moves over the inside of your wrist, searching, pressing too hard, slipping once because everything is too slick. 

For the first time since you’ve known him, Eli looks afraid in a way he can’t convert into irritation fast enough.

“Come on,” he mutters. “Come on, sweetheart. Don’t piss me about.”

You want to say his name. You want to say, You’re bleeding. You want to say, Stop moving. You want to say, I’m scared. I want Simon. Simon would know what to do. But your mouth is heavy and your tongue feels too large and the words tangle somewhere between your brain and your throat and what comes out instead if barely a sound. 

“Eli.”

His face changes, just for a second, all the command stripped out of it. All the training. There is only him looking down at your like you are a twelve year old with a scraped knee instead of pinned under wreckage in a corridor full of smoke. 

“I’m here,” he says, too quickly, as if he thinks you might not believe him. His hand moves from your wrist to your face. His palm is rough and shaking when it cups your cheek, thumb dragging clumsily beneath your open eye. “I’m here. I’ve got you.” 

You blink up at him. 

“Look at me.” His voice lowers. Goes firm. “That’s it. Good. Keep your eyes on me.” 

You try. 

God you try. 

The light swings behind him. 

White. Red. White. Red. 

His face swims between colors, cut up by shadow and emergency lights and his mouth keeps moving. 

“- need to check-” 

He looks past you then, toward the shattered end of the corridor, and shouts. “Help!”

The word tears out of him so violently it seems to hurt. He twists, tries to push himself higher, and his injured leg betrays him. His body drops forward, one hand slamming into the concrete beside your head so he does not fall on you. The sound he makes is not one you have ever heard from him before. 

“Help!” he shouts again, louder, voice shredding towards the end. “We need help here!” 

There’s not answer. Or there is one and you cannot hear it. The alarm keeps going. The strip light swings. Dust moves through the beam in slow underwater spirals. 

You blink slowly. 

“Don’t.” The sound of his voice is distant now. Worse because it’s softer. “Don’t you leave me here talking to myself.”

Your mouth curves, maybe.

“There,” he says, seizing on the proof of life. “That’s it. Be smug. Be annoying. Give me something.”

You want it.

You want to so badly it becomes another kind of pain.

You want to roll your eyes at him. Tell him his bedside manner is shit. Tell him you are absolutely reporting him to his HR for calling you annoying during a mass casualty event. Tell him he looks terrible, which would make him tell you that you look worse, which would make you both feel less afraid for half a second. 

But your body is not listening anymore. 

The light drops again and Eli’s face blurs, sharpens, blurs. His mouth moves and words arrive scattered. 

“- look at me-”

You are. 

You think you are. 

“- don’t close.”

His hand catches yours, folds your fingers into his palm, and squeezes hard. You hear him say your name again, sharp. Then again, not sharp at all. 

The pressure is the last thing you feel. 

Then everything lets go. 

***

Five years ago…

You don’t get out of bed the morning after, not really.

Your body has become useless with no instructions, no hunger, no thirst, no private little humiliations that keep it tethered to life. A bladder that gets full. A stomach that twists. A mouth that dries. But yours seems to have missed the message. 

You just lay under the blankets with heavy arms, heavier legs, and nothing inside you reaches. Nothing wants. You stare at the ceiling until the ceiling becomes a blank canvas, a flat, pale nothing your eyes can pour themselves into. 

The minutes thicken, doesn’t seem to move forward. It accumulates, piles on your chest, grain by grain, until breathing feels like something you are doing from underneath dirt, buried alive. 

Your phone vibrates.

Once.

Again.

Again.

You know who it is without looking.

Soap calls first.

Johnny, the screen says when you finally turn your head enough to see it. His name lights the room blue for a few seconds, bright and obscene, then goes dark. Then bright again. Then dark. His contact photo is still there because you have not had the strength to delete it. Soap grinning too close to the camera, two fingers behind Gaz’s head, you laughing half out of frame because John had been beside you with his hand on your waist and you had thought- God, you had thought- that was what belonging looked like. A group of people crowding close enough that no one could fall out.

The phone goes still.

Then Gaz.

Kyle.

His name hurts differently. Cleaner, maybe. Sharper. Soap had always been a little too loud, a little too warm, the kind of man who made betrayal feel like being shoved out into the cold by someone who used to wrap you in his coat. Gaz’s betrayal is quieter and therefore meaner. It lives in the memory of three typing dots appearing and disappearing while you asked him if Price was seeing someone else. It lives in the delay. In the calculation. In the soft, reasonable lie that followed.

You two are solid.

The phone stops.

Then Laswell.

Kate does not call as many times. Of course she doesn’t, Kate is disciplined even in guilt. Kate can ration panic. Kate can make betrayal sound like strategy and apology sound like a formal statement issued after casualties have already been counted. Her name appears once, twice, then a message follows.

Please let one of us know you’re safe.

Safe.

You read the word until it loses meaning and the room goes grey around you.

You should call work.

The thought arrives from very far away, completely detached from the rest of you. 

You imagine standing and the image alone exhausts you. First, you would have to move the blanket. Then sit up. Then put your feet on the floor. Then trust your knees. Then cross the room. Then shower. Then choose clothes. Then look in the mirror and see whatever is left of you looking back. The sequence stretches out in your mind, impossible and absurd. A pilgrimage designed for someone with muscles, bones, purpose. Someone whose blood has not turned to wet cement overnight.

Your hand finds your phone again only because it is easier than getting up, and somehow, you manage to text your manager with your thumb barely moving.

Migraine. Can’t come in today. I’m sorry.

It is not a lie exactly. There is pain behind your eyes, pressure in your skull, a pulsing ache at the base of your neck from crying too hard on the kitchen floor after everyone left. But migraine is easier because is does not say: My husband been cheating on me and married her two weeks after I signed the divorce papers. Migraine does not say: My friends knew and watched me beg. Migraine does not say: I think something inside me has been unplugged and I do not know where the cord is.

Your manager sends back a sympathetic message with too many exclamation points.

Feel better soon!!!!

You stare at the exclamation points until your vision swims.

Soon.

As if better is a place you can return to with enough sleep and a glass of water. As if the better version of you has not been dragged out behind the house and shot.

The day goes soft around the edges.

You sleep, maybe. Or not. It is hard to tell. You drift in and out of shallow, airless pockets of unconsciousness that do nothing to rest you. Each time you come back, the room has changed in some small indifferent way. The light has moved across the wall. The phone has collected more missed calls. Your mouth tastes worse. Your head hurts more. Your body remains where you left it, heavy and uncooperative, as if grief has filled your bones with sand while you were under.

At some point, you cry, tears leaking sideways into your hair, sliding from the corners of your eyes and cooling against your temples.

You think of John.

You think of his ring catching the sunlight at the kitchen table. His signature already on the papers. His voice when he said, I need you to sign. The flat finality of it. The way you had mistaken his guilt for grief. The way you had looked at his face and tried to find your husband in it, not understanding that your husband had already packed himself up and moved into another woman’s life. That the man sitting across from you was not asking to leave. He had left. He was only asking you to make the paperwork match.

You think of Elena’s hand on his chest.

You think of his smile.

That is what ruins you each time. Not the sex, not even the wedding. The smile. That warm, unguarded thing he had starved you of and then handed to her so freely like it had always belonged there. 

You had spent the last year of your marriage trying to coax that smile back into the house. You had made yourself smaller for it. Quieter. Easier. You had folded your needs into neat little shapes and tucked them away so they would not inconvenience him. You had learned to read exhaustion as love, silence as trust, absence as duty. You had thanked him for scraps and called it understanding.

And he had been smiling somewhere else. Smiling for someone else. 

Your throat closes so violently you gag.

For a second, you think you might vomit, but even that requires more energy than you have. Your body convulses once, twice, then gives up. You lie there with spit thick in your mouth and tears drying on your skin and feel a kind of disgust so deep it has no object. Him. Her. Them. Yourself. The bed. The room. Your own hands, curled uselessly near your chest. The whole act of being alive.

Evening comes, the grey light thins into blue, then black. The bedroom disappears until the furniture becomes shape without detail. Your phone glows periodically in the dark. Missed call. Missed call. Text. Voicemail. Missed call.

Soap leaves messages.

You do not listen to them, but the transcriptions appear in broken pieces beneath his name anyway.

Hen, please just-

I know ye dinnae want-

We need to know you’re-

I’m outside if-

That one makes you move.

Not much. Just your eyes toward the window. Toward the curtains. Toward the thin line of streetlight at the edge of the fabric. Outside. He is outside. He wants proof you are alive because your death would inconvenience his guilt. Because if you die, there is no future version of you to forgive him. No eventual softening. No absolution delivered years from now over coffee and tears. Just the thing he did, sealed forever. You do not look out the window.

You do not give him the mercy of movement.

The next day is worse because you wake up in it.

John. Elena. Soap. Gaz. Laswell. Wedding photos. Two weeks. Your kitchen. The tea on the wall. The fruit bowl breaking. Soap’s face when he said, We thought… We thought he’d end it. As if the affair could be ignored if it had just been a one time thing. As if your husband fucking another woman was something they could file away under bad night, single mistake, lesson learned. As if you were the wife and therefore the problem to be managed, and he was the friend and therefore the man to be saved. 

As if betrayal had a quota. As if you had to bleed a certain amount before they were allowed to respect and love you back. 

You sit on the edge of the bed for ten minutes before standing. Your head swims. Your heart beats too hard, too fast. The carpet under your feet feels unreal. Soft in a way that makes you want to scream. You shuffle to the bathroom with one hand on the wall until you catch the mirror out the side of your eye and abruptly stop. 

There is a person standing there.

You know technically that it is you. Same hair. Same eyes. Same mouth, swollen from crying. Same skin, dull under the bathroom light. But recognition does not arrive with any warmth. You look at yourself and feel nothing but a distant pity. Oh, you think. Look what happened to her.

Her.

Not me.

Her.

That is how the days begin to split you. There is the part of you that lies in bed, breathes, blinks, occasionally drinks water from the glass on the nightstand when the headache becomes unbearable. And there is the part that watches from somewhere near the ceiling, detached and useless, observing the ruin. She has not eaten today. She has not showered. She has not answered the phone. She has been staring at the same patch of wall for forty seven minutes. She is crying again. She does not seem to know.

By the third day, work calls twice.

You don’t answer.

Your manager texts. Then someone from HR. Then a coworker you like well enough sends, Hey, just checking in. No pressure, but we’re worried.

Worried.

The word follows you around the room.

Everyone is worried. Everyone is sorry. Everyone is reaching out now that reaching can no longer save anything. Concern blooms beautifully after the damage is done. It costs so little then. A text. A voicemail. A knock at the door. A trembling apology offered after silence has already done its work.

You call out again with another lie and now there is nothing to get up for.

The bed becomes the center of the universe. The kitchen exists below you in memory and dread, still littered with the aftermath of the night everything finished breaking. You know there is glass on the floor. Ceramic dust under the cabinets. Tea dried brown on the wall. An apple bruised under the table, softening day by day into rot.

You cannot make yourself clean it.

Gaz texts later.

I know you told us not to contact you. I’m sorry. I just need to know you’re okay.

You stare at it from under the blanket and wonder what would happen if you answered honestly.

No, Kyle. I am not okay. I am lying in the bed I shared with him and trying not to think about whether he touched her before coming home to me. I have not eaten anything real in two days. My hair is matted at the back of my head. Sometimes I forget to breathe until my chest hurts. Sometimes I stare at the wall so long the room changes color. Sometimes I think if I stay perfectly still, I might disappear without having to do anything dramatic about it. Would that help? Would that make you feel informed?

You pick up the phone.

Your hands are shaking, fine tremors at the fingertips, and open the group chat only because it is easier than sending three separate messages.

Your thumb hovers and for a second, something in you almost breaks the other way.

Almost writes: Why?

Almost writes: How could you?

Almost writes: I loved you too.

Instead, you type:

Do not contact me again.

The typing bubbles appear almost immediately but before they can send anything, you block them and set the phone on the nightstand, roll onto your side, and pull the blanket over your head. 

Weeks pass, and you do not get better.

You become functional in the loosest, ugliest sense of the word. You learn how to perform enough life to keep other people from forcing their way into yours. You shower sometimes, standing under the water with one hand braced against the tile and let it hit the crown of your head until your scalp aches, until the steam thickens around you, until the mirror disappears. You eat sometimes until your belly is swollen with bloat and then you don’t eat anything at all for days.

The house becomes smaller.

Not literally. The walls stay where they are, but your world narrows anyway. Bedroom. Bathroom. Hallway, sometimes. Kitchen only when necessity becomes cruel enough to drag you there. The living room is too full of ghosts, so you do not go in. 

Your phone becomes the only door you open.

That is the worst part. You know it is the worst part while you are doing it. You know, with the detached intelligence of someone watching herself through glass, that every time you pick it up you are putting your hand back into the wound. You know nothing good waits there. You know there will be no answer that makes the betrayal smaller. No post, no picture, no caption that rearranges the past into something kinder to you.

You pick it up anyway, make a burner account, and search for Elena, thumb hovering over her profile before you tap it.

Some small, ridiculous part of you expects the app to know. To stop you. To flash up a warning that says: Are you sure you want to harm yourself in this humiliating way? Are you sure you want to kneel in front of the life that replaced yours and press your face to the glass?

It does not.

Her page is bright.

That is your first coherent thought. Bright. Not just visually, though it is that too- all clean whites and warm golds and soft domestic light- but bright in the way lives look when the person living them believes the world is mostly kind. Brunch plates. A mirror selfie in an expensive coat. Flowers on a counter. A photograph of a book beside a mug. John’s hand visible at the edge of one frame, unmistakable even cropped down to knuckles and a wedding band.

You stare at that hand until the phone blurs.

You know that hand.

You know the callus along the side of his thumb. You know the faint scar crossing the back of it from a training accident he once dismissed as nothing while you cleaned it and called him an idiot. You know how heavy it felt at the base of your spine. How warm on your stomach in sleep. How steady on your face when he kissed you goodbye. You know that hand better than you know your own some days, and here it is reduced to a casual object in another woman’s photograph. 

You scroll.

You shouldn’t, but you do it anyway.

You find a picture of Elena at a restaurant, months before the divorce, a second glass of wine across from her accompanied by a caption about good company. Elena in a mirror wearing the exact same shirt you remember John saying he didn’t notice when you asked if he liked yours. Elena posting an expensive and beautiful bouquet.

Your body reacts before your mind can soften the facts.

Your stomach turns over. Your hands go cold. A tremor starts at the base of your spine and climbs. You scroll backward through time and watch the affair reveal itself not as a lightning strike, not as one catastrophic mistake, but as a whole second life built carefully beside yours while you slept in the ruins of the first and called the draft love.

Your thumb pauses on a picture from the wedding reception.

It is not one you saw before.

Soap is in the background, slightly out of focus, head tipped back, laughing. His tie is loosened. One hand around a glass, the other braced on John’s shoulder. John is laughing too. Elena is turned toward someone outside the frame, smiling wide, her dress luminous under the lights.

It looks easy.

That is what makes bile climb your throat.

It looks so easy for them to stand in the room where your humiliation was being celebrated with flowers and champagne and not collapse under the weight of it. Soap had stood there with a drink in his hand and a laugh in his mouth while you were somewhere else, maybe in the bed John had abandoned, maybe still believing your friends had been caught in the wreckage with you instead of seated at the reception.

You look at the comments and see one from Gaz, about being grateful for the people who keep you steady.

People.

You wonder if he meant John.

You wonder if he meant you before you became inconvenient.

You wonder if he had ever typed anything about you and deleted it because guilt made cowards of men who could clear rooms with rifles but not answer one woman honestly on a bathroom floor.

You throw the phone across the bed.

Not hard. Hard would require energy. It bounces once against the blanket and lands face up, Elena’s profile still glowing at you from the screen.

You stare at it.

Then you crawl under the blanket and cry until the phone goes dark by itself.

This becomes the rhythm.

Wake. Hurt. Check. Hurt worse. Sleep. Wake again. Hurt again. Check again.

You begin to learn things you never wanted to know. Elena likes white wine. Elena wears perfume with peony and yuzu in it because someone asked about it and she answers. Elena has a sister. Elena has a little dog John apparently likes enough to be photographed with, one large hand cupped around its ridiculous tiny body while it licks his chin. John, who used to grumble that you would spoil anything with four legs beyond repair. John, who told you no to a weekend away because money was tight. John, whose new wife captions him as home.

Home.

You close the app so fast your thumb slips.

This house used to be home. Not because it was beautiful, not because it was perfect, but because you had believed love lived here. Even when it got hard. Even when John came home quiet. Even when he turned away from you in bed and you lay there studying the slope of his shoulder, telling yourself distance was just another language marriage learned during difficult seasons.

Now it is just a house.

That is one of the crueller discoveries. Love had not soaked into the walls the way you thought and once it was gone, everything became object again. Bed. Lamp. Chair. Door. Cup. Floor.

You.

Object.

The crying starts so suddenly it almost frightens you, body folding forward, mouth open around a sob too raw, breath punching out of you in broken, wet bursts. Your phone slides from your hand and hits the carpet facedown, a soft little thud and both hands press to your mouth like you are trying to hold yourself in, like if you let go your whole body might turn inside out from the force of it.

By the time the crying burns itself down to hiccups, your head is pounding. Your throat feels scraped hollow. The room has gone blurry and grey at the edges, everything softened by tears except the pain, which remains bright and exact and cruelly well lit.

You bend for the phone. Your fingers brush carpet first. Then the phone. Then something else.

Wood.

You freeze.

For a second, you don’t understand what you are touching. Your hand slides farther beneath the bed, fingertips following the smooth curve of it, the dust gathered along the edge, the familiar dip and hollow of a body you once knew better than your own.

A guitar.

Your guitar.

Shoved underneath the bed, half hidden behind a box of old winter clothes and the soft grey accumulation of neglect.

You pull it out slowly and for a long moment, you just stare at it.

You forgot you had it.

No. Worse. You remember forgetting.

You remember putting it away because John was tired. Because John had just come home. Because John said, not tonight, love, with his eyes already closed. Because the house was easier when it was quiet. Because he made you feel like wanting attention was childish. Because singing in the kitchen felt too bright when he came home dark and distant and unreachable. Because somewhere along the line, without noticing the exact moment of amputation, you had learned to tuck every loud, living part of yourself beneath the bed.

You had made yourself smaller for him.

Quiet enough not to ask. Soft enough not to press. Patient enough not to need. A woman folded carefully around a man who kept taking up less and less space in your life while somehow requiring more and more of the room.

The guitar sits in your lap, dusty and mute.

Your thumb drags over the strings.

The sound is ugly. Out of tune. Barely there.

Still, something in you goes still around it.

How long had you been breaking yourself into smaller pieces for a man who wanted something bigger?

Music had been one of the things John liked about you in the beginning.

That thought should not matter but it does. It lands with a dull, mean little weight. He used to ask you to sing while he cooked. Used to lean in the doorway with a dish towel over his shoulder and listen. Used to say, Again, love, when you stopped.

You wonder when he stopped hearing you.

The first chord is wrong, fingers not wanting to form the proper shape. The pads are soft from disuse, clumsy against the strings. You try again. Better. Not right. Good enough.

Your phone is still open beside you, burner account glowing faintly on the carpet.

You don’t know why you hit record.

Or you do, but the reason is too humiliating to name. Maybe some part of you wants proof. Proof that you are this hurt. Proof that something happened here. Proof that if everyone else can polish the story into a wedding album and a clean divorce and an unfortunate situation, then you can leave evidence of the blood. Maybe you want someone, anyone, to look at the wreckage and say: Yes. I see it. That should have killed you.

You hit record.

For a few seconds, you just sit there crying, then your fingers move.

The song is barely a song.

It is four chords; a melody that keeps collapsing because your throat keeps closing. Words arriving fragmented, not clever, not polished, not even fully rhymed and ends with you pressing your palm to your mouth, shoulders shaking, guitar sliding sideways in your lap.

You should delete it. You should absolutely delete it. There is no dignity in it. No performance. No artistry. It is not a song anyone should hear. It is a woman unraveling on carpet because the people she loved made a liar out of every safe place she had.

You post it.

Not because you think anyone will care but because you are too tired to protect yourself from being seen. Then you drop the phone onto the carpet, curl around the guitar like it is a body, and cry yourself empty.

In the morning, there are two hundred and seventeen views.

You stare at the number for a long time.

Two hundred and seventeen is nothing. It is less than nothing. It is a crowded room, maybe. A small venue on a bad night. A number the internet can swallow without tasting. But to you, lying on the floor with a headache and dried tears tight on your cheeks, it feels impossible.

Two hundred and seventeen people saw you.

Heard you.

Did not stop it from happening, no. Did not fix anything. Did not reach back through time and make John faithful or Soap honest or Gaz brave or Laswell kind. But they saw. For one minute and forty three seconds, your pain existed outside your body. It had shape. It had sound. It landed somewhere that was not just the inside of your own skull.

For now, it’s the closest thing you have to proof that you are still here.

***

Undisclosed military base // Present…

“They denied it.” Laswell says, lowering her phone.

The room goes still.

Not quiet. The television is still talking, voices layered over sirens and crowd noise and the clipped panic of reporters trying to sound useful from behind police barricades. Ghost’s phone is still in his hand, screen dark now, the same number called so many times the glass has gone greasy beneath his thumb. Soap is staring at the broadcast like the right kind of attention might drag you out of the building. Gaz has stopped pretending he isn’t watching Ghost. Price has not moved from where he stands, but his hands are locked together so tightly the tendons look close to tearing.

For a second, nobody answers. The words are too clean for the room. Denied. Like she requested a meeting room. Like this is an email chain. Like you are not somewhere inside a building full of smoke and blood with your phone going straight to voicemail.

Price turns his head slowly. “Denied.”

“They don’t want unnecessary agencies converging on an active mass casualty scene. Local response and counterterror units already on site are handling it.” Her voice stays level, but there is something strained beneath it, something thin and stretched nearly through. “Task Force 141 isn’t needed.”

Soap makes a sound like a strangled laugh. “Not needed.”

Ghost doesn’t speak. He just looks at Laswell, and the room changes around it. Not visibly. Nothing moves. But something in the air lowers itself to the floor, heavy and animal. His mask hides his mouth, his jaw, everything that might give shape to whatever is happening in him, but his eyes do not have the mercy of fabric. They are fixed on Laswell with a blankness so complete it stops looking like restraint and starts looking like the moment before violence.

“Call again,” Price says.

“I did.”

“Call someone else.”

“I am.”

“Call higher.”

Laswell’s eyes cut to him. “I have.”

The reporter’s voice sharpens before Price can answer, pulling every eye back to the screen. “- we’re going now to live footage outside the rear of the venue where our camera operator is picking up movement near what appears to be one of the service exits- ”

The image lurches, too far away and zoomed in too hard, every movement unstable, every flash of emergency light blowing the image out red, then blue, then white. Police vans block half the view. Paramedics move in and out of frame. Rain streaks the lens. Smoke drifts low across the pavement from somewhere behind the venue, grey and ugly under the floodlights.

For a moment, it is just chaos. Bodies in hi-vis jackets. Officers shouting. Someone crying close enough to the microphone that the sound cuts through the broadcast. The camera tries to follow a group of paramedics running toward the loading bay, loses them behind a vehicle, overcorrects, catches the broken service doors by accident.

Then Eli staggers out of the smoke with you over his shoulders, appearing on the edge of the frame, bent under your limp weight, one arm hooked over the backs of your legs, the other locked across you.

He is covered in blood. You are covered in blood. It runs from both of you so completely that, through the rain and the distortion and the violent zoom, there is no telling where his ends and yours begins, splashing against the ground in pools.

Soap stands up so fast the couch shifts. “No.”

Eli takes one step, another, injured leg dragging behind him at an angle that makes Gaz turn slightly, hand coming up to his mouth before he can stop it. Your arm hangs down Eli’s back, fingers open and loose, blood slipping from them in lines onto the wet pavement. Your head is turned away from the camera, hair matted dark against your face, body horribly slack over his shoulder.

Ghost moves then.

Only a step toward the television, useless and instinctive, but Price sees it. Soap sees it. Gaz sees it. Something in Laswell’s face flickers and goes carefully blank again.

On the screen, Eli nearly goes down. His knee hits the pavement and his free hand slams out to catch himself, your body sliding just enough that Soap makes a broken, helpless noise in the back of his throat. Eli’s head drops. For one terrible second, it looks like he won’t be able to get back up. Then he does, forcing himself upright with a violence that looks less like strength and more like refusal, dragging one more step out of a body that has clearly spent everything it had.

“Come on,” Soap whispers. “Come on, mate. Come on.”

The police line surges and holds. Someone is shouting. The microphone catches pieces of it, back up, back up, possible secondary, hold the line, but the words only make the room worse because they all understand them. They understand procedure. They understand threat assessment. They understand why the officers hesitate, why the paramedics cannot simply flood the doorway, why every second is being measured against the possibility of another blast.

Understanding does not make it less obscene.

Eli crosses the last stretch like a man dragging himself out of hell by his teeth. He gets behind the cordon before his body finally starts to fold. Even then, he doesn’t drop you.

He lowers you. One arm under your shoulders, one hand braced awkwardly behind your head, easing you down onto the wet pavement with a care so stubborn it feels almost cruel to watch. Only when you are flat on the ground and medics are already dropping around you does his hand slip from beneath your skull.

The camera zooms tighter.

Too tight.

Your face fills the screen in fragments: cheek smeared with soot, mouth slack, lashes dark against skin gone bloodless beneath the emergency lights. A paramedic’s gloved fingers press under your jaw. Another cuts through ruined fabric. Someone shoves gauze against your side and it blooms red before the hand has even settled. Someone else is speaking into a radio, fast, too fast, while another set of hands searches for a vein.

No one in the room says your name.

It is everywhere anyway.

The paramedic at your throat shifts his fingers. Presses again. Moves lower, then back, head bent close like he is listening for something the rest of the world has gone too loud to hear. Your body does not move. The camera keeps shaking. Rain keeps streaking the lens. The reporter is saying something, but the words do not matter. The only thing that matters is the hand at your throat and the terrible amount of time it takes to find anything there.

Price’s face goes blank in a way that does not look like control anymore. It looks like something in him has stepped out. His eyes are fixed on the paramedic’s hand at your throat, on those two gloved fingers trying to find proof that the world has not taken you while he was standing in a room miles away, useless.

His voice comes out almost soundless. “Find it.”

Ghost’s phone creaks in his hand.

The casing cracks.

The paramedic’s head snaps up.

He shouts something, and the medics around you move all at once. A syringe appears. An oxygen mask. More gauze. Faster hands. Someone at your throat checks again, two fingers pressing hard beneath your jaw like whatever he found is so faint he is afraid it will disappear if he stops touching it.

Laswell exhales. “Pulse.”

Soap bends forward like the word has gone through him.

“They found a pulse,” Gaz says, but he sounds like he does not trust himself to believe it.

Ghost does not look relieved. That is the thing. He does not soften. Does not blink. His stare stays fixed to the screen, and whatever he sees there makes his voice come out low and flat. “Weak.”

Nobody asks how he knows.

They all know how he knows. The speed of the medics. The way they do not pause. The way no one smiles. The way one hand stays at your throat even as they lift you, as if life is something that has to be physically held in place.

They load you into the ambulance fast, with the brutal gentleness of people who do not have time to be careful but are careful anyway. Your arm slips once, limp at the wrist, and a medic catches it and tucks it back against you before the doors swallow you. For one second, the camera sees inside: white light, red hands, oxygen mask, someone leaning over you with their whole body committed to keeping you here.

Then the doors shut.

The ambulance pulls away.

Eli collapses the second you are gone.

He takes one step after it, then his body simply gives out, knees folding, his shoulder hits the pavement, and he goes down hard in the rain.

Soap covers his mouth.

Gaz turns away.

Price looks at Laswell, and there is nothing polished left in his face. No command posture. No distance. Just a man watching the consequence of every silence he ever asked other people to keep.

Ghost finally speaks.

“Find a way.”

Laswell already has her phone up. “Simon- ”

“Find,” he says, voice dropping into something quiet enough to frighten the room, “a fucking way.”

No one corrects him. No one tells him they have no authority, no orders, no place there. The broadcast has cut back to the reporter, but the footage is still moving behind everyone’s eyes: Eli staggering out by accident. Your arm hanging limp. The paramedic searching for a pulse. The ambulance doors closing.

Laswell puts the phone to her ear.

When someone answers, her voice is cold enough to make even Price look at her.

“This is Station Chief Laswell,” she says. “Wake whoever the fuck you need to wake.”​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Daniel obliged, albeit with an air of curiousity. It had been persistent despite your growing annoyance and late night explanations about your practice of choice.

It seemed like no matter how much time you dedicated to answering his many, many questions, there always seemed to be more.

Armand was the exact opposite. From his place on the couch in your living room, he was quietly tapping away on his iPad. You could sense he was listening to each exchange you and Daniel had, but you opted to allow him to think that he was more mysterious than he was.

He never had many questions for you, outside of asking what items you required to continue your worship. From crystals, to candles, even the more niche items like what you required for rituals, you were always able to rely on Armand to get whatever you needed with minimal resistance.

Unlike Daniel and his blatant ogling.

As you were putting your incense away, you felt him eyeing your movements. You sighed, dramatically flaring your nostrils before turning to him.

"What do you want now, Daniel Molloy? "

He grinned, "Ooh, using the full name, are we? " He perched his elbow on your head, making your eyes widen. Unfortunately, your height was always a source of entertainment for him and endless irritation for you.

"I'd like to watch you do that ritual you were talking about this morning, " He continued. "And before you get all riled up, I just wanna say straight up, " He crosses his heart theatrically. "I won't be an asshole. You won't even know I'm there. "

"No. "

Daniel tilted his head down to look at you. One would think that the expression you had on your face told him exactly why.

"Why not? " He said with faux-innocence.

"Because! " You exclaimed, pushing his elbow off of your head, but he put it right back. You tried twice more, but failed.

"I just don't feel comfortable doing my spells in front of people, okay? Stop asking, you're really starting to piss me off. " You hoped that now he finally got the hint.

At first, you were hopeful. He lifted his arm from your head, and put his hands up in surrender. As he walked back, you turned your attention to your crystals. You picked a couple you thought were necessary for tonight, right as you heard Daniel speak.

"Not even if I'm in a different room, just listening? "

You slammed your hands on the armrests of your chair, spinning around to where Daniel sat next to Armand on the couch.

"Armand. " You said sternly. "Get your fledgling! " You stared at his face until he finally met your gaze. His golden eyes were filled with confusion. You flit your eyes in Daniel's direction, who was now currently scrolling on his phone with not a care in the world.

Armand turned to look at Daniel.

"Beloved. "

"Hm? "

"You may think that you are free to poke and prod to gain whatever knowledge you seek, but that is not the case at all. " His face minutely altered, almsot doll-like in nature. "It's best to respect that not everything needs to be stared in the face to acknowledge its existence. "

"Hey, I'm not saying what she does isn't real. I'm just a little curious- "

"Just say nosy. You're nosy, Daniel. "

He smacked his lips before continuing, "All I'm asking is to see my girlfriend in action. Is that a crime? " He was asking Armand, but you felt like it was your place to respond. Unfortunately, Armand had a habit of saying what you thought before you.

"It is not. But that does not grant you the right to break her boundaries in favor of your wants, Daniel. "

You sighed, pinching your brows. "Thanks, Armand, but I really don't need you to speak for me. I can do that just fine by myself. "

Armand looked like he disagreed, but kept his mouth shut. Daniel was unreadable, but had finally stopped scrolling. You pointed at him.

"You. Drop it. " You moved your finger to point at Armand. "Thank you for backing me up. But please refrain from reading my thoughts to do so, okay? "

You turned your attention once more to your items, focusing on writing in your journal for your intentions in your ritual tonight. You didn't notice the way Daniel's annoyance spiked. But Armand did, and he quickly tugged Daniel by his curls before returning to his iPad. That set Daniel hissing, but otherwise he got the hint.

The slam of the door ten minutes later following Daniel's departure didn't make you or Armand flinch. You sighed.

"He'll get over it, dear. You'll see, there's no need to feel guilty for establishing a boundary. "

"Armand, what did I just say about reading my mind? "

—

You were starting to get worried. It was day three of Daniel's petty tantrum, and there was no sign of him returning. You had asked Armand if he sensed his fledging, considering the severed psychic connection didn’t allow for direct communication, but he came up empty-handed.

You paced in your bedroom, Armand already in bed, iPad still in hand. You were starting to bite your nails when you finally spoke.

"I think I'm gonna do a finding spell to figure out where he is. Maybe not now, my amber's not properly charged. " You nibbled your thumb. "I'll go ahead and get it so I can use it tomorrow. " You rushed out of the room, asking Armand as you left,

"It's a full moon tonight, right, Armand? "

Tap tap tap, "Yes, darling, I'm sure of it. " He responded.

You returned, amber in hand, setting it on your dresser alongside your many other crystals. You made sure to leave the curtains open just a tad, to allow a trickle of moonlight to wash over the gems.

Satisfied at the sight and a glimmer of hope in your eyes, you settled under the covers next to Armand. The side of the bed where Daniel slept next to you was extra cold without his stupid, solid frame teasing you as you tried to fall asleep.

Armand finally set his iPad to the side in favor of offering his arms to hold you. You hestitated before settling into his arms. Your stature made it easy for him to spoon and coddle you. One of your favorite pastimes (and Armand's as well, you suspect) was spending hours in his embrace. The way his fingertips traced your features over and over, memorizing each mole, freckle, scar, or otherwise distinct characteristic was reverent. He made you feel so loved, his unblinking stare unnerving to most, but something you found to be especially intimate.

You sighed into his neck, inhaling his scent before saying, "Maybe I could've told him I was fine with describing it instead of flat out rejecting him. "

Armand's hands found the back of your head, stroking it as he hummed, "But were you fine with it? He has been especially demanding as of late. "

You half-heartedly shrugged, "I know he doesn't mean any harm. It's just…this is an important part of me. And I appreciate how interested and nonjudgmental you both are, but it just gets to a point, y'know? " You nuzzled his chest, and you smiled at how that must've startled him, at least based on the way his movements halted before continuing.

"There are still things I don't feel comfortable sharing, at least not yet. You've always been good about understanding, why can't Danny? Is it cause of the age difference? " You muttered, sleep beginning to overtake you, but not entirely.

Armand sighed, "Daniel has always been exceptional at pushing boundaries. He views it as an act of love, the way he endlessly pokes and prods to learn more about you. "

You snorted before Armand continued.

"I truly do not think that his journalistic instinct will ever be hindered. If anything, it has only grown in intensity since his turning. " At the sound of your eyes rolling, he began rubbing your shoulders, instantly making you melt.

"But I have a feeling that he will see the error of his ways and allow you to continue your craft in peace. " He finished.

You made a noise somewhere between a scoff and a hum, "Psh, yeah, right. The day that happens will be the day Hell freezes over. Or the day he admits he was wrong. Both of which will never happens. " It was the last thing you remember saying before finally passing out due to Armand's magic touch.

"You never know, darling. You never know. "

—

You woke up still in Armand's arms, but you felt something else pressed against your back. You lifted your head to look behind you as far as you could.

It was Daniel. He was in his classic sleepwear combo, an old t-shirt of his from the 90's and a pair of comfortable pants. If you didn’t know any better you would think that he was just another old man. But his lack of blood circulation and piercing yellow eyes said otherwise.

You loosened yourself from Armand's hold to face Daniel. You stared at his sleeping face, the rise and fall of his chest moreso instinctual than necessary for survival.

You poked his face. He twitched, but didn't stir.

"Daniel. " You whispered. Nothing, not even a stutter of his breath.

"Daniel, wake the fuck up or I swear I'll push you off this bed. "

Golden pupils met your furious gaze. You felt your heart rate steadily increase. The sight of Daniel carefree and relaxed in your bed after you were ready to start chasing him made your rage steadily ramp in intensity.

"Where have you been. " You said, voice still drowsy despite your best efforts to sound stern.

"Out thinking. " He responded quietly.

"About what? I hope it's about what you plan on doing to make up for making me worried sick. "

Surprisingly, he looked rather..remorseful? It was strangely sincere, so unlike the unabashedly humorous way Daniel often navigated scenarios like these. He kept his eyes down, and propped himself up on his elbow. You stared at him like he was an extraterrestrial, and he spoke softly.

"I don't want you to think that I'm just using you for entertainment. That's not why I'm with you. " You blinked, searching for any hint of this taking a sarcastic tone, but found none.

"I shouldn't have pushed for you to reveal everything about being a witch right away, that was…stupid isn't even the right word. More like ignorant and entitled. "

You wanted to interject and say that was already his default way of existing, but you held your tongue. His other hand found your cheek and began to rub.

"I won't up and leave like that again. I promise. " He leaned down to press a kiss to your forehead before laying back down. You blinked a few times.

"Danny, was that your attempt at an apology? "

He didn't respond, but the light smirk on his face told you all you needed to know. You scoffed.

"That was the shittiest apology I've ever heard in my life. I would say I can't believe it, but I guess now I can! " You shook your head in disbelief.

"I'm gonna go back to sleep and when I wake up, you better have something good up your sleeve. "

Daniel didn't respond, but you thought you heard him whisper 'okay, short stack' before you angrily turned and buried your face in Armand's chest.

Armand opened his eyes right as Daniel rubbed a hand over his face. They ensured you were unconscious before either spoke.

"Shame on you for preparing such a subpar apology for our beautiful partner, Daniel. " Armand whispered. Daniel quickly whispered loudly.

"You were the one who helped me with that 'subpar apology', don't even start trying to blame this square on me! "

"Hush, Daniel. Lest you wish to make her morning even worse than it already is. " Armand traced his fingers against your spine, reveling in your subconcious shiver.

"Well I don't intend to be hexed, not today, not ever. " Daniel responded before flinging the blanket off of his body and getting up.

"What are you planning, Daniel? " Armand questioned.

"Homemade food always puts her in a good mood. Maybe that and a workshopped apology will put me back in her good graces, too. " Daniel said before heading to the kitchen.

Armand looked down at you, so still and innocent.

It was a miracle you hadn't hexed either of them, he thought as the sound of Daniel's ruckus caused you to flinch awake and groan.