ROAD TO NOWHERE.

boredom hadn’t been a place where stella drifted often into. adolescence of being an only child had left her self sufficient. her imagination could fill a drab moment if called for. most of her life under the watch of her mother had been a solo feeling. it wasn’t until later when she gained knowledge of her sister, emery. would have childhood been different with another companion ? something she’d wondered many times, but always ended up being thankful emery hadn’t been a part of her early chapters. stella faced a lot personally that most kids were lucky to not experience. “i hope you know …i’m going to put makeup on you.” whether you like it or not. stella smirked to her reflection.

“it’ll be fun.” the mascara brush swiped against her lashes. it was growing a little dry from time. wearing a face of makeup hadn’t been much of a priority in arcadia. almost something to be thankful for. fresh faced. the amount of water she consumed without other options available had also been a blessing to her skin. something to be positive about in this hell town. “did your phone go off like everyone else's ? ….” blue eyes flickered to them in the mirror. “the universe has a funny sense of humor here.” there was nothing worse than the jarring static raging from the televisions. the phone call stella recieved was one only known of a false god. a call from her mother. she'd passed — the only signal from the failed call was one of alarming horror. maybe we're all dead already. maybe this is some hellish inbetween. - she thought.

Let Them take. Let the daywalker take. Shaw thought, but the walk to the Common House had been quiet. The town would never be so merciful as to permit them a quick death. 

It was a destination they had taken with no real purpose. They greeted back at the litany of faces who glanced, politely but curiously, at the doctor’s intrusion. Shaw had attended house calls diligently enough over the decade that their presence could very well be ignored, their crutch now only a brief point of interest as time went on. An old wound nursed better. Cared for until the kind hand was swatted away. Alone again, as before—but still in search of company. 

Stella’s company had come first. Not unwelcome, though it had come with the threats of makeup and cosmetics. But it would only be a small grievance, in retrospect. They stood leaning against the wall beside them, the mirror only revealing one side of their frame; the other buried in shadow. “My phone? No, no.” Shaw echoed Stella’s words. Their senses now cast with a persistent glaze, it was easy to mistake her features for another’s. “But this town does commit to its gallows humor, doesn’t it?” Here they attempted a laugh. It had come, but only in sputters, lost in the afterlight. 

“I’m not really sure where my phone even is, at this point.” No calls had come. No calls would ever come again, they thought, when their ghosts were already here. A son they loved. Far too many lives lost. A lover left behind. Instinctively, they found Stella’s eyes in the mirror and found ocean waves staring back. It hurt to linger, so they did not. “Why, did yours go off?” They said instead, eyes planted again on the floor.

The darkness that had settled upon the town was...unsettling, if one was to put it lightly. But time didn't stop. It just kept on moving, and Bastian had stopped trying to make sense of any of it long ago. They had to keep on keeping on - and one way they would do that is to make sure they all got at least a somewhat satisfying meal in their bellies.

Bastian had made it his own personal mission to try and keep the survivors of the town fed with healthy and tasty meals, even if what he was working with was limited. He was working on a stew on this particular evening when someone stepped into the diner and closed the door firmly behind them. Yeah, life still went on and people still needed to eat, even if there were creatures looking to kill you beyond those doors.

He shook away the thought and slapped a smile onto his face, grabbing a spoon and a bowl to fill with a serving, soon approaching the newcomer and extending the bowl in their direction. "Here - please. You've got to try this and let me know what you think."

They took their place on the table nearest the door, the absence of light only disorienting when their senses had been so glazed already. Bastian’s kindness would always be welcome, at least. Their visits to the dinner had been sparse in the earlier months when he’d taken over, but now it became routine. An insistence, perhaps, that they were still here, now a taker than a giver of goodwill.

“Bastian, I don’t think I’m at liberty to refuse you,” they said, taking the spoon. “You’re among the few people I trust to make a mean stew.” The bowl offered was surprisingly hearty by Arcadia’s standards that Shaw was almost sheepish to take it. For bones stronger, hearts less worn. Still the guilt persisted. “You’re sure, though?” Their spoon hovered just atop the bowl, watching idly as the stainless steel filled with condensate.

A nod acknowledged their words, though his head hung with relief and exhaustion. He could only hope Guadalupe would listen to them and allow Shaw to guide her through all this until he could figure things out. There had to be more to that riddle. Some hidden clues he was missing in the midst of all the chaos that ensued. Lea just hated how much his kids were witnessing and experiencing while he struggled to keep them safe. How could he explain that the ghost tormenting them in their dreams was not the same woman who had brought them into the world? And if he did find a way to explain, how could he know for certain it wasn’t real when it left him scars that burned?

Leandro watched them in shock still, eyebrows raising in disbelief when they mentioned it not hurting. The sight alone was enough to cause him pain, he saw no way where their wounds were superficial. He had half a mind to lift their blanket once more, for another look but her words brought him pause. Lea’s eyes closed at Shaw’s question: Would you lie to me? Such an easy response it should have been, and it was, but he couldn’t find the nads to paint his love in such a manner. To allow the words to escaping his lips when he knew well she’d never hurt him so. That she would have cut her own hand before attacking his back in the rabid way his nightmares formed. 

“Please.” he spoke quietly and shook his head to deny the horrors only his back acknowledged. His gaze met Shaw’s again, though everything in him screamed to get up and leave. To put distance between them before he gave in so easily like he knew he could. His own suffering didn’t bother him. It was his children's he couldn’t stand to bear.  “She’d never hurt me.” Leandro allowed himself to say, answering their question but avoiding saying her name. “It isn’t her. This place just plays games with our minds... I’m okay, really.” In a show of good faith he offered them a contorted smile that barely reached his eyes. 

Noting their chose in words he pondered then asked, “Have you been haunted too?” He’d learned of the tree accident, which easily explained away Shaw’s injuries, but now Leandro wondered if there was more to come. Was Shaw just as tortured in their dreams as he and Valentina were? “I initially assumed it was one of those things… those creatures outside maybe trying to get us out. The kids have been sleeping with me since it started. I was too scared something would happen.”

Leandro’s expression shifted with the kind of unconvincing manner that betrayed just how unpracticed he was with a lie. A smile in his features, or at least what had passed for it. In the absence of any genuine sentiment, his smile was just that: a set of muscle-pairs wrung from the corners of his lips, without the convincing pull of teeth. The answer to their earlier question—Would you lie to me?—answered finally. 

There would be no satisfying reward for it. A grinding of their own teeth, finding certainty now that the nightmares were shared by the town. They looked away, briefly, towards the window with its slant of pale light. Arcadia could be so withholding with its pleasures. Happiness here would remain ever so scant. “It’s Sol, then,” they evoked her name, finally. The shared memory between them, word made flesh; a half-life even in hell would always be so fully remembered. 

“I don’t think you’re okay.” They dragged their front row of teeth against a bottom lip that had gone so dry. Words delivered not quite with a bite that would settle deep in his skin, even the shallow prick of a wound. Only a more inward frustration. Why must so many of them insist on lying? If not lying, then a withholding of truth? “Why would you lie to me?” Leandro should know by now that their world should not be suffered alone. The only life here was but fragments that its residents could piece painfully and meticulously together. Otherwise, hell had encased them. Beyond the material things, there was nothing left of value here to trade but the truth. 

Their tongue passed over cracked lips as they offered their own morsel of honesty. “Yes,” Shaw said, simply. “It’s good you’re with your children—I don’t think it’s that simple anymore.” A strange thing to admit, they thought. That the creatures were now simply things to be dealt with. “My ghost has been speaking to me, too. We’re meant to solve it, I think. My half, and yours.” A purse of their lips, before they leaned toward him further. “What do you think?” 

Now tell me what's on your mind. An uneasiness ran through her mind, took hold of her body language and she tensed up. Her fingers took a stronger hold of the glass, her shoulders rolled up and she held her breath longer than needed. Her toes curled inside her shoes and she felt like every pair of eyes were on her, prickling into her back, even when none of that was true. She had a hard time telling what was really going on, so she did what she best did and objectively told what occupied her mind as a leader. Not as the sergeant she once was. It wasn't a lie. It was simply stating the list that went through her mind and hide the visuals that flashed before her eyes so clearly.

''A whole batch of crops went bad,'' the engine of the SUV was growling when they came to a halt in the middle of the streets way after the sun had set, ''I think the soil is tainted.'' That smile. That goddamn smile of Them that had stared at each and every one of them inside the car, until one of them had opened their mouth and Peterson had lost it. She'd heard gunshots plenty of times in her life before - but these particular ones aimed and shot at people that were inhuman... they still haunted her. ''So we'll try a new batch soon, use a different soil or something,'' but what haunted her most was the scared shitless look on Harris' face before he gave his life to cover her with his body from the explosion that followed. ''Just sucks when the crops don't grow properly, you know. One of those days.''

She was so occupied with feeling sorry for herself, even though she acted as if she wasn't, Shaw's kindness had gone right past her for as long she'd been sitting at the bar. Those entrancing eyes she finally connected with, that made her take a deep breath and feel the metal bar of the stool her feet rested against. It made the white noise thrumming inside her skull turn down a notch, so she could hear the clinking of glasses and the background chatter of the bar a little clearer. An inner joke got shared between a group in the back, a couple was having a hushed conversation, it was there - but not distracting enough for Emery to tear her gaze away from the doctor sitting next to her.

And then it hit her.

A long drawn fuuuck went through her mind when she realized the hat still sat rudely on top of her head. She downed the final layer of moonshine that sat in her glass and put it down, released the glass from her grip and relaxed her hand by resting it close to Shaw's. Taking the hat off with her other, she ran her fingers through the loose strands to make herself look at least somewhat decent.

Who was she kidding, really? The jig was up and Shaw did what they did best - see right through her bullshit. Fuck it, what did it matter anyway. ''It's Harris' birthday today.'' The words stung like barbed wire wrapped itself tight around her heart, squeezed the little resistance she still had right out of her. ''So I just wanna feel less like shit and drink.'' Uncurling her toes, remembering to roll her shoulders down and straighten her spine more, it was then when her gaze moved just past Shaw. Unable to look into those experienced eyes, afraid to see sympathy form in their face - the kind she didn't deserve.

''That's all.''

Crops and tainted soil. A nod of understanding. Now bearing a decade’s repository of memory, Shaw doubted that anything could take root here without sacrifice. The land was only one of many that had become unforgiving. Certainly, there were mockeries of life drawn—in the Settlement, the Common House, patches of green amid the town, half-attempts by residents to be helpful or be self-sufficient. They thought of the once-abandoned ranch surrounded by a sprawl of untamed pastures, of goats and sheep drifting through the overgrown fields of green that had gone unclaimed for years. No one had the patience to tend to it. The animals moved through their lives with almost an ignorance to the sorrow of the people’s existence. 

Emery spoke with a kind of cadence as if she were reading only from a grocery list. Sapped of energy, stripped of weight. Words confusing had they not held a practiced vision, they who recognized the body’s tells, of muscles clenched and posture coiled tight. Even with alcohol blurring the edges of their vision, Shaw could sense the wrongness, the lack of convalescence, even as she recalled her supposed worries. 

A pause. They swept another glance at her, then. Gaze more determined, the lines in their face deepened.  The doctor did what they did best. Hammered a heart that had gone still, beat something more alive into the nothingness. “That’s all?” Insistent in their prodding, Shaw made no move to conceal the disbelief in their tone. But they made no move to push. Only allowed Emery to meet their gaze and to be a presence for which she could anchor herself. Easier said than done when their gaze drifted further. The taste of the moonshine felt slick against the back of their throat, hot and wet. They took another swig, then, a brow arched as Emery exhaled a slow, dragged-out fuck and finished her own glass. Her discarded cowboy hat sat on the desk, and Shaw, without thought, pulled it closer to their side. Traced the rim with an index finger. A light-colored thing, almost bringing out the color of the grain of the wood. 

It’s Harris’s birthday today. Their face fell, went still. “Oh.” In their stillness, they neither offered judgment nor absolution. Just bearing witness. A quiet exhale, before they continued, “Emery, I’m sorry. That’s never an easy anniversary to deal with.” 

Time and again they had been a friend to another’s grief. It had rendered them, almost, with a stony kind of calm—for the chain and the weight of people’s pain made it easier to ignore one’s own. A kindred spirit was found in Emery. She who had nursed her hurt too close to her chest in favor of acting so much for others. Yet very few could remain reticent in the doctor’s intense gaze. 

What had Emery said? Alcohol was not their preferred distraction. Their vice had been of smokes—a rare luxury in a place so defined by ashes already. “Is that what you want, Emery? To drink?”

He didn’t remember the household being very touchy-feely, very affectionate in past his own childish requests, of hugging a parent’s leg when he was too shy or always wanting to hold someone’s hand wherever they went, too young to be worried about the repercussions of separation but feeling it all the same. Now, though, at hearing a nickname only ever spoken by one person - twice, stopping him from spiraling into the darker moments, of the worst case scenarios that would bleed through his imagination as he fell asleep - Ben, Benny, reached over and gently took their hand, an anchor to reality for the both of them. Their hands had aged; where once his could fit in the palm of theirs, his long fingers stretched over his mother’s.

“Yeah, I am…” Ben trailed off, hesitant on the proper way to proceed with the story at all. The guilt had been gnawing at him, the same way he’d chew the inside of his bottom lip until it bled, the manifestation of the stress of it all. It felt odd to brag in these circumstances, and while it was only information to add to his story, it still felt bizarre to be listing off accomplishments as a part of it. “I’ve been to the Olympics. Twice. I’ve won medals—“ I don’t miss. It’s kind of my thing - I just don’t miss. “Just in the leg. Like right here—“ His moved his index finger over the center of his thigh, where the muscle was the most taut, opposite palm feeling sweaty in their hand. “I was trying to get help - medical attention. I suppose I did get it,” he joked, gesturing to them. He swallowed. “I don’t actually know if he’s okay.” And part of me doesn’t care, is that normal? Is that how you felt, too?

Benny’s touch had come with such gentleness. All thoughts of regret disappeared. Fingers that Shaw could once envelop with ease now so easily clasped their own. Their thumb grazed his palm, found the callouses and ridges there. Of time pressing itself. Their marriage vows might have been broken and left unfulfilled but this connection would hold. How they wished their touch could provide comfort now That they should be the one to provide solace and not to take it. That they could will their body to lurch forward, begin reacquainting itself with the new body of their son, the only life they had ever brought into this world. 

Time had claimed so much from them. It was the tragedy that laid there: Benny would always have to work to fill the gaps, and Shaw would always find another regret, and in the absence of an endpoint to a timeline the cycle would run infinitely until someone stopped counting. 

But the regret would hold. The regret would be innumerable. For so many days and years and moments had gone in their absence, and—

Too much, they thought. Let’s not talk about it yet. 

They willed themselves back into the present. A sorry plane of existence made brighter by his shape at once familiar and unfamiliar. They watched him, then, caught in the half-light. A sharpshooter at his prime, a fatal wound caught against an arrow struck by a practiced hand: was it simply a survivor’s instinct or a killer’s? 

The joke ran flat against the air. Shaw attempted to catch it before it could drift away. It was a weight that needed to be confronted. 

“I don’t want him to be okay.” 

They declared. Had they revealed too much? Shaw had thought themselves so invisible then, in the way they had moved through the world. Concealed the way the hurt from Henry’s hands had roamed through their spirit, buried it deep, until all that remained was the urge to provide consolation towards patients who had fewer methods for recourse. Advice that Shaw could not follow all the same. Leave. Cut the connection off from the roots. Start life anew. 

How much had Benny seen of it? A worse question lingered still: how long until Benny had gone from a passive witness to recipient of his torment?

Even when trying to remember how Shaw looked back then, had her drawing a bit of a blank. She noticed in herself within the year after she arrived here, her cheeks had hollowed, an appetite that seemed permanently gone in this place and the effects of aging with stress. Now that she was approaching thirty, she was half-expecting strands of silver to line her blonde hair.

Valentina perked up when Shaw spoke again, the cadence similar to how Robbie spoke to her in her dream, but different. “Say that again—” But she had already imprinted it in her mind. “I grow until the day I die, You've seen me once, if you don't see me now you won't survive. That’s what he said to me— is this the same he? Are you seeing a boy with an eye missing, face all torn up?” She swallowed, remembering his unfriendly, bloody smile, teeth sharper than she ever remembered them being, unless it was just more of her grisly imagination at work. She wasn’t sitting anymore, but standing fully attentive as she waited for Shaw’s response. “So it’s a two part riddle?” She scoffed. “What am I, some kind of genius? I fucking hate this place.”

At least Valentina had remained relatively unscathed. Among the few, still, who kept their heads at bay but Shaw knew that even the most resilient could be broken. It was starting now. Nightmares in a town already weaned by poison, was there simply no recourse but to simply live through them? To endure again? 

From their seat on the desk, they leaned further forward, elbows resting on the grain of the rough-hewn wood. Splinters of it bit against their skin, but it was a sensation that at least came familiar to the doctor. “N-No. No boy. But I see a ghost of my own.” How Shaw had thought, however incorrectly, that his would also be a memory that could be nailed and hammered shut. This town would not be nearly so merciful. “They all speak in riddles, then?” 

Their lips pressed together, gaze tracking the grain of the wood, how it had moved beneath the light. How it would not settle against eyes that had only gotten a fitful of rest. Moving. Always moving. “What keeps growing in this place?” They asked. The gears of their mind worked. Body at the cost of one’s life, the riddle had said. What else could be sacrificed beyond themselves? “In a place where hardly anything grows?”

closed starter for @solidgrovnd

It was a routine that had developed in his first two weeks here: the methodical and meticulous perimeter check of the clinic to ensure that each door was locked and every window shut (and in some areas where the windows could not be locked, that they were nailed down). It was no different than early mornings spent riding around the fence line of the last ranch he had been on, checking for holes where wolves could get in, or cattle thieves. There were no wolves here, in fact the creatures that Maverick had been intimately acquainted with (remembered in the thick scar on his right forearm) had shown zero interest in his horse or in Milk (the young cow affectionately named so by the good doctor that had saved his ass). The cattle that needed protection, that needed to be fenced in at night, was them, prey kept warm and fat, ready to be consumed if doors were left opened.

When he was satisfied that nothing was getting in (or, on the occasions where injured and disillusioned from reality guests stayed the night, out), Mav and Shaw took turn making dinner. Their suppers often lacked variety, but Mav had stayed in enough bunkhouses to care very little so long as the food was edible. His southern hospitality often forced him to eat at the table in the makeshift dining area with Shaw, whenever they sat down to eat. He found himself quite happy to eat alone on nights when their work pulled them away from routine of dinner, not out of distastes of Shaw's company. Instead, he found that for all the flaws of this town he enjoyed moments of silence that had never been awarded to him in his 42 years, that up until Hell Town he had never had the luxury of a quiet dinner, always mouths around him to fill the space with sounds.

Then strange events had occurred. It had started with the addition or subtraction of one person around dinner time, depending on whether Jude came here or Shaw went to the ranch. He had no complaints, it not like things got any noisier. In fact if anything, Jude's presence always seemed to absorb noise (this he knew from the soundless way they worked together). He was privy to conversations by way of stares and actions, often he could not excuse himself from the table quick enough to not feel as though he had intruded on a private moment. On Shaw's notable absences, he had more time to think about the people he missed on the outside. So on nights where it was just him, he ate more but felt emptier.

The storm had brought about injuries to both Shaw and the clinic that Mav still struggled to deal with. He wasn't one to admit that he cared, but he had found great frustration at being trapped in from the outside, asked himself what cruel God could cause the collapse of two trees, seemingly hellbent on erasing Shaw's presence. And so he hovered more, treated them more fragile, waited (when they were here) for them to go to sleep first, rarely let them do any physical work around here as to not thwart their recovery. Being ever attentive to Shaw (out of guilt, out of apology) meant he noticed when things that were constant before became... absent.

In the aftermath of nightmares where he had been haunted by his older brothers, Mav felt the undercut of care deeper. He came to Shaw's room now, bowl of soup in his hand, the formality of a dinner table long abandoned for the sake of convenience. He knocked and waited to be called in. Wordlessly he stepped in and then placed the bowl down on their table. His eyes observed the room, took in what was absent yet again. A beat before he pointed to the bowl. "Chicken soup. Mama always sayd they-yur was nothin' it couldn't fix." He looked at Shaw then, fought to word this properly. He had never had sisters or friends that were women or friends that were women that preferred the company of other women. "Didja want to talk about it?"

The first insistence of pain, their first serious injury, was met by their body gracelessly. The agony had dulled once mended by practiced hands, but it gnawed still. As if in drawing out the source of the torment, it had sought to capture everything else. Beyond the physical, their mind had fared no better, nightmares perverted by their guilt, memories of collapsed wood and stink of blood and a blue so open that it could almost be mistaken as the core of fire. Rest would not come at all. They thought of rivers and the tug of gravity towards a cliff’s edge; nothing now to protect them but the shallow warmth of fabric that had been stolen just as much as her time. 

The sound of Mav’s voice had found them like that. Mav’s attempts to coax it into the cold room warranted some entertaining, at least. They’d issued a brief “Come in,” before the ranch hand entered fully, quietly. The figure of him and the gesture were almost obscenely warm in a room so cold. His Southern drawl as he talked about the merits of chicken soup as he set the delicacy down on the desk table just to their side was almost a comfort. “Thank you, Mav.” 

From their position, with their spine sinking against the headboard, hands folded one over the other, and a white dress hidden beneath a ratty blanket, Shaw could still be mistaken as an epitome of grace. Did you want to talk about it?  Unused to being at the question’s receiving end, Shaw shook their head. “I don’t know what’s there to talk about.” An attempt at levity. “Did you have any questions?” It was only a fair trade. A gesture of goodwill for some truth—the only currency still left to trade in a place where material things could be so easily rendered obscure. 

The whiff of the chicken soup overpowered the room immediately. No doubt as to where it had been drawn. Shaw reached for the bowl, shoulder clicking with effort as they dragged it across the surface desk table and toward themselves, unwilling to rise from the mattress. Thoughts of the clinic were at least a welcomed distraction, and they took a spoonful of the soup now, waiting for the burn at the back of their throat. There was none. The controlled heat of it was almost inviting. Teeth found their bottom lip, uncertain suddenly at the warmth so liberally given. “How goes the clinic today? Not too busy, I hope.” 

“Don’t.” The breath released between gritted teeth that scarcely broke the silence. Unease for the first time at the running away.   

Don’t trouble themselves. Don’t touch, Jude thought, as she fell back against the trace of Shaw’s hands. Too faint, too much now. Touch, which she had spurned for a lifetime. Flinched and withdrawn from it, drove away its insistence. If only to forget when she had not been able to, to draw a clear divide between herself and the world. To be untouched, untouchable. Ruined by the time she had first pulled them to her, wanted for more. How Shaw had grazed her. Let it be easy. The illusions of something long unspoken now shattered. Punctured with regret, here, that they had moved for her. For once, she had desired that her presence only bring alleviation. Something easily kept. It had been hopeless and futile. 

Jude folded in on herself, flesh pinched in her own grip. She kept her sight away, lived in the lies that could be cultivated away from Shaw’s face. The soft and forgiving ebbs that she had not been able to resist sinking into. They insisted she hadn’t owed them anything, as if it had ever been calculated. It had been reckless and inept, realised in small instants between staggered breath or later still, in the first fractures of a day’s light against their skin. That she would do anything for them, abhor to be anywhere that they weren’t. 

“Before?” Jude could only choke on the supposition. That it had been simpler. It had been shared, perhaps, the impulse that brought them together. A sentiment of something uncomplicated and casual, the purpose only in taking away the ache of their days of entrapment. So quickly disillusioned by the first kiss. The subsequent returns—too fervent, too tender to ever be so insignificant. 

“Right.” Shaw had only wanted Jude’s body, the only part of her that could cultivate desire. Not the unsubstantial thing within it. The ugly snuffed-out hammering of her heart. “We’re just two people fucking each other.” Cold and untamed, a shrug-off of everything that had gone beyond it. The hereditary twist of the knife delivered with a smile, the only lesson purposefully given to her by blood. To know the inevitability of being left so well that she knew how to push others to it. Her only grace was making it effortless. The parting. 

“Shaw.” Guilty but without apology, the acrimony of words that made it more unthinkable to meet their eye. She dreaded what would be found there.

Usually, Jude was in better control of herself. Not her mouth, so much, where her words were callous and injured without intention, her audience as alien as she was to them. But sturdy in herself—she had never before felt this lurch, such violent stirs. The crux of her had always been unbending and muted. She had fallen apart in their hands. 

“No, I—” Jude shook her head, finally looked at Shaw. Just a glance, her lip pulled into her mouth. She couldn’t trust herself to not make it worse. It was no use. Being with her must have only hurt. 

So Jude would have to leave. Remember how to without looking back or being missed. The former so very impossible. 

“I need to go.” The pull from their touch was the most fierce of all. Even as she made certain it wouldn’t so much as skim Shaw. It had been enough that they had been touched by anything at all. The urge to flee pierced and bled out, it could be ignored no longer. Not outside—not into waiting mouths—as much as it may be like a relief now. It had been some time ago when she conceded that she ought to throw herself to Their teeth, that she had finally been cursed with it. The first stutters of her wretched heart that They could feast on. Yet, she would never bring harm to Shaw’s door. She had waited and skirted on the edges of their life long enough. She would stay close but away, keep them safe until the first light streamed through boarded windows. 

Jude had been torn apart before. Lost everything and had never begged for it back. Hopelessness that was learnt too young. This was only—no, Shaw had been the first that mattered. The mutilations of before could be disregarded with abandon. After being nothing, she must have been too much. Finally too much. Dug too deeply, wanted for something in her dishevelled and unforgivable way. 

Shaw would have someone to talk to about it, at least, the kept secret of them. A person to dissect Jude’s impropriety with. She’d pick up the pieces of herself alone. Go back to what she had left to call home. There she would rattle around lonesome, keep the bay and distance. Let the expanse of her emptiness be felt. No one would approach again. 

Trapped somewhere between clawing to remain and the doorway, Jude remembered the stack of documents at the foot of Shaw’s bed that had toppled and spilt over onto the tile. It would hurt them to retrieve them from the floor. She could not forgive herself for that. The final act of her banished attention—to tidy it away, to leave. She had promised to go quietly. The door in sight, close and kept with a gaze that did not dare to wander. It would benefit no one for her to speak. For there to be more words. It could not be healed, only evaded. 

Something that Jude had dreaded most of all. 

Let me go.

There was so little they could remember of it. Before. The syllables of it had echoed now, in this paltry room lit up by only a bulb, the color of it so sick and yellow. Light left the bruised sky; evening had come. Once, they could imagine how even this little space could be subsumed by the sun through the narrow slope of the window. Of its golden rays that might have glided through what little bridge there was between the wall and their bedroom. The decision to bar it had been made easily when they settled here more than a decade ago. To nail it shut, to board it up, even as their crude handiwork allowed for whatever paltry scants to reach through all the same. In earlier years, they would see Their eyes staring back at their figure through those narrow slats, pointedly and with taunting. The creatures had tried so hard to break them for years, found less resilient figures to tempt in the interim. Shaw had slept facing the wall, keeping themselves prone and curled, their back to the sliver of moonlight. For years, it was the only light they had ever let in. 

That had been before. Before they’d become swallowed by Jude and her river-like eyes, incised herself into the tenderest muscle of their being. Hadn’t they learned by now? They could not stand too long in the light, could not make use of it, could not—

We’re just two people fucking each other. 

Left airless in the whiplash, Shaw adjusted their grip over the crutch to stop themselves from falling but the jolt sent a surge of pain regardless, the teeth grinding against each other to keep from crying. The source of the pain now two-fold. Their mouth parted just as a tear fell. The attempt at a goodbye might have been initiated by Shaw’s tongue but it would be Jude’s words that would deliver the mortal wound.

“Is that what you think?” Their heart lurched at the thought. “That we’re just fucking?” 

The word fell from their mouth only to gut them entirely. Shaw had asked for the truth. Perhaps it was this. “That’s how you see me now, isn’t it.” The hand covering the small of her back fell at their side, clenching itself into a fist, nails that grew over the past week forming tiny crescents against their palm. “No use fighting for me now that you can’t fuck me.”

An accusation. The real sentiment of the words drowned in the depth of their hurt. How easily it could be dismissed as a lie—the year they’d spent surely brimming with evidence against it. Of stolen time in a borrowed ranch, of her time spent inside them growing deeper and longer, of the sky growing bluer and the sky more golden when they finally drew apart. No longer the frantic affairs of hunger satiated but the easy trade of affections in the dark and even at the starkness of the light when there would be no hope of concealment. Just moments earlier: fingers in the small of her back, unable to surrender even the barest hint of touch. 

“Because I don’t think that’s how you see me at all.” 

Only—the doubt lingered. That Shaw had gotten it all wrong. That the five years since they met each other was nothing but a tragic miscalculation, that the affection cobbled together from the beast of their hunger was a lie. So desperate to call someone their own that they had not stopped to think whether it would be reciprocated. The by-product of a doctor’s ill vanity: that they should have mistaken Jude’s touch that was so liberally offered as fact that they were wanted. Loved. How ugly they felt in the clarity of it. Beneath this sorry skin, their blood pulsed. 

I need to go. 

“Jude.” Their voice, quiet, was no more command than a plea. They watched helplessly as they retrieved the stack of documents that had been left in the crutch’s wake. Useless things now. Could not remember what it was meant for, the stacks upon stacks on old yellowing paper in the doctor’s shallow attempts to make sense of the world as it now stood. “Jude.” Their demand echoed, Shaw walked towards the door, legs moving on impulse. Pain, hot and wet, detonated against their immobilized leg, but no matter. They had chased her even now, after the unburdening of truths and the mutual lie and the shared painful goading. Their dress was left unbuttoned. There was no dignity left to be salvaged, nothing Jude had not already seen. Only she had ever seen everything. 

“Don’t go.” They staggered through the doorframe, back against the door. Sank against the familiar press of it to block her exit. The crutch hung loosely at their side, they winced through the pain of holding themselves up and together. The back of their hand left grazed their eyes, smearing it from the tears of burning eyes. “Not when it’s gone dark. Not—” Not with the declaration that they’d hoped was only a lie, “—not like this.” 

“You’d do that?” Though the offer had already been presented, Leandro couldn’t help but ask. He’s often turned to Shoshana over the years, whether as a form of comfort for being the first person to have greeted and cared for them upon their arrival, loyalty over their relationship and the part they played in his child’s birth, or as a cure for the ache in his chest when it presented itself. He didn’t believe for a second that their offer was due to some underlying connection between them as opposed to her genuine graciousness, but even so, he couldn’t tame the flicker of warmth Shaw’s words brought upon him. 

His name made his head pop up and gear towards her. Meeting her gaze against all thoughts even as he knew the torture that lay behind them. Shaw didn’t need to witness it more than they already had, nor would he add to their suffering. Leandro’s brows furrowed at her words but he didn’t comment, simply allowed his gaze to travel with the sheets to their revealed injuries.

A gasp escaped him though he did attempt to mask it by quickly slamming his teeth together. Caging his tongue behind them, along with any word of surprise that could have escaped. “How..?” Words continue to evade him the longer he watched, “Shaw, I’m - at a loss for words. How bad is the damage? Will you be…?” Leandro reached over, though didn’t dare allow his touch to harm her further, and took hold of the blanket - draping it back over their wounds slowly. An injury of such magnitude in the town was concerning to say the least, especially when Shaw’s life was so important to the overall longevity of Arcadia. 

It made sense now. Why he hadn’t seen them as often as he normally would on his walks through the clinic. Why they’d chosen to reside elsewhere throughout their healing process, as knowing Shaw - it was easy enough to know they wouldn’t like to be seen in these conditions. Leandro placed a hand over theirs, comforting in the only way he could think of in the moment. Glad that they’d chosen to confide in him.  “How long, do you think, before you're back on your feet?” 

And yours?

Leandro wasn’t sure that was a question he could bring himself to answer. He had his share of injuries, for sure, but unlike the others he believed he deserved each and every one of them. He’d take them seventh fold if it meant his children, and Shaw, were spared from the same hell. Lea couldn’t bring himself to catch their eyes and shook their head instead. “I’m okay.” he restated, hoping he sounded more leveled than the question had made him feel. The marks on his back burned intensely with his lie.

And Leandro—a friend, perhaps, though the memory of Sol existed between them as if it were a dragged-out vigil. An illusion of tenderness could only ever be a betrayal. How even as they moved against him, they thought of another face, the ache of their ribs from too much desire and grief and longing displaced into his bones, his muscle. That in the place where their bodies met, Shaw had thought of only escape, of water rushing past the river mouth and into the ocean. Dissolve into something else so they could drown out the specificity of the hard planes of his body, the flatness of his chest, the scratch of his beard clinging to the bone of his jaw as he turned against them. “It’s the least I could do.” They had kept the betrayal only to themselves. A tender heart and a body fully given, only to ever be drawn by them as a reproduction far too imprecise. 

So Shaw was without shyness as they uncovered their wounds. To display themselves in full was an ease that had come brutally. Leandro was not keen on seeing the damage, taking the blanket and draping it back over themselves as he finished his examination. A lick of their lips, tongue skipping over cracked skin. The response in which they had landed was nothing quite. “I don’t know,” they said, the chuckle sputtering out almost displaced How difficult it was now to predict anything. But they would not dream of an exit. “It isn’t unpainful,” a slight roll to their shoulders, “but I’m sure others have sustained worse injuries.” It would be much harder to trudge through the realms of self-examination. At least, Shaw mused, they had not died. This world would not be so forgiving. 

I’m okay. They watched as he averted his gaze, listened to his terse response to his well-being. “Leandro.” In the airing of syllables: almost a caution. “Would you lie to me?” The unspoken request then: a trade for a trade. I have shown my wounds. Now show me yours. For surely no one would have come out of the nightmares unscathed. Leandro and his two children had nightmares of their own. Shaw had, too. The blade that had cut through them pulsed still, restitched but just as easily reopened in the night. Healing would not douse it. Least of all prayer.

“Leandro, look at me,” they willed him to speak. No doubt it was a lie; his words and gestures carried the same formlessness as air. Their gaze softened but was still full in its resolve. “Who is it haunting you?”

But even she knew the injuries were severe, and she knew there was worse still to come, promised in the hell of night. Thick unforgiving tears fell from her eyes and she had to look away from Shaw as she tried to breathe air in, the knot in her throat so hard it physically ached. It was as though every muscle in her body was allowed to feel fear and pain all at once and Charlie fought harder than she ever had to maintain composure. She wanted to be strong for Shaw, to show them she was okay, not to worry. Charlie had never wanted to be cared for, and all it did was make the tears taste a little bit more like shame.

She nodded her head, it was all she could do to tell Shaw she was paying attention. Her hand grabbed the gauze and she ripped the package open with her teeth before bringing it to her wound and pressing down hard. Through the blur of saltwater she saw as the white started to turn red. Immediately she grabbed another gauze and repeated the process, layering them and applying as much pressure as she physically could. The pain caused her to release air through her clenched jaw, a painful exhale hissing through the air.

Her eyes snapped towards Shaw, her father standing behind her. His face was so unlike what she remembered, twisted cruelly into a smile. She wondered if she would ever remember him as he had been, or if this is all she would be able to think about now. "I can't," she heaved out. Fuck, how her throat hurt. She shook her head and swallowed past the pain. "He'll hurt you." While she tried to keep her eyes on Shaw, she couldn't help but flick her eyes towards him as he tilted his head towards her. "Please. What else could you possibly want from me?"

What followed: a form of healing in all its crudeness. Not quite with the diligence of their care but only thoughts of urgency. Anything to keep each other alive. “It’s okay,” they said, as her trembling hand sought to apply more gauze, more pressure against the gash. As instructed. “You’ll be okay.” Another echo. 

They instructed Charlie through it, reaffirmations made through the hush of the clinic air pungent with the metallic and something strangely sweet. They became aware of the leak of their fatigue now as their body stretched uselessly. How had it been so many years, and pain would still catch them by surprise? Something lodged in their throat. A guilt so displaced, only death would be the recourse to their epiphanies. They watched as the bleeding grew to a full stop. How they had wanted to press a hand through her cheek, brush the tears now flooding Charlie’s eyes. But their body would not move. They sat now, still, betrayed by a body that would not be demanded, as if in its first brush of real physical pain insisted that it feel everything from which it had been kept. 

Who else would hurt them? Their confusion was only a transitory thing as they were pulled to the events of days past, the people who had disclosed their fears to them. The decision came shortly afterward. “Charlie.” They called, hand reaching out slightly to the space between them, still too far away. “Look at me.” Not at anyone else. This was something they could do, still. A presence that would not drift away despite all there was to this life. “Tell me five things you can see. Could you do that for me?”  

rain briefly ran her tongue across her lips as she slowly inhaled, holding the air within her lungs for as long as she could before releasing it with quiet hum. “not every night,” she began, finger absentmindedly and repeatedly brushing along the reddened mark on the inner side of her wrist. “used to do it every night, but it’s been better. first time it happened was two years ago, give or take; last time i did it was three days ago—” she paused, glancing up at shaw with a tiny smirk. “you proud of me?”

it’d make them the first — and probably the only person, really — if their answer was yes. trying to stay alive in a town where there were creatures trying to reduce her into mere contents of their endless stomach was hardly something to be proud of. considering everything rain had to deal with in the years before arcadia, it would have been easier to simply succumb, to let go and be finally free of this torment but— rain looked away from shaw again, avoiding those perceptive eyes. she’d given away far too much; the last thing rain needed from them was a clear understanding that whatever was calling to her at night was also the very same reason why rain had yet to end it all herself.

that and, well, rain had grown to appreciate shaw’s friendship. it was nothing profound— none of rain’s relationships with people other than her sister had ever been, but shaw was. . . shaw. the town’s doctor certainly had a way of unknowingly convincing someone like rain to stay alive.

They leaned just slightly to attempt to survey the damage, before bracing their left hand against the seat and allowing their body to rest on one side, now fully turned toward her. 

“I am proud of you,” they conceded. It was a crude mechanism, they thought, to battle the internal forces that governed their bodies, their world. To bind oneself so that they would not surrender to the night. A literalization of restraint: desperate, but effective. “I’m just sorry that I haven’t been able to help.” A flash of teeth, then, as they caught themselves biting down on their lower lip to process the revelation. 

For even Shaw had had a limit. The doctor was no master of this space. There would always be limits to healing especially in a place remorseless and indiscriminate in its assault to their bodies. Rain would not meet their eyes, an understandable thing when so much had been revealed already. They recognized the weight of the trust offered freely; they would not betray it by pretending indifference.

 “I’ll certainly try to think about it. For now, maybe try thicker fabric? Don’t you have silk shirts or sheets you could repurpose? It will certainly cause less friction on your wrists.” They paused, the weight of the implication sinking in. “Er, so I’ve heard.” Outside of the clinic they would also offer a helping hand. Gentler, now, without notice to duty.

The room stayed airless. Outside, the sun had sunk to the dirt. It was too late. 

“It wasn’t important.” Her own wounds that had been so readily concealed from the light. From their eyes and hands. The only that had ever known her. On instinct, Jude had hidden away. She did not matter. She had been wrong in so many ways. Most erroneous in the harbouring of their affections. To speak of it would not have repaired anything; it would not have healed Shaw. The bruises were purposeless; she would have let them be forgotten. 

There was something else that Jude knew but did not quite understand. That she should have told Shaw because it was the truth and she owed it to them. That its hiding had been for more than their sake. That the care was hers alone. That she had been afraid. 

I can’t ask any more from you. A question that did not arrive in response, mulled over still. Why not? It was all Jude was good for. To be dug out, a corpse dragged through the soil just to keep them from it. She had carried them without condition, would give them anything they asked. Even the truth. If she found it. 

Jude stood. Pushed herself away from the chair. Abrupt and uneven, as if she had suddenly happened upon something to say. As if the thoughts had, for once, arranged themselves in a way that made sense. That would be worthy of disturbance, of noise. Depict the enamority of the things she felt and thought of. Still, she moved in her silence. Kept it. Nothing was gained. Nothing but distance, the first she had found the solidity to put between them. She moved away, towards slats of wood and nails that kept out light. Creatures. The boarded-over window she would have looked out of. She turned away from Shaw, to have no sight on the way her breath stuttered and failed. The fragility of organs under bone and artifice. 

“I understand.” Teeth dug into the flesh on the inside of her cheek; it had been a lie. There had never been any of this before. No point of reference to steel herself against, to not live anything out but be braced for the impact of it. Shaw had been the first she had ever wanted, ever loved— 

It was realised there. In between their collection of kept things and a light snuffed out by the ruthlessness of time. Or it was admitted to herself, for the first time after having been known for a much longer time. Jude knew how to leave. It had once been such a relief. That everything ended. The only comfort was its constantness. That she would be alone again, the world grey and unmoved. It would be impossible now.  

“You don’t want me around anymore.” It was over. Jude had waited for it. Expected it. She could not hope. Had been wary of the dissipation, the leaning into them. To their care, how she had caught herself in pursuit of the curve of their mouth and their laughter. It had been too easy, something she had fallen into far too deeply before she could have noticed the severity. Already beyond it, she had not been able to gather her senses. Shaw, who had marked her days, the hours—the first shift of the earth in a dead world, an unconscious life. They who she could not be without devotion for. 

A face conditioned never to give anything away. Jude felt a sickness return. Not for the first time, it plunged within her. It was her mind and body that hummed with what her words could not express. She who regretted, forgot care when she spoke. The space she made between them greater than she had ever known it to be. Her, them, the pushing that had squandered even air between them, it was that which had threatened to eat her alive. How still and gentle and whole they were. The scar unspoken that had confirmed it enough. That they had lived an actual life, that they had belonged to something more. How rotten she was. Now the sky had fallen for the second time; here there was nowhere to go. Nowhere to carry them to safety. 

“I’ll go quietly.” A mouth contorted as if it knew any humour, still turned away, unobserved. Words cast sharp and quiet. A flinch, an expression abandoned before it could grace the hardened contours of her face. The quickness of the approaching violence of night, the place she was meant to return now so ostensibly far, so terribly empty. They may eat her, sink Their claws into the worthless cold body. Jude had nothing to else offer. “I’m sure you’d prefer it.” That no one would know they had been touched by her, that they forget it too. Regretted again, even as it is offered with only flatness. She ought to be kinder like she had learnt to be under Shaw's hands. Be graceful in the stepping aside to let someone more worthy hold them. That they not make foes in the inevitability of the departure.

So Shaw had turned living into an almost abstract thing, the kind best sustained and reserved for patients under their care with bodies damaged and minds disordered and hands unheld. The doctor of unflappable stock. This town would not take them even as it swallowed so many others. They had fought so hard to be hidden, altered their life so that the inevitability of their death, when it came, would not feel like such a loss. And, yet—

They had run towards her. Had chased after life again as if it were not a betrayal of the self they had fortified for over ten years. Before her, there were only fragments. Laughters stolen and chased, couplings meant as salves to the wounds beneath. They lost sight of when Shaw’s want had grown into desire, into need, into something far too heavy to name. 

Jude, no longer looking at them. Her back turned to the window, the boarded-up wall. They swallowed. How much they had locked her in. Of course they had wanted her! A lurch of a thought, an indulgence, fought to be buried in their heart. They would be alone with this realization. Let it harden and suffocate there so it would hurt only them. Yet Jude continued speaking. 

I’ll go. Quietly. 

“Jude.” 

With great difficulty, Shaw sat up from their place on the bed. Took the crutch that had earlier fallen down as it made contact with the heap of old things tucked away for no particular reason except to fill the space, that they might feel more wanted, still. A deep breath, then, to push themselves upright. Their breath had turned sharp. The room did not collapse between them, but something else inside them had. She’d go. Quietly, and yet—

“Jude.” An echo of her name. They had grown addicted to saying it, the shape of it in their mouth. How it brimmed and only grew with sentiment each time. The low, satisfied hum that would precede and follow it, the way they’d spoken it against her neck, her mouth, the rare times she’d let them sink into her. The name was unlike anything they’d ever heard or spoken before save for books on saints and sinners. It was not a syllable that they’d spoken so liberally in the company of others. Just hers. Only theirs to keep. 

I’m sure you’d prefer it.

Nothing like it now. They uttered her name with an intent no longer merely a warning or an invitation to bury herself deeper. A plea. “Stop that.” And another. Slowly, and with intent, they ran their left hand along the back of her spine. From the nape of her neck to the small of her back. Shaw’s palm hovered at its center. Stolen, hidden, unspoken—but surely it would be felt. 

“It’s nothing like that.” Another pause. “I can’t ask you to do any more of this for me, day in, day out like you’re obliged to. You don’t owe me anything.” 

Too much. They had asked for too much. Even now, how much care the doctor had borrowed and kept throughout the years stood stark against the half-light and their maker. A glance to their left—Jude’s desk, a chair recently vacated. The wardrobe held so much of her and her scent. Too soon, too. Jude had never asked for any of it. Never asked for the guilt she carried or the burden of having left them behind when Shaw should not have been there at all. There would be no recompense. How much of Jude’s time had they stolen? Years upon years that could have been spent growing something with someone else who was less unafraid to want. Someone who was not committed to being half-dead. 

They had found it so opaque, once. Jude’s head. Others might have found it so damningly clear. The way she had quickly folded for others. The abruptness at which she spoke. Thrived on the crassness and the crude ease in which she moved through the world. Only when they had entered it did they realize how much it ran deep. How they had hungered for it, her easy curiosity, the rare gentleness in her movement. Never too proud not to have begged for it each time. Drowning in her was as easy as breathing. How they had needed to go back to the surface. And, yet— 

It had hurt too much, the thought of her leaving. “Things were simpler before,” they said, “We could go back to the way it was.” So absent of any reference, now that everything had begun dissolving into something else. Before, perhaps, of the nightmares of the tree, nightmares of Jude dying. Before the roof fell and transformed each of their movements as hurt. Before even their shared year of borrowed time. The first time they had kissed each other. Further, still—when they had been seen even when they had combed over themselves so readily. How Jude had looked at them as if they were someone who mattered. How Jude had worked on knowing them since. Time. Time again. Was time running away from death or toward it? What then was drowning, or breathing.

“Don’t leave now. It’s dark out.” The palm that had hovered on her back settled against it. How they still sought the firmness of her even as they pulled away. To steal her away again. To steal more time. “Jude, could you just look at me?” 

“Sorry,” she whispered, unable to suppress the shudder that occurred as soon as Shaw began gliding their fingers through her hair. Out of a need to squeeze in on herself, Rosa drew her knees up to her chin, hugging them tightly to her frame. “It’s not the most niche drink I’ve ever heard of.” There’d been a silence that stretched before Rosa grew the courage to speak again. Usually, she found peace in the quiet, but it’d gone on for a beat too long - she could hear her own throat click, dry but lacking the desire to be properly quenched. Maybe she was being too picky, but she was sure the water tasted like rust. “I gotta say Shaw, it just sounds like you don’t really enjoy drinking.” Rosa teased, but she couldn’t help but point it out because she felt as if she could relate to the sentiment. There wasn’t much Rosa could say in terms of enjoyment when it came to the actual taste of alcohol - but she could recognise, at least with herself, that she enjoyed the haze that occurred when a proper buzz came on.

Finally readjusting her posture, Rosa’s spine straightened as she grew accustomed to the close proximity and gentle touch. Shaw seemed like someone who’d be tactile, but gruff with their hands, but it was seemingly the opposite. Another, much smaller shiver ran down Rosa’s back again, but she didn’t apologise for it this time. “That’s nice.” She conceded, tone dipping in volume each time she spoke. “That you - found a family… here.” Rosa wasn’t quite sure what she was trying to say. It really did bring her a small piece of comfort to know that Shaw had made a home here, that it was possible if necessary. But she wasn’t quite ready to befriend the idea just yet. 

“I think Dee’s doing a lot better than I am.” Blushing slightly, Rosa felt embarrassed to admit such a thing to Shaw. Like it made her lesser - though what else could it mean? If Rosa simply wasn’t capable of adjusting as easily as everyone else? It certainly didn’t make her the bigger person. She had a reoccurring nightmare since arriving to town that somewhere along the line, everyone makes it home except for Rosa - she was too busy being left behind. “I’m - I really, uh…” At some point, Rosa’s eyes had dipped, as well as her concentration. She didn’t grow attached to people easily, let alone quickly, and she couldn’t quite admit to trusting Shaw just yet - but she felt a bond much like a duckling would feel when imprinting to the first being they laid eyes on. Shaw was Rosa’s version of the North star. “I really appreciate you, though. Helping me. I don’t know - I feel a bit useless. Which is really fucking… shitty and hard for me to say. I really just - I really don’t know. Does it - does this change? Get better? It’s… it’s gotta get better. I can’t - I’m not like this. Y’know?”

At her response, Shaw lifted their shoulders into a shrug that Rosa might not see in this position. Delivered all the same, still. The doctor could be so sparse in their approach. An instinct to be seen and not heard, weaned by childhood, adulthood, and the burden of their profession. It was only in movement that their presence would matter. “Yeah, I don’t enjoy it,” they conceded; the air was perforated by a small stutter of a laugh. “I understand why people take up the habit. It’s just not for me, I suppose.” Neither an endorsement nor rebuke; it would not do well to be discourteous. Shaw had recognized the temptation before, and even more now.   But an attempt at proselytizing against it would be futile. Not when all of them were already so condemned to such a diminished life. 

“Yes. A family,” they repeated, fingers continuing the work of feeding in sections of Rosa’s hair, careful not to pull too tightly as they made their way through the stubborn tresses. It would not do to dwell on it, family. How it was still a structure that was being repaired—if it had been built at all. No sense in bringing it up or to scare Rosa off further. That even with the length of their time here, the concept of it was still such a fractured thing. How they had become so crystallized in their indifference. How unprepared they had been with the first touch of tenderness that it had been so destroyed, readily and without grace. Still, Shaw carried on. Made sense of what they could. “This clinic has no shortage of visitors, anyway.” It went unsaid: how the procession of patients was only a transitory thing, but it had filled their days all the same, hadn’t it?  They excused their curiosity about how people moved in the world to the debt inherent to their profession. What it really was, they thought, and thought vividly now: an attempt at being with the world. To replace the quietude and immobility of their younger years, a frozen watchfulness sustained decades later. “I would hope that you would not be one of them. I’d rather you come here unhurt and with energy unspent,” they added, almost a word of caution. 

The words were made tenderer still by hands that were beginning to weave the lower half of her braid, the last few sections. “I was just as lost as you in my first year here.” Their brows furrowed as they attempted to pleat the last of her hair, which had grown increasingly stubborn as they neared its end. “I’d be worried if you had adjusted very quickly. This is an abnormal situation that we are living through.” Was it prudent to underscore the differences between this world and the other? They could not say. But Shaw was no liar.

“You’re doing just fine.” Smoothing the woven locks between their fingers as they reached the final trends, they leaned forward, angling the locked plait to her right side to show off their handiwork. “Do you like this?” The braid, perhaps. Or this exercise at intimacy, Shaw’s attempts at conversation. In the absence of a referent object, the question could mean anything.