aphelion.

There’s no response. The Grandchester mansion stands, forlorn and empty and silent as the grave. It’s only after Ren begins to bang on the door however, that the door parts open with a creaky sigh to the front foyer. Quinn isn’t seen, but on the upper level the shadow of a small girl skips past, giggling softly before disappearing down the hallway. 

her relationships now are few and far between, regardless of verse.   it’s hard to maintain anything that’s more than a brief, meaningless hookup when you’re on the run and it’s so very rare to find someone who’s already fallen into those spaces.   at this point she’s just kind of tossed the whole concept of another person in her life to the wayside.   there’s no point to dedicating herself to someone who she’ll inevitably have to leave behind, and at the end of the day the things she needs out of a relationship are so different to what other people need that it’s not even worth trying. 

she likes to think she’s fine on her own and ultimately she really is, but then i’m out here writing her, all about the emotionally complicated disasters that come with trying to make a ship with her work.   that moment when someone who’s resigned themselves to being alone realizes someone else has snuck in under the radar and made themselves important to them????   THAT’S SOME GOOD SHIT RIGHT THERE.

𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚞𝚎𝚍 𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎, 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 @starhaunt​

as  their  foreheads  lay  pressed  together  in  a  moment  of  silence,  a  hand  moves  to  find  its  home  upon  her  wrist,  anchoring  them  together  another  moment  longer.   it  isn’t  very  often  that  they  can  find  the  time  for  moments  like  this.   ever  since  the  helicopter  crash,  he  has  been  waging  a  war  against  eden’s  gate,  running  around  hope  county  frantically,  without  much  room  left  for  breathing.   graham  closes  his  eyes,  shielding  himself  form  the  inevitable,  suffocating  the  feeling  of  dread  that  will  return  to  his  chest.   he  is  rarely  afforded  moments  like  this,  rarely  allowed  to  taste  the  warmth  of  this  closeness,  even  long  before  these  last  few  months.  his  body  is  no  longer  his  own ;  the  beast  resting  beneath  his  ribcage  makes  it  known,  that  he  is  but  a  tool  in  the  grand  scheme  of  things.

“     i  am  the  end  of  this.     ”         he  corrects,  cryptic  as  ever.   none  of  this  will come  to  its  climax  without  him,  that  much  is  certain,  but  her  choice  of  wording  suggests  that  his  choices  make  a  difference,  that  his  presence  makes  a  significant  difference  for  the  better.   perhaps  it  is  the  opposite,  that  he  was  happening  to  hope  county,  to  eden’s  gate,  to  the  world.   not  the  other  way  around.

his  shoulders  lay  low,  defeated  by  the  weight  of  what  his  words  suggest.  when  did  he  become  so  instrumental,  so  important  to  this story?   it  seems  like  another  lifetime  that  his  significance  in  the  overarching  plot  was  meaningless,  that  he  would  die  as  he  lived,  a  simple  criminal  lusting  after  the  riches  of  others.   graham’s  hand  falls  away  from  her  wrist,  landing  against  the  cushion  of  the  beaten  down  sofa,  and  his  eyes  lift  to  meet  hers.          “    you  should  sleep.   before  we  have  to  go.    ”

it’s hard to look at him.   he’s always been something else, an anomaly she’s never understood how to place, all the way back to that first job, the first meeting, where everyone else was so fucking easy to read and he’d met her gaze like he knew he was a challenge.   she’s not sure he even understood it at the time.   maybe he does now, maybe he has all along.   maybe that’s the point.

but he’s someone else now.   she searches his eyes, dark in the dim light of the room, already knowing there won’t be any new answers to questions she won’t put into words.   she doesn’t know she could if she tried.   her thumb traces his hairline down the side of his face, through the heavy scruff of his beard, and down the curve of his throat until her fingers spread whisper-light over his sternum.

“we’ll figure this out.”   she says it for the sake of saying something, anything.   it’s an empty platitude that won’t make either of them feel better but it’s more than that, too.   she just barely presses her fingers harder against him, an anchor tied to the promise she’s making.   it’s not hope and it’s not certainty and it’s not some misplaced optimism that’s somehow found a home on her tongue.   it just is, as if speaking it creates a point in the world to tie themselves to — a broken buoy in a dark stormy ocean. 

she touches his jaw again, presses dry, chapped lips against his temple to seal the words in, and retreats back to the makeshift bed on the floor.   his blood is still drying on the dirty blankets but the ache doesn’t care and the bone-deep exhaustion won’t let her, anyway.   she sinks into the mess, eyes on him, sharp despite herself.   “eat something.   rest.   you don’t have to sleep but take a break, at least.”   if she leaves space for him when she drags one of the blankets over herself, curling into that musty nest, she doesn’t say so, but she leaves the option open for him.   it’s just habit, now; it’s just how it is.

“Well – you know – not intentionally. It might not even be a tracker at all!” She hadn’t considered that possibility, but in fairness, technology has never been her forte. A finger crooks against her mouth in thought in what almost looks like a parody of Le Penseur. She can totally answer this question. “Oh, you know… The usual.”

The bartender stares at her blankly, waiting. Hands press on the surface of the counter, before she leans in, hoping that Ren is unable to hear the order. “A shirley temple with extra cherries, please.” 

it’s not often she’s surprised by anything these days.   maybe it’s the one-two of the bartender’s long pause and the uncertainty that sets in before khaliya speaks again but ren catches herself blinking at the bar top, genuinely unsure of what had just happened.   she’s kind enough to let it sit (she’s really not, it’s for khaliya’s benefit more than anything) until the bartender has nodded at the both of them sagely and taken his leave and she gives it another full second before she dares look over at her again.

      Rules. Like there was anything she could do, like rules could shape the woods into something that made sense to her, like it could be tamed, domesticated. The word annoyed him like a personal insult. This tiny, tiny thing, insignificant and mortal, calling onto rules like a tin shield she carried into battle, like they could save her. 

      “There are no rules in chaos,” the words came out of his mouth but he did not speak them. He tried to locate the source of his anger but he could not find it within the confines of his human shape. He dived in deeper, followed the thread of that emotion until it sunk in the darkness, a hollow at his centre, and then he could not find himself. He wasn’t there, or if he was he couldn’t reach him, far too deep inside, being pushed even further, the dimensions of his self sinking into infinity, sinking inside a hole in the forest. Lost. 

      “You can’t    expect things will go the way you plan them,“ his voice was hollow, like an echo, like he was the echo. An echo of a man already dead. Not a ghost, but the hum that came back, bouncing in the darkness, in the empty hallways of his brain. He still held on to it, scrambled to pull it all back in, all the threads of himself, the fragments washed by the rushing waters. “The terrain, you’re not trained for it.”

spite rose and crested and washed itself away in the seconds it took to study him.   though she wore the impassive well, beneath the surface she wasn’t sure what to make of him.   the look in his eye was familiar, something traumatized that maybe didn’t yet understand how much; she wasn’t going to read too deeply into it, it wasn’t her place to make those judgements.   not yet.

she cleared her throat as she sat back, letting the rush of the wind through the trees take over the conversation.   there was something here, though she wasn’t sure what, exactly.   something burned here, something old and forgotten, and she played over the options in her mind, strumming invisible fingers across the strands that branched out, trying to pick out the one that might lead her where she needed to go.   it didn’t help.   there were no answers.   just the look on his face like he had every reason not to trust her and hey, wasn’t that handy?

he was right.

Corvo rarely slept, but when he did, the dreams were restless.

It was as though a pit had opened up underneath him and grabbed him, shoving him downwards into a gaping maw in which he couldn’t escape. Some nights all he dreamed of was the cold-the aching, primal cold that shot him straight to the marrow in his proverbial, mental bones. Others, he could not feel his legs as the inky darkness shot up in tendrils and wrapped around him, encasing him into nothing as everything HUMMED in such a loud tone. 

Yet, this time, he felt something nearby. Abyssal blue like that of the bottom of the sea overtook him and he found himself dragged through it like he was trying to wade through tar. At first, it was brief-the faintest, hissing whisper of a cry, of a call. It wasn’t that black-eyed eldritch boy that had toppled him down into this hellscape before, no…it was something new. 

Something the long since maddened Emperor might find intriguing. 

So, he pushed. His Mark glowed like an angler fishes lantern as he attempted to swipe through the abyss, feeling its inky blackness pushing away from him like he was walking through the thick smoke of a burning forest. 

                     ‘who are you?’

Again. He heard it again. His Mark BURNED. Oh, it itched, and he instinctively tried to rip it apart but found that it was too far branded into his very bones. 

                                      ‘who are you?’

When he tried to reply, it was as though the darkness itself had filled his lungs, but he managed to speak. It reverberated around him, making him ache, but he wanted to find it. He had to find it. 

                      “The Black.                                                 Who…who are you?” 

the black,

                                                                             the black,

                        the black.

a thousand and one voices answered her first thousand questions, echoing in slow-building layers, encasing her in a self-made cocoon she couldn’t see or hear or feel.   she breathed with lungs that didn’t exist, that had never existed, and yet she felt the air rush in and fill all the spaces within her, expanding outward into whatever lay outside of her.   she was everything and she was nothing all at once, a being of consciousness, and then a body in a bed, and then a beam of energy that might have been light at some point but had forgotten how to be, branching out into nothing.

she stretched, limbless and all limbs, searching.   the black echoed where echoes didn’t exist and that was curious, wasn’t it?   something real and ephemeral and altogether unknown in a non-space of nothing.   she breathed again, expanded larger, and felt the sudden twist of interest somewhere both far away and immediately close.

an answer, but this time she knew the question.   she was the question, but she was the answer, too, and for a long thousand years she considered how she could be both at once before circling back again to the black and whatever it might be.

“a question.”   was that the answer?   or a proposal.   maybe that, too, was one and the same.   she felt herself spiraling, spinning vast around this point of contact, and everything seemed to rush altogether at once as her focus sharpened in on it.   on him.   whatever he was.

a new weight hung itself around her neck.   a new question, a new thread:   something else to fall her way into.

fingers  twitch,  itching  at  the  bare  inked  skin  of  his  forearms    -    it  takes  everything  he  has  not  to  bite,  though  it’s  obvious  that  he  wants  to  with  the  way  his  jaw  flexes  and  gaze  darts  to  the  side    (    he  wants  so  desperately  to  lash  out    ).        ‘        you  say  that  like  i’m  weak    -    like  i’m  a  victim.        ’        a  breathed  laugh  and  finally  the  youngest  seed  brother  finds  the  other  with  his  eyes,  hands  settling  upon  his  hips    -    the  way  he  saunters  closer  is  too  relaxed,  too  confident  to  match  the  heavy  feel  of  the  room.        ‘        no,  this  is  my  purpose,  everything  up  until  now  was  simply  a  test  of  my  faith    -    i’m  going  to  save  people.        ’        pearly  whites  snag  his  lower  lip,  john  smiles,  almost  ecstatic.

        ‘        YOU  INCLUDED.        ’

it’s a curious thing, watching the machinations of a person’s mind as it works.   over the years she’s gotten good at picking up on the tiniest details, the microexpressions that last a fraction of a second, there and then gone as if they were never there.   he either plays his part really well or it’s genuine and she’s not sure which is more curious — or which one is ultimately the saddest.