#whumpwriting

The discussion he was referring to brought Allison back to her alarming present. Walter. Left a few days ago for a trip. Left Grayson in charge. Told him to keep her working. Told him to keep an eye on her.

Allison also distinctly remembered a particular moment (she didn’t know when it was, had she passed out) where she told Grayson to “go fuck yourself.”

Ah, she thought. So that’s what’s happened.

“Allison, are you listening?” Grayson’s voice was impatient.

“Mmm,” was all she was able to reply, her coughing coming in waves but not being made any better by the foot on the middle of her back.

“Tomorrow,” Grayson started, “we’re transporting you to a facility-”

“No-” Allison pushed the word out with much as force as she could muster, attempting to put her palms to the floor to push herself up. It didn’t do much. 

Grayson responded with a harsh push but ultimately lifted his foot, stepping away from her limp body as he kept talking.

“And every day you don’t work, I’m coming into your cell myself.” Grayson’s words were setting Allison off as she finally began to drag herself across the floor. There was no plan, no real way of escape. But she wasn’t trying to escape, just get away from him.

“Walter doesn’t even know how to train you properly.” Grayson spat, his voice still close, telling her he was following closely. The implication made her stomach sank to know she was barely moving. “Look at you, you should be begging not to be hurt. You should be down and know to stay there. Stay in your room until your called. Use the power you don’t even deserve, work, go back. And yet, you just don’t know when to stop.”

Grayson’s voice rang out in the concrete room as Allison started coughing again as she swallowed and was reminded of her inability to breathe a moment ago. 

Allison perked her head up as Grayson came around to her front, squatting to her level and wasting no time by grabbing a fistful of her drenched hair and lifting her head up harshly and leaning down till his lips were touching her ear. She cried out, not having enough energy to even lift her hands up to head to even try to relieve the pain.

“No wonder you don’t have any respect for this situation or the authority in this place. Walter couldn’t even do-” Grayson hissed into her ear, but was interrupted by another voice.

“Couldn’t do what?” The voice was clear and authoritative. Loud. The effect it had on Grayson was almost immediate as he dropped Allison’s head and she had half a second to hold herself up enough to stop her chin slamming into the concrete.

Allison recognised the voice and was terrified to find she was almost relieved. She rested her head gently on the ground, taking a moment to breathe for a second while looking up slightly at the pair of clean black formal shoes a metre or two in front of her face, a matching cane between them.

“Walter,” Grayson’s louder voice than before did very little to hide his nerves. “When did you get back?” He almost sounded scared.

Walter’s voice sent a shiver through Allison. “Not soon enough, I think. Why have you tried to break my pet?” 

Allison tried hard not to object to the statement. Not yet. Grayson is unapologetic in his answer when he replies. 

“She wouldn’t learn. And you don’t seem to teach.”

The words make her heart skip a beat. Fear is coursing through her when thoughts fill her head about what Walter might do to her if he is threatened that he doesn’t punish her enough. The anxiety of the thoughts compels her to speak.

“No- Jilten- please I- Gray tried to… I-” She can’t get anything out properly and she barely notices that Walter has worked forward, crouching down and hooking the top of his cane under her chin to force her to look up at him, as much as it hurts to hold her head up. 

Walter’s eyes are unforgiving but there’s something in them that says she might not be the one in trouble right now. Like he’s upset someone has touched his toys. “Maybe I like you a little broken like this…But you’re not broken for me, are you darling?” Walter speaks and Allison’s words catch in her throat again.

Walter pulls his cane away and reaches down to cup her chin. The contact makes her melt slightly and she curses herself and him for it. Despite Walter’s cruelties, he kept her sane. He needed her sane to break her the way he liked. And she can’t ever be broken enough to not do the work that he so desperately needed her for. And Grayson almost ruined that. 

Allison tries to protest at his words again, but he shushes her. “It’s okay. You’ll be alright, it’s not you that I’m set on punishing right now, you’re in trouble enough already” And with that, he stands up, clearly ending the conversation, but Allison persists.

“Jilten please I promise-” Allison finally finds enough of her voice, but Walter has had enough. 

“No, I think that’s enough out of you. Present company already thinks I’m too soft on you.” 

Allison looks up at him but is met with Walter already having straightened completely and staring at Grayson, who has been mostly silent watching the exchange. Allison goes to make a sound from the back of her throat in protest of the situation and indicate she is not done, but Walter pushes the bottom of his cane on the back of her head, pushing her down gently until her cheek touches the floor. Her face burns at the thought of Grayson watching this but something in her feels something else. Allison would never defend Walter but Grayson could never have this kind of power over her. Or anyone.

“What have you achieved?” Walter asks.

Grayson is confused in his reply, his eyes flicking down to Allison on the floor beneath them “Surrounding Allison?”

Walter is growing more impatient and take it out on Allison, pushing down slightly harder on his cane whether intentionally or not. “You claim to be more skilled in teaching my pet. Surely that means you have evidence attuning to the fact you have information from her to aid in our endeavours?”

Grayson is silent for a moment before he clears his throat. “We’ve been close. She cooperated for a little with Jonathan and I on this project- I think it could work, just like you said. But she was purposefully aggravating us and making things go wrong. She won’t work. All she tried to do was find a way to contact them.” Allison stiffens at Grayson’s recount.

Walter makes a tutting noise with his mouth, clearly displeased with this new information. He removes the cane from Allison’s head and gently pushes the tip of his shoe under her chin to lift it to look into her eyes. When Walter speaks, it’s to Grayson, but he’s staring daggers into Allison.

“And… did she succeed?” Walter asks, eyes not leaving Allison.

“Sorry?” Grayson replies.

Walter turns to Grayson, clearly impatient. “Did she contact them?” He looks back down at Allison. 

“No. She didn’t get the chance to.” 

Allison tries to release the breath she’s been holding in, but she’s worried Walter notices. Walter continues to stare down at her, and she tries not to squirm under his gaze, but she can’t help moving back slightly when he crouches down again to grab her face, cupping her chin. 

“Darling,” Walter pauses, letting the severity of the question he’s about to ask sink into her. “Did you find a way to contact your precious friends?” The nice touches are over now, Walter’s voice is low but above a whisper and he grips her chin much harder than before. 

“We would have noticed.” Grayson tries to interject, but Walter is completely ignoring him. 

Allison tries to shake her head, but Walter’s grip on her face doesn’t allow her to. “Ah-ah, tell me.” He leans closer and Allison can’t help but flinch. “Come on Ali you can tell me.” 

Allison barely has the strength to hold anything back anymore, and even though she doesn’t reply, her heart sinks as Walter nods in understanding at the look on her face and the breath she stops holding in. 

Walter lets out a deep sigh, surprising Allison by reaching out for her shoulders and torso to pull her up with him as he stands again, supporting her with an arm around her waist. The wet clothes stick to her even more and she tries to ignore it, almost grateful for being pulled off the cold floor. Allison wants to protest at the hold he has on her, but she has almost nothing left to do so. 

“It seems you are just as useless as the rest of them Grayson,” Walter speaks, leaning on his cane with the hand not around Allison’s waist as if this entire interaction has been boring him more than anything else ever has.

“Sir I-” Grayson starts but Walter cuts him off a final time.

“You will not touch my property again, Grayson.”

    She thanked the nurse as he released them through the exit. She supported Arch by the arm as they stood on their own two feet on the way to their old silver minivan; easily identified by the distinguishing rust marks around the rims. Charlotte led them to the passenger side, intent on opening the door for them when Arch stopped her.

    “I can open a door, mom.”

    “I’m helping,” she countered with a turn of her head.

    Arch swallowed. This was mom. This was the van. This was daylight in a busy parking lot. They were not alone, they were not in an alley, and they were not with…

    Arch forced their way to the door, opened it and lifted themselves inside.

         “So independent,” Charlotte chided as she started the van. She checked the rear-view mirror and continued to speak as she was driving. “I bet you’ll be running off the moment you graduate, won’t you? Leaving me and Maleficent to our own devices.”

        Arch took a moment before responding. “I was thinking about Strathford Community College, actually.  One of the nurses brought me some pamphlets yesterday. They offer business and finance courses”-

        “Not with your grades they don’t,” Charlotte finalized condescendingly. “You should upgrade, but you know that you don’t have the attention span for that. It’ll just be a waste of money and time for you.”

        Arch didn’t feel like saying much after that comment. What they would have followed up with was an explanation that they were quite inspired to start their own business. But what was the point in any of that, if their mother would be shooting down every idea Arch had like a trophy hunter on safari?

        -------------

        A couple days of needed recovery passed Arch by. To their dismay, the futon was much more welcoming than the stairs to the basement suite. Waiting on a call to the police station, Arch remained securely by their phone. The call never came, nor did any calls from friends or relatives to see how they had been coping. Everyone was too busy, they thought. It was better that others didn’t speculate much anyway and be disturbed by the gory truth.

    In addition, due to the unfortunate experience they had endured and that no one wanted to mention, all of Arch’s final projects had been waived by their teachers. All in all, Arch was on the road to graduating with a C overall, which was more than was expected of them. All they needed to do was study for their finals and that would be the end of it.

    Arch was focusing on their math’s portion when Charlotte entered the front door with an array of plastic bags, and dropped them down in the middle of the room, right beside the futon.

    “You wanted a romper?”

    Arch closed their textbook, studying their mom suspiciously.

    “Yes…” they breathed out hesitantly.

    “I wasn’t sure what colour you’d want so I picked out a few designs in all sorts. Some have sparkles, and it’s your graduation dance, so of course I had to”-

    Arch knelt down beside the bags, wincing as they twinged their arm on feeling the fabric. Some satin, some chiffon, danced through their fingers.

    “Mom…” Arch was left speechless. She had listened to them. For the first time ever. They were heard. “You didn’t have to”-

    “Yes, I did. For goodness sakes’ it’s your prom. Put one on already. I’ll be returning everything you don’t choose so keep the tags intact!” Charlotte ran into the kitchen, intent on placing an order for Chinese food.

    Arch pulled out the first one that met their fingers. A bright purple chiffon number, beaded around the neck in silver and flowy with a cold shoulder. The pant legs were wide enough that when walking, it was almost as though they were wearing a dress. Arch popped into the kitchen, and twirled, causing their mother to sputter.

    “Oh god, not that one!” Charlotte corrected herself over the phone, “Oh, no, no, not you… Number 66 please. And one 14. For two. Thank you.”

    She finished the order and hung up the phone as her child double over in laughter.

    “Why did you pick this thing out!?” Arch interrogated.

    “I thought it would be great for a giggle. There’s a cream and mocha coloured one in there somewhere, I thought it might suit you best.” Charlotte advised with a toothy grin.

    Arch tried on a dozen rompers gauging many different reactions from their mom and themselves. Both of them did their best to ignore the many cuts and bruises that were still healing. In the end, Arch agreed, the cream and mocha coloured romper suited them best. It was simple in its elegance and matched their eyes fittingly.

    “You look fantastic.” Charlotte said as she leaned over the kitchen table, unloading dinner from brown paper bags. “That one’s also floor length, so you don’t have to worry about finding the right shoes for it.”

        “You know me too well!” Arch hollered as they posed in front of the bathroom mirror. There was a buzz from their phone, which sat on the edge of the vanity.

                    Store meeting. 8pm tonight.

        It was Lyrem. Arch grimaced. It was 7:30 now.

        “Seriously?” Arch muttered as they changed out of their romper and into some street clothes. They returned to the kitchen.

        “Lyrem wants me at the store for a meeting… tonight.”

        Charlotte stared at them disappointedly.

    “Oh. Does it have to be tonight? He’s required to give you notice if he wants you to attend a meeting. You can tell him to reschedule. I swear, that man is getting on my nerves with what hours he’s asked of you.”

        Arch brushed off the comment. “I should still go…” There was a strange feeling in the pit of their stomach telling them that it wouldn’t be a great idea to refuse.

        Charlotte raised a brow. “Alright, I’ll drive you in a bit. I was hoping we could stay in and have a movie night like we used to. I picked out Music and Lyrics. Hugh Grant’s adorable in that one, and young Drew Barrymore; oh, Arch, you’ll love her.”

        Arch smiled lightly as they tugged on their sneakers. “I’ll walk, mom. And I’ll text you when I arrive, and again when it’s done. I need to stretch my legs anyway.”

        Charlotte stared at them with a worried façade, wondering if she should fight their child on this. Any mother would, but she also didn’t want to pick a fight. Not tonight.

    “Here,” she rifled through her black bag. “Mace. It’s a single use canister,” She handed over the small tube to Arch as they stood by the door. “Take it and use it if you have to.”

    Arch accepted it, nodding. After planting a kiss on their mom’s cheek, they started on their journey to Mystics.

That landing was effortless, Roman thought to himself, beaming with pride as he looked to his skater mates hanging out on top of the mini vert, who applauded.

“Nice job, Roman, but we’re gonna bounce.” Shouted one of the onlookers. And after a pause: “you coming?”

He thought about it for a second, his eyes wandering up to the fluffy white clouds that hugged the baby blue horizon. “Nah too nice a day.”

“Too damn hot is more like it,” chuckled his excited viewers, leaving the concrete park and the loan skater to their own devices.

Roman shrugged his shoulders as he watched his friends disappear behind the tattered gate. A rusted sign read; ‘KEEP OUT unless the gate is unlocked’. Not that that stopped kids breaking in, anyways. Roman took his board to the top of the park and let the sun melt into his clothes, his arms, his face. What a truly magnificent afternoon it was. This was his favorite kind of weather: in the dead of summer, with humidity and heat pounding into him like rain on asphalt.

The town all around him looked like it was straight out of the darkest part of Hollywood. The streets were littered with people and trash, and all around the buildings were carved out of stone and built out of brick. The look achieved was somewhat old, like a western film plopped into the middle of the mountains. Boom Town was a place old people moved to and young people moved from. As soon as the students graduated from the dilapidated high school, they hit the road and hoped to never return. As it was, many that graduated later described a supernatural- like pull that led them home. Roman didn’t believe it for a second and knew that as soon as he left, he was never coming back.

He dropped his board on the hot concrete and rested his foot upon it, breathing the scalding air into his lungs. Hopping on his board, he let the wind flow through his hair as he took a couple of laps around the pipes, diagonals, and runs that had been carved into the hill above Boom Town. He was just getting started.

Roman tugged his board back to the top of the hill, already warmed up and ready to start practicing more tricks. His friends were long gone and he relished in the silence of the mountains. Here, the oly noise were the songbirds passing overhead in their playful circles, and the occasional rustle of the breeze in the pine trees above the skate park. Pretty soon, as summer turned into fall, thousands of honking geese would disturb the silence; but not now.

As Roman cruised the drop, he hooked his board with his toe and flipped it, landing hard but safely. Cruising up the other side, and coming to a stop at the top, Roman couldn’t help but glue a wide smile to his face. This was what he was meant to do. There was no purpose, in this moment, other than the connection between his feet and the graffiti board.

Tipping his torso and his board forward once more, Roman soared down the halfpipe. He flipped his board at the bottom, and while the jump had been smooth, the landing was anything but. Catching a crack that had long been in need of repair, Roman spun out of control quickly. One moment he was flying, and the next he was lying on the ground, his cheek pressed into the hard asphalt, pain sizzling up and down the right side of his body. His board was completely still, lying on its side a couple of feet away. He blinked.

Must’ve blacked out, he thought, slowly urging himself to sit. How long had it been? A minute, max. He rubbed his head and winced when his hand brushed his cheek. Taking his phone out of his pocket, he examined his face with care. It looked worse than it was, he told himself. There were a couple of long, shallow scratches stretching from his cheekbone to just below the corner of his mouth, and already a dark welt was forming near his eye. It was beginning to swell, too.

Roman examined his arm and leg, too, which both had a series of deep cuts running along them. They were painful, but even so Roman forced himself to stand. As he righted himself, dark spots took over his vision, and he swayed, struggling to stay upright. Come on, Roman, it’s not that bad. Don’t be such a girl.  He tightened his jaw and walked slowly to his board.

He picked it up.

Tenderly scraping the dust off of the wheels and the top, he then proceeded to make his way again to the top of the halfpipe. He breathed in. Out. He let the hot air wash over him like a wave of steam. He let the pain roll off of him in vibrational waves. He let the birdsong enter his mind and cleanse it. He let the gritty texture of the board scrape against his arms and fingers. He let the breeze blow his blonde hair into his eyes and out again. He let the moment sink in. And then, he dropped his board to the concrete, fought through the sea of nausea, and rolled down the halfpipe at a leisurely pace.

Ahead, the gentle blue skies birthed ominous storm clouds.

When the rain started, Roman was halfway down the hill. The blood had been oozing out of his cuts steadily and showed few signs of stopping. His right eye had swollen deeply, and a plum purple color-tinted his eyelids and brow. The rain washed his sweat away.

Trying to stand upright while fighting the nausea that was rolling in his belly, he staggered downhill, which was a feat in itself. But feeling the cooling rain on his skin helped him feel more alive than he had a few minutes before. He glanced towards his destination; the parking lot at the foot of the hill, which seemed like an impossibly long journey.

Thoughts of how he was going to get home without having to explain what happened to him were haunting him. These tremulous ideas, which included questions of how to call his friends for a ride, were interrupted as a familiar guitar rift erupted from the deep hidden cargo pocket on his shorts.

“My phone! I have my phone!” Reaching to his pant pocket and retrieving the ringing device he couldn’t tell if his legs gave out, or if he had tripped over his own feet. Regardless, the grassy incline came up to meet him, and the feeling of falling and rolling downwards was all he knew before his world once again went black.

Pain greeted him as consciousness slowly returned, followed by his internal alarm system. The shooting pressure in his chest signaled warning signs that screamed: “I can’t breathe!” Thrashing about on the hard ground, he rolled himself onto his side with the little energy he had left. Gasping as the air returned to his lungs and the red hot pain in his body receded, Roman rested his heavy head on the grass and closed his eyes. Maybe the crash had been a little bit worse than he had originally thought.

With a crash, the nausea returned to his stomach, eliminating any relief he had felt moments before. Roman groaned and crawled to his feet, swaying, then steadying himself carefully. I have to get home. Thoughts pushed his feet forward.

The rain fell faster.

Every beat against him was like an echo of his racing heart. Even when he thought it impossible for his heart to beat louder, or faster, it would. Faster. Louder. Louder, faster. Fasterfasterfaster it seemed to race as Roman picked his way down the hill. The hill seemed to stretch out before him forever, the parking lot continuously running away from his reach.

Finally, he arrived, breathing heavily, his body’s sweat masked by the pouring rain. Thunder cracked. Moments later, lightning flashed overhead, illuminating the darkened streets with an eerie glow. His house, only blocks away from the skate park, seemed like miles away as Roman wandered down the twisting streets. Nobody was outside, the windows were all shut and the curtains tightly drawn. Even the trash that littered the streets seemed to rest in silent fury, watching Roman as he passed slowly by.

His house was the third one down the street, on the left, tucked between a towering square right house and a dilapidated wooden house, whose paint job had chipped long ago, and in which no one lived inside. Walking up the steps, Roman caught himself on the railing, dizzy. His head swam as he retrieved the key from under the carpet and unlocked the door.

Safe from the torrential downpour outside, Roman shook his head free of raindrops and pulled off his shoes. His board he deposited in the entryway, and silently he tiptoed to his room. Nobody else was home. He hoped.

Using all the effort he could muster, Roman crawled his way up to the second floor. A wave of dizziness nearly overwhelmed him as he reached the top. Just barely catching himself on the railing, Roman hunched over himself, his breath heaving, fighting the urge to throw up.

Letting the wave a nausea pass, Roman slowly found his way to the half bath near his room. Still not positive if anybody was home, Roman made sure to make as little noise as possible as he closed and locked the bathroom door behind him. Roman gently eased the bathroom door shut, and in the pitch black of the room, he reached blindly for the light switch. Managing to stub his toe soundly on the vanity cabinet along the way, he doubled over in pain again, groaning, once again resisting the overwhelming urge to uproot his insides.

Cursing under his breath, Roman managed to locate the light switch. The bathroom instantly illuminated in a blinding light. Closing his eyes and keeping them screwed shut, Roman supported himself on the bathroom counter and blindly searched for bath cloths and bandages for his cuts and bruises. Slowly, Roman drew his t-shirt over his face, dropping it in a bloody pile on the bathroom floor. Opening the mirror cabinet, he reached for the largest bottle of painkilling medicine, downing five of them in one large swallow.

Turning, Roman tried to look at the wounds on his arm in the mirror. Wincing, Roman uncapped the hydrogen peroxide bottle and poured it down his arm. It flowed into the semi-coagulated scrapes, causing small shooting pains to dig into his body. He grunted, clenching his teeth and doing his best to focus on anything but the pain. Roman cursed out loud, and then clenched his jaw. He had forgotten to remain quiet, and hoped to God no one was home.

Time dragged on as she crouched there, heedless of the growing pain in her knees, heedless of everything she had meant to do. She could not have marked the moment when they fell asleep, nor what told her they had done so, only knew that the watchfulness went out of them, that last humming string of tension falling silent.

Still, she did not stop.

The light outside the window was well and truly gone. The only other illumination rose from the embers of her forgotten fire and the cluster of blisters still pulsing, weakly, on Hollow’s chest. Their other wounds had ceased to glow, fading to a dark and sullen color that she could barely see against the darkness of their shell.

The infection was leaving them. She had a chance at saving them, more of a chance than she had expected or hoped for, and she did not know what to do with it.

How much of her sibling remained, beneath the neglect and the pain and the memories of torture? Beneath the void she was told had stolen their life away?

More than she thought. More than she ever dreamed possible.

She allowed her gaze to roam as they lay still beneath her hand, similarities and differences striking her anew with faint shocks like built-up static.

What were they? What had the void changed? What had it left behind?

They could communicate. They could reason. They could feel pain, and fear, and something like comfort, if their relative calm now was any indication.

What did she do with a vessel that had not only survived the infection, but was sentient?

To what degree? They plainly had a mind, but she did not know how they could still be sane after what they had endured. Their mind might be as broken as their body. They might be able to communicate only the most basic of concepts: yes or no, pain or pleasure.

And did that make then any less worthy of respect, any less deserving of dignity? Did that excuse what she had done and how she had treated them?

No.

If she was damned, though, so was her father, and her mother, and everyone else who had ever treated them like an object, like a thing. What kind of person could they be, after an endless lifetime of neglect and suffering? What had they once been, and what had they become?

She knew their upbringing had been one of strict utility, their waking hours taken up by training and preparation. Rarely had she seen the Pure Vessel idle. The nearest they had come was their presence in the throne room while the Pale King held court, a rare occasion in and of itself. They had been a white-clad shadow on the edge of her vision, never stirring from their unnatural stillness, armored hands folded on the hilt of their nail. They were a symbol of power, of resolve, and she could hardly see that in them now, broken and bereft as they were.

Had they been this lonely, this afraid, even then? Had that perfect image been nothing but projection?

If so, if their awareness was not a new development, they had hidden it so well that she never had cause to doubt that they were anything more than what they showed the world.

She tried to imagine her life without a scrap of comfort, without a smile or caress or warm word from her mother, without the easy company and gentle tutelage of the Weavers. Without any acknowledgement of will, any respect for her decisions—any opportunity to make decisions at all.

Oh, gods—without a voice, without the ability to laugh or cry or scream when she needed to, with no words to express or explain herself, with no way to hum or sing or whisper to herself in the dark. Only eternal silence, eternal obedience to the being that had created her, with no choice but to become what he wanted her to be.

Her next breath nearly broke, nearly cracked, nearly bared everything she was trying to hide. Had they ever been soothed in this way? Had anyone ever offered them a kind word or a warm embrace? Had anyone ever thought to comfort them as the days grew long, as the kingdom crumbled, as the world narrowed and closed around them like the walls of a tomb? Certainly the Radiance had never done so, and she could not imagine her father ever reaching out to offer solace to a being he believed to be mindless.

Even as a hatchling, even before they grew to fill the role of knight, would either of their parents have thought to nurture a child they thought long-dead? Had anyone taken their hand when they stumbled, or lifted them up when they grew too tired to walk? Had anyone held them when they lay awake in the dark?

And how badly had they needed it, for them to defy all the odds and react to it now? How desperate must they be, to ask her to help them, to lean into her touch, though she had caused them nothing but pain?

“I’m sorry,” she whispered again, words nearly swallowed by the ache in her throat. “I’m so sorry.”

She was a coward to tell them now, when they could not hear her. And even if they could have heard, they could not answer. Their voice had been stolen long ago, when the Pale King first lowered their egg into the Abyss, when the hatchling within had drowned in the welling void, sacrificed and reborn before they ever took their first breath.

But she would not wish to hear that they forgave her.

She did not deserve to be forgiven.

She would not have offered forgiveness in their place. She would have lashed out with teeth and claws, extracting blood for blood, pain for pain, drawing forth screams where she had been given only silence.

And if the weight of a kingdom had been placed on her back? If thousands or millions of lives rode on her existence? If civilization itself depended on her cooperation?

She might have done the same. She might have stifled every spark of anger, every flicker of regret, and drifted through her own life like a ghost, believing herself capable of the impossible. She might have swallowed down her father’s demands and fulfilled his every wish, allowing his will to work through her hands and accepting every pain and terror he visited on her, all for the sake of a kingdom that she loved despite it all.

Hornet clenched her free hand in her lap to stop its trembling. When she thought of it in that way, she had already done it. She had already lived this lie, already acted out this charade. She was still bound to a task whose purpose had grown shaky, still sworn to a kingdom that had all but crumbled into dust. She could not leave, but neither could she stand by and do nothing.

She had been named Protector. It was one name she held that still meant something to her.

Even though she had failed.

Her vision blurred again, with exhaustion, with hunger. She blinked to force it clear. She had not allowed herself to think of it until now, but the evidence of her failure lay there in front of her: the Hollow Knight, free from their bindings, from the seals that had ensured their stasis. And despite all the fragile, desperate plans she had spun in the interim, she was still no closer to discovering another stopgap, another method of holding back the infection.

It was finally over.

Hornet shook her head violently, once. She could not afford to think like this. She could not allow herself to be weak. No matter what had happened to the seals, she would find a way to restore them. She would step into the Dream herself if need be. The Radiance could not be unleashed upon the world.

More than just Hallownest would suffer for it.

But where had she gone wrong?

Maybe she had allowed herself to falter one time too many. Maybe she hadn’t been strong enough. Maybe, after countless years spent watching, waiting, her vigilance had slipped.

She hadn’t even been there when her mother’s seal had broken. She hadn’t felt it happen, though she always thought she would.

Herrah had died alone, in her sleep, surrounded by the corpses of her people, and her daughter had not even noticed.

She had sat there for hours before, on days when she could no longer bear the chaos of the falling kingdom. The bedchamber had been a constant, something she could return to and rely upon, always the same restful silence, always the same seals gleaming bright in silk and soul. She had slept at Herrah’s side when she could not sleep anywhere else, had held her mother’s hand and spoke to her and touched her—much as she did now, for Hollow.

Hollow was not Herrah. Hollow, at least, would wake.

Hornet looked down, tracing the gradual curve of their mask as they slept, her thumb grazing the faint seam under their mask where their mouth would open, though she had never seen it. Did they have fangs like her, hidden away behind their jaws? Short, serrated ridges, like the queen? Or rows of jagged teeth that could snap open in threatening display, like their father?

She let her hand drift down from their horn, keeping the pressure of her touch constant while she gave in to curiosity. There were vents there, under their jaw where their mask ended, where their dark skin vanished beneath the lustrous white. Vents that silently eased open and closed in time with their breathing, barely visible but brushing her fingers with a steady flow of air, slightly warm.

 The skin itself was bare, soft as velveteen, soft enough to catch lightly on her callused pawpads. It extended down under the thin, hard plating—almost more like scales—that covered their throat. They took after the Pale King in most ways, though parts of their biology were still alien to her, mirroring neither Root nor Wyrm. Perhaps something ancient coded into the void, some impression of life that had once existed there.

All vessels were similar in a few marked ways. The horned masks. The black chitin. The empty, staring eyes. But she had never had cause to linger over them, to wonder at their makeup or compare it to her own. All her other encounters—

Her hand scraped to a stop.

All her other encounters with vessels had ended in death.

Except one.

She took a breath of chilly air that seemed too thin to sustain her. Suddenly she was above herself again, pushed backward and out of her body by the force of realization crashing in.

So many vessels. They flashed in her memory, white mask upon white mask, soulless eyes and little grasping hands, and the ease with which they died, spitted on her needle or strangled in her silk.

It seemed unthinkable, now, but she had never bothered to count them.

How many?

How many?

Were they all as Hollow was? Were they—did they feel? Did they fear? Had they longed for company, for sympathy, for mercy, right up until her blade split them open and their shades rushed free?

How many vessels had she murdered?

A high, wheezing whine broke through, and she looked down at Hollow in alarm before realizing her own throat thrummed with the noise, and her hand shook on their mask, and her eyes were burning fierce as fire.

Hornet jerked back, swallowing down the sound before she woke them. They did not stir, exhausted, and she could not blame them.

She had hurt them. But at least they lived.

She could not say the same for the others.

She had thought—she had thought—

But it didn’t matter now, did it? They were dead. They were all dead.

The sobs she had buried earlier clawed their way back to the surface. Her breath came shallow, quick as wingbeats, pathetically high over Hollow’s slow, rasping inhale.

They didn’t wake.

She didn’t think she could bear it if they did. If they looked at her with those fathomless eyes, if they reached out for her, if they trusted her—

They couldn’t know what she’d done in the name of protecting them. The lives she’d ended, the graves she’d dug, the losses she’d never mourned. The losses she had never known to mourn.

In the name of ensuring the stasis. Of preserving the kingdom.

Of extending their suffering.

She’d killed them. She’d killed her siblings.

I didn’t know. I didn’t know—

And it didn’t matter.

The walls were closing in, and when she pushed up on shaking legs it seemed her horns would scrape the gilded ceiling. The room was small, and tight, and damp and cold and suffocating and she couldn’t. She couldn’t. She couldn’t do it anymore.

She staggered to the hearth, where her things lay, and scraped them up, nearly dropping her needle to the floor when her tingling hands fumbled with its weight. The soul vessels and spare knives in the knapsack clattered like breaking glass, and she gasped and pressed them close, afraid to look over her shoulder, afraid to find that she had disturbed them, afraid to meet those eyes again.

They didn’t know, but she would still see her own guilt reflected there. She would see the accusation, the pain.

How many could you have saved?

Why am I the one you chose?

Her shell clenched tight around her heart. Her lungs fluttered wetly against their cage. She needed out. She needed out of this house, out of this city, out of her own crawling skin.

Dizzy, she clutched her belongings to her chest with one hand and fumbled along the wall with the other, feet scuffing along the rug in the dark, eyes burning, unblinking. She had to go. Where, she didn’t know, didn’t care. She had to fly, had to move, had to pry this guilt out of her chest. She needed to run, needed to feel the burn of her legs and the buzz of her silk until the pain in her body drowned out the pain in her soul. She would cut down every husk she saw, drawing the sharp outlines of battle around her mind, etching them again and again until this muddled blur of grief was erased. She would kill and kill until she balanced her scales, until she outweighed the lives taken by her void-stained hands.

How could it ever be enough? How could she ever be enough?

She couldn’t. She couldn’t be. She would never be.

She threw a last desperate glance over her shoulder. Hollow lay crooked on the pallet, knees hanging over the edge, back and side streaked with inky void and smears of tarnished gold, gone dull and dark now that their wounds had finally clotted.

She had saved them.

She had doomed them.

She had done what she had to do.

That wasn’t enough anymore.

Cracked chitin, leaking void. A pale mask, cleaved in two. Soft claws scratching, round eyes bleeding, crying. Limbs going limp, little shades surging free. The accusing glare of those bright, bright eyes.

Hornet choked. Stumbled back, putting the wall between her and them. Her free hand found the door; she had just enough sense left to open it slowly so the hinges would not creak. The key was a swinging weight around her neck; she fumbled it into the lock, turned it with fingers already slippery from the rain.

And if there were tears sliding down her mask amid the chilly tracks of raindrops, if a muffled sob escaped her throat, if she stood hunched against the door for a moment and pressed her hand flat against the timeworn shellwood, if she whispered a weak apology there, a pitiful plea hammered to silence under the pounding rain, before she shoved off and staggered away—

If that was so, there was no one there to see.

○

Hornet ran.

She ran until her knees throbbed, until her thighs trembled, until her arms numbed and her breath rubbed her throat raw. She ran until the rain diminished to drizzle and then to the occasional cold drip, falling with a tick, tick on her dirt-streaked mask.

And when she could run no longer, she flew, needle strung and thrown with frantic rhythm, yanking herself through the whistling air as if pursued by the deadliest of foes.

She had no plan, no direction, and she knew that this was foolish, and she did not care. The burning energy in her core was enough. The quick flicker-blaze of instinct was enough. Anything to keep her from thinking, from remembering the hot-cold sting of void on her shell, the crunch of splintered chitin under her needle, the twitch of a hand or a foot as she stood watching, waiting for the stillness of true death—

Her swing pulled up short and a stone platform slammed into her thorax. Air left her lungs in a sudden gush. Her needle clattered away, out of reach; empty space yawned beneath her scrabbling feet, dust and stones falling through the dim blue distance and vanishing into the fog.

Feet slipped. Claws slid backwards. Panicked, she grated out a hoarse yell, firing off a hectic cloud of silk. A great gout of soul burned up in an instant, manifesting in fine, lashing filaments that wrapped her and the platform both, enveloping her in a clumsy, sticky web that—thankfully—took some of her weight and allowed her to half-climb, half-wriggle up the side, scraping her mask and knocking her knees on the rough surface in the process.

Her legs wouldn’t hold her at the top. Panting, she rolled to safety and lay face-up, left hand feeling sloppily for her needle, though her fingers were too weak to grasp once she found it.

For an instant, a single, blessed instant, she did not think anything at all. The height and the pain and the pounding terror had stripped it all away.

Then the emptiness became a lack, an impression of what was missing, and she remembered.

Murderer.

Something edged out of her throat. A whimper.

Pathetic.

Anything that saw or heard her now would think her easy prey, and she was, lying limp and exhausted in plain sight, in an area she had not even scouted, a cavern she had no indication it was safe to rest in.

Where was she?

Sitting up was one of the hardest things she could think of, but she did it, fighting against the fatigue that dragged at her, against the dizziness that made the drifting mist tilt and sway.

A sense of silence was the first thing that came to her, an eerie incompleteness, with only the faraway dripping of stalactites to break it. No shuffling footsteps or rasping breaths disturbed the quiet, which indicated no husks nearby—at least not the fully mindless types that frequented the City. The air was damp and chill, but grayer, with a clammy, briny scent she recognized immediately. Far away at the end of the room, a steady light flickered, dreamlike, against the ceiling, like a piece of fabric suspended in the air.

That was why the room was so quiet. She was in the caverns beneath the Resting Grounds.

She had fled almost all the way to the Blue Lake.

Fled was the word for it. To leave Hollow alone when they were so vulnerable, when they had deteriorated so quickly the last time she left them, when she knew their fever had still not broken, that she had work yet to do.

And that was only the beginning.

The vessels’ faces intruded on her vision, one blurring into the other, much the same and yet all different, in ways she had never bothered to learn. She had been told that they were mindless, empty, all but husks themselves, and she had never seen any point in differentiating them, in memorizing the shapes of their horns or the drab colors of their cloaks. Never wanted to look deeper than the all-encompassing black that swam behind their eyes, never wanted to ponder what they may have been like before the void consumed them.

She had had enough pain in her life. She saw no use in inflicting more. Imagining who the vessels may have been, the kind of life they might have had, would never make her less alone. It would never make them family.

And everything she had put off then, every thought she had tried to bury and every stray fantasy she had folded away—all of them were crowding her now.

Small and weak, most of them had been. Easy to finish off. Tenacious, though in a blind, single-minded way that she attributed to whatever sub-sentience the void bestowed. They wanted what the void wanted, which was oneness. Unity. And they would never stop pursuing that, at the cost of what remained of Hallownest.

That goal drove them to attempt to unseal the Hollow Knight.

None of them had gotten very far, thanks to her.

She coughed, hard and long, and when she could draw breath again it rattled almost as much as Hollow’s. The muted blue-gray of the cavern drained to black and white for a moment until she steadied herself, and blinked, and deliberately pulled in one breath, then two.

Were the vessels only ever doing what she would have done for one of her own kind? Were they the only ones who might have understood how much Hollow suffered?

How could she have killed them for it?

Blindly, movements stiff and rote, Hornet dragged her needle to her side and levered herself up with it, standing as well as she could with her legs still trembling like leaves. Even with her energy shriveled to ashes, even as her throat burned with every breath, she could not stop. She could still run. She had to. She would run until—

Until—

She would just run.

Her needle bounced off the rock with her first throw, and she cursed as she reeled it back in, the silk running cool as water through her too-warm palms. She needed soul again, and soon; she’d consumed far too much of her reserve in that frantic silk-storm. That kind of undisciplined use was exactly what her tutors had had to hammer out of her.

At least it had kept her alive.

She huffed a cracked laugh and threw again, aiming for the rippling light, then swung from the platform and into the air.

○

Taglist: @2amtime @moss-tombstone

Nausea fluttered in its gut, barely noticeable under the pain as its stiff plates and abused joints creaked and popped under the tension. It curled tighter, pushing its face into the mattress. Maybe it would suffocate, and relieve its sister of the burden of remaking it. Maybe the infection would yet take it over, and give her a true husk to dispose of, not this quivering wreck, this half-bred mistake that was neither empty nor alive.

A sick heaviness swelled within it. Its hand dragged once more at its chest, uselessly now, claws blunted and tied shut.

Its fingers flexed in their soft cage, testing its sister’s resolve, testing the strength of her silk. The scratches on its chest itched and stung, no worse than the many wounds that lay open on its back and side, far better than what it deserved.

And yet its sister had forbidden it this, had seemed distressed at its desire to pay for its mistakes.

It was not allowed to hurt itself.

This, it realized, once it stared at this fact for a moment, was as it should be. It was not its own; its destruction and pain were ordained by others, not by its own fevered whims. Its punishment would be carried out by those who commanded it. It was not to receive what it deserved at its own hand.

No matter how it wanted to deepen the furrows on its chest, to pry its own shell open, to rid itself of the void that thrashed and churned beneath. No matter how it ached to be released.

That want was another impurity, another flaw that deserved to be punished. It should not desire suffering, even if suffering was all it had, all it understood. Even if suffering was the only thing it could truly call its own.

It had not been made to suffer. And yet it had, from the moment it hatched in the suffocating black of the Abyss, crawling free over shattered horns and crushed chitin, over the mounded bodies of the dead and dying, to the moment its body had been seized by another’s mind and forced into battle against a sibling who had, against all odds, survived, lashing out at the one who had freed it, at the one who had come at last, unlooked for, to end its torment.

Memory surfaced once again: the press of light beneath its skin, the weight of its nail in a numb hand, the spray of void from a wound not its own—

No. No, it—couldn’t go back there. There was madness there, and a pain and horror that it only half-remembered, and it could not withstand the onslaught it knew would come if it surrendered.

It had not been strong enough the first time. And its sister had nearly suffered for it.

It shuddered, to think of what it might have done to her. Had it been whole, had it been strong—it would have lashed out with flint-sharp claws grown and honed for battle with a goddess, would have splintered her mask with all the ease of an axe through shellwood, cutting her down in a single, wrenching instant. Pain flickered in the memory of bone and the ghosts of nerves, and it could all but feel its left hand squeezing, squeezing until her chitin snapped.

Oh, it would be sick. It could not be sick but it would anyway; a single, miserable retch rippled up its throat and parted its jaws, soundless save for a faint click as its windpipe clenched shut.

It did not know which disturbed it more—the weakness that nearly drove it to harm someone who had done no wrong, or the weakness that it fell into to prevent that harm from occurring. One led to the other, greater evil to lesser, a never-ending descent into corruption.

Its teeth clenched. It twisted its neck, burrowing its head farther into the musty pile of blankets and cushions, farther away from the light. The cocooning fabric blew its own hot breaths back into its face, stifling and sweet, a reminder of the goddess, of the hours and days and years she had spent with her claws sunk in its mind, her burning gaze searing its barriers away, sifting through its instincts and impulses for something she could use.

And she had found it, in the end.

The suffering she carved into it was never purposeless—the gods always had their reasons. Aside from the steely joy she took in hurting it, she could only gain access to its memories when it was crazed with pain, unable to hold its defenses up under the pressure.

It had been halfway to shattering when she found what she wanted, when she discovered the memory that finally set her free. Weak-kneed and trembling, held upright only by a dozen taut, glowing wires that wrapped its wrists and wound around its throat before disappearing into the clouded distance, its chitin warped and buckling where their dull heat pressed in, and—

It did not remember what else she had been doing to it, only that it was gruesome enough that the vessel had not wanted to look.

But it had nearly forgotten the pain when the image floated to the forefront of its mind, faded and pale like a corpse in a river. When, in a desperate instinct to escape, its consciousness finally shrank back into the memory it had forbidden itself to recall. When it remembered the cool tranquility of the palace, and the soul-sweet breeze on its face, and the way its father looked at it, and the forbidden stirring it felt in response.

When she laughed, and every fragment of the dream dissolved around it—the ground, the wires, the metal-bright clouds—and it woke.

Her laugh echoed in its head now, harsh and mocking. How amused she would be to see it crumbling, cracked into pieces by the flaws she had always seen beneath the surface.

That it was capable of this blasphemy now was no fleeting chance, no trick of dream-light or infection. She had shown it that. It had always been defiant. It had never been pure. It was no more suited for its purpose than the thousands upon thousands of empty masks it had left behind when its father led it out of the Abyss. No better than the formless shades that swam in the darkness below, lashing out at any source of light. It was weak, tainted; it did not deserve to have been lifted out of that fate and given another.

It was more at fault than any of the innocent vessels who had lived out their brief, brutal lives beneath a kingdom that would never acknowledge them as its children. It had known the risks and the consequences; it had been created by a god, entrusted with a purpose, deemed worthy to carry his wishes into the world, and it had failed.

Its siblings had never known light, had never experienced any duty or purpose but the calls of the Void Sea, the pull toward unity, toward dissolution. They did not know what it was to ascend from the darkness and into a different thrall, to obey the call of their divine sire in defiance of the ancient force that had remade them.

None of them had ever lied. None of them knew what it was to lie.

It knew. It knew, and had chosen it anyway. Its entire life had been a lie, to itself, to the kingdom, to its father. It had chosen to believe that it would not matter, that the faults it perceived in itself would not invalidate its purpose. It had turned a blind eye to the flaws in its control, and never allowed itself to know how far it could fall.

It wished it had died without knowing.

It took a long, shuddering breath, knowing it would hurt, that it would sting and smolder like live coals in its wounds, and it did not care. It did not care. Let it hurt. Let it burn away to ashes.

Sister would be disappointed.

The breath escaped again in a sudden gust, a sharp rush of air that was almost a sob, though it was not capable of crying. It was not, no matter how its shoulders heaved and shook, no matter how its eyes burned and its mask throbbed, no matter how its throat caught and its chest swelled with a pain deeper than its claws could reach.

Sister.

Would she come back? Would she abandon it now, with all of its failures laid bare?

She should. It deserved to be alone. And she should not be near it. Not while it had any power left to it. Not while it was still strong enough to tear her apart.

If dishonoring itself was what it took to spare her, if it must speak a hundred times to keep her safe, it would. It could not hurt her–could not, would not, may the choice damn it. It had already crossed that line. If its sister’s life was the price of its purity, the cost was far too high.

Oh, but it would do anything to be near her again. If she had to end it now, if she meant to put it down, let it be where it could see her, and it would not struggle. Let her unravel the spells on its mask, let her wrap its limbs with silk, let her open its throat and drain the void from its veins.

Of all the ends it had envisioned for itself, this was the sweetest.

She would be safer without it. She was better off on her own.

That did not make it any easier to breathe, did not loosen the coils that cinched tight around its chest. That did not lighten the chill that sank to the depths of its gut like a stone.

That did not bring her back.

That did not make it less alone.

 ○

 Hornet made it only as far as the kitchen.

She caught herself hard against the counter, the corner of the marble digging into her stomach, and grasped it desperately, as the entire house seemed to slide sideways, tiled floor and vaulted ceiling tipping away from her while she drifted unmoored, held in place only by the cold stone beneath her clawtips.

She was gasping, already halfway to sobbing, on the edge of a breakdown like she hadn’t had in years.

Shock, the distant part of herself commented, helpfully, in a voice that still sounded an awful lot like Midwife’s. Shock, and lack of sleep, and nowhere near enough food or water. It was dipping toward late afternoon, the light outside growing wan and watery, and she hadn’t eaten anything. Hadn’t been able to.

Orange blisters swelled in her vision and she snapped her eyes open, staring at the scratched countertop as if the gray stone could erase the sight from her memory.

What had she done?

What had she done?

She had cut into them—had sawed away the twisted plates and sliced into their tender skin, all the while telling herself that they did not think, did not feel, did not even know what she was doing.

It had been necessary. It had been all she could think of, all she could come up with to save their life. She could not have done differently.

And that did not absolve her.

Her gut wrenched. Gods… she had cut them apart. She had done it while imagining that they were a husk, a corpse, anything to make it easier to hurt them. Anything to stifle her instinct, her foolish flickers of sympathy.

Not so foolish after all.

This could not be an accident, a random sequence of events, though part of her was already scrambling to explain it as such, to fit it back into her old understanding of things. They had been clear, as clear as they could be. There was an elegance to it, a simplicity and clarity she could not deny, even as stilted as their signs and gestures had been.

Am I hurting you?

Yes.

She swore under her breath, the string of blistering words doing nothing to make her feel less filthy.

She could deny it no longer.

Her sibling was alive.

Even what had happened afterward—though it was fuzzy in her thoughts, smeared and smudged by panic—even that proved it.

Why would a thoughtless thing try to destroy itself? Why would it seek punishment or try to atone for its weaknesses? Why would it inflict pain if pain was meaningless to it?

What rational explanation could there be, besides the one that was staring her in the face?

Nothing. There was nothing. And she had to have been blind, to fail to see it earlier.

This was not the first time they had harmed themselves, not even the first time in her presence. She had seen void on their claws before, pooling in their hand, dripping out into the air from those punctures in their palm, and thought nothing of it. All those telltale cuts had healed with the larger wounds whenever she gave them enough soul to focus, and she had never noticed. She had ignored or suppressed everything she hadn’t understood, every sign they had given her that they were not, in fact, hollow.

Had those signs really been so easy to miss? Or had she merely been predisposed to believe that they meant nothing?

She sagged lower, claws digging into the marble as her head dipped down and her horns came to rest on the edge of the countertop with a clack. Her knees trembled.

She should have seen. She should have known, the moment their shoulder twisted under her hands, the moment they tried to escape her blade.

But what had forced their hand? Surely her efforts could not have been more painful than what the mad goddess had already done to them. What had jolted them out of their stillness? What could have made them break a lifetime of silence?

There were patterns to their behavior, patterns she had noticed even against her will. Like the rows of scars that matched the grasp of their claws, like the way they breathed while she tended their wounds—measured, shallow, as if they had been taught to do so, though she shied away from speculating as to why they would ever need such a thing.

They knew pain. For years, decades, centuries, they had known nothing but pain. They had been born to seal a goddess. They were strong enough to bear the burden of her wrath. Hornet’s little knife, as carelessly as she’d wielded it, would not be enough to break them.

Patterns. Like their nail leaving their hand in a vehement throw. Like their frozen horror when she cut herself on their claws. Like their flinch, their lack of response when she threatened them, counter to everything that had been trained into them.

Every time they broke from their programming, every time they showed a sliver of intent, she could trace it back to this.

She knew—they both knew—that they could hurt her, if they wished. She had been cautious at first, instinctively keeping them at a distance, but she had perhaps grown complacent, and they had seen that.

And if their control was compromised, if they had broken enough to show her even this small glimpse of their misery, what if they slipped further still?

They had not trusted themselves. And they had reached out to her, the only way they knew how.

She had thought she was doing them a kindness, that they could no more feel their wounds than she could. But they had felt every moment of it. They endured it silently—as they had no choice but to do—until they thought they could control themselves no longer. And if she was right, the only reason they reached out and broke their silence, violating everything they were made to be, was to protect her.

Because they feared they would hurt her.

A dry, loathing chuckle turned into a cough turned into a retch, and Hornet doubled over, pressing her knees to her thorax and breathing through a fold of her cloak.

Had they known? Had they understood what she was doing to them? Or had they thought it a cruel whim? An experiment? A calculated punishment for some crime they could not imagine?

She had explained herself beforehand, but how could it have been enough? When she had spent hours taking them apart, when her cloak was still wet with their blood, when she had abandoned them and fled as soon as she realized they were not as hollow as she’d thought? What did that make her? A monster? A coward?

Just like your father.

What escaped her was half-sob and half-shout, equal parts anger and misery. She had thought herself better, for being kind to a mindless thing that could not even understand its own mistreatment, and she had fallen to the same vices she so despised in her sire. She was hard, and cold, and selfish, and she would never escape him. She would never stop finding parts of him in her, her gestures and words, the way she thought of the world, the way she treated others.

And she was selfish even now, for thinking this. While her sibling lay alone in the next room, all she could dwell on was self-pity over what she had done, what she had been forced to do, when they had given up everything. When they had borne the weight of a kingdom on their narrow shoulders for just as long as she had, and suffered all the greater for it.

They should not have to suffer alone.

“Get up,” she gasped, curling her claws into her knees until they pricked. She hissed out through clenched fangs, fighting down a surge of nausea. “Get up.”

One hand reached up, then the other, clamping down on the countertop, and Hornet hauled herself off the floor. The dizziness was back, wrapping round her head like sticky webs, dimming her vision for a moment as she clutched the stone and breathed slowly.

She’d done what she had to do. And she would keep on doing it. She would make amends, no matter how difficult. She would. She would.

A minute, two, and she could see again, the fog clearing to a faint blur in the corners of her vision. Food, soon, she thought, and then, swallowing heavily, but not yet.

Cold dread numbed her hands as she stepped back through the doorway. She inhaled, deeply, trying not to let it shudder, and yet it shuddered still.

For once, Hollow was not as she’d left them.

They had curled around themselves, wheezing, knees drawn to their chest and bound hand bent inward at an awkward angle, head turned down and pressed to the mattress as if to block out all light. They’d made themselves as small as a creature their size could be, as fragile and as terrified as a hatchling new from the shell, and she had to resist the startling urge to drop to her knees and take their mask in her hands, to stroke the curves of their horns the way her mother had done when Hornet was small and inconsolable.

They would not find her touch a comfort. Not after what she had done.

She made herself look, made herself stare at what she had wrought, though her hands curled back into fists, though her stomach roiled at the sight of the void staining the blankets, the pieces of shell she had cut away, the leaking pustules and the scarred, misshapen stump. They were miserable, and they might not even want her to be there, might be as sick at the sight of her as she was at the sight of them.

What could she say? What could she ever do to fix this?

The urge to reach out to them rushed up again, so sudden and strong that she took a step forward before she halted herself, fingers tightening further, until her claws dented her palmpads, near to piercing them as Hollow had done. As she had forbidden them from doing.

The scratch marks on their chest still wept with light and dark, still shone wetly where their claws had bitten in. Her next exhale held a helpless sound, a half-groan that died almost before it was audible.

She could do nothing. She could not even heal them—she had a feeling that asking them to hurt her would not be well received at the moment. At the very least, her silk had held; their hand was still firmly wrapped around the rag, claws dulled with shining thread.

That was one thing she had done right.

They did not react to her presence. They did nothing except try to curl up tighter, back bowed, joints creaking, failing dismally at hiding from the world.

She could stand still no longer. She should at least check their fever. If it had not gone down—

She couldn’t bear the thought of everything she’d put them through being for nothing.

Slowly, ever so slowly, she knelt next to them, being sure not to muffle her footsteps on the carpet so they would know she was here, she was close. And then she reached out with one bloodstained hand and laid it on their mask, gentle as she had cause to be with little else, as she might stoop to touch a gravestone worn by the years and covered with moss, or brush by the pale, waxy petals of a flower in the gardens.

She had not imagined it. Their mask was cooler now, the fever falling as the infection drained from their veins, though still not returned to their normal voidborne chill. The clenched fist of fear around her thorax loosened some, and she leaned back, lifting her palm to pull her hand away.

Hollow shifted their head. Barely an inch, nearly unnoticeable. But it nudged the curve of their mask back into her palm, warmth against warmth, and the edge of an eye came into view, bottomless and black against the pale arch of bone.

Hornet did not move. She held deathly still under their scrutiny, arm stiff, afraid to push forward, afraid to pull back.

Did… did they want her to touch them?

They had frozen again as well, waiting to see what she would do, their wheezing breath quieted a fraction as though they held it in. It seemed impossibly unlikely that they had given her this much already; that in addition to reaching out unprompted, they would respond to her actions with clear indication of desire, not once, but twice.

But their stillness now told her that the movement hadn’t been accidental. It was the same way they halted after signing to her, fearful, on edge, waiting for a punishment that wouldn’t come.

Her free hand closed on her knee, holding herself there, making herself wait, and breathe, and think. She hoped she was right, that this was what they wanted, that she wasn’t misinterpreting them, or seeing preference or desire where there wasn’t one.

If she was, though, this would hardly hurt them. Not like what she had already done.

Clenching her jaws tight, she ran her hand slowly down to the tip of their mask, then back up the curve of their horn, barely keeping contact between her palm and their face, giving them every chance to flinch, or pull away, or somehow indicate that this was not what they wanted.

Instead, she thought she saw their neck relax, allowing their head to rest more gently on the pillow. Even their shoulders unknotted a fraction, a slight movement she would not have seen had she not been watching.

She exhaled shakily. How could they still want this? How could they forgive her so easily? How was her touch not a reminder of all the ways she had hurt them?

The guilt she had wrestled down in the kitchen came back up swinging. Her eyes burned for the second time today—a new record, where she was concerned. She could not remember the last time she had cried. Life in the wilds did not allow time or mercy for such things. Hallownest’s fall did not stop for her sorrow.

But this quiet moment, this impossible softness, her sibling allowing her to soothe them with just the soft caress of her hand against their horn, was not something she was prepared for.

The tear ambushed her, dropping from her mask before she even felt it gathering, making a little round splotch among the other stains on her void-smeared cloak.

She made herself breathe, not allowing the building sobs to break through, fiercely unwilling to distress Hollow further when they had only just begun to calm. They had been strong—they had been strong for so long when no one had even known they were suffering—and now she could do the same.

They did not need to know how deep this moment cut her.

They did not need to know the sharpness of her guilt.

They deserved that much, at least, though no one but her would ever know of it.

She flexed her fingers, exhaling shakily as she worked out the aches. Aches from holding the knife, from the splatters of void and acid that had landed between the plates, from the gash in her palm where she had grasped their horn, driving the sharp lowest prong into her chitin. They had not seemed to hear her when she ordered them to take soul from her once more, and the infection gushing from the wound had been tinged deeper and deeper black, and she had panicked.

Soul would only flow between two beings when a conduit was opened. A fresh wound was easiest; though there were other, less violent ways, they were slower, more complex, and required a small starting amount of soul to activate. She had needed all she could spare lately, and a few stray cuts would not impede her.

She usually tried to avoid injuring her hands, though. Much good that did her now.

She had left a mottled handprint on their horn where she grasped it—blue and black mixed with orange—and she dug the wet cloth into her palm once more, though she had already scrubbed it all away.

It would not harm her. Not permanently, although it might cause burns; it was more of an irritant than a legitimate threat. The Radiance had no power over her, not while her mind held strong. She rehearsed these reassurances while she scrubbed at her raw chitin, until finally she tore a hole in the rag and forced herself to stop.

Hollow had not stopped shaking. Those first violent tremors that seized them when she cut them open had died down, however. Now they merely stared into the middle distance, breathing to a fast, irregular tempo, shivering like a grub left out in the cold.

Hornet steeled herself and checked them over again, making sure she hadn't missed anything vital.

Their shoulder was a ruin—a twisted, weeping mess of shell and skin, covered with the sagging remains of deflated blisters, sliced open in too many places to count. The soul had healed all it could—the deepest cuts were closed now, and no fresh void joined the still-seeping infection. But the growths on their body were foreign, and would not heal with the rest; she would just have to wait until they resolved on their own, while remaining vigilant to any lingering infection that might still return.

There was nothing left to save of their arm. Once she drained the largest of the cysts, she had uncovered what remained of it: a charred, mangled stump, severed at the shoulder joint. Their upper arm had completely detached, leaving nothing behind but the shallow dip of their armpit. It looked so painful that she winced even now as she glanced at it.

Vessels did not feel. She forced her gorge down and looked somewhere else, somewhere safe—the rotting ceiling, the mildewed blanket. Vessels did not feel.

She had been glad of that as she worked. Aside from their movement just now, Hollow had been still the entire time, aside from a few random twitches of their other arm. She might almost have thought them asleep or distracted, but she supposed this was how it was meant to be; she had given them an order, and they would follow it unerringly until she gave them another.

Despite the occasional fault, it seemed that most of their training held true.

She hoped so, anyway. She was still not finished. The blisters on their chest, though smaller than the others, must be addressed before she could be done.

She could afford a break, though. A few minutes stolen away from the gruesome wounds, a short time to allow herself not to think of what she still had left to do.

Hornet rose, a lightness filling her head the further she got from the ground. She swayed, stepping back to steady herself. She hadn’t been this dizzy since she ran afoul of a mantis traitor in the Queen’s Gardens and spent half an hour bleeding into the leaf litter before she regained enough consciousness to heal. The bastards had a mean swing, and even a demigod was not invulnerable to head wounds.

She staggered over to the spare basin and immersed her face in it, uncaring of the way the water streamed from her mask’s eyeholes. She had not felt so dirty in a long time. Even her arms crawled with the touch of the infection, and she slapped clear water over them, wetting her filthy cloak all the way through. Washing off before she was done was probably a stupid thing to do, but she needed to do it. She might go crazy otherwise.

Should she eat?

She pressed her hand to her mouth and choked on a burning lump. No, eating was still out of the question.

A drink, perhaps, if only so she would not collapse. The water in the City all tasted the same, sweet and flat and uninteresting, but at least it was cold, and it cleared the bitter tang out of her throat.

She had done it. She had been terrified, and shaking, and nauseated the whole time, and she still wasn’t finished, but she had done it.

The Radiance would not take her sibling without a fight. As long as Hornet still had a fight left in her.

Her father’s voice seemed to tickle her ear. All this trouble for a vessel.

She snarled at nothing, fingers clenching on the sides of the basin. Yes, it was illogical. Yes, she was letting her emotions get the better of her—even down to this surge of anger at the mere memory of her father. But didn’t she deserve it? Shouldn’t she have something for herself, for once in her gods-damned life?

It has always been useless to argue with her father, which made it worse than useless to argue with his ghost. She wouldn’t get far digging imaginary tunnels. As satisfying as it was to construct moments that never would have happened, to conjure up flawless arguments that left her memory of him speechless, she would get nothing from it but anger and restlessness.

She was already restless. She already wanted to walk out into the rain and let it cascade down her shell, rinse off all the lingering traces of infection. She thought she might never get it out of her cloak. And she couldn’t stop seeing it in every shadow, behind every blink, the sickly glow imprinted on her eyes, the thick smear of fluid painting all her thoughts bright orange.

She stared fixedly into the water, at the pale reflection of her mask, into the brown-black of her own eyes.

Soon.

Soon, it would be over.

She couldn’t stop now.

Sighing shakily, she wiped a drip of water from the point of her chin and looked up. The vessel was unchanged, still breathing, still trembling, though there were pauses in between now, moments when their limbs relaxed, going limp and exhausted as their eyelids sank half-closed.

Much as she wanted to let them rest, she couldn’t be sure the fever wouldn’t worsen if she didn’t address the source. It was hard to judge, but she thought it might have dropped a little—or, at least, their mask no longer felt so blisteringly hot. She was loathe to waste what little ground she’d gained.

As long as they were bleeding only infection, not void, she felt safe in continuing. The sooner she finished, the sooner they could begin to heal. To really heal, not just staunch the wounds. It would make her life easier if they could move under their own power once again. Then perhaps they could leave the City, go somewhere less lonely, and—

And what? What did she plan to do with this monstrous vessel once they were well enough that they no longer required her? Turn them loose? Keep them, like a pet, or a bodyguard? She didn’t need a protector—she was a protector. The thought of being tied to this creature she had chosen to save was one she had been avoiding for days, but it reared its head now, like a fool eater snapping closed.

The days of the kingdom were numbered. Hers were not. She had already outlived nearly everyone she ever knew.

Except for Hollow.

She couldn’t stop using the nickname, foolish as it made her feel. It had stuck fast in her mind, more fitting now than either of their titles, and far less cumbersome. Though her mother and father had both been clear about what the Pure Vessel was—and, more importantly, was not—she had never been able to eliminate the naïve part of her that still thought of them as a sibling, a sister or brother that could have been.

Even now, even as far removed as she was from the palace, from her parents, from who she had once been, she could not stop herself from thinking it.

She was too tired to be disgusted, too confused to be angry, so she just bowed her head over the water bowl and shut her eyes, allowing the roil of feeling in her chest to encompass her, wash over her, until the lash and shriek of the winds died down, until she felt only a calm like the eye of a hurricane, forever staring out on a world too fragile for its anger.

Then she turned and went to get more rags.

The mundane preparations numbed her further—switching out the dirty water for clean, disposing of the heap of filthy rags, cleaning off her tools, holding the blades in the fire once more. By the time she was ready to begin again, the dully glowing blade in her hand was just a knife, and the memories in her head had quieted, and when she looked down at the stains of infection on her cloak she did not shudder.

She felt far away, hovering somewhere above her own head in the dim arches of the ceiling, and perhaps this was better. She could deal with the horror and the nightmares later. Right now she needed not to feel, not to cave to the pressures of her own phobias. For Hollow’s sake.

Hornet turned from the fireplace, gaze scraping over the vessel where they lay. She inspected the remaining wounds with a hunter’s eye, as if her sibling were just another body, just another bit of shell to clean.

Something stirred in her gut, some sick-twisting weakness that she shoved down and smothered.

She had a job to do.

Hollow’s head shifted as she stepped towards them. She saw the awareness return to their eyes, so sudden and stark that she could not deny it, not even from her numb remove. Their breathing quickened, and she had barely just noticed, had only a moment to mark it as strange, when they moved.

She halted, her grip on the knife going fierce and harsh, a sudden flash of battle rush draining the exhaustion from her limbs. It was only their hand, but she had not told them to move, had not given them any order, and she was so flush with alarm that she nearly missed the sign she had taught them.

Two taps against their chest. A dull clack, clack of carapace.

Stop.

She did not move. Did not breathe.

The knife shook in her hand.

What—

What—

“What?” she demanded in a hoarse whisper, as if she could have misheard them.

They had frozen, breath compressed into the shallowest of gasps, hissing in and out so fast that it made her dizzy just to listen.

They did not move, not to repeat the sign, not to make a new one. They only lay stiff, as if locked into place by her disbelieving stare, as if motionlessness could protect them, as if their stillness could hide them from sight. Like… like prey.

A quicksilver fear trickled down her spine, though what she feared, she could not have said. She could not have said much of anything. A high, ringing noise in her head had drowned out all her thoughts, submerging them beneath the rising tideline. Her hand was numb on the knife hilt.

What… what had they just done?

What was she looking at? What could make them react in this way? What had made them so—

Afraid.

She choked on a laugh, a strangled noise that sounded more like a gasp for air. It was fear, pure and undeniable. All rational explanations fell away before the strength of feeling that gripped her. Her gut instincts screamed with a force that made her stagger.

They were afraid.

Of what?

Words dried up in her mouth. They had spoken to her, reached out to communicate with her, and now she was the silent one, struck dumb by the implications of an instant that had passed so quickly. She could barely believe she had seen it, would perhaps have brushed it off as her imagination, if they had not reacted with such absolute terror. If they were not still lying there as if she might pin them down and sink her fangs into their throat for daring to speak to her.

Hornet stepped hesitantly closer, lowering to her knees until their head was level with hers, until she could stare straight into their eyes. The void was turbulent, great swathes of black coiling and uncoiling beneath their mask. The longer she stared into it, the more her shell prickled with the sense that she was observing something she could never understand.

She had to try.

“You said ‘stop.’” She kept her voice as soft as possible, recalling every comfort she had ever been given, every reassurance her mother had spoken to her. “Please…” She chewed on her fangs until they creaked, wrestling with the wording. “Help me understand.”

Hollow did not otherwise move, but the void churned even faster in their eye sockets, spiraling into a pit of deepest black. She blinked and tore her gaze away, swallowing thickly as her own fear returned, pressing around her throat.

No, she wouldn’t back down now. She needed to know.

She had looked away from their eyes, so she saw when their hand began to move. Haltingly, as if against a weight that dragged them backward, they extended their arm, fingers quaking, to touch the blade of the knife that lay forgotten in her lap.

Cold poured across her shoulders like a bucket of rainwater. She could not have spoken again even if she’d tried; her throat had closed completely now, her breath halted in her mouth. She could not even think, couldn’t understand and couldn’t not.

Hollow wheezed, a great ragged breath that scratched and scraped like an avalanche, their body finally demanding more air than their frantic gasping provided. Their arm jerked, clawtips turning inward, and they drew it back toward themselves, curling their hand against their chest as if to hide it from her.

Hornet sat, stunned, speechless. The rest of the world had merely ceased to matter; there was only this moment, this realization, this frightening chill that had fallen over her.

She heard her own voice as if from a distance, cracked and faltering, like a shell half-caved in, ready to collapse.

“Am I… am I hurting you?”

A pained rasp, an obstruction of the air in their throat, something that, coming from any other creature, might have been a whimper. Otherwise, silence—their hand did not move.

“Answer me,” she snapped, her voice going shrill and strange, and they flinched, and shame shot through her like an arrow. She was the one who bled most often from the blade of her own anger; it was senseless to let another bear those wounds.

Especially when they had done nothing wrong. Especially when they cowered in front of her like something beaten, expecting to feel the pain of more than words.

She inhaled, but an apology stopped halfway up her throat, halted by nothing she could understand. The moment was as surreal and disturbing as any nightmare. Nothing had changed, and yet everything had changed, and her sibling was afraid, terrified, and she didn’t know if she had merely overlooked it before, or if their terror had finally grown too overwhelming to hide.

They had not reacted like this before. They had not reacted at all.

Breath shivered out of her, out of a throat grown thick with creeping horror. That was… perhaps not quite true.

“I am sorry,” she forced out, though her voice squeezed out so flat that it was easily the worst-sounding apology she had ever given. She still did not know what she was talking to—if her contrition meant anything at all. She swallowed, uselessly. “I—please, answer the question.” A beat of silence, full of the pounding of the rain. Her words were nearly inaudible when she made herself speak again. “Did I hurt you?”

They had heard her, she knew, from the way their head turned a fraction, from the way their shoulders inched up and their chin lowered to protect their neck, though a moment later they stilled, breathing out again, unmoving, as if they had stopped the reaction nearly before it began. She was seeing pieces only, she sensed—fractured hints of the true scope of what they felt.

A vessel. Feeling. Aware. Alive enough to speak to her, unprompted.

Before she could feel out the breadth of this idea, before she could perceive much more than the enormity of it, they moved again.

She tensed, breath held in silence, as their fingers loosened, palm tilting toward their face. Their hand crept upward, wrist twitching with an awful tremor, scraping against their chest in the sign she had taught them for yes.

Hornet had time for a single breathless sound, a sob of incredulity, of horror, and then their hand turned against their own shell, claws dragging furrows in the scarred chitin. They shivered, pressing their head down and inhaling hoarsely, as they gashed their chest open, void and infection alike pulsing to the surface when their talons broke open a blister.

“No!” Hornet cried, and scrambled forward, her body taken over by a tingling panic that cared nothing for whatever unknown force was making them hurt themselves or any threat it might pose her. She grabbed their wrist, hauling at their arm to pull their claws away from the fresh gouges on their chest.

Even wounded, even broken, they were stronger than her, and it was all she could do to stop them. Against their trembling resistance she finally managed to create a whisper of space between their dripping claws and the wounds, and then they seemed to come to themselves, or else their strength gave out all at once, for their arm went slack and she fell backward, sitting down hard with their hand dropping, limply, into her lap.

She clutched it for a moment, panting, and looked down helplessly into their black palm, and noticed pinpoint scars, five of them, dotting their palm-pads, each the size of her thumb, each overlapped with varying shades of gray, twice- or thrice-healed over.

Once she saw the pattern, it was impossible to miss the repetition. Their chest. Their hand. And in the corner of her eye she saw it again; she turned her head stiffly and stared at the five-fold lines sketched on their thigh, nearly covered over by the great slashes of the nail-scars, but undeniable nonetheless.

Her fist balled, and when she opened her fingers there was a strand of silk strung between them, alight with soul, summoned almost without thought. She lifted a fold of her cloak and wiped the void from Hollow’s claws, then, starting with their thumb, she wrapped each finger tightly, blunting their tips, and when she had finished with that she grabbed the clean rag she had dropped and wadded it up, stuffing it in their palm and curling their fingers around it, binding the padding into their hand with a thick, soft thread that would not chafe their worn chitin.

When she looked back up there were tears in her eyes, blurring the bluish light, blurring the angle of their mask on the floor, blurring the swirl of the void and the slow seep of the fresh wounds—both the wounds she had given them and the ones they had given themselves. They had gone utterly still once more, responding to some instinct or emotion she could only guess at, and they were staring fixedly at their own hand—or at hers, where she still gripped their fingers hard enough to make the chitin creak. Waiting, perhaps, for what she was going to do to them next.

She gasped and let go, then pushed their hand out of her lap as if she might burn them with her touch. Were they expecting more pain? More torture? She had already hurt them; she had been hurting them for hours.

Hornet clambered to her feet, rocked to the side, caught herself. The room was airless, suffocating, the ceiling pressing down on her like the lid of a coffin.

“You can feel pain,” she said, distant, choked, and Hollow did not respond, did not do anything but lie there, panting, shaking, wretchedly obedient, even after she had betrayed them.

She swallowed, though it felt like it might break her throat in half. “You feel…”

She had to get out. She had to get out.