- 1966 -

ONYX

reserved (by choice), decisive, self-sure and self-contained, selective, resolved, close-minded, intuitive, deliberate ⍚ opaque - my secrets are not for you ⍚ scrying - i can see more than you know ⍚ sharp - i know where to cut

      Not for the first time, Alice worried if she asked too much of Thomas. She had been careful, too, to keep companions at arm’s length – though not for any fear of inflicting some sort of damage spanning the spiritual plane. The photographer merely kept the less palatable parts of herself and her life neatly contained, packed up and out of sight alongside the boxes of a lost love’s possessions that she hadn’t been able to part with. Sometimes it was easier to just say less, explain less, offer less of herself. That way the past stayed in the past with no risk of tainting the present. The only people with the privilege of hearing painful details she wanted to forget were her string of therapists from the last decade, people paid to listen and not to judge. 

      Thomas had changed all of that, prompted her to open up and reveal things she would have felt crazy for telling anyone else. And he took it all in apparent stride. She didn’t want him to be a crutch but it was difficult not to lean on him when life offered her so little support. But there was a line, she knew, of what was reasonable support to expect of a friend.

     A line she feared they were fast approaching.

      And yet there he was, reaching across the boundaries to offer his hand.

      For a brief moment her gaze shifted between his extended hand and his face, as though she were searching his features for some kind of hesitation. But with a small smile she accepted the gesture, allowing herself to be escorted towards the bed. A soft “thank you” met the brightening of the nearby lamp, a reassurance she knew to be the work of Thomas’s Other. In spite of whatever was waiting for her in Bright Falls, Alice knew she was safe there with the both of them.

      His insistence that late-night reading would keep him happily occupied made her smile widen a fraction. She always appreciated those rare glimpses into what made Thomas tick – he spoke so infrequently of his personal life and pursuits. “Maybe our next trip should be a little farther south to see the ruins. I could go for somewhere tropical.” Somewhere warm and bright. Settling into the bed revealed the typical shortcomings of such accommodations, lumpy pillows and scratchy sheets. But even then Alice felt sleep pulling at her, a long day of traveling and fighting back her own nerves finally getting the better of her.

      In less time than she’d anticipated, Alice was asleep.

     His watch began with a warm smile and the gradually slowed breathing of the other as she would fall under the embracing jaws of slumber. This wouldn’t be the first -  nor last - time he had dedicated himself to a task that required his awareness to be held at the cusp of action; the Spirit had been given that task, and thus far he had done it without hesitation, a surprising amount of tolerance held for the woman who seemed eternally cloaked in a shroud of unspoken agony. she’d never truly given him more than whispers. Glimpses of a past that frightened her, strong as she may be in the face of adversity, stories that he had, respectfully, remained an external party to. 

     It hadn’t been to the same testament of his other nature. The Other longed for it--Thomas knew it as much as he knew himself down to the marrow. The mirrored visage of him was always wondering, always seeing something great and terrible about Alice’s presence, something that brought his own unease ( a rarity for the Spirit, always willing to stand against the mighty with blades of bones and fury ) that the material aspect couldn’t. It was enough to lure a desire to delve into that darkness surrounding her, enough to ignite an endless well of injustice around the Spirit’s own haunting presence. He never shared it. That tragedy of a vision of her beyond the corporeal realm. He had questioned, Thomas did, but it would never to be graced with an answer beyond you don’t want to know. 

     So a guardian in the night they would be. A knight kept collected and eternally at the ready, bloodied and broken as was their armor, with ethereal shield and a hungry sword in hand, and an undying eagerness to stave off the horrors of the night that sought her with such vigor. 

     He had said he would read. It wasn’t initially a lie--he tried to, really, turning over the pages in those long hours, but the eyes refused to see the words upon the page. They formed nothing but empty concepts, pebbles to the mountain that was his growing concern. They were drawing nearer to that darkness and she sought to conquer it. It was an ocean, sweeping and tumultuous, all consuming and starving for shreds of light; he felt such an overwhelming fear for the woman resting in the safety of that comforter. 

“Stop looking at her.” Why? You are.  “Just focus.” You’re afraid. You should be. Whatever nightmare is in that town, it isn’t our problem. She’s going to kill us both. You know we can’t-- “We have to.” 

      She tensed, defensive – not when he approached but when he spoke. Alice should have known that he wouldn’t accept her glaring lack of self care so readily, though she found the judgement not so far removed from hypocrisy. But that was simply how she’d learned to sidestep her way around conflict – set the problems to the side and put your mind to less tumultuous things. How many times had she met Alan’s moods with a bitten tongue and a pinched smile, ushering him off to bed when he wandered home drunk, reassuring him that everything would be alright when he seemed on the verge of spiraling.

      Conflict avoidance. People pleasing. What it was called, if anything, hardly mattered. Alice didn’t like seeing others upset or unhappy and would try her hardest to smooth things over where she could – even if that meant sweeping her own problems under the rug to keep up with appearances. A problem that seemed to have re-entered her life alongside visions of her dead husband. She hadn’t wanted Thomas to worry, hadn’t wanted him to see the depth of fear and despair she felt herself sinking into. He wouldn’t have come with her, or would have tried to stop her from going altogether, if he knew. 

      A worry without foundation, all things considered. It’s not as though he was unaware of what she’s going through – something he reminded her of gently. A frown overcame her features and she set down the packet of coffee she’d been fiddling with for want of a distraction. Of everything he said, what struck her most acutely was the admonishment for lying. Again, that scarred-over guilt she harbored ached like a fresh wound. A lie, a glossing over of her struggles, had been part of what lead her to Bright Falls in the first place.

      When she looked at him it was with a weighted expression, grief and regret making a sad picture of her typically bright features. “You don’t have to– I don’t think it would help.” Careful, even then, not to cause an upset or make his offer out to be somehow devious in nature. She trusted Thomas wholeheartedly, every part of him – perhaps against reason – but still the nature of his proposition sent unease prickling along her spine. Ever since the cabin there’s been a measure of uncertainty within her when it comes to matters of reality versus imaginings. “Knowing that it’s not real, that it’s… someone else in my head, it’s not exactly my idea of relaxing.” Even if he meant well – which doubtlessly he did. Not for the first time, Alice wanted to reach out to him, to brush her fingers against his when she thanked him for standing by her, for not giving up on the widow with bizarre issues. But he held himself always at arms’ length, and she had to respect that distance even as she resented it.

      “I know I should sleep. Maybe if… maybe with you here, it’ll be okay. As long as there’s a light on,” she added with a faint, embarrassed smile. That’s how it had been, with Alan. In spite of everything he’d been good at chasing the darkness away. “But you could probably use some sleep, too – I don’t need you stretching yourself thin for me.”

     He could hardly blame her for her uncertainty. It wrote itself plainly, in neat politeness but present nonetheless, across delicate features all too content with hiding the truth. He didn’t mind. How could he? His own world, his own life, remained as contained from her just as it had to one before, a pattern he wasn’t sure was the correct one given the last consequence. Even now he felt the weight of that watch in his pocket, tainted by the dust of a realm parallel to this. It was guilt that wore it down. Guilt with an agency that faltered in the waking world. She was gone. Alice was not. And he, ever present as a failed guardian, too keen on dangers to allow folly to distract.

      Whatever bothered Alice in her connection to it was not something willing to let go--it clung with a familiar desperation, and though he had never seen the ghoul that unsettled her so much, he had no doubt of its hold on her. A tight smile, one that scrunched eyes in its fondness. “Of course. It would be improper of me to let it fade, wouldn’t it?” A jest, lightly spoken with an air of a chuckle to follow, he hid his own concern just as well as she. What a pair they were--two terribly confined to their own worlds, swallowed by something terrible and maneuvering this dance with the utmost technicality, never to let their emotions reign supreme. The Other had certainly rolled his eyes enough at Thomas’ restrictions. 

Rekowicz allowed a push. 

     Just barely, an extended gloved hand at that eternal arm’s length, smile kept as warm and careful as it always was. She was meant to take it if her will allowed. A guide to the always questionably made bed ( he loathed the coldness of them, they were always so manufactured ) and, as the Other took seat beside the desk’s lamp, the surge was enough to cause that familiar buzz of electricity of bright white light. He was happy to sit aside the bedside, alone with his tumultuous thoughts; happy to focus on a purpose he knew he could uphold if only for a night, delighted to expend his energy on keeping at bay a darkness that rumbled even in the world of spirits, glad to have something he could do right. 

     “You needn’t worry about me. I’ve spent many a night awake, and I admit I have more than one reason to tonight.” Another short chuckle. “I found a book the other day at one of those local shops--you know the ones, a little run down, smells a little too musty, floor to ceiling with whatever they could find--and it has thus far been enrapturing.” There’s a passion there, deeply wound and indulged only in the moments he has to himself where he could pretend for just a moment that he was in another place, another life. “It is the translation of an old study on Mayan architecture. They had some truly remarkable structures...but I digress.” 

      The nearby conversation being transmitted across the veil was nearly enough to elevate his headache to a full blown migraine. Though he was firmly planted in the land of the living, at least one foot toed that line in a way it was never meant to. The others’ presence seemed only to exacerbate an issue he didn’t know that he had. But he didn’t feel torn apart anymore, at least – small favors. He only half listened as the two argued, not wanting to strain to listen and risk ripping his skull in half for his efforts.

      At the mention of the asylum, though, he couldn’t help but tune back in.

      “Didn’t think anyone knew about that.” Anyone outside of Murkoff, anyway. The company was certainly aware of the reporter’s involvement in the downfall of one of their biggest projects – their whistleblower had sent an email to his personal account, after all. They’d been hounding him ever since, in what he could only assume was an attempt at taking back what he’d all but stolen from right under their noses. As though the Walrider was something that could be possessed rather than being the one to do the possessing. But that world, that conflict, it existed in a vacuum of its own – a hellish trial that narrowed the scope of Miles’ life down to him and the corporation. Maybe it wasn’t too far-fetched to think a handful of people out there had connected the dots. He’d been one of Murkoff’s most outspoken critics for years before Mount Massive, and then the whistleblower’s footage leaks and Miles happens to be declared dead mere days later.

      Coverage of his alleged demise was something Miles tried to avoid. Murkoff sent agents to raid his apartment, and in his attempt to destroy evidence a fire had broken out. The official word was that he’d died in the blaze with no readily identifiable remains to be found. Fodder for the conspiracy theorist types, and those were always the sort that his writing attracted. Maybe this man was one of them, someone who’d managed to see the coverup for what it was. Or maybe he knew more about Murkoff than he was letting on.

      “‘Succeeded’ might be a generous assessment – think it’s safe to say they got more than they bargained for.” Not the easily controlled soldier they were looking for, that was for damn certain. “But I guess that’s what happens when you try to fuck with things you don’t understand.”

      He sat up from his slump just fractionally, enough so that he looked more presentable in posture if not appearance. The dark blood smeared across his person wasn’t doing him any favors. “There were no survivors, but it wasn’t an accident.” He’d eliminated the rest of Murkoff’s tactical team and any straggling employees on his way out – whoever swept the building after him took care of any of the unfortunate patients who’d managed to survive the slaughter. There was nothing accidental about leaving no witnesses. Save for him. Miles laughed, a single dry note. “Gee, always nice to meet a fan. Maybe not much of one if you think I’d ever let those corporate fucks pay for me to shut up, though.” Almost idly he hooked a finger in the collar of his shirt and pulled it down just a few inches, enough to reveal the edge of a dark and gnarled knot of scar tissue marring his chest. A wound that clearly wasn’t healed by a normal body. “They shot me. To death. Can’t exactly keep publishing non-anonymous articles when you’re supposed to be pushing up daisies, so I’ve had to lay low.”

      No handshake to mark their now official introduction, but any measure of civility was a welcome change. “I’d say ‘nice to meet you’ but I think we both know that’s bullshit.” As for the matter of past connections, it was a thread Miles wasn’t sure he wanted to chase at the present moment. “It’s been with me since that night, right… right at the end.” Though he’d felt it watching him practically from the start. Like it was expecting him. “It’s the only reason I’m still walking around.”

     For a moment, Thomas was silent. Compartmentalizing. Processing the whole blueprint of what had been revealed by a simple name--centuries of connections, things not meant to come to light, conspiracies and wild things spoken of in hushed whispers and restricted files. Rage was present, as it always was. That piece of him that had materialized into something less than forgiving, the edge of a blade whose sole purpose was the hunt. Miles spoke of the descendants. People who followed in that treacherous research that sought to bring into this world things that should never be there. He felt shame that he’d never truly put a stop to them...and pity for the consequences. 

You’re just one man. They are an ARMY. 

     There was truth to it. But as Thomas looked down upon the man who struggled so severely, stitched together by iron will and frayed thread as fragile as spiders web, he wished he done more. 

    “And so the scythe met the stone.” Always believed a somewhat silly proverb, but now that he stood here, he thinks he understands it. Two threads cut from the same cloth--both at the whim of terrible men, both scarred and torn apart, both unholy--whose ends have met with one another. “If you died..truly died...how did it bring you back?” Brow furrowed. The spirit realm was something of a mystery and he could hardly say he understood its entirety, but he’d not once found one who had been drawn back to the living after seeing its expanse. 

     “All of you, anyways. I have seen husks. Men whose souls have left them nothing more than an empty cup waiting for some wretched demon to manipulate..when we die, we aren’t to linger. We become twisted. Horrors. You are coherent, have some semblance of personality..did it cling to you so fiercely that you never saw beyond?” 

     It was difficult to say, even with both of them staring. No mark was left on the soul from what they could see--too obscured by that swirling mass, a shadow that covered every inch--but the wounds did not lie. A shake of the head. “Nevermind.” It wasn’t his right to know. Slowly, gently, medium sat beside the other with light grunt, fingers briefly rubbing against the ache that only existed in echoes now. He didn’t look. Not a glance. Eyes remained ahead as the Other allowed the turmoil ensnare his thoughts. 

      Midway into the other’s monologue Miles decided that sitting was preferable to standing, and so he set himself down in a display lacking entirely in grace. Funny that he would aim to reject all sympathy first – as though Miles feeling bad for him was a choice, or as though the Swarm viewed his trauma as something pitiable. In truth, a good number of the reporter’s personal and professional problems stemmed from his inability to mind his own business and steel his heartstrings against any wayward tugging. And the thing sharing his life lacked a capacity for empathy – and hardly needed his permission to go rummaging around inside of someone else’s skull. It didn’t matter if the medium rebelled against Miles’ pity or the Swarm’s intrusion, for neither could help what was merely in their nature.

      He let his head tip back until he could lean it against the wall he’d slid down to sit, his breathing still running heavy with the exertion of existing. Quickly though he came to regret the position, the moment of respite interrupted by a wet coughing fit. All of his earlier attempt at staunching the nosebleed had gone to waste, and breaking a basic first aid rule had sent the taste of stale copper down the back of his throat. The coughing only served to worsen the migraine jackhammering away in his head – certainly all pretense of his power was now well and truly lost. 

      And yet that was all the man continued to expect of him, to want from him. Blind desperation, really.

      “You sound like my mother,” was the first thing he spoke once his breathing was back under control, words edged with a slight rasp. “‘You’ll understand when you have kids of your own’, all that shit. At the end of the day you’re just a self-righteous dick who thinks he has all the answers, looking for justification for the awful shit you.” A slight quirk of his brow, and bloodshot eyes lazed upwards to look at the other. “Same as the rest of us.” Miles was at least self aware enough to see the signs of similarity there, not quite a complete reflection but a hint of one. Something like a funhouse mirror – not warped enough to render you completely unrecognizable, but enough that the thing in the glass certainly wasn’t you. There were layers to the medium’s anger that went deeper than anything Miles had ever felt in himself, closer almost to the ancient stirrings he felt bubble up in the Walrider. Common traits existed there, too, something more horrifying to consider than any human similarity. Unbidden the things he’d seen in the other’s mind rose to the surface in fragments. Torture in all its forms. And on the edges of some of those early nightmares was a fringe of static, the vaguest suggestion of a shared history that Miles didn’t want to explore right now – or possibly ever.

      “Miles, by the way. Not that you asked. Miles Upshur.” He didn’t bother extending a hand or attempting to stand. “And my uh… other half is– well, you’ve met. Not much of an introduction I can make beyond that. Don’t think it gives a shit what you call it.” Any label Murkoff slapped on it felt ill fitting at best, children giving names to a god that defied comprehension. “But ‘ravenous sickness’ and ‘gaping hole’ might be a little rude,” he added, fingers drawing lazy air quotes around the medium’s words, though an uneven emphasis was given without a right pointer finger present.

      With a sigh he slouched back against the wall, too wrung out to put up more of a fight using anything but his words. The Walrider wouldn’t let any real harm come to him, and he doubted that the other would be able to carry out his banishing act thanks to it. That afforded him an opportunity to lower his hackles just slightly, enough to mitigate some of the tension threatening to choke him. “You’re wrong, y’know. I saw what it did to the Host before me, to all the people they couldn’t bind it to. If I wasn’t a good fit, I’d be dead by now – or riddled with cancer. Fucked either way. Not all of these things, these… beings, are the same. But I’m not alive because of anything I did, I’m just a lucky son of a bitch.” Not that he felt very fortunate for winning this eternal outcome.

     Despite the devils that had come between them, Thomas had a tendency towards leaning into human compassion. When the coughing began, there was a shift of focus from his own grievances into a twinge of concern for the seeming injury that the other was experiencing. It was an effect he had seen plenty of. A form of psychic exertion--though this may hold deviations due to the delicate nature of apparent symbiotism--that rocked one’s body to the brink of pressing the limits of its control. The devastation of the supernatural taking hold of the physical realm. It presses, builds that pressure into unfathomable force, and release in terrible power, leaving the body playing catch up. 

     Lily had undergone the same symptoms at first. Marianne, too. He hadn’t seen many beyond her troubled years with him, but he’d seen the doctor’s notes. Foolish men of science and their even more microscopic perceptions...he supposed he was one as well, given the surprising ease of this interaction. He was getting old.

     He almost said something. A response had already formed on his tongue when cut short by the introduction. Mouth half open with a started statement, it would close when the name came through. Miles. Why was that so familiar? It turned in his head, tumbling through his train of thought full speed ahead, and with it came the very same sense of terror and suspicion he had felt only once before. Between the external conversation and the pain at his side, recollection wasn’t swift to him--but when eyes turned to meet the unsettlingly gleeful glint of the Other’s eyes and the cruel excitement of his smile, he knew at least one of them remembered. Briefly forgetting company at hand, agitation rolled from his lips. “Are you going to tell me or just stand there grinning? You’re worse than a fucking car salesman.”

Miles. We know that name.  “Yes, I’m aware. God--just spit it out. I’m not playing a guessing game.” Well maybe if you didn’t hit first and ask questions later, you’d still have half a brain to figure it out. Miles Upshur. The asylum. 

     And it was all there. A flood of memory regarding every article, every question, every pin he had placed into the wretchedness of Murkoff’s hidden experimentalism to remind him to keep an eye out. 

     Eyes snapped back towards the other. “Upshur? You were there.” Body lurched to shift into motion, a finger pointing in his swift approach, the medium lowering to meet the journalist’s height. “You were there--in the middle of it, weren’t you? So-” A half breath of a laugh, disbelief filling words that couldn’t quite contain his excitement at the realization. “You were at the asylum. Mount Massive. Where they were..well, I suspected it, but never believed they could contain something so..so they succeeded.” There was something troubling about that knowledge. He had known of the strangeness of that place--never had he the chance to infiltrate, they had too many eyes, but he could sense the evil emanating from that mountain. Like a child incapable of committing to a certain act, Thomas was up and walking to the other side of the room in effort to focus his thoughts, to focus the threads he’d so loosely placed at the back of his mind. 

There had always been something more pressing...they had always needed him more. 

      Therapists had told her the same thing over and over through the years – that it wasn’t her fault. That although she’d organized the trip that would prove to be their last, that although she’d lied by omission about her true motivations for dragging him out to Bright Falls, Alan’s ultimate fate wasn’t Alice’s doing. How could she have known what was to transpire short of being some kind of psychic? She’d worked through so much of it, but now found that familiar guilt rearing its head again. Not only had she brought Alan here – she might have left Alan here. 

      Worrying the nail of her thumb between her teeth, Alice finally tore her gaze away from the backside of the photograph and set her eyes back on Thomas. Coaxing those kinds of answers out of him hadn’t been a simple matter at the start. He’d been so closed off when they’d first met, reserved – though Alice could sense something different about him lingering just below the surface. Or on the other side of the proverbial veil, as the case was. He could be brash and broody, but that didn’t negate the kindnesses he’d extended to her.

      Maybe she just had a type.

      “The two of you might have an easier time with turbulence,” she responded with a sighed laugh, opting to busy herself with tucking the photographs back into her notebook before she could chew her nails down to nothing. Thomas was right – there wasn’t any sense in dwelling on negative thoughts and the ‘what ifs’. The past was the past, and as painful as it was it remained immutable. Present and future were the only realms in which one held the power to change, and that was where she would focus her energy. “I don’t really know what we’re facing, but if it’s anything like that monster, it’s not going to cooperate.”

      But Alice was persistent, if nothing else – perhaps stubbornly and self-sacrificingly so. She’d weathered the gradual sinking of a tattered marriage and put something of a life back together on the other side of it. If there was anything life had taught Alice, it was that good things were rarely easy to achieve. 

      “But for now, the first thing to fight is fatigue.” Although sleep likely would have done her good, she felt too tightly wound to even attempt it. Thomas was right – caffeine was the next best cure. Thankfully the motel room came with a halfhearted kitchen setup, just a small fridge and a microwave with a clock that was hours off, and a coffee maker that looked like it had seen better days. The packets of grounds were from some cheap brand, but Alice was happy she wouldn’t have to go out hunting for an alternative with the sun setting. “Do you want coffee?” she asked as she set to figuring out how the outdated thing worked. “I can’t promise it’ll be any good, but at least they didn’t leave us stranded with decaf.”

     She was changing the subject. It was not unusual in her, he’d found, that flightiness; a quickness to jump to an alternative focus, to put her back to what wasn’t capable of being faced yet, uncertainty driving a wedge into her concentration as though a heated blade. He didn’t blame her for it. How could he when she had faced such treacherous waters? The loss of a loved one, a run in with something expansively supernatural, a force unknown even to him with limits undeniably extensive, her path was riddled with tragedies beyond compare. It would be too easy to drown in such devastation...yet she remained resilient. To a fault. 

     Form lifted from seat with little effort, quiet in his approach, his demeanor was one of constant gentleness lest it be too startling to any too fragile to withstand swiftness. She didn’t deserve harshness, either. Brow kept its natural furrow ( how Lily might tease that his face would wrinkle so plainly, when she felt herself and that sweet playfulness might shine through the darkness ) as an arm cautiously stretched, gloved hand taking pause an inch from her elbow. 

     “Mrs. Wake..” A pause for consideration. She was delicate but held no loss of ferocity when being told something unaligned with her own perspective. Really wanna go there, buddy? We both know how this one is gonna end. It took a blink to drive away the impish voice beside him that fostered more doubt in the question hanging upon his tongue. “I..know this is difficult for you. This place, the memories, this..purpose of yours. I can feel it, you know.” It was a tease of the lightest sort, accompanied by the slight curl of a lip into what warmth he could muster into a smile. “Are you certain you want to push yourself like this?” It’s your funeral. Don’t ask me for help on this one.

     Innocently asked, but weighted in its meaning. His gaze wasn’t one to push, but it would focus on her own for a stern moment--only but a moment, for fear that she may see something in his own too terrible to face as well, or, in what seemed a nightmarish concept, his abilities traveling too far without permission. 

     “I can help you with this.” Softly. Assuring. That same hand fled her arm’s side to gesture towards the too perfectly made bed with subtle hopefulness. “It seems unwise that you do this without some form of proper rest. You were awake all of yesterday, I could feel your unease from a room across--” Tone scolded lightly, then, that furrow creasing his brow further. “Truly you should know better than to lie so blatantly to me. You need to rest, Alice. We can help you with that, if you allow it.” 

      The sense of familiarity floating around in his skull wasn’t a complete surprise, and had largely been ignored by the Host until something in the air seemed to escalate. He had just presumed that the thinness of the veil between worlds had provoked the Walrider, and that given its ability to exist in both planes, it might have gazed into the abyss and found something familiar within it where the man and his double were concerned. 

      He didn’t think it was anything personal, not until the scathing dismissal was tossed his way. It fell at his feet like a grenade with a reversing effect – drawing shattered pieces together instead of blasting them apart. All at once something clicked in his mind with a metal-on-metal shriek, and again the world lurched in uncomfortable dual focus. Miles barely caught himself, clutching at his head, before he could take a tumble, widening his stance with a staggered step as though bracing himself against a storm. There was so much within the Swarm, a being made of multitudes – a creature in its own right with attachments grafted onto it deep in a shadowed lab. He was almost used to those spikes of intrusive knowledge, memories and voices that weren’t his own bubbling up to the surface from the depths. Impressions of the patients that had been sacrificed to summon the thing would rear up in his mind from time to time. Even the Walrider’s own strange knowledge came to him like the remnants of a fog-shrouded dream now and then – snippets of languages Miles had never learned, fleeting images of dark and ancient forests he’d never set foot in.

      But rare were the forced-shared memories so clear, so visceral. Perhaps it made sense, in some strange way. Those things the creature remembered – the things that the man and the spirit made it remember – represented the first instances in which humanity had attempted to sink their hooks into it and draw it out of the void. Attempted and succeeded, even if only for a moment – though it never quite reverted to the state it had known before. 

      This one was there. They both were.

      Miles made a choked noise against the onslaught in his skull, fighting with fingers digging into his scalp to keep even an ounce of control. His spirit, whatever remained of it, stands stock still on its side of the divide between worlds. Its form was the same, if nothing else – alike in vague shape to the corporeal reporter, but cased in shadow that hummed with living static. It watched, unblinking and uncaring as every being around it came apart at the seems. 

      Too much. It was too much. He could hear– god, he could hear words that his ears couldn’t comprehend but his mind somehow processed, a plea that came from a place some instinctual part of him knew he shouldn’t have been able to connect to in the first place. Too much. Every instinct screaming that this was wrong, too much, too loud, and even though he’d closed his eyes without meaning to it was like he could see the spirit world dancing in pale shades behind his eyelids. “Enough, god – zamknij się.”

      He’d reached out without realizing, latched on with shaking hands to the arms of his spirit-self, breached every natural law about not crossing that border that his mind wanted so desperately to adhere to. But it brought a moment of clarity, synchronicity. This wasn’t the time to fight his nature. They moved as one, then, Miles and the half of him that the Walrider held. And when they spoke, it sounded on both sides of reality. 

      “There isn’t anything that can be done for your daughter. You know that. And that which took her from you cannot be destroyed.” Nor could it find satiation in such a badly warped reflection of humanity. “Myślisz tylko, że nas znasz. Emotion clouds…” Reporter’s hands dropped back to his sides, a sharp breath drawn as his consciousness withdrew from the spirit world and snapped back to his tangible body. Something welled up in his eyes again. He couldn’t tell if it was the tears of nanite refuse or related to the knot of emotion caught in his throat. Still human, in spite of it all – he couldn’t stand steadfast before the horror of the Walrider’s memories, or the present anguish he’d been able to feel through the Swarm as it rolled off of the other man in devastating waves.

      “I would help you, if I could. I’m so– I’m sorry. Christ, I’m so fucking sorry.”

     Clarity was born from the viscerality of the stranger’s responsiveness. Clarity that knew little of reason, but knew the veins of rage well; a great viciousness that had always been lurking in Thomas’ bones, something that had been created of pain, butchery, mercilessness, a fury that crackled from a man who didn’t recognize the wetness upon his face. It was a pain left to simmer--to boil, truly, for every cell felt aflame at the spoken truth the spirit cast unto him with such cruel neutrality, and for that, that set gaze and steady, dead tone, he felt the bite of hatred.

     Perhaps it was an unjust response. In that moment, he didn’t care. Thomas had never been one to withstand emotion so easily. That had been her talent, but in true tragedy, the poor moth had inherited her sense of unrelenting injustice from him.

     Deep down, there was no true denial. It was a crippling thing to face; the tragedy of a soul that knew how futile his efforts were to avoid a fate already carried through, the agony of knowing the vile had won over what semblance of good remained in this world, the cruelty of an understanding always there, always staring back from that abyss of reality. He had failed. He had failed, so horrifically much. Starting with nothing but a name, he had not once been able to grow beyond the drowning waters of a haunting past, too deeply intertwined with the waves to truly break free, and so too had he failed in protecting the three things most preciously held. Treasures that had now sunk to the bottom to ebb away gently, softly, quietly into that swallowing darkness, glimmering in their reminders of how terribly far he had strayed from hopeless promises and vows spoken in hushed tones. 

     He could not blame Miles for the incident, no matter how much the Other wanted to refute the spirit’s words. He could not blame him when that voice cracked through the Spirit’s crackling storm of red, hands and cement arms a cacophony of emotion at the ready to BURST, until it too would diminish at the voice of Thomas’ reason. He would lay to rest the harshness of his initial defiance for a moment, allow the room’s lights to settle back into the steady glow of warm hues, and permit the sigh stuck in his sternum to pass through tired lips. Mindlessly, a hand came to press to the ache of ribs once more. In truth, he found himself grateful for a pain that could be focused on, an alternative. 

“No.” Quiet, but sternly the voice resounded. “I am.” 

      It was a defeated tone, though he put as much sincerity into the words as he could muster in the sudden exhaustion of recent expense. There was life to spare--there was always life to spare. There had to be, just as it had been for what seemed centuries past; always a glare, a breath, a glimmer of something to keep one moving, a spark. He didn’t meet the other’s gaze. 

     “My burdens are not yours to bear, nor the thing that resides in you.” They knew there was no mercy to be found in the presence that suffocated the surrounding air. He would find no eagerness to lend a hand--and why had he dared hope for it? Their kind was separated. Distinctly waning on glimpses of a reality not their own, moved by the sheer will of emotion, they chose no sides nor did they have any true kinship with those suffering beyond the veil. He could tell the defenses had drawn once more; a cooled mirror image, the Spirit had fallen to a silent boil, his stern glare hardly hidden but the tongue was caught in recognition of a lost battle. 

They had both withdrawn to the safety of isolation. 

     “I don’t want pity.” Brows furrowed tightly as hurt turned to push. A flicker of eyes to Miles’ own. “I want strength.” Strength to continue his research in the face of omnipresent exhaustion, strength to keep the battle against sinister beings alive, strength to keep going. “You don’t have a child, I’m sure--no judgement, our kind isn’t prone to keeping with the nuclear family image--so, well...I wouldn’t expect you to understand the true cost of these things roaming around us.” An explanation that hurt. It stung like a blade into the lungs, each word another plunge into flesh. 

the mermaid

you are the mysterious glimmer under the water, the ghostly hand that rescues the drowning sailor from the storm and pushes them back on deck, whilst disappearing the moment his crewmates rush over. but you have followed the ship ever since, listening to the distant music and laughter while you hide in the shadows of the hull, wishing you could feel their warmth and understand their songs. but how can you find connection with those so far away, who come from a world so different from yours? you long to understand; you wish to be understood. you dive under the water too slowly when they turn your way, and secretly hope they catch sight of your pearly fins. when they are lost, you slip shells and jewels onto their ship and listen in on them as they wonder where the jewels came from.

tagged by: @miswaken 10 years ago