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i.
They are walking through the garden, arm in arm, and the weight of her is oppressive, makes it difficult to move forward at all. Ray is not sure how they got here; there’s an absence of connective tissue to whatever it is they’re doing, but he can piece together something approaching coherence from her smile.
They are walking down the pebbled path in the westernmost part of the gardens. It’s a beautiful spot that calms him down. Few people come down here, since it’s so far away from the main building and no one wants to look like they’re running away, but Ray is free to wander and tend to the flowers. Hydrangeas. His mind tries to remember the meaning and falters. It’s difficult to focus on anything between the buzz of the mosquitoes, the uncomfortable moisture of the summer air and the pleasant droning of her voice. He feels sleepy. Not regular exhaustion sleepy, Ray is more than used to that, but a syrup-like warmth in his limbs that makes him sluggish.
He is not sure how they got here, but he is not sure of anything much these days. He’s elixir-heavy, he reasons, eyelids leaden and thoughts a fuzzy prickling in his scalp, travelling up and down and up and down his spine like a caress. We must’ve walked, Ray thinks, all the way from the grand doors at the back of Magenta to this secluded spot because I wanted to show her something. Hydrangeas.
‘Ray, are you okay?’ she asks. Her voice is clear, confident, there’s a sharpness to it that pierces the misty haze in his brain and helps bring some feeling back into his extremities. ‘You look a bit pale.’
He is always shaking, for one reason or another. The constant cold that bites at his thin frame, too much elixir, fear, anger, too little elixir – Ray rattles like a bag of skin and bones wherever he goes. He is trembling now, as he always does, but there’s something that unnerves him about it.
‘I’m fine,’ he manages. ‘Are the mosquitoes bothering you? I wouldn’t want them to bite you.’ And then he sneaks a bit of a confession in; shyly, expectantly: ‘I could lend you my coat.’ Ray really wishes he knew how he got here. The buzzing is getting insufferable. It’s hard enough to think without the static all around him.
She looks taken aback by his suggestion, but recovers composure magnificently. She is blooming; her smile is wide, wide, wide, so wide it threatens to swallow his entire world. He wishes she would.
‘Thank you, that’s very kind of you.’
Ray doesn’t want to question this sudden stroke of luck. If he thinks too hard about the way things have been progressing recently, he gets nauseous, starts thinking bad thoughts. Thought of the clouds. Sky dreams. The Saviour’s teachings always save him from that treacherous path, he comes back to what he knows and is stronger in his devotion. So Ray tries to avoid thinking about his coat – in truth, the Saviour’s choice – around her shoulders, most definitely does not think about how they’re touching indirectly. He’s afraid it’s all a dream, he wants it to be a dream. Cicadas are waking up around them.
‘You have a gentle heart, Ray,’ she says, and something breaks inside him. Something also stirs in his memories, lazily swirling about. For some reason, he feels afraid. In front of him, she reaches out; slowly, tentatively – as if he would ever say no to her! – she touches the side of his face. It feels like a backhand. Ray is twice-him, like two people struggling to occupy the same spot in time, dizzy and afraid in the sweltering heat of the gardens. Her hand is cold. She is smiling.
The hydrangeas are swaying in the breeze and Ray hears his own voice without understanding.
‘I would tear my heart out for you,’ he says, he thinks he must have said. But it’s not him, or rather, not him as he knows himself. He remembers a basement, but this is different.
She is still smiling.
‘I know.’
ii.
He is surveying the chatroom. Ray does not get a lot of chances to feel good about himself. He is too small and weak-willed, weak-boned, weak-minded, too much bad and not nearly enough good to hold his spine straight, but whenever he is on RFA duty there’s a small sprout of pride he can nurture. They are so deluded, so lost; for once in his life, Ray feels like he has something to teach others. The girl is the only other thing he allows himself to feel like that about. He sees so much of himself in her, so much softness and not enough hard edges to protect the tender core from the world. He can be that for her, he hopes, privately dreams of being strong enough to shield her from anything that might hurt.
She is helping him out without question and Ray has been catching himself turning that idea over in his head whenever he’s a bit bored, or so tired his mind starts wandering, testing the feel of it out on the tip of consciousness. No one ever listens to Ray, and yet here she is. Chatting with the RFA because he asked her to, quietly sitting in her room and being no trouble at all. Ray adores her, and that realisation feels dangerous. His Savior is very far from his thoughts in moments like these.
I just want to get a good ending, she types, and nausea hits him like a bag of bricks.
iii.
She tries so hard to help him and Ray could not be more appreciative. It doesn’t matter that she is clumsy and careless with how she codes, nothing matters at all as long as he gets to look at her, feel her close to him, know her as she knows him. Sharing a space with another person is such a blessing after a lifetime of separation, and Ray thanks his Savior every day for the opportunity to be someone else’s strength.
When she had first ignored his calls, Ray had felt fear grip his already feeble heart, but seeing her now, robed in a Believer’s cloak, spinning in his chair and smiling at him every time her delicate face comes into view, he can’t imagine her anywhere else.
That’s a lie.
Ray does not want to imagine her anywhere else, but Ray also finds himself dealing with troubling thoughts. He dreams about a bunker. He thinks he can hear the lapping of ocean waves against the walls of the server room. Sometimes he’s burning, sometimes she’s crying. Sometimes, when Ray closes his eyes, he can feel the weight of a throne underneath him. Her shape is always distorted, like he’s viewing her through a CCTV feed, but she’s always there, always by his side. Ray had confided in his Savior about this, the cold fears that wake him up in the middle of the night, and she had admonished him.
‘You care too much, Ray, that is your problem. You’re afraid of losing her and don’t know how to deal with it.’ A pause. ‘I understand,’ she had said, and was ever so dignified even as her face twisted a bit in a grimace of remembrance. Ray did not have to ask who she was remembering. ‘I was like you once. Young and soft and foolish.’ The Savior had stopped for a moment to look him over and he had held his breath, anxious that she did not see any more of his weakness than she had to.
‘I’ll tell you a secret, though. You are a sweet child, but you have to be willing to hurt her if you want her to stay by your side. She needs to respect you, Ray, do you understand?’
He did, but it was not easy. Every time he tried to discipline her, she’d cower a bit or her lip would tremble in that way, the way that completely broke down his defenses. It’s like this today. She’s made a mistake again, thrown his carefully balanced code into chaos. He is trying to work up the strength to punish her, but her wide, tearful eyes are making it hard to focus.
‘I’m sorry,’ she is saying. There’s a faint buzzing that’s growing louder in his head and Ray feels like he’s having two conversations at once.
He blinks slowly, trying to anchor himself to something he can follow.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘That’s my line,’ she says, smiling cutely at him. Ray feels like turning to ash on the spot. It’s more than he could have ever hoped for from life.
That’s a lie too. He thinks of his brother and wants to scream. He thinks of his garden, thinks of the ground beneath his hands and wants to cry. The buzzing is reaching a painful intensity; it feels like there’s a swarm of cicadas banging against his skull.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says again, stupidly, and he bites his lip in frustration. ‘I’m sorry about that.’ No. He tries again. ‘Ah, I must be so annoying right now.’
Ray throws it out there casually, hoping she doesn’t catch on to the begging note in his voice. She normally swoops in to reassure him after he says something like this, but she’s been acting a bit off recently. Sluggish, slow to respond. Distracted. The mistakes were piling on as well. Ray is terrified of something vague and shadowy. It’s like he’s trying to guess at the shape of something in the dark but can only feel an outline. More and more, he is dealing with the growing terror that the thing he’s looking for might be bigger than it seems.
‘Ray, I think we should go for walk. Get a bit of fresh air, you know? You look,’ she bites her lip and he is definitely in need of a talk with the Savior, ‘unwell.’
That seems like a great idea to him now. Anything to get away from the hum of the servers. He offers her his arm and she takes it gingerly. His stomach lurches forward violently. Something is wrong. The room is wrong. He shouldn’t be here, but he is. He should…Ray frowns, trying to pick at a coherent thought from the cacophony assaulting his senses.
‘Take me to the gardens, Ray,’ she says, and her voice is gentle.
Ray is quite sure he’s supposed to be burning alive.
iv.
The Savior had told him he can hurt his worthless brother like this and he is more than happy to oblige her request. The girl should not be smiling, but she is. It’s the last thing he sees before the bomb goes off.
v.
There are in the garden and she is suddenly very close, so close Ray can feel the heat radiating off her. When she smashes their lips together, it feels like his skin is peeling off. It’s familiar in the same way a slap is. Hard and burning.
vi.
Later that night, after the Believers had dispersed and the Savior and his Queen had let him know how he could do better next time, how to project confidence, how to hurt them just right so that they’ll be led into Paradise, Saeran sits on his bed and wonders how this came to pass.
He knows he should be getting ready for bed, the day had taken a lot out of him, but there’s a small part of him that hopes she might afford him some attention today. She tries to keep it unpredictable, alternating pain and small concessions of affection at random intervals just like she had taught him to do to their lost sheep, but he craves any sign that the young woman he had first brought into Magenta is still in there somewhere.
It takes her a while to get back, and when she does, there’s a plumpness to her lips that wasn’t there before, a slight sheen of sweat that lets him know she had chosen to sleep with the Savior tonight. Saeran’s heart gives three painful thumps in a row before he can collect himself. She hates to see him upset.
The slight hesitation to her movements when she is finally near him throws him off. She takes a couple moments too long to reach out, digs her nails in too hard when she finally begins to scratch his scalp. Saeran is instantly on edge, trying to guess at her mood.
When she finally speaks, it’s slowly, like she’s afraid of hearing her own voice.
‘Saeran, do you love me?’
‘Of course, my Queen.’ No hesitation, that much is true. He adores her, even after she’d dragged him back to his hellscape, would crawl on the floor and beg and humiliate himself if it would keep her safe. Has crawled on the…He feels sick almost instantly, nauseous and hot and faint. Saeran really hopes he won’t collapse here and now. He’s not sure whatever scraps of pride he has left could take it.
‘Pray with me.’ It’s a command he’s used to. Carefully, making sure not to agitate his churning stomach even more, Saeran kneels in front her, waits for the cue to start. It had been the Savior who’d guided him in his moments of questioning before, but the woman had ceased wanting anything to do with him as soon as he had turned his eyes from her. The Savior would not listen to his confessions anymore and, if he was going to be honest with himself, he had to admit that it had been a generally positive change. Even under the present circumstances, even as he knew that his Queen had sold him out for a chance at whatever measly authority she was afforded under the Savior’s burning gaze, even as he was thrust onto the throne and forced to bear the burnt of the Believer’s feverish hate and worship, being allowed to spend time with her like this was still better than anything he had had before. Saeran is aware of how pathetic that sounds, even to himself, and grips the front of her robes to steady himself.
Something violent is happening to his perception. The room is upside down. She is looking down at him and smiling. He is
vii.
sitting down and she is leaning over, kissing him, trying her best not to get thrown away. She’s pathetic and he feels a tangled thorn of emotion bloom in his chest at that thought. Whatever. She hasn’t been trying to escape or talk back to him anymore and that’s all that matters. Saeran had even seriously started considering the idea of removing the guards at her door. A cage in the mind is the best cage of all, is what his Savior says.
He is aware of a small smile forming underneath his lips and bites down hard to make it stop.
viii.
Ray feels even more anxious than normal as he paces her room. He is tracking the car’s route on his phone and his hands won’t stop shaking. He is worrying about everything. The furniture, the wallpaper, the flowers. Especially the flowers; they're hydrangeas from his special spot in the garden. At the time, he had thought welcoming her with such a delicate choice would help ease her into her new role, let her know she had a friend in him. It was a good conversation topic, he’d thought, a way to break the ice too. Ray was painfully, hideously aware of how bad his conversation skills were, and one of the forum threads he’d read in preparation for her arrival had said women liked men who could make them laugh. He’d asked his Savior about it and she had said it was not just about humour, more about sharing a common sensibility, but that had done little to calm him down.
He’d even taken a selfie while waiting and he was looking at it now, trying very hard not to think about how thin he looked. He’d hoped that the photo might help him see the room differently, reveal it as she would see it. Someone…. someone had told him that about photography once, that putting a wall between you and the subject could illuminate facets you hadn’t considered. It was most definitely not working for him. It was those damned hydrangeas, there were too many meanings. Too hazy, too hard to grasp. Sincerity and heartlessness all at once and she’d have to take his word for it.
He chances a look at his tracking app. The car still has forty minutes to go until it reaches its destination, just enough time for him to run to the garden and grab a better bouquet. He stalks out of the room, determined to get it right this time around.
ix.
She’s been ignored his plea for help and that is throwing Ray’s mind for a loop. He was so sure she was in need of guidance. Everything in her background check had hinted at it. His Savior had gently chided him for this, but he could feel himself growing more and more attached to her by the minute. Every moment he couldn’t see her in person was agony and he had decided to ask for permission to go meet in her person and convince her.
His Savior had been skeptical at first, but eventually relented.
‘We can’t leave threads dangling around like this,’ she’d said. ‘You have my permission. You have to bring her here, we can’t have people walking around knowing about Mint Eye and salvation and not give them a taste.’ She'd paused there to smooth the material of her robes that had crinkled in her lap. Her hair was a golden halo framing her gaze and in that moment Ray was sure the young woman would only have to see his Savior to understand that she belonged here. ‘You should cleanse her too, Ray, she’s your responsibility now. Welcome her into Paradise like a newborn, free of the world’s corruption.’
So Ray had taken to calling her, trying to show her how happy she could be if only she’d allow him to lead the way, but the girl was determined not to pick up. It was making him uneasy. He knew he didn’t have the best words, he was not his Savior after all, but surely something must have gotten through to her? He was so sure, so sure of this. Why? Why was he sure? Voice mail comes on, but Ray can also hear her pick up. Reality fractures around him. He can smell hydrangeas and suddenly feels the urge to throw up.
x.
Saeran jumps out of bed, his heart hammering painfully against his chest. He’s drenched in a cold sweat and it takes him a full minute of panting before he can figure out he is safe. He is in the apartment Jumin had provided for them and he is safe; he is next to her and he is safe. For now, at least, but Saeran does not want to think about his father right now, not when he feels so weak he’s not sure he’ll make it to the bathroom if he tries to stand up. That will have to wait until tomorrow morning, when he is surrounded by people and not at the mercy of his anxious brain. He’d even felt the him that isn’t him stir, something that had been less and less of an issue the further away he got from Magenta. It must have been a really bad dream to bring him
Saeran has to take a few shallow breaths to ease his nerves. Besides him, she stands up in a mess of sheets and hair and rubs at her eyes.
‘Saeran?’ and even with her voice cracked and sleep-dry, he still feels an overwhelming wave of affection wash over the tense expanse of his nerves. ‘What time is it? Are you okay?’
He climbs back into bed and lays a small kiss on the top of her head and she hums happily against his chest. He is still on edge, feels a bit like a taut bow string waiting for something to happen, but the tightness in his chest is starting to ease a bit, little by little. Being around her makes him feel so incredibly alive and safe he sometimes wonders if he’s not dreaming, if he’s not going to wake up on day and realise that he’s still in the server room.
‘I’m fine, princess. Just a bad dream.’ He plants another kiss on top of her head, just to be sure she knows he loves her. ‘Go back to sleep.’
She hums again and snuggles closer.
‘Don’t worry, Saeran. This is our good ending,’ she says, and there’s a strange twinge to her words that makes his blood run cold.
Saeran takes a deep breath to force his heart to move again. On the bedside table, he sees the electronic display on the clock turn to midnight.
She smiles.