Chapter Text
“Hey man, found these in the back—you mind if I take ‘em?”
He glanced up from the table of scrap to see that Security Captain guy holding a crate of old records. Something Aguilar? Fuzzy on the first name, since he’d only heard it the once, and had been pretty well-sauced on party liquor at the time. Kept waiting to hear it from someone else so he didn’t come off like a giant tool, but no dice so far. But…the records. He shrugged, turning his attention back to sorting usable metal from the latest scrap haul. “Go nuts, dude, I got all that uploaded to the whatsitcalled.”
“Cool, thanks.” Aguilar headed off without explanation, and Sharky watched him go from the corner of his eye, trying to deaden that tug of curiosity in his gut that inevitably meant trouble.
It wasn’t going away.
“Fuck it,” he sighed, putting his tools down and pushing back from the table. He caught up to the Captain halfway across the courtyard—for a little guy, he sure was able to fuckin’ book it.
“You take a man’s records the least you can do is tell him what for,” he said, hiking up his toolbelt and scowling.
The Captain didn’t slow down, but grinned over his shoulder, stupid sunglasses flashing in the golden light of late afternoon. “Thought you said I could ‘go nuts’, Boshaw.”
“Well, yeah, but still,” he protested, trailing reluctantly as they passed through the gates. “Pardon me for thinkin’ you were just gonna take ‘em to your room and like, cry about the past like a normal person. You throwing a party somewhere out there? Like a—like a post-apocalyptic Coachella or something? But like, with music that’s actually fuckin’ good?”
“Jesus, why don’t you just tag along?” He ducked through the side of his reinforced dune buggy, setting the records down carefully on the floor of the backseat before levering himself in through the driver’s side with athletic ease. “I’m takin’ them to a friend. I think they might appreciate having something nice around.”
Sharky scoffed, kicking his tires lightly. “Yeah well good luck without a fuckin’ working record player. Unless they just like to look at the album covers, which is fun for about ten minutes and then you just feel stupid and have to find something else to do.”
“Already got them one, but thanks for your positive insight.” Aguilar adjusted his mirrors and patted the seat next to him. “Last call if you’re comin’.”
Something about his body language struck Sharky as evasive, and his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Better not be one of them New Eden dipshits. You know they break tech that works, right? Like, on purpose? Plus they’re sanctimonious hypocrites who don’t deserve shit, so. There’s that.”
The other man’s eyes slid guiltily away from his, and he scowled.
“Goddammit, no. You don’t get it, man. You weren’t here when all the Peggie shit happened. New Eden can’t be trusted, no matter what key of Kumbaya they’re singin’ these days, and they certainly aren’t getting my records.”
He leaned through the back window while Aguilar protested, trying to grab the crate back up out of the footspace, but it was just too far for him to get a grip on and the safety bar was pressing uncomfortably hard against his ribs. He wiggled back out, flushed and disheveled and breathing hard, more from irritation than exertion. “Take ‘em out.”
“You should come with me,” he countered, raising his brows as though this was a reasonable suggestion. “See for yourself.”
“I’m not going to Ne—”
“They’re not part of New Eden,” Aguilar assured him, buckling his seatbelt and adding, much more quietly: “Anymore.”
Oh. Oh, fuck.
“No. Absolutely not.” He stood uselessly outside the buggy, hands empty, glaring at the ground before awkwardly clambering into the passenger’s side. “You can’t go see them without back up, though. They’re fuckin’ dangerous. So, uh, if it’s that goddamn important to you to go an’ see them right now, I’ll ride along. But that’s it, okay?”
“Suit yourself.” Aguilar waited, looking pointedly at Sharky’s seatbelt until he rolled his eyes and buckled up, then sparked the engine to life and set them off down the bumpy road.
“Un-fuckin’-believable,” grumbled Sharky, frowning petulantly out the window, watching the lush greenery flash by. “You bring me all the way out to Prosperity, steal my records and then drag me back out for no good reason. Probably gonna get shot and die out here, and you’re gonna have to tell Blade when he’s older why he ain’t got his momma lookin’ after him anymore.”
“Mhm. You want me to turn around?” Aguilar drummed his fingers on the wheel in the following silence, then nodded with a smugness that Sharky itched to smack off his dumb face. “Thought so.”
“Listen, man. May not be an America anymore, but this is still American soil, okay? An’ if I wanna complain, it’s my goddamn right do it, thank you very much.”
The younger guy snorted, shaking his head slightly. “Haven’t heard that kinda horse-shit in a while, but sure—whatever you need to tell yourself. Can’t say I know you well, but I’ve been talkin’ to your people. I get the sense that you’re a different guy than you used to be.”
The surge of anger and resentment passed through him about as quickly as it had come on, leaving gray exhaustion, and something else. Slippery and small, and he didn’t like to dwell on it, but why the hell should he feel guilty?
“Well, uh, in case you didn’t notice, nukes and the complete dissolution of society as we knew it will change a person,” he said, mostly to keep out of his own head. “Some folks got dead. Everyone else got different. Not a whole lotta point tryin’ to go back to who you used to be when you can’t get everything else back along with it.”
“Guess that’s fair enough.” Aguilar knocked his head back against the cracked plastic seat, mouth twisting away into the unruly black thatching of his beard. “It’s just—I guess from my perspective…coming of age underground, finally getting topside and seeing the scramble of humanity trying to reassert itself? Sure, some people are shitty, but at the end of the day, most of us are just trying to live comfortably and find a few other folks to keep the loneliness from swallowing us whole.”
“Yeah, okay, but I got enough people,” he countered, folding his arms, watching a shining herd of deer pass through the shaded trees and disappear again, like the flash of light over water. “Plus a little dude to look out for who is already incredibly badass and cool, but is still in a pretty fragile state of development. Can’t risk lettin’ crazy in just because you’re one of them silver linings-types. You go out only thinkin’ about that sappy shit, looking so freaking hard for the good in people that’ve had it rough, you don’t see the bad stuff until it’s too late. Not so much these days, I guess, now that stuff’s mostly settled, but still. Can’t be too careful. Even with folks you thought you knew.”
“We’re taking this place back,” the Captain said softly, intently. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we’ve retaken every outpost within the valley. Me an’ Roger have been hitting their supply chain hard, and we’ve heard chatter from the other chapters. They want to pull out of Hope County. Cut their losses. The Twins’re just being stubborn, but once they’re dealt with—I’m just saying. Could be a good time to make up.”
“Sure, mop up the stragglers and get to rebuildin’.” Sharky rolled his eyes. “Give it a couple of years and either another chapter of the Highwaymen moves in once they think we’ve softened back up, or those Eden fart-huffers decide we’re getting to close to recreatin’ society and massacre us all while we sleep, or hell, maybe a whole new batch of bullshit comes our way. This ain’t gonna get tied up in a neat little bow. An’ I don’t have shit to apologize for, so if anyone’s gonna ‘make up’ it’s not me.”
“Hm. Do you know what…happened with them?” Aguilar asked, and the deliberate tone made his gut turn over.
“I knew them for like, three-and-a-half months,” he said, looking out the window again. Clear sky, orange shot through with rainbow ribboning from the less-than-strictly-Northern Lights. Hadn’t seen or heard one of those supply planes pass by in a few weeks—maybe the Captain was right about the other chapters pulling support. Not that it really mattered. “Four tops. Whole lotta shit happened before, whole lotta shit happened after. Be more specific if you wanna have a conversation, man.”
“You know what I meant.” Aguilar’s voice was edged with irritation, and a small, petty part of him cheered at finally wearing through the other man’s patience. “I saw inside the bunker, Boshaw. It wasn’t—It wasn’t easy for them down there.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” he said, picking at the dried remains of rubber in the window well, scratching, forcing the tips of his fingers in until they started to hurt. His voice sounded too loud in his own ears. “Joseph Seed is fucking crazy. Always has been. They used to talk, you know. Make jokes. I don’t know specifics—and I don’t want to know specifics, okay? Don’t need more morbid shit to fixate on when it gets bad. But my buddy never came back out of that bunker, okay, and I ain’t exactly chompin’ at the bit to engage with that zombie version of them Joseph turned ‘em into.”
“They’re not…really a zombie,” protested Aguilar lamely. Sharky glared at him and he shrugged defensively. “They’re not. They-they look at stuff, and sometimes, uh, they pick flowers and fidget and—I’m pretty sure I’ve heard them humming a few times.”
“Wow, dude, that’s real inspiring.” Shut up, shut up, shut up. He grit his teeth, jaw working to keep more bitterness from spilling out. Aguilar didn’t deserve that. Dumb kid was just riding the high he’d felt seventeen years ago—strong and in love, fighting crazy odds that belonged in an 80’s action movie and actually winning. The concept that some things broke and stayed that way, that even trying to fix them could only end in pain and frustration, had not been introduced to him. Or if it had, it sure as shit hadn’t sunk in. Him and Roger were just feeding into each others’ naive, hopeful fantasies—hard to be around them these days without envy eating away at his heart, a weighted certainty in his gut that it was doomed, that the smiles and jokes that came so easily today would be stolen by violence or just end, worn away by the stress and pain and mistrust inherent in post-Collapse living.
“There’s still a person in there, is what I’m saying,” urged Aguilar, oblivious.
“Well, whoever they are now, they better appreciate my fuckin’ records.” Sharky pushed his goggles further up his forehead, glaring out the window and folding his arms so that the guy would take the fucking hint that this subject of conversation was closed. An unhappy sigh from the driver’s seat, but no argument, and they drove on through the gathering darkness without speaking.
Sharky watched what was left of Holland Valley pass by, blinking in pained surprise as skeletons of pre-Collapse rose up to jar uncomfortably against his memories. Felt like yesterday he was hauling bags of fertilizer for the plant, trudging across the clear, packed-earth drive to the delivery trucks, sharp stink settling into his shirt. Now the level was overgrown with bright fuschia flowers and crowded with cargo units covered in black scrawls of spraypaint. That barn had been gray with a white trim, glass shining in the windows when he and Rook had crashed there for three days, waiting for John’s search parties to move on. Now the roof had fallen in, what wood was left was rotting, and the windows were dark, empty spaces for the dust to blow in. His MeeMaw used to take him fishing just up the river from here, which usually just devolved into an afternoon of him fumbling around in the shallows, trying to catch minnows in his hands or find the rocks along the bank that would make the biggest splashes while she cooled her feet. That bend had been swallowed by the water level when the lake rose, though, and only the drowsy blink of fireflies along the hill remained, reminding him in her voice that it was time to go—it was a school night, after all, and he shouldn’t have let her nod off like that.
The cab pitched as they hauled off the main road, and he blinked rapidly, clearing his throat and bracing himself on the reinforced frame.
“Sorry,” said the Captain, slowing them down and eyeing the trees thickening around them. “Roads’re rough out here.”
“Bit easier, I guess, now that you’ve killed most of the Highwaymen round these parts, apparently. Not that I’m complainin’ ‘bout all the-the murderin’, that shit definitely solves these kinds of problems, it’s just-it’s just weird to think of it as, like…an infrastructure-ial solution.” He drummed his fingers against the cold metal, tapping his feet against the floormats. “Still, though—like how much further is this place? ‘Cause I left Blade with Bethany, and she’s great but she always gives him too much of that-of that fruit mash, you know? An’ he’ll be up half the night with some truly killer diarrhea, which—at least he has fun, but I’ve gotten used to gettin’ in a solid six every night since we moved in, and I would very much like to keep that streak going.”
“We’re almost there.” Aguilar slowed, tires churning steadily off the curving road to park on the grassy shoulder. He nodded to Sharky as he unbuckled and slid out the window. “We can walk from here.”
“You can walk—”
“Really? Come all this way and you’re not even gonna say hi?” Aguilar tsked, leaning through the back window and extracting the record crate carefully. “What happened to being my back-up? We got wolves out here, and my hands are full. I’m feelin’ awfully vulnerable.”
“You’re kind of a dick, dude.” Sharky scowled into his beard, pulling his legs up to his chest and trying to edge out the window without breaking his spine. Shit had been a lot easier on the way in. “Not that I don’t appreciate what you’ve been doin’ for everyone, but like…still a dick.”
“Yeah, well. Pobody’s nerfect, right?” Aguilar at least had the decency not to watch as Sharky struggled out of the buggy, eyeing the dark trees above them. The wind sent the leaves whispering, a sound that was both reassuring and exciting, smelling like damp soil and green things growing and the river. “My aunt used to say that all the time. Used to think it was the most annoying thing.”
“She dead now?” he asked bluntly, boots landing in the dirt at last. That was the way most of these stories ended. Everyone had at least one.
“No, she’s back west with my sister and her kid.” Aguilar flashed him a grin. “Near what used to be Portland—actually part of Rush’s second big settlement project. Just miss hearing it.”
“Oh, okay then.” Sharky straightened his vest, not sure if Aguilar was angling for a chance to talk about his people or if he’d just been answering the question. “Uh. You planning on going back? When this is over? I mean, ‘over’ isn’t really right, but…once this shit with the twins is dealt with. You gonna jet?”
The other man looked taken aback. “I…haven’t thought about that, actually. When Carmina briefed us, a lot of us were thinking about settling here. Farmland as good as she promised, we figured it’d be a nice life, and we could send supplies back to the settlements that weren’t so lucky. But without the train and the rest of our team, it’d be hard to do in any way that mattered. And since it’s just Rush and me…I don’t know.”
He nodded down the slope, still frowning thoughtfully. “This way. I think Rush’ll want to be with his kid, but whether that means bringing her out here or just heading back where she is, I’m not sure what he’s leaning towards. I like it here, though. Plus, things are goin’ well with me and Roger, and I want to see where it takes us.”
That sick twist in his gut again. Lucky, lucky, lucky—must be nice. He tamped it down, though, because for all that Rush’s Captain was kind of an asshole, he really was a decent guy who’d done a lot for them all, and if anyone these days got to be happy, he deserved it.
“That’s cool, man. I—” They had passed through a thick stand of trees and a small clearing had opened up in front of them. A cozy wooden cabin tucked against the lee of a modest hill, and tanning racks standing guard over a deep firepit, several skins stretched over their wooden frames. Everything neat, well-crafted. Idyllic, in a “My Side of the Mountain” meets Bear Grylls kind of way. A smaller wooden structure—maybe a smoker, or some kind of grain hutch—squatted across the way, the grass grown thick around its staunch supports. The only thing that looked out of place was the rusted generator hauled up against one wall of the cabin, its lines unspooling through a window and around to where a door presumably was. It was running, with a phlegmatic chugging that Sharky wouldn’t expect to last much longer than a few months. It had been propped up on some flat stones, and the ground beneath had been cleared in what was likely an attempt to reduce risk of a fire, but judging by the bundles of dried herbs and flowers hanging from the roof inside that he glimpsed through the window, this place was one lucky spark away from being an ash pile anyway.
His mouth was suddenly really dry, and he stopped walking, licking his lips and staring fixedly at the warm glow of that window. Any second now, and they’d pass in front of it. He’d see that awful mask and it would break the spell and he could go back to the car and go back to Prosperity and go back to reassuring himself that they were gone, they were dead, that there was nothing left of the person who meant—who had meant so much to him for that brief, shining period of time before the bombs fell. His heart was beating too hard, too fast, and when he wiped his palms on his stained waders, they were shaking.
But that square of light never flickered. Maybe they weren’t expecting Aguilar. Or maybe they were, but didn’t feel like coming out to greet him. Did they even greet people? Kim had said they didn’t talk. Hurk had mentioned awful grunts, harsh and animalistic. When the big guy had first said that, he’d actually wanted to hit him. Silence was voluntary. The sounds he’d described—no. He couldn’t think about that. He wouldn’t.
“I can’t,” he said when Aguilar turned, a quizzical eyebrow raised. “I can’t.”
The other man gave a short sigh but shrugged, trudging ahead. “Be inside if you change your mind.”
He watched Aguilar disappear around the corner. A large, insistent part of him was urging his legs to move, to pick up and take him back to the buggy and just wait there, but his knees were locked and his boots felt like they were filled with cold, thick clay.
Focused on the window, dread mixing with electric threads of anticipation. Like that one shot in Twin Peaks that had kept him up for weeks—the static view of the living room, the terrified pants of Laura’s mom erratic somewhere behind the camera. Knowing it was coming but still jumping when the strange man and his bulging, horrible grin simply walked into the shot, hitting that center mark before turning and oh-so-deliberately crawling over that fucking couch. He’d actually pissed himself when he’d first seen that. Of course, he’d been working his way through a dozen donuts and a gallon of iced tea, and so high he hadn’t registered that he had to pee, but still. Scary shit. And this waiting in the growing dark was fraying his nerves even thinner.
Felt like someone was watching him. An itch between his shoulderblades. Maybe an owl. A Twin Peaks kind of owl, since the other kind was probably straight up extinct. Spying from the trees and contemplating hijacking his stupid body that was refusing to move.
“It ain’t worth it,” he whispered up to the trees, “My knees hurt all the time, I can’t look at a vegetable without getting severe intestinal cramping, and I’m startin’ to get nasty Grampa ear hair.”
The leaves murmured disapprovingly with the wind, and nothing swooped down to possess him, so he relaxed a little. The Captain cleared his throat as he stumped back from around the cabin, looking at Sharky expectantly.
“You’re really just…gonna stay out here, huh?”
He shrugged, digging the toe of one boot into the grass. “You done in there?”
Aguilar sighed, glancing back over his shoulder. “Yeah. I’m gonna do some foraging real quick. There’s lots of that blue flower Selene wants out on this island.”
Sharky glared at him. “Really? You need to do that shit right now? What-what other errands are you gonna be springin’ on me? We gonna pick up your dry cleaning, too?”
“Won’t take long.” He grinned. “Wait here, if you’re too good to pick flowers with me.”
“Yeah, you know what? I will.”
He scowled at the younger man’s back as he headed off through the trees. Swaggering like he thought Charlemagne Victor Boshaw IV didn’t know when he was being manipulated. Aguilar thought he’d just cave in and go into the cabin, kick off a Hallmark-esque reunion because he couldn’t stay put for fifteen minutes. Not fuckin’ likely.
Sure it was a little spooky being out here in the dark, just chilling outside when twenty feet away was a cabin all lit up and cozy. But he could be a stubborn motherfucker when he set his mind to it, and his mind was set. He’d just find a nice tree to lean up against to save his legs from aching, and he could wait all night if he had to.
He ranged around the cabin cautiously, watching for movement, but nothing stirred. Zombie or no, he didn’t want them mistaking him for a Highwayman or a wolf or anything. He’d seen what they could do back in the day, and if Aguilar was hittin’ them up to take out Highwaymen outposts, they hadn’t lost their murderous touch.
He’d just found a big boulder with a mossy ledge at the perfect height to rest his ass on when a low sound below the shushing of the trees caught his attention. It was soft, and he had to cock his head and focus to really hear it over his tinnitus.
It was one of the songs from the records he’d found. Brook Benton, crooning over plush instrumentals, and he flinched at the memory of a truck cab with a cracked windshield and sticky pleather upholstery, lurching over dirt roads from skirmish to skirmish, back when the hills were covered in bliss fields. Catching a breather and smoking hastily rolled joints on the hood with his best friend in the whole world. Puff, puff, pass—blowing up towards the stars and pointing out constellations, making them up once he’d exhausted all four of the ones he knew. The taste of lukewarm beer, the curve of their cheek under his lips, the sound of their laughter, exhausted but genuine, and their hand finding its way inexorably to latch with his.
Sharky took a brisk breath, blinking away the burning in his eyes. Stupid. It was just a song. Just a dumb old song he’d never really liked, he shouldn’t—
A low, broken moan came from the cabin, and he started guiltily, staring at the warm light emanating from the doorway. They were…crying. Their voice was cracked and deeper than he remembered, but still them, and he found himself crossing the grass and stepping into the cabin before he could think about it.
He faltered as he crossed the threshold, the sight of the infamous Judge, sitting crosslegged on the floor of their cabin behind a plastic record player with their back to him. Their shoulders were shuddering under their feathered mantle and their hood was up. They didn’t turn, but they had to have heard him approach. Maybe they thought he was Aguilar, coming back for something. Maybe they didn’t care.
He opened his mouth, but then, what could he say that wouldn’t make things more uncomfortable? ‘Hey, I purposefully avoided you whenever Cap brought you to Prosperity because I resent you for sticking with Joseph Seed for a full decade after you left your bunker?’
Or maybe ‘What’s good, I hear you just go by ‘Judge’ these days, and do you even remember me? Because it’s been seventeen years and you don’t call, you don’t write—a guy starts to feel a little neglected.’
Nah.
He just cleared his throat, offering a sheepish smile when they turned to look at him. That creepy mask was impossible to read, but there was a wariness to their movement that was clear enough.
“Uh, hi. Just wanted to, uh, check that Aguilar got you set up okay.”
They were a lot scarier when they weren’t crying—the impassive black holes cut into that rough-hewn mask were flat and cold. This was a mistake. He nodded to himself, blinking rapidly.
“Uh-huh, uh-huh, okay. Looks like you’re doin’ fine, so…I’m gonna—I’m gonna go.”
He backed off, turning to go, but they let out a harsh, rasping grunt and reached after him with a gloved hand. He stopped in his tracks, staring at them in dismay.
“Wow, I—I guess Hurk wasn’t kidding, huh?” Oops, maybe they were sensitive about that. “Sorry, maybe you don’t wanna talk ab—fuck. Listen, I just…”
Sharky sighed, tired and self-conscious and weirdly hollow. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about this, about what he’d say and do and how they’d react, but it was all wrong and too late, anyway. Opening himself up to losing them all over again would just put him back in that low, dark place, and he had to be better than that for Blade’s sake.
“I hope. You enjoy the records,” he said slowly, forcing his voice to stay level. “And thank you. For helping with these Highwaymen dickbags.”
They ducked their head and he thought they were going to let him go, but they were working their glove off, short breaths echoing from within their mask. It came off and they thrust their hand toward him, turned so he could see the faded blob outlined on the web between their thumb and forefinger, and suddenly they were sitting close to a roaring fire on the bank of the Henbane, heads bowed together and breathing in the humid, alcohol-and-sweat-scented air. He’d found a few pens at the last house they’d cleared, and the needle came from the pocket first aid kit they carried around.
I don’t want my first tattoo to be forced on me by John Fucking Seed, they’d said, the day after escaping the psychopath’s twisted Confession, and he’d instantly offered to give them one. Didn’t have a fancy portable tat gun, but he’d started doing stick-and-pokes before he’d dropped out of high school, and he’d gotten pretty fucking good at it while he was in jail. So they’d gathered the necessary supplies, including a bottle of vodka to pass back and forth, and he’d painstakingly etched a little black bird into their skin, sealing his masterwork with a gentle kiss.
They’d laughed, examined it, and laughed again.
It looks like the fucking Bat-signal they’d said, tugging him close and kissing over his protests. I love it.
He hadn’t thought about that in a long time, and was honestly surprised the thing had lasted so long, but there it was.
Slowly, they pulled their hand back, resting it over their heart. They held it to their chest for a moment more and then, with a hesitance as though to steel themselves for rebuff, reached towards him again. Their hand shook slightly in the empty air, waiting, and the uneven silhouette of his sloppy, stupid, drunken stick-and-poke from so many years ago trembled with it.
Sharky sighed unhappily, a watery, wobbling feeling in his chest, and before he’d really thought it through he was stepping in and taking it. Their fingers laced automatically, as naturally now as it had happened hundreds of times nearly two decades before. The familiar weight and warmth of the intimacy was only marred by reminders of the distance—a thickness in knuckles of fingers that had been broken in some violent memory he would never know, gaps in his tactical perception from the pink bars and patches of scar tissue from reckless mechanical experimentation. As he brushed his thumb over the strangeness of a hand he’d once had memorized, he thought that these were parts of them that would forever be altered, forever estranged from the bond and life he’d thought they’d share, and it made his eyes burn.
“I thought—” he started and lost his nerve, but there was something plaintive in the way their blank mask tipped back, attentive, and he forced himself to say it. “I thought. If you cared, you’d come. And you didn’t come, so…you know.”
Their shoulders sagged, fingers curling in his defensively.
“Fuck, man,” he sighed, giving up on holding the tears back, letting them streak hotly over his cheeks. “You didn’t have to stay with him—you didn’t have to stay! Seven years thinkin’ my best friend’s fuckin’ dead, and then…hearin’ not only are they alive, but they’re, y’know, the former Big Bad’s goddamn Darth Vader? And just livin’ with that for a decade? God, Dep, that—”
His voice crumpled, the uncomfortable shock of the word he’d forbidden himself from saying for years just falling out as though it were the easiest thing in the world, and the shuddering breath he took in its wake was sharp and cold.
The Judge had frozen, but when he closed the remaining distance, leaning against their bulky shoulder, squeezing his eyes shut so the smell of mildewed furs, earth, and sweat were isolated in his memory without the distraction of the surroundings, their arms wrapped around his back. They held him, embrace gaining strength of certainty as the hard shell of their mask pressed against his neck, and he hugged them back, gripping at the stiff, fibrous weave of their tunic with desperate need.
“I miss you,” he sobbed between great, unsteady gulps. “So. Much.”
They hummed, wordless but voice thick and low with palpable regret.
“Y’could’ve come back,” he said, a stab of resentment forcing him back, holding them at arm’s length when every nerve howled for him to clutch them closer, closer, until he forgot where he ended and they began, until their hearts were beating as one. “You can still come back.”
They flinched, pulling away entirely and kneeling. They took a dagger from a hidden sheath in their boot and dug at the soft floorboards, carving hasty letters—thin and pale but unmistakable:
MY FAULT
He blinked down at the pale scratches, then snorted, inclining his head at them critically. “What, you takin’ credit for the fuckin’ apocalypse now? The biggest goddamn fish story of the century—hell, the last few thousand years?”
They shook their head vehemently, tapping the message with the tip of their knife, but he scowled and nudged it away with his boot.
“Shut up. That’s fuckin’ Joseph talkin’. And we both heard all that stuff about the world fallin’ apart over the radio those last few weeks—don’t remember everything, but I remember that much.” He squatted, wincing as his knees complained, but fixing them with a hard stare. “Nobody blames you for that. For anything. Just so you know. We’d, uh…we’d all like to have you back. If you wanted that, of course.”
They looked at him for a long time. At least he thought they did—it was impossible to see their eyes sunk into those dark, flat pits. They’d dug the knifepoint into the floor again, but not to talk, apparently. White-knuckled, their fist wavered, digging pale chips from the worn surface. He eyed it doubtfully.
“Shouldn’t do that kinda thing if you plan on stayin’. I mean, it’s your fuckin’ house, but still. Gonna have a foot full of splinters if you don’t patch that up.”
They sighed and laid the knife down, and he grinned because the heavy petulance of the sound, even through the mask, was instantly familiar. It was his friend. It was Rook. And fuck, it was good to have them back.