Chapter Text
Es tries not to make it obvious when she watches you. Luckily, you're as emersed in your book as usual - you don't catch her eyes sweeping across your form to land on your profile. Nose closer to the page than technically healthy - weak vision, perhaps? - and a tooth biting down on your lower lip. You read slower than she does; each page turn is methodical but heavy with contemplation.
The room is thick with silence. It always is, but it feels especially cloying today. Most of the time, Es enjoys the quiet, the sound of you turning pages or readjusting your position. Most of the time, Es longs for the shared comfort of it, of being so at peace with one another that words don't seem to matter. Not spoken ones, anyway.
But today is a little different. Today, Es wonders what time is like where you come from. What time was like for you when you roamed the corridors of nothingness, of absolute Void. You told her about the whispers - hers and others, voices as confused and torn and sometimes as furious as Es herself was in the beginning.
Why did you choose not to open other doors? Explore other whispers? she asked you once. Was it the second or third time you re-visited after escaping this place? She can't remember. Why was it my voice that drew you in? Why was it my door you chose - again and again - to walk through? Am I actually the only one? Were there others you could have spoken with?
You had only smiled at that, curiously tilted your head, and then shrugged. I don't know.
You answer with some version of 'I don't know' rather often. You're childlike in a way - overcome with wonder and compassion and curiosity. Yet you freely admit to what you don't know. You ask questions. You ponder things, biting your lip as you delve into the more complex trains of thought that are second-nature to Es.
And Es loves you for it. And hates you a bit. The hate that shimmers up from nothing when jealousy rears its ugly head.
It's complicated - Es' feelings for you. You are her everything now. Sure, she has this library. She has shelves upon shelves of books. She has her comfortable couch, her thick rug that you sprawl across when you loiter with her, and the unused bed. She never sleeps; she never dreams.
But she supposes it's a good thing to have, given you've fallen asleep = more than once - while reading. Asking half-coherent philosophical questions between yawns. Dark lashes fluttering while trying to hide the realities neither of you speaks of.
Your return to the physical world, to Time itself, has also returned all the problems associated with it. Sleep, hunger, a slew of bodily functions that Es understands on a clinical level, but not a personal one.
You aren't tired now, but your stomach does let out a grumble of protest - this one is louder than the last, and it makes Es startle a bit. Such an odd noise - hunger.
You glance over at her with a small smirk, amused and apologetic all in one go.
"Perhaps it is time for you to return?" Es says, hating the words as they come out.
"I can stay a bit," you reply, rolling from belly to hip, eyes fully turned on Es for the first time in...hours? Es has no way of knowing. It feels like a short time, but the progress you've made in your book says otherwise. "It would be nice if this place allowed me to bring food in, though."
You tried doing that once. You came through the door - door? Why does she keep thinking of it as a door? You've told her numerous times that it isn't a doorway, or a gate, but more of a tugging sensation. A pull into an ocean that isn't there. A drowning without suffocation.
It doesn't matter; Es tries to remind herself of that. You came through the door, the suffocation, the ocean without water, and your knapsack of goodies were gone. All of the treats you wanted to share - your favourite foods, drinks, and a comic book you thought she'd like - gone.
When you came back the next day, you said the bag of snacks must have evaporated because it wasn't in the real world when you went back. It had gone away, fizzled out.
Do you think I would go away? Fizzle out? she asked you then.
You glanced away, not wanting to meet her gaze. It was the first - and last - time you ever averted your eyes. You looked ashamed. You looked upset. You looked like you'd come to that same conclusion all on your own.
Es swallows and pushes that back, realising that she's been staring at you, through you, and you've been watching, waiting, a sculpted brow raised and a slow smile spreading on your face. "Am I pretty today or something?" you tease, and Es finds her tongue.
"I cannot speak to that, but you are certainly arrogant today," she returns = a little sharply, a little disapprovingly. But it's all to keep her heart from fluttering.
You know it. You know her too intimately for having never touched, for having never read her writings, her deepest thoughts, her deepest fears and longings. You know her anyway, and she loves you for it. And hates you - just a tiny, tiny bit.
Pride, she realises. It's her pride. Her discomfort at being Seen.
"Where are you in the book? Shall we discuss?" she asks to change the topic. She has no idea if she can flush as the humans in her books do - as you yourself do - but she wants to go on not knowing.
Your grin twitches a little, but you hide your amusement to keep Es from becoming more irritable. "Langoni just entered the Femme Fatale Eye."
"Ah."
You purse your lips at Es. "That's all?"
"I cannot speak to Langoni much at the moment. You will have to keep reading."
You don't seem to like that response, groaning and rolling onto your back. You bring the book with you, laying it across your abdomen, hands meeting under your head, resting in your hair.
"May I ask you a question?" Es begins before she can stop herself. You grin as an approval, preparing for another challenging, probing inquiry. "What colour is your hair?"
That makes your eyes open comically wide, your head turning toward her. "What?"
"It is greyscaled here," she says as if you hadn't noticed.
"I'm...greyscale to you?"
She blinks - now it's her turn to be startled. "Yes. Everything is. Everything always will be."
"I still see myself in colour," you murmur, a hand coming out from your hair, fingers wiggling in front of your eyes, analysing. You sound sad. Almost as sad as Es feels with the new knowledge.
Your stomach groans again, and it breaks Es out of her despair. "You should return." She tries not to sound so mournful, but it's a losing battle. It always is. "Come see me again tomorrow."
You look as if you might fight the dismissal - as if you might finally ask Do you really want me to leave? Don't you want to know the colour of my hair? Shall I try to describe it to you?
But you don't. You accept Es' wishes - as you always do - and bookmark your place in The Thousand Year Beach. Setting the book on the side table next to Es, you murmur, "I'll be back tomorrow after..." you trail off.
Es desperately wants to know what the next part of your sentence is. What do you do in the real world? Do you work on a fishing boat, as The Thousand Year Beach's Anne does? You said you liked her character very much - that she reminded you of your mother when your mother was still alive. Is your father alive? Do you like him? Is he absent, like Jules' father in The Thousand Year Beach? Do you have a paramour? A husband or wife? Children? A cat, rabbit, dog...?
But Es can't ask because she's more afraid of having the answer. She's terrified that, the more she knows about the prelude to "after...", the more she'll fear that you won't return.
Is this codependence? she asked once.
Maybe. Or it might be love, you absently responded as you put aside the book you were reading at that time. You didn't seem to notice that the word came out - or if you did, you weren't embarrassed over it.
"Come back tomorrow, then," Es says, doing her best to look at peace.
"And every day after," you smile, turning for the door and slipping through. Slipping away. Gliding toward the waterless ocean, the drowning without suffocating, that Es will never know.