Chapter Text
On his fourth day in Martinaise, early morning, Kim walks down to the water. He likes the time to himself in the cold. When he was a child, he used to stand in the winter chill and close his eyes and pretend the Pale was engulfing him on all sides, like he finally had a home that wanted him.
He doesn’t like to reminisce, and he doesn’t do it, usually. Something about Harry seems to bring it out in him. The wild ferocity with which Harry swings from subject to subject, emotion to emotion…it would be almost inspiring for a man of his age, if it weren’t for the massive unprofessionalism of it. Though it seems to be effective, so maybe Kim should reserve judgment.
At the water lock, Kim stops and sighs, letting his shoulders relax, closing his eyes. Peace, for a long moment, and then the wind picks up, rushing violently by his ears. He opens his eyes, and finds the world around him motionless, even though he still hears the wind blowing. LOOK DOWN , the wind says, and then the morning is quiet again.
He must be more exhausted than he thought. It’s been a taxing case so far, but not enough to be hearing voices. This is not something he’s struggled with, aside from brief stints in unreality while he was undercover. Pretending to be someone aside from his already well-crafted and honed self dislodges him from himself. But he is Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi of the RCM now, even if he’s playing damage control to an erratic supercop.
Still, there’s wonder left in him, and Harry seems to be nurturing it, even in the brief time Kim’s known him. There isn’t a logical explanation to this, so he listens to the impossible wind, and looks down into the water.
Air vacates his lungs completely. The cold presses in. The smell and sound of Martinaise suffocated him on all sides. A horrible green tie floats on the surface of the water, pushed against the side of the lock. Unmistakably Harry’s. Kim feels nauseous. It isn’t proof of anything, and he tries to be logical, but he knows. He knows .
He tells himself he doesn’t know . He tells himself he’s guessing. But he stayed up late the night before writing notes, keeping his report up to date so he doesn’t have to recall everything after the fact, and he never heard Harry in the adjoining room. He’d been anxious about it, but trusting. Too trusting, it seems. Still, it could be someone else’s horrible tie, and the tie isn’t proof he’s dead on its own.
But regardless of the lack of proof, Kim can’t get the deep clawing belief out of him. There was a presence in the world when he fell asleep last night, and that presence is no longer. He feels it like he would feel something missing in his own body.
He doesn’t want to make the call to Precinct 41, especially not without a body, without any proof other than a stained green tie, but no one else is there to do it for him. Of course, to make the call, he would have to be able to move, which he can’t. He wills himself just to pull out a cigarette, taking his one a day early for extreme extenuating circumstances, but he can’t even manage that. He’s frozen in place. He forces himself to swallow and tried to coax himself into moving.
He didn’t know Harry, really. He doesn’t know why he’s paralyzed by the loss. He thinks, even in Revachol, even in this New New World and all its chaos and all its unpredictability, it is rare to encounter something—someone—entirely unique. Harry was entirely unique.
He tries again just to reach into his pocket. Every muscle in his body tells him no, stay, stare into the headlights, keep staring. He used to practice Volta do Mar when he was a teenager, to steer himself through situations he would’ve been trapped and consumed by. He tries to reach back for it, but instead he only finds the words AFTER THE WORLD, THE PALE.
The world is silent. It went silent while he was thinking himself in circles, somehow, and he didn’t notice. No birds, no air currents, no distant music and shouting, not even his own breath. A complete absence. The smell of brine and garbage and smoke is gone as well. His beloved jacket on his skin feels like thin air. He tries to say hello? because he doesn’t know what else to say. Nothing at all comes out, and it joins the nothing that was already smothering him.
The nothing starts to eat the world around him until everything is a measurable lack of what once was, as it starts to pull him from being too, he mutters after the pale, the world again like a good little Humanist, like someone desperate to still exist. The nothing takes the sound, and then it takes the thought, and then the memory of the thought.
*
Kim is in his Kineema. It’s running. He stares out the windshield at the Whirling-in-Rags, and numbly, instinctively, puts the parking brake on and lets the Kineema rest.
Was he calling Precinct 41? Did he make it back here without realizing? He takes a few steps out of the Kineema and sees the body back in the tree where it was days ago, and feels dizzy, like he’s looking down from a great height, and like he can’t step back from the edge.
He closes his eyes. Deep breaths. Volta do Mar. Nonsense poetry he memorized as a child looping in his mind. He consciously keeps himself from mouthing it.
When he opens his eyes, the body is still hanging from the tree, and the union lawyer is sitting outside the Whirling watching him. He nods at her, and goes inside, because the only way out appears to be through.
Lena is by the door, Garte is behind the bar, everything is as it was when he first arrived in Martinaise. He tries to think if this is a phenomenon he’s ever heard about. Harry has his amnesia, it’s possible Kim could be trapped in the past by the shock of the loss, as some strange juxtaposition? It seems unlikely. It feels real.
Harry limp-staggers down the stairs, looking haggard and three-quarters dead, and instead of the strange blend of pity, anxiety, and fast-buried derision he felt the first time he saw Harry, Kim feels only relief.
“Lieutenant-Yefreitor Du Bois,” he says in greeting, the politeness a necessary defense from his own feelings.
“Is my name Yefreitor ?” Harry asks, apparently so stunned by the implication that he doesn’t try to cover up his amnesia, and Kim can’t help but smile, though he quickly subdues it.
“Your name is Harrier du Bois,” Kim says.
“That isn’t better.”
Kim fights down another smile. He coughs and adjusts his glasses. “It isn’t.”
“Who are you?” Harry asks. Kim watches the gears in his head turn. He didn’t like his own name the first time he learned it again, and this seems no different.
“Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi of the 57th Precinct,” Kim says, by rote. “Your partner for this case.”
“Right. The case.” Harry nods, sagely. He’s awful at pretending. Kim hadn’t known how bad it was the first time they had a version of this conversation, but now it’s painfully easy to tell.
“The body in the tree?” Kim says, because he knows his lines. He at least knows the first few acts of this play, but he still doesn’t know if it’s a farce or a tragedy. He doesn’t know if it will end in three days with an ugly floating tie. He doesn’t want it to be his job to stop it from ending that way, but somewhere deep inside he believes it might be.
Part of him always wanted to be a hero with some great weight on to bear. He wouldn’t have joined the RCM otherwise. He’s learned in the last few decades that all that weight gives him is metaphysical backaches. His shoulders are always tense from it.
“Yes, of course, that body,” Harry says. He nods again.
“We should--” Kim starts, then reconsiders. If things are going to play out the way they did before, there’s no point forcing Harry to suffer the embarrassment of vomiting in front of Cuno several times before they come to an inevitable conclusion. “We should find someone to help us get the body down.”
“But we’re…the…police?” Harry says. Kim nods slightly, and Harry seems briefly glad to have gotten something right proactively.
“Yes, well.” Kim shrugs. “Even RCM officers need help on occasion.”
He watches several different probably ridiculous thoughts fight for dominance in Harry’s torn wet-paper brain. He lands on “I’m a fucking superstar, I can get a body down from a tree.”
Kim coughs down a laugh. “Yes. Of course. My apologies, Lieutenant.”
“Where…is it.”
“Behind the Whirling,” Kim says, clasping his hands behind his back. “Shall I wait here, or would you like a witness for your great feat?”
“Do you want to see greatness, Kim?” Harry asks, staring intensely into Kim’s eyes for a moment. Kim feels another twist of pity that makes him feel slightly nauseous, and looks away.
“How could I refuse?” he asks, as lightly as he can. He follows Harry out of the cafeteria and out into the cold morning. Cuno throws rocks at the body and screams. Everything as it should be.
Harry takes one long look at the body, then looks at Kim, then the body again. “...you might have been right,” he says, softly, and Kim holds back a smirk.
“Very well,” he says. “True greatness is knowing when to call it a day.”
“ Exactly ,” Harry says, pointing a fingergun at Kim.
“May I call you Harry?” Kim asks, and Harry looks puzzled for a moment.
“It’s Harrier, isn’t it?”
“Ah, yes. I assumed Harry was your nickname,” Kim says.
“Harry’s fine,” Harry says.
“Harry, I wanted to ask you a question,” Kim says, and Harry nods. “Have you ever traveled in time?”
It’s a ridiculous question. He knows it is. He also knows that Harry du Bois specializes in ridiculous questions and strange beliefs. Things Kim wrote off as mental illness, brain damage--he has to reconsider now that he’s been rewound.
“I came here from the past to destroy the world,” Harry says, not missing a beat. Kim isn’t sure that’s an answer he can use for anything. That just sounds like Harry.
“Ah,” Kim says, because he isn’t sure how else to respond. “I see.”
“Have you ever traveled in time?”
“I can’t say for certain, but I believe so,” Kim says.
“So you’re a supercop too?” Harry asks, vague wonder in his voice.
“Maybe,” Kim says. He pushes his glasses up his nose and tries to look mysterious.