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She’s hundreds of miles away from Hometown, sprawled out in a bed that is not her own, staring up at the ceiling of an apartment she doesn’t belong in, rolling over to watch Asriel, sat at his desk on the other side of the room with his monitor illuminating his fur in sharp blues, when she says, “do you think it’s ever going to get better?”
“Dess?” Asriel pauses, turning to look at her with pen ink smeared across the bridge of his muzzle, his fur pressed flat where his hand was resting on it, and for a second it’s the funniest thing she’s seen all day, breaking into giggles that get Asriel laughing even if he’s got no fucking clue what she’s on about, and she’s barely been here for an hour but she’s already wiping tears out of her eyes. She pushes herself up on her elbows, ignores the ichor-dark scars that still bleed into her fur from her time down in the bunker. “Hasn’t it…already?”
Dess shrugs. Hundreds of miles away and nothing feels like it’s changed. Not like it did that first time—where she got out and she was gone, knew exactly where she was heading and what her plan was. But now she’s here in her best friend’s apartment, and she’s well aware he’s only letting her crash here out of pity. It’s barely even a two-bedroom. Asriel just has the one bed, and sure, they’ve shared, on long-ago sleepovers, those first few nights Noelle dragged her out of the dark and he refused to let her out of his sight, but…
Asriel stands, comes to sit on the bed and it dips towards his weight, tugging Dess a bit closer. “You and Kris aren’t fighting anymore. So, I’d say that’s a good thing.”
Dess scoffs. “That was more their doing than mine.” She still can’t look at the kid for too long without fear settling around her like an old friend. Her therapist’s given it some fancy name but to Dess it’s all instinct, all those swimming bunker-thoughts she can’t get rid of, even now. Talking about them works until it doesn’t. She doesn’t know how Kris goes back into their own bunker, that one under the school—they say it’s different, but it’s all the same, really. The same dark walls. The same pressing traps.
But the Kris of today is more wild animal than monster teenager, really. Maybe they can just handle it better.
“Well, alright.” Asriel rolls his eyes when she takes his offered hand, only to throw herself back into his pillows. They’re silkier than she was expecting, and she picks herself up, splays out one of her hands over them. It’s so much. Everything is so much. Her mom, her dad, her sister, Kris, even Asriel. It’s like she blinked and everyone around her went and grew up, going to college and having birthdays and changing, and she’s just Dess, and she’s just here.
Asriel pokes her in the side, one sharp claw. It sinks odd into her fur, giving way to skin that not-so-long-ago was shadowy tar that shaped itself around her as she willed it. The being physical thing is new. She’s technically been out of the dark for the better part of a year but it doesn’t feel it.
“What makes you so sad?” he asks. “You were excited coming up.”
She was. She got to meet Asriel’s roommate who drove down in an angel-damned convertible, and he drove them up the highway with the wind burning Dess’s eyes, and she thinks probably she was crying then; her, Dess, unfazed by it all, and she was crying. But the wind was so sweet, see. It smelt of gasoline and trees and life.
“Last time I left I ruined everything,” she says, which is true. Probably would’ve killed Kris if the kid wasn’t able to get away in time, didn’t have Noelle right there in their corner to back them up, scream at Dess with a ferocity Dess hadn’t ever seen in her before. How could that be the same Noelle she remembered? The little girl who clung to her sleeves and shrieked whenever Kris scared her, whose tears Dess wiped away, who she helped pick out her first dress.
She’s got scars, now. Right over her throat. Left there by Kris, the rabid animal who sunk its claws into the kid she grew up with, until it was just a coyote wearing Kris’s—
“Dess, you’re shaking,” Asriel says, grabbing her arm.
“No I’m not.” Dess heaves in a breath. Kid sibling. Isn’t that what her therapist wants her to call them? Kid sibling. Who runs around and says they’re a coyote, now. Who tried to tear out Noelle’s throat. Who carved Noelle’s name into one of her own antlers, one that Noelle’s getting made into a necklace, last Dess heard. Who Noelle chose over her, picked the neighbor over Dess, who gave and kept giving everything just so Noelle could be happy.
“Yes, you are.” Asriel doesn’t let go of her. “Dess, if you’re spiraling about Kris—”
“I don’t spiral.” Dess shoves his arm off of her and stands, crossing over to his window, yanks the blinds up so she can see the lights of the city blinking out there before her. Hometown’s so dark, this time of night. There just isn’t enough of it. But here the streetlights reflect off the road and the buildings pierce up through the clouds like a fountain in the dark. “You’re no better.”
Asriel comes up to stand next to her. He’s taller than her, the idiot. She was the taller one when she left, but she came back and he grew a foot in a blink of an eye. What right does he have to do that?
“It’s really beautiful, isn’t it?” Asriel’s voice is quiet. The city lights reflect off of his eyes and Dess watches that, now, rather than the city itself. Apparently she was gone for four years. Four years where she never saw this: her best friend, growing up. Dumb guy’s got stubble. What, is he trying to grow a beard like his dad? Dess huffs and socks him in the shoulder.
“It’s alright,” she says. Her heart is hammering away in her chest. It’s one city. Sure, the buildings are shiny in the otherwise pitch-black sky, devoid entirely of stars, just like it was down there. Sure, the headlight from the cars keep glinting off the ceiling, and she can’t stop reading words in them, secrets she can’t tear out of her brain. She pushes herself off the windowsill and turns back to the bed. “When do classes start?”
“Next week.” Asriel stays at the window, doesn’t look at her. The fuck is he looking at instead? Dess grabs a fistful of his blanket and smooths it flat. Finally, Asriel turns, a grin pulling up at the corners of his mouth. “What, want to tag along with me?”
“Hell no.” Dess falls backwards onto his bed, staring up at the ceiling again. “Sit in on all your boring nerd stuff? Naw.”
“Well, I’ll be free for lunch, so if you come onto campus with me we could eat together.” Asriel returns to his desk, shuffles a few papers into a pile, shuts off his computer monitor. It plunges the room into darkness and Dess’s fur stands on end. “You’ll have to come with me in the morning, though, the buses are awful in the afternoon.”
“I’ll just stay here, thanks.” Being crammed in a bus with tens of other people sounds a little bit like tearing her own fur off. She’s sure Asriel’s got food around. Apparently his roommate is something of a chef. Asriel kneels down to flick on the nightlight, its soft warm light filling the room, and Dess breathes out. “You sure you don’t mind me crashing with you?”
“A bit too late for me to back out if I was, yeah?” Asriel laughs, flops down right next to her. “Of course I’m fine with it. You’re my best friend, Dess, I’m not throwing you out to the curb.”
“Even if we have to share a bed? I kick in my sleep.”
“I have it on good record from Kris that I do, too, so it should all even out.” Asriel elbows her. In this lighting she can’t make out the details of his face, just the light that brightens small sections of it: the tip of his muzzle, the tufts of fur on his head. Dess stretches a hand out above her, fists it into a ball. Looks a lot darker than her natural fur color.
“You think Mom would flip if I dyed my fur black?”
“Yes,” Asriel says, without hesitation. “But you’re 22, so, it’s not like she could stop you.”
“Oh.”
Asriel pauses. “Did you forget again?”
“I never forget anything.” Dess turns away from him, onto her side, so she’s facing his desk. She blinked. That’s all it was. She blinked, and Noelle was all grown, and Asriel was in college, and Dad was sicker and Kris was wild and she stood there, taking it all in, and it sure as shit didn’t feel like anywhere near enough time for all of that to happen. Kris turned 15. She was there. But surely that can’t be right. They’re still the 10-year-old that followed her down into the bunker. They’re still the 10-year-old that she saw hurting her sister.
She wasn’t even fucking there to stop it. Those scars on Noelle’s throat aren’t going anywhere.
“Dess…”
“I don’t need your pity.” Dess nearly closes her eyes, but they catch on something, before she can—the light that gleams off the glass of a picture frame, and she pushes herself sitting, scoots to the edge of the bed, grabs the picture and brings it closer to the nightlight. “Is this—”
Asriel sits up too, leans over her shoulder and takes the picture from her. “Oh, yeah.” He grins, traces the lines of their faces. Dess remembers this. She remembers this, because it was the summer she graduated high school: her and him, her grinning, wild, and her hair was longer then, down to her shoulders, so it’s dancing wild in the wind as she drags him into a hug. Asriel’s shoving at her. He’s wearing her cap and she’s wearing her gown.
It was barely a few months ago; it was four years ago.
“You kept it?”
“I kept your PO box.” Asriel laughs, but it’s not a happy sound. It’s more of tired sigh, as he goes to place it back on his desk. “Of course I kept it. It’s the last happy picture I really had of us. Because that summer was the bunker, and then…”
“I left.” Dess can’t tear her eyes off the picture. Four entire years ago. Feels like just yesterday. “I ruined everything.”
Four years of her life in that darkness, lost to the bunker. And all it took was a kid that’s more coyote than monster and certainly more either of those than human to fix that problem for good, all in one night. One kid who was stronger than she ever was, who went into the bunker and kept going back, befriending the darkness and going into the shadows, all for her. For Dess. For Dess, who nearly got them killed.
“Well.” When Asriel opens his arms for a hug Dess brushes past him, but evidently that isn’t good enough for him, because he grabs her around the middle and pulls her in anyways. His fur is pale against hers, wavy where hers is short and sharp, and he grips her like he’s scared if he lets go she’ll vanish into the city lights. “Probably. But you’re doing better.”
“Am I really?” She tucks her face against his shoulder. Something wet falls onto her ear and she does Asriel the kindness of not mentioning it, which he better appreciate. He’s warm. He’s alive. He’s here, and so is she, on his bed in his bedroom, and he’s in college, and how funny is that? She wasn’t there for any of it.
“You are.” Asriel pulls away, rubs at his eyes. “You—you’re my best friend. I don’t care what you did. I care that you’re here with me now.”
“Sap.” Dess isn’t choking up, thank you very much. She just has something stuck in her throat. “I think you should get a new picture. That one’s years out of date.”
Asriel slings an arm around her shoulder. “Yeah,” he says, “I think I should.”
When he grabs his phone and holds it up to take a picture of them, Dess is pretty sure he’s got tear tracks staining down his fur, and the ink is still there, splattered across his muzzle like freckles. Dess herself has got dark bags under her eyes, fur still fucked from the bunker, muddy brown-black-tar mixed in with her natural russet. She sort of hates the picture. Actually, she does hate it. When Asriel shows it to her she shrieks and grabs for his phone, and he holds it above her head, and she nearly tackles him into the wall because he is not using his height like that, the dirty cheater.
Outside cars speed by, and the lights reflect off the buildings. Outside somewhere is the bunker, and the kid who broke it open, once and for all. Outside is everything Dess left for, and everything she failed to accomplish, and all the lives she ruined for it.
“Hey, Azzy?” Dess spins to face him, snatches the phone right out of his hands. “I have no fucking idea what I want to do with my life.”
“Oh yeah?” Asriel makes a grab for his phone, and Dess ducks, staring down at the two of them in the picture: fucked and ugly and here, in this shitty room, with its tiny bed and tinier desk. “How’s that make you feel?”
“Like shit.” She places his phone against the old picture, admires her work. Asriel comes to stop at her shoulder, and she leans against him. “It’s the scariest thing in my entire fucking life, and I’ve nearly died, like, at least twice.”
“But?”
Dess shrugs. “Dunno. Haven’t thought that far ahead.”
But here she is. Damn, here she fucking is.