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She is back in the darkness. Back in the night. She looks around, turning on her heel, elbows tucked in and fists hiked up, searching for colour, for warmth, for light—
There is nothing.
The air, acrid and harsh, is still.
Something itches in her eye. She moves to rub it, feels steel against her cheek, and settles for shrugging it out with her shoulder instead. It doesn’t really work.
Her gauntlets hiss warm steam into her face. Her hands, weightless and strong, feel like thunderbolts. It emboldens her to walk.
Her left foot goes forward.
A pause.
Then her right.
Another pause.
Nothing happens.
That emboldens her further.
Her knuckles click inside their metal shells, and she presses on.
She walks for what seems like an eternity. The darkness is a firm unyielding mass, dense and full of aching, that undulates and obfuscates around her body. Every step is forced out as an exertion of will, a shaky sullen sob into the gelatinous void.
It scares her. Terrifies her. She screams a little, and the darkness gobbles her syllables down greedily, and snatches pieces of her soul with it too.
But at least the steam is warm.
Time seems to pass without passing. She has no idea where she’s going. Once, she looked back, but could not see how far she had gone; turned forward but could not see how far she had yet to go. She strained helplessly into the darkness, feeling nerves pinging in her neck, but could see no further into what awaited her than if she had looked inwards and saw what confronted her.
So, she huffed up her gauntlets and soldiered on. Pick up her left leg. Follow with the right. She counts the seconds between puffs of steam, measuring her life between fleeting snatches of warmth.
And then, she thinks she can see…
And then, all of a sudden—
Out in the distance, achingly far, gleamed light. She can’t see what it is, can’t judge its distance or describe its form, except to say that it is light, that it is shiny and sparkly and shimmering, and that it beckons to her longingly amidst an oasis of nothing else.
It pulls her in. She lets it. All it takes is one push, two, and then the darkness yields, it gives, and she’s running, sprinting, as fast as her aching knees will let her. Her breaths tear raggedly through her chest, and she runs and runs and runs, feeling the joints in her shoulders pop, with an endless cascade of steam flowing wonderfully onto her face—
Stop!
She stops.
Look!
She looks.
Shrugs her eye with her shoulder, squints. Looks again.
The light has crystallised. Hardened and taken shape. It’s a glowing metal ball.
And it ticks.
That’s odd.
Tickticktickticktick.
It looks pretty, with many small parts, and delicate golden wings.
And it ticks. Only ticks. Half a clock chime, half a wingbeat, a shaky sullen heartbeat sliced into two.
It ticks relentlessly. Ceaselessly. It hurls syllables out into the darkness, sharp staccato strikes, and the darkness thins before them as if in fear. The ticking echoes, swirling in her ears, grinding against her teeth, and it makes copper crack painfully onto her tongue, makes moonbeams swell behind her eyelids, an auditory miasma, fractured yet confluent, a never-ending knell, and it beckons and pulls and pushes as an irrepressible harbinger of—
The ticking stops.
She has time for one more thought.
Oh sh—
Then the capsule bursts —a single overdue tock— and great fire and thunder roars from within its depths. The heat is intense on her face, searing her eyeballs, melting through her upraised gauntlets, and when she can no longer blink, she sees Mylo, with lightning pouring through his forehead and through his chest, and she sees Claggor, peering at her through broken eyes, and she turns her head, looking, searching, for flashes of blue and betrayed purple, but she cannot find her, cannot see her, amidst all the colours of the world, undulating and obfuscating, which phase shift into lilac, into azure, into shards and shards of emerald, emerald that moves and does not stop, with delicate golden wings, and the air teems, it heaves, with hordes of emerald lights, and then—
She screams.
And the darkness gobbles it up.
And all the colours of the world become black.
~*~*~*~*~*~
When she next opens her eyes, it’s to the feeling of warmth wrapped against her back. She smiles bitterly and closes her eyes again. To her surprise, the puff of steam does not dissipate. If anything, it wraps tighter. She opens her eyes again, and realises she can hear something, something soft and sweet and beautiful, muttering low and pleadingly into her ear.
“—please wake up, wake up, please, please, Vi, you’re safe, it’s just a dream, you’re okay and you’re safe and I’m here and please could you just wake up—”
Violet reaches down and takes their hand into hers.
“You’re awake!” the voice says.
“Yeah.”
“Thank God.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m here.”
Despite herself, the corner of Violet’s lip twitches. “I know.”
The voice settles, and the two of them lie there. They say nothing, only breathing and twining fingers, feeling the weight of the night air pressing against their temples.
At one point, the warmth behind her moves away. Violet half turns, a plea already rising to her lips, but she’s beaten to it by the tock of the lamp, which punctuates the darkness with muted yellow light. It stuns Violet in its softness. Then, the warmth settles back behind her, folding her fingers between theirs, and guides Violet’s head back onto the pillow.
Violet doesn’t end up speaking. But the warmth kisses her hair, as if hearing what hadn’t been said anyway.
Time seemed to pass without passing. Violet couldn’t say how long she lay there, awash in warmth, a heap of shattered steel ensconced within starlight — she only knows how to count the seconds between puffs of steam. But she finds she doesn’t care.
When the sun’s crimson rays shear over the horizon, she decides to speak.
“Morning,” she says.
“Morning,” is the reply.
“How’d you sleep?”
“Briefly. And you?”
“Not that great.” Violet feels lips pressed into the back of her neck. “But a little better than usual.”
“Wonder why that is.”
Again, Violet’s lip twitches. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
The warmth pulls her in. Draws her tighter. Violet doesn’t want to admit it, but she relishes the feeling of being held, in these arms, in this moment, between puffs of steam, safe and secure amidst the scattered fragments of night.
“Thank you,” she says after a long pause, “for staying up with me.”
“Of course.”
“You’re sweet.”
“Say that to my face.”
And Violet does, rolling onto her other side, if only to stare into Caitlyn’s eyes. They’re brilliant, bright and bold and beautiful, and they well with emotions Violet never thought someone else would feel for her.
Never dared that someone else would feel for her.
“You’re. Sweet,” Violet says. She adds the next word on flippantly, as if as an afterthought. “Cupcake.” Her cheeks tinge only the slightest shade of red.
“Hm. I didn’t think you’d actually do it.”
“You know me. I never back down.”
“That you don’t. Come here.”
Violet feels Caitlyn’s arms wrap around her back, pulling her into her chest. There is a soft bloom of warmth through her forehead and through her chest, and she stares out into the sunrise through blurry eyes.
She’s back in the daytime. Back in the light.
The night will come again, she knows. Come with the nightmares and the dark thoughts. As it always does.
She supposes she should probably count down the seconds.
But in this moment, she doesn’t know how.