Archive of Our Own

The air stinks of old rain and sun-baked worms. Your two hands have five fingers each, and you can feel the worn-down tips of your horns when you reach up to feel them. Your hair is stringy and matted to one side of your face, as if you’d slept on it for days with the flu—your mouth feels much the same.

You lick your lips and swallow against nothing. There is an audible, if weak, hn that accompanies your exhale. You frown.

Those are all the senses. Every base is covered, but you aren’t supposed to know to check that this early. It usually takes days to remember, if not weeks—have you been here weeks already? You can’t pull up anything from before mere moments ago, when you noticed that your neck tweaked a little as you looked to the left.

There’s no reason to assume this is actually happening, of course. Senses can be fudged—rain is a common enough smell, and you know your mouth has been dry as of late. You don’t know why you know this, nor do you know how much time ‘as of late’ encompasses.

You can’t remember much of anything, at that. You remember that your neck still hurts, so you’ve got a minimum of ten seconds banked in your database. Chalk that up as a win.

A loud crack splits the otherwise near-silence of the woods, followed by the thunder of footsteps running in your direction. You glance over your shoulder before dropping into a crouch. You cover your head with your arms as a trio of deer scatters around you. They don’t look correct, per se, but you aren’t sure if that’s a weird lamp rule or a Doodler side effect. (You also aren’t sure why you jump to ‘weird lamps’ as being a rule.) Their knees bend out to the sides, their hooves split in the back, they make direct eye contact with you for a moment too long, and you think one of them smiles at you. It makes your teeth hurt.

Once they’ve passed, you get back to your feet and look the way they came. You are promptly rewarded with another crack, and a sudden bolt of pain blooms from your temple.

“Nick?”

The familiar, albeit incredulous, voice is no competition for the ringing in your ears. You frown, preoccupied with probing a finger against the wetness dripping down your face. It comes away dark with blood, that familiar not-color that you’d grown accustomed to after the whole Jodie situation. You turn it this way and that under the sun, watching it shine red—dull into a murky black—glow like a fire—it is both at once. Your neck still really hurts.

“God, shit, the fuck’s wrong with you?” A large man, his face hidden behind sweaty curls and a bandana over the mouth, storms up to you.

You blink at him. They’d always been worse when they used—you hesitate to even think his name, just to be safe—used him against you, on his own. Always with at least one of the others, usually more. Probably missing the TLC they assumed would’ve been more effective than, well, than what he’s currently giving you.

“Are you fucking stupid? Don’t answer that. In the middle of nowhere, like we haven’t been looking, like you—” He shakes his head and knocks his gun against the backs of your knees, sending you to the dirt. “Hold still—hold still.” Your hand freezes on its way to feel your head again, the blood now pooling around the outer crease of your eye. You wink to dislodge it, earning an eyeful of gunk and a shove from him.

“Don’t make that face. Goddammit, lemme—fuck.” He mutters a string of curses as he grabs one of your horns and yanks it to the side, trying to angle your face properly. You lower your hand to your lap, still admiring the shifting colors, when you notice him drawing out a knife with his free hand.

You’re surprised that it hurts when he digs the blade into your forehead.

“Really took it head-on there, huh? Eh-heh—shit.” He mutters something you don’t catch, and you feel the knife twist. It bumps against something solid, then something with a little too much give, before finally slicing its way free.

“You’re lucky I already—dammit, stop making that face!” Your forceful blinks to clear your eye are rewarded with another shove, this one exacerbating the ache in your neck as your head jerks against where he holds your horn. You don’t bother explaining—they’d never seemed to listen, and you doubt he will, either.

He notices your awkward angle from the shove and releases your horn without offering an apology. You didn’t expect one, but you’re still disappointed. His other hand lifts into view, his fingers splattered with your blood and his palm cupping a shiny purple bullet.

“Grant’s tranqs,” he explains, and when you don’t move, he drops it in front of you with a huff. His hands go to the leather bag slung across his back, but he stops his search when his eyes fix on your forehead once more. He squints, frowns, squints again.

You know why. You’ve become accustomed to it—you’ve watched them watch you die countless times now. You don’t know how you know this, but you know it. You recognize the confusion, how he tries to search for an answer in the vanishing injury. He reaches back up, and you feel his fingers ghost across smooth, unbroken skin. You wish you could summon the willpower to feel anything at the sensation.

He swipes his fingers over with more force, wiping away the streaks of blood as if there might still be evidence beneath. You don’t need a mirror to know he won’t find what he’s looking for. You only want one so you can see your own face, can verify you aren’t giving anything away with your expression. You hope you don’t have one.

Getting to his feet, he readjusts his bag over his shoulder and reaches for his gun. You don’t recall seeing him toss it aside, but then, you suppose there’s a good deal you don’t recall. He takes a step, two, before turning back to scowl at you. “Are you coming, or what?”

Logically, you know what that’s supposed to mean. It’s meant to be an instruction, not a question—get up, put one foot in front of the other, follow him wherever it is he wants you to go. Easy, honestly, you’ve been walking since—well, since before you could ride a bike, at least. You frown. Can you ride a bike? It’s been a while, if so.

A half-grin sneaks unbidden onto your face at the phrase. It reminds you of a joke, or maybe a song, but you can’t place it. The grin vanishes as your brow furrows, trying to call up why it feels familiar, then warring with yourself not to remember. Who knows what remembering might do—to you, for them, with him.

A hand grips your arm and pulls you up. You realize he’d been talking.

“—for once in your goddamn—whatever, fucking, just—come on.” The hand tugs, and after a quick stumble, you find your footing and follow him blindly. You don’t recognize the trees around you, but that could probably be said for most trees. They all look the same. You doubt he’d agree, given how intently he carves a path through the woods, turning at apparently random places and doubling back without warning. More than once, you walk into his back, earning a dirty look.

You don’t know how long it takes. You want to call it days, but you suspect that’s an exaggeration. ‘Hours’ doesn’t feel correct either, but the way your legs begin to falter indicates that you may well have been walking for weeks. You begin to wish the bullet had stayed put.

You’re mostly just relieved that he’s leading the way, since it takes the blame off of you if they find your location. You doubt you could’ve given it away even if you wanted to.

Maybe you do want to. It would make all this wrap up a lot easier. The aftermath would be worse, but who’s to say they’d leave you alive to see it?

You ignore your use of the pronoun game. You don’t remember who ‘they’ are, exactly, but you don’t think he’s supposed to know about them. Or maybe it’s the other way around?

You’re relieved you don’t have anyone to ask about it. Whoever it would be, you don’t want to go and fuck them over, too.

Out of nowhere, a squat little house appears. You think the eaves are a little more rotted than when last you saw them, the piles of rotting leaves pushed up against the foundation a little bigger. He parks you outside the door, pressing down on your shoulders as if to anchor you there.

“Stay,” he commands, making a weighty effort to hold your eye. You stare through him, not wanting to see what might return your gaze. They never could get the faces quite right.

Finally, he releases you and sets off, grumbling some excuse about securing the area. You don’t move, barely even blink, as you listen to him go. His curses don’t stop, and you doubt they’re really for your benefit at this point.

Nothing is particularly familiar, which you hope is more due to time than anything else. You know it’s been years, easily—lifetimes, if we’re getting technical, but you also know those didn’t really count. It was before they even started with that when you lost count. Somewhere between the hundredth crown of thorns digging into your skull and the thousandth knife to the chest, it seemed pointless to keep track. That didn’t stop you from laughing every hundred or so, earning a more aggressive retribution on the aught-and-seventieth impact.

You suppose the blows to the head were the least offensive of the bunch. They balanced speed with efficiency, and an aim for knocking you out could, as often as not, send you straight to a flatline that never lasted long enough.

You put some of the nicest-looking rocks you can find into a pile a stone’s throw (ha) from the building. Then you climb up the outside of the house, finding footholds in spots where the wood had been eaten through. It’s only when you finally reach the top, huffing more than you probably need to, that you remember the wings folded under your shirt. Just as well—you’re pretty sure even a jump from this height wouldn’t be enough.

A groan forces its way past your lips before you can swallow it as you tug the shirt over your head. It sticks to your skin and drags against your face before catching on your horns. When you finally pull it free, your matted hair hits your back with a thwap. You grimace, surveying the ground below as your wings tentatively unfold themselves. The cool air against them feels so good that it almost hurts, like taking a piss you’ve been holding in for an hour too long. You hope you don’t piss yourself.

You give a few test flaps, letting your wings get used to motion again. When you go to toss your soiled shirt to the ground, you think better of it—might as well make the clean-up easy on him.

On your first real jump, your wings catch the breeze easily, ballooning up before slapping down to shoot you into the air. You pause there for a breath, watching the earth bob and sway underfoot. The rocks look so small from up here—just a little cluster, barely even a target. You go higher, higher, until even the house shrinks away. There’s motion out in the trees surrounding you, too singular to be more of the deer, and it freezes when you notice it. You suppose it may well be looking back at you, since it turns and makes a beeline for the house. You decide now is as good a time as any to do the same. You allow yourself a brief moment there in the sky, letting your wings take over as you wrap your head in the shirt. It reeks of sweat and dried blood, and is entirely too stiff for your comfort, but that shouldn’t be an issue for much longer.

The thought flicks through your mind that this might actually be happening, but you dismiss it outright. It was never real before—why should it be so now?

You secure the shirt by knotting it with your hair, ignoring how crunchy it all feels once it’s in place. Then, placing your trust in whatever asshole is in charge of this run, you aim your head downward and fold your wings tight against your back.

You feel the breeze plastering the shirt against your face. You plummet so fast that you don’t have time to notice the smell, much less to notice the feeling of bugs splattering against your bare torso.

You hear your name, somewhere between a curse and a prayer, then a crunch, then nothing. From behind the reddening shirt, you allow yourself to smile.

—

When you wake, you are on your back. You remember the rise and the fall, the bullet that came before it, the emptiness that came before that. You do not remember the pleasant emptiness that should have followed the fall. They were supposed to let you wallow in the nothingness, not bring you straight out of it. It’s not fair. It’s not fair.

You try to slam a fist down, but find you can’t move it. You can’t sit up, either—finally, you force your eyes open and take in your surroundings. The pathetic ceiling overhead matches the exterior from before, the outdated wallpaper a clear indication of—of someone’s idea of coziness. You barely catch yourself in time to stop from thinking his name.

You are on the rickety bed, moth-bitten blankets bunched up at your feet. Your arms are tied out to your sides, held down by what looks like gold cables. You doubt you can trust your eyes on that one, above all else. Your legs stretch out directly below you, and you suppose there’s probably a similar precaution there.

You lift your head and slam it back down into the pillow, earning none of the rewards you had historically found with that manner of impact. You do it again, again, but all you receive is more neck pain. Nothing to indicate you get to go take a break in the vacant space between flatline and revival. Again. You try to ignore the tears forcing their way out. Not from pain.

“—felt like being stupid! Just hurry up, you can’t expect me to—son of a bitch!” You hear his furious voice as footsteps thunder into the room. He throws his phone aside and reaches out with both hands, grabbing your horns and holding your head down. You snarl, lash out, try to crane your neck so you can get a good bite in, but he’s far too used to this shit. You don’t remember when he learned how to avoid it, but you remember being pissed about it, all the same.

“Don’t make me tie your head down, too.” He gives your horns a good, hard squeeze, before releasing them and leaning back. In the scuffle, you’d barely noticed what was draped over his shoulder—a clean grey shirt. It looks impossibly soft. You think you could sleep for decades in that thing.

He must see your expression change, because he glances at it, too, before holding it up. “You want this? Huh? You want to put a shirt on, be goddamn normal?”

You force yourself to close your eyes, calm your breathing. Either you lie and pretend not to care, in which case he gets annoyed, or you let him in, and then he gets to fuck you over however he wants. Both options apply whether this is real or not, so you set your jaw and ignore his continued prompting.

“Whatever. God, you’re impossible. Should’ve left the bullet where I found it. Asshole.” You feel the shirt land across your chest, then hear him stomp out of the room. You wish he’d left the bullet, too.

—

In the beginning, they focused on the physical. You found it incredibly easy to push their buttons on that front. Their kryptonite turned out to be a simple, “Harder, daddy.” They figured out pretty fast that they wouldn’t make much progress without trying something new. You didn’t even know what they wanted, so it was doubtful they’d make much progress anyway, but they never believed you.

More often than not, you were alone in a nondescript room. Sometimes they’d move you to another, sometimes they’d bring in new people—often, they’d pretend to be people you already did know. You spoke to none of them.

It was when they first let you go that you almost broke. You were at home, in bed, a bad dream already fading as you rubbed the sleep from your eyes. You heard voices in the kitchen, smelled coffee and bacon, both burnt. You didn’t know to doubt it, not yet.

You went downstairs, and were greeted with smiles and enthusiasm. All of them smiled— all of them. That was what shattered it. You frowned at him, and his smile grew, and you knew with unshakeable certainty that it was wrong.

You took the mug someone else offered you, shattered it against the wall, and slashed the shards across your throat, your arms, your blood mixing in with the coffee before they could react.

As their faces faded into black, he was still smiling.

—

You open your eyes. You are still restrained in the bed, but the grey shirt is now properly on your body, along with a fresh pair of basketball shorts. You don’t remember what you had on before, but you are grateful nonetheless.

A couple chairs have been pulled up to the side of the bed, one of them occupied. You opt for looking past them and out the window, where he is flanked by two more, having some conversation that involves a lot of hand gestures.

“Hey, you’re alive,” the voice in the chair says. It is almost identical to his, save for the softness not yet worn away by familiarity. Your eyes remain outside, watching a not-quite-rabbit inching along the tree line.

“Don’t suppose you feel like talking?” A hand waves at you, but your eyes don’t even try to follow it. “Lark said you haven’t said anything, which probably should’ve been our first clue something was up.” An attempt at a laugh, but it rings hollow. You force yourself not to look at the face—you don’t want to know what horrible way they’ve painted it this time, what they’ve added. What they’ve forgotten. A pause, then a knock on the window. Distantly, you notice the fist there, drawing the attention of the trio. They vanish, then reappear with a rush of questions in the doorway.

“Is he okay?”

“What happened?”

“Why didn’t—”

“Shut up!”

“Lark.”

“Sparrow.”

Well. So much for not letting them know specifics.

“He’s still not saying anything,” Sparrow tells the others, gesturing at you. There’s worry coloring his voice, one more thing to separate it from him—from Lark. The moment Lark expresses that sort of concern, that’s when you’ll be able to rest easy in the knowledge that this one isn’t real, either. You’re almost looking forward to it. “Could you just go over it from the top?”

“I already—” Lark drags a hand over his face and slumps into the other free chair. The other two file in behind him, leaning against the wall and saying nothing. Their faces are unreadable, not that you were really trying, anyway. “I don’t know, it’s like I told you on the phone. He appears, takes a tranq to the face, heals, I bring him here for questioning, turn around, and he’s doing a stage dive onto a pile of rocks.”

“Which didn’t kill him.”

Lark’s voice is acid-sweet. “No, Grant, it didn’t kill him. Thank you for that contribution.”

Grant scowls and sinks back on himself with a muttered, “Jeez, whatever.”

“Would’ve been better if it did kill him, but—”

“Brother!”

There it is. You were wondering why their names had sounded so wrong in each other’s mouths. You wonder if they would sound as poisonous on your own tongue.

“God, sorry! Sorry.” There’s real regret in his voice, but not for you. “Yeah. Didn’t kill him, and he’s still not talking.”

“Were his eyes like—like that before?”

“Not really. I mean, I don’t think so. He was moving around just fine, and obviously he was present enough to get himself into the sky in the first place. Maybe that knocked something loose.”

“Terry, could you cast Detect Thoughts? See what’s going on in there?”

The other person leaning against the wall sighs. “I mean, probably? He’ll definitely know I did it, though, and I don’t super love the idea of getting on his bad side.”

“He only has bad sides.”

“Brother.”

“It’s like you don’t even know me.” Identical huffs echo through the room. “It’ll be fine. Better than just sitting here and waiting for him to get over himself.”

Sparrow stands to offer Terry his chair. Terry slides in and waves at you. “Hi. Don’t mind me, uh, letting myself in.” He says something under his breath that you don’t bother trying to interpret. The room tints itself lilac for a beat, then returns to normal, leaving behind only the faint smell of dead flowers and melted plastic.

—

Sometimes, it took you years to put the pieces together. They would get everything so close to correct that you never thought to question it. Nobody would ask weirdly prying questions about information they should’ve already known, wounds healed at the correct speed, people felt more like living beings instead of pre-written dialogue boxes.

Those were the worst, looking back on them. You could live years in those, finding a nice girl in this one, reconciling both versions of yourself in that one, fixing the problem he’d unleashed in another. You would build a perfectly fine life, not spectacular or remarkable, but survivable. Something to make a home in.

Once, you had resolved everything. All of it, with all of them. You can never remember how you pulled it off, but you remember how it felt. He took the longest to come around, but when he did, you knew it was wrong. You knew it didn’t make sense to earn that level of relief, to feel so okay. You were screaming at yourself, even as you reached out, even as he accepted the hug with confusion, even as you grabbed the gun off his belt—

When you came to, surrounded by faces both annoyed and defeated, you crumpled. You wished you had let yourself stay there, enjoy it for even a moment longer, because you knew you’d never get back to it. You screamed until your voice ran ragged, until your fists were bloody pulps beating against the floor, the walls, your head.

It was your fault for believing the impossible, really.

—

Terry sits up as if a rod had been jammed down his spine. Sparrow reaches out a steadying hand, quickly followed by Lark demanding, “Well?”

Terry shakes his head, takes a second, looks at the still-motionless body sprawled over the bed. Seeing it now, he almost wants to laugh at the lengths they’d gone to. Tying him down, cuffing him with magic inhibitors? It’s ridiculous, really. He doubts the shamble before them could get as far as the door before collapsing.

“He didn’t give them anything,” Terry finally says, rubbing at his temple. He hadn’t seen the gunshot Lark spoke of, nor the apparent healing that came after, but it hurt all the same.

“Then how—” Grant begins, earning another shake of the head from Terry.

“I don’t know, but it wasn’t him.”

“So where’s he been this whole time, if not ratting us out to the entire plane?” Lark’s voice is laced with doubt, as if he doesn’t fully believe that’s not what had been happening.

“I don’t know where, specifically, but it’s been a lot longer for him than for us.”

“Like, time-wise?” Sparrow asks.

“I guess? He definitely lived, like, at least a few lifetimes, but—” Terry gestures at the body. “Clearly he hasn’t aged that many.”

“So, what, he was just out speedrunning life?”

“Speedrunning suicide, more like.” When no smart retort surfaces to this, Terry presses a knuckle to his forehead. “He’d live however long, then something would look off, I guess, and then he’d—y’know.” He gestures again, clearly not wanting to say the words.

“Off?” Grant echoes.

“I mean. Yeah, that’s how he labeled it. It was usually one of us.” Terry carefully avoids mentioning any name in particular. “We’d say something we shouldn’t have known, or asked about something we already knew about, or we did something weird—or, not we, but whoever it was that time—and something just clicked for him, I guess. He would decide it wasn’t real, and he’d go find the fastest way to—to end it.”

“Damn,” Lark says softly. You could almost imagine a twinge of regret in his voice.

It rips something free from where it sits trapped at the bottom of your throat. Your mouth opens, and you wail, because that’s it—that’s what confirms that this one isn’t real, either. You wasted your time again, only they won’t let you die this time. This one is permanent, and now you have to deal until they decide it’s been enough. You don’t know if your resolve will hold out that long. You don’t know what they want anymore, but you’re certain they’ll find a way to get it out of you.

You thrash, pulling at your restraints, hearing cracks as you arch up, your wings bursting out from beneath you, filling the room, impossibly large—too big, too big, they’re too big and there’s no air in here and you scream because god, god, do you just want it to be over, can’t they just kill you and be fucking done with it—

A pillow is pressed to your face, forced down against your nose and mouth as your wings beat helplessly against nothing. You curl your hands in on themselves, clawing at the mattress, at the restraints, at your own skin when they can reach it. Please, please, you don’t want this—

Mercifully, the voices fade into water, surrounding you, drowning you, shoving you into an empty pit and sealing the opening behind you.

—

You wake up. You wish you didn’t. You are still here. You wish you weren’t.

Terry leans forward from one of the chairs, a metal bucket in the other. When you opened your eyes, they were aimed somewhere on the ceiling, and you don’t see much cause to move them from there.

“Morning,” Terry says. You feel something warm against your head, and notice the pillow beneath you has a new texture—something wrapped around it, you suppose. Terry pulls his hand back, holding a sponge and dipping it into the bucket. “No offense, but you reeked,” he explains as he brings it back to your hair. You feel his fingers running through it, pulling at knots and tangles with expert care. You wish it didn’t feel as good as it does.

“Anyway, since you’re awake,” Terry continues as he squeezes the sponge between your horns, “I wanted to properly apologize for the whole Detect Thoughts thing. I mean, I’m pretty sure you’re awake, so I’m gonna assume you’re listening, too. So, uh, I don’t know how much of that you’d actually want me to see—probably none, I guess.” He pauses to loop a few strands of hair around the sponge before squeezing it again. A quiet dribble duh-duh-dums against the mattress. “We’re only keeping you restrained so you don’t hurt yourself, by the way. No offense, but there’s kind of a pattern with you there.”

You wonder why he keeps couching things like that.

“It didn’t seem like it was a spell—I mean, obviously, since it wasn’t—I don’t know, you know how spells are different than that.” You don’t, but it’s not like he’d notice if you didn’t humor him. You just want him to keep washing your hair. It’s nice, better than you deserve.

They must be listening, because after one more pull of his fingers, he sets the sponge in the bucket and stands up. He glances back at you for only a moment, just before he reaches the door, and perhaps he notices your gaze. You hope it’s only because your eyes are still open, and not because there’s something worse on your face.

“For what it’s worth, and however little you’ll believe it,” he finally says, “this one is real. I know you’ve heard it before—trust me, I know.” He manages a halfhearted laugh. “But, yeah. It’s not them this time. You’re out. We’ve got you.”

—

They weren’t all bad. A couple almost verged on being polite, apologetic. Their smiles fell between regretful and simpering as they spread your hands taut. They winced when the knife dropped, when one of your fingers rolled off into a corner.

You’d been a quick study on keeping your mouth shut. In the beginning, you would ramble and plead and spew every curse in the book. You would tell them everything that seemed harmless, but never specifics—no names, no histories, nothing that could be misconstrued as useful.

Sometimes the nice ones would go for the stumps at the ends of your palms, try to staunch the bleeding before the eventual mercy of a healing spell. Their partners would swat their hands away with the air of a kindergarten teacher eschewing the virtue of sharing.

The nice ones didn’t stay nice for long. You figured it was as much due to the company they kept as it was to your refusal to appreciate how friendly they were. How sympathetic they sounded as they moved on to your toes.

But, yes. You fell silent in due time. When you ran out of bullshit to feed them, you grew concerned that the habit of speaking when forced to scream might let something important slip out. Easier for it not to be happening.

And, truly, isn’t that what it all was, anyway? Every time they sent you somewhere else—made you think you were somewhere else, someone else, whatever. None of those were real. Who’s to say everything else was, either? Sure as hell wasn’t any truth to the sincerity around you.

When they figured out that the healing spells were enough to counteract you starving or dying of thirst, they stopped supplying you with food, with water. At least that made it easier to swallow your voice.

—

The paintings on the walls have been pulled down and turned away, leaving sun-stained wooden squares framing their old homes. You can smell smoke—bad smoke, like burning something best left buried six feet under. You were made to quit cigarettes cold turkey, the withdrawal symptoms long dampened by now, but you find yourself wishing for a quick light all the same.

Lark sits in the corner of the room, dust motes dancing around him in the sun. He’s stolen both of the chairs from beside your bed and has his foot propped against the spare. He drags his knife across a length of wood, shaving it down to a passable cylinder. Your eyes had been somewhere near his shoulder when you opened them. You don’t bother looking away.

He wears that same bandana over his mouth and squints when rogue wood shavings flutter past. A pile of similarly carved wood pieces sits on the floor beside his chair, most of them sharpened to semi-lethal points. You wonder whether he has any vampire-hunting plans coming up.

Satisfied, he places down his work and reaches for another, but when he sits back up, he sees you looking at him. Fine, near him.

“Morning, sunshine,” he says flatly, abandoning the new piece of wood in favor of picking at flecks on his knife.

You want to ask what the rancid burning smell is, but you know better. Asking leads to answers, which lead to questions in turn, and you don’t know how to shut yourself up once you’ve gotten going.

“Uh huh,” Lark says about nothing in particular. He pulls the bandana down to his neck and wipes a hand over his mouth. Nothing changes after the pass. “You think you’re gonna get over yourself anytime soon?” His raised brow reminds you that you’re still restrained. It occurs to you that, should you develop an itch, you’d be screwed.

“Grant feels bad for you,” he continues, his focus flitting between you and the knife. “Thinks it’s mean to keep you like that when you haven’t done anything.” He barks out a laugh. You feel something rising up within you to meet it. You don’t know if it’s a laugh of your own or a cry.

You force it back down.

“Yeah. Anyway, I got fucked with babysitting duty, started carving some rods for the walls, figured the guys might let me kill a goblin or two as an apology.” He glances at you, frowns. “Damn. Really thought one of those would’ve worked. Almost wanted to put one about nuts in there, but it came and went.” Another glance. Another frown. He places the knife in his lap, angling it just so.

“Nothing?”

Your eyes are still loosely resting on his shoulder, which sags at your lack of reaction.

“Come on, I’m really trying here.”

So are you.

—

Having been in a pre-Doodler landscape during some of your formative years, regardless of which version was in charge of your memory at the time, you were familiar with tier lists. They were a nice fallback when even shards of glass and boards of nails had grown trite.

The physical stuff rated at a B, maybe an A when they bothered to try something new. Kept it exciting for him, that sort of thing. Most of the runs were a C. The ones that got his hopes up started as S in the moment, but shot down to F once they were over.

When they let a swarm of hungry rats loose, you grabbed one and popped it in your mouth before they came back to check on you. After cleanup, you spat it out and pretended to talk to it. Not even aloud, just mouthing words as if you were playing with LEGOs while trying to avoid being noticed playing pretend. You explained your tier list to the rat in that voiceless manner, holding it in place with one finger on its tail so it couldn’t escape. A captive audience, so to speak.

You wanted to feel bad, keeping it around and out of their sight when it clearly wanted to leave, but you were so damn lonely. It was you and that rat against the world, and it was that rat and the world against you. You ignored the prickling sensation of deja vu every time the rat gave up on an escape attempt.

You rarely slept—or, at least, they rarely allowed you the chance. Once, though, they slipped up, forgot to treat you to the standard array of low-scale harassment for the night shift. It was only a moment, but when your eyes snapped back open, the rat was gone. You tried not to care, but the pins under your nails the next day hurt just a little more than usual.

—

Sparrow is waiting for you when you wake up. He is leaning forward on his chair, apparently ready for you to make the slightest move in the wrong direction. As before, your eyes are on the ceiling, but you don’t need to move them to notice the change. Your arms are now down at your sides, the golden chains gone. You feel a similar absence of weight pulling at your ankles.

You give a test shake to your limbs, flexing your fingers and toes, pulling your knees and elbows in toward you. Nothing halts your movements, but Sparrow sits up a little straighter.

“Please don’t do anything stupid,” he says before you can do anything further. You aren’t sure what they would consider ‘stupid’ at this point, but you know what the guys would consider ‘stupid,’ and you figure it wouldn’t hurt to postpone those plans for a while. You push yourself upright and cross your legs. Your eyes are along for the ride, and land somewhere near the door. Sparrow is a brown smudge at the edge of your vision.

“You don’t have to talk,” he continues, “but it would really help.”

You turn your head in his direction. Your chin tilts up of its own accord, keeping him always just out of focus. You still don’t want to see his face. They aren’t usually this persistent.

“Or we can just sit here. Grant and Terry left to deal with an incursion, but Lark’s out blowing off steam.” So don’t try anything, he doesn’t have to say.

“And, um, before he left, Terry mentioned that you might not think this is real?” His voice is uncertain, doubtful that he was remembering it correctly. “I don’t know how to convince you that it is, but I know I’m real, if that helps at all.” It doesn’t, but if it did, you’d appreciate the effort. You don’t know how to convince yourself, either.

“Sometimes, when I’m too in my head,” he goes on, “I like to Wild Shape. Just get out of the everything for a minute. I don’t think you ever picked that one up, but if it helps to have me not be a person—or, like, not not a person, but—” He shakes his head. “This would be a lot easier if you would fill in some of the blanks of the conversation.”

You are inclined to agree.

“Anyway, I’m not doing anything, and I think I, personally, would feel better if I could stop listening to my thoughts, so I’m going to go ahead and do that, and you can feel free to lose your absolute shit if it’s a problem for you.” Your eyes flicker in his direction, unaccustomed to Sparrow being the twin dropping curses for fun. He grins back at you.

When fur begins sprouting from his arms, you turn your head away. You’d never liked looking at him or his dad shifting, and mixing that with almost observing his face puts you on edge. Instead, you try to focus on the room, try to make your eyes dial back in to the walls, rather than something twenty feet beyond them. The pictures are in their old places, the walls apparently unchanged during their absence. One is of a bird soaring among some too-green trees. When you look back at Sparrow, the same bird is perched on the back of the chair, cocking its head at you. You’re pretty sure it’s a parrot, but it’s still almost enough to make you smile. Almost.

The parrot turns to follow your gaze toward the picture behind it—this one of a placid lake dotted with frogs on lilypads. The parrot squelches and ruffles before smoothing into one of those same frogs. Its weird frog chin expands, making a frown tug at your lips. You turn your head once more, this time finding the seam where the wall meets the floor. There are a few holes, but certainly less than you’d expected—you assume that’s what Lark had been doing with the wood he was carving.

It’s a long time before you make yourself look back at where Sparrow had been sitting, but the chair is empty when you finally do. You keep your eyes in that direction, waiting to notice any motion to clue you in to his disappearance. They’d never made people outright vanish before. They’d also never let any of the guys use spells, but you were ignoring that part. First time for everything, so first time for this. Fine.

At last, you feel something scratching on your hand where it rests on the mattress. You glance down to see a mouse perched there on its hind legs, its hands gathered together as if in supplication. Its eyes flash with familiar mischief. This is all the warning you get before it—Sparrow, you now recognize—scrabbles up your arm to perch on your shoulder. Again, you feel a flash of deja vu, but not for the rat. For something else, something you’re not convinced was ever yours to remember in the first place.

You feel tiny tugs along your scalp, and will your eyes to cooperate at least a little bit in looking where you want them to. It’s enough to see twitching strands of hair worked between two pink paws. Sparrow The Rat is braiding your hair. Sure, why not?

You suppose it’s not the worst thing they’ve ever done in keeping you alive.

—

At one point, you thought you knew what they wanted. It took you years to figure out, and when it crossed your mind, you didn’t even see it for the poison it was. You had been having a movie night with the guys, and the loser vote had won out in favor of some garbage fantasy flick you were pretending to hate. You weren’t against looking at the goofily-dressed men rushing into battle with swords brandished and jaws set, but both versions of you had seen more than enough of the real thing to be tired of the inaccuracies. Too many of them survived, too many were completely untouched by the volleys of arrows—none of it tracked, and watching every single one make it out grew tiresome. You excused yourself to refresh the bowl of popcorn.

Staring into the microwave, you didn’t notice Lark until he was upon you, elbowing you out of the way to get at the empty bowl. Aside from the unpopped seeds the last bag had produced, anyway. He grabbed a couple and tossed them back like dry-swallowing pills, then laughed at your face. You shoved him out of the way so you could continue watching the numbers tick down.

Everyone had been understanding of your habits after they’d broken you out. You always had to make sure everything added up, or else—you never really knew ‘or else’ what. You just knew that everything had that ‘or else’ glued to the back of it, and to avoid finding out, you counted. You snatched people’s hands to verify the number of fingers, interrupted guitar sessions to double-check that there were six strings, commandeered every six- and twelve-pack for inspection before anyone else could get to them. They let you do this without interruption, and Lark was no different in letting you resume your observation of the microwave.

Watching the time tick down in proper order, not skipping or repeating any numbers, you felt something loosen in your chest. Yes, this was correct, this was all how it was meant to be. It was as not-wrong as it could get, all things considered, and the wrongs left over were no worse than usual.

The timer hit one, and you opened the door before it could start beeping. The microwave was a shitty model no one felt like replacing, where it would insist on doing its whole song once it began. Everybody had their own method in keeping it quiet. Yours was to never let it hit zero.

As you pried the bag open and ignored the burn of the paper on your skin, Lark asked some idle question behind you, something innocuous and stupid about the movie you had both abandoned. Looking back, you doubt you could remember what it was if you tried, but at the moment, it didn’t hit right away. It was something about before, back in that other place, before everything had gone to shit, and it was stupid. That’s what stuck, is that it was a stupid question, something like ‘how many days are there in October?’ Something so painfully unsuspecting and ridiculous that it deserved an incredulous answer first, and endless ridicule second.

You went to answer, but your voice caught in your throat as you finished shaking out the bag into the bowl. Not a single kernel was unpopped. They were all perfectly puffed, as if from a movie theater.

Lark made a prompting noise at your lack of response. Instead of finishing what you had begun to say, you put the empty bag down as gently as a baby bird. Then you turn, walk past him, grab the kitchen scissors from the block on the counter, and slam your chin down for stability.

“Whoa, what are you—”

You stick your tongue out and snip it clean off.

“Jesus, what the fuck, man!” When you turn, Lark has his hands up, somewhere between defense and wanting to help. His eyes look more frustrated than upset. You spit your tongue onto the floor and smile at him, relishing the feeling of the blood seeping between your teeth and over your lips.

—

Admittedly, you had been proud of it at the time. They couldn’t force you to speak if you physically couldn’t, right? Only, of course, your tongue was still there when you woke up. It’s still there now, but it doesn’t change how impossible speech feels at the moment.

Skinny braids dangle along the lowest layers of your hair, coming undone at the ends and loose in the middle. You had never really gone back to sleep while Sparrow worked, instead just staring off into space and trying not to think about much of anything. It was not successful.

Lark sits in the chair, again using the other as a footrest. His hair is tied back and his face uncovered. A snake is draped across his shoulders, and you have more than a passing suspicion of who it actually is, but you don’t point it out. Lark is watching you closely, a simple pistol resting on one leg. When he sees you apparently lucid, he lifts the snake from around his neck and places it on the extra chair. The snake buries its nose under its—neck? Body? Tail? You aren’t really sure where the parts trade off, but Sparrow doesn’t seem to stir.

Lark stands and holds the gun out to you. After a moment of hesitation, you take it.

“Go ahead,” he says. “Clearly you don’t believe this is happening, and the rest of us have better stuff to do than convince you not to kill yourself. So save us all some time, yeah?”

When you make no move, not bothering to so much as have an expression, he reaches out and curls your hand around the grip, then raises your arm until it’s pointed at your forehead.

“It’s not tranqs this time. It’s legit. If you’re so sure dying is your way out, fine, but just get on with it.”

You want to. God, but you want to. It would be so easy, he’s all but pulled the trigger for you. But.

But.

They never gave you the option before. It was always a surprise when you figured their game out, no matter how long it took. Even to the last, they were always trying to insist it was real, to string you along until you gave them what they wanted. You never knew what they wanted, but they always asked.

Lark isn’t asking. He’s giving you the option, for absolutely nothing in return. Your index finger quivers, brushes the trigger, pets it like you used to pet that rat’s little head. You want to.

Lark’s face is carefully neutral, but he has never been good at keeping his eyes calm. You had long suspected that was why he preferred the bandana—one less giveaway—but the eyes were always obvious. Painfully so. He fully expects you to pull the trigger, and he wants to stop you, but he will not. Cannot.

“Do it!” he demands. His hand is still on your arm, and he bumps it forward, lets the mouth of the gun tap your skin. “If you’re gonna kill yourself anyway, just get it over with!”

You hold it there. Consider. It’s probably not real. It’s never been real before.

They’d never gotten his eyes right before.

Even if it’s not real, you suppose it might not be so miserable this time, if they’ve at least learned to get the eyes right. Damn if you haven’t missed those eyes. Narrowed and pissed off, even now, still putting on a facade of impatience. The edge in his voice is impossible to disguise.

You lower the gun to your lap and stare at it. You can’t take that expression, but you don’t need to look to feel the relief flooding through him as he carefully pries the gun out of your hand. He chucks it out the door the moment it’s out of reach. You almost want to make a joke about gun safety, but instead, you just look back up at him, and he still looks the same.

“Don’t fuckin’ kill yourself,” he says at last, before punching you in the shoulder. You let yourself roll back with it, landing on your side and staring at the window. Outside, the sun is just beginning to drop below the tree line, and you feel a wave of exhaustion. Hope was usually the worst part, but you really wanted this one to be real. Just this once.