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Rain spits pitifully at the Earth.
Neon lights of New York city reflect in each falling raindrop. The clouds are rolling in slowly, carrying the weight of a thousand grieving souls. Light buries beneath them, as the skies slowly begin to cry.
The night is very grey. Purple and red highlight the back alleys of narrow New York streets, white lights and cigarette smoke. It reeked of sorrow. Come morning, maybe everyone would forget anything ever happened and it could all be written off as a distant fever dream.
Some, however, may never forget. The burden is forever their own.
Puddles are forming on the rugged concrete. Boots stomp through them, a chain link fence still rattling after the climber jumped off. Traffic roars nearby. The aftermath of death lingers in the air, blood congealing on a nearby corpse. The bins reek of rotting trash. Cassian blocks it out with his mask, clutching the gun he’d used to bludgeon the person tight in his hand.
He paused upon hearing a soft skittering along a rooftop. His senses, fine tuned from years of wear, carefully calculate the exact location of his stalker. Blindly, he flings the armed-arm out and shoots. A laser-like bullet flies and burns crisply into a brick wall of the building behind him.
“Almost hit me that time,” came the flimsy tone. Cassian sighed and lowered the gun, turning his head to look at the crouched figure.
“Shouldn’t you be finding some better purpose or cosmic reason of being, ‘Nel?” He asked, heavy with irritation. His voice is deep, modulated from his rebreather.
Funnel cocked his head, looking like a wild animal. His hair was collecting the slow falling raindrops, claws gripping the ledge of the roof. “Sounds too important. We both know I’m not here for long,”
He crawled down the side of the building, hooking himself onto the railing of a lower fire escape. “‘Sides, you looked like you could use the company.”
His voice is… hopeful, Cassian notes. But its torn on its vocal cords and pulled taut by his larynx. Years of abuse and pain. His eyes flick to the cracks in his mask. “I do not,” The rain gets a little heavier. Cassian holsters his gun and removes his rebreather. “If I did, I’d probably have gone with Ramirez. Not you.”
A sigh escapes his… adversary, and his shoulders visibly hunch. “Was afraid you were gonna say something like that.”
Funnel swung himself down and stuck his feet to the underside of the fire escape, peering out at Cassian. His movements were rigid, as if painful. He never seemed to be able to stop moving. The constant moving brought attention to the scattered stitching on his skin. He'd seen him sew it; his skin had disturbingly torn like cloth, and Funnel had just stitched it right back up as if nothing happened.
Cassian watched him for a moment, brows creasing slowly with concern. “You should go to a hospital. Get help.”
“Is there any help left for us?” Funnel asked, voice rough and accompanied by a strained laugh.
He considered the question for a moment. Cassian rubbed his face and walked over to the fire escape. His boots created loud, echoing footsteps in the alley and stopped about a foot away from Funnel. “Carter… there’s nothing for us anymore. That doesn’t mean you should let yourself rot and go to waste.”
Funnel stares at him, silent and unnervingly still. He lets his head fall back a bit more, long tangled hair jostling in heaps. His throat looks hollow and gaunt. All of him does, really. Cassian’s eyes drift further up to his arms and he can see the bones strain against his muscles.
“Can’t we go back?” he asks finally. Funnels’ voice is much quieter, the mandibles on his mask clinging to it like they were afraid to let it go.
Cassian reaches up and does the clasp on the back of it anyway. It falls into his hands and he holds it; it’s almost like a comedy mask. Weightless in his hands. The inside of it is stained with rust and brown. Worn around the edges. His fingers grip it tight.
“You know we can’t,” Cassian stepped closer and looked Carter in the eyes, “It’s pointless to try. Solus is dead; there’s nothing for us. Laika is off to try to help people, maybe you should focus on yourself first.”
Carter’s eyes are unblinking and remorseful. No longer the honey amber they once had been, much duller and sharper. After all this, all this drama and war, Cassian thinks maybe it’d be nice to see his old eyes again. Less sunken in, his cheeks fuller and his skin vacant of its calluses and stitching.
“I…” Carter struggles for speech for a moment. Cassian thinks he can see the beginnings of tears glistening in his eyes. “I don’t know how much of me is left to fix.”
The statement, mournful and heavy, struck a cord inside Cassian. How true it was; lacking sufficient self and worrying about how… concrete anything is anymore. What they once were, their boisterous young teenage selves, colourful as they were timeless. Now they were thin, soggy cardboard disguises of what once was. Each raindrop felt like acid burning its claim into their skin.
“You heard what Solus said,” Carter continued, voice just shy of shaking, “I’m not going to last forever. I’m… unstable.”
When they’d defeated Solus, he’d merely been a false ambition cloaked and shrouded in misery of the souls he collected. An android walking on stilts; a puppet pulling its own strings. A thousand souls crying for a body to return to, emotions caught in a bottle. They finally freed them upon breaking his seal and the colourful spirits flew out in all directions. It was appalling to think how many people might be roaming around, dull and greyed out. Because of him.
Cassian was panting, shoulders heavy. He dropped his gun and took a deep inhale of ectoplasm. Carter watched as it flooded the tubes connected to his pack, like a lava lamp. Pumping and glowing purple, illuminating the dusty space.
“You don’t know that,” Cassian chided. It was in vain.
It’d taken the three of them to take him down. For someone lacking a physical body, he sure was tough to beat. He knew all their moves, their secrets and nightmares and regrets. Every part of themselves, sometimes things they didn’t know.
Cassian got his soul back; Laika got her emotions back; Carter got a countdown.
“Hey, I’m sure that was just a scare tactic! To, you know, scare you,” Laika’s voice was optimistic, but it lacked her usual hollowness. It was sad, almost. She hadn’t really sounded sad before.
They all stood outside near the broken down tunnel systems, in a cover-up warehouse. Carter’s hands trembled at his sides and Cassian was distantly silent. It’d been a long day. Carter couldn’t blame him for the silence—after all, not every day you get your very essence back after not even knowing you’d lost it.
During that moment, Carter hadn’t said anything at all. Just watched in silence as Cassian up and left, walking into the city without a word. Laika had followed soon after with an awkward ‘see you later,’ and ran off.
It didn’t take long for Carter to follow one.
But now, instead of silence, he just responds with,
“I think he’s right,” Carter said, flexing his hands. “I don’t think I have a lot of time left. Not because of my body deteriorating or falling apart. I just don’t know if I can handle living after this.”
Carter visibly swallows. His eyes fall shut and he lets himself breathe. He’s scared. It’s obvious he’s scared. A third of his life has been ripped away and shoved into a blender, and the moment he’s freed from the osmium chains holding him down—pulled right back to hell. It’s a trick question. Because Carter isn’t free, he never will be.
He won’t help people like Laika will. He won’t find himself and fix his mistakes. He won’t do any of that, because he’s walking a very thin tightrope while juggling life on one finger. A life of pain and misery and sinking, rotting sorrow. Carter can feel venom sudsing hot around the lining of his throat.
“I can’t get help,” he croaked again. Cassian believes him. An MRI would do more harm than good to him at this rate.
Cassian lightly touches his coarse hair. “Don’t die because that motherfucker said you would. Don’t die because things change, Cal. You give up too quickly nowadays,” Cassian’s hand brushes through the strands of dusty brown hair, to the lines of his forehead. He smooths his fingers over the crease in his brow, the crooked edge of his nose. “I know that locked in that stupid head of yours, the Carter I knew is still there.”
His eyes flutter and Carter breathes in, and out. His lips quiver and his jaw tightens. Cassian’s words hit like a brick, and his head goes woozy and light. Nausea clouds his insides. He’s lost, so lost that he can’t find a single cohesive thought in his mind. Just Cassian, this fuckass journey he’s been pulled through and the aching call of his bones for rest.
Nestled deep in his cavity of a chest is regret, and a small child-sized light. It’s dimming even now. Cassian’s touch alights a memory, bringing a part of him to life, even just for a brief moment of warmth. This isn’t the same hand that grabbed his years ago, this isn’t the same man he once knew. The differences are stark.
Carter inhales sharply. He feels the need to cry, scream and coil into a ball. It’s not dissimilar to the ravenous cannibalistic urges he felt for so long after his initial escape.
It’s not fair, he wants to scream.
“I don’t—I can’t lose you again.”
Maybe it’s the wrong thing to say. Maybe it’s selfish. Carter feels he doesn’t deserve to keep Cassian linked by his arm and glued to his side. Not when Cassian has done nothing; while he’s done every bad thing. He doesn’t deserve the gracious touch of his fingertips, or the healing gaze of a former best friend.
The soft brush against his forehead is warm but not at all unwelcome. Cassian presses their foreheads together, hand still on Carter’s cheek. He doesn’t say anything, but Carter knows exactly what it means.
“I’ll find you again,” Cassian quietly promises, and Carer bites back a sob. What has he done to deserve this?
It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t, it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Carter begs to wail as much, try to justify his injustice.
“That’s bullshit,” he muttered bitterly. “Don’t you get it? After this, there won’t be any again.”
Cassian gave a frustrated noise and looked up at him. “Would you quit being so pessimistic? I get that we just freed ourselves and who knows how many others from that– that freakshow, but it doesn’t mean you get to be all mopey and depressed. I know you’re in pain, Carter. I hate that you are. But following me is hurting both of us. I can’t give you what you need.”
The rainfall grows heavy. A steady downpour, surrounding them and enclosing them in encroaching, claustrophobic walls. Carter’s claws dig into the metal grating of the fire escape. It’s not fair.
They stand there, unmoving and unspeaking. Carter feels Cassian’s presence like a paper weight on his senses. He feels each breath and each mournful blink.
Carter opens his eyes one more time to look at him. “Where will you go?” he asked instead, his tongue dry and throat scratchy. He doesn’t ask out of genuine interest, rather out of concern for just how far apart they might be. The idea of dying alone doesn't soothe his fears.
A beat. “Somewhere I can… do better.” It’s so simple, but Carter already feels like he’s drowning.
He takes a harrowing breath. It was always going to be this way. If he’d never been kidnapped, if they’d never been taken, maybe they could’ve sought a future with each other. Friends, maybe more. They wouldn’t have been split by the seam and forced apart at the forked road. Carter wouldn’t be hanging on death’s doorstep, with Cassian unable to cross it.
Something unfurls itself in his gut. Searing hot and vengeful. It reaches its claws, tearing forcefully at his muscles and skin, trying to get out. To reach, reach out and latch onto the last shred of childhood they still had. Carter didn’t want to live in a New York without Cassian. He couldn’t. So much of his life, so many memories were formed only because of his best friend. And yet here they stood on opposing sides, again, albeit for very different reasons now.
He wants to spin a web, cover it with debris and keep Cassian locked inside. He wants to wrap him in thick webbing and keep him to himself, hidden away and his. Only his. Reliving their best times, talking and reminiscing and being together. Just being.
Something else inside wants to take it further than that.
Carter fails to hold in a pathetic keen. He almost loses grip on the fire escape. Pain wracks his form and he flinches, mandibles coiling around his mouth. He schools his expression to force the cries away. It’s not enough, because Cassian is touching his mandibles and pushing them from his lips.
“I’m sorry,” Carter manages to bite out. “I don’t wanna keep holding you back. I don’t wanna be the reason you fall behind everyone else anymore.”
He’s barely keeping it together at this point. He forces his eyes to look at Cass, taking in the deep cut scars on his face that had come from Carter’s own hands. His hair coiled and bound into a bun, corded in locs falling on his shoulders. Vitiligo painted his face like he was made to be an artist’s muse.
Fuck, if he could take it all back he would.
“It’s okay,” Cassian tells him, sounding like he truly believes it himself. “I forgive you. Okay? I do.”
Carter takes in his sincerity.
“You shouldn’t,” he muttered wryly, tilting his chin a bit further to look at him clearer. His vision blurred, just briefly before he blinked it away.
“Well, I do, so stop whining would you?” Cassian gave an indignant huff and grabbed Carter’s face firmly. It was so… him . Just for a second, Carter felt like if he closed his eyes, he’d be hanging from their middle school’s monkey bars with Cassian calling him stupid all over again.
But he wasn’t. And this wasn’t middle school. They were 19, they were older and he couldn’t stop time even if he wanted to. If he reached out, just now, just for a second—
Time feels like threaded strings weaving into a giant web, hung in between branches of the oldest, tallest tree. It feels everlasting, extensive in its reach. It slips between Carter’s fingers and flows right into the next thread.
Here, he lets his vision adjust and he looks longingly at Cassian. He nudges his head forward, leaning up on his haunches. Maybe, just maybe if he’s desperate enough, he can break the film plastered between them that blurs his sight.
His nose bristles and twitches at the touch; a soft brush against Cassian’s. The latter, leaning up and looking contemplative. Distant. Too distant.
Carter, he longs to reach and tug and pull him back. Right back into his grasp and greedily shovel piece after piece into his salivating maw; keep him with him forever.
Selfishly.
“Get help.” Cassian speaks softly. So softly. It almost hurts more than the gravity of the situation.
Carter doesn’t grace it with an answer—there’s nothing he can say. What would he say? “Stay, run away with me and we can heal together?” Right.
Desperate. Determined. Losing hope. Carter presses their noses together more insistently. It hurts, he knows it hurts both of them and there’s not much left to be done between them. What’s done is done. What’s been said has been said.
Wordlessly, the warmth from his cheek disappears and following does the tingle on his nose. Carter clings to the fire escape to force himself to keep sticking and avoid falling, chasing after Cassian like he has so many times before. He again wants to beg and grovel and plead and proclaim how unfair it all is.
Deep down, he knows they both earned their freedom. Cassian has earned his solidarity and that’s something Carter has to learn to live with. He’s not sure he can.
The rain is pooling in cracks in the pavement, leaking through the grates of the fire escape and slowly dripping onto Carter. There’s a distant cry of thunder. Briefly, Carter reconsiders the help option. His hope is dwindling.
“You won’t forget me?” He managed at last, watching Cassian walk away through tears. “Promise. Please.”
His steps pause, an agonizing hesitance framing his stance. His shoulders rise on inhale, “I won’t. I promise.”
That seems to be all Carter needs before he looks away, frame shaking with unshed, forming grief. He squeezes his eyes shut, focusing in on the rain and ambient sounds instead of the splashing footsteps getting further and further away.
The further they get, the more he breaks. Inside, he feels his heart tear into stringy pieces. Irreparable. A dozen memories of a lifetime he will never live pass through his mind like bullet trains. Carter’s eyes land on his mask; lying discarded beneath him on the ground and collecting the raindrops,
He bit into his lip hard, before he buried his face in his hands and screamed.