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Chapter Text

The blade of the Great Knife is clean. 

In fact, it's been spotless for over twenty years.

It leans against the peeling apartment wallpaper. The worker's thick hands rest on it, and the grime under his nails and bulging veins in his hands seem completely unnecessary now. He's been, for lack of a better word, unemployed. 

If someone were to look closely, they might even see dust beginning to form around his boots. The air is thick with mold. 

The walls of the building absorb every creak, and convert it to choking silence. 

Decades ago, the monster had routine. He'd become conscious somewhere. Not just anywhere, but somewhere that had meaning for James. An apartment filled with rot. A hotel where something was buried. 

Remain still, frozen in time, until Silent Hill decided he was needed, and he could sense that that man was around. No one forced him to do it; it was just his known purpose. His existence was the answer to the question, "Do you realize what you've done?"

He wasn't a person. He was an entity that existed to serve judgement; consequences wrought in iron and flesh. 

James accepted what he'd done at the end of it all. 

Pyramid Head has never been alive. But he still exists, even if he no longer needs to.

The strangest thing, to him, is that he keeps moving anyway. He still drags the blade, paces the halls and awakens, like clockwork, into a consciousness he never had the sentience to ask for.

He doesn't have to do it. He could, by all means, stand still and never move again. It wouldn't make him 'sad', or 'bored'. 

It would certainly be easier to just drop the knife.

But he doesn't. He keeps his routine as the executioner as if nothing ever changed.

The town still has the same respect it always held for him. Where he walks, the floors don't creak. The wind doesn't blow, and the sun won't look. The places he occupies become claustrophobic when they'd otherwise be forgettable. The doors lock behind him, yet no one is trapped.

He makes his rounds and finds dead ends where there were open paths before. They're not meant for him, of course. But you'd be forgiven for thinking they were.

You see him before you know what you're looking at.

It feels like all the oxygen has been sucked out of the room. The shadows around him--it--are so dark that they look fake.

Your brain takes a backseat, and you stop short before you can even make the decision to run. Deer in headlights. 

He's not moving, either. 

You should be scared, but you aren't. You feel...shame. Mortified. 

You know these things to be true just by looking at him: That he doesn't speak. That he isn't human. That he is untouchable and represents something that was never meant for your eyes.

The dilapidated apartment feels less like a shack right now, and more like a cathedral with blood on the walls. 

And you? You've interrupted God.

You know that the smart thing would be to run, but you can't stop staring. This isn't what you expected an angel to look like, but his presence feels sacred. Holy. You can't help but just...revere him. 

He has no eyes to look at you with, but you feel the weight of them anyway. 

There is nothing merciful in that helmet. But there is nothing cruel, either.

He is Judgement given form.

The metal helmet shifts with a groan. He's tilting his head...but just barely. You get the sense that he's measuring you, but doesn't know what to do. You are a sinner...but not his sinner. 

You should be able to hear your heartbeat in your ears, but you can't. The silence is just too loud.

You keep staring at his hand, but it never tightens around the blade. In your head, you play back a compilation of every time you talked behind someone's back, every time you wished death on a person, every time you didn't keep a promise. He'll catch you out, and then you'll pay. 

But he doesn't. He looks at you like you're a weird animal, not like you're an intruder or a prisoner on death row. 

Then, he lifts his hand.

The god-thing lets go of the sword, and its thick fingers curl into a fist as if holding its hand like that is all it knows how to do.

You can't find the words to respond. This feels...inappropriate. Like he's bowing to you, not the other way around. You should be begging for your life. 

Instead, you take a step closer. Somewhere deep inside the metal prison, you hear it breathe.

Chapter Text

You take the step.

The floorboard beneath your foot doesn't creak. It should. Everything in this building protests when touched, but the space around him swallows sound completely.

His hand remains raised. Thick fingers, still curled as if they remember holding something important. The Great Knife leans forgotten against the wall. You realize this might be the first time in decades that he's let it go.

You're close enough now to see the rust stains on his apron. Close enough to notice that his breathing has rhythm. In, out. Steady. Human.

He's not human. He is judgment made flesh, consequence walking upright. But standing here, watching him tilt his metal head at you, he seems almost lost.

The apartment walls press closer. Not threatening. Intimate. A confessional booth where the priest has forgotten his lines.

You raise your own hand.

The gesture feels ridiculous the moment you do it. What are you, waving hello to death itself? But something in his posture shifts. His helmet turns a fraction more toward you, and you hear that breathing again, deeper now, and something like a confused gasp. 

His other hand lifts to match yours; it's a very slow movement. Palm facing palm across three feet of stale air.

You should be on your knees. He should be passing judgment, cutting your head off, whatever. Instead, you're both standing in a rotting apartment playing mirror-mirror, and it feels so special.

The silence between you grows thick. Not oppressive. Expectant.

He takes a step toward you, and you don't run.

You both stand there, close enough that you could reach out and touch that rust-stained apron, close enough to see where the metal of his helmet has worn smooth from decades of movement. Close enough to understand that he's as trapped in this moment as you are.

Neither of you knows what you're supposed to do now.

He lowers his hand first. You follow. It feels natural.

His head tilts again, and you realize he's looking at your face. Studying you the way someone stares into fogged glass. What's he trying to see?

You understand, suddenly, why he didn't kill you. Neither of you have a job to do here.

He has no one left to judge...you have no sins that belong to him. You're standing in the ruins of someone else's story, two leftover pieces that don't fit anywhere.

The apartment settles around you both, and for a few seconds, it feels like just some hoarder's room and not hell.

He turns away from you and walks to the window. His boots make no sound on the water-damaged floorboards. At the window, he stops, his helmet tilted toward the glass.

He looks almost thoughtful.

You walk over and stand beside him. Outside, Silent Hill looks like an old, gray photograph. Empty streets, empty windows, empty of everything except the weight of what used to be.

The glass is coated with mold and dirt, but you can still make out the skeletal remains of streetlights, the hollow shells of cars that never moved since they materialized in someone else's brain.

You want to ask him what he's planning on doing with his forced existence. His job's over. How's he planning on spending the next however many millennia?

But you don't. He's not stupid, and both of you know the answer is, "This."

Chapter Text

The window frames nothing. Grey light filters through glass that hasn't been cleaned in years, or perhaps decades, or perhaps forever. Dust settles in layers along the windowsill, thick as fingernail clippings. A wall calendar hangs three feet away, its pages yellowed and curling at the edges. The clock above the door stopped at 3:17. Morning or evening, impossible to tell.

You stand beside him in the silence that follows understanding, watching the empty streets of Silent Hill stretch toward horizons that promise nothing.

His breathing is the only sound. Slow, deliberate, like a machine built for endurance rather than efficiency. The pyramid helmet catches what little light filters through the fog, reflecting it back as dull metal certainty. He has been standing here for how long? Minutes? Hours? The distinction dissolved somewhere between when he recognized you and this fragile moment.

Two empty cavities recognize their kinship in a dead space. You both turn at the sound of settling pipes in the walls. Your breathing falls into rhythm...inhale for four counts, exhale for six. Neither of you planned to sync up your breathing, but you are.

You touch the cold glass as he looks outside, and you find that your breaths are slow now. You swallow a couple of times, trying to find the right way to speak, but speaking feels wrong. This shared loneliness feels... safe. Comfy, even. 

You move your hand down and brush against the windowsill, coating your fingers in dust.

The pyramid shifts in a way that seems almost like he's settling in. 

The streetlights below flicker in sequence; first the corner lamp, then the one by the pharmacy, then the distant glow near the church. The fog swirls counterclockwise around the buildings, and somewhere in the static from an abandoned radio, you hear something that might almost be music.

The fluorescent lights in the apartment steady, no longer buzzing with the harsh dental-office frequency but humming something more homey. The linoleum beneath your feet seems to warm by degrees.

"We don't have to stay here," you eventually say.

You hear his breathing get a bit louder, and he seems to freeze up. It's the pause of a machine asked to contradict its programming.

After what seems like an eternity, he turns from the window and begins to walk away. His helmet groans as if it's being bent.

You follow. This was your idea, after all, and it wouldn't be fair to not share in this experience when it's being offered to you. This is unmapped territory.

The door opens to corridors--hospital corridors, somehow-- you feel like you've seen before, in dreams. You're surprised that the doors swing open quietly instead of on grating, creaking hinges. The elevator cable settles above your head, and you notice the walls seem to breathe. But you're not on drugs, at least you don't think you are.

You reach the stairwell. He pauses at the threshold, and you understand that instead of following some kind of a routine, he's thinking. He's deciding which way to go.

He chooses down, and you follow. Every step you take is warm where he stepped. The sound bounces off walls and breaks the silence. It's refreshingly loud.

Something shifts in the walls around you.

Three flights down, the stairwell door won't budge. The handle turns, but the door remains sealed as if the building itself is unwilling to offer a path. The fluorescent light above flickers once, twice, then dies completely.

You hear his breathing in the pitch black after the lights go out. He moves closer, and to your surprise him being there feels comforting. For a moment, you wonder what would happen if that breathing simply stopped. Can he choose to? Does he have to?

Somewhere in your mind, you hear Push. Four hands press against unwilling steel. Two of them are yours.

The door finally gives.

The corridor beyond hums softly. The hospital first floor's linoleum shows scuff marks from shoes that walked with purpose rather than endless circles. The wallpaper's rose pattern shifts as you watch; petals become thorns, then softening back to flowers. The ceiling rises by inches you can almost measure.

He stops. You stop. His helmet tilts at the exact angle yours does. Both your hands lift to touch the same section of wall simultaneously.

"I don't feel like this is normal, even for this place," you say, though the words feel inadequate.

He nods. A tilt, but definitive. It's a surprisingly gentle movement.

You walk together now. Side by side rather than in sequence. The corridor widens where needed, doorways appearing that weren't there moments before. The lights seem brighter, as if someone scrubbed a bit of the mold and dust away and changed the lightbulbs.

At the corridor's end, there's a waiting room. But the vinyl on the couch is warm to the touch, instead of cold. The cushions are comfortable, and they don't squeak. The armrests are smooth, not cracked in typical Silent Hill fashion.

The window here shows the same Silent Hill, but from an unexpected angle. The fog looks less oppressive and more like a rainy day. The street lights flicker in a way that almost looks charming, and you realize the buildings themselves have shifted to create paths where there used to be walls and distorted fences.

You sit, and he sits down with you. The vinyl holds you both without even a creak. You think you can smell wet earth underneath the antiseptic hospital smell.

"Tomorrow," you say, though tomorrow is a concept this place usually rejects, "we could go somewhere else."

Pyramid Head turns toward you, doesn't do anything to indicate protest.

You hear the radio static somewhere distant, and for a little while you swear you can hear some kind of old-timey tune. You stay with him, like that, for a long time. It feels unreal, and you don't want to test your luck on breaking the moment and seeing if you're actually dead, or about to die. This shared silence is nice.

Two finger-width streaks mark where the dust has been wiped clean; your fingers, or his, or perhaps the building trying to tidy things up.

Tonight, being present is an act you both chose; not something that was forced upon you.

Chapter Text

The vinyl beneath you has absorbed your body heat and given it back as lukewarm pressure against your thighs. Outside the waiting room window, Silent Hill's perpetual fog shifts in patterns that might suggest dawn; not the harsh edge of sunrise, but something softer, more forgiving. Gray lightening to charcoal, charcoal softening toward pearl.

You've been sitting beside him through the deep night hours, learning to breathe in rhythm with something that shouldn't breathe. Four counts in, hold, six counts out. His chest rises and falls beneath the leather apron with mechanical precision, yet something in the cadence suggests choice rather than mere function.

Pyramid Head's helmet tilts toward the window with deliberate slowness. The metal's surface holds scratches like a map; thin silver lines that catch what little light exists and throw it back in precise angles. His massive hands rest on his knees, fingers splayed wide against the fabric of his apron. The knuckles no longer press white against the skin, no longer form the rigid fists of someone gripping something that isn't there.

"We could leave," you say, the words emerging steadier than expected, though your voice carries that familiar hesitation. "Before the sun comes up, I mean."

His breathing pauses mid-exhale.

The silence stretches for three heartbeats, four, then resumes with a deeper inhale that makes the leather creak softly.

The corridor stretches ahead. Wrong proportions fight your eyes.

Fluorescent lights flicker in sequence. Above your head. Ten feet down. One that wasn't there before. The walls have grown closer together, shoulder-width apart instead of the generous hospital spacing you remember.

You press forward anyway, though each step feels like a question you're asking the building. Behind you, Pyramid Head's boots should echo on linoleum, but your ears catch only the whisper of leather against tile. His presence presses warm against your shoulder blades.

Close enough that you feel the disturbance in air when he moves.

The door handle under your palm sinks into smooth plaster. Becomes wall before your fingers can process the change. You turn left. The hallway curves right. Pulling you back toward the waiting room like water spiraling down a drain.

"I don't think it wants us to go," you murmur.

You press both palms against wallpaper that shifts beneath your touch. Roses bloom. Darken to thorns. The pattern crawls away from your skin.

He moves beside you then, placing one massive hand on the wall six inches from yours.

The building shudders. It's a tremor you feel through your palms and the soles of your feet. The wallpaper stills. The roses return, their edges soft pink instead of harsh red.

At the corridor's end, a stairwell door materializes in a shimmer like heat rising from summer asphalt. Heavy steel painted institutional green, exactly where logic says an exit should wait.

The stairwell's walls pulse outward and contract inward with each step you take, breathing around you in a rhythm that doesn't match your heartbeat. Your footsteps ring off concrete and metal railings, echoing up and down impossible vertical space. His boots make no sound, but the air shifts around him with each step, carrying the scent of leather and metal polish.

After several flights (you lose count when the numbers on the landing doors begin repeating) you pause. Your hand finds the railing, knuckles white against painted steel.

Maybe this is far enough. Maybe the building will let you rest here, between floors, between decisions.

Pyramid Head stops one step below you. His helmet tilts upward, the metal's dented surface three feet from your face. Close enough to see where the edges have worn smooth, polished by decades of contact with doorframes and low ceilings.

You reach for his hand.

His fingers are fever-warm, the pads rough with calluses that ridge and valley under your palm. The touch anchors you to something chosen.

"Together?" you ask, though it comes out more like hope than question.

When you step forward together, your foot finding the next step down as his mirrors the motion, the stairwell offers what you need. The endless repetition breaks. The ground floor door appears below, solid wood with a push bar that gleams under fluorescent light.

The lobby spreads before you in dimensions that make sense again. High ceiling, wide floor, space designed for people to move through rather than get lost in. The reception desk sits empty, computer monitors dark, but the silence feels expectant rather than dead.

Double doors at the far end frame the first gray suggestion of approaching dawn. Not sunlight yet, but the absence of absolute darkness.

You cross the polished linoleum together. Your reflection appears and disappears in the waxed surface, doubled and tripled by the pattern of overhead lights. The warmth from his hand still tingles in your palm, skin memory of calluses and fever heat.

At the doors, you both stop.

Push bars designed for emergency exit. The kind that opens with pressure, meant for people fleeing toward safety. Chrome handles worn smooth by countless palms.

You place your hands on the left push bar. Cold metal. Aching palms.

He places his massive hands on the right bar.

Fingers overlapping yours by inches. His grip spans nearly the entire width of the door.

"I think we should do this together," you say, though the words feel inadequate for the weight of the moment.

His helmet drops forward half an inch. Rises again.

The motion takes two full seconds, deliberate as a judge's gavel.

The pre-dawn air flows into your lungs sharp and clean, tasting of ozone and old rain, promising world beyond hospital walls. You stand on the concrete steps, Silent Hill spreading before you in layers of gray that suggest depth instead of emptiness, possibility instead of endless repetition.

The fog has pulled back like curtains, revealing three distinct paths. Left toward residential rooftops emerging from mist like broken teeth. Right toward the skeletal grid of a commercial district. Straight ahead where the main road disappears into patient fog.

Pyramid Head pauses beside you. His breathing becomes visible now, small puffs of vapor that dissipate in the cooling air. The sight makes your throat constrict, saliva pooling bitter under your tongue. Something that shouldn't need breath, breathing. Something that shouldn't choose, choosing to make its presence known in the most human way possible.

You study the options, weighing possibilities that feel more real than anything the hospital offered. Left feels like seeking. Your eyes catch window frames and porch railings, the promise of rooms with doors that close. Right feels like searching; your gaze traces storefront outlines and empty parking lots, spaces designed for acquisition. Straight feels like continuation...the road stretches toward a horizon that might hold answers, or might simply hold more road.

"What do you think?" you ask, though you know he won't answer in words.

Sometimes the asking matters more than the answer.

He waits. You wait. The moment stretches between you, measured in heartbeats and the slow lightening of the sky.

"Maybe straight?" you say, phrasing it like a question though something in your chest has already decided. "I mean, if that seems right to you."

Pyramid Head's helmet turns toward the path you've chosen. A precise ninety-degree rotation that takes three seconds to complete. Then back to you with the same mechanical precision.

In the growing light, his helmet's surface resolves into detail. Scratches that form constellation patterns. Worn spots where his hands have touched while thinking. Small impact dents that speak of contact and endurance.

He lifts his foot, holds it suspended above the first step down for two heartbeats, then places it forward. The gesture carries the weight of ceremony, of choice made visible.

You follow, your smaller steps finding the rhythm of his stride. The asphalt beneath doesn't crack under his weight. Your ears strain for the sound of concrete protesting, but hear only the whisper of leather against stone.

Behind you, the hospital windows reflect the first pale wash of sunrise, throwing light back in sharp rectangles. Ahead, the fog draws back step by step, revealing painted lane lines and storm drains and all the mundane infrastructure of a street that exists because you've chosen to walk it together.

Your shadows stretch behind you, his broad and angular, yours narrow and precise.

Overlapping where your strides align.

Dawn creeps across the sky in measured degrees. Black retreating to charcoal, charcoal warming toward pearl, pearl brightening toward gold. Light doesn't announce itself but seeps between buildings, across pavement, over the surfaces of things until they become visible rather than assumed. You move together toward the first intersection beyond the hospital grounds, your breathing and his creating small clouds that mingle in the cooling air before dissipating into morning.

"I don't know where we're going," you say, and the admission feels like relief rather than defeat. "But I think that's okay. For now."

The crosswalk ahead offers new choices; streets branching into the awakening town, each street solid under the growing light. The fog continues to pull back like a sheet being lifted, revealing stop signs planted in concrete, mailboxes numbered in fading paint, fire hydrants positioned with municipal precision. All the ordinary architecture of choice.

Pyramid Head's knuckles brush yours as you approach the intersection. The contact lasts only a moment, warm skin against warm skin, calluses catching briefly on your smooth palms. The touch carries weight beyond accident, intention beyond reflex, promise beyond words.

The sun's edge breaks the horizon as you pause together at the crosswalk, light flooding everything in honey-colored wash that paints building sides and street surfaces in shades that suggest possibility instead of judgment. Your breath steams in the morning air, visible proof of presence, of choice to continue breathing in this place at this time with this companion who chose you as surely as you chose him.

Behind you, Silent Hill settles into morning quiet. Not the oppressive silence of abandonment, but the patient hush of a place waiting to see what its inhabitants will choose to become. Ahead, streets continue in all directions, crosswalk signals ready to change, pavement solid enough to trust with the weight of whatever comes next.

Chapter Text

The first pale wash of sunrise catches on the edges of Pyramid Head's helmet, throwing sharp triangles of light across the cracked asphalt. You walk beside him in the growing dawn. The fog has pulled back like a curtain being drawn, revealing the skeletal outlines of storefronts and street signs painted in shades of pearl and gold.

The rhythm of his breathing stutters against the morning quiet; four counts in, a pause that shouldn't be there, then six counts out with a tremor at the end. You've memorized that steady pattern over the hours you've walked together, and now something foreign disrupts its mechanical precision.

Pyramid Head's massive hand drifts toward his midsection, fingers pressing briefly against the leather of his apron before falling away. The gesture is hesitant, exploratory, the way a child might touch a bruise to test if it still hurts. You've never seen him acknowledge his own body before, never witnessed anything beyond the absolute certainty of movement from point to point.

The motion repeats itself three steps later. His hand rises, hovers over his stomach, then drops back to his side. The morning light reveals the smallest tremor in those thick fingers, barely perceptible, but there nonetheless.

You slow your pace without thinking, and he matches you automatically. His helmet tilts downward, the metal creaking softly as he seems to study his own hands. The pyramid's sharp edges turn inward, creating shadows that make his imposing frame appear somehow diminished, uncertain.

"Something's wrong," you say, the words emerging as observation rather than question.

His breathing catches mid-exhale, holds for a beat too long, then resumes with an unsteady rhythm that sounds almost like a question being asked in a language he doesn't speak.

You place your hand on his forearm, feeling the fever warmth of his skin through the leather. "Come on. Let's find somewhere to figure this out."

The empty storefront appears three doors down, its windows intact and door slightly ajar. The glass reflects your approach, both of your silhouettes moving in tandem, his pyramid helmet catching the light beside your more familiar outline. You push the door open, brass handle cool under your palm, and the space beyond reveals itself in layers.

What should be a simple abandoned shop unfolds into something more generous. The main floor stretches back toward a kitchen area that gleams with impossible cleanliness. Stainless steel surfaces catch the morning light streaming through the windows, and you catch the scent of something fresh. Not the mold and decay you've grown accustomed to in Silent Hill, but the clean emptiness of a space waiting to be used.

Pyramid Head follows you inside, moving through the doorframe with the same fluid precision he's always carried. The ceiling accommodates his presence perfectly, as if the building has adjusted itself to welcome him. His boots finally make sound here, soft leather against clean linoleum, and the space seems to breathe around his presence.

The kitchen calls to you with its functional promise. A gas range that looks recently serviced, cabinets that open smoothly on well-oiled hinges, a refrigerator humming quietly in the corner. Every surface gleams as if recently polished, every appliance positioned exactly where it should be.

Pyramid Head stops in the center of the main room, his helmet turning slowly as he takes in the space. His hand drifts to his midsection again, and this time he doesn't pull away. He presses his palm flat against his leather apron, and you hear his breathing deepen with something that might be recognition.

You step closer, positioning yourself to study the way his frame has subtly changed. Where before he stood with the absolute stillness of a monument, now there's the smallest shift in his weight from foot to foot. His breathing carries new undertones, not the steady mechanical rhythm you've learned to match, but something more organic. More needful.

"Show me," you say, reaching toward his hand where it rests against his stomach.

Your fingers wrap around his wrist, and when you guide his hand away from his body, he allows it. The leather of his apron is warm where his touch lingered, and you press your palm against the spot he was indicating.

His helmet tilts toward you, the weight of his attention settling on your face like sunlight. Though you cannot see past the metal, every angle of his posture speaks of someone trying to translate sensation into meaning. He breathes in, deeper than usual, and the sound carries a note you've never heard before. Not pain, exactly, but a kind of searching.

Beneath your palm, you imagine you can feel something hollow. Something wanting. "Here?" you ask.

His breathing hitches. Then, slowly, deliberately, he nods, the same careful movement you might use when learning a new word in a foreign language.

This simple tilt of his head transforms him from divine executioner to something startlingly, vulnerably mortal. You've witnessed something sacred and profoundly human...the moment when a god discovers the ache of emptiness.

The kitchen around you seems to brighten, as if responding to this revelation. The morning light streaming through the windows grows warmer, and you catch the subtle scent of possibilities: bread and butter, simple things that could answer this newfound emptiness.

The refrigerator opens under your touch like a prayer being answered. Inside, impossibly fresh supplies wait on clean shelves: eggs in a neat carton, butter wrapped in wax paper, bread that yields slightly when you press your thumb to the crust. Silent Hill has provided exactly what you need, as if the town itself recognizes the sacredness of this moment.

You gather ingredients with careful reverence, setting them on the counter. Pyramid Head positions himself where he can observe without crowding you, his helmet angled to track your movements. His breathing has settled into a new pattern, deeper and more expectant.

The butter melts in the pan with a gentle sizzle that fills the kitchen with warmth. You crack two eggs, watching the whites spread and bubble at the edges while the yolks remain perfect golden centers. The simple domestic ritual takes on the weight of ceremony under his unwavering attention.

His helmet follows every movement of your hands as you slide the spatula beneath the eggs, lifting them carefully to preserve their delicate structure. When you turn to the bread, he shifts slightly, a subtle lean forward that speaks of learning rather than impatience. Watching not just what you do, but how you do it--the care in your gestures, the reverence you bring to this most basic of human needs.

The toast pops up pale golden, and you butter it while the eggs finish cooking. Steam rises from the pan, carrying scents that seem to affect him in ways you can see: his breathing deepens, and his hand hovers near his stomach again, but now with recognition rather than confusion.

You slide the eggs onto the plate beside the buttered toast, creating a simple meal that looks almost ceremonial in its spare presentation. When you turn to offer it to him, his entire frame goes still, the absolute motionlessness of something witnessing a miracle.

You approach him with the plate held carefully in both hands, the warm ceramic radiating heat through your palms. Standing before him, you look directly at where his face would be behind that imposing pyramid, meeting his unseen gaze.

"I don't know how this works for you," you say softly, offering the plate.

Pyramid Head's massive hands dwarf yours as he accepts the offering, his thick fingers surprisingly gentle as they wrap around the ceramic. For a moment, you both hold the plate together, your hands beneath his, the shared weight creating a bridge between mortal and divine.

He raises the plate toward his helmet, and you watch in fascination as the bottom left corner of the iron plate begins to peel upward with a soft metallic groan. The movement reveals something that makes your breath catch--not human flesh, but something stranger. A dark, tongue-like appendage emerges from beneath the lifted edge, glistening and organic in contrast to the rusted metal.

The appendage moves with deliberate precision, curling around pieces of egg and toast with an alien grace that is somehow more unsettling and more sacred than any human mouth could be. This is how he feeds. Not with teeth or lips, but with this strange extension of himself that speaks to his fundamental otherness.

He eats slowly, with a careful deliberation that transforms the simple act into something profound. Each morsel is drawn beneath the helmet's edge, the tongue-like flesh working with methodical purpose. You remain close, watching this intimate revelation of his inhuman nature, your presence an anchor in this new experience.

The morning light catches on the edges of his helmet as he takes the last bite, the appendage withdrawing as the iron plate settles back into place with a soft click. When he lowers the plate, his breathing carries notes of satisfaction you've never heard before. Deep, contented exhales that speak of a need met for the first time.

You take the empty plate from his hands, the ceramic still warm from his touch. The simple transfer sends a small current through your fingertips where they brush his; skin meeting skin, the most basic connection transformed into something that makes your pulse quicken.

Pyramid Head's breathing has settled into a rhythm you've never heard before. Deeper than his usual pattern, but with a quality of contentment that seems to warm the air around him. He raises one massive hand and places it gently against his stomach, but now the gesture speaks of satisfaction rather than confusion.

You set the plate in the sink, the soft clink of ceramic against steel marking the end of the ritual. When you turn back to him, he has tilted his helmet toward you with the focused stillness of a cat watching something precious. But there's something different in his posture now, a subtle relaxation in his shoulders, a settling that speaks of trust fulfilled.

"Better?" you ask softly.

His breathing deepens, a long exhale that carries notes of something almost like relief. Then, slowly, deliberately, he nods. The motion is careful, measured; the same reverent acknowledgment he gave when you first understood his need. But this time, there's something more. His massive hand moves from his stomach to rest briefly, gently, on your shoulder. The weight of it is warm and steady, and the touch lasts only a moment before he draws away, but the gesture speaks louder than any words could.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

The clock face catches dawn light filtering through the windows, its hands frozen in place. Your fingers rest against Pyramid Head's bare palm. Skin against scarred skin. The connection still warm from the moment he removes his glove and lets you see the marked flesh beneath. The object communication system you've built together sits arranged on the coffee table, your shared language scattered across polished wood like the pieces of something you are both trying to rebuild. Crystal paperweight for danger, coaster for safety, river stones as bridges. You and he both know what each piece means.

His massive frame settles deeper into the sectional beside you, burgundy leather exhaling softly under his weight. Even at rest, he radiates that fever-warmth, supernatural heat that seeps through the blanket you've tucked around his shoulders. His helmet tilts toward you with that particular angle that means complete attention, the pyramid's rust-stained surface catching the morning light across its weathered metal planes.

You promised him your story, and he waits with infinite patience. Your breath catches on the inhale, holds too long before releasing in a shaky stream. The words stick like splinters in your throat, and you swallow twice, working your jaw.

"I never told you," you begin, the words scraping out barely above a whisper in the quiet house. "Why I came here. To Silent Hill."

Metal plates shift within his helmet, a sound like tumblers finding new positions in an ancient lock. His massive chest expands and holds, then releases in a prolonged exhale that vibrates through the sectional's frame. His bare hand tightens slightly around yours, scarred skin warm against your palm, fingers pressing with deliberate pressure.

"Everyone thinks people come here because they're drawn. At least, that's what the stories say. Called by guilt or sin. But that's not..." Your throat constricts, forcing you to stop and work saliva back into your mouth. "That's not why I came."

The walls around you lean closer, the house itself listening. The morning light grows warmer. Shadows pool in corners that aren't quite so deep before. The floorboards creak once, then settle into silence. Goosebumps rise along your arms despite the warmth. This isn't normal, but then again, nothing about this place has been normal since you arrive.

"I came because I stopped feeling anything." Each word scrapes raw against your vocal cords, your voice dropping to whisper-quiet. "Not guilty. Not angry. Just... gone. Like someone reached inside my chest and pulled out everything that matters." Your free hand moves to your sternum, fingertips pressing against the hollow sensation that has lived there for years. "It started after I lost someone important. I kept going to work, kept paying bills, kept saying 'I'm fine' when people asked. But I sit in the places we use to, their chair, the window where they drink coffee, and feel nothing. Their things still there, still waiting, and I can't even cry."

Pyramid Head's helmet shifts forward, the pyramid's point angling down toward your joined hands. His thumb traces across your knuckles once, twice, movements careful and uncertain, like someone learning to handle something fragile. The gesture sends warmth up your arm, a physical reminder that you aren't alone, even as his massive frame goes rigid beside you.

"People kept telling me it will pass. That grief takes time." Your voice grows smaller, more fractured. "But weeks became months became years, and it just..." You shake your head, feeling moisture gather at the corners of your eyes. "I put food in my mouth and taste... cardboard. Nothing. Music they loved became static, just noise where there uses to be..." Your voice catches. "Their favorite song comes on the radio and I feel... nothing. Not even sad. Just this horrible, numb nothing where love uses to be."

Your voice cracks on the last word. Your careful breathing dissolves into shallow, rapid gasps that echo strangely in the responsive room. Without thinking, you lean slightly toward him.

Pyramid Head's entire frame goes rigid beside you. His hand tightens around yours with desperate strength, and through the metal of his helmet, grinding sounds emerge as metal plates scrape against each other. His left shoulder twitches twice. His breathing becomes erratic: three quick breaths that whistle through the helmet's vents, then a long pause, then three more.

"I couldn't..." The words fragment now, tears streaming down your face and dripping onto your joined hands. You curl smaller, knees drawing up, and find yourself shifting closer to his warmth. "Couldn't feel love anymore. Couldn't feel..." A sob cuts through, your shoulders shaking. "People hugged me at the funeral and I just felt pressure. Against my ribs. Like being squeezed by strangers. My pets want me to love on them and I pet them because I am supposed to, but I feel nothing. Just going through the motions of being human."

The morning light flickers in response to your emotional state, shadows writhing rather than simply stretching. The air presses against your skin like a living thing. Your pulse hammers in your throat. Your vocal cords feel raw.

"So I started driving." Your voice fractures around the words as you lean further into his space, seeking shelter. "Just left. Left my job, left my apartment, left everyone asking how I am doing. And when I saw the sign for Silent Hill..." You swallow hard, salt coating your lips. "I'd heard things. Whispered stories about a town where people go missing. Local legends about strange accidents, hikers who never come back from the trails around Toluca Lake. I thought maybe... maybe a place with that kind of dark reputation would finally make me feel something. Terror. Pain."

Your voice drops to barely a whisper. "Anything seemed better than nothing."

Pyramid Head makes a sound, metal plates grinding against each other like rusty hinges being forced open. He shifts his weight a bit. His free hand rises, fingers trembling slightly before he settles his palm on your shoulder. The contact spans nearly your entire back, supernatural warmth seeping through fabric. His thumb moves in small, careful circles against your shoulder blade, the gesture uncertain but determined.

For a moment, you can only breathe in ragged gasps. 

Without conscious decision, you let yourself lean fully against him, your cheek coming to rest against the worn leather of his apron. The material is thick, sturdy, marked by use and age. Now it cushions your face and muffles the sound of your breathing.

"But then I found you," you whisper against the leather, words still shaky, looking up at the faceless expanse of his helmet. "And you were so still. Covered in dust." Your voice catches. "And I should have run. Should've screamed. Because when I first saw you, I thought you were God. That helmet, your size, the way the room felt like a cathedral around you. Everything about you says I should be begging for my life." You press your palm flat against his chest, feeling the steady rhythm beneath metal and leather. "But I wasn't afraid. You were this amazing, terrible, divine thing but I felt... recognition. Like finding another lost soul in an empty house."

His arm tightens incrementally around you, anchoring you. With careful deliberation, he slowly shifts his massive frame until he is positioned between you and the door. His helmet tilts until the pyramid's edge nearly touches your forehead, the metal creating a confined space between you where your breath mingles with whatever air circulates through his helmet's vents. Through the metal, his breathing slows and deepens, each exhale taking longer than the last.

His other arm extends along the back of the sofa behind you. It's warm and smells like metal and leather, and blocks out the rest of the world.

Your breathing gradually finds his rhythm again. The frantic gasps smooth into deeper draws that match the rise and fall of his chest beneath your cheek. Sometimes his breath catches, holds for a moment that stretches between you, then continues with deliberate control.

A vibration starts deep in his core, felt rather than heard at first, traveling through metal and leather and bone to reach something fundamental in your nervous system. Through the metal of his helmet, a low rumbling sound emerges, almost like a purr, but rougher, metallic. The sound travels through his chest into yours, settling your racing heart.

The morning light fills the room completely now, painting everything in soft gold. You remain tucked against his side, his arms encircling you in a slow hug. It's higher up than a normal person would do it, and he adjusts after a moment of deliberation.

Outside, Silent Hill stretches quiet and still in the growing light.

"Thank you," you whisper against the worn leather of his apron.

The vibration in his chest deepens, and through the metal of his helmet, you hear something that might be an attempt at communication, sounds shaped by deliberate choice and hourly effort to become something different.

His arms tighten around you as morning light fills the room completely. His helmet rests against the top of your head, warm metal pressing gently against your hair. He is very careful to not let you bear much of the weight. The strangeness of it overwhelms you. You find yourself quite aware that his hands could crush you without effort, yet here he is, capital-c Cuddling you.

Your shoulders drop. Your breathing slows. The knot in your chest, the one that has lived there for years, loosens just enough to let something warm slip through the cracks.

Safe.

Chapter Text

Warmth presses against your left side, leather and metal and supernatural heat radiating from his skin. Your cheek rests against Pyramid Head's apron where you fell asleep after telling him everything. His broad arm curves around your shoulders, fingers spread across your back. Breath flows steady through his helmet's vents, each exhale creating small puffs in the morning air.

Light filters through east-facing windows, casting gold rectangles across hardwood floors. But something shifts wrong in your peripheral vision. Where solid walls stood earlier this morning, three doorways now wait, perfectly formed, as if they've always belonged there.

Fresh paint gleams white around each frame, the clean scent cutting through Silent Hill's usual decay. The proportions show architectural perfection, measured by Silent Hill's consciousness that understood exactly what you both need. The leftmost opens onto what appears to be a kitchen, granite countertops catching morning light, stainless steel appliances humming with impossible electricity. Straight ahead, bookshelves rise floor to ceiling in warm lamplight. To the right, workbenches stretch beneath windows, tools arranged with careful precision.

Pyramid Head's breathing shifts to shorter, faster rhythm. His helmet turns toward the new spaces with mechanical precision, metal plates grinding against each other like rusted gears forced into motion. The sound cuts through morning quiet with the finality of a blade meeting bone.

"Do you..." Your throat catches. Sleep-rough voice cracks. "You see them too?"

His hulking form goes rigid beneath you. Through the leather of his apron, you feel muscle tension ripple across his chest like tectonic shifts. His fingers curl against your shoulder blade, not painful but firm enough to anchor you both in what shouldn't exist.

You sit up slowly, the blanket sliding from your shoulders to pool around your waist. Cool air hits skin where his heat kept you comfortable. The sectional shifts under your movement, creaking in ways furniture shouldn't, settling sounds that speak of contentment rather than age, as if the house itself sighs with satisfaction.

Pyramid Head angles his helmet down toward you. Behind the pyramid's imposing angles, his breathing pattern changes--quick inhale, longer pause, exhale cut short. His free hand lifts, points with one thick finger toward the kitchen doorway, then drops back to his thigh, movement sharp, uncertain, unlike his usual mechanical precision.

The house breathes around you both. Not the labored wheeze of decay, but something organic and alive. Walls expand by fractions, ceiling beams groaning as they stretch to accommodate something larger. Floorboards separate slightly with soft creaks, then settle with new support manifesting beneath.

"Should we..." You lean forward, curiosity pulling against instinct screaming warnings. "Should we look?"

His breathing deepens through the helmet's vents. Metal scrapes against leather as he shifts position, turning to face the doorways. When he nods, the motion feels final.

Stepping across the threshold feels like entering a different house entirely, or perhaps a different reality. The kitchen stretches twice the size of what the exterior walls should allow, granite countertops flowing in an L-shape that accommodates two very different users with unsettling precision. Standard-height surfaces where you can work comfortably. A raised section where someone seven feet tall could prepare food without the constant hunching his frame usually requires.

Phantom scents drift through air that moves with gentle circulation, bread rising, coffee brewing, cinnamon and vanilla traces that speak of baking already finished. Golden light streams through windows that face a yard you didn't see last night, illuminating curtains made from fabric that matches nothing in Silent Hill's usual palette of decay and rust.

Pyramid Head ducks his helmet low, metal scraping the doorframe's top as he moves through behind you. Once inside, he straightens to his full height, the ceiling accommodating him perfectly, as if the room measured itself against his exact proportions and found them acceptable. Tile floors gleam with impossible cleanliness, the kind of sterile perfection that speaks of supernatural intervention rather than human maintenance.

You trail fingers across granite surfaces that feel warm under your touch; not from sunlight, but from some internal heat source. Smooth stone worn by hands that never used it, polished by phantom meals never prepared. In the refrigerator, ingredients wait on clean shelves with the patient arrangement of a stage set: fresh eggs still cold from nonexistent chickens, softened butter in a dish, vegetables that shouldn't exist in a town where nothing grows.

"Look--Jesus, look at this." 

Pyramid Head approaches the raised counter section with careful deliberation, enormous hands hovering over the workspace scaled to his proportions. His helmet tilts down toward cutting boards made from wood thick enough to withstand strength that could splinter normal surfaces. Knives hang from magnetic strips, each blade large and heavy enough for fingers that dwarf standard handles.

The breakfast nook catches your eye through positioning rather than grandeur. Built-in seating curves around a table sized for two, cushions that are comfy and not just decorative. Place settings wait with patient precision: plates, cups, silverware arranged as if someone planned to serve a meal that morning and simply stepped away.

You settle onto one side of the seating, fabric soft against your thighs with the exact firmness your body craves. Pyramid Head examines the opposite, wider bench. When he sits, the furniture holds without strain, cushions compressing to accommodate bulk that would crush normal construction.

Across the table, his helmet angles toward you with that particular tilt that means complete attention. His hands rest flat on granite, callused palms spread against stone.

Morning light catches dust motes that dance between you, air circulation carrying the scent of vanilla and cinnamon. Enough ingredients for two weeks of meals. All the counter space one could ever need. Seats built from good, sturdy wood.

"It's perfect." 

Through the metal of his helmet, a confused groan emerges. 

The reading room opens through an archway that frames built-in bookshelves rising from floor to ceiling. Leather spines catch lamplight that flows warm and golden, illuminating titles you've had on your wishlist for some time. Technical manuals on metalworking rest beside poetry collections you've loved. Philosophy texts neighbor field guides for tool maintenance.

Two reading chairs wait at comfortable angles, not facing each other directly but positioned for shared solitude. The smaller chair fits human proportions and feels plush yet ergonomic. The larger chair stretches wider than two doorways put together.

You run fingers along book spines, feeling leather bindings. Pages that fall open to passages you've read before in distant libraries, authors whose names you recognize mixed with texts you've never seen on your favorite subjects. Each volume placed exactly where you would have placed it, had you been the designer.

Pyramid Head's helmet tilts as he takes in technical diagrams and construction manuals. His thick hands hover over volumes about woodworking and masonry. They're all huge books, bound in thick covers, each one on a different subject of craft. There are even a few on butchering and smoking meat.

The lamplight brightens on its own, illumination adjusting as you settle into the smaller chair. When Pyramid Head lowers himself into the larger chair, the ceiling seems to rise a few inches, and the floor joists settle deeper with a creak. His breathing creates the only sound, steady rhythm matching the slow page turns. He looks settled and more relaxed than you've ever seen him.

You open a book of poetry, pages falling to verses about finding home in unexpected places. Across the space, Pyramid Head handles a construction manual with careful precision, each page turn deliberate as he examines house blueprints.

The library smells like aged paper and leather. You could spend years reading these books and surely never get through them all. 

You feel yourself developing a stomachache. Your fingers pause on the page, trembling slightly. Authors you loved as a child. Philosophy books on questions that kept you awake in college. Guides to technical interests you'd forgotten you had.

You notice Pyramid Head breathing a little differently now. Through the metal of his helmet, he makes a grinding sound. His powerful hands pause mid-page turn on a page about building a storm shelter.

You break the silence by snapping the poetry book shut. "This feels...creepy."

He offers a sympathetic rumble in response.

The workshop sprawls beyond proportions that should fit within the house's footprint; a space that defies architectural logic with Silent Hill's casual disregard for physical laws. Workbenches stretch beneath windows that show a view of forests you know don't actually exist outside. Tools hang from pegboards in perfectly organized arrangements, each implement positioned exactly where reaching would feel natural for gigantic hands.

There are hammers with handles thick as your wrist that look impossibly heavy. Saws with blades long enough to cut through impossibly thick beams. Measuring tools that seem to offer precision far beyond millimeters.

Pyramid Head stops in the doorway, towering frame filling the space completely. His chest expands as he draws deeper breaths. Through the metal of his helmet, a sound emerges almost like an "oh". He raises his hands, fingers curling as if gripping phantom tools.

Half-completed projects with unreal amounts of detail wait on benches. A cabinet that looks like it's existed for centuries without ever experiencing any wear and tear. Shelving units designed to hold books from the reading room. A table sized for the kitchen's breakfast nook, wood grain flowing in patterns that would complement granite surfaces. 

You remain at the threshold, legs wobbling. Stomach dropping. This space, tools sized for strength you don't possess, workbenches too high, everything designed for capabilities beyond your reach. "I can't... this room isn't..."

His boots finally cross onto flooring reinforced to absorb impacts that would damage normal construction. He slowly approaches the main workbench. When his fingers close around a hammer, the handle disappears completely within his grip, his shoulders dropping two inches as weight settles perfectly in his palm.

He lifts the hammer, testing balance, then sets it down carefully.

You smell wood shavings and metal polish; it's clean and nice. Why can't you be happy for him?

Your legs feel weak watching him move through space designed perfectly for him. Words stick in your throat. "You could spend forever here," you whisper.

His helmet snaps toward you. He drops the hammer, and it hits the workbench with an ear-piercing sound. His hands spread flat against it and you see that his knuckles are squeezed white with pressure.

You hear him make a grinding, frustrated sound. Purpose calls from every tool, every project, every surface designed to accommodate his specific capabilities. Against his own will, he seems to pull himself away from staring into the workshop.

You step back from the threshold, wanting desperately to leave the room. It seems to take everything in him to finally shake him out of some trance. "We should--" Your voice cracks. "This isn't really for us."

His breathing stutters, like there's something caught in his vents. When he finally moves toward the doorway, it feels like you've dragged him without ever using your hands.

Light shifts as afternoon progresses. Each room grows more detailed every time you pop your head in to one of the rooms.

The kitchen counter now holds fresh fruit that wasn't there an hour ago. Apples still dewy. Bananas perfectly yellow. Bread cooling on racks that appeared while you were in the workshop, filling the air with yeast and warmth. Coffee brewing in humming machines.

Your legs shake with each step between doorways, and you feel your muscles tremble. Pyramid Head follows closely behind, his breathing tense and sometimes not there at all.

In the reading room, additional books line shelves that stretched higher while you were away. Volumes that match reading preferences you've never expressed aloud, and favorite authors whose names you recognize from your own shelves at home.

The lamplight turns harsh as you enter. Your bookmarks and spare glasses from home are on the side table. A notebook you never started writing in is flipped open.

"This--" Your voice cracks. "This is... This is my stuff."

Pyramid Head's helmet jerks toward the stuff and he makes an irritated grind. His hands form fists, tendons standing out like bridge cables, then deliberately open, fingers spreading to release tension that could crush whatever he touches.

You exit into the workshop. Projects advance toward completion on their own, without hands to guide tools. Wood joints fit tighter in midair. New tools are appearing.  Blueprints spreading across workbenches showing upcoming furniture plans for the kitchen and reading room. One of the blueprints says "2027." Another has "Est completion time 2077" written on it.

You lean against the doorframe as your legs give out. Pyramid head snatches your elbow to keep you from falling. "We can't..." Breathing ragged. "Can't stay here."

His towering form locks rigid at the doorframe between workshop and living room. Through the metal of his helmet, sounds emerge like grinding, catching on something they can't process, tearing and creaking and failing. One hand reaches toward tools, then drops, speeding to hold you up as you continue to fall limp.

Lights flicker in rapid sequence. In the kitchen next door, the coffee begins boiling. Pages flip through entire books. Tools clatter to the ground.

The original living room feels smaller now. 

Your legs buckle completely as you reach the sectional. Pyramid Head's arm wraps around your waist, lowering you onto cushions where you woke this morning. He settles beside you, imposing presence angled to create shelter between you and the three doorways that almost pulse.

Your throat burns, words scraping raw tissue. "Do you understand?" A ragged breath. "It's trying to keep us."

Pyramid Head's helmet tilts toward you, complete attention on you now and not the other rooms.

Behind you, the other rooms' lights seem to be practically on a strobe function. The coffee pot whistles to a shrill peak, pages tearing as they turn too fast, a floating hammer skids across the floor and swings blows against the previously perfect work in progress table. Everything was prepared for a blissful, domestic life of purpose and warmth and you had the gall to say no. Why?!

You reach for his hand with shaking fingers. His broad, rough palm engulfs yours in a way that seems unnatural but purposeful. When his fingers close around yours, you feel anchored.

Your voice barely reaches a whisper. "We could stay. Everything we need. Food, shelter, a purpose for you, quiet for me. We'd be safe." A pause to breathe. "We'd never need to worry about the future fucking it up."

Chapter Text

The coffee table splits down the middle.

The crack races through wood like lightning. Splinters spray across your lap as Pyramid Head's hand jerks tight around yours, knuckles grinding together, his whole arm going rigid. His chest stops mid-breath, then resumes in broken stutters.

You've never seen him sound like this. It almost sounds like he's sobbing.

The sectional bucks violently, throwing your hip against his thigh. Leather splits where it touches him, peeling back like burned skin. Stuffing spills out grey and wet, reeking of lake water and rust.

The ceiling bulges downward. Plaster cracks in spirals, blood seeping through, too thick for water. It drips onto the communication stones. The crystal paperweight clouds from within.

Pyramid Head's fingers brush the coaster. The cork crumbles to ash.

You grab three river stones as they scatter, shoving them deep in your pockets before the next impact.

The floor softens. Your socks sink into suddenly spongy carpet. The walls breathe, expanding and contracting like diseased lungs. The front door warps, doorknob melting like honey.

The three sealed doors remain perfectly still. Waiting.

A grinding builds in the walls. Organic, like cartilage tearing. The window goes dark, not night-dark but thick-dark, as if pressed with wet clay.

Pyramid Head stands, pulling you up. The sagging ceiling forces him to hunch, his helmet scraping plaster. Your foot punches through the floor, just enough that splinters dig through your sock. Something cold touches your heel. You yank free, leaving skin behind.

The house groans. Not failing...it's waking up.

The remaining river stones from the glass jar crawl across the shattered table, leaving wet trails. They have too many legs.

"We need to move." Every exit looks like a trap. The paradise you rejected is showing its teeth.

The wall between rooms stretches.

Solid drywall pulls apart in strings, revealing pulsing red tissue underneath. The smell hits: copper and ammonia, sharp enough to flood your eyes with tears.

Pyramid Head tugs you toward the hallway, but the doorframe contracts. Wood and metal squeeze inward. His shoulders won't fit. He grips both sides, biceps straining as he fights to hold it open. Wood splinters under his gloves, dark blood welling up from the house's wounds.

You duck under his arm through the shrinking gap. The hallway tilts thirty degrees. You brace against walls that pulse warm-wet under your palms, feeling veins throb beneath the surface.

When you turn back, the doorway has shrunk to child-size. His helmet fills the opening completely. His chest rises and falls in sharp, rapid bursts, eight breaths in the time of three normal ones. He slams his fist against the wall. The entire house shudders, a full-body flinch.

The floor cracks underfoot with the sound of ice over deep water. Through the gaps, you see beetle-sized maggots writhing in nest formations, their movement making wet clicking sounds.

He disappears from the doorway. Heavy footsteps pound above; he's punching through walls, trying another route. But the ceiling thickens with each passing second, building new barriers faster than demolition.

A door flies open to your left. Through it, you see him on what should be the second floor but is somehow level with you now. He reaches across the impossible space. Ten feet separate you; his fingertips strain toward yours, falling short. The air between you ripples, pushing back when you try to move forward.

You try to stay aligned as he moves, but your hallway spins. The walls blur past, doors streaking by in brown and white smears. His groans echoes from every direction, multiplied, overlapping, creating a rhythm that makes your head pound. The spinning drives you to your knees, palms flat against the moving floor.

Then silence. Complete. Even your own breathing makes no sound.

You're alone in a hallway that stretches beyond sight in both directions. No doors. No windows. Just you and walls that pulse with a heartbeat not your own.

The house settles with a sound that could almost be satisfaction; a long, slow exhale through hidden lungs.

The kitchen door appears in front of you. Not opens, appears, materializing like a photograph developing in chemical baths.

Behind it, metal sings against whetstone; a high, pure note that sets your teeth on edge.

The doorknob turns without your touch, brass rotating in smooth clicks.

Through the opening: not your Pyramid Head, because this one doesn't look at you. He stands at the counter, drawing his Great Knife across stone in measured strokes. The blade catches overhead light, throwing silver crescents across the walls.

"No." The word claws up from your chest, leaving your throat raw.

His helmet tilts three degrees, acknowledgment, then returns to the blade. His shoulders never move from their rigid line.

Through the archway, another door frames your Pyramid Head. He fights against restraints made of writhing tentacles of wallpaper. They coil around his limbs like living rope. Each step forward drags, his boots scraping against linoleum that grips like quicksand.

The kitchen executioner sets down the whetstone with a decisive click. He draws one finger down the blade's edge, testing. A thin line of blood appears on his fingertip.

A fleshy body bag manifests in the space between them, writhing in bandages that leak yellow fluid. The executioner turns with mechanical precision, no wasted motion, no hesitation. The blade rises in a perfect arc and falls. The creature splits, its rotten guts spreading across linoleum in black starbursts that hiss and steam.

Then he turns past you. To where your Pyramid Head strains against his bonds. The executioner lifts his knife again, both hands gripping the handle.

The house isn't just separating you; it's offering replacement, an exchange of broken for functional.

The floor extends like taffy until both doorways connect. Two Pyramid Heads face each other, one with blade ready and stance perfect, one trapped and pulling against bonds that cut into his arms. Your Pyramid Head's chest stops moving entirely. He pulls against the living wallpaper and you swear you hear his the metal from his helmet shriek. Blood runs from beneath the edges, dripping steady onto his boots as he wrenches harder.

You try to run to him. The floor stretches with each step, distance staying constant no matter how your legs pump. The executioner stands between you like a monument, unmoving.

"You're not him," you shout, voice cracking on the final word. "He chose--"

The Great Knife embeds in the floor with a sound like a broken church bell. The executioner reaches for your Pyramid Head with deliberate movements. One hand stops the frantic pulling, fingers wrapping around bloodied wrists. The other presses his shoulder down like it weighed nothing. Your Pyramid Head's hands fall limp, arms dropping to his sides. His breathing returns, but it now sounds mechanical.

The executioner helps him stand, movements efficient and cold. The tender way your Pyramid Head learned to touch; the careful pressure, the hesitant seeking, erases from his posture. He stands rigid, shoulders squared like a soldier.

You hear a deep, metallic vibrating sound. The executioner steps aside with a sweeping gesture toward the Great Knife.

Your Pyramid Head takes one robotic step towards it.

The floor drops away.

You fall through darkness and land hard on cold tile, hipbone striking with a crack that echoes. Hospital corridor. Brookhaven, where you first learned he could be gentle. But your stomach clenches at the sight; the hallway stretches beyond where walls should end, same door repeating in endless succession. Same number. Same rust-brown handprint on each one, fingers spread in identical desperation.

Behind you, women with their faces swollen, covered in bandages, dressed as nurses move in synchronized twitches. Their heads snap left-right-left in mechanical unison. You hear wet fabric dragging across tile floors, and you run.

The corridor branches. Left, right, straight. Each turn brings you back to mint green walls, the same flickering fluorescent that strobes every third second. You duck into a patient room as nurses pass, their breathing a wet chorus. When you peer out, you see different corridor entirely. Basement level, concrete instead of tile. You see a ghostly afterimage of Pyramid Head, just for a moment, following a man and a woman you don't recognize into the dark. 

Water drips ahead, each drop echoing like a metronome. You follow through spaces that fragment and rebuild. Operating rooms with tables still warm, shower stalls running rust-red water, a morgue where seven decomposing bodies sit up in perfect synchronization just to track your movement with sewn-shut eyes. The farther you go, the more you feel a building pressure on you, as if the gravity here is heavier.

At the end of the corridor, you see a door marked with symbols that sear your retinas when you try to focus. The door is open and leads into a boiler room. In the center, the woman from your vision sits cross-legged. Dead-pale but smiling, lips blue-tinged. She's blonde, wearing a choker. Somehow, she looks like she's from a vintage Playboy magazine.

Snow falls, impossibly, into the hospital boiler room. It seems to be coming from the ceiling. 

"He's waiting," The woman says, tiny stalactites tumbling from her mouth with each word. "Where he's meant to be. Where the guilt lives."

"This place doesn't need him anymore." You can see your breath fogging up.

"Then why did he go back to the knife?" She circles you, and when you look down you can see she's floating, just barely. "l'll tell you why. Because this place pulls us back to our patterns. What's yours?"

The answer sits heavy in your chest. Searching for feeling in dangerous places. Following pain because numbness felt worse.

"I'm not empty anymore." But your voice wavers.

"Then why are you walking even deeper, completely alone?" Her smile widens, showing too many teeth. She points up through the impossible snow. "He's not down here. He's up there. That's who he was meant to be."

The room tilts ninety degrees. You're back in the hospital corridor, fluorescent strobing the same pattern.

But now you know the trick.

You turn around. Take one step backward. The corridor fights you, floor moving like a treadmill in reverse, trying to drag you deeper. You lean into it, heels digging grooves in linoleum. Your calves burn as you force each step, muscles trembling with effort. The moving floor speeds up, fighting harder.

The mint green walls shudder. A crack appears in the repeating pattern.

You take another step back. The fluorescent stops strobing. Holds steady.

Another step. The rust-brown handprints fade.

You're going back.

The wall tears like wet paper, edges curling and blackening.

Through the gap: a void where physics gave up. Floating debris, chairs, medical equipment, fragments of rooms, drift in slow rotation. And across impossible space, him.

He's holding the Great Knife.

Not swinging. Just holding, point-down, his spine curved wrong, shoulders hunched inward like he's protecting his chest. The executioner stands behind him, hand clamped on his shoulder like a vise. His helmet tilts down at the blade, trembling with micro-movements. His shoulders rise and fall in rapid, shallow bursts.

You need the stones. You dig in your pockets, fingers scrabbling; still there, smooth and warm. You pull out one river stone and hold it up, arm extended high.

His helmet lifts, just a touch.

The executioner presses down harder, fingernails digging through fabric. Your Pyramid Head's weight shifts forward, boots scraping against his platform's edge. You throw the stone onto a floating desk. It clatters, a tiny sound across the vast emptiness, echoing back distorted.

His hand twitches on the knife handle, fingers loosening then re-gripping.

The executioner leans down, helmet beside helmet, and you can only assume they're communicating. Your Pyramid Head's shoulders draw up to his neck, whole frame contracting. You catch a floating coffee mug, the blue one from your own personal morning routines, and set it on a floating shelf that you see will soon drift towards them both.

The executioner backhands the mug into fragments, like he's saying 'No more distractions, no more human bullshit'. The air turns cold.

Your Pyramid Head's breathing mists visibly. Fast white puffs of vapor in rapid succession.

A medical chart floats by within reach. You grab your index finger, bend the nail back until it tears completely free from the nail bed. Blood wells thick and dark. You write in your own blood across the chart: "YOURS." Four letters that drip and smear. You throw it to him.

He catches the chart before the executioner can intercept. Holds it with both hands, the knife wavering forgotten. He looks at you, then the clone behind him, then the blade that wavers in loosened grip.

He opens his fingers. Lets the Great Knife go. It tumbles sideways into void, spinning end over end until darkness swallows it. The executioner staggers, hands outstretched and grabbing as though in denial that he let such a precious tool go. Your Pyramid Head turns, takes the executioner's hand, and removes it from his shoulder like the touch offends him.

Without the knife between them, the other Pyramid Head looks like just another ghost of this fake world. He's a prop here, you can already see his edges getting fuzzier like one of the visions. Your Pyramid Head steps to his platform's edge, extending his hand across the gap. He crumples the paper from the chart in his hands and squeezes it until you see your own blood drip from his fist.

You reach back. Twenty feet of nothing between fingertips, but your arms stretch toward each other, fingers spreading wide to cover maximum distance.

The void shudders, edges rippling like disturbed water. The executioner fades to transparency, then to nothing.

"We choose each other." Your voice carries clear across the emptiness.

The gap begins to close, platforms drifting together with grinding sounds of stone on stone.

Reality snaps back with the sound of breaking glass. The void collapses violently, space folding in reverse until you're thrown backward through dimensional layers; hospital walls, kitchen tiles, wooden floors blurring past in strobing succession. Silent Hill forces you both back to the original living room. Afternoon light streams through clean windows, intact furniture arranged exactly as before, communication stones sitting orderly on the unbroken table. The three doors he closed stand wide open to rooms that glow with the same warm, impossible perfection.

Pyramid Head kneels in the center, chest heaving in stuttered bursts and shudders. He drops the bloody paper beside your knee.

"Back where you belong." A voice resonates from walls and floorboards. "The offer stands. Peace. Purpose. Place. Keep the Triangle Thing, if you like him."

His helmet turns toward the kitchen where golden light spills across clean counters, where he first felt hunger transform into something deeper.

"He needs function. You need feeling. Here, both, forever."

Safe. Your throat constricts. Safe was numbness. Safe was dying one zero day at a time.

"Or," Windows darken with sudden speed, showing Silent Hill proper through the glass. Empty streets, ash falling thick as snow, shapes moving wrong in the fog. Not the bright, welcoming afternoon from before. "Out there, where pain is the only promise."

The temperature drops ten degrees in two seconds.

"Choose before I choose for you."

Pyramid Head looks at you and shakes his helmet once. A clear answer.

He stands, joints creaking softly. You stand too, feet carrying you three steps closer. to each other.

His breathing fogs onto your cheeks, and you're close enough to smell leather and metal and something underneath that might be skin.

"We can't stay in Silent Hill." Your voice steadier than expected.

His fingers touch your cheek with pressure light as bird wings landing.

"But we can go somewhere else."

His thumb traces your jaw from ear to chin, movement slow and deliberate. Gentle but certain, like he's memorizing the shape of your face.

The house shudders around you, foundation groaning in protest. Doors swing closed in quick succession. bedroom, bathroom, kitchen. each slam echoing.

"You'll have nothing!" Silent Hill's voice turns sharp, crystalline with fury. "Empty, useless days in a house that's not home, where anything can fuck it up and break the little peace you have!"

"We'll have each other." Your hand covers his against your cheek, fingers threading between his.

"That's not enough," it snarls uselessly.

His breathing shifts to match yours, inhale for inhale, exhale for exhale. His free hand finds your waist, steadying you.

You hear the offered rooms locking, a quiet little 'fuck you'. Windows crack open with sharp pops, frames splintering. Ash-heavy air floods in, tasting of rust and old fires.

So, you're being kicked out.

He steps toward the fractured window, glass crunching under his boots. You follow without hesitation, taking big steps to catch up with his long strides.

The house screams, a sound like metal tearing through dying animals. "Idiot! People would kill for this fucking fantasy life!"

Walls buckle inward with sharp cracks, drywall splitting in web patterns. Floor erupts in foot-long wooden spikes. Pyramid Head's arm slams across your chest, yanking you against him as hardwood punches through air where you'd been standing. A chandelier crashes down, crystal shards sparking off his helmet in bright cascades. He flinches at the impacts but his arm stays locked around you.

The sectional flies at you both, leather and springs and wooden frame. He pivots hard, putting his back between you and furniture. The impact drives him towards the door, his grunt of pain vibrating through his chest against your ear.

But you can't reach the window. Silent Hill pulls the walls like taffy, trying to create new corridors.

He drives his fist through the wall's plaster, sending chunks flying. You add your foot to the hole, heel punching through lath. Construction nails the size of sticks rain from the ceiling in sharp silver streaks. He curves his whole body over you, becoming a shell. The nails punch through his leather apron with wet sounds, drawing blood lines down his arms that drip onto your shoulders.

When you stop squinting, you can see gray nothingness on the other size. Silent Hill didn't build anything here. You grab hold of his hand and are hyper-aware of a pressure on your head, the taste of copper, and your vision blurring.

The pressure doubles, triples. Your knees buckle, legs folding. Pyramid Head's arm tightens, holding you upright, his muscles straining against a weight you can't see and can barely feel in comparison.

The gray parts with every difficult step. Light ahead; real streetlight cutting through mist, yellow and steady. You stumble onto cracked asphalt, legs remembering how to work. Pyramid Head emerges behind you, swaying from dozens of nail wounds that paint his arms in dark stripes.

You're on an empty street, broken yellow lines fading into fog. Behind you, nothing. The house erased like it never existed. He goes to one knee, not from pain but from the pure exhaustion of fighting the town's will, shoulders sagging like he's been carrying mountains.

"We made it out." Your breath fogs in the cool air.

Out isn't away. You're in a gray liminal space with fragments of reality, some things you recognize from home and some blurry dream shapes. But when he stands, when his breathing finds its natural rhythm again, when his hand reaches for yours, it feels natural. Like touch is the simplest thing in the world for him.

You help him balance, shoulder under his arm. The steps are painful from the splinter you got earlier. Holding hands, you both walk deeper into the gray nothingness.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

The fluorescent tube above your desk a few times before settling into its harsh white buzz. You set your coffee down on the cheap particle board desk, lower your briefcase to the floor beside your chair. 

Your computer screen reflects your face as it boots up: dark circles, bloodshot eyes, dull skin. 

Files stack three inches high in your inbox. Rural Road Safety Assessment forms, each one stamped with yesterday's date. You lift the first sheet and are uncomfortably aware of how you can feel your broken nail scraping against the paper.

For your coworkers, it's just another Monday. 

Form 487-B: Site Safety Compliance Report. Contractor: Morrison Construction. Location: I-95 Northbound, Mile Marker 23. You type the information into standardized fields and see "Foundation excavation complete." 

Next form: Apex Building Solutions. Heavy machinery operation protocols. 

Form after form. Concrete pouring schedules. Steel beam inspections. Hospital corridors that breathed, wallpaper that moved, walls that stretched like taffy. You blink hard, forcing focus back to black text on white paper.

"Come in." Margaret doesn't look up from her computer screen. Her office smells like coffee and toner cartridges. 

"I need you to handle the preliminary paperwork for the I-95 expansion sites." She slides a thick manila folder across her desk with several packets paperclipped inside. "Just data entry today, but you'll need to visit each site within the week to verify contractor compliance."

Site visits. Eugh. "How many locations?"

"Twelve." She flips through pages without looking at you. "Morrison, Apex, Blackstone Industries, couple others. Standard protocol, safety equipment verification, workforce documentation, environmental compliance checks."

"Is the timeline flexible?" You ask, trying to hide the fact that you're basically saying, "I've just experienced a traumatic event, do you mind if I take some time to process that?"

"End of week. Start with the Morrison site Thursday if you want." She keeps typing while she talks to you.

You spread open the contents of the folder across your desk. There are site maps printed on engineering paper, safety compliance checklists with OSHA violation codes. Previous inspection reports stamped with dates and signatures. You watch your hands shake while you sort through the papers, trying to work as if the trauma is just a mild cold you're dealing with today.

You start with Morrison Construction's safety compliance history. There were three violations corrected in Q3. You see a couple of equipment certification updates showing "3 recently certified heavy equipment operators" without individual names listed, just certification numbers and dates. You scan the incident logs and realize part way through that you're looking for words related to Silent Hill.

Of course' it's just standard contractor documentation. Insurance certificates, safety training completion rates, equipment inspection schedules. You flip to the next file, searching through previous inspection reports for any mention of workers who stood out. 

Apex Building Solutions, Blackstone Industries... Page after page of safety protocols and violation histories that you should be paying attention to right now, but instead you're just thinking 'Where is he? He's in one of these'. Your breathing shifts without permission, four counts in, hold, six counts out. His rhythm, learned during hours of sitting close enough to feel the rise and fall of his chest.

A safety incident report from Morrison catches your eye, dated last month. Equipment Operator #3 and Safety Supervisor assisted in crane stabilization incident. Supervisor provided critical support during emergency procedures. The supervisor's initials are listed: PH.

You push back from your desk and walk to the break room, your balance a bit off from trying to avoid putting pressure on your heel. You pour yourself what's left of the communal coffee.

It tastes like burnt water, but you drink it anyway while standing there; you need the caffeine right now. 

"New highway project's got everyone working overtime." Dave from Permits sits at the round table, eating a bologna sandwich. "My buddy at Morrison says they're pulling double shifts just to stay on schedule."

"What kind of work?" You ask.

"Foundation stuff mostly. Some bridge repair near the lake." He takes another bite, mustard squeezing from between bread slices. "Heavy concrete work. They brought in some new guys, big crew expansion. One of the new guys is a giant. He showed me a picture, I said he's gotta be in the Guinness Book of World Records."

"What's he do?"

"He's a supervisor, I think."

PH. Safety oversight supervisor. Someone whose size exceeded normal human range, whose work involved protecting others from danger.

"That's crazy," You say.

"Someone said he's living in a motel so we don't know what all his life's been like," Dave finishes his sandwich, wiping mustard from his fingers. "But he knows his stuff, prevented a serious accident last week when that crane started tipping."

You finish your coffee and set it in the sink before walking back to your cubicle. So...you've got a lead? You lower yourself into your desk chair and pull out your OSHA compliance checklists.

Standard inspection protocol...equipment certification verification...Safety training documentation review...You'll need to check each worker's certification badges...

Your torn fingernail hovers over the checklist items. On-site verification that means you'll see workers directly, observe their capabilities, document any unusual specifications in your inspection report.

PH. Safety oversight. A "giant".

You pull out last quarter's safety violation reports, scanning for Morrison Construction incidents. The crane stabilization report appears again: Safety Supervisor PH demonstrated exceptional knowledge of emergency procedures. Recommend commendation for preventing serious injury during equipment failure.

Exceptional knowledge. Emergency procedures. Someone whose previous experience involved understanding how to protect others from harm, whose size enabled capabilities beyond normal human range. Yeah, the timeline doesn't make sense, but...what else have you got?

Thursday morning, 8 AM is the Morrison Construction site compliance check.

You prepare tomorrow's inspection forms on your computer. You buy a turkey sandwich and limp back to your cubicle.

You don't bother eating it. Food tastes like nothing anyway, has for three years, smelled unappetizing except that one time...

Your eyes burn from staring at compliance checklists. Each safety protocol blurs into the next, OSHA codes just meaningless letters. 

You shouldn't get your hopes up. Safety oversight could mean anything. Could mean someone skilled with emergency procedures. Not a paranormal giant.

You organize the OSHA compliance forms into neat stacks and walk to the bathroom.

You don't look like yourself in the mirror. It's you but... gutted. You didn't always have dark circles and graying skin and greasy hair, even before Silent Hill happened. Whatever, no one is going to notice anyway.

You check over your wounds from the past weekend obsessively. You almost like that it still hurts and that the wounds feel raw and fresh. They're real, they happened.

You imagine how insane you'd look if anyone asked what was going on and you told them the truth.

You splash cold water on your face, dry your face with rough paper towels, and sit back down to review tomorrow's plans to act like you're doing a standard compliance check and totally not search for a giant impossible man. What'll you say when they notice your hands shaking? Early onset Parkinson's?

You're ready to go home.

At five o'clock, you save your work and shut down the computer. The office empties around you as coworkers gather coats and briefcases, heading toward the elevators. You leave last. You don't want anyone to ask questions about how you look, but you know they won't, but if they did it would just be annoying.

The cold air feels nice and sharp and fresh. Way better than the stale office air.

You slide into the driver's seat and grip the steering wheel too hard. He's gonna just be some normal guy.

But tonight, you'll go home and sleep badly and wake up with a morning full of possibility.

Chapter Text

Coffee steam fogs your glasses as you spread the Morrison Construction forms across your desk. The OSHA compliance checklist has twenty-three boxes to check. Safety equipment verification, worker certification review, incident report analysis.

Margaret's voice carries from her office, discussing budget allocations with someone from Parks and Recreation.

You gather the clipboard, hard hat, and safety vest from the supply closet. Standard municipal inspection gear. Now you'll look official, not desperate. The hard hat's plastic shell cracks along one side from years of desk storage.

The drive will take thirty stomach-wrenching minutes.

The steering wheel grooves ridges into your palms. Your Honda merges onto I-95 behind a semi hauling concrete barriers and the diesel exhaust coats your windshield in gray film.

Exit 47: Morrison Construction, 2 miles.

Your mind plays disaster scenarios. Paul Henderson will be five-foot-nine with a beer gut. Or sixty years old with grandchildren. Or twenty-two with acne scars and an engineering degree.

Not seven feet tall. Not fever-warm skin beneath leather gloves. Not the careful way massive hands could cup your face like you were made of tissue paper...

The semi takes Exit 47. You follow.

Orange construction signs sprout from the roadside: "WORK ZONE AHEAD." "REDUCED SPEED." "HEAVY EQUIPMENT CROSSING." You wish they said "FREAKY ZONE AHEAD", "REDUCED SANITY", and "HEAVY GIANT GUY CROSSING".

There's a chain-link fence. Yellow hard hats bob between concrete barriers and steel beams. A sign reading "MORRISON CONSTRUCTION AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY" hangs from the gate.

The site office is a white trailer splattered in mud.

A tired-looking worker in an orange vest approaches your car. "Municipal inspection," you say, holding up your clipboard.

He points toward the trailer. "PH's in the office. Watch the excavation on your left."

You walk the gravel path between orange cones. The excavation gapes fifteen feet deep and pools with standing water, surrounded by heavy equipment you couldn't begin to name.

Your hard hat slips forward over your eyes, the chin strap hangs loose no matter how you adjust it. You look ridiculous.

You knock on the trailer door and hear the knock rattle the inside.

"Come in."

The voice is deep, but...ordinary. Human-deep, not the resonant rumble that vibrated through metal and leather. What were you expecting?

PH looks up from a desk covered in blueprints and coffee-stained safety reports. He is tall, maybe six foot eight if you had to guess. But he's built like a former athlete gone soft, with gray stubble. His hard hat sits beside a University of Maine basketball mug filled with cold coffee. Photos of teenagers in basketball uniforms are taped to the wall behind his desk. His nameplate says Paul Henderson.

Oh. You idiot. Seriously, what were you expecting?

Your stomach drops through the trailer floor.

"Municipal inspection?" He says, having zero clue that you're currently dying inside right now. He gestures toward a creaky folding chair. "Margaret called yesterday. Said you'd be coming by."

Time to do your job and dissociate at the same time. "Safety compliance review, OSHA requires--"

"Yeah, I know the drill." Paul pulls a manila folder from his desk drawer. "The safety certs, inspection logs, incident reports. These are all up to date."

PH is a former basketball player who coaches high school kids and probably complains about his knees hurting when it rains. The initials PH stand for Paul Henderson. Did you actually think someone working here was named 'Pyramid Head'?

"You mentioned a crane incident last month," you say, reading from the report. Why are you doing this?

"Yeah, hydraulic failure. Thing started tipping toward the excavation. Could've killed two guys." Paul rubs his jaw. "Lucky we had strong backs on the crew that day. Few of us managed to get chains on it, stabilize the base."

So it was a team effort, not supernatural intervention.

"The report mentions you have exceptional knowledge, did you, uh..."

Paul laughs. "Twenty years in construction teaches you which way equipment's gonna fall. Basic physics, really. Weight distribution, center of gravity. You see a crane start to tip, you know where to put the counterweight."

Normal human knowledge accumulated over decades of normal human work, obviously.

"Any recent staff changes?" you ask.

"Lost a demo guy to Blackstone last week. Good worker, but their lakeside project's paying premium rates. Can't blame him for taking better money."

PH -- Paul --leads you along the perimeter fence, pointing out safety equipment stations and emergency protocols. His voice is background noise; you've heard everything he's saying before, you don't need to pay attention to this.

"Crane over there's the one that nearly tipped," Paul says, pointing to a yellow machine near the excavation. "Maintenance found a cracked hydraulic line. Simple equipment failure. Happens more than you'd think."

A crane operator tests his equipment, the boom swinging in slow arcs overhead. Workers in fluorescent vests move between concrete. Normal-sized, human-proportioned men doing normal work.

"Hard hats required past this point," Paul says. "Fall protection when working above six feet. Standard stuff."

You nod and make checkmarks on your form. "Emergency equipment accessible." "Workers properly equipped." "Hazard zones clearly marked."

You sign the final inspection form, PH signs his bit, shakes your hand and walks back toward the trailer.

You had spent three days building fantasy around office gossip and workplace acronyms. The same magical thinking that probably created your Silent Hill experience. Trauma responses can feel supernatural. Grief can manufacture miracles.

The numbness feels more familiar than the panic did. But emptiness isn't the worst thing. Emptiness is honest. Emptiness doesn't lie about rescue or promise salvation through external sources.

You will file the Morrison report and continue the Great Work of verifying that the world operates exactly as it should.

Chapter Text

The intake form stares back from your phone screen, cursor blinking in the text box labeled "Describe your current symptoms." You've been sitting in your car in the municipal parking lot for twelve minutes, engine off, fingers hovering over the keyboard.

Your thumb taps against the screen. Types. Deletes. Types again.

"Experienced severe mental breakdown lasting 48 hours" appears on the screen. Your thumb hovers over the backspace key. Delete. "Had episode where I lost touch with reality for two days". The words sit there, clinical and insufficient, before disappearing under rapid thumb strokes.

How do you explain the weight of phantom breathing against your neck, the fever-warmth that radiated from skin that couldn't exist? Your hand moves to your throat. Fingertips searching for the echo of a touch that left no mark but changed everything.

Your torn fingernail catches on the phone case as you scroll down. "Have you engaged in self-harm behaviors?" You stare at the raw pink nail bed where you'd...probably...bent it back sometime before you realized you were having a panic attack at that rest stop. You write 'N/A'.

"Previous trauma history?" Your fingers move more steadily now: "Prolonged grief following loss of important relationship. Avoided processing for approximately three years. Recent acute stress triggered episode with elaborate fantasy construction."

The words look appropriately clinical on the screen. No mention of Silent Hill, no supernatural elements, no impossible connections with psychological constructs. Just straightforward acknowledgment of delayed grief processing and stress-related mental health crisis.

Your phone buzzes with a calendar reminder: "Blackstone Industries site inspection - 10 AM." Right...onto the next one. Time to pretend you're a functional municipal employee conducting standard workplace inspections.

You save the partially completed intake form and start the Honda. The radio plays soft rock as you drive toward the lakeside construction site, volume low enough that you can hear your own breathing. Four counts in, hold, six counts out. The rhythm you'd learned during the episode, when your damaged mind convinced you that someone else's breathing could anchor you to sanity. A very helpful breakdown, in that respect. Many people's breakdowns don't give them cool life tips.

The site foreman introduces himself as Jim Rodriguez, extending a calloused hand and gesturing toward a desk covered in manila folders. His office smells like an auto repair shop, in an oddly pleasant sort of way.

"Margaret mentioned you'd be stopping by today," Jim says, settling behind his desk. He pulls the exact folder he needs without looking, pours coffee in a steady stream while talking, his signature flowing across documents with practiced efficiency.

You flip through the forms with mechanical precision, checking boxes and making notes on your inspection sheet. Everything exactly as it should be in a properly managed construction operation.

When you breathe, your ribs press inward like your body wants to crawl into itself. This guy has no idea how broken you are.

The therapy intake form waiting in your phone browser. Twenty-seven questions about your mental state, most still unanswered because you can't figure out how to describe weekend-long delusions without sounding like you're still invested in the fantasy. This doctor is going to treat you like a child. "Is the Pyramid Head in the room with us right now?"

"Any recent staffing changes?" you ask.

"We picked up three new guys over the past month. One's a demo specialist from Morrison Construction; experienced with heavy structural work, really valuable to have around. You might have met him at another job, his name's Tom."

"I haven't met him, but did I hear from PH at Morrison you poached him."

"Something like that." Jim laughs and signs the form.

You complete the visual inspection and return to the trailer.

Walking back toward your car, you notice a worker studying blueprints near the excavation site. Professional obligations require interviewing workers as part of the compliance verification process. Today you'd love to not, but something about the normalcy is calming to you. At least you can pretend to not have trauma.

"Excuse me," you call out, approaching with your clipboard. "Municipal inspection, mind if I ask a few questions about site safety procedures?"

Tom looks up from the blueprints, squinting in the overcast light. "Of course. I'm Tom by the way." He extends a hand stained with concrete dust. "You're the inspector Jim mentioned. You been to Morrison?"

"Yeah, I heard you worked for PH. How are you finding the transition over to this site?"

Tom's expression shifts to a slightly awkward grimace. "Honestly? It's been a relief. Better pay, better management, better respect for experience."

"Oh, were there issues at Morrison?"

Tom's jaw tightens and you can tell he's trying to figure out how to choose his words carefully.

"Fifteen years of demo work," Tom says, his hands moving restlessly over the blueprints, smoothing edges that are already flat. "Then PH brings some hotshot with mental issues and suddenly I'm the backup option. You ever seen Rain Man?"

You've heard this kind of a story before. Experience meets fresh credentials, politics and nepotism decide the winner.

"Look, I'm not tryina get anybody in trouble. But all I'm saying is, if you hire somebody, you should know who you're hiring." Tom's jaw works like he's chewing something bitter. "I'm not sour about it. I'm not. It's this DEI shit, I'll bet you he hired him to fill some quota or whatever."

"I mean, I get what PH sees in him, I ain't never seen demo work like that, but he's a safety hazard. He works on concrete like he doesn't even care if he throws his back out. Go look if ya don't believe me."

Christ. Safety concern? If Margaret hears you knew about this and didn't look into it you'll never hear the end of it. Fuck this guy, whatever he has against people with issues.

"Jim runs a fair operation. Experience gets recognized, assignments get distributed based on capability rather than who interviews well." Tom's shoulders relax slightly. "Morrison's loss, honestly! They went for the guy who did the work fast over the guy who could do the work right."

You finish the inspection notes, documenting Tom's concerns as routine personnel complaints with no direct safety implications but something you'll look into anyway. God, if you hadn't talked to him you wouldn't have to go back to Morrison. PH was a nice guy, but now you'll get to sit down and go, "Hey, I heard you might be in violation of some safety codes and lied to me yesterday!"

You slump against the driver's seat. Deflation settles into your shoulders like a weight you didn't realize you'd been hoping to shed.

The intake form waits on your phone: "What triggers or situations might cause symptom recurrence?" Your fingers move across the screen: "Seeking meaning in routine workplace dynamics. Tendency toward pattern-seeking to find meaning in everyday things."

An honest self-assessment. Your damaged mind wants to find hidden significance in mundane events. That's an appropriate awareness for someone in your situation. Impressive, even!

You complete the form and submit it immediately. Time to schedule help before the disappointment of ordinary reality drives you back toward elaborate psychological escapes.

The phone rings twice before a professional voice answers. "Dr. Chen's office, this is Linda."

"I'd like to schedule an appointment. For therapy." Your voice wavers. You watch the construction workers chat around a truck in the parking lot and wonder how much credibility you'd lose if Margaret found out you had mental health problems like this.

"New patient intake?"

"Yes. I've been... I had a breakdown last weekend. I need to talk to someone about it." The words come out like you're desperately pretending to use another person's voice, just so you can roleplay that this isn't YOU who has issues.

"Dr. Chen has availability Thursday at 2 PM. Would that work for your schedule?"

Thursday. That gives you two days to figure out how to explain weekend-long delusions about supernatural executioners without sounding like you believe they were real.

"That works."

"I'll send additional forms for you to complete before the appointment. Is there anything specific you'd like Dr. Chen to know beforehand?"

Anything specific. Where do you start? The elaborate queerplatonic fantasies involving impossible characters? The physical sensations that felt more real than any human touch you'd experienced? The way you'd rather live in a house that wants to devour you than spend another day at a safe, stable job?

"I had hallucinations that felt real. And now I'm having trouble accepting life, uhm, without them." Each word scrapes your throat raw. 

"A lot of people have trouble getting back to normal after going through something really difficult," Linda says in a way that sounds clinical yet kind. "Dr. Chen can help you with that. I'll let her know."

"Thank you."

"We'll see you Thursday at 2 PM."

The call ends. You sit in your Honda in the municipal parking lot, engine off, processing the conversation. 

Thursday at 2 PM. Beige office. Learning to build meaning from grocery store conversations, and sitting at the traffic light waiting for it to turn green, and being able to taste food again, and nothing epiphany-inducing and trippy. 

Chapter Text

Your Honda idles in the Morrison Construction parking lot. You've been practicing your medical terminology lately when you feel a panic attack rising. Breakdown. Stress-induced delusion. Visual hallucinations brought on by grief. Your therapist will appreciate the self-awareness at the appointment tomorrow.

Through the Honda's windshield, you watch PH emerge from the trailer office, coffee mug in one hand, clipboard in the other. He waves, unconcerned, and you hold in a groan thinking about how you're basically going to have to place a complaint to a perfectly nice guy. Another tedious bureaucratic hoop...

The gravel crunches under your shoes as you approach the trailer. "Thanks for seeing me on short notice," you say and step inside. His office feels smaller than it did on Monday.

"Margaret said you had some follow-up questions about safety protocols?" PH settles behind his desk, pulling the same manila folder from his drawer.

Your clipboard rests in your lap as you flip to a blank inspection form. You try to mentally remind yourself that it's just business, that it's not like you're ACTUALLY chewing somebody out...

"I spoke with Tom recently. He mentioned some concerns about workplace safety practices with one of your newer employees."

PH's jaw tightens slightly. "Tom put in his notice on Sunday night. What's he saying now?"

"Something about you not enforcing standard safety protocols." You consult your notes, though you remember the conversation clearly enough. Tom's complaints about the employee in question made your stomach turn. "You ever seen Rain Man?" You've heard that kind of coded language before...

"Uh huh." PH's voice carries a defensive edge. His fingers drum against the desk surface, calloused tips tapping an irregular rhythm. "Tom say anything else?"

The trailer's fluorescent light buzzes overhead. Outside, diesel engines rumble as heavy equipment repositions around the excavation site. You suppress a sigh. This is exactly the kind of workplace drama that makes municipal inspections tedious.

"He suggested the employee might pose safety risks to other workers. Something about reckless work habits." You look up from your clipboard, trying to keep the irritation out of your voice. You know what it's like to be the person others whisper about, the one who might not make it through the next round of budget cuts if anyone looked too closely at your recent performance because someone caught you crying in the bathroom once. "I need to document this for the file, PH. You know how it is."

PH sets down his coffee mug with deliberate precision. "Look, I gotta ask you something. What exactly counts as a safety violation in your book?"

"OSHA has pretty clear guidelines--"

"I mean practically, what counts?" He leans forward, forearms resting on the desk. "Say you got a guy who can move concrete blocks by himself that usually take two men. Gets the job done faster than anyone I've seen in twenty years. Now, is that unsafe, or is that just good at what he does?"

You tap your pen against the clipboard. "If proper lifting protocols aren't being followed--"

"What if the guy clearly knows what he's doing, and I just...don't happen to have the paperwork on hand?" His jaw works like he's chewing something bitter.

Fifteen years. Tom mentioned fifteen years of demo work before being displaced by the new hire. You write "Worker capability assessment" on your form. "I'd need to observe the work practices directly. Document any deviations from standard safety protocols."

He rubs his jaw, fingers working across gray stubble. "Fair enough. But you gotta understand, I've been running crews for twenty years. Never had a serious accident."

The trailer feels smaller with each passing minute. Paul's protective stance toward his workers suggests this isn't just about safety protocols. There's workplace politics involved, probably the usual older worker versus newer hire dynamics.

"Would it be possible to speak with the employee Tom mentioned?" Your voice carries the weary tone of someone going through required motions. "Just to verify compliance with safety training requirements."

His fingers stop drumming. His eyes narrow just enough to suggest he's weighing his options. For a long moment, he says nothing, studying you with the calculating look of someone deciding how much trouble this inspection might cause.

"Look," he says finally, his voice softening slightly. "Tom's got fifteen years experience, and he's good at what he does. But sometimes the old guys get their noses out of joint when someone new comes in and works different. Doesn't mean unsafe, just... different."

You nod, waiting. This is usually where the real story comes out.

"The new guy, he doesn't talk, he's got that uh...aphasia." His shoulders shift uncomfortably. "Showed up earlier this week, no references." He runs a hand through his gray hair. "Look, I probably shouldn't have hired him without any documentation, but..."

"But?"

"Guy was living rough, you know? Been sleeping outside somewhere, and when I picked him up he was covered in this nasty shit like a bunch of kids had thrown something on him, smelled like spit. I didn't want him on my construction site, but it seemed heartless to just dump him off somewhere." PH's voice drops. "Works clean, efficient, always looking for another thing to do. I was impressed as hell."

"No certifications? No previous employment records?"

PH shakes his head. "Nothing. Brand new to construction, far as I can tell. Never touched a hard hat before this week." He shifts uncomfortably. "Look, I know how this sounds. Guy shows up off the street, no ID, no work history, and I put him straight to work. It's not exactly by the book. But what would you have done?"

You make notes on your form, the implications becoming clearer. "So he's working without proper safety training documentation? OSHA certification?"

He winces. "That's... yeah, that's a problem. I've been meaning to get him enrolled in the certification courses, but he just got here, I've been busy. He follows safety protocols better than guys who've been doing this for years. Doesn't mean it's legal, though. I know that." He rubs his jaw. "Tom thinks I hired him out of some bleeding-heart liberal guilt. Maybe he started out right. But after seeing what the guy can do? I kept him because I'd be an idiot not to."

Your pen stops moving across the form. The irritation builds in your chest. PH had sat there during your first visit, letting you believe everything was in order when he knew damn well he had an uncertified worker on site. With your recent issues, the last thing you need is Margaret discovering you filed an inaccurate compliance report. Your job security is already hanging by a thread, panic attacks and trauma be damned.

"Wait. You told me yesterday that all your safety certifications were up to date. All your workers properly documented."

His face flushes slightly. "I said the paperwork I showed you was up to date. Which it was."

"By omission, man. You let me file a report stating your site was in compliance." Your voice sharpens with the stress of someone who can't afford any professional mistakes right now. "Do you have any idea what position that puts me in if OSHA comes knocking?"

"Buddy works alone doing jobs that usually need two-man teams. Moves equipment I've never seen anyone handle solo." PH spreads his hands. "He's brand new to this, but he's got natural ability I can't explain. Problem is, Tom's been doing this for fifteen years and suddenly feels replaceable." His expression grows more serious. "That's the real issue here. It's not about safety, it's about Tom's pride."

You've got a clear OSHA violation here, an uncertified worker performing potentially dangerous tasks. This should be straightforward documentation, but the obvious conflict between following regulations and recognizing genuine ability complicates things.

"I'd need to verify his training status," you say, going through the motions while knowing there's nothing to verify. "And observe the work practices to document any safety issues. You need to get this guy certified, even if it's a kind thing you're doing. Anybody could fall on hard times."

PH considers this for a moment, then nods reluctantly. "He's working the north excavation today. Concrete pour scheduled for this afternoon." He pauses, clearly weighing his options. "Tell you what, why don't I introduce you? Let you see for yourself. Maybe you'll understand why I made the call I did, even if it wasn't by the book."

The offer surprises you. He's gone from defensive to cooperative, probably figuring it's better to control the interaction than let you wander around the site asking questions. And honestly, you need to see this worker for yourself. If there are real safety issues, you need to document them properly. 

"That would be helpful," you say, closing your clipboard. "Easier to document everything properly."

As you stand to leave, PH remains seated, his University of Maine mug cradled between both hands. "Look, Tom's solid, don't get me wrong. But he's been doing demo the same way for fifteen years. Sometimes the old guys don't like it when someone comes in and shows them there's a better way to do things."

His words settle between you with the weight of workplace reality. Personality conflicts, territorial disputes, the eternal tension between experience and innovation. Nothing unusual, just the human drama that plays out on every job site.

"Come on," he says, grabbing a spare hard hat from a hook by the door. "Let's go meet Buddy. See what all the fuss is about."

Chapter Text

The excavation edge approaches. Below, workers move around the partially demolished retaining wall. Chunks of broken concrete pile in organized heaps, rebar twisted and cut into manageable lengths.

"There." PH points. "That's him."

Your clipboard slips two inches before your fingers catch it.

Even from twenty feet up, even with a ridiculous hard hat hiding features, the way he moves makes you stop breathing. He lifts a sledgehammer like it's a toothpick, holds it perfectly still, then brings it down with surgical precision. His hair is dark, a little matted, put up in some sort of double-looped ponytail. It must be long. He's bigger than the other construction workers, but moves in a way that looks mechanical.

"Jesus," PH mutters. "Still can't believe it. Watch this."

The worker below sets down the sledgehammer. Grasps a length of rebar with both hands. The metal bends under steady pressure until it snaps. No cutting tools, just raw strength applied with that specific mechanical rhythm that should not, could not exist.

Your knees lock.

He turns toward you.

"Hey!" A voice calls from behind. You spin to see Tom crossing the lot, still in his Blackstone uniform. "PH! We need to talk!"

PH's face hardens. "Tom, you don't work here anymore."

"I got friends who do! They called me about the freak you hired." Tom's eyes find you. "You're the inspector from yesterday. You need to know what kind of liability this guy is."

Below, several workers have stopped to watch the confrontation. You see him, "Buddy", go completely still, like a machine powering down.

"We should discuss this in the office," you say, but Tom's already heading for the ramp.

"Let me show you what I mean!" He starts down and you hurry to follow to gain...some? Control of this situation.

He reaches the bottom first, striding toward the frozen figure.

"This guy," Tom announces loudly enough for everyone to hear, "can't even talk. How's he supposed to call out warnings? How's he supposed to communicate in an emergency?"

Tom circles him, playing to the gathering audience of workers.

"Go ahead," Tom challenges. "Say something. Tell them your name. Tell them where you worked before."

He says nothing. The same godlike silence that meant judgement before is now seen as...what...proof of incapability?

You step forward. "That's enough. Workplace harassment is--"

"Harassment?" Tom laughs. "I'm talking safety, the thing you and SUPPOSEDLY PH are here for. Watch this."

He shoves Buddy's shoulder. It's like pushing a concrete pillar; Tom staggers back while Buddy doesn't even sway. But something shifts in his posture and you catch the faintest hint of something old and dangerous.

"Tom, stop," PH warns.

"See? He's not right. What happens when equipment fails? When someone needs help?" Tom grabs a piece of rebar, swings it in a casual arc as if to point. "What if something's coming at a coworker and he needs to shout a warning?"

The rebar swings toward another worker, clearly not intended to hit them, but Buddy moves.

Faster than physics should allow. One moment frozen, the next intercepting the swing with his bare hand. The metal stops dead, Tom's momentum arrested so suddenly he nearly falls.

And from Buddy's throat comes a sound... not words, but that mechanical grinding you remember, a growl of metal on stone, vibrating through the air like a physical force.

Everyone steps back. The sound cuts off abruptly as Buddy realizes his mistake, but it's too late. Workers stare. Tom's face has gone pale.

"What the fuck was that?"

You move without thinking, stepping between them. "A laryngeal condition. Damage to the vocal cords." The medical terms flow smoothly. "The workplace discrimination lawsuit you're building here would be substantial."

Tom backs away, but his eyes stay suspicious. "That ain't natural."

"Neither is harassing a coworker with a disability." You turn to PH, clipboard raised like a shield. "I need to complete my inspection. Clear the area, please."

PH finds his voice. "You heard her. Everyone back to work. Tom, you need to leave. Now."

The crowd disperses slowly, whispers following. Tom shoots one last look before climbing the ramp, phone already out. You know he's calling someone. State inspector, maybe? Media?

When relative privacy returns, you turn to find Buddy watching you with those pale eyes, an intensity that would say 'food', not 'friend', to anyone who didn't know what was really going on here.

"Your trailer," you tell PH. "I need to interview him privately. Right now, as soon as possible."

PH hesitates. "After what just happened?!"

"Exactly why we need documentation. I need side of events." You're already walking, trusting them to follow. "Before Tom makes this worse. You want to help this guy, right?"

The trailer feels too small with three people, especially when one takes up so much space. PH hovers by the door, clearly reluctant to leave.

"I need to speak with him alone," you insist. "Attorney-client privilege concerns."

"You're not a lawyer."

"I'm a municipal official documenting a workplace discrimination incident." You meet his eyes steadily. "Unless you want the state crawling all over this site Thursday?"

PH leaves. The door clicks shut.

Then you're alone with him. Your clipboard clatters onto the desk.

"It's you."

His shoulders drop. All the careful human pretense falls away as his spine curves forward, an almost hunched posture. He's not used to not carrying the weight of the Knife. His hand rises to the hard hat, pulls it free with shaking fingers.

He has hollow cheeks, and when he takes the hard hat off some thick strands fall over his icy gray eyes. He looks powerful and gaunt all at once, and in a way his build reminds you of a very buff newborn baby deer. Something powerful and controlled that doesn't quite know how to move. His head hunches forward, and when he's able to have such poor posture, he looks a little relieved.

His mouth opens. What emerges might be...your name? It's mangled by vocal cords never meant for speech, but it's unmistakable. The sound tears something in your chest.

"Don't hurt yourself." You step closer, hands shaking. "I know. I see you. I--"

The trailer door slams open. A man in a state inspector's uniform stands silhouetted against morning light, Tom visible behind him.

"I received a complaint about unsafe working conditions and an undocumented worker."

Your mind races. Buddy's completely still again, but it won't matter. The inspector will want documentation he doesn't have. Tom's smirking, phone recording.

"This worker is part of an ongoing municipal investigation," you say, moving to block the inspector's view. "I'll need you to wait outside while I complete my interview."

"Ma'am, I have authority--"

"And I have an active discrimination complaint involving a worker with a recognized disability." You pull out your phone, fingers flying across the screen. "I'm documenting a previous employee's harassment of an employee with traumatic aphasia. Your arrival immediately after his threatening behavior suggests coordination."

You're impressed with how quickly you're able to pretend you weren't just having the most emotionally vulnerable moment of your life. You've gotten quite good at lying about how you're doing in the past few days, and now it's come in handy.

The inspector pauses. Tom's smirk fades.

"Furthermore," you continue, letting official authority coat your voice, "this worker is currently under municipal protection while we investigate whether Morrison Construction is violating ADA compliance. Any interference with that investigation will be noted in my report to the state commission."

It's all lies wrapped in enough bureaucratic-sounding words to create hesitation. You probably don't have the clearance to do something like this--could this get you fired? Whatever.

The inspector looks between you and Tom, calculating.

"I'll wait outside," he says finally. "Ten minutes."

The door closes. You turn to find Buddy watching you with something like awe. Or fear. Or both.

"We have ten minutes to figure this out." Your hands shake as you grab PH's files, searching for anything useful. "Can you write? Nod yes or no."

He nods.

You thrust a paper at him. "Write your name. Anything. Just show me you understand."

His massive hand dwarfs the pen. For a moment, nothing. He looks at Paul Henderson's nameplate on his desk. Then, carefully: "PH."

You laugh, edge of hysteria. "Of course. Of course that's what you'd..."

"Listen. You need documentation to stay. I can help, but not here. Not with them watching." You grab another paper, scribble your address. "Tonight. After dark. Can you find this?"

He nods, folding the paper into his pocket with reverent care.

The door opens. The inspector enters with PH behind him, both faces set in professional masks.

You inform them both that you're filing an official complaint about workplace harassment on his behalf. The inspector documents Buddy's lack of paperwork, but notes the pending ADA investigation. PH promises to have certification completed by Thursday.

Tom protests, but his recorded harassment undermines his credibility. The inspector leaves with, blessedly, just a warning.

You stand in the parking lot afterward, PH beside you looking exhausted.

"He can work until next week," PH says. "But if he doesn't have some kind of ID and documentation by then..."

"He will." The words fall out of your mouth without even thinking.

Night falls heavy with fog. You pace your apartment. Every car that passes makes you check the window.

At 9:17, a soft but certain knock.

He fills your doorway, dressed in dirty, thrifted clothes, looking lost and found simultaneously. You step aside and he enters, ducking his head from habit. You remember how PH had described him as 'looking like he was covered in spit'. 

He got spat out...

"Hi," you manage.

He reaches into his pocket, pulls out the folded paper with your address.

You nod, shaking.

He makes that sound again; grinding metal and broken glass that might be joy or grief or...both? When you reach for him, he meets you halfway. His massive hands cup your face like any pressure could break you. Maybe it could.

"We'll figure it out," you whisper against his chest. "Get you papers, a real job, a place to--"

He pulls back, shakes his head. Points at you. Points at himself. Gestures at the space between, to the window outside. Gives an awkward, silly thumbs up. He's smiling, all teeth, and it's a bit tense but you can tell it's genuine.

You sit together on your couch. Four counts in. Six counts out.

Your phone buzzes. Dr. Chen's office, confirming tomorrow's appointment.

"I have therapy tomorrow," you tell him. "To talk about... us. Everything."

He tilts his head, questioning, as if to say did I do something wrong?

"This is..." You gesture helplessly. "A lot. I had it scheduled because I thought you weren't real and I was hallucinating. But to be honest, I probably need the help, anyway."

He nods. His hand finds yours, scarred fingers threading between smooth ones.

"You can come," you say, hopefully. "Wait in the car if you want? Or there's a diner nearby. Oh, but you'll probably be working."

His grip tightens. 

You make up the couch with every blanket you own, though if he seems more or less comfortable he doesn't show it. He sits against the wall instead of lying down. Old habits, you guess.

When you wake at 3 AM, he's exactly where you left him. Watching the door with patient vigilance.

"Hey." Your voice cracks with sleep. "You can relax, we're safe here."

Slowly, carefully, he moves to sit beside you on the couch. Still upright, still watching, but close enough that his warmth seeps through the blankets.

"That's better," you murmur, already drifting back to sleep.

His hand finds your hair, smooths it with mechanical precision that becomes something softer. You fall asleep listening to him breathe. It's quieter now. You have to pay more attention to hear it.

Morning comes with all its ordinary demands. Coffee, shower... pretending your life hasn't fundamentally changed...

He watches you prepare for work with intense focus, like an alien trying to figure out what exactly humans do every day. When you hand him coffee, he cradles the mug like it's holy.

"I have to go to the office first," you explain. "File the reports from yesterday. Then I have therapy at two. Will you be okay getting to work?"

He nods, but there's something uncertain in it.

"There's food in the fridge. Books on the shelf. TV if you want." Each suggestion sounds more absurd. What does an eternal executioner do with daytime television?

The office feels surreal. Margaret reviews your reports, frowning at the complications.

"This could get messy," she says. "Tom's already filing complaints with the state."

"He harassed a disabled worker. I documented everything."

"Still." She taps her pen against the desk. "Keep me updated. I don't want you scrutinized. You didn't have to get involved like that, but, that was good of you."

Dr. Chen's office is beige and oddly soothing. You sit in the patient chair, words tumbling out about connection and impossibility and choosing to build something despite every rational objection.

"He can't speak," you explain. "Probably never will. He doesn't have a legal identity. He's..." You laugh, edge of tears. "He's everything I shouldn't want and the only thing that makes me feel real."

"And how does that make you feel?" Dr. Chen asks gently.

"Terrified." The admission comes easy. "And alive. For the first time in three years, alive."

She nods, making notes. "Well, recovery isn't always conventional. What matters is that you're choosing to engage with life again. I'm glad you didn't cancel your appointment."

"Me too."

You drive to the DMV with him in tow. Stand in lines, fill out forms for lost identification, claim memory loss, say you've just filed a police report about a mugging (that never happened). The clerk looks suspicious but processes the temporary ID.

"It won't be perfect," you warn as you drive between offices. "But it's a start."

The motel room seems smaller when you help him pack his few belongings. The leather apron hangs in the closet.

"Do you want to keep it?" you ask.

He stares at it for a long moment. Then, deliberately, closes the closet door.

PH calls while you're loading the car. "The state inspector's backing off. Seems your ADA threat worked." A pause. "But I still need documentation sooner rather than later."

"You'll have it," you promise, watching Pyramid Head -- "Buddy" -- fold himself into your passenger seat.

"Thank you," PH says, and you know he means it.

That night, you cook dinner together. He learns to chop vegetables. The knife work is flawless, until you touch his wrist and show him how to be imprecise. Human.

"Too perfect scares people," you explain.

He nods, adjusts. The next cuts wobble slightly. Better.

You eat in comfortable silence, then sit together on the couch. The TV plays something forgettable while you help him practice writing the letters of the alphabet. He seems to understand literacy perfectly, but he pushes too hard on the pencil. 

You drive him to Morrison Construction at dawn, temporary ID in hand. It's not much, but it's a start.

PH meets you at the gate, relief obvious. "This'll work for now. I'm glad. I'm going to sponsor his certification training."

"Buddy" nods gravely, shakes PH's hand with careful pressure.

The day passes in ordinary miracles. He works. You inspect other sites. Evening comes and you share the silence easily together.

But first, one more stop.

The cemetery is quiet, fog rolling between headstones. You haven't been here in two years.

He follows at a distance. It seems he's familiar with the concept of death...of course. You kneel by the stone, read the name of someone whose absence created the emptiness that brought you to Silent Hill.

"I found something," you tell the stone. "Er, someone. It's complicated, and uh, impossible, and I think you'd either love it or stage an intervention." Your laugh comes out cracked. "But I'm alive again! Feeling things."

When you stand, he's there. You lean into him and let the moment sit. Your eyes water and you feel like you're facing some...monumental change that you don't quite understand, but you want anyway.

"Let's go home."

You have something for him.

"Wait here," you say, disappearing into your bedroom. When you return, you're carrying a wrapped package, rectangular and solid.

He tilts his head at the gift, head expected to be too heavy, tilting all the way until his ear almost rests on his shoulder. You smile and settle beside him on the couch.

"I got you something on my way back from therapy. Open it," you encourage, pushing the package toward him.

His large hands work the tape carefully, like he's defusing a bomb. The paper falls away to reveal a book: American Sign Language: A Comprehensive Guide.

He goes completely still, eyes wide as he stares at the words. 

"I thought..." You clear your throat. "You have so much to say. This way you could say it. Without hurting yourself trying to speak."

He opens the book with reverent fingers, finds the first illustrations. "Hello!" "Thank you!" "Friend!"

His hand moves experimentally, copying the gesture for 'friend.' It's clumsy with his large fingers, but the intent is clear.

"We'll learn together," you promise. "Maybe take some classes?"

He sets the book down carefully, then raises his hands to sign, and it almost looks like he's blowing you a kiss. You blush, look down at the chart of illustrations.

Figure 3: "Thank you"

Tomorrow will bring new challenges. More lies to make up about where he came from. A disability complaint that might be more hassle to press than it's worth for the sake of getting him settled in. A world that won't help him without piles of paperwork, dozens of appointments, and a lot of time.

But the two of you have plenty of that.