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The cabin is empty. The night is quiet. The air is warm.
But not to Tobias.
The boat is filled with dead bodies.
The sky is full with the screams of his friends.
The air is cold and thick with the scent of blood.
His feet ache from running from the Locker, but he doesn’t care. The only thing he can register is the numbness in his fingers and the strange lightweight feeling in his body. He’s floating as he walks into his cabin – Graves’ cabin, the one they shared – and looks around the small space with unfocused robin’s egg blue eyes.
The boots.
Wallach made Graves those boots, and though he never wore them you could tell he appreciated them.
There were four pairs in total.
The other two are back in the Locker, rotting with the corpses they’re strapped to.
Tobias remembers the look of horror on the crew’s faces as the Locker’s security measures took them. It’s a flash in his mind, like a brand against his eyelids, and he sees their bodies, their empty eyes, the fruitless attempt to rescue a man who was probably already dead every time he blinks. He feels nothing. He’s empty, and he can’t tell whether it’s because he hasn’t eaten since the night before or because he’s literally lost everything.
Again.
He’s lost everything again.
His family is gone and it’s his fault.
It’s his fault.
It’s his fucking fault.
Nausea overtakes him suddenly, and Tobias turns and runs back to the side of the ship to rid his body of the source of this. Nothing comes up but bile, which burns his throat like no hellfire he could ever imagine.
Once his body gives up on vomiting, Tobias pulls himself back and leans against the hull of the boat. The dizziness still overtakes him, and the numbness is frustrating. Why can’t he feel anything?
Because it’s his fault.
Just like the Riverfolk said, he’s a monster and brings nothing but misfortune and violence to those he loves. The curse that he brought upon himself that fateful night on the River still follows him to this day.
It got his crew killed.
It got Graves killed.
He sees the crew before it – Brick, Kolt, Wallach, and Graves. They stand before him, ghosts, haunting his mind, plaguing him.
It burns.
It burns.
It burns it burns it burns it burns.
“GET AWAY FROM ME!” He shouts, delusional with the lack of food and grief. Grabbing the nearest thing by him – an empty crab trap sitting by his left foot – and throws it at the specters. “GET AWAY, GET AWAY, GET AWAY!!”
His cries tear at his throat, reopening wounds he believed to have closed years ago. He throws the next closest object, this time a discarded shucking knife, and before he knows it they’re gone. The knife lodges itself in the wood of the ship, and all is quiet again. The last dying echoes of Tobias’ screams fade away, and the only sound he can register is the beating of his heart.
His mind, torturous in its own right, brings him back to the thought of Graves’ own heartbeat. He’d only been close enough a few times to hear it, but it’s still distinct in his mind.
Graves is gone.
Wallach is gone.
Kolt is gone.
Brick is gone.
They’re gone.
They’re gone.
AND IT’S YOUR FUCKING FAULT.
It finally hits Tobias, like a wall of unimaginable weight descending from the sky. The floatiness he felt previous is nonexistent now, and he feels so heavy that he fears he’s going to sink the boat. Turmoil rips through him like a savage animal, the pain of the loss turning his insides to molten lead. Despondent, unable to process any thought aside from the fact that all he wants to do is hear Malcolm’s heartbeat again, Tobias falls to his knees and screams.
The screams turn into sobs, and the riverman curls over onto the deck. One hand clutches as his stomach, fingernails digging half-moons into his abdomen, as though trying to claw out the guilt in his stomach. The other finds the deck, clenching into a fist.
The crying wracks the man’s body, his back arched and forehead pressed into the cool wood below him. His throat feels like it’s been ripped to ribbons by the wounded sounds of his grief, but he can’t stop; it’s been years since he last allowed himself to cry, and now it was too much.
You gave away your family again, Tobias.
You’re a damn fool.