Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Alex Mikhaylov would not consider himself to be a man above the rest.

No, he would certainly not.

Yet, earlier that very morning, he had gone outside to scour the open plains of snow that surround him and his isolated dingy cabin. He had been expecting himself to die that very morning, as he had brought a gun with him. The one that fits snug right between his fingers and his palm. He did not bring any bags with him either for this excursion. It is not such a thing one would call a hunting trip.

However, he is much too cowardly to commit. Or, rather, he believes that taking a bullet to his skull would be a quick repentance for his guilt. Too quick of an end to his suffering. He must atone for it in other ways. So, he went out…hunting, and came back with nothing but himself. 

Though the aching pain of hunger in his stomach far more outweighs the current situation at hand. What he has before him is such a heavy weight, so pressing, it is like he is able to feel again for the first time; gaining a sort of consciousness outside of his barbaric state of survival.

This far out in the wilderness, where you are severed from the threads of humanity, Mikhaylov did not expect God to listen to him. This far out–God cannot hear you. He knows this, because he had been praying for nearly a decade now. Fervent for a second chance. But the Alaskan skies stayed silent and graced no such choir of blessings upon his ears, and he had given up. He did not deserve it. No longer believing in an afterlife, but certainly knowing that if one did exist he would not be up in the glorious warm clouds of heavens gates.

No, he is not a good man.

Yet, amongst the collecting dust on the sparingly few pieces of furniture he owns, rests a girl, unconscious on his couch, in his log cabin. She is shivering, with a pulse as weak as a bled calf at her neck. Alive. Gloriously alive. Breathing.

Among Mikhaylov’s vapid thoughts of being old and alive when he should not be, retracing his pressed footsteps in the snow; notably, by himself, that very morning; is a weight, covered by the drifting particles of snowflakes and nature’s powder. It is rare that anything other than the chiming caw of a bird, or the mewling scream of a fox in the distance, graces him with a visit.

There, barely a shape buried beneath the snow, curled at the foot of his front door, is a breathing body. Shifting slightly, breathing, is the mess of muted orange coils of hair, beneath the dunes of snow. At another rise and fall of breath, Mikhaylov had prayed for the first time in years.

Throwing his pathetic attempt of suicide away, it falls onto the snow beside him, and he knelt down onto the ground. Muttering various pleas beneath his breath, his knees dug into the cold and wet, and he kept digging until his gloved hands met bare skin. How–what?

Mostly, his gaze captures onto the pallid skin of the girl's face, lips turning blue. He thinks that this is it. Either she dies, and he’s responsible. Or, she lives. He can’t figure out what the consequences to that would turn out to be.

Between the thin layer between them, he can feel life leaving her body, limp already. At this realization, no matter how hot he feels beneath his sturdy insulated coats, his blood turns icelike–colder than the air that surrounds him.

Frostbite. The first, unfortunate thought he concluded. The second? Hypothermia. He is no doctor, has never studied medicine, but he has enough knowledge in that thick, stupid, ancient noggin of his to know how deathly winter is. No matter, even if the Gregorian calendar denotes this season as early spring.

Gathering all the strength in the old joints of his knees, he finds a firm grasp on her weakened body, and in one swift motion, holds her to his chest.

Outside of wishing against his own misery, a new, foreign wish takes precedence. For this young girl to stay alive.

Kicking the door to his cabin open–gratefulness surges through him that he has never felt the need to lock it before, despite owning a key–he moves his feet one in front of the other, hurriedly. Dipping slightly, his hands loosen and his grasp on her lets go. This time, she lays on his blue, time-worn couch. Her head rolls, muscles fatigued by collapse. As gently as he can, his rough calloused fingertips meet her soft freckled cheek, tilting her head back up. Her eyelashes are dusted white with icicles.

Fire. He needs to start a fire. Fire is warmth. Warmth is continuity.

Time becomes an irrelevant thing with how fast he moves towards his raked pile of wood in the corner, and grabs his matchsticks upon the mantle. Blowing against the sparks, his unpracticed breath ignites a dance between the brick and stale wood until a piece of sun flickers, dormant. He keeps going, adding fuel for more work of flame. Once the glow stands fine in the bed of coals and wood, Mikhaylov steps back, observing. 

He frowns.

The girl looks sixteen. Her face is pulled tight, as if in pain, but moments before he had already used his fingers to check the hairline of her wet curls to see if there was any injury. There had been no blood, nor splatter of crimson painted among her anywhere. Yet, she looks to be in a torment.

She’s wearing a thin white blouse, and leggings. A singular necklace rests upon her disturbed neck. He can see all the skin beneath her shirt. Pallid, heavily scarred. The cold had wrapped her in its embrace, and she is soaking wet, still. The translucence of her skin reveals to him where exactly her organs might be between the freckled stars on her skin.

His gut tightens, not from hunger. At the sight of this, his chest begins to heave too, burdened by an ache.

Despite this, somehow, in his old age, he feels that he is being blessed. He is worse than war generals, far more cruel than any soldier to have existed. Despite being a wretch of man, impossibly more uncivilized than the patrolling military he sees in the market somedays; impossibly more uncivilized than the man who first created war; that she is a gift.

Clearing off the table in front of the fireplaces, he moves all of his amounted mess and clutter to whatever wooden countertop is closest, uncaring whichever way he placed them. Once done, he takes his boots off, water flooding between the cracks of his flooring as the ice melts off of them.

There, on the table–a respectable distance away from the fire–he sets down the singular item he went back out to retrieve. A polaroid, as equally wet and gone as the girl is. In the photo, damaged terribly, there is a person standing beside her, clad in a uniform of white. She looks even younger then.

I will not pry, he promises himself. I will not ask, he promises himself that too. But Mikhaylov does wonder, wherever in this world did she come from?

Sitting down across from the girl on his own chairs, the warmth of the fire cascades down the side of his face. He watches her breathe, hoping that she will wake up. He lets out a fortifying breath.

Mikhaylov does not think that he can handle losing anyone else at his hands.

Chapter Text

Darkness.

Blackness upon blackness. As far as the eye can see there is no discernible light. No powers are alive here. There is nothing.

The nothingness graces over a body with a delicate touch, gently kissing skin. The body is a tingling figure in this void, suspended however the lightless abyss decides. The nothingness is cold too, a brisk nipping mouth around the body, in this barren field. The body is hers. She can reach out and touch it. She’ll feel the touch. Yet, weighed down by what surrounds her, she is inert. She lacks the strength to move, or even reach out.

 All around, this nothingness is hers.

There was once light here. She knows that, but that knowing is distant. She cannot see anything. For as long as the path forward is, the emptiness kills. Any evidence of what is or what was, became illicit and removed. What was once a gallery, filled…she is no longer able to recall the empty spaces.

She cannot hear anything either, nor, think a comprehensible thought. Perhaps, rather, that she does think, but they are lost in the rivers of her mind in their insignificance. They float upwards, in her body, simply, passing through, back into the dark.

She does not know how long she gazes into the blackness, cold and mostly senseless. Time is an affair she dare not intrude in, and she has lost curiosity in the passing seconds, minutes, hours. It is not particularly peaceful, but there is no conflict either in this state. It is simply a nothingness.

The nothingness feels like longing, almost. It is the only thing pressing down and immediate. Not even the winds, blowing from whichever direction, bring an impression such as this–whistling such a feeling into her. A distant, far away, uncontainable longing.

Briefly, lips press softly into hers with a kiss. Far away, out of reach. Grief and agony intertwine.

It is barely outside of her grasp. Hopefully, if she reaches far enough, battles herself for it, she can touch it. If only her fingertips grace its surface, of that longing, then maybe she can remember. She can remember what those empty frames in the darkness were filled with–how long it took to paint each stroke of the portrait inside of there. But, it is slipping outside of her hands, like everything else. It falls into that same nothingness before she can even gather the strength to lift her wrist slightly. The darkness surrounding her never ends. 

Almost, as if she’s blind: basing everything off of touch, she grasps onto the only thing in here. Yet, around her, it is desolate. Pain rushes through her body like a circulating system of blood; racing through each limb, clotting in her chest. 

She cannot understand why. She cannot understand why the nothingness insists on wrapping its limbs around her body, digging cavities into her, replacing it with only pain. The nothingness takes and takes and takes. Her body suffers the burden of this labyrinth. 

Then, in her head, up, is a splitting sensation.

Sharp edges of nails trace her hairline as if to soothe where curl forms at skin. It digs. The clawing hands–long, tangible, and mean, move over her. They drive through the middle of her skull, separating her cleanly into two. First, they map the cords of her brain, before reaching deeper into the corners, hovering with talons. Then, they pierce, on the sides. As if spooling something, their wrists turn inwards, and from each corner of her mind, they wrap fragments around their fingertips. And it hurts. 

There is something in her mind, searing through flesh and bone, tearing away at her. She is so weak, so futile in her efforts, that she cannot get away from it. Stuck. Paralysed. It is because of the darkness, a void without light, that suspends her there.

It keeps her bleeding when someone is tearing something away.

She cannot remember. She cannot possibly remember. Something is being dismantled. Something is being torn. Something in her mind is being ripped apart like canvas.

Larger, and far greater than she ever was, pulls her apart and winds it around a spindle. They are taking it for their own. Taking what she does not want them to have. They take part in the making of destruction. Like a God would.

A hungry snarl unfolds from cannibalistic teeth. The hands leave her head.

The only thing she knows is that she had loved. And that love had been taken away from her.

Her mind bleeds.

Chapter Text

The pain feels like she is being torn and woven into a different fabric.

Into a different person. Someone new.

Then, she wakes.

When she has finally gathered the strength to open her eyes, a blurry vignette greets the edges of her vision. Pain lays over everything like a thin blanket, drifting her in and out of focus. Something upward in her body shifts. She realizes that there is lesser darkness, but mostly, a light. All at once, that splitting in her head recedes into the background. It doesn’t disappear, but it fades as the colors of sunset and kindling waltz in her face.

Those colors warm the apples of her cheeks, producing a heat that travels past her skin and into her bones. The warmth spins, stepping closer and then farther, as if in a dance. Fire. It seems a familiar thing, and somewhere tucked away in the corners of her mind–in that painful place below her temple–she processes it as something she once knew. Her body no longer feels icelike, no longer trapped in that floating blackness, but her body refuses to do anything but curl into itself–hiding from that enduring taloned sorrow. The aftermath has her mind crying out, each pathway in her skull melding into each other like a river as the edifices of it were broken down and torn apart.

Beneath the weight of something as equally warm and smothering, she reaches the stiff joints of her hand out towards the fire, in an effort to hold some of that flame in her hands. It’s too far. Her fingertips quiver. Moving her hand to her scalp, she feels where the ruin is, but only feels the hairline of her scalp and the stiff dryness in her curls. As if none of it happened. A nihil expanse where everything else should be. She cannot recognize herself.

A creak sounds beyond the crackling of fire, muffled through her ear. Turning achily, she tilts her chin to it, searching for the noise. A man. 

Sitting in a worn log chair, he’s leaning forward slightly, with one scarred hand on his knee. In the other hand holds a cup of steaming tea which he graces towards his mouth. Wrinkles, crowed eyes, and a beard surrender the evidence of his age. The corners of his lips tilt downwards as he frowns in curiosity. The irises hidden underneath the thick eyelashes of his eyes glance over her–watching–wondering.

She looks at the man. He looks at her. 

The bowl fits in her hands just fine, producing a warmth in her palms from holding it. She breathes in through her nose, trying to capture its aroma while she still can. It’s a plain stew with not many vegetables, but she’s starving and the only other feeling her body can recognize besides the deep pitted hunger–is gratitude. She stopped shivering a while ago.

After she had woken, nothing happened for a while. She took in her surroundings, slowly, like taking bites, and assessed where she was. She currently resides in an old, dusty, and cluttered log cabin, with a harrowing blizzard outside. The whipping wind and snow threaten to collapse the fire's flames, but each time it does, the man places his hands on the bricks beside the coals and breathes life into the dancing sparks once again.

She could not bring herself to say anything with the pressing weight in her throat, devouring every trace of her voice. The man had not said anything to her either, keeping his mouth in a firm line. He set his mug down on the arm of his chair, eyed her for a short bit with the traces of consideration barging his features, then stood up.

He made her the stew, nothing for himself, and when the time came for her to sit up, she struggled decently. Understanding marred his features when he caught onto the hints of her aches. He helped her sit upright on the couch, and after stepping away, draped the very same blanket over her shoulders with disdain as it fell away from her form. The man made sure she was steady enough before he arranged her wrists outward, placing the bowl in her hands.

 It climbed to the edge of full before, but now, it’s half empty.

“I found you outside in the cold.” He said, a murmur in the cabin. That is all he says. He asks no questions, but lingers, sitting down in his chair again with his tea, no longer steaming. 

She tries to find a way to thank him, but realizes that though she understands his words, she cannot understand her own. She cannot respond to him in a language that would make sense. So nothing comes out, and it is buried in her throat, and it makes this abrasive sensation rise up in her gut she wishes to expel but knows she cannot.

A single tear rolls down her cheek. That is all that comes out. Inside, where the grief burrows, she knows that she must not cry, so she does not; despite it being all that she wants to do, despite feeling like she hasn’t cried in a very, very long time. Her lip quivers, and she bites it with her teeth–hard–to keep back the shuddering breath that wants to follow after.

She lets the tear drop down to her chin. Knowing its trail must glisten in the firelight, she also knows that she is unable to hide it.

Bowing seems an appropriate way to thank him. That is what she does, as far as she can, in her ache. The man furrows his eyebrows, not understanding, but says nothing still. He takes another sip from his mug, no longer steaming.

Besides the fire and storm, an enveloping silence circles them both.

Once she feels full, she sets the bowl in her lap, resting a hand against it to capture its fading warmth. Her other hands reach up, absently, towards her neck. Her fingertips travel along a chain the width of a few strands of hair until they reach a clasp. She rubs it between the pads of her fingertips, testing its durability. It holds. Traveling down, the texture of the necklace changes from cold metals to a dry, smooth, but filled with caverns as she traces. Then further beneath that, its metal once again, extensions of the necklace hold on to create a charm, similar to that of an amulet. 

She can anticipate each groove and texture as her fingers trace it. As if she’s done this thousands of times. Enough to the point it becomes like muscle memory.

Chapter Text

There is a rifle dead centre on the table in front of her. She places her empty bowl beside it.

The man in the corner of her peripherals is tall, broad, and slightly intimidating. He wears a red nordic jacket, lined with fur and folk art on the inside. It hides, just barely, all the muscle he has accumulated over the years–which is still visible despite his aged appearance. He sits straight, comfortably, sipping on a mug of a beverage that once steamed with heat. 

With her hands empty now and her stomach full, the man determines that this is a sensible enough time for her to sit quietly and listen to what he has to say. He does not use his words sparingly. 

“I am Alex Mikhaylov.” He says, voice low and deep. Lifting a hand, he motions around them. “This is my cabin.” He is oddly stoic, face a still mosaic as he speaks. “I found you outside, in the snow,” his hand motions to the table once again, “–with these.” 

Her gaze flickers back to where she set the bowl. She leans over, peering, curling the checkered blanket in on herself to maintain some kind of comfort. The rifle on the table, a weathered brown backpack, and a mottled piece of paper, wrecked by the weather, which she realizes is a photograph. It’s ripped in the corner, but faintly, there in the background is someone standing beside her. She recognizes none of the items on the table. She barely addresses it that it is her in the photo. For some odd reason, she did not think she looked like that.

She does not know what she looks like outside of the photo, only understanding that her hair is a shaded orange, and curls shoulder length. She knows only of the hair on her head, her freckled hands, the clothes she is wearing, and a rigid stiffness that follows her. She questions that, realizing instantaneously, she does not have any knowledge of herself. What do I look like, she thinks, staring hard at the waterboarded photo. Who am I? Is the much larger question that follows. In that question comes a fear, in the fact that she cannot provide herself an answer.

It is a good thing that the old man–Alex–does not ask any questions, but supplies her with information instead in a gruff voice. “We are just fourteen days off from Utqiagvik, Point Barrow, and a few degrees of freezing yourself to death.” She recognizes his joke, tries cracking her best at a smile, but she does not recognize the name, and that arouses a fear in her, too. He continues to tell her that they reside in a town called Eden, still isolated and partially abandoned from the war. His cabin is far outside of it, deep in snow and wood. 

Taking sips from his mug, he pauses momentarily between each sentence, allowing her to digest his words. “Alaska is a place of…perpetual winter.” His crowed eyes focus on the fire, watching it flicker among the coals and wood. “Ten months out of the year it snows, in the other two, the sun never sets. There are only two seasons. Snow and not snow.” The man chuckles at his wordplay, as if in a remembrance. She nods, not sure what to say, how to respond even.

Mulling it over, she comes to a conclusion. This town called Eden sounds like a godawful place to be in, but she is not outside in the middle of a blistering cold snowstorm; she is not facing the whipping winds outside, she is in his house, she has been fed, and he is explaining everything to her without anger. She supposes, she cannot say anything about it, so she remains quiet. It must not be a horrible place to be in, if he is here. The climate would explain his build, after all. Harsh winters, heavy labours, days without bounty nor favor.

The man stands. She watches him gather the mess askew the table, taking her belongings (assumingly), carrying them into a separate niche of the cabin. For a few moments, she basks in her thoughts and the crackling of the fire. Then, he comes back. He stops in front of her, yet still a distance away. “I wasn’t expecting company.” He picks up her bowl with one of his large, calloused hands. “I don’t have a room for you to stay the night. I hope the couch will do.”

All her thoughts cease. Looking up at him, she shakes her head. He sounds kind of muffled on that side. “That’s fine,” is all that manages to come out of her mouth. She’s choked up by his considerations. “The couch will do.”

So the evening recedes, Alex has cleaned the kitchen, she has stayed stationary on the couch, watching him filter in and out of the rooms of his home with a building curiosity. But she is stuck, her mind constantly producing deep pools of doubt within every fiber of her being.

She sleeps on the couch, albeit, only a little. Mostly, in the darkness, with the howling skies outside, she stares up at the wooden beams and sees shapes in those. Trying to make sense of what she sees, where she is, who she is, through the fogginess of a perpetual headache. 

Sleep comes to her eventually, she cannot know when exactly, only remembering how she was fighting it off with fatigue, afraid of delving into the endless blackness again.

The fire had gone out sometime during the night.

In the morning, she woke stiffly against the couch, waiting in the darkness until the man came out of his room. He starts up a dinged kettle on the burner stove, sets out mugs for the both of them, then feeds her a drink of peppermint tea. The packet was found in the corner of an almost-empty tea drawer, and it tastes like it. She’s grateful for it anyways, it quells the nausea temporarily.

Afterwards, his mug now abandoned on the edge of the counter, he briefly disappears into another segment of the cabin. He comes back with a stack of clothing in his hands, she does not know where from. He allows her to take it, and she balances it on her hands. “Something warmer than you currently have on,” he says. She nods.

One of his sturdy hands rests on the top of her shoulder as he directs her to the bathroom, where she can shower. A distilled warmth. He shows her how the shower functions, then shuts the door with a resounding lock, to remind her of her privacy here.

Turning the light back off, she allows the quiet to run through her, fully. The first thing she sees, in the darkened lighting from the scarce windows, is the mirror. In that mirror is herself. Herself, and all that she is, stares back at her.

She must face herself and go beyond seeing that dim silhouette reflecting back at her. First, she sets down the stack of clothes on the corner of the counter, beside one of the sinks. Her hands now free, she balances herself on its ledge as she looks around.

The mirror stretches over the entirety of the wall. In the glass, she can see the layout of the bathroom completely. With the door closed, she can look to her right and find the place where she might relieve herself. Then, there is a dividing wall made up entirely of dark blue tile, separating that space from the shower. The entire place is more thought out than one would initially expect for a cabin, harbouring a slightly indulgent intonation. As if it had been built with the intentions of it being more than a random lodging in the woods.

She thinks back on the walls of the cabin, noting the pictures she passed while he directed her here. He has a family, maybe. She’s intruding, probably. Yet, she sees no family. No sign of life, other than…him. It is him here, only him. Now, her. That thought settles her for a moment.

Looking down at both of her hands, she turns them over, peering at them more closely than she did before. Spotty freckles mark her hands, scars nick different places too, most pale white and paper thin–as if she reached out into a thorn bush. Then, on only one of her palms, there is a laceration reaching from the top where her index finger begins to where the bend of her wrist is. It’s much paler than any of the other ones that litter her hands. It looks like it had been cut. Staring at it, she wonders. Cut by what, and why?

Pushing the sleeves of her blouse up further, she frowns. There aren’t any more scars along the lengths of her arms, only freckles and an odd tan that cuts off at the elbow, revealing milky skin above. No more clues there.

Leaning in, she faces the mirror, peering at her reflection. She sees all that she is. She looks like a quite noticeably aged version of the photograph. Older. Nothing in particular piques her attention, though. Just a face full of freckles with the genetic portrait of curls and green eyes to match. Looking at herself makes her feel strangely empty.

There is a gleam down her throat. She notices the necklace she held from earlier. Squinting just a bit, trying to capture all of the fine detail on it. It is a bone. Perhaps one that belonged to the skull of a human, particularly from its browbone. Pausing, she looks closer. Or something that vaguely resembled a human.

She does not know why she immediately understood what part of the body it may have come from, or what it may be from. She does not entertain the thought further, as it stirs up a kind of revulsion tucked away in her gut, sadness and loathe intertwined.

Picking up the chain of the necklace between her fingertips, she feels the texture of it. Gold chain. Her fingers dip, trailing its structure. Then a browbone, then, lower, an amulet. It feels as if it was skewered, or welded on. It’s in the shape of an eye. The grooves and indents of the fine metal reminds her distantly of something. Like a place of stones among stones. Flipping the back of it, her fingertips feel for anything else. They catch upon an engraved line of divots, much like lettering in a sentence. She tries making it out in the dark, but ultimately, cannot. It is not in any language that she knows of.

Pushing away her curiosity around the amulet, she surrenders to the curiosity about herself. Tying back her mess of curls is when she sees it. There. On the left side of her face. Scars. A canvas of it. Leaning in closer, she almost bumps her forehead against the glass. It’s where an ear would be. Dropping her hands from her hair, she reaches towards it. Feeling both sides of her face with her hands, a spreading, sinking sensation crosses her. She finds one ear with her hand, but not the other. Her breath is stuck in her chest, refusing to travel upwards any further.

She’s missing an ear.

Even in the dark she can tell that the skin there is discolored. A slight pink with a bumpy surface where there is a buildup of scar tissue. It’s twisted and misshapen. When she pulls the front pieces of her braided hair back, you can see the dissymmetry more clearly. It’s…ugly. It would explain why she can hear out of one ear and not the other as well. It would explain how, when she woke, she could only hear things one at a time, in a sequence following one after the other; a million other things pressing down into her awareness. God, she’s deaf. Actually deaf. She doesn’t have an ear.

The breath that she releases fogs up the cold mirror, covering what she sees. She pulls back. There’s something growing in her gut, digging deep into her stomach. Curling as if it is something rotten. That tucked away feeling in her ribs from earlier is starting to come out, bearing its teeth like a bear coming out of hibernation. Hungry, grueling, and desperate for substance.

Right above where both her ears would be, that pounding headache from earlier persists and remains.

She’ll figure out how it happened later. She can worry about her deafness later. Pushing it away, she focuses instead on the invisible layer of sweat, grime, and disgust covering her. 

Looking down at her socks, she assumes she was wearing boots before. Guessing, she thinks that the man–Alex–had taken them off of her feet so that she could rest on his couch. Again, she is grateful. Toeing off her socks, she finds nothing frightening. The cold tile greets her bare feet, sending a chill of wake through her. Then, she rests her fingertips on the waistband of her leggings. A rush of adrenaline makes her fingertips tremble. She does not know why she feels so frightened at the idea of seeing her legs. They’re her legs, not anyone else’s, they’re a part of her body. Scoffing at herself in her head, she thinks that it's ridiculous her hands are shaking right now.

Counting to three, she decides that on the countdown, she’s just going to do it. She rips her leggings down to her ankles, tugging them off so fast it's as if they were on fire. They end up inside out on top of her discarded socks.

Looking down, her hair musses her vision. She looks at her legs in the dark, unwilling to turn on the light. In her rush to get the article of clothing off, a wave of dizziness accompanied her partially unclothed state, and she rested her hand against the wall. On that wall, her hand remains terribly close to the lightswitch. She moves her balance to the counter instead, inspecting her legs.

They are like her arms, similarly tanned and freckled, but pale and white where the leg of her pants cut off. Her legs spot both with sparing dots of strawberry and the same thin, white scars, decently splayed about the length of them. Atop her knees, there is a mass of tangled white spots, but that, she suspects, is childhood or bush injury. But on her right knee is where the concern lies–a splay of spots, painted over with a tight, white sheen. There is a fridge ache whenever she bends the joint, as if it has sustained injury before. Perhaps more than it ever could handle. But it does not look as bad as her ear and for that, she will take it.

With hands still shaking, she unbuttons her blouse, button for button. She stares ahead at the wood panelling in front of her, making a point to not look down at herself yet, relying only on her fingertips to guide the clothing off. She’s hoping there isn’t something else hiding beneath her clothes.

As her hands reach the last button, she feels winded and has to remind herself to take a breath out. Continuing to look forward, she tugs the shirt off of her shoulders, letting it drop onto the same heap on the floor. The cold air nips her bare skin. Turning, she faces the wrath of her own judgement.

You could have pressed the barrel of a gun to her forehead and it would have shocked her less.

Everything below her breastbone, past her midsection, to right above the pelvic bone, is scarred. A collection of scars, slightly raised at their edges, pull taut on her skin. Some scarring disappears underneath the waistband of her bra and underwear. She thinks it would put anyone who kills to shame. She has survived…something. That much is clear.

Tentatively, she brings one hand up to trace the thick bordering lines of one of the scars. She keeps her touch light, barely registering it on herself. Somehow, she knows that they don’t ache much. At least not much. Only in the cold. And it gets worse every year. Tears prick at the corners of her eyes.

She cannot count the number of times she has felt that sensation since waking from her dreamed stupor of nothingness. She doesn’t know how she knows that. She doesn’t know why. Her shoulders shake with unreleased sobs as she tries to keep it in.

Turning, she inspects her back in the mirror, eyes circling her figure. She realizes that the scars don’t stop on the front of her body, but go through her. Entirely. They look larger on her back, as if the entry had been cleaner than the exit. It looks like someone tore a hole through her, ripping through her skin with a pair of talons. Like someone decided, that’s it, but failed. Fuck. How did I live?

A slight dizziness overcomes her, and the tiles of the bathroom spin, and the feeling of her breath swelled up inside of her tells her to exhale. She hacks out a choking cough, harsh.

Every possibility races through her head. Every thought, every outcome, every idea. She stares at herself in the mirror, almost completely naked. What did I do to deserve this? Rings through her as loud as a church bell.

As she traces each scar, her mind tries coming up with an answer that feels right. One that fits. Maybe she did something unspeakable in the past. Maybe this was someone’s revenge. That’s…plausible…to a fault. Yet none of these feel register, nor feel definitive, nor a means to an end. None of these thoughts feel right. It sends her mind down a spiraling path.

Maybe, just maybe, she has done something truly horrific. Something so horrific, that she is not able to consider it–because it is not something anyone would ever do. It is not something capable for anyone to do, unless they deserved scars like hers.

Judging by these scars, she guesses that she is not just anyone. 

That sick, rotten feeling surfaces once more in her gut. Every piece of evidence, every clue of her identity–they don’t fit together. At all. It’s as if someone took bits and pieces from separate people, mixed those fragments in a hat, pulled a couple out and decided to make a person out of it. Not the rifle, not the bag, not the photograph, not the scars, nor even the necklace inscribed in a foreign language around her neck, tell anything of who she might be.

And so far, the man who has taken so kindly to her, does not appear to harbour any answers either.

Imagine that. Wilderness, Eden, Utqiagvik, Alaska. She, with scars unimaginable, without memory, conveniently stuck in a snow storm. God, it looks like she’s running from something. She takes another large breath in. She could be running from something. Or someone. Who? What?

Dragging her fingers through her knotted curls, she walks to the shower, bare feet cold against the tile. She’ll disregard everything she sees–in her mind and on her body. Distantly, a part of her knows better than to ruminate on those things for too long. Her hands shake as she brushes through undone braids. They shake. She does not know if they’ll ever stop.

Shedding her underwear and bra, she throws them on the same heap from where she stands in the shower. Then, she turns the handle, the water coming out of the showerhead pouring out and over her. Closing her eyes, she rubs the water into her face, trying to let the world fade away as she focuses on the droplets racing down the length of her body; and the warmth slowly sneaking into the brass pipes.

She lets herself not deal with the possibility that she could have been someone horrible, if only for a couple minutes. Eventually, those thoughts will return.

Though she’s showered and washed away the filth of her supposed sins, every numerable inch of her skin still feels covered in a layer of ruin. She does not think that will wash away. 

Unexpectedly, in the shower, her mind wandered off to other places. A place, within a thought, within her mind. A place far back, visiting that endless nothingness. After she had scrubbed her skin pink and raw, detangled her curls in a motion one would only know with years of practice, she focused on that endless nothingness. She thought about every passing moment since she woke. Since before she woke. It consumed her entirely.

Her fingertips reached upwards, without her conscious thinking, brushing against her lips. Pressing down with two fingers, shifting, she tried to repeat that pressure she felt on the brink of sleep; before the taloned hands came with a rapture upon her head. With her pointer finger and index finger, she traces, trying to remember what that fleeting touch felt. That soft grace of someone else's lips. A kiss.

She’s not allowed to ruminate on it for long though, as the shower water begins to fizzle back into that coldness. Realizing she has taken up far too much time, she turns the water off completely.

While it lasted, the hot water did wonders at the back of her neck, soothing some of that persistent migraine. Slowly, the throbbing pain above her ears receded, falling away like snow melting in the early eagerness of spring.

Getting out and drying off was no problem either. The problem that came to her, came from within her mind, as she dried off with that rough piece of fabric. She dragged it along each of her limbs, removing all traces of water. As if she rubbed hard enough, the scars would leave with it.

She doesn’t know what she did–doesn’t know why she can’t remember–all she knows is that she doesn’t. She is horrified at the idea of the truth.

Dressing herself was nothing feasible nor particularly rectifying for her to retain it to memory. It was simple, and she can’t find it in herself to be embarrassed. The old man–Alex–had gone through the bag (possibly hers) and found a clean pair of clothing for her to use. Socks, jeans, a thick knit sweater, and the amenities. Upon putting each article of clothing on, she had inspected them. Not too deliberately, but enough to try and saunter them for clues. But each piece is tagless, and their only evidence being the colors, size, and areas of wear. There are rips in places that there shouldn’t be. None anywhere inappropriate, but places she cannot think of anything they could possibly be from.

The clothes fit on her quite snug anyways, warmer than the ones she wore earlier. They fit her as clothing belonging to her would, but the sweater is a decorated mirage of blue and greens, eating her figure. She does not think it is hers. In the mirror, she compares it to the blouse she wore previously and the other articles of clothing that are in a pile on the ground. Her necklace lays atop the sweater. Dragging a finger across the rips and seams of it, she thinks that maybe the sweater was someone else's once. The thought brings a wave of disgust, nausea, and a sensible loneliness over her, draped like a heavy curtain. A specific guilt runs through her veins.

She does not think she has ever felt so much before in such a short amount of time. But she does not know herself, so she cannot trust herself. She does not know what to think. Right then and there, she makes a promise to herself. That she will only trust the things that she sees.

Kicking her clothes into the corner of the bathroom, she sees herself once more in the fogged up mirror. The person staring back is someone maybe sixteen, neither a weapon or a girl. There is a certainty painting her breath, that she will never truly know. Perhaps both, perhaps none.

She asks if she can do anything to help–anything at all, so he sets her around the cabin to do things.

He makes her do baseless tasks throughout the day, like folding linens, organizing his cupboards, and the dishes. She knows more than anything that the tasks are meant to keep her busy and occupy her, but even after the events of last night she finds an overwhelming urge settled within her to go out and run; to climb, do something, anything. But a glimpse outside one of the windows has her pushing down that thought, a struggle, really. It’s like fighting a seasoned armyman with a dishcloth. Not the greatest shield against artillery.

She completed all the tasks, and he stood, stalling, thinking of another thing to do. He came up with nothing. Now, she’s been sitting in front of the couch, in front of the fire, for perhaps hours now.  Entranced by the flames, with the warmth it brings, along is a shred of familiarity. After seeing everything beneath her clothes, sitting in front of the fire becomes a reducing act. Reducing her to simply being a human. A human needing a heat source to find comfort and nearness in a bleak expanse.

It may be dangerous to leave someone alone in your log cabin for hours on end, but the man had, almost without hesitation, started the fire for her, smiled through his wrinkles, and told her that he’d be back soon. She can’t help but stay put, rubbing her hands over her thighs in an attempt of distraction.

Curiosities upon curiosities pass through. Taking reign in her curiosity to search the cabin and meander, she stays put. She does not look through drawers or cabinets, nor take books off of his shelves, nor does she flip through the loose papers, stacked atop one another collecting dust. No, she stays, considering every possibility.

When he returns, banging snow off of his boots, she realizes she has had an awful long time left to think. Apparently, he realizes the same as he takes graceful, common steps around his home–understanding that she has not touched anything. By the look in his eyes, he half-expected her to. The mind is a danger to itself first before it is ever a danger to others.

The wise thing, he decides, for her to do next, is to stand beside him as he prepares their meal. The sky has darkened once again, warranting the birth of lighting around the rooms from lamps and a stoke for the fire. He begins talking in low tones, chopping up potatoes and other varieties of ground vegetables. It’s small talk, she doesn’t really listen, but somehow processes all of it. The snowflakes outside are as large as pathrock. He brought more wood into the sheltered area to dry. Absently, she nods.

Time accumulates into a cumbersome thing, very quickly she moves through the motions until she’s sitting at the dining table with him, preparing to eat. The man–Alex–has since then draped his quilted coat over the back of his chair, poured each of them a glass from a vase of filtered water, then slowly sat down with a releasing sigh.

He says a forgotten grace, hands clasped in a semi-prayer. He speaks quietly, stuttering over the words slightly. Despite his eager and large vocabulary from earlier, he renounces such things in the sake of thankfulness. She does not know what he is thankful for, she does not ask. Feeling it's the respectful thing in the moment, she bows her head with him, waiting. With a spoon in her hand and her wrists resting against the wooden grain of the table, she closes her eyes. As soon as the word amen leaves his mouth, she shovels a spoonful of soup into hers. The eagerness makes him chuckle softly in that elderly way she knows without really knowing.

Lapses of silence come and go between bites, before finally, Alex speaks in full this time, like he did earlier. “Where’d you come from?” He asks, quietly. She almost misses it because of how soft he said it, like a prayer. Pausing, she stares at the wood grain on the table, following the pattern with her eyes. Feeling his expectant gaze still on her, she shakes her head. “I…don’t know…”

Humming, his brows raise, but he says nothing as she continues to speak. She feels she has to give him an answer. He’s done this much so far. “I…can’t remember anything.” She admits. “I don’t know where I am…or who I am…” 

That familiar prickling feeling rises in the corner of her eyes once again. She does her best to push back against it, and blink against its wanting surrender. “What’s your name?” He asks her. She continues following the wood grain with her eyes, a curl falling in front of her face. She’s still shaking her head. All day she has been searching for a name. Nothing has come. She doesn’t know. “I don’t know.”

She thinks, tries to, to the point her headache resurfaces. Her vision starts blackening at the edges, and right above her ears is that same sharp pain. God, it’s too much. A striking, piercing heat through the middle of her head. Everything becomes muddled, only known as unmeasurable pain.

“Where’d you come from?” She raises a hand to her head, trying to get it to stop. The questions or the pain, she doesn’t know. Pushing her fingertips against the place it hurts most, she tries to suppress the scorching ache–trying to quell it–with any means that she knows of. Shutting her eyes, focusing on anything other than the pain becomes too difficult a task.

Everything in the room is pressing into every sense of her awareness. Every sound, every movement, every thought passing through. This time, unsureness laces his tone. “...Your parents?” She doesn’t answer the question. Opening her eyes, she says the only thing her voice can push out past the pain. “I’m sorry.” The weakness strikes through her, she cannot force out anything stronger. Her voice shakes.

A single tear has rolled down her cheek, once again, like the night before.

It is easy to look upon yesterday and reference it when there are no existing memories from before to compare it to. All of it, everything she says, is the closest thing she knows to the truth.

“There’s no need to apologize,” he says, a tone filled with regretful sympathy. She hates it, but cannot find it in herself to protest him. Taking the chance, she looks up at him. He eats slowly, his brows a furrowed mess beneath that white, and a frown laces his face, which is dragged down by his thick snowy beard. “Well,” he starts. “I”m glad you’re not hurt.” He takes another bite of his soup, then sets his bowl down, the inside of the dish cleared out.

“You already know that nothing operates until the spring.” He says. “I can’t call anyone until Eden’s gate opens, and the train starts running on schedule again.” She takes a bite of her soup, displeased as the taste is mussed in her mouth. She swallows the bite anyway. 

“Perhaps,” he says, hopeful, “if we’re fortunate, you’ll regain your memories within the fortnight.” She nods. It would be great if I did, she thinks, swallowing down another bite. Then, I wouldn’t have to fight myself. She says nothing though.

“You might remember something, eventually. Don’t rush it.” He says.

She doesn’t think she is a bad person–or ever was. Yet, every evidence she has goes against this. Everything–everything—tells her that she is simply lost and alone; or tells her that she is fighting something; running from it; trying to survive. If she was running, then perhaps it was the consequences of her actions.

It would be right, if God punished a soul like hers. It’s time He goes after the bad ones. But then another thought occurs: if God is punishing her, why isn’t she dead? That blank space in her head holds nothing but the past few collective hours alone. She thinks, maybe having no memory is almost as good as being dead.

You have to find a purpose. Something to live for. She cannot simply go on existing, anticipating when the next time the old man will set a fire, so she can put her aching and icelike hands in front of it. There needs to be consequences for what she’s done. And dear, fucking God, she feels like other than her memories, there is also a very large, very significant part of her that has been left behind.

It feels like she had another limb, but it's been removed from her, now. There is blood dripping out of the wind, she can feel it. Yet, she cannot see it. There is a wall separating her from seeing it, and on the other side of that wall is the thing she needs. It’s like she’s been severed from it.

Bringing her hand up to her lips once more, she presses down, chasing that familiar feeling. She catches herself though, and instead wipes the rest of the soup broth from her mouth. It’s like a phantom pain. But she does not think that the burning in her chest is the same one she gets around her missing ear–if she gets any pain there at all.

It occurs to her why the man–Alex–has sat himself down on her right. She wants to smack herself for not piecing that together sooner. She’s half-deaf. Of course he knows. She looks up at Alex once her porcelain bowl is scraped clean of its contents. “Thank you,” she says.

He only looks at her with a knowing, grim smile.

Chapter Text

Three weeks.

It’s been three weeks, twenty-one days. If you asked him how many hours since it happened he would look into your eyes and tell you a straight faced five-hundred.

Realize that Ray is usually a patient person. He does not submit to the qualms of others, he makes and negates his own deadlines, and if you humored him–he’d say that he had twisted himself out of the hands of fate itself, because not even death has been able to keep an obedient track-record of him. But that was before it all happened.

In the Before, he had been able to patiently wait for the right opportunity to collaborate a plan against dying for eleven years. Now, even three weeks feels too long.

Ray has never experienced forever but perhaps this is what it feels like. Forever is a stretch of time that seems neverending in an amalgamation of both suffering and disbelief. It would be a type of climate that drags on into nothingness, accentuating the emptiness beside him at the dining table, or it would be the lack of warmth that graces his arms at night. 

Three weeks, twenty-one days, five-hundred hours since he last saw her. He can remember, perfectly, the hours leading up to her disappearance, the hours after her disappearance, the hours in between. Every detail, every breath, every awry fingertip–he can recount it clearly. It's etched permanently into his mind. He carries it everywhere, with whatever he does.

Thinking it over, again and again, he wonders what he could have possibly done differently for this to not have been the outcome. 

Waking on the sandy beaches of a deconstructed New York of a nonexistent bordering America, with the sun climbing onto the waters of a sunset, that's when he felt it. The bareness on his side, compounding with such an ache in his chest. It didn’t go well with the bruising he acquired back at headquarters, which felt so incorrigibly wrong. Wrong was the only way to explain the feeling.

When he opened his eyes and lifted himself off of the sand, he heard the tidal of waves in the background, but not her. Not his Emma. He would then look around, searching for those coiled curls, those freckles, that limping figure from years of ceaseless strain. He could not see her. Lady Liberty was a daunting figure in his sight. People talked around him–their mouths moved–but he only heard silence.

Taking two steps at a time, he had pushed between the shoulders of God-knows-who, calling out her name. She had to be here. She had to. He saw the faces of other family members, he saw the remnants of bullet casing, guns buried in the shore, hiking bags entombed. No sight of her at all, not even a glimpse.

It was prodigal–that sinking in his gut, accompanied by the pain, by the shortness of breath, at realizing that the promise had cost something. She lied. He believed her.

How in God’s name had things gone so wrong?

Hours later, Ray’s entry into the human world had been filled by a volatile absence. It made him want to punch something, hit something, shoot something. Alas, his weapons had been rid of him and he was sent to sit outside.

It was Yuugo who sent him outside, understandably knowing that Ray had to get away from it all. All of the questions he could not answer, the concern, the thought that maybe he had something to do with it–her disappearance. Especially away from that fucking man who brought his family here.

Mike Ratri is a man whose skin stretches over his bones, appointed in white, clad in a suit the color of blood. He speaks deeply, says a few words and means more, and is very monotonous. He is the proxy of the Ratri Clan, Peter Ratri’s uncle. “I’m not your enemy, our clan will no longer harm you or your children.” Was Ray’s first impression of the man, standing atop this scientific abomination in place of a boat. This guy, assumingly, ranks high in the government.

Even though it is never voiced, Ray knows inside that this man was not born with a shred of empathy inside of him. Perhaps, it took the man years to build up and accumulate enough guilt to take a step forward and stop with the literal genocide, cannibalization and torture of youth. Perhaps, he does care. If Ray felt that this man did care, maybe the boy wouldn’t have cussed him out, and he wouldn't have been sent outside, but that is not the case.

At the very least, the man compensated for the basic necessities required to continue on living. He provided housing, food, clothing for the kids, and even offered Norman a hug–to which a sharp glare was provided in return. Amidst the chaos, they look alike, echoed in his mind, but was verily dismissed.

Mike Ratri had little to say, and handed out pitying smiles to most of everyone he greeted. It was the most degrading thing in the world, and his own mother tried sending him off to his death. The man looked at him, then looked past him. Mike Ratri is the devil incarnate wearing an archaic skinsuit as a disguise (and also, horribly failing).

The United States of America, they were all informed, does not exist anymore. The world is ruled under a one-nation government, borders don’t exist, and therefore immigrants do not either. A striking remark about them being lucky passed through another rich, old, white man's lips, but Ray did not bother to entertain it, nor did anyone else. 

The world is in the midst of a reconstruction after the war, World War III. Somehow, the Ratri Clan was unaffected. Ray does not leave sight of that detail, how could he? The least they could do in exchange for the past millenia of suffering was hand their funds to a granted bunch of unruly teenagers; those who wore the uniforms of soldiers, carried guns on their backs for the past lustrum, the difference between calibre rate and bullets far and few between. Yuugo, Lucas, his own fucking Mother had suffered longer than Ray has. Than anyone else he knows. They’re only thirty-three, and this is the first opportunity of a new life. The judgments he has for Mike Ratri is pages long.

The year is 2047, and on a blessed day, children started appearing spontaneously throughout the world.

Gracefield’s children are the rapture. They cannot be granted anything less, nothing else.

The house is much more a mansion than anything else, with high twelve-foot ceilings graced in wooden paneling, walls of white and brown wood, lighting that hangs down from its threshold. It’s magnificent, pompous, and fucking expensive. The place where Ray cussed the man out is the front room, which provides a simple glimpse into the rest of the repertoire. Clad in deep red carpeting, mixing halls, and an expansive openness of the first floor, which is then guided by the entrancing stairwell.

His mother is alive, well, but exhausted, and it gives him enough of a shrike to stay angsty. She had relaxed into one of the arm chairs, staring hard at Mike Ratri. Seeing Mom again was, effectively, the phrase: kicking a man while he’s already down.

Yuugo had stood behind one of the couches, also disgustingly white, and watched, or more so, waited menacingly for more words to be exchanged. Lucas, and the others, went about treating any injuries and bruising that came about with both the promise and the escape. Norman had coughed into the crook of his elbow, stood beside the boy, in a house that was all too familiar to him–it seemed. 

His family alive. Emma, pointedly, nowhere in sight. It made breathing hurt. When word came about the promise, that was when things escalated to a fault. He was told, repeatedly, that she might be dead.

Somehow, only a couple of people had realized the depth of Ray’s panic and understood where this aggression was coming from. Usually so calm and level-headed, it was weird for the others to see him draw rationally at a line and tiptoe the edge of it. He acts under pressure well, he formulates plans, and although he is a bit of a cynic, he’ll admit, he has never expressed his frustrations so openly. 

Accused and at his wits end, Ray went towards that back porch of the house, and sat outside on the steps. He rested his arms on his knees, his shoulders tightened in ache every moment he did so. He thought over the fuck you’s that travelled to his lips and towards Mike Ratri, who sat on one of the armchairs, stunned. 

With the river flowing through the land. That same sun, hitting golden hour, had painted its light across its waters accusingly. It told him: You were there. You could have done something. But inside he knows, intimately, that he could not have done anything. Nothing at all. That is what haunts him. Being alone, in the quiet, everything felt strong. Too strong. It was a cacophony of noise, of grief, of debilitating pain, and a tender emptiness by his side that felt like the purple of a bruise. She’s gone. It settled into him deep. Emma is gone.

It’s been three weeks and he has his own room now. He’s never had one he could call his own. Never. Not at Gracefield, not in the wilderness, not in the shelter, not in Paradis. In the human world–the deconstructed America’s–Ray has his own room, when usually, he shares. He wants to cry about it, but he has not cried in years, and the one time he came close was seeing his best friend, face-to-face, alive. Still, after a while, the side of his abdomen, where his ribs are–where he breathes–hurts.

Ray is older now, though, he is bigger than his misery. He has no problem staring at the barrel of a gun head-on. Blood doesn’t scare him either, he’s seen too much of it to be afraid. Yet, this is foreign. He has nowhere to place his sorrows, he cannot speak them aloud, he cannot whisper them into the midnights, he cannot lament them elsewhere. The person he would talk to about this is not here. She is gone. Gone, gone, gone.

He sits at the desk in his room, bare of any belongings, except the scribbles on paper he has done over the past few days. He writes down everything he can remember about the promise–formulates it into a mindmap, of which he finally can piece together the happenings of where she went. 

Because Emma has been missing for three weeks, twenty-one days, and five-hundred hours. It’s not like he’s counting, but the emptiness beside him at the dining table, and the cold he feels in his arms at night–it's too large of a difference to notice.

His thoughts are a river that winds forever, and then some.

Ray was there for the implement of the promise. Emma was–is–a good liar when she needed to be. She wears her heart on her sleeve, and she’s able to hold her hands behind her back convincingly enough. So much so, that when she said she’d survive, he believed her. Ray initially thought it was too good to be true. He wished he followed his intuition. She wanted a hand at playing Martyr. He was lied to. For believing. Trusting. God, he hated himself. It didn’t make sense to Ray. None at all. He had met with Him. Him was a conniving sonofabitch, portrayed as a trickster on the tarot cards. Ray should not have believed her. Him. Either of them.

He cannot escape it, even in his sleep. All there is, is all that was. Dreaming, all he sees are the misting fragments of her as the promise commences. Sometimes, he still feels her hand in his.

Once he wakes though, the emptiness overcomes once again. It makes him want to shout, yell at the top of his lungs until they threaten to burst. 

No one wants to talk about it, not in the day, especially not in the dead of night. It’s a funeral with unspoken words. She’s gone, Ray, there’s nothing you can do. Shut up, shut up, shut up, is it so wrong for him to have a little hope? Because somewhere, distantly and far back in his mind, he does not accept death as a final answer. There has to be something else.

He wakes up like this, covered in a thin sheen of sweat, and makes his move to the desk; back at the drawing board; it makes him want to die. He realizes he is being both dramatic and pragmatic about this, he knows, but it is impossible not to be. It’s been this long already, he doesn’t have any answers, and there is a proprietary blame that lays its burden heavy on his shoulders. He is in Mike Ratri’s house of steered pity, and she is not. He has met the man behind the frameworks of the current world government, and she has not. He is here and she is not.

He didn’t stop trying though, he couldn’t afford to not. He’d find a way. He had to. If there were children popping up all over the globe, surely Emma had to be somewhere. Somewhere other than an unreturnable realm. Somewhere other than a grave. Somewhere breathing. Surely, she was still alive.

He reworks everything in his mind more than once, trying different convincing patterns. He knew Mom wouldn’t mind pulling a couple of strings, retelling her stories of how godawful Peter was, and demanding compensation for her suffering–he’d be able to get it. Access to whatever he wanted. To find her. Emma.

He will travel the entire fucking world if he has to. He will not accept death. Even with what she said before. Even then. Yet, as soon as Ray declares that he feels like he can get up in the mornings, something happens and it shoots him down like another grazing bullet to his arm. Everyone pretends it's okay, so he must try to do the same. It feels like none of them care, and it's creating this blistering, built up anger inside of him. She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone. The one person he has spent his life living for, and now she’s gone. Completely. Only that trickster named God knows if she’s still even breathing on the face of this universe. Ray fell in love and was then played like the sick fool he was. He’d been taken for a fool and rightfully so. He can’t handle this. He will find her. He has to. 

Where the unknown is, the guilt follows.

He had heard Norman long before he saw him, and Norman saw him long before he heard the scrawl of ink on paper. He saw Ray through the doorway, and slowed his step, making his way over. He watches in silence for a long moment, lips pursed and veritably amused. 

“Are you going to apologize to him?” Norman asked, leaning his hip against the side of the desk, arms crossed, his chemo port sticking out beneath his shirt. He meant his incident with Mike Ratri a few weeks earlier. Ray, pen in hand, snorts without humor. “I think not.” The man had it coming, and whatever he deserved, Ray was happy to dish it out, much to the dislike of his family. 

He leans back in his chair, unamused, eyes flickering over the mass of paper in front of him. 

It’s been a while since he wrote in Japanese, as mostly, the journals are Emma’s. They both wrote in either English or Latin depending on the context of the entries. Rarely, Ray had something to write down. It was her that took them to bed every night, getting ink on their bedsheets. Yet, she’s not here right now and his Japanese is stagnant and distilled from childhood.

The children of Gracefield learned Japanese because it was one of the more complex languages a child could know. If a child spoke and wrote in more than one language, it being, effectively one of the hardest, it made the brain (allegedly) that much tastier. Ray never thought he’d use it outside of a learning curve. Now he is, he hadn’t expected it to feel so foreign and unprepared.

Norman tilts his chin downwards, looking at the mess in the darkness of the room. He squints his eyes, considering. “You don’t need these,” he says, using a pale hand to gesture towards it. “I know,” Ray says, it comes out like a murmur. Truly, he knows this. But never in his life had he felt the need to write something down to figure it out. Not with languages, not with math, not with Emma. All his life, she had been a considerably easy person to read. She was a painting and he could see each painstroke, each layer, digging down beneath. Now, she’s a memory. A pentimento. A folded photograph in his breast pocket.

He’s writing down, for the first time in his life, something that doesn’t make sense to him, in an attempt to figure it out. He didn’t think there was much mystery to Emma. Now her absence is something he cannot figure out.

Norman picks up a piece of paper, reading over the lines. It’s not just Japanese, but traces of Latin too. It was the language the demons used, by proximity, also the one Ray had come to learn over time.

Ray’s not religious, nor is he spiritual. He’s lived in a world of amassed biology turning against one another, he’s been stuck inside of his mind, hell–he’s even been to a place called Seven Walls, temples, a shrine named Cuvultidala. It’s a paradoxical situation, really, where he does not believe magic exists but he’s faced God, looked that devil in the eye, and walked backwards into day and night.

Emma had asked him, a long time ago: If not God, what do you believe in? It stunned him a little, as she has never pronounced her faith to him in such a way. Science, he had told her, logic.

She hummed. And when that fails you? She asked, fingertips toying with her amulet. He paused, briefly. It hasn’t failed me yet.

How he wished he saw the signs, surrendered and got down onto his knees and prayed, then, all those years ago. But Ray is belligerent, stubborn, and in that causation, a brat. He does not submit to the perils or whims of things that have not created him, why should he start now? 

No. He will find Emma, prove her life, even if it means going head to head with a dead, angry God. There is no reward one should get for death.

He’s such an idiot. He knew something was off, yet relented anyway. He believed her words, and got played like the fool he was. He believed her like a god, and been betrayed like a man.