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"I heard you can see the whole of the Endless Deep from there. Well, more'n heard, really, because who hasn't made their way 'cross that there shelf at some time or another?"
The doll was heavy in his arms. Dial had never quite considered him to be heavy before, but now...
His jaunty walk was smoother than usual. Every movement was deliberate and as smooth as the brass man could make them. It wasn't like TOby could very well flinch, not now, anyway, but those rips and tears just looked so fresh...
"'S the only way ta get to the ferry. Oh! That's another bonus! You and the ferryman will have all kinds a time to catch up with one another, weren't you saying you always wanted to know the fella better? I'm rightly sure you did, I've got a mind like a steel trap, you know, and I don't make it a habit to be forgettin' stuff like that-"
Don't let him speak. Don't stop talking. Silence is violence and God if Dial could only fill his hypothetical ears with the sound of his own voice for the rest of his damned life he'd be happy. In another life he'd made a career out of his incessant inability to shut his darn pie-hole, and it had transferred over quite nicely to his afterlife.
"-And people come 'n go over that there ferry every day! You'll be seeing loads of faces, new ones, old ones, hell I'll even come'n visit from time to time. I'm sure you'd love to see your old pal Dial every now and again, wouldn't ya? And that cousin 'a mine, you know the one, RGB? I'll tell him to go an' keep you company. Can't have you out there all on your lonesome for too long, that ol' North Wind is a bastard, my hand ta Jesus. Granted, 'tis quite the spot to see them frames blow by. And boy howdy if it ain't a spectacle to see a brainstorm brewing up 'cross the horizon. You'll be able ta see 'em for miles from all the way up there, ya surely will."
The puppet in his arms didn't move, save for any jostling that came from Dial's walk. One arm hung limply down while the other sat motionless across his chest, almost obscuring a fresh line of stitches. They kept drawing Dial's eye and he kept forcibly directing his gaze elsewhere, his non-existant stomach churning at the black ticks across his fabric. God he wished TOby would just do something, a twitch or a blink or a...
No, stop. Wishful thinking never did a damn thing for nobody.
The only thing he'd seen move since... since today, at least, were TOby's eyes. Seemingly frozen open, the pupils were left to do whatever they pleased, and currently they were staring deliberately at the ground ahead.
"And even if there's a lull in visitations, well, wouldn't you know the whole thing's just straight up made outta books! Well I'll bet you'll be just as well read as any feller's got a right to be in no time at all. Granted, you've only really got whatever book you're sat on, but hey, you go ahead and tell me your favorite and I'll do my darndest to find it for ya. I heard that Wizard book's a good one. Have you ever read it? 'S about this gal Dorothy, ya see-"
Plot synopses were good space fillers as his mouth went on autopilot. Unfortunately, that lest his brain free to wander, and he wasn't as fond of where it was headed.
Dial wondered if TOby would ever be able to sleep again. He suppressed a shiver (don't want to jostle those stitches) at the thought. Even he knew how important it was to sleep in the nighttime.
Luckily, Dial wouldn't have to find out how TOby was meant to cope at night, at least not yet. Hate was always fickle when it came to the Light (almost purely just to spite Time) but he knew she wouldn't let night fall before he'd completed the task she'd given him. It was a long trek to the Bookshelf, but the day would last. This, at least, he knew for certain.
He didn't realize he'd stopped talking until another voice filled the unintentional gap.
"Dial."
God, that was why he didn't want him to speak. Even with no real mouth, no actual throat, TOby's voice was raw and sounded like it hurt on the way out.
"Now, now, you don't gotta tell me- you've already read it, haven't you? I should'a known, a feller like you's sure to have-"
"Dial."
It was the first time he'd ever say he hated the sound of TOby's voice.
Okay, perhaps not the first. Not after...
He couldn't bring himself to give TOby an invitation to speak. He couldn't be responsible for more of his pain.
TOby took the opening his silence provided.
"Can you..." TOby hesitated, a thing that was so out of character that it made Dial tilt his head down to look at the doll in his arms. TOby was still refusing to make eye contact, his gaze fixed down and to the side. God those stitches looked raw...
"Can I...?" Dial asked, wracking his brain for something to fill in the blank with. Can he walk slower? Can he stop talking? Can he just pitch TOby over the side of the abyss to avoid the whole sentence all together? (Hate would have his head for the last one, even if Dial did agree to a plan that suicidal)
"Can you... not tell anyone?"
That threw him for a loop. Dial wrangled his brain back in enough to try to pinpoint what exactly he wasn't supposed to be telling anyone.
"Look, bud, I'm all for modesty and sensitivity when it comes to your new... well, condition, but I don't think it's the sorta thing nobody's gonna notice. I mean, ya think the rebellion's just gonna figgre you're taking a vay-cay from their pow-wows? Sitting up on that shelf for the fresh air? Word's gonna get out sooner or later, though I guess if you want to tell'em yourself that's fine by me."
There was silence in response.
"Unless," tried Dial, unsure. "That weren't exactly what you were asking."
"No," said TOby. "That's not... I mean, probably if you don't go yelling to everyone that I got myself caught that'd be great, but..."
Dial had no lungs but he held his breath. He couldn't know. There was no way-
"Just... maybe don't mention the crying."
He knew. Oh Mary mother'a God he knew.
"And the screaming. All of that," TOby seemed to stare more intently into nothing. "I mean, I used to mean something to people. I want everyone to think I went down with a little dignity. Might make them feel better about... well, all of... you know."
He'd tried not to hear it. Heaven knew he'd tried to block it out. He'd never known someone could scream the way those damned screams echoed through every crevasse, through every nook and corner and shook you right down to your frame, the way those sobs, those pleas, those wails and cries of agony.
She'd used his nerves. Crafty as she was wont to be that was a new one even for her. He'd been there for every stitch. Twenty pieces to be put back together, twenty pieces of doll that had once been TOby, that were still TOby, twenty pieces that could feel every push and pull of her devilish needle.
Hate was so good at finding loopholes. In this world, an Indelable creature like TOby could not be erased, could not have their pieces replaced or removed entirely, because that was all damage too easily fixed. But broken? Oh, they could be broken. Hate was a master of breaking things. Dial knew this better than most. He'd seen too often her ability to shatter a person like a glass bowl and make a mosaic out of the still-living pieces, picking and pruning them to be just as she liked them, knowing full well she'd taken any ability to ever be whole again out of their reach.
TOby would never walk again. He'd never be able to scowl or open his mouth or display anything other than that too-wide, painted on smile again. He'd never roll his eyes so hard his head went with it, never attempt a middle finger with a mittened hand, never double over in laughter or shake out his hair or kick Dial in the shin or return an embrace or-
"Dial."
The voice brought him back to the present. Dial looked down at the doll in his arms and for the first time the painted pupils were focused directly on him.
"Please."
TOby's voice broke on the word, as did whatever remained of Dial's heart.
"Of course," he said, his normally dramatacized accent dropping with some of the first genuine words to leave his speakers in as long as he could remember. "My lips are sealed, Dollface."
TOby's eyes flicked away, back to the ground ahead. He wouldn't say 'thank you', it wasn't like him. Dial knew this, just like he knew that TOby knew that Dial'd never bring any of this up again if he could ever help it. They were two beings of contradictions, and in this way they understood one another.
"D'ya want me ta finish that story about Dorothy?" Dial piped up, desperate for an out. "Where was I, I did that dickish apple orchard, didn't I?"
"Monkeys," supplied TOby. "You were at the flying monkeys."
"Right!" said Dial gratefully. "Those monkeys! So, the big old green lady in the sky sends out her fleet 'a flyin' monkeys-"
Words were a solace. Words were how he survived. He was good at words, good at saying a lot without saying anything at all, or speaking volumes with minimal syllables. He had to make do, what with a glowing symbol on his forehead broadcasting to everyone he met that all their words were being sent straight to the woman on the other side of his signal.
But those words, the few, precious, truthful words caught between an ocean of filler- Those were the ones Dial would remember.
TOby, on the other hand, chose to remember the one time Dial had ever agreed to be silent.