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Her bones felt heavy, like they were tied down with rocks shackled to her wrists and ankles, dragging along the ground, letting out a screeching noise whenever she took a step forward. It felt heavier when she stepped foot past the door, finally unlocking it after her trembling hands missed the keyhole one-to-many times to be accidental. Mockingly, the wooden floor creaked, aggravatingly, she felt her fingers find companionship in those noises. She threw her jacket over the coat-hanger and kicked her shoes off, having them tumble across the ground, not hiding her obvious frustrated attitude.
The house was quiet, it always was, it never really mattered if Isaiah was home or not because you could scarcely hear any movement. She dreamed of the day her hearing was keen enough to catch the subtle pen-scratching against paper or the shifting of fabric against the rough of a table hem. But she conceded and simply made her way up the stairs, foregoing any relaxation the couch could offer her - despite how lovely splaying herself against its wide expanse could be.
While ascending, she twisted her fingers into her hair, tugging at the pins and ties keeping it together in a faux-neatness, letting it down which her scalp thanked her for.
She wanted to call out to Isaiah, ask if he was even home, but she lost the need to do so when she caught the door creak open and his silhouette illuminated from the light in his room.
He looked like he always did, too smug for his own good and snapping something in Harriet tight like an arrow knocked against a bow, strung wide. But comfortable, and at home, which eased the hammering paranoia in her non-beating heart.
“Slam the door any louder and the neighbors are going to start getting concerned” He spoke with an even tone, Harriet didn’t need to look at his face to know what facial expression he wore, one could hear it in his tone. She kept her gaze steadied at the room behind him, however, revealing a scrawl of papers and ink which hid a new story in its wake. The new book . . . or the skeletons of it.
She didn’t realise she had risen on her tippy-toes to try and glance over his arm, maybe to catch a sight at the writing, until the door closed, slapping her out of her peeping pose.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, there was no slamming” She decided to reply, finally. “You must be hallucinating”
He looked thoughtful, theatrically so “Maybe”
She rolled her eyes at his tone “Don’t tell me the Sheriff knocked the last bit of sense out of you”
His chest moved like he was laughing, or faking one, or just amused - she could never tell around him “No, no, I believe it was that way before”
Scoffing, she raised her eyes and made full observation of his face, and she quickly wanted to look away - it was almost animal instinct, humiliating. He wore a comfortable face, calm eyes, unbothered lips, his jaw didn’t clench in frustration like hers did, and his shoulders were loosened, not taught against his ears. She couldn’t help but lock up around him nowadays, it was odd, there was nowhere else she knew how to unwind other than under this roof, around him, but ever since he had returned she found herself doubting her reality. If she blinked too hard would he vanish? Was the momentary reprieve of his release a cruel trick of her mind, just like the entire dream on the ship was. She couldn’t help but clutch her shaking hands at the thought - to awake and none of this to be real, or even further - for none of this to be real.
If she left this moment with him, in the hallway, would she awake in a dirt-struck alleyway, no food, no money, but the gut-punch of hunger.
Her eyes descended again, following the curve of his shoulder tragically. If she moved so she couldn't see him, would she look back to find nothing there but the creaking-crying of the house, weeping for its occupant?
“Harriet”
It was said neither in accusation or anger, which is what she expected when her mind wandered during conversation. She blinked and shook her head, looking back up.
He raised his brow “Harriet?” He repeated this time with a questioning tilt. She found herself getting nervous again as she looked over him.
“It’s nothing,” She filled in, quick, wooden fingers rubbing against her temple skin “I’m really tired - you know, speakeasy and all, I’m just-” her hand went flush down her face to her chin where she rubbed at an imaginary itch. “I’m just, well, it’s been such . . . days”
He smiled, softly and with furrowed brows, the face that made her ignite in a pit of anger, or what she interpreted as anger. Or maybe she was offended at the patronizing gaze, or both. Her face hardened again in retaliation, he looked like he waited for a clarification that she didn’t really want to provide.
“It feels like you were gone for far longer than you actually were”
This didn’t really seize his confusion but he tilted his head in a comforting manner which she struggled determining if it was genuine or mocking.
She never liked looking up at people when talking, she didn’t enjoy the superiority it gave the other, it didn’t help that she couldn’t make herself appear any bigger than she was. With Isaiah it was only a little different. She felt like he lowered his gaze instead of her having to raise hers - if that had any sense to it. It was the equivalent of someone putting their hands on their knees and squatting to get eye-level with someone, it was equally mocking as it was considerate, to some.
To consider - with Dr. Tenma, his gaze lowered but his eyes never did, to no one, one had to chase his gaze. With the boys, their eyes met unanimously, it felt more or less equal. With Isaiah, his eyes caught hers before she had the chance to look.
“It’s only been a few days” His lackadaisy manner rolled her eyes back.
“No - well, I know that” She huffed. “It’s more. . . well it’s strange,” She couldn’t find it in herself to sit down and explain the entire absurdity that came with the dream the coterie had. “The primogen, all that nonsense, it’s tiring - don’t tell me you didn’t lose time in that sell”
“Did I?’ He echoed “Maybe, it has been a couple of days”
Her frustration crescendoed and she rubbed at her face again “Forget I asked”
“Harriet, none of this I am forcing you to do”
“I don’t need you to repeat yourself” She said “And I don’t have to either, I already pleaded my case to you”
She could see him open his mouth to retaliate with something that would surely anger her some more so she raised her hand in front of herself, urging him to stop before he began “No no - whatever, I’m sorry for bothering you, you were writing”
He didn’t move when she lifted her hand to silence him. He only looked at it. At the tremor running through her wrist. At the way the wooden fingers, two of them darker where blood had soaked in, failed to curl quite right.
“Harriet,” he said again, softer now.
“I said I’m sorry.” She stepped back before he could step forward. The hallway felt suddenly narrow, like the walls had leaned in to listen. “I won’t interrupt your masterpiece.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the half-open door, at the chaos of ink and paper. “It’s hardly a masterpiece.”
“That hasn’t stopped you before.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Cruel.”
She tried to turn away, to retreat to her room and lock the door and sit on her bed until the phantom ache in her bones settled. But he shifted, just slightly, and the movement blocked the hallway in a way that was subtle enough to be accidental.
She looked up at him, then immediately wished she hadn’t. This was the issue with him, he was too steady. Too present. Too real. How hypocritical for her to say when she just mused about the potential of this all being a machination of her mind.
“You’re trembling,” he observed.
She rolled her eyes “I always tremble, great observation”
“Yes.” That was all he said. No mockery. No lecture. Just agreement.
She tucked her hands under her sleeves, hiding the shake. The wooden prosthetic fingers clicked faintly as she flexed them against her palm.
She made a deeply sour face, lip lifting in a faux disgust expression “I’d prefer you not look at me like that,” she muttered.
He raised a brow inquisitively “Like what?”
“Like I’m going to start crying or something.”
He tilted his head. “You are remarkably difficult to make cry.” The clear sarcasm in his tone made Harriet reach out to hit him in the chest instinctively, but even as he hand made impact it did nothing but ruffle his attire in the slightest. As if her ego needed to be taken down another notch. She could practically kick it with her feet at this point.
“Goodness” She exhaled sharply. “You never tire”
Silence settled between them. The house gave a low, mournful creak as if siding with her. She gave it a gentle thank you in her mind. Her eyes flicked toward the stairwell behind herself. Toward the front door downstairs. Calculating escape routes she would never use.
“It’s foolish,” she said at last, voice thinner. Pushing words out became more and more difficult by the second and she, for a second, wished she was human again so she could use the excuse of ‘i’m sleepy and going to bed’ to halt and leave the situation, but alas. “I know it is. But when you’re gone, I start to think-” She swallowed. “I start to think perhaps I imagined you.”
He didn’t interrupt. That alone made her chest hurt.
“The . . . everything” she continued, gaze a slight bit unfocused now. “The dream. Your cell. The way nothing makes sense anymore and I’m half confused about most things. It would not be the cruelest joke, would it? For my mind to invent you as some-” she gestured vaguely at him like she was showing him off to some invisible figure, wooden fingers knocking against each other with a soft clack, almost harmonious, “-some comfort?”
He studied her for a moment before replying, churning something through his head. His lips faltered for a second away from that ever-familiar smile but made quick work on returning.
“I am offended,” he said after a moment. “You imagine me and that is the best you can do?”
Her glare was immediate and her grunt audible “This is what I mean, Isaiah.”
His mouth remained curved up, that amusement flaring in his expression again. To her dismay.
“You think if you walk past me,” he said, voice lower now, as though reaching her at her level, “I’ll vanish.”
She realised she really didn’t like it being repeated back to her. She couldn’t compartmentalise the feeling of wanting to go stand in a corner as though scolded for her foolish fears. Was it not like having someone repeat to you your own fear of the dark as a child? Or how you were afraid of going to the forest in case a wolf came to eat you?
She frowned. “Well . . .”
He stepped aside, opening the hallway, and she looked down at it, the expanse that led to the bathroom or her room.
“Go on, then.”
“Wait- you-!” Her jaw clenched and she looked momentarily panicked before shaking her head and rubbing at her temples. “-do not.”
“Don’t what?”
“Make sport of it.”
“I’m not.” he replied cheekily.
She turned her shoulder to the hallway, as though denying its existence.
“You are always making sport of something.”
“Usually of you.”
She sneered, “Isaiah.” Her voice cracked on his name, and that seemed to sober him more than anything else had. The teasing thinned alongside the air between them. “God forbid - I shouldn’t have brought this up, I told you to go back to writing. I’m not here to be made fun of”
“I won’t vanish,” he said, simply, evenly, his tone was flatter as though trying to appease her rampant paranoia.
“You can’t promise that.” she urged, hands getting thrown up in the air.
“I can promise I have no intention of it right now.”
“That’s not the same. You’re reckless on purpose”
“No, it’s not the same,” he echoed, yet again.
That should have frustrated her. Instead, it steadied her in some strange way.
She turned her head, then her body, towards him, eyeing him up and down while her hands wrapped around herself. She realised, yet again and as always, that discussion was leading nowhere. She instead took a hesitant step forward. Then another. Close enough that she could see the faint crease near his mouth. She wanted to hug him again and cool her own mind of her insecurities but the sudden movement of her body without her even noticing made her simply stand there. My God, she thought, what am I? Desperate?
She stopped there. He didn’t touch her. He rarely did. Not unless she was feral with hunger or shaking so badly she might shatter a glass in her own grip. Even then, his contact was brief. Practical. As if affection were a tool and he used it sparingly.
“I don’t like this,” she murmured.
“Standing in hallways?”
“Needing-” She cut herself off abruptly, shoulders stiffening. “Reassurance. It’s unbecoming. Just tell me to shut up sometimes”
He leaned back against the door frame, arms crossing loosely. “You are a century too late to worry about what is ‘becoming’.”
She shot him a look that could have drawn blood.
He sighed, barely audible. “Harriet,” he said, and there was something careful in it now. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”
Her answer came too quickly.
“No.”
She wanted to slap herself or throw herself down the stairs or die a tragic Shakespearean death right about then. Maybe God heard her pleas and was going to make her invisible. Color would have flooded her face if she still possessed any. Instead, her eyes dropped to his collar, to the neat line of fabric, to anywhere but him. She looked pissed.
“I mean . . .” she fumbled, wooden fingers catching in the hem of her sleeve. “I simply don’t want to intrude. Or be indulged.”
“Indulged,” he repeated lightly.
“Well, yes.”
“You think I'll endure you?”
“I think,” she said tightly, “that you are very patient.” she completed with a strained voice that struggled to get each syllable out. What she wanted to say was something along the lines of ‘stubborn’ and ‘like to be annoying’, but she held her tongue.
“I am not patient.”
“You are.” she snapped back.
He hummed thoughtfully “Well,” he started “I am selective then”
“That’s worse.” she grumbled.
A quiet huff of something almost like laughter left him.
Her hands were shaking badly now. She pressed them against her arms, as if that might quiet them. The tremor only worsened. She was so hungry, so stressed, so - ugh.
He noticed. Of course he did, and without warning, he reached out. She saw his hand and flinched before he even made contact. Instinct,
His hand halted midair. There it was, that sliver of something in his expression. Definitely not hurt. Not quite that, no. But some expression made her stomach twist.
“I don’t bite,” he said dryly, trying to bring that bit of humor back.
“You quite literally do.” Her voice was brittle, slapping the humor down. “I just-” She hated the instinct and the recoil, the way her body remembered hands that had not been gentle. She was no longer a child, she tried to remind herself.
“I don’t like being grabbed, in case you weren’t aware” she finished, smaller.
“I know,” he said, which made her look up. There was no mockery in him now. No smugness. Just that infuriating steadiness. She knew he wouldn’t grab her but needed an excuse to pardon her. . . her this.
He lowered his hand deliberately, slowly, giving her every second to object.
He placed it lightly on her forearm, in her sight, like a tamer to a frightened animal. She stiffened anyway, she always did.
“You can step back,” he murmured. “I won’t be offended.”
She didn’t.
Her breath, which she had forgotten she didn’t need to do, came in shallow, unnecessary pulls. She stared at the space between his collarbones, refusing to acknowledge how close she was.
“I hate that . . . I . . .” She trailed off.
“That you what?”
She clenched her eyes and shook her head “Forget it.”
He shifted his weight and, with a gentle sigh, and guided her forward that last inch. It was hardly a movement at all, but suddenly her knees brushed his thigh.
She froze, mouth snapping open. “Isaiah-”
“You’re about to fall over,” he said calmly. “And I have no interest in peeling you off the floorboards.”
“I am not-”
Her legs betrayed her. The weakness wasn’t physical, not truly, but the kind that came from holding oneself rigid for too long.
Before she could protest again, he sank back into the chair just inside his room, drawing her with him in a smooth motion that left her startled more than anything else. When did they even walk into his room properly?!
She made a loud, scandalized sound as she found herself half-seated against him. “Isaiah!”
“Hm?” she didn’t need to see him to want to smack the smile off him.
“This is entirely- my god, are you serious?.” Her body could have been made of rock and steel at this point with how her body locked up.
“ You’re so right. Scandalous.” he laughed.
She tried to push off him, wooden fingers slipping uselessly against the fabric of his top. Her palm brushed his chest and she recoiled as if burned.
“You could have at least - I mean come on, this is, what are you-”
“You’re shaking,” he said again, as though that worked as a proper explanation.
“I told you, are you deaf? I always-”
“You’re worse tonight. Ever since you came home”
She hated that he was right but still pretended he was speaking some vast falsehood.
Her body was perched awkwardly, not fully committed to sitting, not fully escaping either. Every muscle was locked. Her back ramrod straight, as if posture alone could preserve her virtue. He did not wrap his arms around her. He didn’t trap her there.
He simply let one hand rest at the small of her back.
It was very, how would one say? Present. Grounding. Her body turned from liquidy and malleable to solid and just there.
“You can leave,” he repeated quietly.
She swallowed.
Instead of leaving, she shifted, tentatively, until she was properly seated on his lap, though she held herself as if balanced on a ledge. There was a careful inch of space between her spine and his chest, as though she feared contact might condemn her.
He waited. And slowly, slowly, almost imperceptibly, she sagged.
The space vanished.
Her forehead hovered near his shoulder but did not quite touch. Her hands curled into the fabric of his shirt, wooden fingers clicking faintly.
“I don’t -,” she began to whisper.
He interrupted with a snarky tone “Is there anything you do like?” and it made her want to headbutt him but she instead rolled her eyes.
‘I like you’ she heard herself say in her mind.
Oh. She let herself digest her own thoughts for a second before she audibly gagged and recoiled. She held herself back however. ‘I need to go to church, first thing tomorrow’.
“Woah hey, I was joke-”
“Shut up, I’m fine! Just. . . hair in my throat” She cut in. “What I was trying to say was-” She took a deep breath. “I don’t like. . . needing this,”
He sank down again, she hadn’t realised he’d raised his body for a second “I know.” He replied.
“It feels weak.”
“It isn’t.”
She gave a brittle laugh. “You would say that.”
“Of course.”
She hesitated. Then, with visible reluctance, she let her head rest against him. He went very still, not that he was afraid to move but as if any movement might startle her away.
“I keep thinking,” she confessed softly, “that if I close my eyes, I’ll open them somewhere else. Before. Or worse.”
“You won’t,” he said, factually.
“You don’t know that.” she urged.
“No,” he agreed. “But if you do, I’ll find you again.”
She made a small, disbelieving sound “Terrifying”
He rested his chin lightly atop her shoulder, so light it was almost nothing. “I am very difficult to get rid of, Harriet.”
Her grip tightened faintly. Yet sometimes I feel like you’re eager to leave me be. Get rid of me.
“Don’t joke.”
“I’m not~” he sing-songed.
Silence again. Not heavy this time. Just quiet.
Her trembling eased by degrees.
“I hate that you see me like this,” she muttered.
“Mhm?” At this point his hands reached over to grip a pen again, and he spoke with a half un-focused voice.
“Frightened.”
He considered that with a hum, she thought, or pretended to. “I don’t,” he said at last, again.
She frowned against him. “Don’t what?”
“Hate it.”
She bit her tongue. He shifted one hand, careful, and began a slow, absentminded pattern against her back. Not indulgent. Not overtly affectionate. Just steady.
She endured it at first. Then, after a long moment, she leaned into it. Still stubborn. Still rigid in places. But there. And he let her be.
For a while, the only sound in the room was the faint scratch of his pen against paper.
It was maddeningly ordinary. She listened to it the way a starving thing listened for crumbs. Each stroke proved something. Present. Here. Real. The nib caught once on a rough fiber and he made a quiet noise of irritation under his breath. She nearly laughed from the relief of it.
“You’re smudging,” she muttered, voice muffled in his shoulder.
“Am not.”
“You always drag your hand through the ink.”
A pause. A subtle shift of his wrist. “…I did not.”
“You did,” she insisted, faintly triumphant.
The corner of his mouth brushed her temple as he spoke. “You’re very bold for someone occupying my lap without permission.”
Her fingers twitched in his shirt. “I recall being abducted.”
He hummed back. “You recall rattling like a can of coins.”
She huffed. The sound vibrated between them. Truth be told, the tremor in her limbs had lessened to something manageable now, a background hum instead of a violent rattle. She hated that it took this to quiet it. Hated that the cure for the spiral was proximity.
His pen resumed its quiet path. The room smelled like paper and oil and him, something clean but old, like rain on stone. It anchored her in a way she did not want to analyze too closely.
“Hey. . . Isaiah.”
“Hm?”
“If I were imaginary,” she began carefully, “would you know? Or I mean- would you be able to tell?”
He did not answer immediately this time. He set the pen down and the absence of the scratching sound was louder than the noise had been. For a second she thought she severely fucked up but looking up she found relief he didn’t carry an angry look about him.
“If you were imaginary,” he said slowly, “you would not argue with me this much.”
“That is not evidence, you lack substantial sources, right?.” She looked at his profile. “You could be imagining my defiance.”
“Then I have a cruel imagination.”
She spoke “Well yes” all while tugging at the fuzz stuck on his shirt. “With the kinds of books you write. Are you surprised?”
Thankfully, silence pooled again, but it was softer now and less like a threat. No longer did she feel like a prey hunted. More like a blanket thrown carelessly over sharp furniture. After a long moment, she spoke again.
“If I wake somewhere else,” she said, dragging some of her syllables, “and this was all a cruelty of my own making…”
He did not let her finish “Then be cruel,” he said. “Imagine me again.”
Her eyebrows furrowed.
She knew it was stupid to say it out loud, but she wanted to be defiant, in some way. She tried to anchor her mind so her spiral did not begin again.
“That’s. . . “ she started, “That’s no kind of fair.” She tried to hum a laugh along, but all that came out was an exhale of air.
He smiled, “It never is.”
Her bones still felt heavy, unevenly distributed throughout her body, it tugged at her skull the most. She rested it against the crook of his neck, face looking outwards out into the hallway. She couldn’t imagine getting up, she felt too heavy, so sorrowful, it was a pain she couldn’t handle. She kept herself alert, because she didn’t want any of that - to imagine him again.
She swore she smelled something burnt under her nose and just shook.
If she closed her eyes, if she slept. He would vanish, or she would.
She would prefer if she was a creation from his imagination, rather than it be the other way around, it would be salvation for her heavy, un-beating, heart.