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Two days since those kids from the Liu Association first showed up and Roland still can't kick the scent of smoke. Scrapes his tongue with his teeth but keeps tasting ash; changes out his suits but each time finds more grey to wipe off his cuffs. On the way up to General Works he'd walked by Languages and felt so sick at the smell he'd nearly had to pull to the side of the stairwell and dry heave.
It'd help if he could crack a window, get some fresh air, but the Library's not the place for that. No exits here, just endless rows of books spiraling up and up and up into oblivion. A perfect little vault that Roland's decided to lock himself inside, all for—
"Roland?"
Ah, fuck. He'd hoped that, tucked as far back in the stacks as he could manage, no one would be able to find him—but when has his luck ever been that good? Still, rather than curse and stomp and swear, he swallows it all down just like always. Shoves his hands in his pockets as he turns, remembers at the last second to slap a smile on his face, and says, "Angela."
She looks the same as always, clutching yet another book to her chest and watching the world through eyes that can never stop stamping everything into memory. "You don't normally come back here," she says. "What are you doing?"
"Ah, y'know," he says. It'd be a more convincing show if he could get himself to lean back all casual against the wall, but the tightness in his spine nixes that idea before he can so much as shift his weight. "Just thought I'd check out some of the books we've got back here. Wasn't sure where everything was, y'know?"
And he's expecting the usual did you find anything interesting from Miss Lived-In-A-Basement-Her-Whole-Life, but instead Angela looks up at him with a tiny divot between her eyebrows that should read as annoyance and instead, combined with the softness of her tone, reads as—not that. "Are you… alright?"
Fuck. His throat tightens up all at once; it's a good thing his smile's already on his face because otherwise he wouldn't be able to slap it on his face to hide behind. "I," he tries, and finds that the rest of the words won't come out of his mouth.
The worst thing about all of this is, in a vacuum, her story is one he'd love. A parody of a girl created for a millennia of suffering, rejected every time she tried to change anything for the better, finally breaking free of her shackles and taking something for herself, no matter the cost. A revenge story, endless pain consolidating at the finale into a brutal poetic justice, as someone who should've only been collateral damage flipped the script on its head and left the person who'd abandoned her shaking in her wake.
They are not, in fact, in a vacuum.
Roland looks into the eyes of the woman who is directly responsible for the death of his wife and lets his smile slide off, tilts his head back and forth til his neck cracks. "Probably just tired," he says, like it's an admission. "There's been a lot of guests to greet, lately."
Guests to greet sounds a lot nicer than murder victims showing up. Angela looks at him; her gaze is calmly analytical, the way it always is when she's not having a mental breakdown about the timeloop she'd been trapped in a literal million years. "There have been," she says. "I'll have one of the other librarians take care of our next reception. Take the time to rest."
Rest, she says, as if it's something he deserves. As if his hands aren't stained with the blood of his own story in reverse, now; as if a night's sleep will do anything but thicken the ash on his tongue. No need to make the kids kill people when I'm right here, he almost says. What, too much of a chickenshit to do it on your own? he nearly asks. Can't we just call it here, and—
—what, give up? As if. He's seen the look she gets on her face every time they're talking about her shithead creator, all frozen ice and knifesharp steel. A machine must behave as a machine or whatever, but to anyone with eyes Angela's perfectly human: she understands pain and suffering and revenge as well as anyone in the City, ready to ruin everything for the sake of her own hurting heart.
And then here he is, jumping whenever she says, barking on command like his throat isn't scraped dry by smoke. Pretending like he isn't waking up hungover more days than not, still waiting to hear a bright lilting laugh and feel a pair of hands push the hair back from his face. Acting like it doesn't kill him every single time when all he ever gets in return is silence, black and unending.
So no, there's no giving up on this now, not for either of them. Not when every day they're adding another book to the collection; not when she keeps sending out invitation after invitation after invitation; not when every time he starts to say, Hey, maybe we shouldn't, her only answer is We should, we should, we should. Not when he takes that, and nods, and lets her point him like a weapon any damn way she pleases.
What's the rest of it matter? What's it matter that during half their conversations she finishes his thoughts before he can voice them? What's it matter that even as more and more people awaken into the Library, his company is still the one she'll seek out over all the rest? What's it matter, that every single smile he can coax from her still feels like a victory?
Nothing at all, is the answer. Not a single goddamn thing. That's that. This is this.
So he swallows the words that want to come tripping out in response to her lukewarm kindness. Says instead, "Roger that, boss," and even manages to get it coming out lackadaisical. Pretends to yawn as he moves past her so he doesn't have to meet her eyes; wishes he had to work not to elbow her, rather than dodging around her so automatically he nearly bumps into the nearby stacks instead. Keeps his pace steady as he walks away, and pretends he can't feel her curious frown prickling at the back of his neck until he vanishes, finally, from her gaze.