Chapter Text
The helmet shows me things I can't feel.
That's the arrangement. That's the price. You wear Nazette — the name is the helmet's, not mine, I don't have a name anymore, bloodbags don't get names — and Nazette shows you the shape of everything around you. The shape of a person's grief. The shape of a room's decay. The shape of a family's trajectory, the arc it's drawing through time, the place where the arc bends toward the ground.
You see all of it. You feel none of it.
The tears come anyway. Not from sadness — from the place where sadness should be. The hollow where the feeling was before the helmet filled it with sight. The body remembers that this is where crying goes and the body cries into the hollow and the hollow echoes and the echo is the only thing I hear from inside myself. Everything else comes from outside. Everything else is shapes.
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The family doesn't notice me.
This is correct. This is how bloodbags work. You exist in the margins of the household — between the walls and the furniture, between the meals and the conversations, between the people who matter and the people who are consumed. I was consumed by a different family first. A family that wanted humans dead. A family that fought in the war and lost and died — all of them, one by one, torn apart by things stronger than them, until I was the last one standing. Not standing. Kneeling. In the dirt. With the old family's blood on my clothes and the new family's soldiers looking at me the way you look at a dropped coin — worth picking up, barely.
They picked me up.
Don Quixote — the First Kindred, the Father, the one whose dream is a castle and whose castle is now an amusement park — he looked at me. I expected the look to be the same look my old family gave me. The look that says "you exist for my teeth." But his look was different. His look was confused. Like he'd found a fish in a tree and couldn't figure out how it got there.
"This one still has its shape," he said. To no one in particular. To the air. To whatever audience Don Quixote imagines is always watching him. "How peculiar."
He meant my soul. The helmet — Nazette — preserves the shape of the wearer's soul. The old family didn't know that. The old family found the helmet in a ruin and put it on me as a joke. A crown for the cattle. Something to laugh at while they fed.
They laughed. I wore the helmet. The helmet ate my feelings and gave me sight. The old family didn't notice the sight because the old family wasn't looking at me. Nobody looks at bloodbags.
The new family doesn't look at me either. But the new family isn't cruel about it. The new family is just — busy. Don Quixote is talking to the Fixer. The woman called Bari. They talk for hours. Days. The talking has a shape. I can see it from across the courtyard where I sit and do nothing because bloodbags do nothing. The shape of their talking is a spiral. Tightening. Each conversation pulling them closer to a center that neither of them can see.
I can see the center. The center is a park. An amusement park. Don Quixote is going to build an amusement park because the Fixer is telling him stories about humans and the stories are making him believe that humans and bloodfiends can share space and the belief has a shape and the shape is a building with rides inside it.
The helmet shows me this. I sit in the courtyard and I see the future arriving in the spiral of two people talking and I feel nothing about it because Nazette won't let me feel it. Nazette just shows. Nazette is a window with no curtains. Everything visible. Nothing touchable.
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The family has shapes.
Dulcinea is the Second Kindred. Her shape is a circle that's flattening. When I first arrived — when the soldiers dropped me in the corner like a sack of feed — Dulcinea's shape was round. Full. She had volume. She moved through the castle with the weight of someone who knew she belonged here. That was months ago. The circle is flattening now. Pressing down at the top. Being squeezed by something I can see but she can't — the pressure of Don Quixote's attention going elsewhere. Toward Bari. Toward the dream. Away from her.
She doesn't know her shape is changing. Nobody knows their own shape. That's the helmet's other cruelty — you can see everyone except yourself. I could tell her. I could say "your circle is flattening, something is pressing on you, you should look up." But bloodbags don't talk. Bloodbags don't have mouths that matter. The old family taught me that. Every time I opened my mouth the old family laughed and the laughing taught my throat that opening is dangerous.
The Barber — Nicolina — is the Third Kindred. Her shape is a flame that's shrinking. When I arrived the flame was tall. She was making things. Dresses. Masks. Costumes. Her hands moved constantly. She was the only person in the castle whose hands never stopped because her hands were doing what they were FOR and the doing was the flame.
The flame is shrinking because nobody sees it. She makes a dress and she hangs it up and the dress hangs there and Don Quixote walks past it and Dulcinea walks past it and Sancho walks past it and the Priest walks past it and the dress hangs and the hanging is the shrinking. The flame needs air. Attention is air. Nobody is breathing on the flame.
The Priest — Curiambro — is the Third Kindred I watch the most. His shape is a bowl that's cracking. He holds things. That's what he does. Other bloodfiends come to him and they pour their suffering into him and he holds it because holding is his purpose and holding is his shape and the holding is killing him. The bowl was thick when I arrived. Now I can see the fracture lines. Hairline. Spreading. Each confession poured into him adds weight that the bowl wasn't built to hold.
He tells them "it's going to be okay." He says it to every bloodfiend who sits across from him. "It's going to be okay. Just endure. Just suppress. Just laugh." And the words come out smooth and steady and the words are lies and the lies have a shape and the shape of a comforting lie is a bandage over a wound that needs air and the bandage is suffocating the wound and the wound is getting worse.
He doesn't know. He can't see his own cracks. I can.
And Sancho. The Second Kindred. The Father's right hand. The one who goes with him on adventures and calls his ideas "ridiculously juvenile" and follows him anyway and the following is the shape of her and the shape is — I don't know what Sancho's shape is. She's the only one I can't read clearly. Not because the helmet fails. Because her shape keeps moving. It shifts. It rearranges. One day it looks like a shield. The next day it looks like a chain. The next day it looks like a door that's opening and closing and opening and closing and the opening and closing is so fast that I can't tell if the door is open or closed or both.
Sancho is complicated. Sancho is the one who will either save this family or destroy it and the helmet can't tell me which because the shape won't hold still long enough to trace.
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The starvation starts before anyone admits it.
I see the shapes change. The bloodfiends in the lower levels — the ones who aren't Kindred, just residents, just the population of the park that Don Quixote is building — their shapes are thinning. Not flattening like Dulcinea. Thinning. Becoming translucent. Like paper held up to light. The hunger is eating them from the inside and the inside is becoming visible through the outside and the visibility is the thinning.
They eat hemobars. Don Quixote commanded it. No human blood. Hemobars only. The hemobars taste like — I don't know what hemobars taste like to a bloodfiend because I'm a bloodbag and bloodbags eat what bloodbags eat which is nothing that matters. But I can see what hemobars taste like in their shapes. The shape of a person eating a hemobar is the shape of someone drinking water from a cup that used to hold wine. The water is water. The water keeps you alive. But the mouth remembers wine and the remembering is its own hunger and the hemobar-water can't fill the wine-shaped hole.
Nobody tells Don Quixote. Don Quixote is building rides. Don Quixote is designing attractions. Don Quixote is talking to Bari about the dream and the dream has such a beautiful shape — golden, rising, warm — that looking at it hurts because the looking is done through the helmet and the helmet lets me see beauty without letting me feel it and seeing beauty you can't feel is the specific cruelty the helmet was built for.
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Today I'm in the workshop.
Not my workshop. Nothing is mine. Bloodbags don't own workshops. I'm in the workshop because the workshop is where the Barber is and the Barber is making something and the something is a dress.
The dress is red. The red is deep — not blood-red, not emergency-red, the kind of red that exists at the bottom of a sunset when the sun has already gone and the sky is holding the color because the sky isn't ready to let go. The Barber's hands are moving the fabric through a machine and the machine is humming and the humming and the hands and the fabric and the red are all one motion and the motion is the flame and the flame is —
Small. The flame is so small now. She's making the most beautiful thing in this castle and the flame is barely alive because nobody has breathed on it in weeks. Maybe months. I don't track time well. Time is a shape too and my shape of time is a flat line because nothing changes for bloodbags and the flat line makes the days blur.
She finishes the dress. She holds it up. She looks at it. Her face — behind the mask she always wears, the pretty one, the one she chose before she started choosing terrifying ones — her face does something that the mask can't quite hide. The face is looking for someone to show the dress to. The face is searching the room for eyes that want to see what she made.
The room is empty except for me. And bloodbags don't have eyes that matter.
She hangs the dress on the rack with the others. The rack is full. Dozens of dresses. All beautiful. All unseen. The rack is a graveyard of things that were made with love and hung in silence.
She turns to leave.
My throat closes.
The old family. The laughing. The sound I make when I try to speak is the sound of a pipe that's been stepped on — thin, crushed, not quite enough air to make a real note. The sound is humiliating. The sound is the reason I don't speak. The sound is the old family in my throat telling me that opening my mouth is funny and funny means they laugh and laughing means I'm nothing.
But the dress is red and the flame is small and the rack is a graveyard and she's walking away and the helmet is showing me the shape of what happens if nobody speaks — the flame goes out, the dresses stop, the hands stop moving, and when the hands stop moving the Barber stops being the Barber and becomes just another hungry shape thinning in the dark.
I open my mouth.
The choking comes. The throat says no. The body says no. The old family says no. Every part of me that learned what happens when bloodbags make sounds says no.
I speak anyway.
"That — "
The word comes out broken. Cracked down the middle. The "that" barely qualifies as a word. It qualifies as an attempt at a word. The attempt is visible. The attempt is audible. The attempt costs me something I can't name because the helmet won't let me feel the cost, only see the shape of the cost, and the shape of the cost is a small creature inside my chest pushing a boulder up a hill that has no top.
She stops. She turns. She looks at me. She looks at me the way you look at a piece of furniture that just made a sound — confused, suspicious, not quite willing to believe that the chair spoke.
"That dress is — "
The second half of the sentence won't come. The choking has it. The choking is sitting on the words like a hen on eggs that will never hatch. I can feel the sentence in my throat — "that dress is amazing" — and the sentence is right there, the whole thing, complete, beautiful, ready — and my throat won't let it out because my throat is still in the old castle with the old family and the laughing and the nothing.
My eyes are leaking. Not crying — leaking. The tears come from the hollow. The hollow where the feeling should be. The tears don't mean sadness because I can't feel sadness. The tears mean the body remembers a time when speaking cost less than this and the body is mourning that time while the helmet keeps it at arm's length.
She's still looking at me. The furniture that spoke. The bloodbag with a helmet and wet eyes and half a sentence stuck in its throat.
"Amazing," I say.
The word falls out of my mouth like something dropped. Not spoken — expelled. Like the body finally coughed up a stone it's been carrying since the old family put it there.
"That dress is amazing."
She blinks. Behind the pretty mask, her eyes do something. Not the pressure-sufficient thing — I don't know what that is, I don't have words for other people's faces because I've never been close enough to learn them. Her eyes just — widen. Half a centimeter. Maybe less. The kind of movement you'd miss if you blinked.
I don't blink. Bloodbags don't blink when they're looking at the thing they just used all their air to speak to.
"Thank you," she says. Quiet. Confused. Like she's thanking a chair for complimenting her curtains.
She leaves.
The flame didn't change. Not visibly. Not in the time it takes for a person to walk from a workshop to a hallway and disappear around a corner.
But the helmet shows me something. A flicker. At the very edge of the shape. The very bottom of the flame where it meets the wick. A flicker that wasn't there before I spoke. A flicker that might be nothing. A flicker that might die in the next wind.
A flicker that might not.
I sit in the empty workshop. My throat hurts. My eyes are leaking. My chest is hollow. The helmet is showing me shapes I can't feel and the shapes include one small flicker at the bottom of a flame that was almost out.
I don't feel anything about this.
But I would if I could.
I know that the way I know my name — the real one, the one I don't say, the one that lives underneath the helmet the way wine lives underneath water. Present. Remembered. Untouchable.
The dress is red. The flame flickered. The bloodbag spoke.
Tomorrow I'll try again.
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