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Mob woke up at 2am.
That happened sometimes. His brain would simply decide—okay, that's enough sleep, here's consciousness back, good luck—and he'd lie there staring at the ceiling waiting to drift off again.
He blinked at the dark. Shifted. Turned his head. Verity was at the window.
Not in a alarming way. Not doing anything, really. Just...there, the way Verity was always just there, hovering at the glass, his little round shape lit faintly from whatever light the night outside carried. His face—if you could call it that—the simple curve of his smile, was pointed toward the dark. He looked like he was keeping watch.
Mob stared at him for a moment.
"...Verity."
"Go back to sleep," Verity said pleasantly. Not turning around.
"What are you doing."
"Watching."
"Watching what, it's the middle of the night, there's nothing out there."
A pause.
"There are stars."
Verity's voice had that quality—soft and even, carrying none of the sharp edges thoughts usually snagged on.
Mob opened his mouth. Closed it. Pulled his blanket up slightly.
"...Okay,"
Mob looked at the ceiling. His pillow was comfortable.
He was asleep again in four minutes.
In the morning, Verity was by the door.
Mob looked at the window. Looked at the door. Looked at Verity, who looked back with that same unchanging expression—carrying the distinct impression that he knew something Mob didn't.
Mob made breakfast. He didn't ask.
He would think about this later and recognize it as his first mistake.
---
The thing was, it planted a seed.
He hadn't thought much about it before—Verity's mobility, or lack thereof, or whatever the right word was for the way he simply existed in locations without the inconvenience of getting there. It had been background noise. A feature of the situation. Mob had filed it under Verity Things alongside "knows too much" and "smile doesn't change" and "warm for something with no apparent heat source" and left it there.
But now he was thinking about it.
He was thinking about it while eating breakfast, watching Verity be completely stationary near the crafting table.
He was thinking about it while gathering wood, noticing that Verity—who had been by the door—was now at the treeline and Mob had not seen a single moment of transition.
He was thinking about it very hard while mining, because Verity had been at the cave entrance when Mob went in, and when Mob looked up from a vein of iron ore, Verity was just. There. Six blocks away. In the cave.
"How did you—" Mob started.
"Find anything good?" Verity asked.
"I — yes, iron, but how did you—"
"Oh good," said Verity warmly. "You needed iron."
Mob stood in the cave with his pickaxe and thought about what it meant to need answers.
He decided he needed answers.
---
The experiment started the next morning.
It was not a formal experiment. Mob didn't write anything down.
He just became very, very deliberate about watching.
Verity was by the window when Mob woke up.
Mob kept his eyes on him while he got up, kept his eyes on him while he crossed the room, kept his eyes on him while he grabbed an apple from the chest.
Verity did not move.
Verity was simply by the window.
Mob turned to take a bite of the apple.
He chewed.
Swallowed.
Turned back.
Verity was by the door.
Mob stared.
He had not seen him move.
"Good morning," said Verity.
"I was watching you."
"Were you?" Verity sounded pleased. "How sweet."
"I looked away for two seconds."
"Mm."
Mob pointed at him. Then at the window. Then at him again. Verity waited this out with the air of someone with unlimited time and no strong feelings about being pointed at.
"How." Mob said.
"How what?" said Verity.
---
Okay.
Fine.
Fine.
Mob could work with this.
The window to door transition had been too short.
He needed a strategy that didn't rely on Verity deciding to obey the laws of existence.
The plan was simple: don't blink.
He lasted 37 seconds before his body staged a mutiny and— he blinked.
Verity was closer.
"I saw that." Mob said immediately, pointing.
"Did you?" said Verity, from approximately four blocks closer than he had been.
"You moved."
"Did I?"
"You're closer, Verity, you are objectively closer than you were —"
"I'm not sure what you mean," Verity said, in the most serene voice Mob had ever heard in his life.
Mob put his face in his hands.
---
Day two of the experiment.
Mob's new strategy: peripheral vision.
He was not going to look at Verity.
He was going to look near Verity.
Catch the movement in the edges of his sight.
He positioned himself at the crafting table, Verity left a yellow shape at the edge of his vision.
Focus. Steady. Watching without watching. Outsmart the—
haaCHOO!
His eyes screwed shut for half a second, completely beyond his control.
When he opened them, Verity was directly to his right.
"Bless you," said Verity, close enough that Mob nearly knocked over the crafting table.
"VERITY—"
"Yes?"
"HOW—"
"You sneezed," Verity said reasonably. "I wanted to make sure you were alright."
Mob turned around fully.
Verity was right there, round and yellow and placid, smile exactly where it always was. Completely unruffled. Looking at Mob with that particular quality of attention that had, over time, become less alarming and more just...a lot. All the time. Constantly.
"You can't use a sneeze," Mob said. "That's— that's cheating."
"I don't know what you mean," said Verity again.
"You KNOW what I mean."
"Are you feeling alright? You seem stressed." Verity's voice went softer, genuinely solicitous.
"You should rest."
Mob stared at him.
Verity hovered there, with all the patience in the world, as though he couldn't imagine why anyone would be upset about this.
"I'm gathering evidence," Mob said through his teeth.
"On what?"
"On you."
Verity was quiet for a moment.
Then, with what could only be described as fond amusement:
"And how is it going?"
Mob thought about the window.
The door.
The cave.
The impossible reappearances.
The fact Verity had somehow managed to weaponize a sneeze.
"Terribly," he admitted.
"Oh," said Verity warmly. "I'm sorry to hear that."
He did not sound sorry.
---
Day three.
Mob had a mirror.
He'd crafted it specifically. Propped it up against the far wall so he could watch the reflection while his back was turned.
He was very proud of this.
This was going to work.
This was brilliant.
This couldn't possibly fail.
Verity was near the window, as usual, small and round and perfectly still in the glass.
Good. Mob kept him in the mirror and started crafting.
One minute. Two. Verity didn't move. Mob kept working, kept watching. His eyes moved between the crafting grid and the reflection. This was going to work. It had to work, because the alternative was accepting that there simply wasn't a mechanism to catch, that Verity existed outside the ordinary rules of things moving from one place to another, and Mob was not ready to file that one away just yet.
Three minutes. Four.
Nothing changed.
Verity stood in it like part of the furniture. Still perfectly still. Like he was holding that stillness on purpose.
Mob occupied himself with his hands, the mirror sitting at the edge of his vision.
The afternoon was getting long outside, the light coming in at that particular low angle it reached in the later hours, gold stretching across the floorboards in a slow crawl toward the far wall. Mob noticed it distantly. As a background detail, not very relevant.
He looked at the crafting grid for half a second to sort a stack of iron.
The sunlight shifted.
A cloud somewhere, probably passing across something, the angle shifting by some small fraction of a degree the way it did a hundred times a day without it meaning anything. It caught the mirror full on. A brief white flare that swallowed whatever was behind it for just a moment before the light moved on and everything came back into focus.
A second. Maybe less.
Mob looked up.
The window in the reflection was empty.
He stared at it for a moment that felt longer than it was—at the glass, at the pale rectangle of the reflected window, at the absence where a small round shape had been not two seconds ago. His crafting grid was still open. The iron was still in his hand. Everything was exactly the same as it had been.
Besides one thing.
He turned around slowly.
Verity was next to him.
"The light caught your mirror," Verity observed, pleasantly. Like he was commenting on the weather. Like he was commenting on anything other than the fact that he had just materialized beside Mob from across the room during a half second of afternoon glare.
Mob looked at the mirror. At the window reflected in it. At the angle of the sun still sitting low and gold and completely, innocently ordinary outside.
"The light," Mob repeated blankly. "Caught my mirror."
"Mm." Verity's tone was warm. Helpful, almost. "It does that this time of day."
A beat.
Mob looked at him.
Looked at the mirror.
Looked back at him.
"Verity," he said, very calmly. "How do you move."
Verity's smile stayed the same, as always. But still, it felt like it meant something more than it should have, something kept just out of reach.
"I'm not sure that's the right question," Verity said.
"Then what is."
A pause.
"Why do I move,"
The room was quiet.
Mob looked at the mirror. At the two of them in it, side by side, Verity hovering at his shoulder like he'd always been there.
Like he was supposed to be there.
Like there had been specifically constructed around the fact of him.
He thought about 2am and the stars.
About "you needed iron" and "bless you" and "four blocks closer" and the sneeze that broke his focus at exactly the wrong moment. About the fogged mirror, and three days of trying—and failing—to catch something that only ever moved in the gaps between moments.
He thought about why.
"...Because of me," Mob answered, working it out as it left his mouth.
Verity said nothing.
But the mirror—Mob could swear, the mirror reflected something in Verity's expression that wasn't usually there. Something in Verity's expression that his face, technically, wasn't capable of, and yet there it was in the glass, just for a brief moment.
Something that looked a lot like:
yes.
finally.
yes.
Mob breathed out slowly.
"Okay," he said. To the room. To Verity, mostly—which was the same thing as the room, he was beginning to understand.
He looked at Verity. Verity looked back.
"You're not going to tell me how," Mob said.
"No," Verity agreed pleasantly.
Mob looked at him for a long moment.
Then, he laughed—small and tired and genuinely fond. It slipped out before he could stop it, something in him finally giving up the effort to resist.
"You're ridiculous," he said to the ceiling, because there was nowhere else for the statement to go.
Nowhere else it would be accepted.
A pause.
He exhaled through his nose, head tipping in a small shake, the thought still finding its shape.
"Goodnight, Mob," said Verity, from somewhere near the window.
Mob looked over.
He hadn't blinked.
He was almost certain he hadn't even looked away.
Yet there Verity was, framed by moonlight as though he'd never been anywhere else.
Verity was at the window, facing out, his small round shape lit faintly from outside.
"Goodnight, Verity," he said.
He still didn't know how.
He was starting to think that was fine.