Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kim had secretly dreaded this day.

Of course, Lieutenant Vicquemare had warned him (quite often, quite harshly) that it was going to happen sooner or later. As it turned out, later was about five months after THE HANGED MAN case.

Not that Harry had been sober the entire time - even a memory wipe can't smooth out the grooves addiction leaves, especially when returning to familiar environments. Staying sober in Martinaise was a different beast than staying sober in Jamrock. 

However, this seemed to be what Jean had called "the big one", where either the hangover or the intoxication itself was too bad to remember going to the precinct. 

Gloved hands ready to knock, Kin found himself hesitating in front of the wooden door, with its frame still speaking of the times it had been kicked in. Kim had been here only once - to help Harry clean and more importantly, to find the drugs before Harry did - and had since found a plethora of excuses to turn down any of Harry’s hopeful invitations.
The intensity with which he wanted to accept was just too unnerving.

A thud and some soft swearing roused Kim from his thoughts. Focus, Kitsuragi. This is not about you trying to stay professional.
“Detective,” he called out, “It’s Lieutenant Kitsuragi. You are decidedly late for work.”
There was no answer, but the silence behind the door grew louder.
“Mr. Pidieu said he had received no communication from you regarding your absence and Lieutenant Vicquemare thought it would be best to send someone,” Kim continued.

In reality, Jean had congratulated Kim on his first “shitkid-recovery-mission”, before adding that it would be the first of many and suggesting that he probably shouldn’t even bother.
Kim had let him speak, before informing Pryce that he was going to be absent. The captain’s gaze had lingered on Harry’s abandoned desk for a moment, before he allowed Kim to go without any further questions.

“Shit- okay- hang on-” came the answer from behind the door. The rustling of cloth followed.
No clinking of glass, Kim caught himself thinking.
After a few minutes and a few more curses, the door in front of Kim unlocked and opened.

Kim kept his face very passive.
What greeted him was Harry, in a state of undress that was unusual even for him: Jeans (the ones that Kim considered Dangerous), his green snakeskin heels, no shirt, both a bow tie and a scarf around his neck and, to top it all off, the gardening gloves Miss Beaufort had given him back in Martinaise.
He looked flushed, but that might have just been Kim’s orange nylon-jacket reflecting the light streaming through the windows behind Harry.
Kim briefly took in what he could see of Harry’s apartment - no destruction and no bottles, at least not in the living room including the small kitchenette. Of course, Harry could have hidden them by now or restricted his escapade to either the bathroom or his bedroom.

“I’m not drunk,” the fashion disaster in front of him insisted quickly, noticing Kim scrutinizing his apartment, “I can go to work.”
“Are you sure, detective.” It was not a question, more of an order for Harry to explain himself.
“Yes. All I need to do is get dressed.”
Harry turned to leave, shuddered, and came to a stop about two steps from where he had greeted Kim at the door.
Kim watched the muscles on his back contract as he drew himself up to his full height, chest puffed out. The sudden glare over the shoulder was unexpected and something Kim had previously only seen directed at suspects.
“Who are you to try and tell me whether I’m sober or not? Coming in here unannounced-”
“I wouldn’t say it was unannounced,” Kim gave Harry an unimpressed look, magnified by his thick lenses, “I called for you and you answered. As for your current state-”

Harry clenched his jaw and closed the distance between them in a stride that was almost a jump. He poked a finger sharply between the Lieutenant’s collarbones.
“My state is none of your business, Kitsuragi!”
At that, Kim furrowed his brow. Kitsuragi?
“Harry-”
“That’s Lieutenant Yefreitor Du Bois for you, binoclard!” Harry had been stripped of one of his Yefreitor ranks upon returning to the 41st.
Kim pushed away the hand still pressing into his chest and used his other hand to jerk Harry’s face towards him. No yellow in the sclerae, pupils normal. Face reddened, but no alcohol on his breath.
“Seriously? That, from you? Did you take anything?”
“Fuck, I wish I did.” Harry broke into a grin and, to Kim’s astonishment, twisted his head just enough to drag his parted lips over the gloved palm against his face.

Kim jerked his hand back as if Harry had bitten him.
The leer vanished from Harry’s face so suddenly that Kim could have convinced himself that he had imagined it.
“I made you uncomfortable,” he said quietly.
“Was that not the intention?” Kim’s eyebrows twitched over his glasses, the fingers of right hand still worrying at the Scene Of The Crime, his ears undoubtedly a shade redder.
Truth to be told, after almost half a year it was impressive that Harry still found ways to catch Kim off-guard.
The Question was, to what purpose? What was this?

Harry stared at him, mouth agape and wide-eyed before he threw both his hands out in a wild gesture that barely missed Kim. “‘Tis but a slip of the tongue, if a bit more literal than one’d expect!”
Kim scrutinized Harry from behind his glasses, letting the silence bloom between them.
The Lieutenant had gotten used to Harry’s erratic behavior (as much as was possible) but this was…unusual. Frightening, even, a small part of him added.

A series of twitches momentarily distorted Harry’s face before he heaved a sigh and dragged a rubber glove over his face, taking some stray beard hair with it.
“I apologize for this, Kim. I’ll sort this out, get dressed and meet you at the precinct.”
“Officer…what exactly are you sorting out?”
“I’d rather not get into it. I am, however, sober. Right now.” He inclined his head towards Kim and raised his eyebrows in an effort to look sincere.
“I find that hard to believe.”
Harry grabbed both of Kim’s shoulders and gave them a shake. “We speak truth, sire!”
Kim re-adjusted his glasses. “We?”
“Oh, you must have misheard - the word uttered was “Me”.”
“Me speak truth. Sire.” Kim repeated, his voice intentionally void of emotion.

He delicately removed Harry’s hands as he continued speaking. Harry tended to be more… tactile than he was comfortable with (it raised too many inconvenient questions for Kim), but again, it was not usually this pronounced.

“Harry. Relapses are to be expected. They are part of recovery. I would appreciate it if you would tell me what happened between you leaving the station yesterday and me arriving at your apartment.”
He furrowed his brow and hesitated before continuing to speak.
“You…do remember what happened?”

Lieutenant Du Bois straightened his posture and clasped his hands in front of his chest.
“As a condition that can be the result of a diverse array of causes, brain injury and infections among them, retrograde amnesia theoretically has the potential to be a recurring ailment. This, however, has been observed rarely and typically does not coincide with a complete repetition of symptoms. Uh…by which I mean, yes, I remember,” he added sheepishly.

Kim closed his mouth with a click of his teeth, but quickly found his footing again.
“Well. You have two options: Either you let me inform our precinct that we both will not be coming in today and I will stay with you until you come down from…whatever this is, or I’ll drive you over and have Gottlieb take a sample for toxicol-”

Kim couldn’t finish his sentence before he was thrown against the door, broad fingers digging into his upper arms. Mere inches away, Harry’s face filled most of his field of vision. Even through the blur, Kim could see that the whites of Harry’s eyes were visible all around his irises.

Through droplets of spit and breath stinking of sleep, Harry released a flurry of words.
“We are NOT going to let you drag us on that butcher’s table, he’s going to PUT US DOWN the moment he figures it out, he can just pretend to draw blood and give us a LETHAL INJECTION and he’d know a million ways to explain our death and you’d LET HIM GET AWAY WITH IT because you’d be COMPLICIT, and because of THIS we won’t let you stay here either because how the FUCK could we trust you to not finish us yourself out of convenience and then act like it was an overdose and Jean and Pryce and the whole fucking precinct would believe you, because who wouldn’t believe stick-in-the-ass, play-by-the-rules Kitsuragi over the SHITKID and also we wouldn’t even be able to defend ourselves in the first place because we WOULD BE DEAD.”

It only took a moment for Kim to spring into action. In a swift motion, he grabbed both of Harry’s wrists, pressing his fingers into the soft spots just under his palms.
With the involuntary release of Harry’s fingers, Kim freed his forearms by pulling Harry’s hands away from him in a big arch. He kept his grip on one of Harry’s wrist and, with a quick sidestep, twisted his arm behind and into Harry’s back.
The rubber glove stuck to the cold sweat that had broken out during Harry’s rant.

“Enough.” The word came out like a gunshot. “Explain yourself.” Kim jerked at Harry’s wrists for emphasis. “Now.”

Part of Kim felt guilty for handling Harry like this, but the rest of him had survived long enough to recognize danger - even from a partner. Even from a friend, he thought, sullenly. Even from someone, he...
The tension in Harry’s muscles dissipated all at once.

“It’s so hard for you to trust - you can’t shut out the voice that just asks - “again?” and it frightens you.”
Kim bit his bottom lip. He had told Harry that this…talent of his was unnerving and that he’d prefer it if the man could refrain from dissecting him emotionally - or at least have the courtesy of not letting Kim know.

“Are you going to stay calm now?” he asked in a low voice, one hand on Harry’s wrist, the other pushing against his back to keep the awkward angle on the arm.
“I…can’t guarantee it. It’s not entirely up to me.” Harry admitted, part of the softness in his voice gone again.

“Because you are not alone in your head?”
Kim felt a pang of embarrassment at saying this out loud, but even when they had known each other only for days, Harry had claimed that his thoughts essentially manifested as a chorus of suggestions that would even contradict each other at times.
Plus… there was the repeated and emphatic use of the first person plural pronoun.

“Can you let go,” Harry asked in a hoarse voice, “This is starting to really put a strain on my shoulder…”
“Please answer me.”

There were a few convulsions in quick succession. Aborted movements, Kim realized.

“Okay.” Harry sighed deeply, rolling his shoulder in discomfort. “Okay. Kim, I’m afraid the issue isn’t so much that Harry is not alone - it’s that we are.”
Silence.
“And you would be…the voices?” The Lieutenant was sure there was an explanation here that made sense outside of a supranatural level.

“You…could call it that, I suppose.” Harry’s voice changed very slightly in pitch as he continued. “Although it would be impossible for us to be certain about our own nature. How can you truly observe a system from within?” He shook himself.
“Point is, Harry’s not there. I don’t think we would be able to pilot this thing like this otherwise.”

“Maybe you do need to see Gottlieb, then.”
Although, what could the lazareth do? It doesn’t seem likely that he’d stock antipsychotic medication and he probably would consider sedatives a waste in this case.

Harry tried to jerk out of Kim’s grip at the mention of Gottlieb, but again, the movement was cut short.
Kim pressed his lips into a thin line. Maybe he should just go along with this, at least until he had figured out how to help Harry.

“Well. Evidently, among…you…there are differing opinions about me. For what it's worth, I can assure the more suspicious parties involved that I only have Harry’s best interests in mind.”

“Oh. Uhm. Don’t worry,” Harry’s voice came out timid now and he no longer tried to glance back at Kim, opting to stare at his shoes instead, “most of us like you. I mean. I really do. I also really liked the Kineema, you know.” He shuddered under Kim’s grip.
“Again, the shoulder is basically screaming right now, Kim. The pull on the scar tissue is not helping. We will try to keep the more violent ones at bay.”
Harry (?) did sound very strained right now, weirdly raspy. Kim ran his tongue over his teeth, thinking.

“Let me address whoever just attacked me - I think we can come to an understanding. You seem afraid of facing dire consequences once it becomes evident that Harry…”is not there”. I want to help return things to normal again. It seems you’d stand to benefit from that.”
Harry twisted his neck to give Kim an intense glare, but otherwise made no move to wrestle himself free.
“What if he never comes back? What if we stay like this forever? What can you even do about this?”

Kim held his gaze, trying to project more confidence in his abilities to amend this situation than he had. Trying not to let panic bubble up from his guts himself.
“He built himself up from nothing before and I was there from the beginning. I don’t want to overstate my role in his recovery, he did the hard work obviously, but I might be the person who has the biggest chance of being an asset here.”

Harry’s back moved with a few heavy breaths, loudly expelled through the nose.
“Fine. You’re on thin ice, though.”

Chapter Text

If this was an elaborate joke, Kim decided, then Harry was an astonishing actor.

By now he was able to tell some of the “voices” apart. Of course, since they all used Harry’s vocal chords, they sounded similar, but there was a difference between the slightly wispy, curious tone the one interjecting with the most outlandish statements had and the breathless way one of them had asked Kim to “fuck him better” (Kim had politely declined).

The ones that worried him most were the voice that endlessly paced and looked at Kim like a caged animal as well as the deepest voice, which seemed to have made up its mind about “finally getting this thing in shape” and was utterly disinterested in Harry’s return.

He had tried to figure out just how many there were but found it impossible to tell. Reading faces was hard enough for the Lieutenant, which made categorizing expressions as separate entities a task he simply wasn't built for. Plus, as one of them had helpfully offered, only a portion of them seemed to do most of the talking, as per their own preference. Asking for names hadn’t led to anything either, since none of them knew what Harry called them. When he inquired about their numbers directly, he received answers ranging from 18 to 26.

With two dozen influences, it's no wonder Harry can easily spend 20 minutes looking off into the middle distance… , Kim thought.

The coffee in front of him had become lukewarm, while Harry had to leave his untouched on account of being unable to come to a consensus about drinking it. One very vocally demanded caffeine, another refused on account of Harry's inflamed stomach lining and a third one made multiple attempts at rattling off the different species of Coffea.

He had managed to dress more appropriately after Kim had picked out some clothes from Harry’s overstuffed wardrobe. Granted, it had also taken gratuitous use of the Eyebrow.
Clad in the green disco blazer and his beloved bell bottom pants, you wouldn’t even have noticed anything off about him at first glance.

Well, maybe the insistence of wearing at least one of the fingerless gloves along with both a scarf and some colorful ribbons around his neck would have caught someone's attention, but if Kim was honest with himself, that was very much something regular Harry would do too.

Kim glanced at his wristwatch.
He’d been there for a while now - there was probably talk about this in the old silk mill. In any case, it didn’t seem prudent to bring Harry there in the state he was in. He was still on thin ice, mainly for destroying the Coupris 40 but also for his conduct up to that point.
From what Kim had gathered, he had told at least Lieutenant Vicquemare about the voices he’d been experiencing since Martinaise, if only to ascertain whether he heard them before (he did not) but Kim doubted that Jean had taken him seriously.
It’s safe to assume he won’t now either, Kim thought, After two years of being his partner, he’d probably just chew him out for yet another strange excuse for Harry’s behavior.

Harry followed Kim’s gaze to the watch, then looked him straight in the eye.

“Atop the Motorway 8/81, early midday sun glints off the dome roof of Precinct 41.
Within, Captain Pryce and Lieutenant Vicquemare meet by the coffee machine, possibly by chance. “Hasn’t turned up yet,” Lieutenant Vicquemare grunts with a shrug and raises one eyebrow at Captain Pryce, who just nods.
“Captain,” Vicquemare continues, “you *know* how this goes - we can’t afford to lose Lieutenant Kitsuragi just because Harry can’t keep his shit together.”
Captain Pryce pours himself coffee, black and burned, before answering: “You are still here, Lieutenant, years later.”
Lieutenant Vicquemare barks a humorless laugh.
“Yes, but Kitsuragi has some fucking sense.” He leaves and forgets his mug.”
“Kitsuragi” blinked at Harry. This voice he hadn’t heard yet, at least he is reasonably sure. He took a moment to figure out how to respond to this.

“If you expect me to abandon you for your…predicament, I think you will be disappointed, detective.”

Harry cocked his head to the side, his face neutral. “I only relaid what I witnessed.”
“Witnessed,” Kim repeated after a beat.
Harry nods and fails to elaborate.
Maybe this one embodies his imagination?

The silence drew out between them. Kim turned his mug in his hands.
“So,” Kim started, slowly, “You still haven’t told me what happened.”
Harry pulled back his hand from the mug in front of him, coffee dripping off his index finger onto the table.
“We…don’t know.”
“Has this ever happened before?”
Harry shrugged, then spread his fingers in a vague gesture.
“In a way - there have been situations where one of us would speak for him.”

That made sense - Harry had a penchant for blurting out sentences that had an entire conversation missing.

Harry leaned into his chair, slinging one arm over the back of it.
“Sometimes he also needs help *doing* things. I’m sure you remember him teleporting up the FELD building in Martinaise.” A self-satisfied smirk moved his mutton chops.
Kim was not in the mood to argue this again, so he just nodded once instead.

“So, everyone chimes in with suggestions but ultimately Harry makes the choice - except for this morning. Am I understanding this correctly?”
“An astute observation, my liege.”
“Mh-hm.” Kim drummed his fingers on his coffee mug.

Harry looked thoughtful too, resting his chin on his knuckles.

“Unless we look at this from the wrong angle, of course.”
Kim cocked his head to the side. “How so?”
“What if the thing we call “Harry” is more of a… connective tissue? The side-effect of us sparring, smoke on the battlefield. After all, he only “woke up” months ago, with no memories of his own.”

Kim raised an eyebrow. “He didn’t just come into existence at age 44.”

“Did he not? The pockmarked officer never tires of bringing up the contrast of what Harry was to what he is now, or rather, insisting there is no change at all - every single time he notices the difference. Could it be that his former partner died and what took his place was the shadow created by our light?”

“No,” Harry interrupted himself, “Occam’s Razor dictates that it is more likely than not that he is the constant and we are the aberration. Even though the phrase “Occam’s Razor” is usually attributed to a concept originating in philosophy,” Kim noted the change in Harry’s tone, “there is evidence pointing towards the saying stemming from an utterance of Valérie Occam, infamous sequence killer. Occam claimed that the simplest way to end an argument was a razor to the throat.”

The thought that the man who managed to convince him to uproot his life in the span of a week was more reflex than person troubled Kim more than he would have liked to admit.
If he was just “smoke” it was very easy to imagine him just having been blown away completely. Kim was roused from these dark thoughts when he felt Harry’s thumb tracing the knuckles on his hand.
“Don’t worry Kim. He will find his way back. He has made it back from so much worse.”

The Lieutenant fought the impulse to draw back his hand and allowed himself the little gesture of reassurance.
…a gesture that he had failed to give Harry, singular, permission for. Nausea washed over him when he considered that he might not get the opportunity anymore.
Kim pulled away.
“Come on Kim, we can hold hands a little!” Harry sounded playful and leaned over the table to reach for Kim again. He shuddered and stopped, when the Lieutenant dropped both hands in his lap and shifted back on his chair.
If he comes back, I'll finally tell him. he thought and hoped that the part of Harry that was so intuitive about what he feels had already been pushed away from the steering levers again.

“I’m frankly less interested in discussing the nature of consciousness than finding a solution for the problem at hand.” Practicality had always been a welcome shield against despair for Kim.

“We should talk to the civil consultant,” Harry suddenly said excitedly, “He always has something interesting or useful to contribute- Fuck OFF, bookhead.”

“Erm. While I’m sure that Mr. Heidelstram would have a lot to say about this, I’m not sure he would have an answer.” And we would lose a lot of time. Time we might not have.

“Maybe if we played the role with enough conviction - we just need the right replacement parts - have to activate his muscle memory by vigorous exercise - told you, Kim, you need to factory reset him, if you know what I - just have to order him to come back - is too quiet, we need to listen more closely - we will find his shape in the hole missing from those fighting alongside him - STOP, we need to BREATHE!”
Kim watched them gulp down lungfuls of air, while still trying to make sense of the onslaught of words he had just been subjected to.

A quiet voice spoke up now, breathless but that was just the way it talked.
“Maybe he can be found where he was first taken. It ate his memories and it ate other people’s dreams, but maybe it still remembers what it tasted like.”

Harry looked up at Kim. “An offsite copy,” it added in a hushed tone.
Kims eyes widened with understanding. “The Pale Origin Point in Martinaise.”
It wasn’t much, but it was at least something concrete and actionable.

—

From Harry’s apartment, it took them about 45 minutes to get to Martinaise.
It would have been 30, had Harry not tried to throw himself out of the car twice, once because a voice was convinced the hole in reality would actually kill them, the other time mostly to “see if his body can take it.”.

With the Kineema, of course, it would take even less time, Kim thought to himself and couldn’t keep a sour expression off his face.
Pryce had requested a transfer of the vehicle alongside the Lieutenant but *for some reason* the paperwork kept getting lost, or there were repairs to be done first, or any other hindrance that allowed Kim’s former captain a last Fuck You Kitsuragi.

“They will run out of excuses eventually,” Harry chimed in.
Kim’s eyes flickered to the rearview mirror, then back to the road in front of him.
“I take it you are the one who allows Harry his uncanny hunches.”

“Mh…no. I just saw your grip on the steering levers tighten, your mouth curl into a frown and I know how much you miss your old MC. The hunches come from elsewhere, within and without.”

“Without?”

“When he speaks of the city talking to him, he is telling naught but the truth. La Revacholiere sends her words on the wind.”
Harry’s hands suddenly grabbed at the seatbelt, giving it a violent tug.
“It’s an INTRUDER,” he hissed but thankfully made no third attempt at escaping the speeding vehicle.

"There's even more voices?" Kim didn’t really know what to do with this information - he already had to reframe his view of reality today and was not keen on doing it again.
Harry readjusted his seatbelt carefully before he answered.
"In a sense. I can show him things he doesn't have the eyes for and make faint whispers loud enough for him to hear."
A realization hit Kim.
"Like when he imagined his necktie speaking to him."
Harry, or rather whatever was speaking to Kim, was taken aback.
"These things are very real, Kim. You just never tried to listen."

There was no point in arguing with Harry’s… creativity? But there was something else…
"Lieutenant Viquemare said Harry hadn't heard voices before Martinaise, but that he did talk to his tie. How does that make sense?"
"In the beginning it was just me and the two ancient ones. The city, sometimes. That was after the church raid." It spoke in a light tone but Kim felt the hair on his back stand up.

If that was true, maybe the Pale was the source for whatever happened to Harry. The issue was - would a repeated exposure fix things or make it worse?

—

When they arrived in Revachol’s forgotten district, Kim parked the car close to the waterlock.

The walk to the church itself was surprisingly uneventful. In fact, it was almost worrying that they failed to encounter a single person on their way there. Lilienne could have been out fishing while her kids stayed within their home, but neither Isobel nor the three drunks who had pulled “Tequila Sunset” from his wrecked car were anywhere to be seen. The RCM had been made aware of rising tensions in the area and there had been talk of more mercenaries getting dispatched (Krenel, under yet another name) but the Moralintern had prohibited the RCM from intervening at this point. Officially to keep the RCM a neutral party in the growing unrest, but at least at Precinct 41, people speculated that this might not have been the true reason.

As they walked, Kim noticed Harry shudder to a halt a few times. He also stumbled a lot more than he usually would, but other than that, it seemed that the voices had either entered a treaty or that one of them was keeping an iron grip on the controls.

Kim was surprised that seeing the church dark and silent once more was actually affecting him.

He already knew it would be abandoned - Coalition entroponeticists had flown in shortly after Soona had made her discovery and had edged both her and the delinquents out of the church in order to set up their own equipment and take their own measurements. Soona suspected they had intercepted communications with her former team, in which she spoke about the Swallow but Kim couldn’t rule out that Harry telling several people about it had something to do with this as well.

The scientists left after funding dried up surprisingly quickly.
As it turned out, there was little to be gained from investigating intraisolary Pale, at least in the eyes of investors.
Sure, maybe they could have found a way to push back against what would eventually swallow all of Elysium, but that was nothing they could turn into money now. In fact, interisolary travel was a huge industry with many moving parts and high stakes, so if Kim was cynic, he might have wondered whether reduction of pale was researched at all.
Callous and disinterested in anything beyond their lifetimes, old men had decided that this endeavor was not worth it.

Still, as he stood in front of the empty church… Kim would have never admitted it, but it saddened him.
He looked over at Harry and found his partner’s eyes flit quickly over the entire building, his face rolling from one expression into the next in nervous twitches, the voices obviously sparring with each other.

“Do you need a moment, detective?”
Harry blinked a few times. “There is more of it now. Less of everything else.”
Kim furrowed his brows. “The Origin Point has grown?”
“No. The world shied away from it.” Harry answered cryptically.
“Khm.” Kim shifted his balance from one foot to the other. “Can we be certain it is still safe?”
“That fucking thing has NEVER been safe!!”
“Well, safe enough.” Kim conceded and tried to not let it show how much the sudden yelling had startled him.
“Only one way to find out, Lieutenant.” Harry glanced at him and smiled confidently.
“We understand if you won’t follow. No, he is coming with us! But it could hurt him- Kim, we need you to be there. What if it does nothing? What if it does something to him?”

Kim hesitated, wondering if there was anything he could do to cut through this argument, when Harry’s voice went back to an even, confident tone.
“Kim, it’s your choice. It might be dangerous, but there is still the danger of some of us backing out - it’s not backing out it just makes SENSE - back out? We’re not a fucking pussy.”

The Lieutenant’s face very pointedly did not move.
“Yes, it seems some supervision might be sensible.”
“We don’t need to be superv- thank you Kim, I think he would appreciate it.”

They finally stepped over the threshold, unhindered by locks or even just caution tape.

Chapter Text

Inside, the church looked darker than Kim remembered. Maybe it was the angle of the sun - the low spring light might have shone further through the stained glass.
Still… There was something strange about the shadows within the building. Everywhere the light didn’t reach, there was nothing but a primordial blackness that didn’t allow their eyes to adjust to it. When Kim moved his eyes, afterimages of those shadows moved with them, casting harsh shapes of stygian blue.

“Papercutting, done by invisible hands and shears that can split atoms,” Harry intoned, presumably having noticed the strange optical phenomenon as well. He sounded muffled, despite standing right next to Kim, which sent a chill down the Lieutenants back.
Their steps were strangely soft as well and it took a moment for the Lieutenant to realize that it wasn’t just because of the low volume. Impossibly, the tiles had a give to them, similar to carpet.

Even without scrambling the senses, the place would have been eerie. Abandoned research equipment lurked in the darkness, presumably more expensive to ship back through the Pale than to replace. Stripped of most of their parts, the machines lined the whale carcass of the church like partially ingested fish.

Kim took off his glasses to clean them, less so because there was a need for it but because he felt himself getting nervous. Cutting one source of sensory input often helped him in these cases. He realized quickly that his discomfort sat deeper than what he could consciously perceive.

He put his glasses back just in time to see Harry step towards some of the beams near what they had dubbed the Swallow, following them up into the rafters with his eyes. Experimentally, he tried to reach for one of the lower supports. Kim furrowed his brows.

As Kim closed up to him, he froze - just out of the corner of his eye, he was seeing people.
Dancing in silence, sitting on wooden pews, barging into the church guns at the ready. When he turned his head, the figures vanished from his line of sight, only to crowd the edges of his vision elsewhere. Kim was even able to make out a woman standing with her back towards them near the blurry shape of a radio computer, as well as the frantic movements of a young man bent over an invisible table. Two officers of the RCM were engaged in chaotic movement, the halogen marks on their clothing glinting through time.
Kim closed his eyes and shook his head, but the afterimages of this place remained.
Maybe the reasons for terminating the research hadn't only been monetary.

“The effects of the anomaly are far more pronounced now and worsen the closer we get - you are not going to climb up there.” Kim demanded.
Harry didn’t even turn towards him. Kim would have thought that he simply hadn’t been able to hear him, if he hadn’t heard Harry mumbling to himself. Percentages, it sounded like.

“There is a good chance we can get up there, if we follow the right pattern. It helps that we saw Tiago do it before.”
“You are no crabman.”
“Kim, it’s no big deal - we don’t even need to climb, we’ll just teleport up there.” Harry shook out his limbs, then stretched his arms.
“You did not teleport. What are you even trying to accomplish?”
The Lieutenant felt himself growing agitated. The ghostly images around him were unnerving, he was uncomfortable having to shout over a mere four meter distance and all around, this just seemed to have been a mistake.

His partner gave him a look of surprise. “We need to touch it.” he said, as if Kim had just asked him why he was breathing. He must have been further from the Swallow than Kim was, since he didn't need to yell.
“Touch?! The Pale?!!” This time, shouting came a lot more natural.
“Come on, there is no way you never had to jump start a car…”

Kim took a few steps towards Harry and felt the pressure on his ears increase. He was momentarily distracted by his wristwatch blinking frantically and then dying. With mounting terror, he understood that he was in the center of the Swallow. Although, he reminded himself, the correct term is actually “porch collapse”. He felt a lump form in his throat.

“You are not a dead battery. I know you forgot all about the Pale so let me remind you: this is a Bad Idea.”
Harry crossed his arms in front of his chest and cocked his head to the side, reminding Kim of Titus Hardie for a brief moment.
“Why did you drive us here if you were just going to be a problem?”
Kim threw his head back. “A problem? Harry, if it is this bad on the ground, who knows what’s up there? Hell, how do you expect to make the climb, when you fall over your own feet while all of you scramble for control!”

Kim saw deep ridges form around Harry’s brows, nose and mouth, before the beginning of a snarl melted away again. The tension fell from Harry’s shoulders and there was genuine sympathy in his features now.

He stepped towards Kim, and before he could do anything about it, Harry drew him into an embrace. Kim’s entire body tensed up, but he was too surprised to react further.

“Kim”, Harry’s voice was soft and low, “You still call us by his name. You still don’t fully believe he’s not here. But you have to understand - all damage that can happen now happens to an empty shell.”
Kim had avoided this line of thinking the entire day - hearing it so bluntly in Harry’s baritone was almost physically painful.

He tried his hardest to not let his breathing speed up, to control the sound of his voice, to not think about the body around him as a corpse that refused to enter rigor mortis.
“This is a mistake. This might return to normal by itself. How can he be gone if…”
“...if he is holding you?” Kim felt Harry’s face - their face, its face - move against the side of his head, a sad smile.

He was released from the embrace and held at arm's length.
“We are how Harry interacts with the world, but we are just that. Tools. Sophisticated ones, but not that different from a crowbar or a flashlight. Whatever character we have comes from continued use. The one who was trying to comfort you just now? A mirror with no real agency. Me? A viewfinder, pointed at nothing in particular. I was wrong before - Harry isn’t the matter between us. He’s the shape we pour into, which is why we are so good at pretending to be people.”
“But-”
The hands on Kim’s shoulder fall away. Its expression was neutral again, perhaps tinged with a vague curiosity as it looked down at Kim.
“Lieutenant, it boils down to this - this might work and it might not. Nothing lost with the latter, everything gained with the former.”

Kim had a hard time looking at the body in front of him. He took a step back, literally and emotionally and thought about what he had witnessed today: A long row of what was merely reactions.
But isn’t that just life, if you break it down enough?
It surely is yours, Kitsuragi.

The thought and the Swallow rubbed his nerves raw. He suddenly felt both too tired to keep arguing and too desperate for this to actually work.
“Fine. Fine. Do what you have to do, if it helps get Harry back.”

The effigy gave Kim a knowing glance and a reassuring smile.
“It will be fine. The Dreaming One has a way of being right about things in the end.”
With that bizarre message, it started its ascend.

Kim watched it climb and shuddered against a chill that wasn’t there. He recognized the leaden feeling in his lungs as grief.

—

Kim wasn’t sure what he had expected. There was no disruption in the optical illusion, no discharge of electricity, not even a sound. The placeholder climbed without incident until Kim couldn’t see it anymore. An unknown amount of time passed. Something climbed down. Something looked at Kim with a pale, sweaty face and confusion in its eyes. Something had reached out to him and then stopped itself.
Harry had asked how he got there.

They sat down on the swingset near the canal, since it was at this distance that Harry couldn’t feel the Swallow anymore. Here, he only had to deal with the rusted remains of the Coupris 40. Kim wondered if it was a little easier now that the “41” on its side had been mostly corroded away. He glanced at the detective.

Harry wasn’t even looking at the wreck. Wearing an intense expression and moving his lips almost imperceptibly, he wasn’t looking anywhere. Kim knew not to interrupt what was no doubt a rather heated discussion.
After a while, Harry let his lips flap in a long exhale.
“Fuck.”
“Mhm.” Kim hummed in agreement. “I take it you are caught up now?”
“I think so, yeah. What a mess.”

Kim pushed one of his legs against the ground, making the chains of the swing clink softly.
“It could have been worse. Although, I would like to not have to repeat this.”
Especially since there is no way of knowing if it will work a second time.
He relaxed his leg again, slow enough to avoid any momentum.
Can I even truly know if it did now?

“Perhaps you could tell me what happened? So this might be avoided in the future?”
“I’m not sure it can really be prevented.” Kim could barely make out Harry’s dejected mumble.
“But you do know what happened?”
“Maybe. You believe me about the voices now, right?” There was hope in the question.
“Detective, at this point I don’t believe my skepticism would be constructive. I’ll go with the simplest explanation.”
Harry considered this for a moment. “Kim, did you know that “Occam's Razor” comes from a sequence killer.”
“I’ve heard about that, yes. What was it you wanted to say about the voices?”

Harry’s hands clenched and relaxed around the metal chains, once, twice. One of them looked severely sunburned, with the skin already flaking off his fingertips.

“Well there are…other ones too.” Harry said slowly. With how easily the detective usually talked about his idiosyncrasies Kim suspected Harry hesitated not because he was unsure whether to tell Kim about this, but because he didn’t know how to. He decided to let him find the words, offering a medicinal amount of encouragement with a small nod.

Harry drummed his fingers on his lower lip. “I guess all the other voices are mostly connected to me during consciousness and these two are subconscious. Or maybe unconscious?” He didn't seem quite satisfied with this assessment but let it go with a frustrated sigh.

“Anyway, they are there when I sleep. Or at least while I fall asleep and when I wake up.”
“A sort of sleep paralysis?” Kim offered carefully.
“No… I think it’s my brain, in a way? My brain without me. Hurm.” He realized that he didn't know where this was going. “They usually want me to stay unconscious and I…guess they were really convincing yesterday.”

Kim furrowed his brows at this, despite himself. He had started to make assumptions about the voices during their interactions with him. Here’s Harry’s fear, here is his intuition, here is his willpower… was this his suicidal ideation? Before he could open his mouth to speak, Harry did.

“No, they don’t want me dead - I think they just want to protect me and they don’t know any other way. All they know is that everytime I got hurt, it happened when I was awake or dreaming. If you shut the world out, it can’t get to you, right?” He drew one of the corners of his mouth up in an uncomfortable shadow of The Expression.
The Lieutenant gave him a stern look and tried to override his unease.
“What did they say to convince you?”
“Nothing new, really, they just had a little more ammo… with last week and all…” Harry said and shifted uncomfortably, making his seat on the swing sway.

Ah, Kim thought, the family annihilator.
Child, Mother and Father - dead, all killed by the latter after he had lost his white collar job to the bottle. It had been a sordid affair by itself, but it had affected Harry on a personal level.
“That was bad.”
“Really bad.”
“Mhm.”

Harry grimaced and exhaled loudly through his nose. “I thought I was sleeping…I probably would have just stayed like that, too. Time isn't really a thing when-”, his eyes widened suddenly. “Oh god, Kim, what if I sleepwalk like this *all the time*.”
“You probably would have noticed things being out of place or waking up where you didn’t go to sleep.” Kim said, but couldn’t keep the doubt entirely out of his voice. “Maybe you can just ask them?”

Harry seemed to do just that - his eyes unfocused and he stopped breathing for a moment. “They say no”, he relayed after a beat. “But, Kim, they lie sometimes…”

“Well I suppose then you’d have to be restrained to your bed to be completely sure.” Kim said while taking off his glasses to clean them with the lining of his jacket. When he put them back on, Harry stared at him with a strange expression and his mouth slightly open. Kim didn’t have time to ask what was wrong before Harry blurted out: “Oh fuck, he just told me what happened - Kim, I’m fucking sorry.”
“About what? About shoving me into your door?”
“*What?!*” Harry flushed red and looked almost panicked.
“Well, mhm, one of your…copilots, suspected I would put you in danger and attacked me. I wasn’t hurt,” he added quickly, when Harry’s face switched from almost panicked to definitely panicked.
“Shit, I mean- I’m fucking sorry for that too, but-”
“No need, you were not exactly in control of your faculties-”
“-but I meant all the uh… sex talk.”

Kim stopped talking, preoccupied with the feeling of his ears heating up.

“Ah. That. Well like I said, you weren’t yourself. It’s fine, really.”
Harry looked absolutely mortified, so before Kim could stop himself, he tried to de-escalate further: “That was just your libido talking. In fact, in the appropriate setting it wouldn’t have been entirely unwelcome.”

His brain caught up with his mouth and it took all his volition to not cover his burning ears.

CONTROL - God, Kitsuragi. You truly picked the most desperate way to “tell him”.
VICE - Oh you haven't seen anything yet.
PROCESSOR - Those are not sounds, but you are definitely hearing them.