Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

You make your way up the steps. The smell of chuck coal in a furnace fills your lungs as its pillows of smoke smear across the sky, pitch gray and black. A small red light peers through the grates like blood trickling out from vertical wounds.

Perception: Cindy's eyes pierce you, that grin plastered on her face the way it always is, an ivory-white hand stretches out from the black cuff of her sleeve.

Her palm waits for you to place two real pieces in their home.

"She's a real daddy's girl, that one." Her smile is all teeth; her lips crack and peel at the corners.

Conceptualization: Ribbons of paper rolling off the walls, dry skin from lips

Interfacing: You take the coins and deposit them with the clitter clang of metal meeting metal meeting palm.

The red light welcomes you as the grate groans its rusty wail.

Perception: A young woman sits on the couch, spreading herself out to take up as much space as possible.

The room is as cozy and decrepit as you remember; a house of warm oranges, whites, and reds.

You remove your hat and tip it to her, nodding a silent hello in her direction, jutting your hand out into the space between you.

Perception: She gives out a loud huff of impatience as she stands to move toward you.

Suggestion: She does so with a level of assurance uncommon for her youth.

Perception: Her hand is cold velvet and a bit broad; you take it into your own and return a firm shake of her hand.

Authority: You already know she knows you’re a cop by the stiffness in her shoulders and the balking at your presence.

Perception: She gives a curt smile before going back to perch on the arm of the couch.

Encyclopedia: You first learned of her from Ulixies and Steban.

Inland Empire: You had stepped through the door as it creaked into the small nook cornered away in a pocket of culture in the slummed-out part of the town.

A cacophony of coffee aromas. The air was thick with the rich fragrance of fresh brew, mingling with the earthy notes of the aged books that lined the shelves.

The place is a haven for those seeking solace in the embrace of caffeine and literature.

The atmosphere was hushed, almost pious, as patrons hunched over their worn-out notebooks, scribbling furiously, lost in thought.

Conceptualization: wonderfully chic and painfully pompous

Inland Empire: Your eyes swept across the room, searching for the familiar faces of the underground cell that's totally not just a Book Club.

A small corner table, and a faded red cloth. Occupied by two figures, their heads bent together, engaging in animated discourse, oblivious to the world around them, their passion palpable in their gesticulations.

Ulixies, exuding an aura of stiff, unyielding attentiveness, is primed for release. His attire was a mishmash of an eclectic personality. A notebook lay open in front of him, filled with sketches and hastily scribbled notes, all capturing artistic visions and fervent thoughts.

Beside Ulixies sat Steban, a being of casual and paradoxical intensity. A focused gaze pierces through the complexities of written and social graces. Clad in a weathered trench coat that had seen better days, he carried his usual air of detached intellect. His neatly trimmed beard frames a face etched with lines of experience and contemplation.

A cup of steaming black coffee sat untouched in front of him, forgotten amidst the fervor of the conversation.

They nodded as you took a chair and scraped it across the floor to sit by them.

"Comrade"

"Comrade"

"Comrade"

You all curtly addressed one another. Steban and Ulixie shared a private and astute glance between the two of them.

"Any new recruits?" You asked.

Steban leaned back, disappointment evident in his eyes. "We've had a few interested parties, albeit transient ones," he confessed, his voice tinged with resignation. "They glimpsed the spark of our ideals, but the flame didn't take hold within them."

Ulixies sighed.

"Change can be daunting, and not everyone is ready to commit to a certain level of genuineness," he remarked, with a mix of disappointment and hopeful trepidation.

"However, amidst our efforts, there is a glimmer of progress."

Steban's gaze met Ulixie's, sharing a flicker of childlike excitement.

"We were recently contacted by another cell," Steban revealed. "They invited us to join forces to strengthen our cause and consolidate our efforts."

"Oh?"

Ulixie leant forward, cautious anticipation in his eyes. "It is an honest-to-god on-the-ground political faction, spearheaded by a remarkably effective young woman."

"She has a knack for connecting disparate groups within Revachol, from communists and union members to inframaterialists." Steban adds, running hand to smooth back his hair.

Empathy: It's a consequence of his vanity.

Perception: I mean, blame him or not, the man is extremely handsome.

Electrochemistry: You take a glance at Ulixies, who is less handsome, but youve always wondered if they were fucking

Logic: You could probably just ask.

Ulixies shifted in his chair, a shadow of concern crossing his face. "There are rumors though that her father holds a prominent position within the Moral Intern, a high-ranking official at that, not that there's any basis to this.  Just thought I'd let you know."

Esprit De Corps: They wanted you to confirm if it was true or not with your cop powers.

"You want me to confirm if it's true or not... with my cop powers?"

"We want to remain vigilant and wary of potential conflicts of interest."

"compromised loyalties."

Halflight: Traitors.

Suggestion: You agreed because not agreeing would make you seem less cool, and for some reason, seeming cool in front of these guys is extremely important to you.

Authority: pathetic

Suggestion: You don't bother to sit, instead shuffling to angle yourself away from the entryway and further into the tight-fitting room to better hold conversation with her.

"Ms.Dumont, I'm a double yfretior Harrier du bois and a devoted inframaterialist and communist." You tap the brim of your hat nervously.

You take a knowing look at the series of pins and patches on her lapel. "Amongst many other things."

Rhetoric: Her father probably wasn’t particularly happy about a good majority of those identifiers.

Reaction Speed: She catches it, and you give her a wink.

Perception: She rolls her eyes, unimpressed.

Empathy: and perhaps just a smidge bemused.

"So a young lady like you is a communist, then?"

Empathy: Her face curls up in what can only be described as profound disgust.

"Yeah, let's cut that out right away, and yes, comrade, even 'young ladies' like myself can be communists."

Drama: We detect no untruth; she has only the potential displeasure of having a moralist official as a father.

Rhetoric: and perhaps a particularly unique perspective on the true nature of their brand of evil and oppression, if rumors are true.

Pain Threshold: It really doesn't matter if they're true or not; you can see it in her. She doesn’t need to read theory; she's lived theory.

"Apologies, comrade, it's an unfortunate side effect of..." You trail off. You'd want to say that it was your age, sex, and status as a member of the RCM, your memory loss, but you know deep down that's all bullshit and you were just being a dick.

"Of kind of being a dick?" She raises a well-rounded eyebrow.

Suggestion: You shoot her a one-handed shot with your finger pistol.

Conceptualization: The endless planes of dry, arid awkwardness and deserted sands of conversation stretch out between the two of you and into that shimmering, wavering pool of heat that you find at the dips of roads and long, hot surfaces in the distance.

"Nice weather we're having?"

Empathy: She doesn't even bother to confirm or deny your statement.

"You discovered the Insulindian Phasmid." She states, She isn't fawning; it's weird she's bringing it up at all.

Drama: Oh, but our name proceeds us, sire, and we can use this to our advantage!

"Yes! You are a fan of cryptids?" You perk up over eager

Electrochemistry: like a puppy

"Not particularly; my partner is really into cryptids though," she shrugs, "Are you even allowed to be a Communist?" She takes a long, poignant look at the RCM rectangle on your jacket.

"Mmm, technically, not," you say, giving her a wry smile.

She quirks an eyebrow. "How'd you end up part of an inframaterialist cell, by the way?" She looks over at the art on the wall.

Shapes of orange, white, and red; stark streaks; sharp lines

"I met them in martinase while I was trying to remember who I was; I lost my memory and couldn't even remember my name." You direct your eyes to scan over the red smatterings of paint on the wall behind her but know not to dare gaze past them.

"Harry is short for Harrier, then? It's a good name," she nods, and I hope you like it.

"It's grown on me," you admit.

Empathy: It helps that someone like Kim has endeared himself to it.

Inland Empire: You have the feeling whatever name she had been given was not a name she liked.

"I can sense that you're going to want to interrogate me. Question my dedication to the cause? Ask about the moralists freak child?'' She takes a cigarette case from the inside of her vest.

"I am a detective," you say.

"It's not like I'm going anywhere anytime soon." She does not look at you; instead, she flicks a piece of stray lint off her sleeve.

"So your father is a moralist?" You follow the trajectory of the lint as it disappears from your sight.

She raises her eyebrows in tandem and shoots you a sarcastic smile.

Empathy: no shit Mullen.

Suggestion: You'd probably be better off being precise here.

Inland Empire: We don't have much time.

Electrochemistry: She pops the case open and pulls out a long, thin, rolled cigarette with no filter and holds it out between her fingers.

Reaction Speed: You stare at the gesture dumbly before realizing she means for you to light it.

Hand-eye Coordination: You fumble through your pocket to attach your fingers to your lighter, flicking it open and letting the flame creep up against the tip, setting light to the simmering tobacco.

"You know they say smoking's bad for your health; it's a real killer." You lick your lips as she places it between hers and takes in a long inhale of breath.

Perception: The paper crackles as the end smolders.

Inland Empire: You think about Kim now every time cigarettes are involved.

Volition: It's sort of bad for our addiction to nicotine to have such a positive association.

"Fffff, yeah, I was running pretty clean up until recently, not that it matters anymore, Mr. Du Bois."

"Is he an official within the Moral Intern?"

"Mr.Du Bois? Well, he's a cop, so I'd say yes." She stares daggers into you.

Conceptualization: a block of lead

Suggestion: You give her a warm smile; turn up the charm.

Drama: You are stupid, innocent, and as endlessly patient as you are curious.

Suggestion: Her expression changes, and she lets out a long, discontented sigh.

Empathy: Be gentle; she's tired, so tired.

Halflight: She will be tired for the rest of time.

Pain Threshold: There's no place for gentleness here.

"If you mean my father, Yeah, He works as a middle man between the coalition, the moral intern, and Revachol," she pinches her brow. "in charge of relations and propaganda that kind of garbage, making sure everyone isn't at each other's throats... revolution snuffer."

"Bastard?" It's an important question.

"Yeah, real asshole," she gives you a surly smile and averts her gaze, cigarette coming to her mouth.

"Just like me?" You give her a toothy grin.

She looks over to you, really looks at you, and softens, her expression saddened. "No, not like you."

Empathy: She wishes she could love her father; she wishes her father could love her.

Inland Empire: We could...

Esprit de Corps: That is not why we are here; it can't be.

"I'm so sorry."

Volition: Apologizing, always saying sorry for reasons we don't know

Empathy: She looks up at you with tears in her eyes.

"I'm sorry it has to be you." She turns from you and out into the large gap in the building.

Volition: don't ask her.

"What do you mean?" You swallow thickly.

Inland Empire: There are a billion trillion stars out tonight...

Halflight: don't look, don't look, don't

You turn to look where her gaze leads past the tattered blood red banners floating in the breeze and up to the sky. The stars stretch on endlessly, their infinite numbers swallowing any semblance of comprehension. Each distant speck represents an eternity, a reminder of the vastness of the universe and your own insignificance within its boundless expanse. The weight of it presses upon your mind, leaving you lost, forgotten, and swallowed by the relentless void.

They implode, explode, reform, and are born only to die over and over again.

Freezing ice fractalizing in your blood like a crystal.

You can feel your body trying to run but failing. "I’m sorry it has to be you, Harry."

You turn to see her head whipping in a fervent panic.

Volition: What have we done? Oh god, what have we?

Her eyes are gray and milked over, her skin pallid and tinged in a glycine purple, blood falls from her mouth and covers her front with the reddest of reds.

Rhetoric: Revolution, Revolution.

"I'm so, so sorry, please..." She scrambles up to you, a movement too quick to perceive and too inhuman to want to.

"who? Who did this to you?" You touch her, searching her for injuries or any damage that could cause her to become this way.

Perception: She's cold to the touch—much too cold.

"I did, Harry, I did; we always do it to ourselves in the end, being where we don't belong. I'm just sorry it has to be you." Blood gushes with each sputtering of her mouth, and her tears streak blue down her cheeks.

Authority: How dare she, how dare she pity us? We don't need pity, we

"I can fix this!" She keels over and into your arms.

You hold her as her body falls limp, her hair flooding down to the floor, catching the blood that streams from her face.

"I CAN FIX THIS!"

You can feel her blood pool through your fingers.

"Harry, Harry," you hear, feeling a grasping hand on your shoulder shake you.

The grip is firm and familiar.

Perception: You turn your head, and suddenly you are here, in bed, with Kim, his eyes bleary and filled with worry.

He takes his other hand and runs it through your facial hair. "Was it Dora again?" Kim swallows and averts his gaze to glance at the side table.

Empathy: He is upset by the dreams, but right now he isn’t trying to avoid your gaze; he is simply looking for his glasses. in case you need to talk about it.

"N-no, it was, uh, a body." You run your fingers across your face, if only to make sure it's there.

Inland Empire: To feel the difference between dream and reality

Halflight: It will become harder with each passing day.

"Which one?" Kim puts his glasses on his face and sits upright.

Volition: Which one he asks? There are too many to count: endless, infinite bodies, infinite stars.

Empathy: You can see him struggling to stay awake.

Endurance: Sleep is so coveted and never complete; you both wake from nightmares often.

Physical Instrument: The work is hard.

Endurance: The work is to be born, to work, to die, be born, die, be born again, work again, die again, be born again, work, death, birth, work, work, work, work, death. The pale, death, and life again

Esprit De Corps: Sunrise Parabellum

Pain Threshold: It's on the edge of your gun because the thought of what it meant—each day a battle—used to make you want to kill yourself.

Volition: Not anymore.

Empathy: It helps to have someone there.

Inland Empire: To share the memories with

You: Sunrise Parabellum.

"There was a call in the report from a maid in Grand Couron."

Conceptualization: You had cautiously stepped into the apartment, and your attention drifted over its interior with a mixture of curiosity and distaste.

Authority: This display of affluence was designed to impress and intimidate.

Rhetoric: The room reeked of excess and opulence, a decadent shrine to materialism and status.

The furniture was dressed in lavish fabrics and adorned with intricate carvings, a statement piece for the presentation of glut, eschewing any practical choice for comfort.

Expensive trinkets were meticulously arranged on gilded shelves, worthless little trophies for non-achievements awarded only for the insatiable appetite for acquisition.

The dim, artificial lighting from ornate chandeliers cast an ethereal glow.

She lay crumpled on the floor, splayed out in the middle of the room.

 Conceptualization: She looked like an artwork, a performance piece gone terribly, terribly wrong.

Her skin had gone sallow and pale; blood pooled out from her mouth, and the gaping gash tore a jagged grin across her neck.

Despite every horror done to her, she was oddly beautiful, with soft features and long auburn hair that splayed out around her.

She smelled of cinnamon, sage, and the iron tang of blood.

Limp hands are lithe and slender, with nails bitten down to the nub.

"Anxious," you said, pointing to the gnawed raw flesh of her fingertips.

Jean sniffed in affirmation and scribbled down a note on the margins of the autopsy.

"Are you ready to start then, finger boy?" Jean scoffed, throwing a pair of medical gloves down to where you were leaning against her form.

You grimaced at the nickname, snapping the gloves over your hands before resting them against her chest.

You closed your eyes and focused on the inhalation of air into your lungs.

You knew that Jean above you had turned sour, his face scrunching up into an expression of agony and distaste. You had mocked him in the past for wasting time doing the stations of breath.

Empathy: You had to do it now; you had to touch, feel, and let the pain in, no matter how much it hurt.

Pain Threshold: And God, it hurt. It hurt so very much.

"Case number HDB41-0402, you said as you wriggled your sleeve down and took a glance at your watch. "Time of arrival, 9:30 a.m."

"Name?"

"Maid said her name was Ms.Dumont; no first name." You waved at him to write it down. "Leave some space for a first name if we figure it out by the time we're done here."

"Should I leave nothing on DOB for now too?" Jean asked, tilting over to take a look at the body.

"Yeah, let's say 20? 22? She was young. Say ≈21."

Endurance: Despite the bags beneath her eyes and the stress and pain clear on her features,

Empathy: The world is unkind to all, young and old.

"Occidental," Jean scribbled down with a swift flick of his pen. "Sex?"

You lifted up the hem of her skirt. "Female."

"Good for her," Jean posited.

"Let's go ahead and mark Hepatobiliary, toxicology, and serology non-applicable." You took a stray lock of hair and gently removed it from her face.

Her eyes had faded; the spark that was there was long gone.

Inland Empire: They did not love her body, but the thing that gave it life.

"Cardiovascular, inconclusive, but lividity suggests she had not been moved since she collapsed here." You looked over her long arms as they splayed out from her torso. "She lost a lot of blood... She must have bled for a while; sometime around midnight should be the time of death."

"Bless the goddamn maid for not touching anything." Jean ran a finger over a small table lining the sidewall, admiring the accumulation of dust on his finger.

"Gastrointestinal," you said, moving down her body and placing a tentative press of your fingertips on her stomach and abdomen. "It seems like she hadn't eaten in at least a day."

"Injuries... besides the obvious... The gash is about 4 cm wide at the center of the gash, and," You slipped your pinky into the wound, feeling out the depth, "it's 2 inches deep."

"Fatal?"

You tilted her head and ran your fingers over a strange, intricate dotted pattern bruised and indented into the sides of her neck, the length of which disappeared into the wound.

"Mark it as probable, specify the blood loss, and note possible strangulation." You tilted her head to the other side. "Strangulation is not post-mortem, it is pre-mortem. Strange pattern; come and take a picture of the neck here."

You shifted to move and allow Jean access. You slipped your hand into her jacket pocket, the flap of which lay open and hung just barely off her shoulder. Its studded cuff and worn leather were a sharp divergence from the pristine newness of the apartment.

Rhetoric: She didn't belong here; she wasn't like this.

You pulled out a piece of paper and unrolled it.

Oh no.

 You looked at her again.

And then once more at the paper.

Your face must have betrayed you because Jean kicked the back of your shoe.

"What is it?"

A five-pointed star, reversed and framed by two antlers. The flier's typography, haphazardly printed as if in panic, announced the details of an underground communist rally. The words, arranged with purposeful imperfection, invited those who yearned for change to gather under the cloak of darkness, in a hidden corner where whispers of revolution echoed.

Logic: It came in waves of understanding, pieces of disparate details crossing over one another.

Then the name clicked. This was the woman, Andine Dumont.

"Her name's Andine; she is, and she was an important part of the movement." You moved to step back as panic rose to meet you.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Jean gritted his teeth, ripping the paper from your hands.

"Oh..." He looked it up and down before looking down at you and the body. "This isn't good."

He saw you trembling and could smell your fear.

Even then, you knew this would haunt you.

"The communist? The one your book club asked you to investigate..." Kim blinks, ebbing you with gentle inquiry.

"Inframaterialist cell, but, yeah..." You swallow, and your throat stings with a lack of saliva, with the trachea grating up against itself.

"Water?" Kim asks, but he's already stepping into the bathroom to fill a cup from the sink.

Physical Instrument: You could use it to cool the burning of your body.

Volition: Of your mind.

"The worst part is that Pryce took me off the case and gave it to Chester and McLain," you say, flailing your hands about in agitation. Shuffling to follow Kim as he pours the water from the faucet

"Chester and McLain of all fucking people," you pull at the hair on your head, your body vibrating in a need to pace back and forth and back and forth and so on.

He turns in the small space and presses the cup onto the soft round of your belly.

You take it instinctively, downing the whole thing in one large gulp.

Electrochemistry: Alcoholism of our kind comes with all sorts of perks, things that even Kim can appreciate from time to time.

or all the time.

Whenever he'd like.

"They don't know their fucking heads from their asses, Kim, and I'm the goddam expert here," you jab your finger into your own chest for emphasis.

"You should put more trust in your fellow officers; they work hard." Kim takes the cup back and pours himself some, taking small kitten-like sips as he watches you from over his glasses. "They're…" Kim searches to find something nice to say but gives up when he realizes it'd be a stretch of effort.

"I need to get Pryce to let me back in on the case." You look down at your reflection in his eyes.

He takes a free hand and runs circles over the crest of your shoulders.

"Harry, that's..." he moves in close.

Esprit De Corps: It's not a good idea; you're compromised.

"You have to trust Pryce and trust the rest of the wing to do what's right; besides, sometimes you get..."

Empathy: He flounders to say something kind here, something other than what he means.

Esprit De Corps: That you get overwhelmed, overworked, and obsessed.

Inland Empire: Possessed.

Authority: That you can't handle it.

"Yeah, I can understand that, but..."

Inland Empire: Him being right won't stop you; she needs us.

"This feels different, like I"

Empathy: Kim's face tightens in that way it does, in that way that communicates that no matter how sympathetic, beautiful, and patient he is, he will not comprehend this. He will not understand.

"No, you're right", you say, giving him a long, defeated sigh.

Electrochemistry: But you can hold him, whisper loving words into his hair, and caress him when we need it.

Volition: We are not alone when he is here.

Electrochemistry: So you kiss him languidly, slowly remove the cup from his hand, and nudge him back to the bed.

You both drift off back to sleep like that, kissing each other until neither of you is conscious enough to continue to do so.

Inland Empire: You miss the days where the two of you can wake up together and head to work at the same time.

Squeezed up close to share the mirror while you shave and shower. Crowding the kitchenette and sauntering around the small nooks and crannies of the apartment, making sure the two of you have everything you need.

It's a lonely thing to wake up to no one near you; it's easy to understand how six years without another body besides you drove you so far off the edge.

Insanity was waking up every day from a nightmare about being left behind to walk into an empty kitchen and not have a scribbled note next to a plate of cookies and lukewarm coffee.

'I didn't want to wake you; there's some fruit and leftovers in a bag for lunch.' - Kim

 You hold the piece of paper to your lips.

Let the tears roll down your cheeks.

Kisses, kisses, tired of wishing it didn't hurt so much to be happy.

Empathy: Sometimes you think it's easier just to be sad.

Pain Threshold: Know it's easier.

You tuck the note into your pocket, eat your cookies and coffee, and head out toward the precinct.

You give Jean a friendly wave as you catch him smoking outside the front doors.

He stands leaning up against the wall, eyes glossy and far off, as he mechanically brings his cigarette to his mouth and then down again, allowing smoke to exit. The cycle continues as he takes smoke back in.

You bump your shoulder into his as you cozy up next to him.

He flicks his ash at you in response.

Suggestion: What a dick.

"Morning"

"Morning Jean." You open up your sack lunch, pulling out the apple that Kim left in there.

Encyclopedia: Good for heart health or something. You wouldn't take Kim for someone attached to pseudoscientific wives tales, however.

"So now we are supposed to be working on that missing person's case then? What was his name, Miguel? Any updates on that? Or maybe Pryce came to his senses? " You shove the apple in your mouth with a little more force than necessary, gagging yourself like a suckling pig.

"It's Miquel with a Q for some shitty reason; dumb ass people naming their kids stupid shit; speaking of stupid shit, Chester and Mac actually arrested her father sometime yesterday; it's a whole fucking issue now." Jean takes another long drag and checks the scuff marks on his boots. "So no, Pryce did not 'come to his senses.’ He rolls his eyes.

"Issue?" you ask through the apple; it tastes like a shitty apple that's not quite ripe enough but at the same time dry and leathery.

Drama: Insultingly flavorless.

"Apparently they lacked the common sense not to just barge into the goddamn meeting he was in, some fucking charity event, arrest him in front of one too many press junkies, and now it's on every fucking radio in Jamrock." Jean pinches the bridge of his nose, a cigarette still dangling from his forefingers.

Halflight: What is he doing? He's going to catch his beard on fire!

"Fuck," you say as you swallow the piece of fruit flesh and stare down at the rest of its fruit body, a dull orange-red in your hand.

"Though honestly, no one seems to really give a shit," he says, kicking a stray piece of trash down the sidewalk "yet."

"Yet?" "And as far as MiQuel is concerned, his goddamn girlfriend has started putting up stupid posters everywhere with OUR precinct as an extension." Jean grinds his teeth before pulling another drag from his cigarette.

"I don't see the issue with that. She's allowed to... it could help?" You shrug, debating if you should subject yourself to another bite.

"It would help if she didn’t say there was a fucking ‘reward for information that could lead to his safe return’." Jean flicks his cigarette again, watching as the ash flits down to the ground. "Well fuck, now none of it is credible," you groan.

You can already imagine the endless stream of worthless ramblings, prank calls, and supposed psychics that have to be assaulting the radiowaves. "Least Jules is being kept entertained."

Jean gives a dry, wheezed squeak of a chuckle, but it's real, the genuine article. A sly slip of his lips turns up as he lets it fall from his mouth. You stare affixed, the apple nearly slipping from your hands from the shock of it.

He looks at you from the side with a flash of confusion and then realization. In a few moments, he fixes himself, shutting you out once again.

Empathy: You want so badly to hug him, kiss the tears from his face, and run a placating hand through his hair as you tell him how sorry you are for forgetting him, how important he is to you, and how much you love him even though he's such a stranger to you.

Reaction Speed: You this time?

Physical Instrument: Again with this?

Volition: I don't even know anymore. Is this?

Electrochemistry: It's not sexual. Is it?

Logic: What's wrong with us?

Thought Cabinet: What is wrong with us?

There's something lurking beneath us, deep within the recesses of memory. It's something reminiscent of hidden whispers that haunt our being. Is this another locked door? Another aspect of the underground for which we crawl and fester: What is it that draws this from us? Why does it have Jean Vicamear for a face?

"Anyway," Jean gives you a snarling grunt as he stubs his cigarette out and moves to enter the precinct, not even holding the door as you rush to catch it before it slams into your body as you follow.

Suggestion: Such an asshole

Esprit De Corps: The wing is calm midmorning; those left are often doing paperwork, and those gone are on the field.

Halflight: Hopefully not dying.

Esprit De Corps: Your eyes keep moving up the catwalk and down to where you know Pryce sits in his office smoking his cigars and watching you all, scanning the pen periphery like a dedicated sentinel, a smooth skull like stone, a concrete gargoyle of a man.

When you enter the communication office, you can already tell that Jules wants to murder you, not that he gives any physical indication; his face is as placid and droopy as ever. He gestures over the stack of call records and says, "Have fun."

Jean and you drag yourselves over to your desk and throw the stack down with a hefty thwump.

The transcripts range from sort of useful to this is just a lady rambling about her cat named Miquelle, which, to be fair, is pretty funny.

You spent nearly 2 hours reading through.

By the time you actually finished, you had already realized, about an hour in, that none of these were going to be anything other than a waste of time.

"Should we just go to the apartment and maybe ask the neighbors who might have been missed during the first run?"

"I think we’d genuinely have an easier time checking the John Jamrocks in the morgue, but I don't know; maybe a shuffle might do me some good." Jean sighs, leaning back in his chair, his bones creaking in harmony with the wood.

The doors rattle the frame, and the wind current creates a sudden vacuum that stirs the loose papers in front of you.

It's then that you turn to notice Kim walking in, dripping wet. Cascading rivulets of water, pathetic little spots of liquid, falling onto the concrete below him, haunted by the distinct sound of sloshing wet clothes.

Empathy: The poor thing is barely holding his clattering teeth from shaking his entire body with shivers.

Electrochemistry: We know how to warm him up.

“Woah, what happened to Kimball Kitsuragi?" Jean barks. "You lost the dunk tank game at the fair or something?"

You give Jean a dirty look.

You had tried several times in the past to get Jean to not call him that, but you figured he did it more to annoy you than to annoy Kim.

The rest of the unit cracked into a small snickering mass.

Composure: To Kim's credit, he doesn’t even react, And Jean shuts up real quick when Judit follows in after, just as soaked.

Albeit less so, the water pattern archs a dark streak across her side.

Kim took the brunt of it. Jean darts up from his chair, crossing around his desk, to pick up a stunted jog to catch up with Judit.

Empathy: Oh, now suddenly he has sympathy.

You heft your body up as well, wobbling a bit to gain balance at the speed at which you take chase, a few paces further back. 

"what happened?" You can hear Jean murmur as he follows Judit and Kim into the locker room. 

Esprit De Corps: There aren't enough women to merit having the locker room be anything other than co-ed. There's a strict code of conduct and respect that looms punitively amongst the space; no funny business, or else.

Electrochemistry: Anywhere else is free reign, open season; we should get to desking and necking.

Esprit De Corps: Maybe we’d actually finish our paperwork then.

"Some kids threw a bucket of water over us while we were on patrol." Judit explains softly and calmly.

Empathy: Kim is stock still, his movements strict and barely contained. He's very upset about it; he's livid.

"Just water?" Jean leans in subtly to take a sniff.

You mimic him reflexively.

Electrochemistry: You are particularly familiar with the smell of piss; you could even describe your knowledge of it as intimately aware.

This is, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your predilection towards piss, not piss.

Perception: But there is something off about the smell; it's almost perfumed in some way, scented by something odorlessly sweet.

Electrochemistry: Like paint thinner or high-alcohol spirit.

Encyclopedia: Flammable, but too diluted to catch light.

Rhetoric: It's the implication that matters.

Suggestion: Perhaps we should lighten the mood here.

"God dang delinquents, right, Kim?" You give a little chortle and a soft, playful punch to his shoulder, giving a swift wink to Judit.

Empathy: But then Kim's head whips towards you; there's fury beneath the stoic mask of control. It's in his eyes and the clench of his jaw.

Drama: Finite cracks in porcelain, a material as sturdy as it is fragile. You turn to glance at Judit again, but she avoids your gaze. then to Jean.

Empathy: There's a passing realization that comes across his face before he closes it off.

Drama: Sire, there's something we are missing here. You look around at the three of them, hoping to gain insight into what isn’t being said.

Empathy: Guilt, avoidance, anger, pity

Drama: They're all hiding something,

Halflight: And they're hiding it from you.

"What's going on?" hackles rise, heart pumping.

Kim and Judit turn to Jean.

Empathy: You tell him; why didn't you tell him before? It speaks.

Pain Threshold: We want to hear it from Kim; he makes bad things sound better.

Authority: He won't give it here, however.

You tilt your attention to Jean.

Authority: Increase the intensity.

Halflight: You can produce fear in yourself just as much as you can produce it in others.

Jean cracks easily enough: "Her father posted bail; communists think the moral intern is protecting its own." He gestures to the three of you. "He never even made it into handcuffs."

Unease, silence, time melts around you like tar on hot pavement.

You can feel your ribcage begin to elongate, curling in on your lungs and heart like teeth.

You look to Kim for comfort. His eyes dilate as they meet yours, imperceptibly darting to Judit and Jean in a nervous twitch of anxiety.

He does not offer you solace; instead, he slams the door to his locker, eyes drawing across yours with a hurt.

He’s feeling your pain, and he can't handle it.

Empathy: Refuses to handle it.

Authority: He isn't yours when he's here, when there are other officers watching.

Pain Threshold: The realization should have come sooner; it should have been obvious, but in this moment it causes your ribs to marr you.

Empathy: We told you he wouldn't be able to understand.

You look back at Jean. "And you didn't tell me?" You can't help but hear the betrayal in your own voice, the rising temperature of anger that settles just below.

Halflight: Gnash inwards, Gnash outwards, be hurt.

Physical Instrument: The flinch—you remember that now.

Empathy: No one can look at you when you get like this.

Authority: And they're all mocking you, your confidants, and the fucking precinct; they don't think you can handle it. that you’re not worthy of handling it, goddamn kiddie gloves.

"It isn't our case anymore; I don't see why it fucking matters," Jean shrugs, deflecting.

Halflight: He's nervous.

Kim's back is facing you as he puts on a new pair of pants.

"It-," your eyes dart to the back of Kim's head, Matters.

Judit follows your gaze before running it back to Jean.

Jean scoffs, "Why, because she was a communist and because you now suddenly decided you are one, are you ordained as some fucking pariah of cases regarding communists?".

Your cheeks fill and burn with blood.

"Yeah, a bit." You step in towards Jean.

Authority: You're his superior; don't let him forget whose hand it is that feeds him.

Halflight: He stays still, but you can see him stiffen, smell his pulse rise.

Perception: Kim is lacing his boots with firm tugs, each jerking motion tensing the muscles in your body and priming you.

Empathy: Judit is busy regulating her breath with even, steady inhalations.

You take another step.

"It was my case, our case, and they fucked it. How come you don't give a shit, Jean?" You press your finger slowly into his chest, staring at it as it indents into his flesh. "Too fucking depressed to give a shit?"

"No, Harry, that's your fucking job." He slaps your hand away, grabbing you by the wrist. "You wanna know the truth?" He returns the jab to the chest, pushing you ever so slightly with the force of it. "You want to know why Pryce took you off the case?"

"Jean-" Judit presses a placating palm to separate the space between you.

Kim stands but does not turn to look.

"Because we told him to, because you're too fucked in the head to keep your shit together," he says, running his finger over the three of them.

Shivers: A glass vase, a priceless artifact from the era of the suzerain's greatest triumphs, an object worth hundreds of thousands of Real, teeters at the edge of a small platform in the home of a wealthy patron; it shatters in sync with the pain in your chest.

Inland Empire: Lost and broken forever, as all things eventually become.

You look at Judit; her eyes don't meet yours, but she shakes her head.

Kim squares his shoulders back but doesn't turn to you.

Drama: It's true, sire.

They have betrayed you.

All of them, even Kim.

Physical Instrument: You can't even hear what their words are as you stomp out of the room, your body in a flurry of motion. Lesser officers balk out of your path as you storm your way up.

The metal grating bends and curdles, creaking at your clambering steps as you whisk across the catwalk.

Authority: Don't even bother knocking.

Physical Instrument: Knocking is for pussies.

Pryce doesn't even have the courtesy to look surprised when you slam his door open.

"Put me back on that case." Your voice hisses and steams at the center of you, gruff and inhuman.

And in what case would that be?" calm, collected, unphased, and clearly more concerned with bigger things.

Inland Empire: This is the biggest thing, the fool, the old, rotting fool.

" YOU KNOW WHAT FUCKING CASE PRYCE DONT-" you grab the back of the chair across his desk and shake it, radiating and vibrating your anger through it, "fuck with me" as you corral it back in, that writhing, pulsating thing inside you.

Pryce watches the chair with apathetic disinterest.

His gaze traces your panting, heaving form briefly before focusing his eyes on yours with a deep, piercing intensity. He holds a pen in his two hands, end to tip, before pointing the tip of it at you.

The cap pops with a satisfying click of metal and plastic.

"Your colleagues deemed you unfit to take on the case; people you chose." He wields a stern voice as he speaks.

Empathy: That's what hurts the most about this; it's what's the most wrong.

Volition: It isn't a matter of fit or unfit; it's a matter of need.

"I don't—I can handle this case; I CAN Do this." Your voice cracks, and your anger slips through like poison.

Suggestion: This is making it worse.

Frustration rises like bile in you, burning your lungs, your veins tightening the feeling out of you, a fuzzy static rushing to fill you white hot and crackling. "I NEED to do this."

"You can't." The words strike down like a gavel against you.

Physical Instrument: The grip on the chair tightens, coils, and your muscles snap and stretch, tension overflowing as you smash it against the wall. Wood splinters out as a leg cleaves and crunches in on itself against the steel frame that encloses you.

The force of the impact runs earthquakes across the metal and dislodges the blinds from their runners; they fall and clatter to the ground.

Drum smash symbol kit sounds mark silence that leaves Pryce unimpressed by your performance.

His eyes turn away from you. pen moving like a wand to cast a spell on the individual who now stands in the doorframe behind you.

"Lieutenant, please remove Du Bois from my office." He gives a nod to them—to someone else. "In fact, take him out of my precinct for the rest of the day." He punctuates the 'my' with a capping of his pen.

Suggestion: Sheathing of his sword

Halflight: Don't look behind you; save yourself.

You turn to look.

Kim stands there, eyes refusing to move from anywhere else but Pryce.

The rest of the precinct wavers and whispers in the background.

You can see the shameful red at the tips of his ears.

"Yes, sir," clinical and precise, a consummate professional, unbothered, ready for any command.

You stand dumb, teetering like a vase on a ledge about to shatter.

There's a long pause, a condensed unit of time worth of waiting.

Kim doesn't even bother to move or to grab your forearm to drag you away.

He just stands there, gaze forward, hands clasped behind his back, iron rod upright. A flag pole for the rising guilt that climbs up your body

Pryce is already back to his papers, uncaring if you leave now or a hundred years from now.

Kim, on the other hand,

He snaps his eyes away from you the minute you begin to follow him; his muscles are primed, and he is fuming underneath that veneer of level headedness.

The walk back down is agonizing; each step grows heavier, and the snickering and wavering whispers turn to silent shame.

They mind their own business.

Authority: Like they should.

The wind runs past you as you exit the precinct and head down towards the garage.

Pryce's horse huffs out at you as you pass it.

Glossy black orbs reflect you in their fisheye lens, pitiful and distorted.

He jerks open the passenger door of the Akina not even turning to look at you as he moves to the other side.

"Get in"

Authority: He thinks he can just

"You don't have to do this." You try to state it as a matter of fact, but it comes out as a petulant whine.

"Actually, I Do."

You slip into the seat as Kim ducks into the car.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Your teeth grind your molars into the back of your skull with a squeal of enamel.

"It means that it's part of my job description, Officer." Kim bristles..

"Don't fucking officer me, Kim."

"Oh ho ho, no, I'm going to 'officer' you right now; what the fuck was that?" Kim turns his entire body to you, hands still gripping tightly to the levers.

"I told you last night that Pryce needed to give me that case back."

"I thought you understood that you had to put trust in someone other than yourself."

"I did; I put my trust in you, and you stabbed me in the fucking back, Kim."

"Stab you? Did you know that as part of my transfer, I had to take up the role of "Harrier Handler"? Kim jerks the handles with a firm grip.

The Akina sputters to life and begins gripping it's rubber onto the road.

There's anguish in his voice, "I hadn't-" heartbreak "I hadn't know what that meant."

Volition: Until now.

Empathy: We scared him.

Halflight: He doesn't scare easily.

"I can handle the case, Kim; it's just a couple bad dreams." You curl in on yourself. Shame, like vines wrap themselves around your bones and settle themselves there. "I can handle a bad dream."

He takes a second glance at you, doubling back as his expression recalibrates to something more controlled again.

"We can talk about it when I get back from work." He bites his lower lip as he drives.

Composure: Tension, stress

Inland Empire: You'll lose him, like you lose everything.

"I love you." You know that you have to say it first.

Empathy: It's hard for him to say it at all. Much less to someone like us.

He sighs briefly, running his hand over his slick-backed hair.

He stops in front of the apartment, idling; he doesn't look at you, but you can see the tips of his ears tinged red. "Please, get some rest." He mumbles it as you exit the car.

You nod and head upstairs.

Opening up to the empty apartment.

Alone once again.

Chapter Text

Cindy isn't smiling this time; her pale, spindly palm is already upturned.

You look down at it and grimace.

"Don't make it a thing, Pig, just pay the fucking price; it's not inter-isola navi."

You drop the two coins into her hand.

She feels their weight before she nods for you to enter.

A young woman sits splayed out across the couch, taking up as much space as possible.

Inland Empire: This is how it's going to be now, the same terrible existence night after night.

Pain Threshold: it bites our brain like kisses.

"You didn't introduce yourself last time," you say, placing a stray lock of your hair behind your ear.

"You didn't ask." She shrugs her shoulders out of her leather jacket, which is a size too big for her small body.

Perception: She seems even younger than before.

Empathy: Even more tired than before.

Inland Empire: There's no sleep here. No rest.

"I'm asking now." You shrug your shoulders back, brushing up against the lobes of your ears.

"Tsk, you said it before, 'Andine'," she rolls her eyes at it, quoting it in the air.

"Harry is short for Harrier and Andine." You gesture to yourself and then to her.

"Celandine." She speaks it softly; no one has spoken her true name since the day she was born.

Empathy: Written but never spoken

Ela, Andine, never the whole thing.

Encyclopedia: Celandine comes from the old word 'Chelidonia', meaning swallow.

"Correct." She seems surprised that you know.

Inland Empire: It is said that the flowers bloomed when the swallows returned and faded when they left.

"It's also a flower," she confesses.

Perception: Her eyes are gray and green, just like yours.

"Freedom, joy to come; there's a woman that I love? loved? She was a fan of Franconigerian flower language," 

"Grieving mothers considered the swallow to be sacred, that it carried the soul of their lost children." She lifts her legs to her chest. "But I didn't have a mother."

"You have a father," you point out.

"Do I?" She quips back with barely concealed disdain.

You want to ask, but you know you shouldn't.

"Did he kill you?"

"I already told you I did it to myself; I took to flying too quickly, and so I was hunted. They clipped my wings. We always do it to ourselves in the end. It's what it means to be what we are." She shakes her head.

"What we-" 

"I'm sorry it has to be you, Harry. I wish it could have been me, but the way it is now, it has to be you." She looks out and past the banners floating out into the night again, upward streams of red.

You can hear the wind howling, flapping them out into the world beyond you.

Halflight: Don't look, don't look, save yourself.

The stars stretch on endlessly. They implode, explode, reform, and are born only to die over and over again. The sky, the night, the stars, then in an incomprehensible terror, open. Eight abyssal black eyes stare into you, holding you still, unable to look anywhere else, their inky mass flowing in discordant hypnotic rhythm.

Physical Instrument: A step forward, paralysis

Inland Empire: You can't even turn to watch her as she begins to die.

Perception: All you can hear is the gurgling of her blood and the death of the universe.

You wake up on the couch; it's dark now, and you are trembling, your body moving in twitching, erratic spasms.

Savoir Faire: You stand on stick legs that sway like reeds in cold winter winds and make your way into the kitchen. Your hands fumble across the counter to reach for the cup that should be there right by the

Reaction Speed: you can feel it shatter as the sound reverberates through you; shards of ceramic scatter across the linoleum and into the living space.

Small particulates of clay will forever wedge themselves underneath the couch and into the carpet fibers.

Inland Empire: Irreversible, irrevocable damage.

Interfacing: You slam your fat, unseemly fingers against the lightswitch.

Pain Threshold: You don't care about the pain that stings like sharp rays through your cranium.

Visual Calculus: You have to assess the scene.

Perception: It's…

Volution: Harry. I'm so sorry.

The stupid dragon mug, the one that Kim gave to you because it reminded him of you

Physical Instrument: It's good we shattered it; Violence is what you are. It's what you've always been. It's good you've stopped denying it.

You can feel the crescent grip of your nails dig into the flesh of your palms.

Halflight: The animal you are, that you try to hide behind silly clothes and sillier habits,

Physical Instrument: Fooling people: constantly fooling those around us into believing what we  *really* are

Halflight: You have Hate for blood, Harry, a goddamn birthright, a crown of teeth, and fists you carry with you at all times, it ordains you.

Pain Threshold: Hurt before the hurt can reach you.

Inland Empire: It makes it go away.

Physical Instrument: Look at its stupid fucking face, soft round body, and bright mocking colors. That's what Kim sees when he looks at us. Some foolish, witless, ineffectual toy of a man

You tilt and crick your neck to snap your attention to the RCM mug still left from the morning.

You don't register the action to take it, but you enjoy its subtle lack of heft and the uncumbersome and mild way it settles in the much larger meat of your palm.

Physical Instrument: You could crush it with one hand and feel it crack and splinter before it gave way to shards and dust.

Hand-eye coordination: You can't even map its trajectory as you whiff it through the air. It pops against the wall in a satisfying, crackling stream of fragments and glittering pieces.

The sound of it fills your ears; its porcelain scream reverberates across the floor as each piece lands and skitters along the linoleum.

Conceptualization: Shards of bone litter the space around you; you are some horrible monster now standing amongst the graves of innocent bodies, now laid waste in the quake of your wrath.

Halflight: How long till it's human skulls, human bodies you're once again crushing, breaking, and rending piece by piece?

Physical Instrument: Ruining lives, making invalids, and stomping your own head against a curb

Volition: This is bad. You have to save Kim from this; you have to leave. We have to put this back together, fix it, and then we can be good again. It's just a blip. Not a permanent fixture.

Inland Empire: There is no such thing as permanence; It's all impermanent.

Electrochemistry: Especially touch

Pain Threshold: Undeserving of it, corrupted by it.

Your soles strike matches across the pavement as you storm down the sidewalks.

Thin layers of heavy cloud cover trail behind you as you bloodhound your way towards wherever the city is calling you.

The cardinal directions dissolve as you path your way through alleys and over fences into the thinnest of capillaries and across the widest of veins, a blood cell pumped through Revachol to wherever its beating heart has decided to settle for the day.

A worn-down refuse dump in the valley, an old smoke shop weathered by the ravages of time and war. The smell of varnish and tobacco seeps out from the walls, along with the woodrot and scent of enclosed spaces.

There are about 30 of them tightly packed in, fish tinned and fresh-faced.

Is this all we have?

Shivers: It'll be enough when the time comes.

They all look to sniff you out, the jovial banter wading into soft white whispers.

Steban catches you lurking and placates the crowd by chastising you for your choice in attire and general-

Suggestion: Extremely unsettling presence?

Conceptualization: Sure. 

"Comrade, not to critique your fashion choices, but The post-ironic notion of wearing an RCM symbol to a rally," he pulls lightly at the patch on your jacket, "is likely lost in the current political climate."

Rhetoric: 'It doesn't help that he looks like he's come here to murder someone. Ulixes cough and glance seem to communicate.

"I was on her case," you crowd Steban in as the rest of the group seems to re-engage with a new sense of fragility and alertness.

Steban's eyes widen, and he turns to really look at you.

Empathy: He only gives this level of attention and scrutiny when he's extremely interested.

Suggestion: Unlike Ulixes, who follows and peers into everything and everyone with an almost predatory level of attention, Steban is most often nonchalantly spacing out into the distance or giving a precious flirtation of attention to whatever is in front of him.

"Don't just say that shit and then stand there with your dick out; what is going on?" Steban checks your shoulder slightly.

Halflight: Murder him, rip his fucking head off, and drink the blood from his neck.

Suggestion: or don't? Definitely don't do that.

Rhetoric: the optics would be... disastrous.

Authority: Yeah, but it'd be extremely cool.

Physical instrument: powerful.

Halflight: Kill the little shrimp one too; he keeps fucking staring at us. Smash his owl-fuck glasses into his skull and lap his brains out through his cranial cavity.

Conceptualization: like a dog bowl

Visual Calculus: -

Volition: I think it's safe to say we're a little on edge and we should tread carefully.

Electrochemistry: You know what would really smooth us down right now?

It smells fruity and floral, with the unmistakable sharp tang of spirit.

Volition: not that; we can't stop when we start with that.

Savoir Faire: your hand whips out to the side with nearly supernatural instinct. You manage to, without even looking, coordinate the trajectory of the young girl's step to scoot past you to match your own velocity in such a way that the blunt she was carrying slips seamlessly into your own fingers and up to your lips.

Electrochemistry: you inhale the entire thing.

She doesn't even register that it's gone until you're blowing it back out around you.

Billowing smoke pours out of your nose and mouth like some great ancient beast with fire in its belly.

Conceptualization: A dragon?

Volition: …

Empathy: …

Pain Threshold: ...

Conceptualization: Too soon?

"Bro, what the f-fucking?"

Authority: She notes your patch.

"Narc—"she mumbles out the last of it and averts your eyes.

Empathy: Steban tries to hide his grimace and clear sense of distaste in your behavior.

Electrochemistry: You feel your frayed wires settle and numb around the smoke that begins to glide its way through your nerves.

"They took me off the case, and then some of my colleagues biffed the fucking arrest. Asshole is out on bail," the fire still tries to spark out against the dulling of your senses, a tug of war on your fight or flight.

Halflight: I pace back and forth in my body like a caged animal; I froth and foam like a sick dog.

ελευθέρωσέ με. Allow me to rip and tear. Don't let your heart stop. συνέχισε να χτυπάς

Inland Empire: Thump, thump, thump

Endurance: We always get back up.

Esprit De Corps: not always.

Steban shakes his head in disbelief and resignation.

"Damn, god damn..." His fists clench along with the tightening and untightening of his jaw muscle, the one vein that runs up the temple. "Her father really did it? The moral intern, peon?"

"Slightly bigger fish," you say, running your hands out to the size of a much larger fish.

You can feel Ulie's eyes widen from where he stands in your periphery.

Haflight: Slit his throat before he slits ours.

Reaction Speed: He'd be too swift, too sudden.

Conceptualization: He has battle scars to prove it.

"Kai is not going to like that," he says, slithering up behind you.

Composure: you visibly flinch, only restraining yourself at the last moment from not punching him square in the face.

Electrochemistry: He'd probably find it hot.

"Kai? Who is Kai?" You snap your attention between the two.

"You'd do your best to calm yourself, gendarme," Steban says, running a placating hand down your forearm with a reassuring squeeze.

"Kai is Ela's partner; he's been in a frankly impressive political fervor since the news broke." Ulixie adjusts his glasses.

"Organizing multiple subsequent rallies back-to-back in different parts of the city, including this one," Steban says, shaking his hair out before gesturing his head to the rest of the crowd.

"The plasm output on him must be incredible," Ulixie murmurs.

"No one is concerned about that?" Your brows draw in on themselves.

"Everyone is concerned, but he's too fast to really slow down long enough to stop."

"He's using her death to push the cause."

"Redirecting energies," Uli says, handing you another piece of paper.

Coalition causes Moralist Molars to gnaw on the flesh! Capital Calls to Throw out our babies and Murder our friends.

Justice For Ela! Justice for Revachol!

Take up your Antlers and Strike the heavens.

Allumer la flamme! garder les étoiles allumées!

Conceptualization: The visual element is incredibly striking.

Suggestion: extremely effective wordage.

Rhetoric: mmh mmh

Rhetoric: Fuck 

Rhetoric: Yes.

"He's having each of us scatter them into the wind tonight; apparently there's going to be a lot of that tonight."

"Wind, that is."

Esprit De Corps: Oh no.

Revachol: I will take each leaflet, each scrap, and weave it through my hair. Carry it between the gales of body and bone, this message will find itself in the hands and minds of every denizen of this isola and will echo onwards across the pale into the nothingness and back again.

Inland Empire: something beautiful is happening here.

Volition: It's always the beautiful things that cause us pain. 

Esprit De Corps: many of us will die in the aftermath.

"Where is he?" You shove the leaflet into your pocket and clench it tight, feeling it crumple.

"That's on a need-to-know basis, comrade."

Reaction Speed: You turn to where Ulixie stands behind you, grabbing his lapel as you shove your forearm into his throat. Steban stumbles back into the arms of a small group of girls, who hold him still.

"I need to know," you grit out, steam hissing from a kettle.

Perception: He stares back at you, eyes cycling, analyzing your state; his body is limp, unconcerned with the show of violence.

Physical Instrument: This is something else you have pushed up against this wall; he does not perceive the world's terrors the way we do; he is wholly dedicated to dying and killing.

Rhetoric: A small, noble thing

Authority: He smiles at you, understands that you have recognized what is inside of him that many don't see, and is thankful for it.

Steban begins to prepare himself behind you for an altercation, his hands coming up into fists to fight you.

You release Ulixie before Steban has the time to properly psych himself into punching a cop.

"He's currently at Villalobos and will end his campaign at Boogie Street near the section of Front and Second off on the side roads. It's a warehouse, not too big. I recommend catching him there. He'll be the most fun then." Ulixie brushes himself off, realigning his clothes to better suit his body. "Good luck, comrade," he says, giving you a firm salute before effortlessly weaving past you and back into Staban's rightfully upset orbit.

The crowd gives you a wide berth as you leave the party.

You head him off at Boogie Street as per Ulixie's advice; it takes a good amount of time to go from The Valley to Central and an additional hour or so worth of time to actually find the old, worn-out shack of an abandoned warehouse; it's more accurate to say it's a garage.

You don't beat him there, but arrive soon enough to witness it.

White sheets of paper take flight from the rooftop like seagulls into the night. A flock of thousands flutters and glides out over the district and into the long pulls of the wind current.

He knows the wind; you see him long and slender, like a willow tree barely keeping unbent in the bluster; a light frames him as an endless extension of his own shadow; he points down to you as you approach, slipping in through the cut, jagged, and rusted fence.

"Wh-ho let the eh Fuh Fuh Fucking Pig In?" He shouts down.

Beams of stray light come to collect over you; your shiny, reflective RCM rectangle glimmers your 'brand' and makes it glow.

His accent is some kind of mangled ubi.

He has a heavy lisp and stutter.

His lisp isn't in the shape of his jaw like yours was until you learned to angle your tongue; it's in his brain.

Empathy: Ela was the speaker, her voice tactical and booming.

Rhetoric: He is the wordsmith, the theory, and the drive.

Halflight: The Gunner, The Radist, and the Killer

Inland Empire: Peaceful... nest in your abdominal cavity like a little wild mouse.

Volition: You wish you had never heard those words.

Physical Instrument: Knock, knock, knock; your heart beats in double time.

"Harrier Du Bois, Double Yfrietor,"

"Du Du Double Fr-Freh- Freightor? Y-you du Du DONT Loo-ook like Ah fuh Fuhking boat to me?" He heckles, thumbing the side of his nose.

Someone throws a can at you.

Authority: Arrest them; burn this goddamn operation down.

Rhetoric: Possibly an unsurprising opinion here, but ignore that asshole. Just assure them you're for the cause.

"COMRADE HARRIER DU BOIS, I NEED TO TALK TO YOU!" You shout up at the roof, hucking the stray can back at them.

Suggestion: That was the coppiest you've probably ever sounded.

Drama: You probably couldn't have sounded less like a cop just now if you tried.

Suggestion: They Boo at you and Chuck more cans and a few rocks at you. Good job. 

Inland Empire: Ela mentioned her partner liked cryptids.

"Yeah, I'm an afucking cop! You know what kind of cop?"

"M-mm Moralist C-cock ssL sleeve? G-good fh fuck toy?" The whole group Snickers and jeers.

"Close but not quite, Imma Cryptid Cop! The Cryptid Cop and I need to talk about Ela!"

"K-K-K," he curls over his words, tape clicking and scratching in his brain.

"Aye Keep her fucking name outcha filthy cop mouf," one of the others chucks another can at you.

"N-nn name." He points down at you.

"Harry DU Bois," you make sure to enunciate each syllable and consonant with a firm pop. "I discovered the Insulindian Phasmid in Martinase as well as an appreciation for Mazovian Economics and Infra Materialism in particular."

"C-c Communist crr-Cryptid Cop?" He settles in a bit, and the rest of the group is placated by his sudden lack of vitriol.

"I'm also an art critic and feminist; I'm a lot of things, including a detective with a lot of questions." Your voice is laced with desperation; he recognizes and feels that in you.

"FUCK!" He gives one last shout before kicking something off and stomping out of view.

The group behind him remained in a dazed state of uncertainty.

A large metal door creaks open and illuminates a small section of the earth beneath you.

Inside is cramped and oddly cozy, not too dissimilar to the pillowfort feeling of Cunos little cubby.

The printing press is a large, daunting presence with intricate systems of stamps and levers.

Around its epicenter spread the life and bloodline of the revolution and the small, intricate lives of those who operate it.

Perception: In the corner He paces back and forth, his hands worrying over himself.

Electrochemistry: He's really pulling that cuno calling, absolutely riding that lighting.

Encyclopedia: He's high as shit on amphetamines.

"F-ff fuck you, w-w-ww," he grits his teeth and shakes his head.

A few stray kids crawl down from the roof ladder and make themselves look busy around the room.

Halflight: You're being watched. Eyes crawling and creeping all around you.

You're starting to think that the joint may have been laced.

Electrochemistry: Oh, it definitely was; I just didn't want to say anything in case the crown head over here would start harassing the vibes.

Volition: Well, I guess it's okay because we are going to be extremely productive.

Electrochemistry: Extremely lame. But look at that right there.

A small, mirror, white powdered lines, crushed and set straight in perfect little verticals.

He watches you watch it.

"W-wh what you gg gu gonna narc? Fuh fucking Pigg-gie?" He scoffs at you before making his way over to the plate and taking a swift line up his nose.

"Oink, oink," he snorts at you as he snuffs up the line.

Authority: Don't let this fucking child out do you; show him you're no fucking amateur.

Rhetoric: do it for the praxis.

Suggestion: Do it for the case.

Electrochemistry: do it for the sparkle!

Inland Empire: Do it for Disco

Volition: don't;

Empathy: for ela 

You move over to him, a looming, gracious creature of fat and sinew with snarling teeth. His thin waist and thinner body bump up against the back of the table with a small tremor. He bends and adjusts to accommodate your heft as you lean in to run the thin white powder up your nose and into your brain.

Electrochemistry: It Crackles your synapses like a million pops of glitter, runs like light and ghosts inside your body. Brings you back to where you used to be—a young thing with bright eyes and a brighter mind. It's a wonderful, beautiful thing for her to return home to us. 

Synaptic Majesty: You can live forever this way as a brilliant array of sound, color, and movement—a chemical being, a being without a body, a star child.

Who?

Electrochemistry: She’s the edge, the blade.

"Sick, fu-fucking twit-ted Cryptid c-c-cop," he says, giving a few firm slaps to your back.

"Yeah, yeah." You feel it reverberate.

"Y-you fi-fi-fixing to catch the Ter-tera-atorn next a-aye?" He uses your proximity to tug on the loose string of your tie.

You glance down at the pendant tie that Lena gave you.

Volition: She’d likely be upset that you’re snorting cocaine with a bunch of teenagers.

Visual Calculus: Young adults 

Electrochemistry: shut up.

Synaptic Majesty: shhh, we will connect, coalesce, and create something new, just look, perceive, and exist.

"Nah, this was a gift from the woman who taught me about the phasmid," you twirl the end of the tie around your finger. The feeling is fuzzy and warm as your blood turns to radio static. 

"Oh, yea-yeah, I'm all about that c-cr-ryptid. Sh-sh-shit h-h-a-have it here," he says, tugging up his shirt, revealing the long expanse of a leather belt.

"Here's the t-teratorn," he says, pointing to the rough carving of a bird-shaped creature along his hip with eight little beaded dots in the center of its head.

"And here’s the Ph-phasmid," he points to another carving, this one at the starting of his belt notches, too many holes punctured to fit his malnourished body.

Conceptualization: The phasmid has long, striking slashes for legs and six small beads along the sides of its head, three on each side. 

Encyclopedia: You know it has more eyes than that.

Synaptic Majesty: But look! There she is tattooed on his skin along his forearm.

Perception: You wouldn't have noticed it, but there is a small tattoo of a swallow in flight. It's on the inside of his arm, tendons bending to pull his belt taut enough for you to see.

"Nice tattoo," you point to it.

He raises an eyebrow and is clearly impressed with your gumption.

"Wuh-water child, b-born on a boat," he points to himself with pride.

"Has she ever been on a boat?" You move your hand like the waves of the sea.

"F-ffhu, she fuh fuhking died before," he waves it off, avoiding your gaze as he sets himself to using his slender arms to move in the mimicry of tasks.

Best look busy.

Synaptic Majesty: He's nervous not only because you are a cop and he is a criminal; he is nervous because you are looking to ask questions and he has answers. That he is hiding those answers, hiding that he knows things.

"Did her dad ever take her?"

"N n no, I don't, I don't, I don't know?"

Synaptic Majesty: Yes, she has been on a yacht before; to him, it's not real sailing. It upsets him anyway.

"Those Boujie boats don't count; they're not real sailing."

He nods apprehensively, an animal being coaxed from its cage.

Synaptic Majesty: He can bite; he has teeth honed to strike at the jugular.

Halflight: Watch as you bleed.

Synaptic Majesty: He's seen people die. 

"She didn't seem like the one to be too fond of that kind of thing." It's a statement, not a question, but you ask it anyway.

He gives a huff, saying, "Ev- ven if sh-she did, She's b-b-beyond m-mmaterial now," a snap, and a jolt.

Synaptic Majesty: That means something.

Rhetoric: He knew she was of a higher class, and he really knew she was beyond him.

Inland Empire: He's unwilling to bury her.

"I'm deeply sorry for your loss."

"H-hav-vent l-l-lost sh-shi-shit y-y-yet cop-p-po" He slams his fist down on the desk in front of him.

Synaptic Majesty: On top of the flier, this is about the flier.

"Because of the fliers?" You take the one out of your pocket and hold it out to him.

He snatches it from you and looks over it with analytical intensity.

He's not reading the world like you are right now; he's just trying to keep up.

Synaptic Majesty: We are divining the world through us like a perfectly fractal crystal, splaying out each spectrum known to the human eye and beyond.

Logic: we are interweaving; we are connecting.

Conceptualization: rejecting our syncopation

Visual Calculus: simplifying and rearranging the process into a singularity of mind and body

Encyclopedia: working together in harmony

Drama: performing feats of magic yet unseen by humankind

Rhetoric: for the future

INTELLECT: for the solution

"M-m-more than p-paper pig," he says, waving yours over his head. The group around him watches it as it flutters.

"Sh-shes the whole damn th-thing now," he says, crumpling the sides of it in his fist as he moves to force it back into your chest.

PHYSIQUE: HE'S NOT VERY STRONG, BUT HE COULD KILL AND HAS KILLED BEFORE.

PSYCHE: You and him are the same that way; he doesn't remember their faces either.

Synaptic Majesty: He'll kill for his freedom. 

"Girl child revolution?"

He snaps at you, a wicked grin cracking over his Cheshire face and gleaming. Teeth crooked and jutting out from his gums.

"She's what we n-needed." He snaps again and points his finger at you, "T-t-to b-bring the r-ra-rauco-ous!"

The rest of them cheered with a howling yelp of a battle cry.

"Even though her father was a moralist?" You circle a half moon around him as you run a finger over the ink of the press. Tacky and black, It sticks and leaves a string of itself between your fingertips.

MOTORICS: Penmanship is articulate and educated.

Synaptic Majesty: Who taught him to write?

"She taught you to write like this." You trace the lettering on a metal-carved stamp.

"Sh-sh-she," he says, his brows curling in on his grinning features.

"Why was she at his apartment?" You let your eyes meet his black pool, inky wide with that sparking shine.

Synaptic Majesty: with me there dancing, dancing.

PSYCHE: the purest of human disco

"Fuh-fuh fuck of-ff I do-dont, kn-now sh-shit," his grin crumples under the weight of his displeasure.

PHYSIQUE: WE ARE HARSHING HIS HIGH.

"You were her partner, were you not?"

PSYCHE: He looks guilty because he was not a good one to her.

"Why was she there?" You lean in to make sure your eyes stay connected.

Synaptic Majesty: Make sure the dance doesn't end.

"M-mm," he closes his eyes and shakes his head. "F-ff m-mm m-meh- FFUCK Drugs! M-meds, she was on meh-meds, the expen-n-sive-k-kind," he waves you off, a sudden bout of tiredness overcoming him as he flounders his way over to a small loveseat and collapses into.

He then waves away his friends off, they make scarce and scatter like rodents into small nooks and crannies away from the light.

"She couldn't afford them on her own; she tried going w-w-without b-but," he says, running a hand across his temple.

"What were the medications?"

"M-mood st-stabaliz-ers," he fingers a stray lock of hair between his index and thumb.

"Mood Stabilizers?" You move closer to his space.

Synaptic Majesty: Oh no, this was the wrong question to ask.

"Yeah, sh-shed b-be o-ok-kay for a time, then sh-shed f-f-freak." He moves his hands around his head in a spastic gesture.

"Freak?" 

"s-sh-shit l-like voices in her head" he rolls his eyes and parrots a yapping hand.

"Voices?" your heart begins to twist uncomfortably in your chest. 

"Yeah, t-talking to objects and shi-shit," he sniffs and avoids your gaze.

INTELLECT: He's not lying but there's something else.

PSYCHE: something more, something dangerous for us.

"Do you know what it was? The diagnosis?"

"N-n-no b-but, It was freaky sometimes; she'd know things." his eyes dart from side to side before he leans in towards you.

"Know things?" your body lurches forward with the desire to know.

INTELLECT: we must know.

"F-ff fuchking th-things sh-she c-c-couldn-n’t h-have kn-known, sp-spooker sh sh shit, c-c-cryp-cryptid sh-shit " He hisses out, spine arching, feline and alert. 

"Do you have an example?" You choke out the words, they come forced from your lungs.

"Sh-she'd kn-know w-w-where people w-were and wh-wha-what th-they w-were doing. W-when it w-w-was the w-worst sh-she'd, the city w-would talk to her, telling her th-that she needed to save it." He curls back into himself gnawing down on his lower lip.

"Th-that It l-loved her, w-wanted her to be Vi-vigilant, it's wh-why she j-joined I-I th-think." He closes his eyes, saddened. 

You can feel it slip away from you; the light inside you dims and flickers until it is blown away entirely.

You can't respond; you simply stand, your stomach and chest twisting in agonizing shapes inside of you.

He shouts after you as you stumble out of the press and into the black of the night. Glass crunches underneath your foot, cracks, and shatters in your chest.

PHYSIQUE: your blood pumps backwards through you, your structures crumble and collapse.

PSYCHE: Our kin, our daughters taken

Pain Threshold: too much, please; we can't have lost this too.

Electrochemistry: fix it; we can fix this just

Volition: Anything, anything is better than what is happening to us right now.

It takes no time at all to find the small light, a single ship glowing out on the empty sea of run-down streets, the abyssal sounds of people alive and having fun echoing far off in the short distance down boogie street.

Synaptic Majesty: The teller at the other end is far too eager to take your money.

Volition: Your lips are far too eager to meet the rim of the bottle, but it's better than the alternative.

Empathy: it's better than being here in this much pain.

Inland Empire: this much gone, so much lost; it's this or the pale, the hole in the world, in us, collapsing in on us. 

Electrochemistry: But it'll be better. Making it better

Commodore Red: Hello slow dancer, lover. Quite now, I will hold you.

I wasn't alone; there was another like me?

Commodore Red: Yes, and she is gone now, and you are gone now. Each sip of me, of my sweet nectar, of my beautiful body, brings you closer to her and further into oblivion.

Synaptic Majesty: Keep you warm in our embrace.

Limbic System: melt us down to pools of sweet molten nothing.

Ancient Reptilian Brain: Crystal fragments of our skull will shine like the light of a disco ball.

Volition: A party of one.

You stand in the red light of the pillars of your nightmare once again, Cindy's hands tucked deep in her pockets, her eyes reflecting little glowing orbs back at you.

"She's not going to like that you're drunk again." Cindy grimaces, looking you up and down.

"I need to." You stagger where you stand, swaying and spinning.

Ancient Reptilian Brain: On and on and on

"You haven't got the coin anyhow; you've gone and spent it all." She turns to look at the bottle that materializes in your hand.

"No-no, no, I can pay," spinning hands fumbling.

You swore you had two; you had to have had at least two.

You would have kept them for her.

Savoir Faire: You haven't got two real; you haven't got anything in your pockets but lint and disappointment.

"I don't have it."

Inland Empire: "Don't you remember, you *poor* fuck? Poverty-stricken fuck."

"You don't have it." She clicks her tongue and nods at you.

"You have to let me in."

"I don't have to do shit, porkie."

"I have to."

She looks at you and finds you pitiful.

"Okay," her grin creases and wrinkles around her face; shadows cast and crinkle through the edges of her features.

Her eyes are those of an animal, shimmering and reflecting light in the darkness.

"You'd give up anything?"

"Anything?" 

"Your hands?" 

You look down at your palms, weathered and calloused, instruments of violence, of harm, of years of abuse.

Of tender touching, of fingertips against soft hair and skin, blushing and warm.

You tuck them reflexively beneath your armpits.

"Your eyes, then; I'll take those and let you in." Her eyes widen and needle at yours.

Suggestion: Playing us, this is the prize she wanted to begin with.

Volition: We have to give her something, and at least without them, we won't have to see the horrors of the world anymore.

Inland Empire: A billion trillion stars are in the sky tonight.

Her hands slip from her pockets, each segment pronounced with deep lines. Her nails are long and pointed like crow's feet.

Her talons scale the rims of your sockets, sinking behind the dome of your eyelids into the spherical space behind them. It hurts and pops, like dislocating a shoulder.

An ache that holds deep in your core. The world goes dark. You feel your eyes rolling around in her palm as she feels the weight of them. little lines of static fill the space in front of you.

until she slips them into her pockets.

Then it is endless nothing, a void that fails to imply the very concept of anything other than itself. It cannot be black because it defies the idea of color, and it cannot be like night because there is no day. A nothingness of endless proportion.

You hear the grate door creak open as Cindy ushers you, sightless and witless, deeper and deeper into the non-world you now inhabit.

A gasp, a wince, a woman too young to be cut down In her prime, her eyes were once the same shade as yours.

"I'm sorry," she says. Before you can lay claim to it, you feel her young and wonderful fingers begin to card through your hair as she comes closer to look at you.

They're cold because there's no life in them.

You could not save her.

You were too late.

You cannot fix this.

"You were like me?" You come to cup your hand over hers; it chokes out a sob from you, but without eyes, you cannot cry.

You cannot see her face, but you can feel her.

Feel her frowning.

"No," she pauses. "Yes," she corrects.

"No, in that Im not a cop, a man in his 40s, or a drinker, but yes, I was like you."

"Bird for a name," you mumble.

She laughs at you; it's a pretty sound. Laughter is often a pretty sound, so rarely heard in earnest.

"Yes, bird, for a name and for a body." She hesitates, her hands ghosting over where your eyes would be.

"I would never wish to be senseless." You hear her hair swish around her as she shakes her head. "I never wanted to die; I'm nothing like you."

She takes your hand and splays her fingers over it, comparing the size, shape, and feel of it.

Your hands warm hers.

You give her what little life you have at this moment.

"I'm sorry… That's not true. I loved like you, cared like you, and fought like you. I felt her heartbeat in my chest like you, but unlike you, I was a coward; I didn't know what I had, and I was scared." She grips your hand tightly. "If I had listened, perhaps she would have saved me."

"Revachol?" 

"Yeah." 

"I hear your voice when she speaks to me." Barely above a whisper, a secret, one kept even from yourself. 

"I promise you, I'm not her; I'm just a girl."

"You're a daughter; I would and I should have." You sink into her arms and fall to your knees. Her body bows to accommodate your weight.

"Maybe if we had met," she says, placing a kiss on your forehead and tucking your head beneath her chin.

"You said that you're sorry; it has to be me."

"I am, and it has to be you, all alone."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I'm looking out into the night, Harry, at the gap in the roof where the stars are born and where they die. Red banners fly into the sky Where the pale begins and begins and begins."

You feel the wound on her neck against your cheek as it blooms open, blood beginning to trickle out from her.

"Bird watchers watch us, but you don't have eyes, so you can't see them; they'll hunt you, keep you from ever reaching the stars." Her body crumples as all she is runs down your face. "I'm so sorry it has to be you, Harry."

She's dying in your arms.

"Please, please don't."

"The stars, the pale, the city,"

"Please don't leave me."

"They're beautiful, Harry."

Chapter Text

Sunlight warms your face and turns that empty black into an uncomfortable red behind your eyelids.

A shadow flits across your face as you feel the cracked dryness of your lips separate from the foaming detritus that clings to the edges of your mouth.

Pain Threshold: Pain filters in slowly, first your stomach, your head, your legs. 

Your cheeks sting as something or someone begins a series of firm slaps to the side of your face.

"Harry, you piece of shit, wake up."

You tug your eyelids open, and you can almost feel the flakes of grime shake off as you blink them.

Blue, gray, and lost, your eyes find themselves searching to focus in on Jeans' expression.

Empathy: You'd wish the expression was one of anger, sadness, disappointment, or concern, but instead you're faced with apathy, an unprecedented boredom gracing his features.

"Mornin' Jean?" It comes out slurred alongside your lopsided smile.

"Fucking God Harry, Get the fuck up." He comes to grab under your armpits, giving them a firm tug upward.

Savoir Faire: You scramble to try and use the help but fail to gain purchase correctly, knocking Jean off his balance.

"Wh-?" you look around you as you lug yourself up against Jean's frame and begin to regain some semblance of balance and fortitude. "Where am I?"

Perception: You're currently sitting in the exterior hallway of what seems to be a cheap motel.

"You're at my place, stupid shit." Jean braces the floor as he raises his knees carefully off the concrete, brushing himself off and feeling his body for any scrapes, bruises, or potential sore spots along his legs and arms.

"You live in a motel?" Your face scrunches up into one of profound concern.

"Yes," he says matter-of-factly before turning to see the expression on your face.

Volition: That's so sad.

Empathy: He's so sad. 

"Oh fuck you, Harry," he says, his face curling into a snarling grimace of disgust. "Don't- , get inside."

He opens the door with one hand and uses the other to push the flat of his palm into the broad expanse of your face, corralling you by your head.

It's cool inside and even more depressing than imaginable.

Pain Threshold: The lack of light does assist in the hangover, but everything else fills you with a heartbreak that you are having a hard time even beginning to articulate.

Jean wanders over to the bedside table, the small room being a picturesque representation of a man whose life has been nothing but disappointment and failure back to back.

Logic: Perhaps this is why the two of you got along so well.

Perception: It's a single room with a single bathroom. The wall leading into it has a small kitchenette carved into it. A small mini-fridge with cartons of takeout and empty bottles litters the area around the coffee machine. The other wall is a closet in which, just slightly ajar, hang Jeans uniforms.

You note the small armoire that must contain the rest of his wardrobe. Which probably isn't much larger than a couple pairs of jeans and a few extra pairs of socks and underwear.

You wobble over and sit at the end of the bed, drawing your eyes over the stains that fill up the empty space of the white walls.

Jean is murmuring to someone over the phone, informing them that you're here with him.

Reaction Speed: Oh no, you spot it amongst the trash that litters the top of the drawers—a framed photograph of the two of you.

He's smiling in that photo, strained, professional, and awkward; you have bunny ears put up behind his head, and he's entirely unaware.

He's holding some kind of trophy in his hands.

You reach out and hold the frame in yours, your fingertips gracing the glass. "I want these back."

Volition: You—they won't be good for you.

Inland Empire: It's for your own protection.

Volition: I'm sorry. 

"Want wha-?" Jean grumbles before turning to see you.

You turn to him, saddened beyond your years. "I want the memories back." You cover your mouth to hold back from saying anything more.

"No." Jean scoots down the bed, ushering you off to his side as he presses against you. "Trust me, you don't."

He grabs the photo from your hand and moves it away from your sight.

"It—it got really bad," he says, running his hands over themselves.

"That's—" you take in a shuddering breath, "the worst part; I know, I know I hurt you, and I'm so, so sorry."

Jean's hand strikes out to reach for your wrist with a firm grip.

Empathy: Be careful what you say; he can only take so much from you now.

You place yours over his and give it a gentle caress, smoothing out the tension in those muscles. "I probably said sorry all the time, but it never changed anything because I'd keep hurting you. And you me, right?"

He nods, looking down at your conjoined hands, his expression stone-faced.

"It's not fair that I forgot everything and left you all alone with that; you have to remember." You give a light, reassuring squeeze to his hand.

His hand shudders in yours. "Shut up,"

Perception: Drip. Drip.

You turn your head and look at Jean; his face is deep red, and now tears are shamefully making their way down his chin and onto the clasped hands that sit between the two of you.

Pain Threshold: Your heart swells as he notices your head tilting up into the small space between you.

Empathy: This is the time, if any, and it aches with the desire to console and comfort.

Electrochemistry: To place your lips against him and taste the salt of his tears within that kiss

Interfacing: You lean in; he does not move, but Jean's face flickers for a moment with confusion before your lips meet his.

Physical Instrument: A soft grunt and a firm, warm breath filter out from his nose; his goatee runs a roughness across your bare chin, the texture colliding with the tips of your mustaches in a way that tingles and itches, not in an unpleasant way but in a strange, rugged, and alien way. A tacky wetness presses up against your bottom lip.

Perception: This is...

Volition: Yeah 

Electrochemistry: This feels nice. I think

Jeans body stiffens, tense, and becomes rigid.

Empathy: He's not really softening into it at all, is he?

Electrochemistry: We're sort of just sitting here.

Your long lashes flutter delicately open.

You can't really see, but you know his eyes are also open.

You're now staring at each other, bleary-eyed and far too close, with your lips attached to one another.

Perception: Oh, but look, there in the peripherals, his hands are coming up to our face.

Electrochemistry: Yep, there's contact.

Physical Instrument: Oh, okay, a bit too much force there, buddy; he's sort of squishing us a bit.

Pain Threshold: Oh wow, he's really squishing us.

Jean yanks your face back and away from him in a swift, firm jerk.

"You're drunk, Harry," Jean sneers.

"Oh. No! I'm not I." Your hands scramble to grip at his lapels. "Jean, I think there's something about you and us; I think I might-lo."

Thought cabinet solution:

What's wrong with us?

There were Eight of you; you shared everything: food, wealth, shelter, secrets, and warmth. You’d huddle together when the ice would creep down the windows; you'd hold one another when no one else would; when your own parents had left you all to die; when they had died themselves. You'd cry in each other's arms on nights when the pain of life would be too much for children with no one else to care for or love them. You watched them all die because the love between you was never enough to keep the cold out, the hunger out, the pain out... You figured the only reason you were the only one left was because you were given a name that means strength, a name that forced you to survive even when you wanted to fail more than anything else, that you had to be the last so that the others wouldn’t be forgotten.

You realize now that the true reason is because you aren’t the last, that there is a ninth, another of your tribe, one who needs you, one you need, the reason you are still here.

Volition: One you just made a really weird, hungover pass at.

Oh fuck. 

Logic: This might be the wrong time, but you kissed him, which also means that you cheated on Kim just now.

Composure: Oh god fuck... oh fuck

"Oh fuck, oh god, no no no no."

"Harry."

Volition: How? How did we fuck this up so quickly, oh god?

"Oh fuck oh god, oh no no fuck no god."

"Harry" 

Pain Threshold:Oh god, fuck, sweet god, no why?

"why? Fuck-god, why?"

"Harry, SHut the fuck up!"

Pain Threshold: Ow.

Physical Instrument: He tugs on your ear of all fucking places; who does that?

"Pull your shit together," he tugs on your ear again.

You flail your hand uselessly to try and get him to stop.

"Jean," you whine, tugging your head away.

Empathy: You have to clarify; tell him what he means to us.

"Jean, I-" 

Halflight: You can see his pupils dilate, dread crossing his face.

Knock, knock, knock.

Three firm raps to the door

Jean bolts from his position and opens it.

You let out a deep breath, choking on it once Kim stepped in from the other side of the threshold.

Inland Empire: Firm, stoic, and picturesque, framed by the sun

Composure: His expression cracks open and shatters in relief when he sees you. His body betrays him as he nearly bolts the short 4 or so paces towards you.

Reaction Speed: He's forgotten Jean is here.

Composure: By the time Kim reaches you, hands hovering over to touch you, he remembers, folding himself back up into that calm and collected facade.

Esprit de corps: But Jean is sharp; he's noticed; he's putting the pieces together; the puzzle is solving itself against his will.

Perception: As you stand to greet Kim, you can see behind him. Jeans face unfurls into horror as the solution dawns on him.

He shuts his mouth with an audible clack when he notes your noting of him.

Face turning beet red as he looks firmly away and out the door

Empathy: You look back at Kim; his eyes are placid, but his mouth reads an unruly rage.

Authority: We're in the doghouse now, Harry boy.

Goodbyes are brief as you head down to the Akina; each movement generates the scent of loss—the scent of apricot gum, the scent of pine, and the scent of motor oil—fading into obscurity, distorting and rotting your mind.

Halflight: We will die if he leaves us.

Volition: Don't ever tell him that.

The two of you crowd yourselves into the car.

Kim stays in the seat, unmoving, hands on his lap, as he looks at the levers and mechanisms that pilot the car.

"I kissed Jean just now." You fold your thumbs into your fists, flexing them as hard as you can.

"What?" Kim doesn't look up from where he's staring.

You shrug "He was crying, and I wanted to comfort him."

"I don't really care," Kim says, his hand twitching.

Empathy: He cares, just not right now.

He takes a breath and starts the car.

It revs to life and begins the trek home.

You enter through the apartment, and there is silence in the halls.

He clicks the lock open with the key and strides in, shucking his jacket off and throwing it over the chair in the kitchen, moving to take a seat across from it.

Perception: You let your eyes peruse the space as if it were a stranger to you. Your eyes meet the dust pan filled with the carcasses of the mugs you broke.

You wander to stand above it, Kim tracking your every movement.

"You broke the mugs because you were mad at me." Kim raps his fingers against his knee.

Composure: He hopes to placate it before it begins to jitter against his will.

Empathy: He's nervous. 

"I broke the first one by accident and the second one because I was mad at myself." You nudge a fragment of the dragon mug further into the pan.

"I waited a long time for you, then when you didn't show, I went out and searched." Kim shrugs, his mouth tilting down with a disconcerting sniff.

"I haven't slept." He tries to be casual and unaffected.

Drama: He's good at lying, but he's bad at not feeling.

Inland Empire: Or perhaps that's you.

You turn back around and move to the chair across from him.

The jacket glows from where it sits crumpled up on the back of the chair.

Halflight: It calls to you; there is something dangerous woven into the threads of this jacket.

Interfacing: You run your fingers over the gentle blush of orange textile, tracing the fabric across your fingers to feel the caressing slide of waxed cotton and Polyethylene.

"So do you have anything to say for yourself?" He wants answers, realistic explanations, logistics, and sense—something concrete and explainable.

Volition: Something sane.

Visual Calculus: It's the swirling warmth of the bomber jacket pulling on the strings of your memory. Orange, sweet, gentle, merciful—it's the shade.

Inland Empire: Her name would have been Clementine.

"Have you ever thought about having kids?"

Kim looks at you, suddenly profoundly lost in what to do.

Encyclopedia: You didn't bother to name the second one in fear of her; Clementine would have been your everything.

You screw your eyes tight.

Inland Empire: Celandine could have been.

Kim stands with a wretched screech from his chair.

"I'm going to bed," he storms out and towards the bedroom, eyes not once daring to look at you.

You take a sip of water from the sink, leaning down to let it fall against your mouth and face.

You turn your head to see Kim tugging his shirt off, throwing it into the room, and running to loosen his hair from its gel prison.

He flops into the bed and pulls the covers over himself, clearly restless.

Your body moves to loom in the frame.

He does not shift or startle when you crawl in next to him, your hand reaching to rest against the smooth planes of his stomach.

Interfacing: We're glad we kept our hands

Perception: His touch, his warmth

Volition: Have it while you can.

Electrochemistry: You run your lips across the nape of his neck, feel his abdomen twitch and flutter, and hear his breath hitch.

"Mmm, sorry," you whisper into his nape.

"I'm," Kim shuffles his head into the pillow, "tired, stressed; it's been hard and..."

You run your fingertips over the dip of his pelvic bone.

"Mmmh," he says, letting out a soft, frustrated little sound.

You continue to stroke the soft dip, the pads of your fingers running soothing, repetitive circles.

"Harry?" It's quiet, reed-like, waving in the wind.

"Yes." You run your nose against the stubble there at his nape, taking in his scent.

Empathy: Another pause; he's mulling something over in his mind, perhaps trying to keep it straight, ordering his wants from his needs, weighing his desire to be touched and held.

Composure: Weakness, what it is to be a weakness for someone.

Inland Empire: The most beautiful and terrible, evil thing

He shifts back into you, the curve of his ass nestling up against you, and he tilts his head further into the pillow.

Electrochemistry: You can hear the desperation and shame in the sliding grip of cotton sheets in his grasp.

"Harry." He keens, It's a request, statement, and demand all in one.

Interfacing: You let your fingers dip further down, feeling the wirey brush of hair and then the soft, velvety warmth of flushed skin.

"Hm," another grunt. He juts back against you and grinds.

"Do you…?" You nudge your pelvis against him in return, already half-hard and wanting.

Volition: We can always be ready for him; we're good for this, at least at this, if nothing else.

Physical Instrument: Good, strong, hard body; manly; able to fuck; ready to fuck.

Haflight: Whether we want it or not

Empathy: If Kim wants this, we want it.

Electrochemistry: It's okay, you want this.

Kim nods his head into the pillow. 

Composure: too embarrassed to speak it.

You run your tongue up the shell of his ear.

"Ahhn~", He shudders as a moan slips involuntarily from his mouth.

You know it's because the sensation is as sensitive as it is mildly disgusting and debasing.

Physical Instrument: A fat, hot, wet slug against his skin

Empathy: He doesn't normally like this.

You use the flat expanse of your hand against his hip to leverage him from his side onto his back.

Empathy: When he bottoms, it's because he's desperate for connection—to feel wanted, needed, and loved. Wants to face you.

Pain Threshold: You wish he wanted to topple you, wanted to punish you.

Volition: That you hadn't made him feel the way he does.

Your fingers slip beneath the hem of his waistband.

He flops down, hiding his eyes behind the crux of his inner elbow. His other hand rests against the plane of skin just above his navel, right next to the thin line of an old stab wound.

Encyclopedia: He told you it was the first time, that he had been sure that it was going to kill him—that one little stab by a coked-up kid, and that was going to be it—all that clawing for survival, and that was it.

Esprit De Corps: Too many die dishonorable, undeserving deaths.

Electrochemistry: Yep, nothing sexier than that morbid ass thought.

Halflight: Gets the adrenaline going.

Electrochemistry: Does it, though?

You try to ignore the thoughts in your head as you pull back the elastic, and his member briefly springing back down against his pelvis.

Electrochemistry: Oh, but that does.

Tip red, flushed, and lying in wait.

Composure: You bite your lower lip, gnawing it down to edge away the desire that floods through you.

You run the briefs down his legs, lifting them and holding them up, folding them toward his body. You rub your hands greedily down their length, hooking them over a shoulder as you dip a free hand to run two fingers down his taint, just enough pressure against his rim until he squirms.

"Hm," a small whimper as his hips buck up and away.

You lean your body over to pull the side table drawer open, fishing the bottle out and popping off the cap with your thumb.

Kim's toes curl as you drizzle the lube down his outstretched legs and thighs, free-hand sliding the excess toward his hole.

You spread him with your thumb, dipping it in and out, running along the rim until Kim's lungs rise and fall with the effort to breathe.

Half-light: Drown him, let him ride down the river, and show him what it is to truly love a boiadeiro.

Interfacing: With two fingers, you curl them up with the bend of his spine.

Fuck." He pushes back down against them, forcing you to slide over his prostate.

It's been awhile—longer than actual time would indicate.

Electrochemistry: If he wasn’t so desperate and so wanting for it, you could imagine him virginal.

You emit a deep guttural growl and grind yourself against the back of his thigh, running your teeth over his ankle.

Three fingers and the tense strain of Kim's muscles fighting back, refusing the invasion until he’s not, until he’s suddenly pliant beneath your ministrations, loose, and begging for more.

Composure: His ebb and flow of holding himself back and letting himself go

You fold his knees over your forearm, taking your member, now throbbing and fully erect.

You slide it over his hole, spreading lube from there over the shaft, tapping it a few times to watch the slick line of wetness string from the contact before pushing in testing with short aborted thrusts and then one long slide to bottom out.

Electrochemistry: smooth, tight heat, wondrous and tactile, free of the confines of your mind, something to be enjoyed in its abstract physicality.

Connection, communion, a sacrament as Kim whimpers and grunts soft little prayers breathy and wordless, his body thrumming and becoming restless with the odd shape of you, gut deep and settled. Hips to flank

Long pull out, ripple of muscles tensing and untensing, shuddering across Kim's inability to control himself, the deep slide back in.

Kim lets out a long, keen wail of pleasure.

Pain Threshold: Or pain.

Physical instrument: Or something married between the two.

You roll your hips in a slow, steady rhythm until Kim once again finds himself breaking down into incoherence.

Empathy: You hope his mind has stopped working, has stopped thinking, and that all he is right now is flesh and pleasure. That your body has given him his rest from existing as an animal too complex to ever truly be okay.

You cup your hands beneath his knees and spread them, using them to leverage down with each movement—deeper, shorter, faster thrusts.

"N-n w-wait, st-stop" Kim's hand reaches out against your chest, hips jerking down to meet each thrust.

His head snaps back, f-fuck."

Perception: You feel a tacky wetness bloom against the swell of your lower belly.

His body strains up against yours, and each of your thrusts presses your stomach against the head of Kim's cock, forcing him to hump up against it.

Empathy: It’s too much sensation, nearly painful.

"T-too, mmm," he shakes his head, his other hand coming to grip your upper arm as you angle yourself further down, pressing more of your body against the swell of him.

Halflight: Good, make it hurt; mark him; he’s yours.

Your teeth latch against the crux of his shoulder and neck, the full weight of your body pushing up against him.

You feel him tighten around you, feel him pulse as his breath catches on the exhale, and feel the warm, hot cum pump against the round swell of your belly.

You pull out slowly, let the feel of his insides tense, and squeeze around. Feel the drag of his insides as Kim's back tries to right itself from its arched position as he tries to ride back down from his orgasm.

Your cock pops free red and drips.

Kim watches you through lidded eyes and a half-gapped mouth, breaths coming out in short soft pants, a single hand splayed across his chest, fingers splayed over his pecks, thumbing at his nipple.

Perception: He can’t see you clearly. You’re an amorphous beastly shape of a man with long, strong arms and a hairy body, musk-scented and ruddy from head to cock tip.

You feel your chest constrict around you, and your airways struggle to intake oxygen.

Endurance: Goddamn it.

Physical Instrument: Fucking pansy ass, already fucking a man, and you won't even get your shit together enough to actually finish the job?

Endurance: Get to it; lay your seed across him; don’t flake out now.

Electrochemistry: Hey, Hey, Fuck those guys, you want this, of course you want this. Why are you even hesitating? It doesn't matter if you deserve it or not. Just let go of it all.

You wrap your hand around the base of your cock and feel the wet, warm slide of lubricant. You close your eyes, let your head dip back, and you are no longer here; you are just a body, a creature without a mind, another animal, primal needing, breeding, so very, very alive, so loved by the very existence of your nature.

Your eyes crinkle tight as you finish in ropes across his own mess that's begun to accumulate at the dip of his navel and across his chest.

He lets out a little chuckle at the sensation with a soft smile, delirious and well-fucked.

Suggestion: We did well; he’s pleased; we’re pleased; he’s pleased.

Volition: It felt good; we feel good about this.

You pet back his hair and lean a kiss to his forehead; you grab a wet cloth from the bathroom, tepidly warm, and clean him off with the utmost care, lingering in languid moments to accentuate the tenderness that blooms in your chest.

You lay next to him and let your fingers trace the parts of his body that coalesce and give meaning to his form: lips, knuckles, ribs, the dip of his collar bone, the dip of his navel.

He hums out contentedly and half-formedly your name as his eyes flutter closed.

You wait for his breath to steady a soft evening out of mind and body, fingers tracing the contours of his face, before you slither out from the bed.

Logic: You can't sleep now; we have too much to do.

Volition: Besides, dreams wouldn't be good for us right now.

Electrochemistry: We're also flagging a bit. We should stock up.

Volition: No, that was a mistake, a lapse in judgment we need to keep steady.

Electrochemistry: We need to snort more cocaine and hit that Majestic. We were riding that thought train, making connections we couldn't make without it.

Logic: That's not an incorrect assessment; we do perform better when we're on it, and we could use all the help we can get.

Volition: We also don't have time to look for it; if we come across it, then fine, but only if it arrives to us via magic.

Electrochemistry: Fine I'll work hard to try and manifest it, I guess.

Suggestion: We should talk to the father.

Logic: But we don't know where he is.

Interfacing: Steal the reports from Chester and Torson.

And then what?

Suggestion: We talk to him.

Volition: To what end?

Authority: An end, any end, we just, something, anything, a confession.

Empathy: Closure. 

Volition: This is about us now, isn't it?

Inland Empire: No, this is for her. 

Logic: Why is it for her?

Inland Empire: Because she's

Rhetoric: She's important. 

Esprit de Corps: And there's something missing here. Something hidden.

Physical Instrument: It'll take a bit of acrobatic work, but you should be able to manage to sneak in via the smoking balcony.

Savoir Faire: We could probably teleport up there.

Physical Instrument: Sure, why not?

Logic: No, it'll be too loud if we do it that way.

Savoir Faire: You grip the railings and scuttle your way up the fire escape, careful to pull the ladder up behind you.

Pain Threshold: Your palms itch red-hot with the effort, alleviated briefly by the cool steel of the door.

Encyclopedia: The file is either in archives or, more worryingly, in Chester or Torson's possession.

Drama: Sire, Both will be tricky to manage, but we would have a far easier time if we were simply seeking out information on our poor, missing Miquel.

Esprit De Corps: Without Jean?

Drama: Nay, on Jean's behalf!

Authority: As punishment for our outburst.

Drama: I hope only that he has not ratted us out, the knave.

Volition: After this, we should probably explain ourselves a bit.

Drama: Ugh, wouldn't it be a far better performance to not do that and just keep avoiding it? May, Perhaps, forever?

Volition: No. 

Empathy: Sorry, I'm going to agree with Sir Crowns a lot on this one.

Savoir Faire: You make your way down the halls hunched over to make yourself small on your way to the archivals.

"Harry." Standing on duty is an unusually tall woman with broad shoulders. Her uniform is well fitted and tailored to slim her down along the waist. the manufacturing giving the illusory essence of a particularly intimidating marble pillar, the top of which is adorned with a misfitting pair of bright pink cat eye glasses that are attached with a gold chain that comes to rest behind her ears and into the dark gray cascading hang of a low riding ponytail.

"Who, me?" You point to yourself and give a hopefully guiltless grin.

"No, the other imaginary Harry that sneaks around and talks to himself." The archivist peers over before going back to the light clattering and hum of the radio computer.

"Ah, yes, hello!" You give her a little wave and try to scoot past.

She lifts her arm out in front of to stop you. "And may I help you?"

Authority: This woman is dangerous.

Volition: We should leave

Drama: Nay sire, simply stick to the script.

"Y-yes Looking for files pertaining to a missing individual by the name of Miguel with a Q." You shape the letter out in the air with a flick of your finger.

Drama: Excellent performance, sire; well done.

"Alright, Then I'll get that for you right away." She turns to move, blocking your path from entering.

"Oh, no need; I can just sniff it out myself." You wave her off, dismissing her and urging her back to her station.

"If you're looking for the file on Ms.Dumont’s case, you're not going to find it." Her tone flatlines.

Inland Empire: We're not allowed in the archives; there is a reason for this.

"Sorry?" 

"You heard me, Harry; you're not going to find it, and you're not going to find what you want out of this; it's not going to make anything better." She narrows her eyes at you.

Authority: what the fuck?

"Do I know you?" You balk, taking an involuntary step back.

"No, I guess not, but I know you, and I know that you'll only get worse if you keep pushing on this." She punctuates with a sharp, swift movement of words.

"I-, You don't, I'm not, this is-" You flounder over yourself.

"About the Victim? You've been better lately, I'll admit that, but you don't know how bad you've gotten or how truly awful you can get. So should I get you those files on Miquel?" She posits, her head tilting at you with obstinate politeness.

"I don't know who you think you are, but I'm going to ask you to get me the files on Ms.Dumont and get back in line, officer." You bristle, puffing yourself out like a particularly ornery and ruffled bird.

"Fine," she gives it pause, moving with a deliberate gait toward a cabinet by her desk. "But I'm going to advise against it; you're always a wonderful detective, Harry, and often have a kind heart, but you're prone to destruction."

"Don't act like you know me; you don't know me," you interject, gripping your hands into fists to try and squeeze out and compress the tension inside of you.

"Ive known you probably longer than you've known yourself at this point, Harry. But you're right, I figure now, I don't know you, this you, and frankly, I don't want to; last time was enough." She chides and rolls her eyes at you.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” you growl. 

"It means that I knew you for nearly a decade. As your superior and even as your partner," she tilts down the rim of her glasses to look at you. "officer." 

"I'm sorry I didn't," you say, instantly curling in on yourself with shame.

"You've done plenty of feeling sorry for me and more than enough for yourself; don't confuse my charity as an extension of devotion or a desire for any kind of reconciliation. I'm just too familiar with your persistence and willingness to do whatever it takes to get what you want. I'm simply being pragmatic and saving myself the need to reorganize the archives after any potential tantrums." She shifts a drawer open and pulls out a manilla folder.

Esprit de Corps: She also thinks perhaps finally they'll hopefully fire you this time if you fuck this up bad enough.

"So steal the file, Harry, and never come back to the archives, ever again." She holds the paper just out of reach. "Do you understand me, officer?"

"Yes." You move to grab the folder.

She quirks an eyebrow as she raises the folder back towards herself.

"Yes, maam," you say, holding your hand out politely, waiting for your treat.

She gives you a curt smile, placing the file in your hand, before briskly turning her attention back to the computer.

You nod to her, whisking yourself away from her presence and back towards the balcony. A flurry once again as you make your way through the corridors.

You clutch the manilla folder in your two hands as the thick cream-colored cardstock creaks with the force of your fingers tightening.

Volition: I'll admit it, that fucking sucked.

Electrochemistry: You're going to snap Harry; we need to curb it, smooth the edges, and bring back the majesty.

Savoir Faire: The disco

Inland Empire: For the case, for her.

Volition: No, only if it's by a miracle, remember?

Encyclopedia: We don't even know where to get it.

Electrochemistry: Oh, but don't we? 

Visual Calculus: It's the big red door to the right with the large latch; it's a beast, a beautiful heavy behemoth, and behind it is the world.

Electrochemistry: The sparkle, the shine

Halflight: The Ruin

Volition: It would be extremely illegal, unethical, and

Esprit De Corps: Everyone does it all the time.

Interfacing: The handle feels familiar, its cold touch; an intimate friend. 

Volition: This is seeking it.

Inland Empire: It's no surprise we've gone here and done this before.

Physical Instrument: You know the exact amount of force needed to open the door as quickly and quietly as possible.

Savoir-faire: Know how to maneuver the space between the stale air and tight-fitting corridors.

Encyclopedia: Know which shelves and which container contain the substance.

The room is dark and musty; stale air accumulates dust, coating the space. There are narrow halls lined with shelves and drawers and every type of storage vessel imaginable.

It's too easy to find—a well-stored and well-tagged number and associated case neatly stapled to the little baggy containing a reasonable-sized bump or two worth of cocaine.

Electrochemistry: It's so easy, there's barely any joy in finding it.

Encyclopedia: It'll always be here, just behind this door, a fingertips brush away from

Volition: Destroying ourselves, destroying Kim

Electrochemistry: I'd say the cocaine would make you feel better right now, but maybe we don't have to take it now; just have it a bit later when you really need it.

Drama: The Packages are cataloged perfectly; all you need to do is strip the ink and rewrite the quantity, and none of them will be missing.

Electrochemistry: found, home, sweet home. 

Perception: The plastic crinkles as you press your fingers against it.

No. 

Volition: No? 

Electrochemistry: What do you mean no?

I'm not taking this.

You retract your hand as if it were a hot stove, whipping it back into your pockets.

You exit out back through the balcony, thumbing the case open for an address.

The address is redacted; a thick black line is marked over the lettering; you hold it up over the light and get nothing.

Volition: You should be proud; that took a lot of self-control from you.

Shut up, I don’t want to talk about this. I just want to

"Fuck," you say, running your finger along the back, hoping to feel out the raised lettering.

Encyclopedia: You wish you could have remembered the goddamn address to the apartment.

Hand-eye coordination: I wish you were allowed to have been the one to drive there.

Interfacing: I wish Jean didn't have such smooth and delicate handwriting.

Perception: You do note the number of the maid, however, which is still intact.

Interfacing: You shove a few coins into the slot of the nearest payphone, flitting through the case file for any other potential notes of interest as it rings.

"H-hello?" A woman answers the phone. . 

"Is this Mrs.Andules?" You tilt the paper to the side, squinting your eyes to read jeans penmanship.

Perception: So fucking swoopy.

"Antnez, yes, may I help you?"

Fucking Jean, getting names wrong

"Apologies, and it is Miss Antnez, correct?"

"Ci, yes," 

"This is Detective Dubois. You spoke to my partner, Jean Viquemear, correct?"

"Yes, I did."

"Wonderful, due to some filing errors, I need to reconfirm Mr. Dumont's home address; you work for him there, correct?"

"No, I work for him at the apartment, not the house." There's shuffling on the other end.

Fuck, goddamn it.

"Ah, so you wouldn't have that information; could I just get the apartment then? We just need to keep track of his whereabouts." You smile, trying to lessen the tension in your voice.

"He's not here; he's at a hotel." More shuffling. 

"A hotel?" Your voice betrays your interest.

"He says he's going there to party for me to clean up. When he gets back, he tells me not to tell the cops or answer the phone. "

"Oh?" Again, betrayal of interest and depraved desire for the baseless inquiry of petty drama

"Yeah, surprise, he doesn't pay enough." You can hear her smirk.

"Well, if that's the case, you wouldn't happen to know which hotel?"

"Yeah, some place in Grand, Le Petit Oiseau, an old place that caters to the throwback crowds, and the Apartment was 704 in the Le Falaise building."

"Thank you, very much." You scribble in the address on a loose piece of paper, shoving it and the folder into the inside of your side pocket, creased together in half to fit.

You nearly don't recognize him amongst the crowd.

Savoir-faire: Rather, you don't expect him to be as sequined as he is.

Perception: Missing him would not be the challenge. Failure to notice him would

Savoir Faire: His daughter is dead, and here he is partying, dancing to disco music.

Empathy: As if he's happy she's gone. 

Halflight:His eyes meet yours and widen.

Empathy: terror, then calm, a gracing reflection of a tepid pool, acceptance, and relief—all in the matter of time it takes for him to widen his teeth into a grin.

He points at you and waves you over.

"Howdy there, partner, ehm, sorry officer," he says, giving you a little salute before taking the glass in front of him and shooting it back.

Electrochemistry: A little of it dribbles down his neck and into the smooth expanse of his bared chest.

Savoir Faire: He wears a flashing fuschia silk shirt, unbuttoned halfway down his chest, and tucked hastily into a pair of tight-fitting white high-waisted bell bottoms.

The disco music blares, and the lights teeter around the room, shining technicolor across his perfectly straight pearly whites.

"I-," you begin, interrupted by a firm slap and grip on your shoulder.

The bartender eyes you with disinterest before glancing at Mr. Dumont.

"I want this man to have whatever drink or drinks he could possibly desire; if he insists on the cheap, I want you to ignore it; only the finest fucking shit do you understand?" His eyes never leave yours, his hand tightening its desperate grip on you, his other shaking his finger at the bartender. "It's all on me!"

The bartender looks at you with an eyebrow raised, awaiting your order.

“Sorry, nothing for me; I'm-"

"Nonsense God damn it, you came to see me, right?" He takes a finger and points to himself, jabbing it violently against his collar bone.

"Yes, but-" 

"But nothing; order a drink; I don't care if you're on duty." He waves you off, pointing down at his own now-empty cup and holding up two fingers to the tender.

"I'm actually recovering." You shrug his hand off, waving the bartender away from making the second drink.

"From what, a surgery?" He looks you up and down, evaluating you for potential injury.

"No-no, alcohol," you mime, tilting a bottle back.

Authority: Why are we telling him this?

Physical Instrument: We should be beating his head in behind the dumpster in the alley, watching the pretty white teeth bleed.

"Oh fuck off," he sputters, taking the drink from the bartender and pushing it into the space on the counter between you. "It doesn't 'stop, it doesn't 'go away, there's no fucking point, and it won't keep the people you love from leaving anyway." He furrows and growls, hissing as he takes the glass back and messily chugs half of it.

"I want to talk to you about your daughter." You lean into his space, puff out your body, and bristle like a large bear.

He inhales slowly and heavily, shaking his head, and smiles stubbornly and viciously, it strains his face. He runs a hand into his pocket, throwing a small packet onto the counter in front of him. "You like cocaine, pig?"

Volition: Seriously. 

Electrochemistry: Magic Man with the Holy Shit

"Oh yeah, you do, you fucking asshole." He takes his pinky and slips it into his mouth, his eyes dangerous and haughty as he sucks it wet, letting it go with a firm pop. never once breaking eye contact as he opens and dips his finger into the bag.

He holds the pinky out to you, dust coating his saliva. "You know what this is?" He waggles it tantalizingly in the air.

Encyclopedia: It's cocaine; why does he

Perception: Look closer.

Visual Calculus: It's not a trick of light that cocaine has a light but perceptible sheen of lavender coloring.

He nods at you deviously and knowingly as your pupils dilate. "Yeah, I spent more money on this shit than I have on anything in my life; I want—mmm, sorry, your name, I think I should know it."

Harry," you say, swallowing down the excess of saliva that has begun to accumulate in your mouth.

Physical Instrument: Hunger, Pavlovian, Dogged

"Harry, bless your heart, I want you." He wipes the smudge of cocaine across your collar, moving in close enough to see the sweat on his skin and the fear in his eyes. "To party with me, It's the least you can do before they have you off me." Close enough to kiss.

Electrochemistry: Wow, yes, I know the tie isn't here anymore, but yes, we absolutely should party with this guy. Imagine what that shit will do to us. Wait, sorry, did he just imply that we're going to get him off?

Reaction Speed: No, he said off him, like Kill him.

Encyclopedia: Who the fuck is "they"?

"Sorry what?" You shake your head and realign your attention to him as he runs a line off the counter and flicks his head back with a moan way too pornographic for a man of his age and status.

"Fuuhhnn, fuuck, FUCK, Harry, baby, let me fucking tell you, this," he points to himself and the residue on the bar, "is Disco as fuck ."

Savoir Faire: Di-sco? Did he just say disco?

"You like Disco, Harry?" He takes the second half of his drink and rattles the ice inside of it, letting the clinking sound resonate next to his ear. "Me? I fucking love disco."

Rhetoric: We do like disco. 

Electrochemistry: We should disco with this guy, take his drugs, and disco-

Volition: No, we came for information, Celandine; we need to focus on her. 

"The lights, the dancing—" he starts to sway his hips, lifting his hands up a bit as he moves, "the girls, the drugs, the music, god, the music and the drugs ! You know how long? How long, fuck?" He throws his head back and laughs, slamming his cup back down.

"You wanna know my dirty little everything, Mr.Harry cop-man?" he sways a bit into your space, glistening and shining and smelling honestly way too good right now.

He looks you up and down and asks, "Did'ja dress up for the occasion or do you fancy yourself, Mr. Le Million?" Aye, big guy? Come on, party with me, please." There's honesty in his voice—a raw, pained desperation.

Empathy: Is he suffering?

Authority: No, he can't be this monster, this murderer.

Logic: Something isn't making sense here.

Electrochemistry: Do THE FUCKING COCAINE, ITS MAGIC PURPLE RICH PERSON COCAINE, when's another opportunity like this even going to happen?

Volition: We already decided not to do the cocaine.

Electrochemistry: No, no, no, we decided no cocaine from the locker; fine, that was a bad idea, but we said yes to the miracle magic cocaine; I fucking manifested this shit, so now we're going to DO THE COCAINE, and we are going to SOLVE THE SHIT out of her murder, and we're going to do it by DISCO-ING THE FUCK OUT WITH THIS PIECE OF SHIT MORALIST.

Logic: It is extremely rare cocaine.

Suggestion: And he would be more susceptible to questioning if he were in our good graces.

Endurance: Also, you're so, so tired.

Drama: He's also totally treating us like we’re some kind of poser.

"O-okay." You slump down, and he gives you another grin, pouring out a bump onto the counter In Front of you and patting your back feverishly as you lean down and inhale sharply.

Physical Instrument: Holy shit, yes, yes, yes.

Inland Empire: Wow.

Electrochemistry: It runs smooth, lit up by a thousand pure crystal moons on a starless night; it's the city; it's the whole goddamn world running through you; synapses ignite and glow fractalized in a million different colors as she makes her way through you, adorned in a dress of soft lilac draping like water down your brain stem and through your veins; lovingly beautiful features and long flowing hair; she's happiness; a warmness that you have only felt in the tenderest of moments in the fleeting touch of your mother's arms when she first held you. On the plush lips of your first kiss with Dora, feminine, electrifying, formless like the pale but solid as the planes of Kim's body and voice,

Encyclopedia: And no wonder the suzerain, the bourgeois, killed and maimed, fought wars, and ended lives for this stuff.

Synaptic Majesty: It's love, Harry, true love, so pure you'd never need the real thing.

Empathy: You open your eyes to meet his.

Synaptic Majesty: Ever again. 

The night dissolves around you, the lights of the world in its glittering wonder turn watercolor and melt, washing over you in fragments of memory, the walls disappear, the understanding of dimension and reality give way to rhythm, tempo, and the bass, as his body leans up against yours as he makes you dance with him, hands occasionally coming to balance on your shoulders and waist, small points of contact that give you form to your formless existence, sharp radio waves blasting through the pale.

Physical Instrument: You're painfully hard for reasons you can’t quite fathom at this point.

Electrochemistry: We are not riding the synaptic wave here; she is riding us, and we are struggling to keep up.

"I used to dance all the time," he slurs into your ear as he moves up against you. "I raised her all on my own, you know? I wanted to dance at her wedding."

Conceptualization: His voice sounds like red, orange, and white.

Perception: He smells like summer sunflowers and wet spring soil, sweat and sage and cinnamon and free of iron, free of the curse of blood in his body or in his veins. 

"Sorry who?" You let the lights wash over you in a warm shower of light as she sings in harmony with the music.

‘I feel love, I feel love, I feel love.'

"My-fuck, you know, you know you asshole" hammers a weakened fist against your chest.

Inland Empire: It's not the rhythm of the song; it's the rhythm of his heart shattering against rocky shores late at night, deafening seafoam.

Volition: His daughter, you stupid drugged-up fuck.

"Celandine?" Your pelvis bumps up against him, and he stumbles against you, hands violently gripping onto your ethereal essence.

"Andine—her name is I, yeah," he gives up halfway through, reeling back into his space as he glides away from you, leaving traces of himself behind as he moves.

Savoir Faire: He's really good at whatever it is he's doing with his hips there.

Physical Instrument: A smooth motion of the body, a wave of muscles working in tandem to generate the moment.

Savoir Faire: You try a bit to mimic the movement.

Logic: A bit of a gyrating clockwise to counter-

Inland Empire: No, you feel it in you, in the music.

‘Fall and free, fall and free, fall and free.

Savoir Faire: You refuse the form, embrace the formless, and become sound, color, and concept.

Synaptic Majesty: Wonderful Harry, beautiful. We are all one organism, dancing at the end of the world.

Volition: What the fuck are we doing?

"How does it feel, by the way?" He spins out and past your side, the outside of his leg brushing up against your vast endlessness as he loses his footing.

Electrochemistry: Fucking incredible

"How does what feel?" You move to orbit him, brushing and holding onto his forearm, pulling him back into your fray before he falls away from you forever.

"To kill a man," he melds with you briefly, and you feel it in your soul.

Synaptic Majesty: A beautiful, wonderful spinning organism born to die

"Oh man, bad-good? I can only remember the one." You radiate your voice out as the song envelopes and continues its synthesis.

‘You and me, you and me, you and me.

Halflight: Screaming, melting in a tin can, strangled to death by a fabric serpentine god

"Harry, of all the people who could have been sent, I'm super glad it was you." He runs his hand up your chest and leans further into you, further into your being. Connection and dissolution come together as the killer and the hunter.

"No one sent me; I'm here."

Inland Empire: You are not here; there is no here to be; we are abstract, devoid of space, devoid of time, expanding beyond.

Synaptic Majesty: A million, billion, and unfathomable infinity of stars are dying.

"You don't have to lie to me."

"I'm not, but I'm kind of losing my mind."

Synaptic Majesty: Being born, imploding, exploding, shattering, gathering

"Wait, if you're not BWI, what are you doing here?"

Synaptic Majesty: Spinning, spinning, spinning.

"A what?" 

Synaptic Majesty: Slipping, scattering, no longer mattering, no shape, no form, formless, reasonless. Vast and without meaning.

"A bird wa-no, no, no, what does that matter? Why?" You feel a shove, a disharmonious feeling to your core of nothing that centers you.

"Why does what matter?"

Empathy: Harry, you poor drunk fuck

Volition: Free, nothing to tether us to this fucked-up world, shit reality.

"What do you want from me?"

Rhetoric: Restitution, revenge, understanding, love, for things to be better, for things to be the way people dream about

"Answers?" Unsure, unsure of it as you are of your state amongst tangible reality.

Electrochemistry: Cocaine this good should be illegal.

Volition: It is illegal.

Synaptic Majesty: There is no law in my chemical kingdom.

"Answers, answers to wha-" wavering, withdrawing.

"She's gone- she was in your apartment-" if galaxies, if particles of stardust could cry.

"No, I wouldn't have pushed if I had known, I couldn't, I can't fix it now."

"Can't fix what?"

"How I hurt her, how I pushed and pulled, but I did everything for her. Because of her, I thought what I was fighting for was the right thing to be fighting for, but I was wrong, and now there's nothing I can do to fix it; I just wish."

Synaptic Majesty: Collision, two orbiting formless infinites synthesizing and bonding to take shape and coalesce into being.

Empathy: For a brief, salient moment, you are one.

"I wish I could tell her how much I loved her, love her."

Logic: This man, this father, did not kill his daughter.

Rhetoric: No answer, no retribution, no solace, no solution—he cannot absolve you.

When you return, your eyes can once again see Cindy framed in jagged edges of red illumination.

"I'll pay you the toll in blood if I have to," you say, posing yourself wide and proud.

Her piercing, sharp eyes score their way down your form before dragging themselves back up again.

"You don't bleed gold, pig; you bleed mud and slop; just pay me in coin and get the fuck on with it." A white hand appears somewhere amongst the black mass of her coat.

You slip your wallet out of your back pocket. "You think you can split a bill?" You sneer, slipping your fingers to pull out the two metallic coins.

She doesn't laugh at your joke; she just lets her gaze infect you with its intensity.

This is stupid. The rules here are stupid.

You palm the coins into her outstretched hand, turning your foot to brush past her and towards the bars.

Authority: A prison

Halflight: A cage

Perched upon the couch once again, she watches as you tumble in, looming and slow.

"You lied to me." You don't dare look anywhere but the tips of your shoes.

"Lied to you? Harry, what are you talking about?" She sounds exhausted.

Empathy: She is exhausted.

Endurance: The longer she stays, the more tired she becomes.

"He didn't kill you, he—" you raise your hand to float over your words.

"I told you that he didn't. I told you that I did it to myself."

"Shut up, shut up with the stupid abstract riddle bullshit nonsense. I get it. I get it. Boohoo hoo, you're sooo sorry it has to be me." You clench your fists at your side, heat rising to your cheeks as tears splinter out of your eyes in frustration.

“Harry, what the fuck are you even on right now?" She scoffs, her arms crossing over themselves.

Authority: Readying herself for altercation, for argument

"I don't know, magic purple rich people blow." You sigh out, throwing your body to her side and letting it sink into the cushion of the couch.

She raises an eyebrow.

"I got it from your dad."

She nods and looks out and away.

Inland Empire: At the Stars

"Don't do that; I know you're going to die again, apologizing and bleeding in my arms."

"I can't die, Harry; I've already done that."

"Right. Right."

"So you met my dad then?"

"He likes disco and wanted me to party with him."

"He's probably glad I'm not there to cramp his style; I'm no longer an embarrassment to him now that I'm here."

You don't dare look at her, but you know she's looking at you by the way she runs the tips of her fingers against the grooves of your knuckles.

Conceptualization: Sharp jagged mountains of bones jutting out from skin and body. Fingertips cool like spring snow. 

"He loved you."

"Huh?" She closes her eyes in brief concentration. 

"Your Dad." you explain. 

"Oh." she lets out a sigh of ill content

"He wanted you to know that."

Logic: Time does not exist in dreams or in the space between spaces, but you know this is the longest you've been here with her.

Inland Empire: The longing comes in waves and blooms outward as the thoughts of memories that would never be fill the mind inside of your mind.

"Are you upset that he says he loves me?" She turns her head away in shame. 

"I think, I think I was hoping that I, that I was, could be. No, sorry, this is stupid."

"No, it's not, but it's not worth wanting; you're alone now, and that's my fault." her hand reaches out for yours. 

"If I figure out who killed you... Will you be at peace?" Your hand turns to grip hers.

Interfacing: She feels so real, so inundated with everything that could possibly tell you she's a physical presence, really here with you, touching you back.

"What killed me, and I don't know, am I a Ghost? Am I haunting you?"

"What else could this possibly be if you're not here, if you're just something I've created to torture myself?" you place your fingertips to the space above your heart. 

"Maybe you're the one haunting me, Harry." She shakes her head in disbelief, disapproval. 

Anger rises in you like a tidal wave, "Maybe. Maybe there are banners, red flags sailing out into a night filled with too many stars; maybe your throat slits open; maybe you choke on your own blood, blood pooling out from your body and all over me and my hands; and maybe you apologize over and over and over again, every night leaving me, leaving me the way Dora left, the way Kim is going to leave me one day too." 

"Maybe… Maybe Cuckoo birds lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, not because they don’t care but because they know that there are birds who are better equipped to raise them, even while knowing that those other birds could never and would never love them the way their own could have." Her voice cracks with the effort, the strain to be heard by you. 

"Is this another one of your riddles? One of your little poems?" You scoff, releasing her hand. 

"You could have been my father." She folds her arms protectively over herself. 

"That's not fair."

"I wish you had been, and I hope that's proof enough that I'm not some figment of your tortured mind, because I know you'd never let yourself think that someone would want to be with you, to be a part of your life in a way that was as good for them as it was for you." She dismisses you with a free hand. 

"That's not-" the anger leaves you, leaves you empty, echoing endlessly. 

"Are you upset that he says he loves me?" She asks again, firmer, accusative. 

"N-no, NO! I'm not," You startle back hackles raised, defensive. 

"Because I don't know if you should believe him." She tightens the grip around herself. 

"No, Celandine, I could tell; I could tell that he loved you." You reassure, she has to know, has to understand. 

"No, he didn't."

"Cela-" 

"He didn't because no one knew me, and now no one ever will because I'm dead. Had my fucking neck cut open cuz I talked too much, looked where I shouldn't have, and now you're all alone in this." She shouts, releasing herself from her hold she turns to face you fully. 

Perception: You feel the structure around you rumble as small pieces of concrete crumble and float off into space.

From that terrible gap in the building, where concrete crumbles away to meet the sky, A large clawed and feathered pitch beast emerges, framed by rivers of deep maroon cloth billowing out into the cosmos beyond it. Its Beak jagged ebony clatters a trill hollow, chitinous melody. wings spread out and into infinite, incalculable dimensions, a wingspan that envelopes all but you and her in its berth.

Eight inky black eyes with a glossy and slick sheen slide open, reflecting within them all of the blooming, dying embryonic nebulae of birthing stars.

She chuckles in disbelief looking at you as the blood gurgles from her neck and spittles out from her mouth with each heft of her chest punched in with the need of her diaphragm to laugh. 

"And God now, Im- I guess I'm sorry that it's happening again, now more than anything. Maybe you'll figure it out, and then she and I can finally fly."

"What? What is that?" You clutch her shoulder as she slumps against your chest, your finger pointing out to the monster before you.

"Don't you know Harry? It's wrapped around your neck; heck, it was even wrapped around mine once. You think you'd know, you think you'd know," she laughs, the effort becoming more and more difficult through the sheer amount of blood.

"Doesn't it hurt?"

The trilling echoes the sound crashing deafeningly into a cacophony of oppressing sensation, not quite sound, not quite silence.

Limbic System: Information, too much, too much to know. 

Ancient Reptilian Brain: The future, the past—it's singing the song of everything that ever could or ever has been.

"Not anymore." Her head lulls back, her face smiling and laughing as she trickles out over herself.

"Not anymore" 

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