Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

HARRY

HORRIFIC NECKTIE: No. NO. No WAY, bratan! What the hell, you can’t leave me here, not tonight! 

You tug at the knot of the multi-colored noose around your throat. Its cheap fabric scrapes against your skin like a dead vine. 

PAIN THRESHOLD: God almighty. You’ve been running around with that itchy cretin around your neck for days. How you’ve resisted rending your own flesh is an accomplishment. 

COMPOSURE: You’re just pissy because you haven’t had a drink in like...4 hours. 

HALF-LIGHT: Oy, there’s a tribunal expected. Within the next 24 hours. 

INLAND EMPIRE: Less.

VOLITION: Means we’ve gotta keep going, pal. Momentum.

Yes, momentum. The concept of money might not have stuck, but the reality of physics, even in abstract, is instinctual. Joyce’s warning drove home the gravitas of cause and effect, the risk management plaguing your every choice. To call this predicament a “powder keg” is an understatement. Rather, it’s like watching the graceful, sickening descent of a nuclear bomb. 

INLAND EMPIRE: Quickly approaching terminal velocity. You might not be able to do this on your own.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: You need backup. 

EMPATHY: You need Kim.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You need dope. 

VOLITION: No. You don’t. Say it.

“No.” You say it out loud. “Don’t need no dope.”

VOLITION: Attaboy. 

Your gaze drops to your silent psychedelic partner, docile as a dead snake in your hairy-knuckled hands. The half-Windsor leers up at you like a beady, accusatory eye. Dull guilt sloshes round in your throat.

ENDURANCE: I think that’s just heartburn. 

You shove the tie into your pocket. 

INLAND EMPIRE: You’ll be fine without him for a night. I’m not helpless.

AUTHORITY: Focus on the task at hand. Don’t just linger, dressed like a delinquent, trying to jog repressed memories of a misspent youth dancing disco and scoring speed.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Everyone’s such a killjoy tonight. We’re practically pulling a double, we have to be prepared for duty and dancing. 

AUTHORITY: No. No dancing.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You expect us to solve the mystery of an existential sound-void in a hot, fresh dance club without dancing?! You don’t know what you’re missing, Boss! The acoustics in that church are s t u p i d good.

AUTHORITY: That’s enough. It’s not good for—

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Dancing is absolutely good for you - don’t let him tell you different.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Have to say, coach, it does you good to get physical.

SUGGESTION: Real physical. 

SAVOIR-FAIRE: Yeah, man. Body talk. Don’t think too hard. 

LOGIC: He doesn’t.

COMPOSURE: But please do take a second and think about what you’re wearing.

You stare at yourself in the mirror with the hard-jawed solemnity of a medic performing triage. Your arsenal is limited. Your laborer jeans will pass as pedestrian rather than professional. The Hjelmdall shirt and “Fuck the World” jacket are the only articles that scream ‘party-time.’ Except for the mesh top, maybe. That might be a better option.

SAVOIR-FAIRE: Not tonight. It’s too cold. Your nipples could cause grievous bodily injury if someone looks at you the wrong way. 

ESPRIT DE CORPS: Safe to say that regardless of your fashion choice, the lieutenant’s going to be horrified.

EMPATHY: Horrified is overkill.

All your choices up to now have earned you an eye-roll. Sometimes it seems the lieutenant has to remind himself he’s blatantly staring. You know your panache has purpose, but he remains unconvinced. 

SAVOIR-FAIRE: Who cares? You don’t need to prove anything to him. You just embrace that unique methodology, my man. Why be predictable? Safer to be everything and nothing. Safer, and cooler.

AUTHORITY: You ought to be in uniform. 

ESPRIT DE CORPS: At this point, “cop with crazy clothes” is as much of a uniform as your dress blues. 

AUTHORITY: You’re a disgrace. You stick out like a gangrenous thumb on the verge of amputation. Your blatant instability and Kim’s gun are the only thing protecting you. 

Your eyes find the lieutenant’s outline in the mirror, visible through the curtained window, his head bowed. He must have his notebook, busy flipping through pages, going over his notes. He has yet to light his evening cigarette.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: He’d like to see you in uniform. 

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Goodness. Get me a fan.

You ought to get going. Before he thinks you’ve had another heart attack. 

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: That’d make a baker’s dozen, wouldn’t it? 

ENDURANCE: Don’t be ridiculous. 

PAIN THRESHOLD: Don’t be so sure.

PERCEPTION: Through the shack’s open window, you can hear the ever-thumping loop of music from the church. The sea sighs, off-rhythm. Wshhh….wshhh…. 

You fell asleep to the sound of it last night. 

SUGGESTION: Cuddling your pillow, wishing it was a person. Aching for someone to hold. To hold you. Imagining the lumpy, feather-filled sack was a warm body, the unambiguous shape of someone who trusted you enough to sleep next to them. No light, just the sound of the tide. The smell of the sea, your sweat, and —

PAIN THRESHOLD: No, please, not apri—

PERCEPTION: Pine needles. 

SUGGESTION: Hngf...God. You’ve got it bad.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You’re stressing, man. You can’t work like this, and sure as fuck can’t party. You need something to unwind.  

VOLITION: Hey, no. You can’t afford to fuck this up. Seems like you’d do well to avoid disappointing Kim. Or worse, embarrassing him. 

EMPATHY:  You’ve surpassed embarrassment. You’ve transcended. 

INLAND EMPIRE: Still. Something is wrong. I can’t put my finger on it. 

It’s true. You don’t feel ready. Not in the slightest. 

INLAND EMPIRE: It’s not that. Something’s coming. I can’t see it. I can’t…

SHIVERS: In Northern Jamrock, the temperature drops, but the briny air is too salty to hold any frost. A harried officer of the RCM stands alone, irresolute, tasting the charge of an imminent storm as unimaginable as his own past. The promise of things to come prickles his ankles, and he is unable to grasp the great force coaxing Revachol’s temperature up. The city has yet to feel the real heat. 

Your hand twitches over your pocket. 

AUTHORITY: For fuck’s sake. We’ve got some serious separation anxiety to iron out with you, boy-o. Get out of here. Stop dawdling and do your job.

EMPATHY: Such a bully. A simple ‘don’t be scared’ wouldn’t hurt sometimes. 

You slap your own cheek, bounce up and down a few times, ignoring the knock-knock of protesting floorboards as you scan the room one last time. Your eyes fall on the pile of your tools that you can’t cram into your almost too-snug pants. Such is the price of ‘god-ass.’ 

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: The bottle of pyrholidon, dark glass and all curves, sits coquettishly still. Just the thing to relax. 

VOLITION: You don’t need to relax. 

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Oh really? Didn’t Beautiful Dreamer over here say he needed to step up his game?

INLAND EMPIRE: I don’t need help! I—

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: And, tough guy, who was just insisting we can’t fuck this up? 

VOLITION: Well…

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You’ve been trudging along this whole week, and you know it. Harry-boy, I know what makes you tick. I know what your best work looks like, and I know how to get you there. 

You’ve crossed the floor in a blink, like someone pushed you, or lifted the floorboards and slid you to your mark like a Saturday morning cartoon. You swirl the bottle between your palms, hearing the heavy, satisfying glug of syrup licking at the insides. The glass is warm. Too warm. Body warm. Like in it sleeps something alive. 

HALF-LIGHT: How threatening it should feel. How dangerous.

But…

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Harry. I know you better than anyone. I know the best and the worst. Hand to the sky, my lad, I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m only trying to help. It’s gotten you this far, hasn’t it? A little more won’t hurt. Not like you’re thinking. Pop one of them magnesium pills if you’re nervous, wash it down and bada-bing, you’re square. 

You unscrew the cap. It’s sticky around the lip, gleaming black and strangely iridescent in the yellow light from above your washbasin. 

PERCEPTION: It smells of drying asphalt and molten candy. 

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: And super-cop success. 

VOLITION: Fuck you, man.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Now, now. I’m here for you, too. You’ll thank me later. Cross my heart.

VOLITION:….Get it over with, then.

You pop open your meagre pack of magnesium, toss a pill into your mouth and chase it with a mouthful of dark syrup. The chemical aftertaste floods the back of your mouth with the tang of brown sugar and gunpowder. It burns, just as you feared - cheeks, gums, all their neighbors. It’s sucking on a stick of lit incense. Morning glories winkle violet (and violent) behind your eyelids, and va-va-vooooom—the effect is instantaneous. You can practically feel the molecules skipping over the blood-brain barrier, bathing your neurons in golden honey.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Oh yeah, babe. Oh yeah. That’s the ticket. 

INLAND EMPIRE: Something inside you is roaring to life, throwing open all the windows in your mind, psychic weather be damned. Oh, saints alive—

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Just an aperitif, dove. Down the hatch.

Before you know it, you’re knocking back another shot.  Your throat seizes up around the sickly sweet liquid. It doesn’t go down half as easy, thick as glue sliding down your esophagus to burn in your chest. 

PAIN THRESHOLD: oH fUc k

ENDURANCE: You’re gonna lose it.

Your knees quake, heat searing under you skin; you fumble for the magnesium, crunching the pill between your molars like a spy breaking a cyanide capsule as your brain struggles to adjust to the change in volume. Chalky powder coats your tongue, but its effects are negligible. You sway - a few seconds of fighting off the urge to up-chuck has you reach for a half empty bottle of Commodore Red. You yank the cork out with your teeth and choke down a few desperate swallows. 

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Sit deep and ride high, Daddy-o. Now sound off, gang. How we feelin’?

INLAND EMPIRE: H O L Y

AUTHORITY: Terrifying.

EMPATHY: I miss kissing.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: Vic’s gonna kill you. 

Who?

ESPRIT DE CORPS: He’ll be furious, shitkid. He’ll punch you right in the mouth.

The lieutenant raps at the door. “Detective?”

VOLITION: FUCK.

EMPATHY: He’s probably a good kisser. 

SAVOIR-FAIRE: Get your roll on. Boogie time.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Bring that bottle, Daddy-o. And...Cuno’s “kilo” might not be a bad idea either. You never know when you need that kick. 

COMPOSURE: You might want to chew some gum first.

INLAND EMPIRE: You should. Trust me.

~

SHIVERS: March of 51’ in Martinaise. Within the seventh sister’s wooden ribcage, three centuries worth of dust rains down like so much snow. Her walls groan in protest as the saint’s stained lungs crackle, colored light flashing across the floor as though through water. Eight souls look up, up to the shuddering rafters in terror. The silent vibration of the great and tiny nothing is so absolute, they can each feel its sweet, invisible waves tickling their ears like fingers. 

PERCEPTION: The lieutenant is shouting at you. Though he is right behind you, you can’t hear a word he’s saying. But you can sense the air shift around him - he’s ready to flee. 

You, though, are frozen. Exhilarated. 

INLAND EMPIRE: That’s it. That’s the door. The door to the—

HALF-LIGHT: GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS AND RUN!

INLAND EMPIRE: Wait, shut up! I can almost hear—I can almost see—

“Detective!” The lieutenant, voice faint as though calling from the other end of a rugby field, grabs your arm now, hard, set to drag you toward the nearest door, the nearest window, through the shattered visage of Irene the Navigateur. Some wild instinct in him is taken over, some muscle memory.

ESPRIT DE CORPS:  Not the kind ingrained by two decades on the force, but a childhood bracketed within old bones of a church like this. Surely a boy raised in a Dolorian orphanage would know where to find the ‘sister’s pockets,’ the hovels and hidden chambers primed for quick escape.

Suddenly the monstrous blast of the club roars back in your ears, the smothering pillow of silence finally torn from your face. Egghead has found his limit. 

Your head spins. Soona is gushing technical jargon, but you don’t need a doctorate in physics to know what that was. The falling feeling in your stomach as you toed the edge of the porch can mean only one thing.

Pale. Here. In Revachol. A mere thirty feet above you. The first of so many little voids.

INLAND EMPIRE: So many little doorways. 

HALF-LIGHT: Waiting to devour you.

SHIVERS: It already has. Now in this moment, and a long, long time ago, before any of them were born, swallowed them up like a flock of birds in a cloud. It will chase them for years before it catches them. And yet in the same moment, it suspends them, here and now, like specimens in amber. 

You should be afraid. Soul-deep. But you’re not. Be it your compulsive self-destruction, your rage, or your helplessness in knowing nothing at all hours of the day, but something in you wants to kick open each tiny invisible door and dive in. You’d climb the rafters in a heartbeat like the goddamn crab man - even if it meant falling to your death - for the chance to bare your soul and let the great abyss eat you up. 

It has everything to do with you, and you know it. It feels like going home. Like it might let you 

IN_S LA _H ND _I   E _V MP _E IR _R E _S :   REMEMBER.

You whirl round to face the lieutenant; he releases your sleeve. His eyes are fixed on the invisible point of un-reality, his face grey. There’s fear in that look. Real fear. 

You’re surprised. More than you have any right to be, after racking up three panic attacks of your own in your first seventy-two hours of acquaintance. He met you with caution, kindness, firmness, and was smart enough to know when to dole out each, armed with enough composure to keep you on track. Only now can you see fissures forming in that carefully constructed image, like her Innocence looming broken behind him. You never considered something like this would scare him. 

ESPRIT DE CORPS: The lieutenant’s sense of control is everything to him. It gives him grounding in this grim world. He cannot reconcile a promise of great unmooring, no matter how many times he may cross himself or speak his verses.

AUTHORITY: Yes, well, you’re not afraid of the dark.

EMPATHY: You have no idea what his darkness looks like. 

Part of you, the part watching him teeter on the verge of surrender, wants to let him fall. You want him down at the bottom of the well with you. You want to tell him the water’s fine, but you can’t. Because it’s not. And if you’re not careful, you will both drown. 

EMPATHY: Don’t let that happen. 

“Lieutenant?” you holler over the pounding beat, reaching out to grip his shoulder and give it a gentle shake. “You ok?” 

He drops his gaze at last to you, startled by the contact. “What?” he calls, leaning in, and suddenly the concept of language dissolves in your brain. You can practically hear the words trickling out of your ears like sand. 

RHETORIC: Oh fuck, was that my cue? I—

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Forget it. No more talking. Get down.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Dance.

RHETORIC: No, wait, just give me a sec—

P_E H _L Y _E S _C I _T C _R A _O L _C I _H N _E S _M T _I R _S U _T M _R E _Y NT: DANCE!

You slide back and away from him, finger-guns blazing, and turn on your heel, thrashing about to the beat with complete abandon. 

COMPOSURE: The boots were a good choice. 

Andre crows with laughter and joins, looking for a moment rather like a spiky-haired version of a wacky inflatable salesman, all limbs. The lieutenant stares at the pair of you like you’re two Wirrâl-world hydras sprouting bouquets of misshapen heads. He might even look less surprised, less exasperated if you had.

“What are you doing?”

“The hell does it look like? Get your groove on!” Your jacket swishes as you gyrate your hips. Something pops ominously in your lower spine. 

PAIN THRESHOLD: Ignore it. 

He shakes his head, still visibly perturbed. “This was a terrible idea.”

“Come on, Detective Toe-Tapper, I know you can boogie.”

The lieutenant shakes his head, but you can tell his attention is fixing onto you again.

SAVOIR-FAIRE: Smooth, my man, you got it. Now tell him to cut loose!

EMPATHY: Perhaps it’s the fact that you’re only a week into your partnership, but you’re still not 100% sure if the lieutenant’s ever cut loose in his life. What on earth would it even look like?

ESPRIT DE CORPS: He drives fast. Too fast. Deathly fast, until the bellow of the engine rattles his skull. It reminds him of his edges, his real limits. Reminds him to breathe when he can’t release his thoughts.

INLAND EMPIRE: His Dreams. 

“You’re a lunatic,” he says. “I can’t take you anywhere. We should go.” 

ESPRIT DE CORPS: He’s trying his best, donning the mask of professionalism just to keep it together. 

EMPATHY: It’s not working, though. Corralling you is almost too much at this point. 

AUTHORITY: Then pull rank. 

HALF-LIGHT: You kidding me? He’ll dress you down until you’re nothing but bones.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: No, he won’t. He’ll LOVE it.

INLAND EMPIRE: He will.

EMPATHY: He will. 

ESPRIT DE CORPS: …He will. 

You pull to a full stop, fixing him with a glare that you hope is stern, but likely just passes for constipated. It doesn’t matter. Volition is manically screaming at you to commit. So you do, pulling out the voice you have to trust is there, the one that rings like the clapper of the war bell, the one that booms like a 90-knot gale, the one that commands. The one that would be Captain. 

“Lieutenant Kitsuragi!” you boom, repressing a cackle as his eyes widen comically behind his glasses. “I am Lieutenant Double-Yefreitor Harrier du Bois and you will listen to me!”

ESPRIT DE CORPS: The lieutenant is stunned, no doubt, but you’ll be damned if he doesn’t automatically stand straighter. At attention. 

AUTHORITY: Don’t stop. You’ve got him.

“I might be a madman at the helm of a ship, but I am still your superior officer. And if I tell you to cut your corset strings and get funky, consider it a goddamn order. Now, unless you’re inviting me to write you up for insubordination, bust. A. Move!”

There’s a few seconds wherein Lieutenant Kitsuragi looks at you, open mouthed, utterly dumbfounded. Borderline offended. And for more than a moment, you’re sure that was the mathematical opposite of the right thing to say. 

INLAND EMPIRE: There are far worse things. 

Then.

“O-kay,” he spits, a wild gleam in his eyes, and holy hell, he could be twenty years younger. 

ESPRIT DE CORPS: Clear as day before you is first year 23-year old juvie-cop Kitsuragi. Fresh, bullish, ballsy, former delinquent of delinquents. Here is a man who could have given Cuno a run for his money.

“Okay, you fucking psychopath, you want to go toe-to-toe? You want me to dance?”

“Hell yeah, I do!” you cry, throwing out your arms in an invitation, ready to go to your knees if that’s what it takes. “Show me what you got!” 

For all his reservations, there’s something to say about the lieutenant’s commitment. There’s a reason you trust him with your life. 

PAIN THRESHOLD: Your stupid, meaningless, lonely little life. 

SAVOIR-FAIRE: Don’t ruin the mood, man.

The lieutenant - 

SUGGESTION: Kim. 

- unzips his jacket, flicks it back so it doesn’t inhibit him.

PERCEPTION: Little hard to do, his pockets are full - notebook, pens, camera. His shirt’s come untucked, giving you a glimpse of hip, and the waistband of his jockeys. His smile is wicked as a bank thief’s.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Who puts the BRAT in BRATAN? 

He dances. Just for you. His heel kick could put a pro to shame. He spins with a grip on his invisible top hat, puts both hands behind his head and gives you a body roll that makes you want to put your hands all over him, suddenly, and terribly.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Just to feel every ripple of muscle, the strength hard-won and packed tight in his wiry frame, held up by the curve of that perfect reticulate spine. God, how you would love to see him naked. 

SUGGESTION: Wouldn’t we just? 

SAVOIR-FAIRE: Can’t blame him. Our boy can move. 

COMPOSURE: These pants were a bad idea, they feel snug.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You’re welcome.

SHIVERS: Inside the last, the smallest, little church in Martinaise, some invisible set of wheels is touching down. Two of her soldiers, her guardians, her Therriers, dance like world’s end is already here. Like they can see the scar beginning to form between their bodies, determining everything. 

INLAND EMPIRE: Everything.

SHIVERS: EVERYTHING. 

SAVOIR-FAIRE: Have you stopped dancing? 

The pulse of the music vibrates in your chest. The room is a washing machine of colors and noise. You feel sick, and separate, and far away, removed from the trappings of the flesh.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Nothing that happens to this body matters…nothing…

INLAND EMPIRE: Your mind is full of music. 

SHIVERS: MY MUSIC. 

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Somewhere, in that far away place, your knees hit the wooden floor. 

LIMBIC SYSTEM: Have you stopped breathing?

COMPOSURE: What’s happening? 

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Your best work, Harry, I’m telling you. I’m telling you. Can’t you feel it?

PERCEPTION: You feel nothing. Nothing. Your fingertips are numb. Your whole body is numb. Your body is…gone.

ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: Have you stopped existing?

You can’t have. Because—

SHIVERS: Lit up before you is the great map of Revachol. Not in the relief hidden in white rectangle you wear blazoned across your back like the flag that will one day likely cover your coffin. It is the map of her roots. The many underground passageways cloaking her form like heavy black branches over her lungs. 

ESPRIT DE CORPS: You knew them like the back of your hand once. 

INLAND EMPIRE: You would still.

SHIVERS: YOU DO. 

ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: Do you? Is there anything even left of you here, in the blackened swamp of what’s left of your soul, Harry-boy? Can you remember? Can you even bring yourself to care?

INLAND EMPIRE: The bullet holes in the walls of the city are nothing compared to what’s to come. The battered and barely-there buildings reduced to dust in twenty years. A bullet to the heart of Revachol that will open the floodgates to the gaping maw of that great, terrible nothing.

SHIVERS: THE WAR WILL RAZE THE LAND ENTIRE. EVERYTHING, EVERYONE CONSUMED IN UNHOLY FIRE. 

ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: While you standby, Harry boy, letting it all happen. Letting her death throes fill you up without a care in the world, even as she begs you to

SHIVERS: SAVE ME. YOU ARE A CHILD OF THE REVOLUTION, BORN IN THE ICY FIRE OF MY HEART ON THIS VERY DAY. 

CONCEPTUALIZATION: But you’re so small. All of you. Small, and frail, and scattered. Like a hill full of ants in the face of an oncoming downpour, trying to lift the great cosmic leaf.

ENCYCLOPEDIA: An army ant can lift objects up to 20 times its weight. A colony, even a modest one, can be heard marching through the jungle, and can strip a corpse in four hours. 

INLAND EMPIRE: Nothing is impossible. Everyone is important.

SHIVERS: UNITY IS PARAMOUNT. 

INLAND EMPIRE: Paramount. 

ESPRIT DE CORPS: Paramount.

“Detective? Detective!” 

“Bloody hell, man, did he have a stroke? Is he breathing? What color are his gums?”

“For God’s sake, he’s not a dog. Move.” 

PERCEPTION: You must be back in your body, because someone is tapping your cheek. 

“Come on, detective. Look at me.” 

You blink. Kim’s bespectacled face swims into focus. He’s kneeling above you, much like that first day as you lay crumpled at the foot of Lena’s wheelchair. This time, he’s swapped bemusement for amusement. “There you are. Can you talk?”

“Unity is paramount,” you slur. You’re not sure if he heard you - he leans in closer, then seems to think better of it. 

SUGGESTION: Closer, closer…

“We’re like…ants.”

“Uh-huh, I’m sure we are.” He looks relieved, watching you take in his face. He’s the only thing standing between you and the silence, between you and.... “Can you sit up?” 

You lurch up, almost into him, rubbing the back of your head. Your knees will be screaming later. 

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: I’ve got you covered, baby. That’s some good medicine, ain’t it? 

For a moment, it had felt like all your aches and pains had vanished - even now they don’t feel like they belong to you. It’s like slithering back into a salton, soggy wetsuit, zipped up so tight you can hardly breathe. You lean back on your hands, looking up at the ceiling, sucking in air. 

“For all the cardio you’ve put me through, I’m surprised you’re so winded from just a bit of dancing.”

“Yeah, I know. Save the old man jokes.” 

“Can you stand?”

You nod. Kim is still grinning as he watches you creak to your feet. There’s a little color in his face from exertion. Seeing him dance might have just been worth a seizure. 

ENDURANCE: Mm….can’t say that was a seizure. We’re working on it.

“We should go,” the lieutenant says. “Get some fresh air, yes?” 

ESPRIT DE CORPS: He’s watching you closely. There’s something about his concern that feels good, and familiar. 

You give your pep talks, your goodbyes. It’s when you start rambling to Andre about ants stripping corpses that Kim finally (gently) steers you out. The frigid coastal air hitting your face makes you sigh, the rest of your skin a clammy mess stuffed into your clothes. 

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Fuck, it’s hot. 

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: I can list 1000 reasons why you should take off all your clothes. All of them start with Kim, and end in Kitsuragi. 

COMPOSURE: Slow your roll, man. I’m hanging by a thread. But yeah, get that jacket off.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: Yes. Please do. 

KIM

You’re more amused than perhaps is kind, watching Harry struggle to peel off his leather jacket for a solid minute. 

“Having some trouble?”

“Ah, fuck it.” He forgets the jacket and tugs his shirt up, baring his sweaty chest and neck to the breeze. 

What a shape he makes. He strikes you as the kind of guy always labeled “tall for his age,” with those big shoulders and powerful arms. Your eyes fix on the pleasantly plump curve of hairy belly sticking out over the waistband of his jeans. You’d so love to rub it, even if it made him blush and try to pretend it didn’t exist. Those jeans make his thighs look thick and strong, and his ass look like candy, which is no small feat for a man with barely any at all. 

You are stupidly into him.

“I’m so hot,” he says. The phrase zings up your spine like a runaway firecracker. “And then there’s you, Mr. Cool. Did you even break a sweat?”

You did, but not for the reasons he’s thinking. You haven’t pulled those moves since the dawn of your thirties. You’ll have to remember to stretch so you don’t wake up stiff as a board. You’re already sore more days than not, with Harry putting you through your paces. 

“Those kids might just save the world,” Harry says. “It’s wild that it really is that simple. Love is fucking hardcore, don’t you think?”

You shrug, pulling out your smokes. “It’s better than its alternatives, if a little precious.”

Harry shoves his hands in his pockets, standing with legs akimbo. “I have to be precious. Can’t afford not to be. Otherwise…” He tugs his shirt down over his belly at last, leaving you slightly crestfallen. “How could I bring myself to care about a place that shits all over you?” He stops glaring up at the stars and finds your face. “Just seems so unfair.”

“Yes, well. That’s life, plenty would say. City life especially.”

“Do you love Revachol?” he asks. “Even though she gives a jackass like me chances I don’t deserve, and never lets someone like you get away with anything?”

“What does that mean, someone like me?” 

“One of her real children.” 

Usually it would sound trite, almost pandering, but somehow it doesn’t when coming from him.

“Yes. I love her.” You grin. “Maybe a little like you love disco.”

“Like it’s going out of styyyle,” he trills, drawing his hips in a wide circle like he’s on the dance floor again. It’s painfully charming. “I don’t know. I guess it just surprises me, who and what people love.”

“It’s home, detective. I don’t really have a choice in how I feel.” You knock a fist against your chest, the round white badge like a target over your heart. “I try to put it to use.”

Harry toes at a little patch of ice by his feet, still observing you. “You can never turn off, can you?”

“I’m a cop. I hardly ever turn off.” 

“Hm.” He looks down thoughtfully. “Think that’s why I am how I am?”

“I can’t answer that, detective. I’d be a fool to speculate.”

Harry shakes his head. “You’re so much better than me, Kim.”

How are you supposed to cope in the face of such earnestness? Talking to him is like scaling a staircase with a trick step, and you are falling. 

“Hardly.” You swallow. It takes effort, but gives you time to gather yourself, turn down a different path. “How’s your book?”

He snorts. “It’s…something,” he says. “I…” A darkness passes over his face, the same from the other night, before he crooned his heart out for the Whirling. He frowns, sighs; you can see something stirring beneath the surface as he fights to pick the right words. 

“I’ve gotten to the captain’s inevitable unrequited love plot line,” he drawls. “He’s obsessed with this noble woman who’s charming and beautiful and voluptuous and, well. You can imagine.”

“Doesn’t work out, I take it?”

“No, it doesn’t. Because she says he’s poor. He’s common.“ He shakes his head. “Now he’s stuck in the thickest, coldest part of the Pale, his men dying all around him, and he’s paralyzed by this memory of her voice. He’s just sitting in his cabin, pounding whisky after whisky, set to shoot himself in the head the minute that bottle runs empty.’” 

You don’t reply. Looking at Harry’s drawn face makes you feel ill. 

“I don’t want his whole story to be all about her,” he says, his voice bitter enough to taste. “I don’t want his death wish to be motivated by something so…small. I don’t want to believe he’d ruin himself for that. I don’t want him to be a bad man.” 

You shouldn’t have asked. You really shouldn’t have. It’s so hateful to see him shrinking before you, when he is so, so much bigger than life. 

“Still,” Harry says, “I’m only a third of the way through. There’s so much left, something’s gotta change, right? Gotta turn something around, if not for him, for his men.” 

“Yes,” you reassure him. “Yes, I expect you’d be right.”

It’s not about the book, and you know it. You’d wormed the story out of Garte, that Harry had come in that night you were gone, having called his ex-wife, knuckles bleeding from trying to tear the last working phone in Martinaise from its moorings. You know he doesn’t want your pity. You don’t want to give it to him anyway. It will do him more harm than good. 

It’s like he knows you don’t want to hear,  burning with words that he’s fighting to hold in. You might not want to hear it, but you do want him to feel heard. The best you can do is not to shut him down. He’s trying, and learning, and you are proud of him. You could learn from him.

Harry sucks in a breath, lets it flutter through his lips. It ruffles his mustache, and he absently smooths his hands over his mutton chops. “I remembered something else.”

“Lay it on me.”

“My birthday.” 

“Oh really?”

“Yeah.” He shivers, that faraway look in his eyes again. “March 19^th.”

“But that’s today.” You can’t keep the suspicious edge out of your voice, eyes narrowing instinctually. But years of training tell you it’s the truth. He’s utterly sincere, or at least believes himself to be.

“It is.” 

“How about that? And how old are you, Harrier du Bois?” He makes a zipping motion over his mouth. “Oh, don’t be like that.” 

“You might not believe me.”

“If you say something like twenty-five, I will object.”

“Hey, I’m an Anodic Dance music expert!” He strikes a ludicrous Saturday-night pose, then deflates, coming to lean back against the wall next to you. “Can you imagine, though? I’d be Commodore Red’s marketing nightmare.”

“Are you a very youthful seventy? I’m kidding,” you say quickly as his mouth drops open in horror. You give him a less than gentle shove with your elbow. “I’m kidding, kidding. Promise.” You hum thoughtfully. “Look at me. Let me look at you.” He doesn’t move, so you turn to him, bracketing him against the wall with an arm, right up in his face. It’s bold, but you know he won’t balk. He turns on the drama, brings his hands to his face in a faux swoon with wide, sad-dog eyes. 

“Oh Mr. Kitsuragi,” he says, his voice a high and breathy. “Oh, not the eyebrow, please.”  

Somehow, even now, he jimmies a laugh out of you with the skill of a carjacker prying open a locked door. “So I’ve found your weakness,” you say, arching it with perfect control and drinking in his titter. “Come on, detective. I’m intrigued. How old are you?”

He drops the act and closes his eyes. “I was born March 19^th of ’07.” He takes a deep breath. Snowflakes alight in his beard. “During a blizzard.” 

“The last year of the revolution,” you muse aloud. “So today you’re forty-four.”

He winces. “Be honest, how hard is it to believe? I can’t look in the mirror anymore without wanting to cry.”

“Hush.” You can sense him toeing the quagmire of self-flagellation. “I’m the one with old man eyes.” You incline your head, let your glasses slip a bit down your nose. He’s terribly blurred like this, but it has the desired effect. You can see his mouth twitching with mirth. “Hm. It’s not that hard to believe. I can see it. I guess the beard ages you, but only a little.” 

“Yeah?” Harry surprises you. He reaches up and pushes your glasses back up your nose so you can see. It throws his face back into sharp focus. Flushed, lined, unwashed. Manly. “Does it make me look forty five?”

You smirk. “Well…”

“Maybe I should shave it?”

“No,” you say entirely too fast, too loud. “No,” you repeat, softer, “you should keep it. It sure makes you the envy of more than a handful of gents, I’m sure. And there’s no grey. None that I can see. It’s very…masculine.” You reach up and stroke his beard with a gloved hand. In for a penny. “Happy Birthday, Harrier du Bois.” 

Harry’s grin does not falter, but the lights behind his eyes are dimming again. “Kim?”

“Yes?” 

“I’m sorry you…have to listen to all my shit.” 

“You know, if we solve this case, I’m going to personally bill Precinct 41 for every one of your apologies I’ve had to endure.”

“You’ll be able to buy half a latte with the change,” he says dryly. “It’s about what my apologies are worth. I can’t even remember some of the big stuff. The stuff I should really be sorry for.”

“I’ll savor every sip then,” you tell him. “I have big things to be sorry for, too, Harry.” 

He’s looking at you, and again, you can sense a rare silence in his mind, the whole of his attention pinned to your face. Nothing else. “I like when you use my name.”

“I like when you wear those jeans.”

Harry’s quiet for a full ten seconds. “Oh do you?” he asks. 

F u c k. His voice is like the sun going down. He knows exactly what you mean. He misses nothing, sees you down to your goddamn soul. You knew he would. It terrifies you and excites you and weirdly pisses you off a bit, but you did it anyway. Threw him a straight pitch and failed to think past the catch. 

No, that’s wrong. You didn’t even try.

The way he’s looking at you is like the first seconds of being naked. It revs you up like someone has cut the safety lines and flooded your system with juice. It turns you on to have him look at you like that. Sweet sins of the Innocence, it turns you on.

“I do.” 

Harry doesn’t reply. He doesn’t move. Oh. 

Well, there it is. Nothing to be done. You swore you had guessed right. Your instincts are rarely wrong these days, but there is always risk. This is far from the first time. 

You move to step away, but Harry sucks in a breath, stands up a little straighter, as though to follow you, to speak. “I—”

You freeze. “Didn’t catch that?” you murmur, your voice is gentle as you can make it. You don’t want him to panic. Getting pegged by a beautiful young female spy is one thing, but your dick is flesh and blood and comes attached to you: a man, his age, and his partner, however temporary. 

His pupils are huge right now. His pulse speeding along like an engine. Innocence alive, Harry, don’t you pass out on me. 

Then, like watching train tracks shift, suddenly he is a man with direction. “Well. I was gonna make a comment about your pants, but everyone’s like ‘red alert, don’t say that!’”

“Oh?” you say, wary, yet intrigued. Your hand drifts down from the wall to a less threatening post, brave enough to rest on his shoulder. “Indulge me?”

“You look good in yours, too.” And then both his big, warm hands are on your waist. Under your jacket. “But I’m sure you look better out of them.” 

You’ve been round the block. You’ve been grabbed, groped, pushed around. You are not put off or afraid by the line he’s crossed. You invited him to do so. 

But when his hands find you - when the tips of his fingers find the top of your pelvis, caressing with an air of long-practiced familiarity (comfortable and slow, like he’s known your body for years), words evaporate from your tongue. His thumbs stroke your sides, coast over your belly to trace the upward slope of your ribcage. Your breath shifts to the shallow end of the pool. He must feel how warm you still are. Your shirt clings to your sweaty skin. He pulls you closer.  

You’re woefully unprepared to be touched like this. You can’t label such caresses innocent, but it doesn’t feel like a prelude. He just holds you, simply, feeling the shape of your body in his arms. His touch oozes practice, a confidence profound enough that he can afford to be curious. You can’t imagine the kind of experience that comes with being with the same person for so long. 

 But even if Harry’s own mind begs to forget, even if he succeeds, some things transcend memory. Experience like this, the kind that once seemed utterly dull, prudish, shackling, now seems anything but. 

You’ve no bravery left for romance anymore. That ship has sailed. Hand-holding, late-night calls - even an embrace for a hair too long can stop your breath and set your heart pounding for all the wrong reasons. And yet…

Harry shifts, turns, and you just go, melting under his hands like butter. He moves you in one smooth, unhesitant sweep, gently pushing you up against the wall. The brick is cold against your back, reminding you that it is near midnight in early March in Martinaise, likely to hit freezing. Good. Your skin is so hot. His gaze enough to pluck the treasured gem of authority from your invisible crown. 

You thought he might be rough. Demand things of you. You were ready to mitigate his manhandling until you were both hot from playing with fire. 

But he’s not some great bully. He never has been. He wasn’t like that when Cuno cursed in his face. He wasn’t like that with Tommy, even when he refused to talk. He wasn’t like that with Titus, half a head taller and thirty kilos heavier, who would not hesitate to put Harry’s face in the ground and crush it. Harry met every storm unafraid to drown, diving into the waves from which he could not run. And they had all cracked for him. All softened. Even Titus. 

And somehow he thinks he’s a bad man? 

You bring your hands up to the back of his neck to lace your gloved fingers in his hair. It’s like pressing a button. Harry leans in and kisses you once, hard and slow on your open mouth. A great swell of warmth rises like a thermal in your chest, but you barely have a second to enjoy it before he pulls away, his eyes drinking in the whole of your face. Cautious, calculating, but sporting a cheeky gleam. “Well,” he rumbles, “how about that?”

“Hmm.” It’s not a moan. It’s not. “I liked that.” The words roll thickly off your tongue. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He leans in and does it again. And again. And you’re meeting him with an enthusiasm you don’t have to fake. You love kissing, mundane and sacred as breathing. Tender, and easily made impersonal. It can be whatever you want, whatever you need, for whoever you wanted or needed. An act mercifully spared from your personal alchemy of intimacy issues.

You expect to feel those hands start to travel, to shove beneath your shirt or tighten in your hair or even sneak down the front of your pants in lustful mania. Instead Harry wraps his arms around you and pulls you into a bear hug. Every inch of you is touching. You cling to his shoulders and let him, let him kiss you with searing sincerity, swaying in the alleyway like lovers in a black-and-white movie. And then he’s pulling back, and dipping in again, tipping his head the other direction, moving his hands over your back, goosebumps rippling all over your skin beneath your clothes. 

You can barely keep up, feeling his teeth graze your lip. He sucks until you make a sound in your throat, tracing the little bite mark with his tongue. You press yours into his mouth, suddenly, hungrily, violently. He groans, not with surprise, but unmistakable encouragement. It drives you nuts. You lick into his mouth and suddenly you’re on your toes, burning all over like someone has tapped a vein and pumped you full of lighter fluid. He kisses you and kisses you, and you are kissing him back and you. Just. Can’t. Stop. 

You’re overdue for this. Needs became desires, and desires dropped low on the list of priorities, became less important, more risky, less exciting. You had to protect your heart, as well as your reputation. 

But now Harry’s cranked the volume on your libido back up, and even if you top more often than not, you’re ready, you’re ready to turn around and with a little spit and gritted teeth, let him open you up, let him drive into you with all the power in his big, beefy, unambiguous body, let him absolutely ruin you. It is exactly the distraction you need from the loose cells of cosmic terror inside that crumbling church. 

You know he’ll be good; such a physical, sensual creature had to be. He moves as an expert, without any of the showmanship. Skill like this doesn’t require showing off.

He breaks away from your mouth, starting to kiss down over your jaw, down your neck. “Hah,” you grunt, as his mouth starts moving over your pulse point, your Adam’s apple. “Yes…” All the blood is flowing right to your prick, and you throw your arms around his neck, rocking up on your toes to wedge your crotch against his thigh. He leans in, his feet planted, solid and sturdy, letting you do as you please, keeping you from falling, from wavering off balance. He has you, he won’t let you go. He won’t let you down. 

Harry growls as you tighten your arms around his neck, grinding against him. It’s base, filthy. You should be embarrassed of your desperation, but he’s on the same wave, the two of you riding it together. You feel the surety of it in the way he caresses the small of your back, in his tight, enduring hold. What you wouldn’t give right now to be doing this in your room, doing this proper. 

Fuck proper. How long has it been since you’ve been allowed to roll out your bag of tricks? You haven’t lost your touch.

You snake an arm between you to pop the button on his jeans and shove your hand into his pants. He’s hard, hot, hung, and he groans, loud and unabashed and just for you.

“Shh,” you say, and give him a little squeeze and rub through the fabric. You’re a little surprised he’s wearing any underwear. Then again, packing like he is, all that jogging would be uncomfortable without.

“Sorry.” He chuckles. “Damn, I keep racking up the bill, don’t I?”

“Big old bonus for me,” you purr with a smirk. Harry grips you under the thigh and hoists you up a little on the wall so you’re a more stable. “How long have you wanted to do this?”

“Fuck, Kim. There’s no way I’d ever be brave enough unless I…”

“Unless you what?” 

Harry hesitates. Somehow you don’t like that pause. It feels guilty paired with his expression. 

“Unless you what, detective?” 

“Well--you know.” 

You really don’t love the sound of that. “Don’t know if I want to fill that in myself.” 

“I…I just needed a boost. Just a drink. And a little pyrholidon.”

“Is that it?”

“…might have done a little speed before we hit the dance floor. I just--I needed it. Needed the little extra courage. I can’t do this kind of stuff while I’m sober.”

“This...kind of stuff?”

“You know. Mess around. With a guy. With you.” He goes in to kiss you and you turn your head. Harry stops, his lips brushing your cheek. “Was that…the wrong thing to say?” 

Clench-jawed, you take your hand out of Harry’s pants, gently push him away. He goes without any kind of resistance. You don’t look at him as you hear him zip up. Your cock is still hard and hot as an iron bar down the front of your pants, but your disappointment is doing its best to wear it down.

“Should we reconvene later?”

“Harry. I don’t think it’s a good idea we do this at all.” He’s crushed, you see it immediately. So are you. His hands felt so good. But this is messy--he’s messy. You have to tread carefully. 

“Why not?”

“I’m not here to just be your...bisexual experiment. And I don’t like hearing that you need the whole fucking vice cabinet to even approach me that way.”

“Kim, please, don’t be like that.” 

“Be like what?”

“Be all surprised that I’m--” He breaks off, waving a hand vaguely in the air, as though hoping to yank the right turn of phrase somewhere out of the clouds. He fails. “How I always am.”

“Always? Do you think that helps your argument?” You shake your head. “I don’t know why I have to explain to you why you getting trashed and trying to get me in bed for the novelty of it bothers me. You can’t just toy with people like that! I wish you’d learn some goddamn self control.” 

“You think that the only reason I’m doing this is because I’m high?“

“You said so! You just said you wouldn’t be brave enough without it.”

“I can consent, if that’s what you’re worried about. Hell, if I can work like this, don’t you think I’m clear headed enough to know that?”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” you sigh. The moment’s passed and it’s a damn shame. You feel old, ugly. More than a little used. 

“Fine.” He looks sullen and moody, the echo of every teenager you watched speeding down the pipeline of mounting delinquency. Suddenly he looks very silly in that outfit.

The helplessness you feel is worse than anger. You’ve let yourself forget that this is business. You should leave. You should go back to your room, to your cold and lonely bed, dust yourself off and get back to this bloody business. 

Goddammit, it didn’t have to be this way. It is, though, Kit. 

“You know, your inability to care about anyone or anything that stands between you and your vices? It doesn’t hurt just you. It hurts everyone around you.” An alarm bell is ringing in your head. You have absolutely no right to lecture him, a distant part of your remaining decency yanking furiously on the reins. Contempt doesn’t feel good, and it certainly isn’t useful. You know that, and yet you’re piling on. You can’t stop. It’s worse than being violently sick. 

Harry’s doing that thing with his eyes again, his focus contracting to a single piercing point, a hawk sensing the promise of blood. Your blood. “I’d say the same thing about your ego.”

Your eyes narrow. “Excuse me?”

“It’s not about the fact that you don’t believe I want you, is it? It’s just a convenient excuse. You don’t want to be liked by me. You sure as hell don’t want to be seen with me.”

“I did not say that.” 

“But am I wrong? I’m not this way by choice, Kim. I can’t just turn this on and off.”

“Have you ever even tried? Even for a day? Or sought help?”

“See? That’s what I mean--that’s what I fucking mean! You think it’s for lack of trying.”

“Do you think this is easy for me? Do you think it’s a cakewalk watching you in this kind of extremis on a daily basis? Am I such a bad person for not wanting you to die?”

“Oh, how noble of you. I’d say no--if I believed that’s what it was actually about. I don’t think you care so much as you think I’m bad for your optics. You don’t actually give a shit if I’m trashed at any given moment so long as it’s good for your career, even if it’s inconvenient for your boner.”  

“That’s low.”

“Yeah? Well it’s pretty ugly of you, too. You’re nowhere near as good a person as you think you are. You knew this is how I am, Kim. You know I’m sick. I think it’s mighty unfair for you to be throwing stones and lecturing from the mount. Your pride’s mad loud and way out of tune.”

“Pride is not the same as caution, officer. I’ve had to work three times as hard to get where I am. Keeping myself afloat means being discreet. Something you, forgive me to say, are not famous for.”

“Discreet? You mean ‘not embarrassed?’ You just afraid of people finding out and thinking you can do better? Thinking that I’m going to drag your good-cop rep down with me? Keep that last promotion out of reach?”

“You don’t get to tell me how I think, or what I feel. Ever. And you’ve got some nerve throwing that in my face when you just acknowledged that I can never turn off. Yes--I have to think about what I do. Who I get involved with. I have to think what my personal life looks like to other people. I don’t have the same luxuries as you. I’ve said this was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come on to you. For many reasons.”

“No. Just one. Because I’m me.”

“Do not put words in my mouth. I’m saying it’s because—“

“Because in your eyes, I’m the pinnacle of further to fall. I know. You think I’m a disgrace to the uniform. I have people telling me literally every second of every day. I tell myself that every day. You don’t even have to say anything to me and I know it’s true. I see how you look at me! How you’re relieved that you’re not me.”

Your whole face flares with heat. “Really? Would you like to be me?” 

Harry is silent just a second too long.  

“Right. That’s what I thought.” You’re shaking with rage. You know whose is that voice hollering in your head, Fuck, Kit, calm down, you don’t gotta light the whole match box to take down the bridge. Well, fuck Dom. He didn’t get it either. He never stood in your shoes. And where is he now? “You know, acknowledging your advantage in the world compared doesn’t absolve you from anything. It doesn’t make my position easier, or make me trust you more. And you’ve got a hell of a nerve talking about good and bad cops, now, as someone who smashed in someone’s knees to the point of paralysis. You call that justice?”

“You’ve got some balls thinking you’re any better. You rack up those six kills in your first year of homicide alone? Jumping units make you that trigger-happy, or were you just fucking careless in juvie?”

The world drops from beneath you. “…You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re welcome to enlighten me.”

“I don’t have to explain myself,” you feel yourself say, because you can’t hear, a cloud of angry hornets buzzing furiously in your ears. Now you want to throttle him. You want him to understand. You want to tell him the truth and you want to knock out his teeth. You want to turn inside out and go back to fifteen minutes ago when he made you feel real joy and forget real doom. “You don’t get to judge me.” 

“Then you don’t get to, either. You don’t know what it’s like to live with this, or to hurt like this. You don’t know what it’s like inside my head. I’d never be able to do what I’m doing otherwise, and God knows we’d never get this case solved at all.”

You throw up your hands. “Fucking fine, Harry. You keep telling yourself that. If you think you can solve this better yourself, you go ahead. Work however you want. I can’t make any choices for you, but if you keep this up, you’ll be dead in six months. You’ll forgive me if I don’t want to stand by and watch.” You shove away from the wall and storm past him. “Try not to drive away everyone who would care.” 

You’re twenty paces away when you hear him call, “I’ll just add your name to the list of those who wouldn’t!”

But when you look around to reply, he’s gone. Lost in the fog rolling in on that sour sea breeze. 

~

Your glasses are opaque with sleet by the time you reach the Whirling. The cold walk has set your brain a-whirling alright, with the cruelest, meanest thoughts you’ve ever nursed in your entire life. How dare he. How fucking dare he. 

You stride right past the stage, not even looking at the crowd, take the stairs three at a time. The cardio gives you a good excuse for your red ears. You lock the door and sit down on your bed, breathing hard, trying not to crack a molar and struggling to reconcile how you have allowed yourself to crash land here, how you could have allowed such a lapse in judgement, when the charged air in Martinaise reeks of oncoming death.

You are too experienced not to know that someone is going to die before this is all over. Your bet’s on Harry. It might have been him from the start. And if it is, you’ll be pulled in for testimony at both precincts. What on earth could you say to those at the 41st? That you fraternized? That you fought? That he dismissed you? That you let your guard down and, in a fit of petulance, let an unstable, amnesiac, brilliant member of the force wander off to his self-made undoing? Would anyone be surprised? Would anyone care?

More than they would if you went. Hell, it might be your turn, anyway, your proximity to the human-atom-bomb that is Harry tweaks the odds every hour. You might even deserve to go. 

Does Harry really think you’re proud of those six tallies? Does he think you’re that kind of man, that each strike had not come with bitter, painful penance? Does he think you’re not still paying your dues? 

Boom-boom-boom! Someone pounding at your door shocks you out of your spiral. 

“Lieutenant!” It’s not Klaasje, that’s all that’s certain, but it is a woman. “Lieutenant. Please. I need to talk to you.” More thumping. The non-optional, notice-to-enter kind. 

You push off your bed, yanking your door open to see the ‘horse-faced’ officer, as Harry had so bluntly called her. A glance at her uniform tells you she’s a sergeant, in her early thirties, a little older than she initially sounded. Married, by the ring on her finger. You hadn’t had a chance to really see her before, too distracted by the awkwardness of witnessing Harry so obviously, sincerely in the dark when faced with his colleagues. 

You know what she’s going to ask, and beat her to it. “Lieutenant Du Bois isn’t here, Sergeant.”

“Where is he?” 

“I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?” she demands. There’s no softness in her voice. No deference. Good, you don’t feel like being pandered to. “Why isn’t he here?”

“He didn’t make the rent.” A plausible lie.

“You couldn’t spot him?” 

You resist blanching (barely), raising an eyebrow. “I’ve spent almost half my allowed stipend on him this week. If he wants to collect tare for cigarettes and sleep under the bridge, that’s his choice. We’re not sharing a room or a bed, no matter how cost effective.”

“When did you last see him? Where?”

“Officer, I’m not his handler.” 

“No, but you’re our eyes.” Her words are pointed and direct as a dart. You feel them. Her long, bold features are not hard to imagine as intimidating, especially across an interrogation table, and she sure as hell wants you to feel like you’re sitting at one. But there’s a hard and practical tenderness that you decipher, too, even behind the anguish of the situation. You wonder if she’s a mother.

“Twenty minutes ago, he was walking off toward the boardwalk.” You pause. You have to be careful with your words. “He’s upset. If I had to guess, he’s taking a walk to cool down.” 

“Does he have his gun?” she asks, calm but pressing. 

“Yes. No bullets. Thought you’d be glad he found it.” She drops her gaze, clearly doing some very quick thinking. Steeling herself for every worse-case scenario. She’s practiced. “I’m sure he’ll be back in the morning.”

She looks up at you again. “You ever hear of him before?” she asks. 

“Not by name. I’m sure I’ve caught wind of his antics. I know he’s known as a—“

“A can-opener, yes.” She nods. “People just…like him. Trust him.”

“It sure didn’t seem like it when he radioed into your precinct.”

“Not everyone at the precinct has to like him. It’s more important that a suspect does.” She shrugs. “This isn’t the first time he’s flown off the deep end. This is just the deepest fathom. And the furthest end.”

“Seems like an awful high price for all of you to pay on his behalf.”

“Well, Pryce needs him in the field.”

“Isn’t it cruel to make a man believe he’s a knight when he’s really a pawn?”

“Words from someone who’s never made it to the edge of the board.” 

“Hmph.” You shake your head. “You officers at the 41^st are a different breed. You have to know your yefreitor is a very sick man.”

“E dove può andare un malato?” she asks, dropping into the archaic Messinian of Volta that makes everything in you come to a slow stand-still. 

It’s an old verse. Somewhere, you can hear Eyes, sun shining on his epaulets before ceremony. “Nessuno lo sa, quindi non lo so, tesoro…” 

“Well,” you say, before you can get lost down that road, “you know him better than me. How worried should we all be?”

The stillness in her expression tells you all you need to know. Very.

You sigh, tap your toe twice. “What’s your name, Sergeant?”

“Judit Minot.” She steps forward as though to shake your hand, but does not extend it. “And you’re Lieutenant Kitsuragi.”

“Do I want to know how you heard of me?” you ask, praying she doesn’t bring up the Boogie-Street All-Stars Silver League. 

“I knew Dominic,” she says, unblinking. “From years back. He was from Coal City like me. I knew him when he started, before he transferred.”

Your throat tightens as though trapped in a vice. You do not speak.

“He called me after my partner Joseph was killed. Harry had to take on his case. It was how Dom found out I was RCM. I was a mess.” 

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too.” 

A great, dark-gloved hand of grief is tightening on the back of your skull. You straighten up. You will not bow to it, not today, not in front of her, not here in the twilight of a case this dire. She lets the moment rest, watching you with a focused and compassionate eye. Maybe she learned that from Harry. Or maybe Harry learned it from her. 

She must see you thinking, sinking. “Everyone can say what they want about Du Bois,” Judit says, “including you. But Pryce has yet to be wrong about anyone. And if he says Harry is irreplaceable, then we believe him. Besides.” She looks back at his door. “He’s family. After a while, it doesn’t matter. He might yell at us that he can’t go home again, but it doesn’t mean we don’t do our best to bring him back.”

You doubt anyone would say the same about you. Your office door remains open at the 57^th, and you’re well liked - or well tolerated - but you've a hard time believing anyone is left who'd call you a brother. 

“Then why are you up here, and not him?” You nod down toward her wigged companion, still sitting in the cafeteria, staring at his feet. Minot looks over the railing, then back at you, her jaw rigid. 

“It’s better you don’t ask.”

A silence passes between you. A pleading one. You know she will not ask you again. You shouldn’t make her. 

“Fine. I will find him,” you tell her. “But you should leave. You and your partner, and be sure to let everyone see you doing so. There’s enough risk to the ranks with just two officers here.”

“We have orders of our own, Lieutenant,” she says. “But I appreciate the warning.” 

“What’s the officer’s name who runs the channels?”

“Jules Pidieu. Oldboy. He can put us in touch.”

“Alright.” Your mouth twitches, remembering that old-school thick Surenese accent. ‘He said he sodomized your mother.’ “I’ll ask for him.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.”

You watch her head downstairs and rejoin her companion before closing your door, feeling even worse than you did on your return. 

Harry is out there tonight, alone and armed in the throes of anger and pain that are, justified or not, your doing. 

You picture finding his body on the streets, or hidden in the encampment of the boardwalk, or in the shack after running out of luck and rolling snake eyes one too many times. Left alone to rot by the person he’s imprinted on, for better or worse. You.

You, who can only find it in your heart to care because other people do. Like their despair is somehow permission, like he only matters because he’s valued by the top brass. 

He deserves better than you, you small, prideful, ugly bastard. He deserves better.

Buzzing, neon panic drops over your face like a shroud, sudden desperation rushing over you like fever. Where can a sick man go, indeed? 

You check for your Keijl, shove your keys into your pocket and slam your door behind you, hurry down the stairs, out through the main doors and into the dark. The midnight air is bracing as a slap. You wish more than ever, as you turn up your collar and break into a jog toward the canal bridge, that Eyes was here. To be your partner, your brother, your gaze, your guide. He’s just a picture in your head now, a ghost of gruff verses and cryptic criticisms whose face you struggle to remember. He deserved better, too.

Fine, then. You will be better.

HARRY

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: That Rosemary asshole oughta rethink his business model. You cleaned him out! Time to party like it’s your last night on earth. 

HALF-LIGHT: It might be.

COMPOSURE: Where’s your jacket?

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: You were hot. You took it off.

LOGIC: Don’t ask me where you left it. 

COMPOSURE: Wait, it had the house key in it! To the shack! Son of a bitch. You think you can—

INTERFACING: Sorry, bub, there’s no way you can pick that lock. Hobo-copping it up tonight. 

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Time to hit the town! Come on, serve the church the Creed of Speed, there are waves of genius that are better ridden sleepless and solo. Polish off that sweet Commodore and let’s mount the moon like a mechanical bull. 

You spit red into the dirt, unsure nor concerned if it’s crimson with blood or wine, and chug back the last dregs until the bottle is drained and dry. 

PERCEPTION: You taste metal. Your upper lip itches like mad.

ENDURANCE: You’re sporting a hefty nosebleed from all the speed. 

VOLITION: God, Harry. What. Have. You. Done?

COMPOSURE: Obviously engaging in evasive maneuvers around the boiling embarrassment searing the absolute center of your being. 

PAIN THRESHOLD: Nothing is helping. 

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Well, with that attitude, of course it won’t! 

VOLITION: Knock it off. All of this is your fault.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Back off. You don’t know what’s good for us. You wanna sit and think about what just happened?

PAIN THRESHOLD: Fuck no. 

The reminder of the lieutenant’s furious tone makes your guts dissolve inside you, melting into a slush of shame and rage and bitter humiliation. The way his voice had sounded when he told you he was leaving. You stand there, staring through the haze of drink at the fog rolling in over the boardwalk with an empty bottle in one hand and one full of strange blue liquid in the other, your chest so heavy with sadness that you cannot even cry. The reek of low tide fills your nostrils. A toxic gas, a miasma of death. 

INLAND EMPIRE: Won’t be smelling pine needles any time soon.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: But what you will be smelling is that sweet blue moonshine. Pop the cork of that liquid magic, buddy. Maybe you’ll glow too.

ENDURANCE: Do not. Please. It’s a wonder you’re standing at all.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: The mark of a professional, baby.

VOLITION: I don’t think you should be proud of that.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: Sounds like something the lieutenant would say.  

EMPATHY: You really hurt him. You really did, you know that?

PAIN THRESHOLD: Don’t. Don’t think about him right now. You can’t. It hurts worse than thinking about her. 

How can you possibly think of anything else?

VOLITION: Maybe think of the case, instead. Like he would. 

ESPRIT DE CORPS: He’s not thinking of the case right now. He’s thinking about you. He’s thinking about all of this, too.

AUTHORITY: He’s got some gall. Says nothing when your habits are convenient for work, the filthy hypocrite. Who is he to give you grief for just being yourself? 

HALF-LIGHT: Fuck him. Fuck love. Fuck the ragged remnants of your small, savage, broken heart. Love isn’t hardcore, love is stupid, it messes everything up, messes everyone up and gets people killed.

EMPATHY: Don’t talk like that. Don’t think like that. 

ESPRIT DE CORPS: It hurts the lieutenant to see you so out of control.

AUTHORITY: Then that’s his problem.

EMPATHY: You're such a brute. So coarse. For God's sake, his boyfriend died. Remember? Remember the DEAD BOYFRIEND? Did you even think about that? You think he wants another one?!

AUTHORITY: Walk it back, chief, you’re not his boyfriend. Not even close.

SUGGESTION: You want to be, though. You do.

AUTHORITY: Fraternization is frowned upon. 

SUGGESTION: It didn’t stop you. It didn’t stop him, either. 

ESPRIT DE CORPS: What about his dead partner?

AUTHORITY: Whatever. You’re sure as hell not his partner, he’s just playing nanny because you chased your old one off. 

ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: You went and did what you do best, Harry. You fucked it. All. Up.

PAIN THRESHOLD: How can you stand to be this kind of mess, this kind of monster? It’s like your soul decided to just get up one day and leave. 

INLAND EMPIRE: No. It’s the only thing that stayed.

PAIN THRESHOLD: It’s hideous. You’re hideous. You piece of shit. You crazy, stupid fuck.

VOLITION: Harry—

PAIN THRESHOLD: It’s been your specialty you entire life, hasn’t it? Just devoted to hurting people. No one gets this good at it without years of practice. 

VOLITION: Harry. Listen —

ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: Sounds like you need to take a walk, Harry. Sounds like you should take a nice, long walk off the edge of that boardwalk and into the sea like your goddamn Coupris. Give it three days and the lieutenant will find your floating, bloated body…

ENDURANCE: You’re going to puke. 

You barely manage to stagger over to a wall near the encampment and empty a days worth of booze and bile into the dirt until your sinuses burn and you’re hacking hard enough to bring up a lung. 

COMPOSURE: Saints alive, get a hold of yourself. 

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Just making room for more of that sweet moon-juice! 

ENDURANCE: What is wrong with you? You have to stop. You have to stop. You’re dying. You’re killing yourself.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You wanna remember who keeps us all in business? Who actually keeps morale up? Keeps you awake, keeps you moving? Why do you even listen to these high-horsed fucks, Harry? If you hadn’t spilled the fucking beans, you might have been waking up next to—

“SHUT UP!” you wail. “Shut up, PLEASE!” You slam the empty bottle against the wall, where it shatters in your shaking hand, glass cutting deep into your palm. 

ENDURANCE: The FUCK!? 

PAIN THRESHOLD: Takes the edge off, though…. 

ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: Isn’t this something, Harry-boy? Isn’t it something, listening to them bicker? The lone ape listening to the shrill chatter of an avian hell. Don’t you want to disappear? Don’t you wish you could just tip your head back and sink into sweet velveteen darkness? Never, ever, ever wake up again? Look around. There’s always a light on. There’s always a way out.

Your thoughts drift to the Terror Captain, sitting at his desk in his berth, eyes dancing between his pistol and the rapidly emptying whisky bottle. Your pepperbox lays idle at your hip, silent, asleep, useless as you. An empty hand and an empty mouth that once held sweet, world-ending promise. 

VOLITION: Don’t. Don’t even think like that. Don’t you dare. 

SHIVERS: You were born at the crossroads with your eyes open, took your first breath surrounded by the smell and sound of death, flanked by old souls passing in the night, in the cold, in the war. You were born in the last dregs of winter, when the long nights begin to wither and the light begins to grow. You were born into tragedy as a hopeful child. 

Your heart freezes in your chest, paralyzing you. Everything hurts so much. Everything hurts.

COMPOSURE: Take a breath.  

INLAND EMPIRE: You’ve been here before…

VOLITION: You can come back from this. Promise. You can come back from anything.

SHIVERS: YOU HAVE WORK TO DO. 

PAIN THRESHOLD: Please, just look at you, you animal. You can’t protect anyone like this. Not Kim, not yourself, not this fucking band of vigilantes who won’t listen, who won’t run when you tell them to. And you think you’re supposed to be the one to free millions from monumental chokehold? How are you supposed to save anyone at all?

VOLITION: You start with one.

INLAND EMPIRE: You start with Ruby. 

HALF-LIGHT: Ruby, who knows your name and fears it, sure in her belief that you will crack her shell and unspool all of her secrets like a blood-letting. 

ESPRIT DE CORPS: You’re not the only one drunk and thinking of kissing the barrel tonight. 

You groan, your aching stomach heaving again. The great, purple, liquid hands of every substance in your system are snaking over your face, sinking great, skulking sausage fingers deep into your brain. Any edge they might have provided dying along with you. And still…

“Ruby,” you groan, slumping against the cinder block wall of a half-collapsed house. “Ruby. Where are you?”

INLAND EMPIRE: Where would she hide?

EMPATHY: Well, where would you hide?

SHIVERS: Inking what could be your last words… 

HALF-LIGHT: She’ll throw herself on the sword before she’ll let you drag her into the lion’s den of the RCM. Be careful. You don’t know all of what she’s done. 

HALF-LIGHT: Or what she could.

INLAND EMPIRE: You’re in for a surprise. 

SHIVERS: DON’T GO ALONE.

Your muscles twitch, your circuits fried with everything gumming your nervous system. You can’t imagine ever feeling worse in your entire life.

INLAND EMPIRE: You have.

VOLITION: And survived. 

SHIVERS: YOU ARE NOT BROKEN. YOU ARE AS YOU WERE MEANT TO BE. YOU ARE TO RISE. YOU ARE TO SING. YOU ARE TO FACE THE DAWN. 

VOLITION: It’s time to kiss the bottom of the pit, Harry. It’s time to say goodbye.

HALF-LIGHT: You can’t. 

V ^E _S O ^M _H L ^P _I I ^A _V T ^T _E I ^H _R O ^Y _S N: You *must.*

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You’re sinking. Deeper. Deeper. Colors morphing, borders dissolving…

You swallow thickly around the taste of blood. “Please…”

ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: What’s that, lover-boy? You want to face the music? You want the real deal? You want real oblivion? 

INLAND EMPIRE: Do you?

ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: Trust is true oblivion. Do you want to see what’s to come? You can’t open the door, not yet, but you can look through the keyhole. Only a glimpse. If you want. If you ask for it. 

VOLITION: You may as well. If it will help. Look forward, Harry. Look up. Look up and—-

INLAND EMPIRE: SEE.

SHIVERS: The world around the guardian vanishes, every cell in his body utterly vacant for a moment as his eye rises above the city like a great bird of prey, and sees… 

INLAND EMPIRE: Crumpled pages. Shattered windows in the precinct. The temporal blackout, the squealing death throes of a crane, the bodies in the streets. Lightning reflected in two round frames, the screaming of so many timelines crashing together like gnashing teeth, the sighing of your Northwest wind, and hands. Someone’s hands gripping yours tight, euphoria flooding you like a salve over raw flesh. The far future fire at his back, his job done, whispering a rhythm only existing inside him, turning to the sea, turning away, falling asleep for the final time as he rides the wind across the porch.

CONCEPTUALIZATION: Like Terror’s Captain. Like Crozier. 

DRAMA: Facing the pain of the poison drain, and ‘riding the waves of his Seeing.’ Oh sire, yes, yes! Has there ever been a role made so perfectly for you? 

SHIVERS: IT IS BUT ONE POSSIBILITY. THE SCULPTURE WITHIN THE MARBLE. YOU MUST CREATE IT YOURSELF, WITH YOUR OWN HANDS, BREATHE IT INTO BEING. 

YOU ARE MY CHILD. BE CALM. BE AT EASE.

I WILL NOT LET YOU FALL. 

ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: Time passes, baby. And stops for no one. 

Where am I? When am I?

Your eyes ache behind their lids, lashes crusted together. They water as you struggle to open them. A potent blue light stains your bloody hand, your arms. Wet sand sticks to your face. A dull, soft thundering echoes in your ears.

PERCEPTION: A flapping tarp, blown in from the encampment, has been laid or tucked over you. The kind you might use to crudely hide a body.

PAIN THRESHOLD: Your hand throbs, stinging horribly. 

Well. It means you’re alive. 

PERCEPTION: It’s so quiet. 

INLAND EMPIRE: The eye of the storm. 

You elbow your way clumsily to your knees, throw the tarp off your shoulders and look down at your hand. Pieces of dark glass lay embedded in your skin. You pick out one of the largest pieces with a surprisingly steady hand. A paroxysm of pain bolts through your palm. 

HAND-EYE COORDINATION: You’ve got this. Get it all out.

It's still mostly dark, the sun sleeping in. The vast ocean of feeling inside you froths gently, an eerie and otherworldly calm. 

What…was that? What did I see? Whose hands were those?

INLAND EMPIRE: Don’t worry about it right now, Harry. 

VOLITION: Remember what you have to do. Remember Ruby. 

Ruby. Alone. Lost in her own personal darkness. 

EMPATHY: A darkness where only you can see. Only you know the landscape. 

INLAND EMPIRE: Where only you can find her. 

SHIVERS: Find what she left for you. 

ENDURANCE: Take care of your hand, first.

The bottle of blue medicinal spirits sits by the wall…the knot of your horrific necktie stuffed in its neck. “The hell?” You reach down, suppressing a groan, and pick it up gingerly. You move to tug it from the bottle.

INLAND EMPIRE: Are you one to argue with destiny, child?

You stand there, trying to feel the weight tipping on invisible scales. Remembering Her voice. But one possibility…

“Not arguing. Shaping.” You grip the tie and pop the knot out of the bottle, tossing the loop it around your neck. It does not speak. “Ah, I see. You’re mad. It’s ok, I can take the silent treatment, bratan.” You tip the bottle of blue spirits over your hand and—

PAIN THRESHOLD: HOLY FUCKING SHIT. You’re peeling the flesh off your fingers! You’re burning a hole right through your—

COMPOSURE: Bite the stick, ya weenie.

A fresh flow of blood erupts from all the gashes, drawing new lines in your palm, dripping down your fingertips. It’s quite the dramatic picture, along with your already bloodstained jeans. And shirt. And general person. 

HALF-LIGHT: Hehehe, metal.

COMPOSURE: I can’t even begin… 

INLAND EMPIRE: Let’s take a walk, Harry. There’s something waiting for you at the shack.

“No jacket, no keys, no problem,” you mutter, shivering as you shuffle away from the wall and eye the skyline. Even in the darkest part of the morning, you can tell where you are, and start off toward the fishing village. Funny how quickly things become familiar. 

You’re still turning over the images in your head - and thinking longingly of the pinball maker’s coat lying in your room - when you hear a man’s voice. 

“Please. Please. He’s not in trouble. I’m not going to turn him in for anything, I need to know where he is so I can—“ 

ESPRIT DE CORPS: The lieutenant.

EMPATHY: His voice uncharacteristically desperate. 

SUGGESTION: Oh Kim! Oh Kim, Kim, Kim!

ESPRIT DE CORPS: Of course he’d show up. Of course he’s here for you. How could you forget? He’d throw himself in front of a train for you, Harry, how could you forget?  

SUGGESTION: You oughta sprint over there and give him a big ol’—

VOLITION: Don’t, Harry. Not now. Don’t get distracted. 

SAVOIR-FAIRE: Don’t let him see you. 

VISUAL CALCULUS: As you mount the slope up toward the shack, you can see its open door through the window. 

ESPRIT DE CORPS: He’s already searched for you.

SAVOIR-FAIRE: Make your move, pal. With those eyes, he might not see you. 3-2-1 GO!

You stride up the hill, pivot to your left and hop up onto the porch, doing so as smoothly as you can - which is to say not at all. But Kim, standing there and arguing with the washerwoman, must have his radar tuned to your image.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: He’s been looking for you all night. He doesn’t miss you. He couldn’t. 

“Detective!” He’s already started to run toward you when you yank the key he’s left in the door, slamming and locking it behind you. You cast your eye around the room, take it in.

VISUAL CALCULUS: He’s dug around a bit, yes. But not too much. Not so much that you can’t recognize the room. Not so much that you can’t hunt proper. 

Thud! The sound of a shoulder hitting the door. 

SUGGESTION: Oh, how gallant.

“Detective! Detective du Bois. Open this door!” The hard bang-bang-bang! of his fists against the wood.

EMPATHY: He sounds so scared. Answer him.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: No. Obey your protocol. Sweep the room. Sweep your corners.

“Ruby,” you whisper. “Ruby. You’ve left me a gift, have you?” 

INLAND EMPIRE: Can you see her? Can you feel the echo of her? 

SHIVERS: How she longs to gaze at the cobwebbed corners of the ramshackle ceiling, thinking about her would-be lover’s soft body next to her, longing for her in a way you once had and can no longer fathom? 

The doorknob rattles.  

“Please, detective. Please let me in. We can talk. I promise. I will listen.”

SHIVERS: Feel her in the dark, on her knees. Feeling the gravity of her choices, her desires, her resignation. 

You take a step, and the squeak of the floorboards give you pause like they never have before.

INLAND EMPIRE: Emergency exit. 

You drop to your knees, the pain immaterial as you pry up the floorboard. It comes away almost at once, despite the agony in your fingers.

“Harry!”

PERCEPTION: Behold, a space big enough for a small cache of weapons. Dark, and seemingly empty, but…

INLAND EMPIRE: But not quite. 

“Harry, you have three seconds to open this door. If I have to shoot this lock, you’re paying for the goddamn repair.” 

VOLITION: So be it.

You reach down, sweep your hand through the dark cavity. Smell the tang of gunpowder, lingering in the air like old perfume. Find…

SHIVERS: Her gift.

A bullet. 

Another. Fucking. Bullet. You grip it tight in your bleeding hand, and sense her, and see her--

INLAND EMPIRE: The heart of power of Martinaise. In the depths beneath the FELD Building. 

You put your hand to your hip, on your mercifully empty firearm. Outside, you can hear the click and tuck of the lieutenant loading his own. 

INLAND EMPIRE: No. Don’t. You can’t afford to waste a single shot. 

You lurch to your feet, stagger to the door, wrenching it open to reveal Kim, who has both hands on his Armistice, pointed at the ground, seconds from taking aim. He was not joking. It takes barely a second before the sight of your ragged, bloodied form wipes the pinched look off his white face. “Detective…oh god, what did you do? What did you do?” 

“Keep that bullet,” you tell him, taking the moment to load yours. It locks home in with a click, old words gleaming against your bloody hand like the epitaph on a tomb. “You need it.”

“Harry…”

If it’s the last time you’ll ever hear him say your name, then it will do. You’ll take it. You’ll carry the sound of it in your heart to the end like a love letter, or a birth mark, or a scar. 

Because there’s a war on this morning’s horizon. 

And the sun is coming up.