Chapter Text
The fog is thick across the Pox tonight. The darkness is really true darkness here, any light pollution visible in the night sky swallowed up by the shadows of trees that stand bowed around you. Tall, thin figures with long reaching limbs and dark cloaks of pine needles. Snow with a hard crust of grim dirt on the top. The fog is greyish yellow-tinted where Kim’s flashlight hits it, dense and soupy.
ENCYCLOPEDIA: Photochemical smog. Thick with tropospheric ozone, volatile organic compounds, ammonia gas, sulphur and nitrogen oxides. Trace amounts of pollen from the forest floor. A dense layer of residual industrial dust blowing in from the burnt out buildings of Coal City. Smoke from burning coal and petrol.
It is not a forest. Not a true forest. You have never seen a true forest.
CONCEPTUALISATION: This will be the closest you will ever get.
KIM KITSURAGI: Beside you, the light sputters and for a moment the world goes impossibly dark. You can hear Kim muttering beside you, swearing, as he hits the base of the flashlight against the palm of his gloved hand. Leather on soft plastic. You slow down, putting a hand out in front of you to stop yourself bumping into anything, and you feel Kim’s shoulder impact against your back. “Khm. Apologies, Lieutenant.” The darkness makes his already-dire eyesight even worse. “ Fils de pute …” A loud plastic-y thud, and then the light flickers back to life.
ENCYCLOPEDIA: The land chosen for the Hospital is basin-shaped, collecting smog and snow like an overflowing bowl. You are walking along the rim of the basin currently. You can’t imagine how much murkier it must be further down. It was lovely, once. Thickets of evergreen trees, mostly conifers, some spruce and tamarack. A few deciduous trees, originally planted by the ambitious landscapers of the Revachol Military Convalescent Hospital. Thin-bodied silver birches, aspens with grey papery bark and dark diamond-shaped lacerations running parallel up their trunks. Known as lenticels, like knife-slashes bleeding black. Broad-leafed oaks, already ancient and grown deep into the land, dug up and moved into prime positions on hand-sculpted hilltops.
CONCEPTUALISATION: Bent waists and green gold overcoats that shimmer in the soft breeze, tending to their charges as carefully as any doctor.
You start walking again, hearing the soft snow-muffled crunch of Kim's footsteps behind you. He’s keeping the light pointed towards the ground, searching for any traces of recent activity. This was a pathway once, paved smoothly to allow for wheelchair users to enjoy the parkland. The flagstones are broken up under foot now, uneven with jagged-leafed plants pushing their way out from between the cracks. Rivulets of ice run through the cracks, frozen solid.
INLAND EMPIRE: Shaded pathways for nurses in crisp white aprons to gently wheel old soldiers along, to take in the air. Benches for wounded young men on crutches to sit and rest. Read a book, perhaps. Spend time with visiting family members. Irregular clumps of flowers, a deliberate and artificial naturality. The parkland is a carefully cultivated window to nature, a sanitised wilderness.
ENCYCLOPEDIA: The Revachol Military Convalescent Hospital park and gardens were designed in the early part of the last century, by a young and enthusiastic landscaper who believed fervently and profoundly in the healing power of fresh air and exercise. Sweeping lawns were designed for convalescents to play games of boules or croquet. A serpentine stream curving away from the bulk of the main hospital buildings, for enrichment.
The flashlight is flickering again. Like disco lights. The trees pulse in the juddering yellow halo of light.
KIM KITSURAGI: You turn to look at Kim. His cheekbones are thrown into sharp relief by the on-off light, the contrast sharp and cutting. The angles of his face are vivid against the curves; the soft bump of his nose where it has been broken in the past, his round jaw and his downward-descending eyes. The pale yellow circle of light on the floor grows dimmer and dimmer in shuddering bursts until the poor torch croaks out its last burst of light and dies in Kim's hands. "Fuck," he says quietly, somewhere in the pool of darkness at your left side. There is no real heat to the word. It is a statement. He hits the butt of the light again, smacking the heavy weight of the battery compartment against his palm as if to jolt the mechanism into working again. The darkness between you stretches, infinite and impossible.
HALF-LIGHT: Your stomach clenches. A broken little baby bird of fear fluttering uselessly in your chest. It is so dark.
You: "I put in new batteries before we left," you say. You hold your hands up innocently, although you know he can't see you in the darkness.
KIM KITSURAGI: "I'm sure you did," the lieutenant says with a long-suffering sigh. He sounds tired, exhausted really. It's no wonder.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: You've been pulling double shifts off the record, all of you, Jean and Officer Minot, McClaine and Torson. Kim, with his freshly completed transfer. There were mutterings at that, that the 41st precinct’s newest officer was immediately looped into Pryce's private project. Not unhappy mutterings; just surprised. And then the second surprise. Partner reassignments. “Minot, Viquemare. You work well together. I want you on this.” A pause. Minot raises her eyebrows, surprised, and a look of conflict flashes on Jean’s face. Relief and something sad. There isn’t an accurate word for it, as far as you know. “Kitsuragi. Du Bois.” He snaps his fingers at the two of you. “Bring back some of that Martinaise magic.” Kim glances across the office at you. You’re all sat in those awful cheap plastic chairs, insanely uncomfortable. The blinds are drawn down over the window, the door locked. Kim doesn’t smile, but you know him enough to know that he’s pleased to be back with you. Pryce doesn't enlighten you on exactly what you're working on in that meeting, although you have some ideas. You're explicitly banned from discussing the tasks he dishes out with anyone except your partner, even the others that you know are working on other parts of the same project. Makes it easier to spot the leaks if someone squeals, he tells you by way of explanation. First he had you combing through a bunch of personnel files, searching for dated absences that corroborated with a specific list he had provided you with. Patrol Officer work, something you hadn't had to bother with since you became a detective and certainly not since you lost your memory.
Still, you do your best with it. You're a diligent boy. You've taken to doing your extra workload sat on the cool tile floor of Kim's apartment while he sat at the kitchen table and managed his own half of the stack. Half finished takeaway containers scattered on the table and floor between you. Coffee cups, some empty, some half full and nearly cold, surround you like some old science experiment. Like the bowls of water in the old church- measuring the void in the centre of the world. You sleep on his firm, overstuffed couch most nights now too, too exhausted to Jamrock shuffle your way back across town to your own place.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: On the couch, listening to the sound of the shower running in the adjacent room.
VOLITION: Dangerous thoughts.
LOGIC: He lives closer to the precinct; that's how you both justify it.
EMPATHY: And you don't like your cold, empty flat anywhere near as much as you like his place. He’s just as fastidious about his apartment as he is about his own personal upkeep. It’s really nice being somewhere with freshly mopped floors and surfaces free of clutter.
PAIN THRESHOLD: It would be even nicer to sleep in an actual bed though. Your spine, crumpled like a discarded beer can, would thank you.
PERCEPTION: In the present, the Lieutenant walks beside you with his spine stiffened with caution. Rain patters against the ground, mingling with the snow on the ground, turning it to freezing slush. He’s wearing an RCM issued raincoat, waxed cotton with the mark of his rank in raised black thread on the shoulders. Unlike your green plastic raincoat, it makes no noise when he moves. Yours crinkles and crackles like an old crisp packet.
KIM KITSURAGI: He tsks under his breath as you rustle along beside him. This is a stealth mission. He was hoping that you would take that into consideration when you chose your clothes, but obviously he was expecting too much of you there. Although, he thinks with begrudging charity, this was an unexpected outing. You’d both just grabbed what you could from the precinct and headed out. Another extra few hours of work on top of your already over-long shift.
ENDURANCE: Your tired overstimulated brain rattles around in your skull and fails utterly to think anything through logically. You are dehydrated and hungry. Cold too. You’ve got your regular disco jacket underneath your raincoat, and you’re wearing your revolutionary hat with the upside down star emblazoned on the front and the fur-lined flaps to keep your ears warm, but you’re not wearing socks and you’ve still got your disco-ass shoes. The heels make you a little unsteady on the cracked flagstones. It’s been- what- two weeks since the first secret assignment Pryce gave you? Two weeks of maybe four hours sleep every night.
EMPATHY: Somewhere inside your raisin-brain a part of you wants to curl up on the dirty wet ground and cry until the grey snow buries you.
HALF-LIGHT: It would be nice, to die in the snow. To white-out completely. The delirious warmth before death.
KIM KITSURAGI: “We shouldn’t be far away, now,” he says, quietly. He’s very close behind you, not quite touching you. He’s using the sound of your steps, you realise, to help guide him through the darkness. It would be so much easier if he would just give in and touch you, just rest his hand on your shoulder and let you guide him, but you know he won’t let himself do that. He’s drawn back from the easy level of contact you’d developed in Martinaise. You both have, you suppose, with the strain of Pryce’s secret project. It’s hard to indulge in your tactile impulses when you’re up to your ears in work. He’s begun to shy away from you too, flinching from your touch like a nervy horse, and you’re stupidly scared that you’ve missed your chance, that whatever special thing there was between you is dead and gone. Buried out on the island with the Deserter and the Insulindian Phasmid and the spirit of communism.
RHETORIC: Communism isn’t dead and neither is your spark, comrade.
SUGGESTION: It will take work, but it’s work that you can do well. Diligently.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: You went a month only able to speak on the phone while he tied all his loose ends at the 57th and then the transfer was processed and immediately you were flung into this new thorny knot of investigations. It’s different, the vibe between you now. You’re not sure why. He’s the same as always, patient, kind, repressed in a way that makes you want to can-open him so fucking bad. But he doesn’t touch you anymore.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: God, you wish he would.
KIM KITSURAGI: “It should be somewhere around here.” He stumbles, suddenly, and the movement must jolt the flashlight because it decides that now is the time for it to rise from the dead. It resurrects itself, somewhat paler, and you hear Kim breathe a sigh of relief.
You: You give him a nod and take a big step forward.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: When you'd finished working through the first stack of paperwork, you'd given your compiled list to Pryce and had received in turn another stack of paperwork and another narrow set of parameters to sort them into; this time, the career files of officers from other precincts. Injuries, partner transfers, cases solved, disciplinary hearings. Find the thread, Pryce had said. Unravel it until it makes sense. So you do. You dig through the papers and you cut back on sleep. You pull sixteen hour days. You try desperately to hold out hope for continuing your sober streak but your self control wears paper thin and on an especially bad afternoon Jean finds you rooting through his desk drawers like a truffle pig trying to find his secret stash of speed. “I have to stay awake, Jean,” you tell him desperately, exhaustion making you slur a little. You and Kim have been at the precinct since 2am digging through the archive, trying to find a pattern in a series of cold cases that Pryce has suddenly decided are relevant to his super secret project, and now you’re meant to be on patrol for at least another six hours. Jean narrows his eyes and folds his arms. He’s fucking exhausted too. Twitchy. “I can’t sleep now. It’s too important.” You expect Jean to explode at you. You expect him to get really fucking furious, actually, and you let your eyes slide shut and welcome the onslaught, but when nothing comes you open one eye cautiously. “I’m sorry,” you say, wincing preemptively for a blow that never lands.
He just looks at you, his jaw tense. “Would you stop? I’m not going to hit you, you fucking idiot.” Then he sighs that world-weary sigh, the one that belongs to someone much older than his thirty-four years, and bends to open the last drawer. There, in a little plastic baggie tucked inside the back cover of a Dick Mullen novel, is his stash. Oddly, he seems more embarrassed by the tacky crime fiction hidden in his desk than he does about the drugs. He leans on the desk, measures out a tiny portion of it into a cigarette paper and screws it up into a little ‘bomb’ that he drops into your palm. “Here,” he says tersely. “Just don’t… Don’t make it a habit again. Please.” It’s an understanding between you, one that sparks a flash of recognition in your chest; this is how it was, you think, before everything unravelled. Just the one, to get you through the day. Him enabling you if you whined enough, if you made yourself look pathetic in just the right way. Always a one-off. A pick-me-up. He gets you.
INLAND EMPIRE: One swallow doesn’t make a summer.
Kim is silently furious with the pair of you- mainly Jean- when he puts two and two together. But he has no real leg to stand on. No recourse. Most of the cops in the precinct are using stimulants, the only thing stopping them from falling asleep at their desks. It’s an open secret. He cannot and will not stop you. You are an adult, after all. You are your own man.
His disapproval combined with the brutal lethargy that dogs your steps for days afterwards is enough to convince you to get back on the wagon. You mainline coffee directly into your bloodstream instead to stay alert during your day shifts until you give yourself a caffeine-induced panic attack at your desk. Kim silently pries your mug from your shaking hands and pretends not to notice the way your fingers cling to his as he goes to move away. The next morning you notice that the shared precinct jar of instant coffee in the breakroom has been swapped for a nicer, higher quality decaffeinated brand. It’s not just him caring for you either. A week later while you’re both heading up the stairs to his apartment, Kim pales and stumbles over his own feet and you realise with a sinking feeling that you’ve both been together constantly for the last twelve hours and you haven’t seen him eat at all. You sling an arm around his shoulders despite his protests and help him up the rest of the way, sit him down on the couch, and cobble together a stir fry from the slightly shrivelled vegetables you can scrounge up from the bottom of his fridge.
ENCYCLOPEDIA: One serving contains 23% of his recommended daily allowance of vitamin A, 230% of vitamin C and 8% of calcium. 22g of fat and 38g of carbs. 1834mg of sodium and 1204mg of potassium.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: It is not enough, even for a skinny binoclard like him. But it is something.
SHIVERS: YOU TAKE CARE OF ONE ANOTHER. GOOD.
INLAND EMPIRE: When he falls asleep on the sofa after managing half of the huge portion you gave him- sprawled bonelessly over your regular spot- you gently take his glasses off and set them on the table beside him and lay a blanket over him to keep him warm. You fall asleep lying at his feet on his soft burnt umber rug, your head pillowed on your rolled up black RCM jacket.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: Everyone in the precinct is in the same boat; utterly drained. Even Oldboy is edgier than usual, tapping his fingers rhythmically on his desk and jumping slightly every time the crackle of static sparks up on his radio.
SHIVERS: Something big is coming. Something is going to find you, if you don’t find it first. It’s a dark cloud over the whole city; something electric in the air. The smell of ozone. People laugh too loudly in the streets, drive a little too fast. You double lock Kim’s door behind you every night.
INLAND EMPIRE: Kim accepts it all with little change to his posture. There is concern in the thin press of his lips, the way he holds his shoulders so tightly squared, but he’s thriving on it too. The workload, the lack of sleep, the unhealthy food, the chaos, even suffering you as his partner. You worry that he’s mad that you persuaded him to transfer, that he would much rather face off against the smuggling and customs disputes of G.R.I.H. than the sheer naked chaos of the Bloody Murder Precinct, but sometimes you glance up at him while you’re working at his kitchen table and he’s already looking at you. There is something like affection in his eyes. Something you don’t have a word for.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: You look forward to a night in your own bed when morning comes though, even so. Despite your appreciation of Kim’s pristine apartment, you still catch yourself fantasising about a night on an actual mattress. A bath in your own bathtub, an evening cigarette on your own balcony. Perhaps Kim would be willing to stay at your place instead; after all it isn’t his company that you’re sick of, but the loose spring in his sofa that jabs into your back at just the wrong angle when you lie down. The night he fell asleep on the couch and you slept on the floor was honestly the most comfortable night you’d spent at his place. There was a small pleasure in sleeping at his feet, all curled up on yourself like a lapdog. He’d been so embarrassed the next morning, stiff and formal, apologising over and over despite your reassurances that you were actually comfortable as hell on the floor. You wouldn't have even dared to think of sleeping on his bed. You are thinking about that memory all morning, his repeated demand of why didn’t you just wake me up , when you finally spot the connecting thread amongst your notes. You find the end and pull. A string of RCM officers, across all precincts, double-dipping. Taking pay from the RCM but also from the Moralintern, with the checks from the Moralintern much higher than the pitiful allowance that the RCM allowed. Officers with addictions, with families or debt problems. People in desperate need. Officers working on cases relating to political tensions. You would have made an ideal candidate, pre-memory loss, you think and the thought makes you feel cold to the bone. They’d been approached and wooed by some faceless Moralintern agent until they were willing to accept the payments, in exchange for access to internal RCM affairs. You whistle, long and low.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: [Medium: Failure] They’ve always kept you on a tight leash, but this is different. You’re being observed, like a prey animal stares at a predator to gauge how fast they need to run away. They think you’re a threat.
LOGIC: [Hard: Success] They’re not scared. They’re gathering evidence so that they can justify their actions when they brutally put you down.
ENCYCLOPEDIA: The relationship between the RCM and the Moralintern has always been tense. You- the RCM, not you personally- are allowed to exist because you are a necessary evil. Somebody has to keep order on the streets, and the optics of the whole thing are so much better if the police are working for the city rather than the colonisers, at least nominally. But you’ve always chafed at each other. The Moralintern hate your refusal to extradite fleeing foreign criminals for crimes that do not exist in Revachol, your refusal to hand over information on political dissidents. Protecting subversives. They hate the few powers that you have, because you utilise those powers to make yourselves as annoying as possible.
RHETORIC: It is an illusion of a rebellion. You are a dog on a leash and the Moralintern are catching you by the collar. It is their rules, their loopholes. They have made you their lapdog; even your little subversions are predetermined.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: So they’ve been bribing cops for information. Meeting somewhere in the Pox, supposedly because it’s quiet and out of the way. A regular meeting scheduled for every other week like clockwork. Kim follows your string of words, your finger tracing over your notes as you gesture to various pieces, and shrugs with a grim determination. What’s another few more hours on the clock? Fancy a stakeout, then, Detective? He asks.
KIM KITSURAGI: He puts a hand out suddenly to steady you, mindful of your wandering thoughts. Raindrops fleck his cheeks, catching the light like little gems. “We’re here.”
PERCEPTION: The building that you have stopped in front of blends perfectly into the trees. It is a wood-and-stone shack with a narrow heavy door and a padlock holding it shut.
ENCYCLOPEDIA: [Easy: Success] It is a hide. An unobtrusive wooden building built to allow bird enthusiasts to observe wildlife without disturbing them with their presence. It was built back when the hospital was still used for recuperating soldiers, another bright idea to distract them from their freshly developed Trauma and Stressor Disorder. They held art classes here.
INLAND EMPIRE: A young man with horrific burn scars up the whole left side of his body sits quietly in his wickerwork wheelchair, a pad of paper resting on his good leg and a stick of charcoal in his hand. He is left handed, naturally, but he cannot bend the fingers in that hand so instead he is making clumsy lines on the stark white page with his right. A soft curved belly, spindled legs, a flared-out wing. His eyes dart between the page and the bird, stood on a twig of holly outside the window. Behind, the sun is high above the rolling green hills, the beautiful parklands. A pretty nurse with dark hair and a neat blue coat over the top of her white uniform sits with him. I think it’s time to head back , she says, fussing gently at the blankets laid over his lap. Don’t you think? We don’t want you to exhaust yourself after all the progress you’ve made. He makes a sound of frustration, glaring down at his uncooperative hand, and she stills him with a look. Don’t get yourself overexcited, Mr Ambrose. We can come back tomorrow. The white bandages are marred with charcoal dust.
PERCEPTION: There are windows on the other side that look down over a large swathe of the basin, and a thicket of bushes planted around it to obscure it from view.
ESPRIT DE CORPS- It is the perfect place to set up your stakeout. You’re going to be here a long time. Good panoramic view of the area. Dry, or as dry as you can get. Somewhat sheltered.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Are you with me, Lieutenant?” His voice cuts through the quiet. He is expecting an answer, his voice tense. Tired. He keeps pushing his glasses up to his forehead so that he can rub his eyes, deep red rings around them like the dark rings you make on his kitchen table when you forget to use a coaster for your coffee. He doesn’t know where you go, when you go quiet and away like this, and it frustrates him. “Detective.”
You: “Yes, sorry. Sorry. I’m with you. I was just… thinking,” you finish lamely. “They used to hold art classes here.”
KIM KITSURAGI: He gives you a funny look. “Not in the last 50 years or so,” he says.
You: “No. Before the revolution. When it was still a royal military hospital. Art and nature was meant to be good for the treatment of Trauma and Stressor Disorder so they set up bird hides and gave them art stuff. It’s meant to be relaxing.”
KIM KITSURAGI: He doesn’t ask how you know. He’s given up asking- he knows that all he’ll get is some vague mush-mouthed babble about the voices in your head, and he doesn’t want to go down that path right now. Instead, he hefts his backpack up on his shoulder a little and starts to size up the padlock on the door. “Hmm,” he says, faintly annoyed. “It’s a proper lock. Hard to pick.”
LOGIC: Most things are around here. The place is empty most of the time, the only visitors being desperate drug addicts looking for a place to die quietly. Or scrabbling around in the hospital buildings hoping to stumble across painkillers left behind, never mind that the hospital has been closed for nearly thirty years now and completely off limits for over twenty.
VISUAL CALCULUS: It’s likely just a deterrent. If you hit it just right, from the right angle…
You: “I can break it,” you say, eying up the heavy bulk of it. “I think.” You search around in the dim light of the torch for a stone on the ground.
PERCEPTION: [Medium: Success] You can hear howling in the distance. Wolves, somewhere on the horizon. You find a nice smooth rock, white with blackish imprints on it like a skull, lying on the ground not far away. Kim follows your movements with the torch, ostensibly to give you light to work with but also so that he can watch you, his tired eyes fixed on you as you pry the rock up out of the dirt and raise it above the lock.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: [Hard: Success] The rock smashes down into the metal with all the force you can muster. The lock crumples instantly. It appears to be made from rust, mostly, so it isn’t surprising when your blow sends it flying to the ground.
You: You push the door open. “After you,” you say with what you hope is a charming grin.
KIM KITSURAGI: He gives you one of his nice secret smiles in return, the crows feet at the edges of his eyes crinkling, and heads inside. “Nice job,” he says. He’s always one for the more subtle approach, but he can appreciate your brute force approach too.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Especially when it involves you showing off that bicep girth.
VOLITION: Oh, shut up.
COMPOSURE: You are suddenly and uncomfortably aware that this will be the first time since Martinaise that you and the lieutenant have sat alone together without a sheer cliff of paperwork in between you.
HALF-LIGHT: You no longer have your shield.
Wet Cold Bird Hide: The building is slouching, the wood beams damp and warped, but it seems to perk up as you enter. The room is narrow, with a rickety bench running the entire length of one wall, and a tall cracked glass window. Here, you can see the sky much more openly through the trees and you can just make out the shape of the moon through the clouds. There is a convergence point about twenty feet in front of you where three paths join together between the evergreens. This is the meeting spot.
You: “Well, this won’t be too bad. We’ve got a roof over our heads, camouflage, a bench to sit on.” You gesture out to the dark window. "Excellent view."
KIM KITSURAGI: He presses a hand to the bench and wobbles it slightly. “I wouldn’t trust the bench,” he says. “It’s soft in the middle. Rotten.”
HALF-LIGHT: Just like you.
EMPATHY: You feel a sudden pang of hurt in your chest for the poor abandoned bench. It was built to make people happy, to help people heal. Now it just stands there, useless, and watches itself rot.
KIM KITSURAGI: The lieutenant flicks off the flashlight, leaving you to adjust in the dim grey light. “We’ve got about two hours before the given meeting time,” he says, almost to himself, and starts to dig in his bag for something. “Should be long enough for the rain to hide our tracks." He withdraws his hand proudly, holding a steaming thermos and two plastic cups. “Here.” He hands one to you and pours a stream of the dark liquid into your cup, just about able to see. The smell of coffee fills your nose.
You: “You always think of everything, don’t you?” You say, and the fondness bleeds into your voice unbidden.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Khm. Well. We’re likely going to be here a while.” He repositions his weight from one leg to the other, uncomfortable with your unexpected tone shift. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t get frostbite.”
You: “It would make it significantly harder for me to Jamrock shuffle about the place,” you agree. It is really fucking cold, even inside the hide. Your toes are icicles in your disco shoes. This dampness cannot be good for the crocodile leather of your shoes. The walls do a decent job at keeping out the wind, but the air is moist and stale.
KIM KITSURAGI: He peels off his raincoat and folds it into a comfortable wad, placing it on the hard-packed earth before he sits down so that his nicely pressed uniform trousers don’t get dirty. You don’t bother to do the same thing. You just flop down with a grunt, fingers wrapped tightly around your coffee cup. Kim pours his own cup and takes a sip with a pleased hum. His eyes flutter shut, so drained that he cannot keep them open anymore. He's in uniform today; black jumper, white shirt, black tie. Layers hidden underneath his crisply ironed parade jacket.
INLAND EMPIRE: Three hours spent sitting hunched over his sewing machine, pinning and tucking, letting out and taking in to get it to fit perfectly. Carefully stitching the holographic patches onto the arms and the back of the neck. He likes it to look effortless but he really does put a lot of effort into looking cool.
PERCEPTION: His breathing is starting to slow and even out. His chest rising and falling.
PERCEPTION: The jacket really does fit well. Emphasises his shoulders; surprisingly broad, corded with wiry muscle. The small dip of his waist and the flare of his hips. The jacket fits so well that it almost reveals more than if he was wearing nothing at all. You can see the bump beneath his right underarm where his gun sits in its holster, covered by the black gabardine. He would be a skilled tailor if he decided to make a career switch. You'd let him handle your precious disco clothes if they needed it.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: There are a lot of things you'd let the lieutenant handle. You love a man in uniform.
You: Do I?
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Oh yes. Just look at him.
PERCEPTION: In the pale light of the moon, against the stark black of the uniform, his skin seems to glow. His head is lolling forward. He’s falling asleep upright. His mouth going slack and relaxed as he breathes in.
SUGGESTION: You should reach out. Run your thumb over his lower lip.
PERCEPTION: It is a very nicely shaped lip. Flushed dark from the cold. Chapped a little, darker on the left side where he’s been chewing at it. His lips make a little o shape as he exhales, the heat of his breath steaming in the icy air.
VOLITION: The exhaustion is getting to you. It’s making us say things we never normally would.
SUGGESTION: Touch him. Coward.
HALF-LIGHT: Coward.
You: You force yourself to look away from the lieutenant and look out instead at the parkland. You’ve done stakeouts with Jean since your return to the force, but not with Kim.
INLAND EMPIRE: Crammed into a borrowed Coupris 40 parked in an abandoned parking lot, both of you sunken into the back seat and bundled up in several coats each. He’d bought a bottle of whiskey with him, for warmth . He’d offered it to you and you’d been sorely tempted, but instead you’d just looked at him and asked why? Jean had squirmed under your gaze like a naughty child caught teasing his little sibling. I want him back, he’d said, very very quietly, so quietly that you nearly didn’t hear him. The you that isn’t anymore. The man who died in the Seven Sisters church in Martinaise. Then Jean had downed the rest of his flask, wincing as it burned his throat, and chucked the whole of it out of the MC’s door like a petulant child throwing toys out of his pram. It clanged on the tarmac, landing in a pool of stagnant rainwater. You both stared at it for an uncomfortable amount of time. Then, louder- Never mind. Sorry. Ignore me, Harry. You’re trying your best. And so is he. But there’s a hole inside his chest, just like yours, and he doesn’t understand why yours gets to heal and his doesn’t.
LOGIC: So he chooses to act like a child about it.
VOLITION: Hey. Harry. Don’t disappear into your own head right now. You need to be alert. Someone does.
Wet Cold Bird Hide: The rain against the corrugated iron panels of the roof makes a comforting noise. A thrumming smattering sound that scratches the back of your brain. There are cracks in between the wood slats that make up the sides of the building, where the ivy shoves in its wandering fingers.
SHIVERS: Above you the clouds stream through the sea of dim stars. Aerostatic balloons buffet about on the gentle breeze. The light pollution of the city is clear from up there, on the western horizon, turning the sky faintly green and blotting out the stars.
INLAND EMPIRE: In Coal City, down in L'Ossuaire Municipal, a kid too old and too broad to be artefact-hunting finds himself caught in a narrow crawl space between two chambers. He is alone here, in this dark tomb, his fingers bloodied from clawing his way the impossibly thin concrete passages. Panic spikes in his chest, the press of the walls stopping him from breathing in fully. Then, blissfully, he twists his hips just so and frees himself; tumbling into the next chamber and crumpling on the ground with a heavy sigh of relief. In Grand Couron, a balding man sits at the head of his dining room table. There are enough chairs for eight people to dine here, but most of them have never been used. He eats his ten-minute oven ready meal alone, comforted by the sound of chatter on the radio. In Central Jamrock, a kid steals a bag of delivery food from some lady’s doorstep and eats it with his hands, burning his fingers on the too-hot sauce, crouching in a grim-dark alleyway between a Frittte! and a Video Revachol. His eyes are like dull copper coins. In Martinaise, a mother and her daughter sit on the doorstep and watch the shapes in the clouds. The girl has a cigarette, the mother a cup of hot cocoa, and they share both. Somewhere in the Pox, an overtired detective sits sentry as his partner spends time with the inside of his eyelids.
CONCEPTUALISATION: Two birds on a wire, their feet frozen in place by the ice-cold.
SHIVERS: You are here. You will always be here. Even in this abandoned wilderness, you are in the heart of the city still.
KIM KITSURAGI: His eyes flutter behind his eyelids. The cup in his hands is slipping from his grasp.
REACTION SPEED: Wait-
HAND/EYE COORDINATION: [Legendary: Success] Your hand shoots out, catching the cup just as it falls. Your hands are big and clumsy, made for indelicate work, but you can be careful too. You set it down on a patch of flat dirt beside you.
KIM KITSURAGI: His eyes fly open suddenly, his head jerking back and his breath catching. He's still for a moment, pinching his brow and trying to centre himself. "God," he says with a groan.
You: “Just resting your eyes?” Your eyes crinkle at the corners when you smile, amused.
KIM KITSURAGI: There is a sound that isn’t quite words. He pushes his glasses up to his forehead and rubs roughly at the bridge of his nose with both hands. When he speaks again, he is much more composed. "I apologise, detective. I appear to be more tired than I thought I was. It will not happen again."
DRAMA: [Medium: Failure] His voice is clipped and tight. Official. He sounds annoyed.
EMPATHY: [Trivial: Success] He is not annoyed. He is embarrassed.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: A decorated lieutenant of the RCM, falling asleep at his post. Ridiculous, he thinks.
EMPATHY: He's falling asleep where he sits even now, the soft fog of sleeplessness clouding his already poor vision. He's used to the exhaustion of the RCM life, but being a part of Pryce's taskforce is a step beyond the regular level of stressed, depressed and poorly dressed that most regular RCM officers operate at.
SUGGESTION: Talk to him. Help him.
CONCEPTUALISATION: He will drive himself into the dirt, the smell of burning motor oil hot and rich in the air.
You: "Kim," you say carefully. "You should sleep."
KIM KITSURAGI: "That would be nice," he says with a flash of- what? Annoyance? Sarcasm? It is hard to tell. "I haven't done that for a while. Unfortunately I'm on the clock, lieutenant, so I'll have to stay awake for a few more hours."
You: "You could sleep for a while now, if you wanted. If you were comfortable enough here? There's an hour till go time, at least. I'm fine keeping watch alone for a little bit and I can wake you up if anything significant happens." You shrug. “You can have my jacket if you need a blanket. I’m not too cold.”
DRAMA: [Easy: Success] A bold-faced lie, sire. You are shivering. Goose flesh bumps over your skin.
LOGIC: [Easy: Failure] No, no, we can take it. Honest.
ENDURANCE: [Easy: Success] No, really, we can’t.
KIM KITSURAGI: His eyes move slowly to you. Every move is slowed to a crawl, his beetle-eyes too tired to scuttle around, but he gives you a sceptical little glance. "That would be highly unprofessional," he says.
EMPATHY: Being tired like this makes him grouchy. Petulant. A fussy little man. He falls back on his professionalism, his stiff upper lip and his carefully built image.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: For some bizarre reason, that really gets you going.
You: "I don't mind. It’s just the two of us." You tap the edge of your styrofoam cup. "You're looking after me. Let me look after you too."
KIM KITSURAGI: He stiffens slightly at that. Shifts uncomfortably on his patrol cloak.
EMPATHY: This is his feelings complex rearing its ugly head again. He doesn't know how to handle this. "Why don't we just do our jobs instead?" He says. "And wait for the marks to show up."
AUTHORITY: Tell him to go to sleep. Order him! You're his superior officer.
EMPATHY: Somehow that feels wrong though. He's much more comfortable giving orders, and you're much more comfortable following them.
EMPATHY: [Medium: Failure] Fine then. He can suffer the points of exhaustion if he wants. Let him be.
You: You sit back, looking out of the window into the night. “I’m just saying. At least one of us should be somewhat rested.”
KIM KITSURAGI: He doesn’t answer, just huffs out a cloud of cold air, and turns to look out over the parkland.
PERCEPTION: The trees all tight-knit together. The white-silver trunks shining like silver in the moonlight.
You: “So,” you say. “What do you normally do on stakeouts?”
ESPRIT DE CORPS: You and Jean used to just bicker and drink. Sometimes you would bring a book and he would relentlessly make fun of you no matter what you chose to read.
KIM KITSURAGI: “You sit quietly and pay attention.”
EMPATHY: He doesn’t actually want you to be quiet. He’s so tired that he’s clinging to your rambling like a pale-crazed sailor trying desperately not to drown. Your voice is the one thing keeping him awake.
VOLITION: Pick a topic, any topic.
RHETORIC: We’ve got a captive audience, Harry!
You: “Do you think we’ll ever see true communism again in Revachol?”
KIM KITSURAGI: You expect him to groan or roll his eyes. He eyes you oddly at the sudden change of subject, but tilts his head thoughtfully. “I don’t know that we ever did,” he says eventually. “It’s such a purist ideology. Has to be perfect, just right, or it’s not true communism, right? Everyone has to believe. One doubter is enough to send the whole tower crumbling to the ground.”
INLAND EMPIRE: You see a flash of Steban’s infra-materialist matchbox tower, glued together impossibly with ideologically plasm. Held together for a few moments off of the strength of your belief before it crumbled down onto the floor again.
RHETORIC: Belief has a tendency to snowball. It tumbles down the hill, building momentum, until it consumes everything in its path. It’s contagious. All it needs is a little push.
You: You nudge him with your elbow, ignoring the way he tries to dodge, and give him a grin. “Hey, I can believe enough for the both of us.”
KIM KITSURAGI: He snorts. “I’m sure you can. I’ve never known someone commit so fully to communism before he even understood the concept of money.” A pause. “I’ve thought a lot about it, after the meeting with Pryce. About moralism, communism, ultraliberalism.” He says the last one like it’s a dirty word, although moralism is by far the worst one of the three in your opinion. “I don’t doubt Mazov’s main theory,” he says carefully. “It sounds… nice. It’s the practicality that’s the issue. And the violence. Any sweeping political change comes with violence.”
HALF-LIGHT- Blood on the cold cobblestones of Boogie Street, freezing solid in a couple of hours.
INLAND EMPIRE: Sweeping political change is coming, no matter what you feel about it. An out-of-control tram flying off its track. You can’t stop it. The only thing you can do is try to steer it.
You: “Violence is a part of the life-cycle, though, right? After death, life again.”
KIM KITSURAGI: His breath puffs out in short bursts of fog. The creature of impulse in his chest is excited by the idea; the part of him that always reaches for his gun as a solution, the part of him with six perforations on his record. “I don’t know,” he says firmly. “I’m not… I’m not the kind of person who should decide these things. I’m just a police officer. What do I know?”
EMPATHY: There is the shadow of a child in his voice. Nervousness. The tiniest wobble.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: He is deeply scared of change, no matter how much he understands the need for it. No matter what he comes to terms with, he is grateful that he will never be responsible for the big choices.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Let’s change the topic.”
You: “Tell me something about you,” you say, almost too quickly. “Tell me your favourite memory.”
KIM KITSURAGI: “Please don’t try to can-open me. I am not a suspect. I am your coworker.” He says it lightly, like he’s joking, but he’s being entirely serious. There is an undercurrent of steel in his tone that makes you feel cold in your bones.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Not a suspect? I’m already pretty certain he’s guilty… of stealing your good sense. You cannot stop thinking about him.
VOLITION: God. Don’t talk. I think I preferred it when you were still going on about the drugs.
EMPATHY: That was an oddly tender thought, for you.
PERCEPTION: The evergreen thicket outside creaks in the wind. A deer, grey and white against the black and white backdrop of aspens, walks across the clearing.
You: “It’s pretty,” you say after a moment. “Out there.”
KIM KITSURAGI: “It’s wild,” he says. Terrifying, he means. “All those dense trees, so thick you can’t see through them. Full of wolves. Bears. Feral addicts.”
You: You huff, slightly offended. “I’m a feral addict,” you say.
KIM KITSURAGI: His brows pucker. “You’re in recovery , lieutenant. And you’re doing so well. It’s not the same.”
EMPATHY: This is difficult for him to grapple with. He doesn’t like to conflate the two images in his brain; the skinny junkies that he hauls off of Boogie Street and into the precinct to throw in the holding cells until their high has worn off, and his friend who sits beside him all warm and solid and firm. He cannot allow himself to conflate the two, to see traces of you in them, because otherwise he would never be able to do his job. The guilt would eat him.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: In the Moralintern-informed RCM view, addicts are feral and dangerous. Subversives. You, on the other hand, are not an addict. You are an officer . This classification supersedes any other.
RHETORIC: [Hard: Success] Addiction is not a moral failing. It is an illness.
You: “I’m not better than them, just because I’m trying to recover. I’m only able to recover because of the structure around me, the support, the…” You trail off. It is easy for you to imagine yourself dying in the Pox like so many others do, in some disused room in the vast hospital complex, foaming yellow vomit on your tie. Kim is listening to you intently, very still, with his head tilted to one side. “It’s a privilege, to be able to recover,” you say more firmly. “Not everyone gets to have that. It doesn’t make their lives worth any less.”
KIM KITSURAGI: He inclines his head, a sharp nod. “Khm. Yes,” he says. “I see your point.” He is silent for a little bit. He’s tucked up his knees to his chest to rest his cup on them and he is staring at a point somewhere beyond the treeline. The darkness hides his crows feet, the bags under his eyes. It makes him look impossibly young. You can see the shadow of a younger softer man, an aspirational aerostatic pilot, a hopeful moralist. Worshipping at the false shrine of incremental change.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: Despite the shivers it instills, he does not stand by that idea anymore.
RHETORIC: Slow change only serves to benefit the status quo. Imperceptible, crawling progress does nothing for anyone. Change, real tangible change, has to be sudden to be successful. Violent.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: He understands that now. Kim Kitsuragi is a man with enormous capacity for empathy, though he tries to keep a lid on it most of the time. He loves his city and hates that the lives of normal people are treated like pawns on a chessboard, statistics on a crime map, cards in an interisolary game of blackjack. It has been stagnant, unchallenged, for too long.
RHETORIC: Moralism is no longer a morally justifiable option. Compliance is complicity.
HALF-LIGHT: That creature that lives under his skin and feeds on blood is getting more and more excited as the days crawl on. Straining to get out.
INLAND EMPIRE: May. He will let the creature free then. This is when the snows will melt and the rain will fall and the blood will run through the city’s gutters.
RHETORIC: Eat the rich.
HALF-LIGHT: Dine on bourgeois flesh.
KIM KITSURAGI: He stirs slightly, raising his cup to his lips again. You mimic the gesture. The coffee is lukewarm now but it is tooth-achingly sweet and milky, just how you like it. “It is pretty,” Kim says eventually. “The silver birches. There used to be silver birches in the grounds of my school when I was younger. I used to sit under them and eat my lunch.” He huffs a laugh, although it doesn’t sound like there’s any humour to it.
INLAND EMPIRE: The wind whispering in the leaves. It’s almost like having friends to talk to.
You: “I’m glad I don’t remember my school years,” you say.
KIM KITSURAGI: “You were probably popular.” He looks over at you, a little smirk on his face. “Athletic, chatty, friendly.”
You: “I’m surprised you weren’t.”
KIM KITSURAGI: “What?” He splutters. “Don’t be ridiculous, Harry.”
EMPATHY: A orphaned seolite faggot with milk-bottle glasses and a stutter. I wonder why they weren’t lining up around the block to be my friend.
You: “I would have wanted to be your friend,” you say quietly.
INLAND EMPIRE: It is not a random guess. You would have. There is something in him, in both of you, that draws you together like electrolysed supramagnets.
ENCYCLOPEDIA: Electrolysed supramagnets transcend the power of regular magnets. They are used in delicate radio equipment used to transmit blurry messages through the super-deep-grey of the Pale, strong enough to crush steel within their grip.
KIM KITSURAGI: “You would have beaten me up and stolen my 2 centim lunch money,” he says with a short laugh. “You would have loathed me. I was a snotty little know-it-all.”
EMPATHY: There’s a lot of anger there, at his younger self. He tolerated a lot more than he should have done, but he ran his mouth a lot more than he should have done too. Exacerbated the problem.
RHETORIC: The lieutenant has always had this tendency to try and argue himself out of trouble. To appeal to logic and reason.
You: “I can’t imagine hating you,” you say. Your voice is naked and truthful.
CONCEPTUALISATION: You literally cannot form the shape of your thought in your mind. It is inconceivable; petering out into white-and-black static like a poorly tuned televisual screen.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Maybe,” he says. He’s lost in thought. His eyes follow the breeze moving through the white bodies of the trees, slightly blurred by his glasses.
INLAND EMPIRE: There are universes in which he hates you. That thought comes so much easier to you. There are universes where you say terrible things to him, where you do terrible things. Where you make him watch as you blow your own brains out in the Whirling-in-Rags cafeteria and he hates you for the memories you leave him with.
HALF-LIGHT: You have so much capacity for terrible things, packed away in that broad chest of yours.
INLAND EMPIRE: But here, in this universe at least, he feels the same.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: He won’t tell you that, though.
KIM KITSURAGI: “I wish I’d known you back then.” He sighs. “But really, I’m too old to think bitterly about my school days.”
SUGGESTION: Change the subject. This is quickly getting morose.
You: “What do you think we’ll find?” You ask, gesturing out towards the window.
KIM KITSURAGI: The lieutenant yawns, his jaw popping and cracking as he rubs a hand over his throat. His stubble is coming through more than he normally likes; he sacrificed his morning shave for a few extra minutes of sleep. “I think we’ll find a low-level cop trading out cheap secrets to a low-level Moralintern agent,” he says. “I think it’ll be- what did Pryce call it? A thread. Another thread to pull on.”
HALF-LIGHT: Another rabbit hole to fall down.
INLAND EMPIRE- Pull the thread. Unravel it until it’s all laid bare in front of you.
You: “Pryce is planning something big.” You take another draught of the ice-cold coffee. “Le Retour.”
RHETORIC: Riding the coat tails of the people rising up. An agent of chaos, an unknown entity. An agent of blood on the streets.
KIM KITSURAGI: He’s too tired to hold himself so stiffly. He lets himself relax, slumps forward so that his chest is leaning against his knees. It is odd, seeing him like this while in full uniform. The stiff lines of his shoulder pads and the soft curve of his spine. “If the Moralintern are getting eyes on the inside, it’s likely they’re already onto him.”
You: “Onto us, ” you correct.
KIM KITSURAGI: He hums darkly in agreement. He doesn’t like this ‘us’ . It worries him, spikes a visceral anxiety in his stomach. But he is part of it now, part of precinct 41, just as much as you are or Minot is or Jean is or Gottlieb is.
You: “Revachol will rule herself again,” you say. “Something beautiful is going to happen.”
INLAND EMPIRE: A few weeks, maybe a month from now, a storm breaks. Rivulets running down the broken windows of the skytouchers in Revachol East. Blood red water breaking the banks, bursting over the storm barriers on the tributaries running into the Esperance. Damp ashes of newly burnt out buildings, hissing when the rain touches the fresh hot wound. The aerostatic balloons above observe impassively.
RHETORIC: You hold your hope close to your chest. You have to. But what good will come from a revolution led by a fucking cop-militia? It keeps you up at night sometimes.
VOLITION: But you carry on.
You: “Something beautiful,” you repeat, a little quieter.
EMPATHY: He laughs silently at that, remembering your obsession with that blank wall in Martinaise, desperate to fill the empty space with something better . He doesn’t share your optimism. Perhaps in the morning, in the sunlight, he will. But here in the dark, with his exhaustion dulling his thoughts, he lets himself feel bitter and angry that this is the position that has been handed to him.
INTERFACING: You want to touch the creases on his cheeks, the soft folded laundry of his face. He is crumpled; you want to smooth him out.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You really need to touch him. It feels very urgent, suddenly, like you’ll die if you don’t.
HALF-LIGHT: You’ll die if you do, as well. You will die either way.
SUGGESTION: One of his hands is lying on the dirt ground at his side, holding himself stable. Lie your hand over the top.
You: “Kim,” you say, very quietly. You reach out a hand and reach out, to place it over the top of his where it rests on the damp earth.
REACTION SPEED: [Hard: Failure] Wait-
KIM KITSURAGI: He is too fast for you, even with his reflexes softened with exhaustion. He traps your hand like a spider under a glass, seizing your wrist and pinning it to the ground with sharp, precise fingers.
EMPATHY: [Easy: Success] He is not entirely sure why he just did that. Just that, somewhere in the medial temporal lobe, in the amygdala, a message flies to the hypothalamus and triggers a burst of adrenaline. He responds like he’s under attack.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: He is under attack. Every day. A million little indignities at your hands, a million little touches and smiles and nudges and jokes and utterly guileless sad looks when you think he doesn’t see . He sees nearly all of them, by the way. It makes him… defensive. A thin cord of quiet fury wrapping its way around his neck.
HALF-LIGHT- His fingers are digging in painfully. Holding your wrist still.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Detective,” he says. “Don’t.”
PAIN THRESHOLD: His fingers tighten. You yelp.
KIM KITSURAGI: His eyes darken at the sound. His tongue flicks out to wet his lips. He pulls his hand away immediately, like the warmth of your skin is burning him.
EMPATHY: He sits up very straight. His face is unreadable. Anger?
You: “Why not?”
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: What’s a little hand-on-hand contact between bros?
LOGIC: Don’t be obtuse. You know that’s not what this is about.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: It’s about getting that sweet, sweet pre-apocalyptic sex. Bang like you've got an expiry date, baby. The threat of impending doom only makes it hotter.
EMPATHY: It's about vulnerability. He's so deeply repressed that any confrontation of emotion is painful for him.
You: I don't want him to be in pain. I don't want to hurt him.
EMPATHY: He needs to face it. He needs to tend the wound to be able to heal.
SUGGESTION: Go on, Harry. Push your luck. Get closer.
You: You lean into his space, following as he tries to pull away. “Kim. Why not?”
AUTHORITY: It feels odd, disobeying a direct order from the lieutenant. You don't like it.
KIM KITSURAGI: A massive shiver runs through him, starting at the tail end of his spine and running up his body to cup around the base of his skull like hands around the bowl of a gin glass. He keeps his mouth shut, lips pressed in an angry little line.
HALF-LIGHT: He wants to push you away, hard. He wants to hurt you. The way his lip curls just so and his hands flare out like he’s restraining himself from pushing you away, the full body shudder that runs through him. He’s disgusted.
EMPATHY: [Formidable: Success] Yes. He is. But it’s not you that he’s disgusted with; it’s himself.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: This animalistic part of him, the part of him that wants things and feels things and experiences bodily impulses is something that he has tried to cordon off in a little box for years. Kim Kitsuragi doesn’t want anything. He doesn’t need anything. Certainly not base and rank things like human contact. Like affection.
EMPATHY: Or rather, he wants these things so badly that they consume him sometimes.
INLAND EMPIRE: A scene that plays out every night. He should have been asleep the second his head touched the pillow; he is tired enough. He lies awake instead, on his side, watching the lights from the motorway that runs parallel to his apartment building moving on the ceiling. There are images that he is trying to push out of his mind, just like you do, but these are not the sweating dizzying nightmares that keep you awake, Harry. These are worse, to him. A hand, palm broad and calloused from years of rough treatment, brushing against his bare knuckles. Sad, smiling eyes. Looking up at him with that soft strange reverence that makes him feel so powerful. A moustachioed mouth, spewing so much ridiculous shit in front of very important people. Very bad. Very embarrassing. He cannot help but imagine putting that mouth to better use, and the tips of his ears burn. In the bed, the Lieutenant groans and rolls over onto his back, kicking away the sheets to feel the cool air hitting his body. He focuses on the ceiling. Orange and red from passing MCs, and very occasionally flashing green accompanied by wailing sirens. Orange and green. Orange and green.
ENCYCLOPEDIA: The lights of the Revachol Voluntary Medical Corps.
EMPATHY: Busy saving lives out there while he lays in bed and- what?
INLAND EMPIRE: He practises a Volta, a return of air, makes himself breathe in and out. I found a blank white spot. He fixes his eyes on a patch of white shadow, where the green and orange passing lights from the window don’t reach. All the others looked up. What a beautiful day! What beautiful weather! One hand over his heart, not quite touching. The white undershirt that he wears to sleep in is bunched up a little. A dark line of hair on the washboard flat of his stomach. His other hand makes a fist in the cotton sheets. His head tips back. An elegant strain of the muscles at his neck. But all I heard was the printing machine. He knows the lines to the Volta by heart, so well that he barely registers the meaning anymore. Just the rhythm of the words as he mutters them under his breath; still keeping himself quiet, even here, in his own bedroom, with no one to hear but the pair of barn swallows nesting under the eaves outside his window. His tongue darts out to wet his lips. His heartbeat calms. He is unsatisfied, but it is better that way. He nurses the burning blue-hot flame of disappointment in his belly, curling in on himself like he’s protecting something precious. He nurtures his self-denial, cares for it like an ailing old friend.
You: “Kim.” You lay your hand on his shin, leaning over to get a look at his face. “What’s wrong?”
KIM KITSURAGI: “Khm.” He shakes his head, shrinking back. “Nothing.” He takes his glasses off to polish them on his jacket sleeve.
EMPATHY: It is easier to deal with you when he can’t actually see your face. The darkness combined with his poor vision cobbles your face together into a fuzzy smudge, a thumb-print in the corner of a photograph.
You: “That’s not true, is it? It’s not nothing.”
KIM KITSURAGI: “You are doing it again,” he says. “You are trying to can-open me.”
You: “Why won’t you let me touch you anymore? You keep...” You wave your hand around in a vague gesture.
EMPATHY: You know the answer to that. You just don’t want to let yourself accept it, and he sure as hell isn’t going to spell it out for you.
KIM KITSURAGI: He just groans out a yawn, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Ugh. I can’t think. I need to sleep.”
ESPRIT DE CORPS: Exhaustion is wearing down his self control. Shutting off the parts of his brain that keep him sane. Too tired to raise the Authority eyebrow.
You: “Then sleep,” you say. “I can keep watch. Just let me do something for you, please-”
KIM KITSURAGI: He slides his glasses back on and puts a hand on your shoulder, gently pushing you away from him, and you can feel the control, the tension in his grip. “I’m fine, detective. You don’t need to do anything.”
You: “But I want to.”
ESPRIT DE CORPS: Sleep would be delicious , he thinks. Sleep and human touch. Things that don’t fit into his utilitarian worldview.
SUGGESTION: Get him closer. For warmth.
EMPATHY: Let him sleep on your lap. Let him rest. He needs it desperately; he is fraying at the hems, threads of his composure all unpicked.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Take care of him, if you know what I mean.
You: “Kim.” Your voice is getting whiny. Wheedling. You clear your throat. “Come here.” You reposition so that you’re sat back against the wall of the bird hide, grunting slightly as you feel the icy shift of the cool air in your bones. You can still see the window, still keep up your observance.
PERCEPTION: He sighs. It sounds like giving in.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Fine.” He speaks shortly, as if he’s begrudgingly doing you a favour, and moves a little closer to you. You put your arm around his narrow shoulders, feeling the cool chill that radiates off his uniform, and tug him the rest of the way so that he’s pressed up against your side. He’s shivering, and he melts against you. “God, you’re warm.”
You: “I know. I’m like a bulky, inconvenient space heater.”
KIM KITSURAGI: He reaches up a hand and tugs gently on the left ear flap of your Mazovian Revolutionary Hat. “This is the only practical article of clothing you own, isn’t it?”
You: You smile. It is pretty practical. Pretty badass too, makes you look like a true communard. You take it off and plonk it down on Kim’s head instead. He needs the warmth far more than you do.
Mazovian Revolutionary’s Hat: Good job, Comrade. Keep your brother-in-arms warm. Share your body heat. Share your clothes. Share your true revolutionary spirit.
EMPATHY: He’s more relaxed now, now that he’s closed the space between you. His eyes are slowly sliding shut, and he keeps jerking himself awake. He slumps a little, sliding slowly down the side of your chest.
You: “You know that you can’t save the world if you’re so tired that you’re falling asleep on your feet?”
KIM KITSURAGI: “It’s just for the rest of this… case,” he mumbles, nose tucked somewhere against your armpit.
LOGIC: It feels odd referring to this as a case when you don’t really know the whole picture. This feels bigger than a case, bigger than the RCM really.
RHETORIC: This is a people’s movement.
ENDURANCE: Despite that, it still does not transcend physical limits. You still need to care for your physical vehicle.
You: “That’s what I used to say.” You straighten the hat on his head, and you don’t pull your hand away. It stays in the curve of his neck, tucked between the hat flap and the soft skin below his ear. Warming him up; his ears are red raw at the tips from the ravages of the cold. “And then two years had gone by and I tried to put my head through a hole in the world.”
KIM KITSURAGI: “I’m not you.”
You: “I know. Thank god.” You huff a small laugh. “But still. I don’t want to watch you work yourself into the dirt.”
KIM KITSURAGI: He hums, not really listening to you. His eyes are following a pair of bats flying across the clearing outside.
ENCYCLOPEDIA: Eptesicus Nilssonii, the northern bat. 240-280mm wingspan, generally weighing between 9 and 11 grams. They like empty buildings, old Dolorian churches, and bombed out apartment blocks. They are the most common species of bat in Insulinde, but they flourish especially in the abandoned roof-tops of Revachol. The hospital is riddled with them.
INLAND EMPIRE: A young woman, thin and reedy in an ugly pink raincoat, half-sits and half-lies on the floor of the abandoned hospital. She watches the pig-face of the bat hanging from the exposed rafters above her and sees it grow larger and larger until it threatens to swallow her. She muffles her screams into her elbow. In the morning she will wake cold and alone still and she will wish that the monster she saw in her hallucinogenic haze really had consumed her. The spectre of the twisted dream-bat will follow her for the rest of her life.
PERCEPTION: You can hear the chittering call as it fades into the dark sky above you.
You: “Can I kiss you?” You say suddenly.
KIM KITSURAGI: Silence. His face is blank. Only his eyes move, flashing up to your face and then quickly away.
You: “Please?” You add, because it feels polite. And it’s embarrassing. It’s pathetic. It’s needy and sad; you are a sad old man, sitting awkwardly on the cold damp ground, looming over your work mate and begging him to take pity on you. Begging him to make you useful.
KIM KITSURAGI: He clears his throat. “Khm. I don't think that would be wise," he says weakly, and you look away, take a deep breath.
You: "Right."
ESPRIT DE CORPS: He is thinking about Le Retour, the urban legend that according to you will become real in less than a month’s time. Pryce and his plans that you still don’t fully understand. The looming Thing in the distance that has no name. The Gloaming, the Blood-Letting of Unimaginable Proportions, the throat into which all the world will be swallowed up. The death of the city itself. You, maybe, with a bullet splitting your jaw and your brains painting the concrete red. Something beautiful is going to happen. Too many thoughts, buzzing in his brain like swarming flies in the Central Jamrock fruit market. He wants something, anything, to shut them off.
HALF-LIGHT: Anasthetic injected directly into his brain. A stiff drink. A warm body on top of him. Anything.
EMPATHY: No, not just anything.
INLAND EMPIRE: You.
KIM KITSURAGI: He shifts at your side. You are there, alive, jaw still intact. “I didn’t say no,” he says quietly. You are wringing the truth out of him, squeezing little bits of openness out of him like an old washerwoman wringing out sheets with a mangle.
You: Your eyes go wide in surprise. “Oh. Right. Okay then,” you say.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Hell yeah. It’s go-time, baby.
SUGGESTION: Tread carefully.
You: You draw your hand away from around his shoulders and bring it to his right cheek instead. He blinks at you, impassive, through his thick glasses.
ENCYCLOPEDIA: They are VidaCo Magnusson Diamond glasses in the colour Silver, one of the cheaper designs available from the mid-range line. The bulk of their cost is in the lenses. A prescription that intense is expensive. They are diamond shaped, framed with silver metal and there is a scratch on the left lens that has been carefully buffed out as much as possible. Only a white shadow of it remains. In the line of duty they have been punched off his face, trodden into the pavement, bent out of shape. They have fallen into the sea. He has repaired them every single time with the same careful precision he uses to care for the Kineema.
EMPATHY: He loves his things. He is fastidious about taking care of his possessions.
INLAND EMPIRE: He takes care of you.
HALF-LIGHT: You’re his possession.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Oh, fuck yes.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: You should consider yourself extremely fucking lucky.
You: You lean in carefully to see if he’ll lean closer, but he doesn’t. He lets you come to him instead. You press yourself against him, against his chest, feeling his breath stutter slightly. You can feel the bulk of his gun, holstered under his right arm. You press your lips against his, slowly, carefully. This is a polite kiss, a gentle kiss, like he is a delicate animal and you are wary of making any sudden movements in case you send him running.
KIM KITSURAGI: He sighs, his mouth sliding open against yours, and he takes control of the kiss. His eyes shut. One of his hands comes to your shoulder, not pushing you away or pulling you closer but just lying there on the green suede of your jacket. A silent order. Stay still.
INLAND EMPIRE: It was when he saw you for the first time after Martinaise. That was when he realised. You bounded up to him like a dog let off-leash, threw your arms around him in a rib-crushing hug, so warm and sweet that he was almost swept away by the current of your enthusiasm. Almost. He extracted himself from your arms and straightened his jacket with a khm, and resolved to stop letting you touch him. It was getting too close. Personal. Conflicting with the innate nature of lieutenancy.
You: Experimentally, you dip your tongue into his mouth. He lets you with an amused twitch of his lips. He is very tolerant of your tendency to kiss wetly, unbothered by your slobber. The hand on your shoulder is careful, gentle, drawing shapes and patterns that you can’t make out because all of your focus is sucked into his mouth when he tilts his head and brings his tongue to meet yours.
PERCEPTION: He tastes of coffee, like an extension of yourself. It is not unpleasant.
INLAND EMPIRE: This touch is unfamiliar. It is loving, overwhelmingly so. Something that has never been felt, not by this new version of you.
INTERFACING: You want to lay your hands on every inch of him. You want him to take you apart, take all of the pieces apart to see how they work and then carefully put them back together. The same careful methodical way he tends to his gun. You want his attention focused on you like that. Singularly intense.
PERCEPTION: He’s not shivering anymore. He’s leeched enough of your body heat. His extremities are still frozen, though, his nose like an ice cube pressed against the curve of your cheek.
KIM KITSURAGI: He’s throwing caution aside, too, his hands becoming bolder and his mouth hungrier. He is drunk on sleeplessness. He stretches, arching his spine, and you hear the joints of his shoulders pop. You wince, and he laughs into your mouth. His other hand finds its way beneath the hem of your shirt, quite suddenly, and you squeal.
LOGIC: His hands are so cold. Dreadful circulation. It’s why he always wears the gloves.
REACTION SPEED: [Easy: Failure] Wait, when did the gloves come off?
You: “God,” you say, low and coarse, and kiss him again.
HALF-LIGHT: Deeper, deeper, deeper, until you drown.
CONCEPTUALISATION: You’re flying low like a great skua, wings cresting the tips of every wave.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You need to kiss him till you pass out. You need his dick in your mouth more than you need to breathe air.
VOLITION: Okay, wait, no. Slow down there, Harry-boy.
LOGIC: This is not the most comfortable venue for a tryst of that kind. Your knees are already aching from the cold air.
ENDURANCE: You do need to breathe actually. Quite desperately.
You: You ignore the urge. You want to drown.
KIM KITSURAGI: "Harry." A sigh, parting just enough for you to suck in a breath of air. "Harrier." Kim pulls away suddenly, leaving the void between you to fill with cold air. He doesn't go far. He slumps a little, presses his face into your green suede jacket. He is trying to stifle a yawn against your shoulder. He's settled himself against you, all sleepy and pliant, with his eyes squeezed shut. Sleep-drunk. But not too tired to remember his work. "Khm. Do you still have eyes on the window, lieutenant?"
You: "Hmmm." You hum and press your lips to the crown of his head, to the shoreline of his gently receding hair.
KIM KITSURAGI: "Is that a yes or a no?"
You: "Huh?" You were absolutely not listening. You scramble for an answer that makes sense.
REACTION SPEED: Wait-
PERCEPTION: Yeah, no. You were too focused on his hair, surprisingly soft beneath your lips. He smells like mud and leaves.
You: "No?" you say tentatively.
KIM KITSURAGI: "No?" He leans back and raises his eyebrow.
LOGIC: Oops. Wrong answer.
SUGGESTION: Backtrack now, as fast as you can.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: This is what he was afraid of all along. Distracting you. Another reason for you to avoid the case, to avoid working, even more than you already are. He was worried about distracting himself too. He's compromised, just as much as you are.
You: "Yes, I mean. Yes." That's got to be the correct answer.
PERCEPTION: Somewhere out amongst the evergreen trees, the wild pines, a wolf howls.
KIM KITSURAGI: The lieutenant’s eyebrow raises a fraction higher, and you swear he rolls his eyes at you. "Detective," he says, exasperated. "Pay attention." He turns away from you, towards the window, although he doesn't unglued himself from your side.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: You are too warm, too soft, for him to leave you.
INLAND EMPIRE: The view in front of you is empty, the trees and the ground and the sky framed behind the glass of the window. The picture is still except for the wind in the trees, the occasional calls of wildlife. The meeting will begin at its appointed time. You have twenty minutes left now.
You: You tighten your arm around the lieutenant’s shoulders.
HALF-LIGHT: Soon the sky will reach the peak of its darkness. The hollow animal tracks in the mud will fill with blood. You will smell gunpowder in the air.
KIM KITSURAGI: He gives you a tired smile and presses his cold hand over your forearm, running his fingers through the thick dark hair.
CONCEPTUALISATION: This is a symbiotic relationship; you warm him up, he cools you down.
VOLITION: This is how it begins.
HALF-LIGHT: You do not know yet how it ends.