tell me we’ll never get used to it - by any other name
(posting chapters here while off ao3)
There was no conclusive start to their time together. For her to have marked a beginning would have meant accepting that there would be an end, a limit, a day when their time would run out. And she didn’t.
She remembered the first time she’d seen her only because she knew it must have happened. What had she been wearing? Had it been sunny outside, or had it been overcast? Was the room hot or cold? When had their eyes met for the first time?
What had she seen in her?
This is how it goes.
There’s a monster on the loose, and everyone is hiding. There’s a monster on the loose, and the story should have a hero. There’s a monster on the loose, and it should be taken down by spears and cannons the strength of dozens.
There’s a monster on the loose, and she doesn’t care about any of that.
The Midsummerman, they’d called him. He’d liked to display his victims in works of art so meticulous it almost hurt to take them down—knives and cyanide, crowns perched on bleach-white skulls, hands and wrists interlocked in a bed of flowers. Like children, asleep in the meadow.
Midsummer for his dreams. Man because that was what they believed him to be.
Sometimes, she still cursed his name in her sleep.
*
She approaches her nightmares critically, clinically, cynically, and calculatingly, and everything else that starts with a C. What does this mean? What about that? Whose face is this? This hand? This body hanging from the rafters? Are those my demons crawling from the shadows and pinning me down, or are they someone else’s? Is it a river I’m standing in, or is it a sea?
Denial is the prescription she writes herself. She’s not a doctor for nothing.
*
She’d paid attention to her in the way a person paid attention to the stones on a trail, or the turn of the stars behind the clouds.
In another world, she didn’t think she’d even have noticed her. In another one, she didn’t think she’d have been able to tear her gaze away. Maybe in yet another one, where stakes were higher but life was simpler, they’d have been thrown together by fate and accident and wild, wild circumstances and gone up in each other’s flames, and it would have been easy.
She’d bumped into her on the first day, she recalled, going around the corner. She’d spilled tea on herself—not much, just a splash—and dropped a pen. Of all her memories of the day, she had no idea why that was the one that stood out the most. The way the mind works, eh?
She’d asked questions, she remembered. Most people liked to ask questions as if they already knew the answer to them—sos and what you’re sayings and rights. She’d asked questions the way questions were meant to be asked—wide-eyed and curious and serious at the same time, taking things in and thinking about them instead of being bitter about being wrong. She thinks that’s what struck her first.
She’d listened with her eyes and her hands and her face and her body, and, when she’d looked up, she’d meet her eyes and nod. A happy nod, a solemn nod, an impish nod, but a nod nonetheless. Yes, it said, I hear you.
And then, over a body stuffed with coals in a field of withered flowers, in the midst of lights and frenzy and protocol and shouting, she’d held a shaking woman in her arms and stroked her back and sat and listened until she gave a name.
*
What do we do now?
*
There had been an expression that almost looks like loss on her face when they’d lead Van Statten away, and, not quite sure what she was doing, but doing it anyways, she took her hand and led her to a hole-in-the-wall chippy with enough actual holes in the walls that she refused to eat in the building itself (much to the disgruntlement of the woman behind the counter, who’s shouts of It’s fucking atmosphere! followed them all the way down the street and around the bend).
(Maybe that’s when it started—the two of them wandering into a churchyard and sitting beneath stone angels, her laughing as she upset the box, and laughing harder as she plucked chips from the ground and ate them, dirt and all.)
Looking back, she found herself wondering why she never left. Or, rather, why she stayed. Companionship was the word that often surfaced. Camaraderie and a mutual inability to think of anything else to do, and maybe some curiosity thrown into the mix, too.
And then, one day, on the highest bluff in the middle of nowhere, hot and sweaty and aching to the bone, the trees below lit up like a forest of flames in the light of the setting sun and the sky above burning and swirling with stars and clouds, she took her face in her hands and pressed her lips to hers, and everything felt right.
*
Is this love, she wonders at a point, or is this obsession. And who’s to say that it isn’t both.
She doesn’t know the difference.
*
It’s enough to say that not much changes, because it’s too much to think about the little things that do. Hands that linger for fractions of seconds that burn like dying suns and the smallest of smiles from across hallways and conference rooms that shouldn’t make her heart beat like there’s two of them but do. Gazes that hold her and make the hair stand up on the back of her neck and scorch her to the core. A jacket hanging on a doorknob in her flat and an old pink mug on the kitchen counter in hers. Calls that stretch far past what could reasonably be called night, except there’s a reason now, and strands of bleached blonde hair tangled up in the sheets with brown.
And the kisses. The kisses are good, too. And everything else that follows.
She mentions it offhandedly, one day, the pipes and mildew in her flat. And then, because she wants to help, or because she doesn’t have a filter, or for no reason at all, she’s asking her to move in.
There’s a moment, when she’s staring at her, where she thinks she’s put her foot in her mouth. But then she throws her arms around her, and she can feel her smiling against her lips.
Her flat sells surprisingly well, considering the nest of cockroaches in the bathroom they didn’t tell the buyer about.
*
Jack is ecstatic. When is he ever not?
If only he could know how it ends.
*
It had been unrealistic, she supposed to have expected things to be perfect then and for forever. More fanciful, still, for her to expect her to be perfect then and for forever. Smiles tended to wilt behind closed doors and laughter turn to growls, and she had the illusion of all the time in the world to see every grin twist into a scowl.
Money was one of the few things she’d never had to worry about, which was just as well. She didn’t think she’d have been able to bring herself to care.
She’d disagreed. She’d disagreed back. And then they were shouting, and then she was storming out of the flat. The slam of the door had echoed down the hallway behind her, and kept ringing in her ears even five blocks away.
She’d spent the night curled up on a bus stop bench, hood pulled over her face and arms crossed tightly over her chest, and woken to an old woman with a shopping cart tugging at her boots.
She’d given her the boots. She didn’t know why. She still thought about them, sometimes.
She’d found her like that, twisting an old coupon the woman had given her idly in her hands, in the morning, a cup of tea in either hand and a box of custard creams tucked beneath her arm.
They’d bought a purple couch.
*
Three of us against the world, she used to say. And then it was two, and then. . .
And who knew what it was, now.
*
Communication is the key to a good relationship, she’d heard someone say once. A teacher, maybe? She doubted it was any of her friends. Maybe Jack, if he weren’t so bad at giving advice, and even worse at following it.
Communion is subjective. She talks, of course she talks. It’s the one thing she’s never learned not to do. She talks and she talks and she talks, but she never says, and she doesn’t think she hasn’t noticed.
She knew her; she barely knew her. She told her everything, but she still knew nothing. They’d speak without ever exchanging a word, and she would squeeze her wrist lightly when she stood to refill their mugs. She’d answer questions until she didn’t, and she’d ask until she stopped. Ebbing and flowing, the conversations went, and that’s how they left it.
It was beyond words, in a way, and so much lesser in another. Honest. Arduous. Cryptic and impossible and, depending on how you looked at it, completely pointless. She wishes everything were so easy.
She thinks that she knew—about her, what she was and what she wasn’t—or suspected, at the very least. She’d never said anything, not with words, but she’d say it in other ways—the way she’d roll over when she would crawl back into bed in the dead of night, and silently wrap an arm around her waist; the way she’d make no comment about the plain, dark clothes that would appear and vanish in their closet without explanation; the way she’d turn the news off when she switched it on in the morning and locked their fingers together as they drank tea over the papers; the way she never said a word.
See? Communication.
*
She wished—
Oh, god, she wished.
*
There’s a house on the junction of Satellite Street and Fifth Avenue. Boards that hadn’t been there when the house had been sold are nailed across the windows on the first floor. The windows on the second floor are shuttered. Daffodils grow in the front yard, and the roof is covered in dead leaves and fallen branches.
He was tired. Tired and scared, and ready to give up. She’d time it perfectly. He wouldn’t have fought.
Except she was wrong.
Nine shots. Six hits. She still couldn't stand fireworks.
Trembling on a porch, gasping for air, spreading pools of red, and pain that was so much more than just physical. Hands that couldn’t move, a heart that couldn’t beat, and eyes that could do nothing but watch as two more bullets sunk into her heart.
all you have to do is breathe. but you could never do that right either, could you?
tell me we’ll never get used to it - all you have to do is breathe. but you could never do that right either, could you?
“Glospin?”
“Theta. How nice of you to join us.”
“Why’re the lights off, what’re you—”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, cousin dear.”
“Glospin, what—oh.”
“Back away, Theta.”
“Glospin, what did you—”
“Ow!”
“Glospin!”
“You’ve stabbed me! You stabbed me!”
“What the hell are you doing? Get up, he—shit.”
“Help! Somebody, help!”
“Stop it!”
“What’s going on?”
“Oh, my god.”
“She stabbed me! She killed him, and she stabbed—”
“I didn’t do this, I just found—”
“Fuck, I can’t feel my fingers—oh, god, I’m faint—”
“Shut up!”
“Get her away from me!”
“Quences, he—”
“It was him—”
“I can’t—”
“I didn’t do this!”
“Stop it!”
“Get her off—fuck!”
“What the hell’ve you done?!”
*
“Hello, Theta.” She glances up at the new man.
“Hello. I like your waistcoat.”
The doctor smooths the wrinkles in it as he sits, placing his notebook on his knee. “Thank you.”
“They won’t let me have a waistcoat,” she says. Her chin is in her hand, elbow propped up on the armrest. It’s an expensive chair—it feels like one, at any rate—and she’s half-afraid her arm will sink into the leather. “Or a suit, for that matter. I’ve asked for one, asked them to bring me one from home, but they keep saying no. Why do you suppose that is?”
“When you say they, are you referring to your family?”
“Lovely weather, isn’t it?” she says, cocking her head in her hand. It’s pouring buckets, and the window panes rattle with every fat droplet.
“I suppose it is,” says the doctor, “if you like the downpour.”
“Rain’s nice,” she says. “Rain’s brilliant.”
He chuckles. “No shortage of that in Cardiff.”
“Love a good rainstorm,” she says. “And there’s always the best puddles afterwards. Mud, too. Love mud. Bad rep.” She frowns. “Too bad.” She glances at him out of the corner of her eye. There’s something written at the top of the page, but she can’t make out what it is. Shorter than a note, longer than the date. “Are you going to tell me that that’s a metaphor?”
“Do you see it as a metaphor?”
She shrugs. “Don’t know. Sounds like something you’re supposed to say.” She drops her arm and rolls her head back, staring up at the ceiling. “Why’s it always got to be a metaphor? Can’t anything just be what it is? Though,” she says, tilting her head from side-to-side, letting it roll across the back of the might-be-be-expensive chair, “I guess things wouldn’t be as interesting, then.” She glances up. The doctor is looking at her, a look of amusement writ across his face. “Sorry, were you talking? Carry on.”
“I didn’t say anything,” he says, still smiling. It’s a bit condescending, that smile, like he’s talking to a child. She wants to smack him.
“You’re supposed to. Maybe. I don’t do this often.”
“These sessions are for us to speak to each other, and for you to help me understand.”
“Understand.”
“You. Your issues.”
“Ah, of course.” She grins. She’s sure it doesn’t reach her eyes. “My issues.”
“You don’t think you have any?”
“Oh, no, I have plenty.”
“Which are?”
“I’m delusional, I suppose,” she says. “Mad? I’m afraid I don’t know the terms. I mauled my cousin, and I’ve been told by various—” she picks at a loose string on the pocket of her jeans, “—irrefutable sources that I stabbed him and killed my great-uncle, too.”
“You don’t believe it.”
“Oh, no.” She smiles pleasantly. “I’m a pacifist, you see.”
“Oh?”
Theta makes a face and leans over the armrest. “Nice courtyard,” she says, peering out the window. “Bit bland, but nice. Cobblestone, very daring, especially in this economy. Are we allowed outside? I think some fresh air would be nice, don’t you? Very good for—” she mimes a deep breath, then twirls her finger beside her head. “You know, clearing the head?” The doctor opens his mouth and she cranes her neck a bit further. “Lovely flowers,” she says. “What are those, daisies? Chrysanthemums? Dianthus caryophyllus?”
“. . . Dandelions.”
All in all, it’s a fantastic waste of time.
*
The thing about time, see, is that it passes. Obviously.
It’s not something she normally has the time (ha) to dwell on. Better things, yeah?
The thing about being shoved into a box is that she fancies she can feel each and every individual second scraping by. It’s grating, the boredom, and she thinks that, if she hadn’t been mad before, she certainly is now.
She’s finished all the books by the second week. She’s exhausted all scenarios of revenge by the third. She’s had two lamps, a chair, and her curtains confiscated by the fourth, and cutlery privileges revoked three days later.
She bursts into hysterical giggles when they come back and search her bedframe and even the pack of cards she hasn’t touched, and gets sedated for her effort.
It’s the first time she’s laughed since Christmas.
*
“Still no Black Sabbath?” asks Manny-with-the-hair.
“Nope.” She grins up at him, strumming a G.
He shakes his head, and his hair flops around his shoulders. It’s a fascinating thing to see from upside-down. “Shameful,” he tuts. “What’s this, then?”
She plucks a D. “Brahms.”
He watches her swallow her medication, and she waves him off with a grin. She spits out the pill the second the door shuts, wrinkling her nose as she wipes her tongue on the back of her sleeve.
She unwinds the axe that night, and cuts through the paint on her window with the tip of the D string. She picks the lock with E and B, and swings to the ground with the help of her bedclothes and G. She leaves the body on her bed with a smiley face drawn in black marker below the bridge.
She doesn’t get far. But that’s not the point.
*
“You’ve escaped twice this past month, Theta.”
“I’ve been caught twice,” she corrects. “On an unrelated note, I’m playing at a pub in Riverside next Thursday, so don’t be too disappointed when I don’t show up for our appointment.”
He gives her an admonishing look. “Theta.”
“You’re right, you’re right,” she sighs. “I lied. It’s on Tuesday. Hey, you should stop by!”
“You haven’t been speaking with any other patients.”
“You’re not going to tell me that I’m antisocial, are you?”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you, Theta.” He leans forward. “It’s not good, to isolate yourself.”
“It’s not good for me to be locked up,” she counters, “but you still do it anyway.”
He ignores her. “You’ve only got one person on your visitor’s list. Isn’t there anyone else you’d like to add?”
She shrugs. There’s a ragged part of the armrest where she’s been putting her elbow, and she picks at the cracking leather with her nail. “Not that I can think of.”
“The number of people you keep denying says otherwise.” She ignores him. She slides lower in her seat and glances out the window. It’s sunny, ridiculously so, and the light bounces off the window and back into her eyes, making her wince.
She rubs the edge of her jumper between her thumb and forefinger. The wool is worn and growing threadbare. “Don’t wanna see.”
He tilts his head. She sees him ready his pen. “They don’t want to see you? Or you don’t want to see them?”
“Bit socially awkward, me,” she says over him, twisting a loose curl of purple yarn around her finger. “Wouldn’t know what to say. Not much to talk about. I think I’d just—” She waves her hand. “Make a weird noise and drift off. No point in them making the trip for that.”
“That’s just an excuse, Theta, and I think you and I both know it.”
“Excuses are just reasons you don’t like.” She shrugs. “Anyways.”
“Yes?” She shrugs again. He switches tactics. “Tell me about your family.”
She raises an eyebrow. “I thought you were supposed to be subtle.”
“You don’t respond to subtlety,” he says frankly.
“Eh.”
“You don’t get on with them.”
“Gold star!” she proclaims. “That doctorate is well-earned, I see.”
“Your relationships are strained. How did that happen?” Silence. He tries again. “What sets you apart from them, Theta?”
She groans. “My grandfather made his fortune digging up rocks,” she says. “My brother made his carving them into octopi with boobs. My father wasted his on his woes and exotic cheese. Meanwhile, I live in a loony bin and have no money. Happy?”
“Not particularly.”
“Hm. Shame.”
*
She spreads the envelopes out in front of her like a puzzle. The edges and corners slot together, just, and she runs her fingers over the gaps in her mosaic of correspondence. The paper is rough, just enough to bump and drag against her skin, and she runs her fingertips along the scalloped edges of the stamps.
There’s quite a number of them—not as much as she’d thought, but still more than she’d expected. She sees a magazine she doesn’t remember taking out a subscription for, and a handful of letters addressed in a familiar cramped scrawl.
She relishes the dig of hard edges into her hand as she balls each one of them up and drops them in the bin.
*
“You can’t keep doing this, Theta.”
“I’m insane,” she says with a smile that was all teeth and no warmth. “I can do what I want.”
“You’re not, and you know it.”
Brax looks conspicuously out-of-place, washed-out and sickly, beneath the dingy fluorescent lighting. The maroon of his suit stands out like a sore thumb against the stained yellow of his seat.
Theta nudges a pawn forwards. “Really? I don’t know, everyone else seems pretty insistent on it.”
Brax barely spares the board a glance as he picks up his knight. He taps the base of the plastic piece against each square, and Theta scowls. “It’s this or prison, and—”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” She scowls, slamming another pawn down. Brax glances down his nose at it, and shifts it closer to the centre of the square. “My sincerest apologies. How selfish of me to forget about your reputation when there’s a murderer walking free.”
He captures her queen and places it on his side of the rickety table, lining it up with her other fallen pieces. She glares at the board for a moment, then moves a piece at random. Brax lets out a long-suffering sigh that makes her want to punch him, and corrects its course. “This is a situation, Theta, and, as usual, you’ve done nothing to help alleviate it.”
“Far be it for your best speeches to be wasted in a hospital sitting room.” She sinks lower into her seat and stretches out her legs. Her scuffed trainers bump against the polished toes of his shoes and he shoots her a look promising nothing short of bloody vengeance before moving them out of the way.
“Petulance won’t help you.”
“Oh, no,” she says monotonously. “My great plan has been foiled.”
“They’ve told me that you’ve been escaping.”
“It’s not that hard, after the first few times,” she says. She kicks the seat of his chair. Thump thump thump. His eye twitches. “You should try it sometime. I’m sure you’d look lovely in a straightjacket.”
“Theta.” She throws her hands into the air.
“I’m going mad, Irving,” she spits, “madder than usual, and this is not my fault! Fuck’s sake, I didn’t kill him!”
“I’d stop shouting, if I were you,” he says drily. There’s a nurse glaring at her from the corner, and she makes sure she sees her stick her tongue out at her before turning back to her brother.
Brax shifts a bishop forwards. Theta stares at it, then reluctantly moves a pawn into the empty space. The sleeves of the stolen jumper are just a bit too long and loose, covering her hands, and the dangling ends knock a piece over. Brax straightens it. “How are the elections?” she asks. He ignores her, and captures the pawn. “Oh, am I not allowed to ask? Or are those over? It’s just so hard to keep track of things in here.”
“Theta.”
She cocks her head. “What about the funeral?” He glowers at her.
“Which one?”
She raises an eyebrow. “Pardon?”
He lets out a hiss of annoyance. “Haven’t you read a single letter?”
She lets out a long, drawn-out sigh. “It’s just so hard, you know?” she says. “To hear about things and know I won’t be able to take part?” She flutters her eyelashes. He looks nauseous. “Solitary confinement’s considered a form of torture, you know.”
“Glospin’s dead.”
She blinks slowly. Then again. When she opens her eyes for the third time, she’s still watching him. She leans forward and captures a rook. His eyes flick down to the board for a fraction of a second, then back again. “My condolences,” she says slowly.
“And mine.” He sounds almost bitter.
“Open casket?” she asks innocently.
She thinks he might have cracked his bishop. “Cremation,” he says with a glare.
“Conservative.” She nods. “Nice. Were there cocktails at the reception?”
He slams his knight into check and stands, straightening his suit. “Koschei Oakdown wants to be put on your visitor’s list,” he says shortly, doing up the buttons of his jacket. “I’ve denied it for you.”
She twists the corner of the jumper. “Thanks.”
“Lovely seeing you. Don’t get well soon. And read the letters, will you?” He slings his coat over his shoulder and then he’s gone, the door slowly swinging shut behind him. Not quite as dramatic as she thinks he was aiming for, but they’re not allowed to have slamming doors.
Her captured pieces are neatly lined up across from her like an army of ghosts, the remaining ones pinpricks across a board dominated by black. Her handful of hostages are scattered across the table, sad and pitiful in comparison.
Theta missed the ball on the last bounce. She twisted around to watch as it went over her shoulder and into the corner. She stared at it for a moment then sighed and got to her feet.
She brushed the dust clinging to the rubber surface off and wrinkled her nose. It was something new to look at, at least.
She glanced over her shoulder. The empty whiteboard stared accusingly back at her.
Well. Almost empty.
She flung the ball at it again. It knocked off a magnet before bouncing off in the other direction. A photograph fluttered loose and slid across the floor, finally coming to a stop under the toe of Theta’s boot.
Annie Hopkins. That had been her name, the girl on the wall. Her mother had confirmed it.
She grimaced as she crouched to pick it up, and shuddered when her nails scraped against the plasticky surface of the photo paper.
She tossed the picture onto her desk and snatched up a scrap sheet of paper (at least, she hoped it was scrap). She wandered around the desk in a circle, tilting her head up to stare at the ceiling.
Had it taken her this long, before, to figure things out?
She threw herself into her seat. It jolted and she kicked the desk, sending herself spinning across the room. Her elbow slammed into the wall with a bang and she winced. The chair squeaked in protest.
No, it hadn’t. At least, she didn’t think so. It was hard to remember. Hard to put into perspective, at least. Time was fickle like that.
She balled up the paper in her hands and tossed it between her hands. Everyone has off days, she reasoned. Nothing to be ashamed of. She clenched the ball tighter in her hands and kicked off the wall, spinning back towards her desk.
She grabbed it with her free hand as she passed, dragging herself to a stop.
Off days. That’s what this was, then. An off day. Off month. Months, if you would (she wouldn’t).
Of course, most peoples’ off days didn’t involve giving funeral homes more business.
She tossed her rudimentary ball at the board. It more flopped than bounced off, crinkling as it drifted to the ground. She sighed and tossed her feet onto her desk.
It hadn’t taken her this long before. That, she was certain of.
So why the hell was it taking her this long now?
She could hardly be out of practice. That just wasn’t something that happened. Not like this, not with her. She scowled and snatched the marker pen off the table, twisting its cap on and snapping it back on again. Pop, click, pop, click, squeak, click, pop.
She bit down on the end of the cap and twirled the pen between her fingers. There was, she admitted to herself with a small grimace, always the possibility of the copycat being better than her. Small, though. Very small. Miniscule, even, if you liked the word, which she did. Not one that she was willing to entertain, though.
He wasn’t. Not the type.
It was stifling. She tugged her jacket off and tossed it to the side of the room.
Motive. There was always motive. Even when the motive was nothing, there was always a reason. She knew that better than anyone.
Chewing gum too loud. Unfortunate resemblance to an old enemy. Stupid hair.
Convenience.
Who, her? Projecting? Pshaw.
It could, suggested a small, traitorous voice at the corner of her mind sounding suspiciously like a certain bearded psychiatrist, be that, though, couldn’t it? Maybe, it suggested. Maybe. Just maybe. Maybe you’re sympathetic? Empathetic, even? Could that be possible? Maybe you don’t want to catch him. Maybe you’re on his side, just a bit, or maybe you’re worried about what comes next, or that—
She threw the marker at the board. It left a streak of black in its wake and rolled away to join the ball.
What had she done before?
The subconscious was a funny thing.
She slid off her seat and flopped to the ground. She quinted up at the ceiling, a frown tugging at her eyebrows.
She’d talked to people, she was fairly sure. Nothing door-to-door, but she had. Watched interrogations from behind the glass. Joined in, sometimes (very sometimes) (as in once).
She grimaced and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes until she felt like they were going to burst.
Not mainly, though. Nothing as inactive as that.
No.
It must have been her second year, or maybe late in her first. Before her third, for sure. Between August and November, maybe?
Disembowelment. That, she remembered. Disembowelment. Disembowelment and bone-robbing, which hadn’t been a term before that day, and for good reason, too.
A doctor, John had said. A surgeon, Mike had corrected. A fucking sicko, Owen had grumbled. That doesn’t help, Jack had snapped.
(And that’s the thing: how do you know? How do they—how does she—fit so perfectly into the mold, this archetype, this machine, and how do they make it work?
And here’s the other thing: it doesn’t always have to be that complicated.)
Anyone who’s ever cooked a chicken can figure out how to break out a spine. Anyone with half a brain can figure out how to use a knife. But who’s going to need that many bones?
Ah. There’s the question.
It wasn’t the sort of question to be answered in an office, or at home, or in front of a board. It wasn’t the sort of question to be answered, period.
(The term ‘liquid courage’ truly wasn’t any sort of exaggeration. It had burned going down, and had burned coming up again the next morning, but, in the moment, head spinning, blood rushing, heart beating like the drums of war, she’d felt weightless, and weightless she’d stayed.)
The femur, she’d remembered, somewhat hazily, hands buried in dying, withered heat. The tear of skin and a crack like splitting wood—
Wood.
There’s the answer.
(The chairs really hadn’t been too comfortable, though she supposed they fit a certain aesthetic. Theta had left it to Jack to suggest burying the furniture to the families.)
Her phone rang and she all but dove for it, sending papers flying. “She’s a bitch,” said Martha before it had even finished ringing.
“What?”
She heard a shuffling on the other end of the line. Her phone buzzed against her ear. “Messages,” said Martha bitterly.
Theta flicked the call to speaker and dropped the phone on the desk, leaning over it and squinting down at the screen.
Her stomach turned.
“Just a gossip column, but Jack’s losing it,” Martha informed her. Her voice sounded oddly thin over the speakers, like she was whispering into a tin can. Or was that just her?
Theta waited for her to say something else. “Did you read it?” she asked when she didn’t.
“No.” Lie. Theta pursed her lips and flicked her finger up the screen. The words whipped by in a blur of black on shocking pink, like ants smudged across a page. What she did catch made her nauseous. “Any luck, it’ll be down soon.”
“Won’t be,” Theta grumbled, grimacing and pinching the bridge of her nose. Her head was pounding. “Free press.”
Martha made a concerting noise over the line. “Ask Jake to hack it?” she suggested.
Theta shook her head, then remembered that Martha couldn’t see her. “Nah,” she said lightly. “Nah,” she repeated. Her tongue felt like sandpaper.
“Fine.” Martha didn’t sound upset, Theta didn’t think. And then she wondered why she thought she would be. “You alright?”
“Hm.” Her fingertips were tingling, buzzing with something that wasn’t quite warmth, but couldn’t reasonably be called anything else, either. “Yeah,” she forced herself to say, biting out a tight grin, despite the fact that Martha couldn’t see her. “Yep. Right.”
She hung up and threw her phone across the desk. Her hands shook when she flexed them, palms stinging with pins and needles.
Fuck.
*
Really, Theta didn’t know why she was so surprised. After all, it had only been a matter of time.
Cases dragged on. It happened. It wasn’t like there was much they could do about it. Asking nicely never seemed to help.
(Theta had been asked to give an interview, once. It had gone horribly, and she was fairly certain that, had the microphone not been mysteriously unplugged, it would have been a disaster.)
She drummed her fist against the table, staring at her screen. The computer had switched itself off ages ago, but she didn’t need to see the article to quote it.
Scandalous, the writer (Claire Rook, her name had been Claire Rook. Like a side character in a children’s adventure novel.) had said. Well, if you were looking for it, maybe.
She squeezed her eyes shut and dragged her hands down her face, elbows grinding against the desk.
It didn’t matter. It shouldn’t. They’d all been dragged by the press at some point or another (Some more than others; Martha had a Google Alert set up for Jack, and Mickey had taken out subscriptions to at least three tabloids. He didn’t seem to mind—rather, he seemed to thrive on the attention).
It was a gossip rag. A gossip rag that had clearly stolen pictures from The Guardian. They were running hentai ads alongside the front page, for God’s sake.
A gossip rag that had gotten ahold of her school records what the fuck.
She hit the space bar and the screen blinked back to life.
913 hits, because this was the kind of website that counted hits. One each for Jack, Martha, and Mickey, and another nine for her. 901, then.
She leaned back in her seat, squeezing her eyes shut.
Troubled past. She scoffed. The whole thing was one badly-Photoshopped cover from being a supermarket pulp novel.
I’m not angry.
What word would you prefer?
She opened her eyes a crack and peered at the screen.
915. Fuck her.
She could, she supposed, call Koschei, if only to let him know.
Koschei.
Koschei, who had been in the article too.
There is reason to call into question the ethics of the investigation, especially when considering the presence of famed psychiatrist Koschei Oakdown in the lives of the senior investigators—
Famed. She scoffed. She could almost see Koschei’s head swelling. Hardly the word she’d use. Inobscure, maybe.
—a hidden past shared with the notorious Theta Lungbarrow herself—
She gagged and slammed the laptop shut.
Her legs were itching. She leapt to her feet and began pacing.
Bullshit. Bullshit smeared across a server and tagged as news. She scoffed and dragged her fingers over her scalp. A strand of hair got caught beneath a nail and she shuddered as she tugged it free.
Abruptly, she threw herself to the ground, then got up again, then sat back down.
The infamous raid on Satellite and Fifth—
There was hair on the carpet, too, and eraser shavings, and a bit of a broken branch she’d tracked in on her boots. She twisted it beneath her fingers until it snapped, then did it again, and again.
—in the perfect true crime setup, with Lungbarrow set to lead; but as the villain, or the hero?
She snorted, brushing her hands clean on her knees. It was almost—no, it was—laughable.
Her keys were still in her pocket. She supposed she’d forgotten to take them out.
She dragged her fingers through her hair again. Her scalp was oily; she hadn’t showered.
She jiggled her leg, heel beating the ground.
It’s the moments in between, Rose used to believe, that are the most important. Nothing planned really happens, she used to tell her. It’s the stuff before and after that decides everything.
Sometimes he wondered if he had her in his trap, or if she had him in hers. And then he’d wonder if it mattered.
*
Her truck more ground than screeched to a halt and she was thrown forwards, face colliding painfully with the steering wheel. Theta swore and pushed her glasses up onto her forehead, rubbing her nose.
A rapping sounded by her ear. She pushed the hair out of her face and squinted through the window. Jack waved, holding up a cup of what Theta prayed was coffee.
The door squealed as she threw it open and Jack made a noise of distress, nudging a scratch against the blue paint with his hip. “What have you done to her?” he asked, a look of dismay on his face.
“Been busy,” Theta grumbled, snatching the cup out of his hand. It scalded her throat as it went down and she wrinkled her nose. Decaf. Shame.
Jack huffed and took a sip from the bigger cup he’d been holding out of her reach. Bastard. “That’s neglect, Doctor,” he said, shaking his head disapprovingly. “Who do I send the complaint to?”
“Oxford.” Theta took another gulp of the barley-coffee and smacked her lips. Two arms, she noted. She glanced down at his leg. “Good day?” she asked.
“It was.” He scowled and glanced up, the sunlight bouncing off his dark lenses. Not that many people would have need for sunglasses in mid-October, but, well, Jack. “You good for this?”
“Will be when you stop asking that.” The drink in the cup rattled as she took another sip. It wasn’t doing much to wake her up, but at least she was warm. “Lead the way, Captain.”
*
It always surprised Theta just how many people they could manage to scrounge up for a body. Nothing but contamination, in her opinion (See the scuff marks you just walked over? The eyelash that fell from your cheek when you shook your head? The dust in the carpet, the group arguing over the splatters? Yes, Johnny, even if it is just mildew). Good for her, she supposed, but also really, really bad for her. Not that she could reasonably argue too much. No stone unturned, and all that.
“Motels,” she grumbled, pressing up against the wall to let a man toting a bucket walk by (See? Contamination! She wasn’t even wearing a hairnet!) (Which wasn’t really anyone’s fault other than hers, but it wasn’t like anyone had offered her one, either). “Why’s it always a motel? Can’t anyone ever leave a body in a park, or a nice ballroom, at least?” She wrinkled her nose. “One that doesn’t stink of asbestos?”
“I think that’s the air freshener, Doc,” said Jack, lifting the tape for her to slip under.
“I think I know what asbestos smells like, Jack.” He ducked after her awkwardly. She sniffed again. Blood. Lots of it. It clung to the air, the smell, giving it a weight like the lightest veil. She could almost feel it seeping into her pores.
“End of the hall.” Jack pointed around the bend. “I’ve got SOCO to clear out. Five minutes?”
She ignored the gloves a passing officer tried to hand her, tucking her spare hand into her pocket instead. “See you when I see you.”
“Five minutes,” said Jack wryly.
She winked and flounced away, pivoting around the corner.
Ah. She stopped dead (oh, no, bad phrasing). Well, that explained something.
She crept down the hall, tiptoeing around the splotches of blood seeped so deeply into the carpet they looked like they’d been there from the beginning. There were still puddles in some places. She wondered whether, if she stepped on a dry spot, it would crack, or simply bend.
Not just the floor, either. The walls were dripping and crusted with red, like a gruesome parody of a bad paint job, and there were even flecks on the ceiling, frozen mid-drip and dried into tiny brown stalactites.
And there, at the end of the hall, the pièce de résistance, the crowning glory, the centrepiece, the highlight. The ebony jewel in the middle of the crimson crown, and whatever passed for a gallery in a world blinded by blood.
Wrong was the first word to pop into her mind. Wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong. Her hair was too bright, too verging on yellow, her fingers just barely too long. Chin too sharp, legs too short. Nails painted sloppily, pink polish staining the skin around the cuticles, a shirt that didn’t fit. Wrong.
Imitation.
Of what? who? what? ???
Pieces of hair tucked behind ears with deft hands, rings cleaned carefully of blood before being slipped back on. Thorns woven into braids like silken ribbons, eyes that were only just too green pried out with care and locked gently between bleached white teeth, jeans cuffed neatly at the ankles. Anchors driven through flesh and bone with what you could even call tenderness.
This, she heard it who her him him whisper, my dear, is love.
A eulogy is not an epilogue. She licked her lips. But you wouldn’t understand that, would you?
She lifted her hand and held it next to her face—the icy chill of death against burning human heat. Drained—no question about that. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d loaded it into water pistols and sprayed them willy-nilly.
No cameras, obviously. It’s what she would have done.
She couldn’t find the door, for some reason. She couldn’t find any doors. In fact, she wasn’t even in a hall. The windows spiralled around her, and then they shattered. There was nothing behind them.
It was in her hair, too butitshouldn’thavebeen, turning flowing blonde strands into stiff brown spikes ithadbeeninherhairtoo.
She was running towards the door, and then she was running along it, and then she was banging her fists against an empty wall, and then there was no wall.
She stumbled, and heard something break.
No walls no floors no doors and what was she standing on because it sure as hell wasn’t a sea of shattered glass so whatwhatwhatwhatwhatwhatwh
atwhatwhatwha
She fell to her knees and the world turned white.
*
She didn’t know how long she stayed balled-up in the corner, arms tight around her legs like a vice, face buried in her knees. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours, it could even have been days—she didn’t think she would have noticed. The movements of the other people were to her like flies buzzing behind an inch of glass. She felt, rather than heard or saw, them passing in front of her, like shadows in a pitch-black room. They gave her a wide berth, inching around the invisible barrier with the care of treasure-hunters trying not to wake a sleeping dragon, or children creeping around a swollen balloon, pins held behind their backs.
Most of them already thought that she was mad (which she was—just not in the way they thought they thought she was) anyways. No harm in cementing the notion.
She felt like she’d been there for days. At the same time, she felt like she’d just sat down. When she was approached, it felt both like it was too soon and that she’d been waiting for far too long.
She’d expected Jack, or maybe Martha. She’d expected someone to crouch down next to her, to duck away from a gentle hand and leap to her feet like a coiled spring. She’d expected to plaster a smile as fake as the light in her eyes across her face and sweep out before anyone had time to ask her anything else. She’d expected to shiver and stumble her way out of the building and make the hours-long trek home down the side of the highway. Maybe she’d even have the good fortune to be murdered on her way. Or to commit one. She hadn’t decided yet.
That wasn’t what she got.
A shadow fell over her, and the hair on the back of her neck bristled. “Get up,” said Koschei. “I’m taking you home.”
Theta managed a muffled noise that could have been a groan, and a minute twitch of her head that might have been a shake. She heard Koschei sigh, and imagined his nostrils flaring in exasperation as he rolled his eyes to the heavens in search of divine guidance. “Christ’s sake,” he growled. She heard the rustle of fabric as he crouched down, and felt surprisingly gentle hands unwind her arms from around herself. She kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut as he slung one of her arms over his shoulders, and wrapped one of his own around her waist. She was just glad he didn’t try to carry her. If he would even be able to manage. She let out a faint, high-pitched giggle at the image.
“You’re not going into hysterics, are you?” Koschei asked drily. She was walking, she noted. Knees bending, bones rolling in joints. One foot in front of the other, muscles tightening and contracting and loosening and stretching. So much put into the simple action and, yet, humans did it with less effort than breathing. Neat. “Fuck. Fine.” She half-stumbled when he stopped, feet dragging against the carpet. “Hey.” He patted her shoulder. “Stairs. C’mon.”
His car was just as ridiculous as she’d expected. She thought she might have been blinded a bit by the vibrant purple (or maybe that was just her—she was still dizzy), and it had no business having that much leather inside it.
The driver’s side door slammed shut and Koschei turned the key in the ignition. The engine roared to life, and Theta felt her seat rumble beneath her. “Address,” Koschei demanded.
Theta squeezed her eyes shut. Deep blue door, paint chipped and worn from where it kept slamming into the wall. Purple couch, strewn with rainbow cushions and worn flannel blankets. Counter, stained with rings of tea and spilled soup. Bedroom. Office, books on the ground and jackets slung over the desk, and photos turned down on their faces. She shook her head and dragged her hands down her face. Where was that, again?
Koschei sighed, and Theta heard gravel crunch beneath wheels (crunchy crunch crunch). “Fine,” he said. “Alright, then. Don’t get on my case about it later, then.”
*
She didn’t remember what her dorm had looked like. Had she pinned up posters, or photos, or strung scarves and tinsel from the bedposts to the walls? What had the ceiling looked like when the curtains had shifted and let slivers of sunlight shoot through? She’d had a recorder, she remembered, and a habit of leaving it on her roommate’s dresser or her desk in the morning, and finding it on the ground in the afternoon.
Not that she’d cared. She hadn’t spent nearly enough time in that room to call it home, and wouldn’t have even gone back had she not been frog-marched every night. A place to sleep, to work, to sit in silence and contemplate whatever it was people spent their time contemplating. And dreadfully wasteful, she remembers saying. She could have done any of that just as well, if not better, on the roof, on a bench, or in Magnus’s bathtub, and given no one any reason to complain (except Mortimus, maybe, but they’d all known that he didn’t shower anyways).
At most, she thinks, it would have been a mirror of Koschei’s. His had been an impersonal one, she remembers, even in contrast to Vansell’s monotone, showroom sheets and pillows. No point, he’d said, and she’d agreed and forgotten about it.
Koschei’s house wasn’t small. Normal-sized, a jogger passing by might call it. Average. A bachelor’s pad would be the words on a real estate agent’s tongue, and condo on the lease.
The Koschei she’d known wouldn’t have given it a second thought. The Koschei she knows tosses a throw out of the way and deposits her on an overstuffed brown armchair smelling faintly of cats.
He didn’t sit down across from her. She didn’t know whether or not she was grateful for that. “Tea?” he asked, tossing his coat over the back of the couch. “I’ve got chai, ceylon, and some weird pink stuff I got on sale.”
She cleared her throat. “Pink stuff,” she said, a bit hoarsely.
He vanished. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, resting her elbows on her knees. The chair was soft, even softer now that she was thinking about it. Soft enough that she was actually a bit worried about sinking into it. And that was definitely a cat smell.
She’d had a cat once, in a sense. A stray that used to wander around the grounds sometimes that she would throw chunks of biscuit at, until Millenia told her that they were bad for cats. She’d called her (the cat, not Millenia) Stinky, Tyche, O Mighty Ball of Rage, and, on one occasion, after being scratched, Irving (she had later gone back and apologized for her actions—Theta, not the cat).
She puffed her cheeks out and let her breath out until her lungs were sagging and her chest ached. She leaned back and dragged her hands down her face.
She peeked through her fingers and let her eyes roam around the room. Walls the colour of a robin’s egg (She’d never actually seen a robin before, but their eggs always looked very pretty in pictures.) (They sounded quite nice, too—the birds, not the eggs. She’d searched up a recording of their song and listened until Max from next door had banged on the wall and yelled at her to turn it off.), a coffee table covered in scratches and stains sagging under the weight of more books and magazines than she could count (she tried, then got distracted by a headline about a unicorn, Sherlock Holmes, and Jesus), heavy brown drapes she could have drowned in, and an almost-carbon copy of the rug in his office that had definitely seen better days. Faded elegance and false mosaics. About as far from his Baroquian office and tailored suits as she could imagine.
Cramped was a word. So was messy. Cozy was another.
“Tea.” She jumped. “Here.” She took the mug that was, indeed, full of steaming pink liquid. She sniffed it suspiciously.
Koschei leaned against a wall, next to an unframed painting of a desert scene. Theta felt distinctly like the tumbleweed should have been bouncing through the room, not the canvas. He shifted his own mug from one hand to the other. Theta raised her own and took a cautious sip. It tasted, to her (pleasant) surprise, more like lemons than boiled Pepto-Bismol. She took another, larger sip.
Koschei tugged idly on the string of his teabag, watching it bob up and down in his mug. “Wanna talk?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Don’t know,” she said. “Is this therapy?”
He swirled his teabag around in his cup. “This is me trying not to be an arse.” A few drops slashed over the rim, and he caught them on his finger before they fell to the ground.
“Huh.” Theta took another sip. “Needs work.”
“Yeah?” The floorboards should have creaked when he walked around her. It felt like they might have, at least. It felt like they did.
They didn’t, of course. Koschei probably wouldn’t have lived in a house with creaky floorboards even when held at gunpoint. Probably. “What happened?” he asked.
“Nothing.” She took a gulp of tea, then coughed as it scalded her throat on the way down.
“Bullshit.”
“Is that any way to talk to a patient?” she asked sardonically.
“You’re not a patient,” Koschei pointed out. “Not right now.”
Theta scowled down into her pink stuff. “Bad day,” she muttered.
“How?”
She shrugged. “Tired, I guess. Unprepared.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ever chucked a body out a window?” Theta asked sarcastically, scratching the back of the head. “Bet you anything someone down there screams.”
“You’re not a pedestrian.”
“Analogy, Doctor,” Theta grumbled, dragging her hand through her hair. Her fingers caught on a knot and she tugged at it irritably. “You know, that might just be the nicest thing you’ve said to me lately?”
“A pedestrian, Doctor, a pedestrian.”
She snickered. “Sure.”
“You’re tedious. A lifeless lump. I can feel myself falling asleep already.”
Theta dragged air in through her teeth. “He—there was a serial kidnapper,” she told him. “Sounds a bit silly, saying it like that, now I think about it. ‘Serial kidnapper.’ Most people don’t talk about them, you know? Not in many crime shows, I reckon. Doesn’t sound like the brightest idea, either. Serial kidnapper. Kidnapper, but serial. What’s one person going to do with that many people, anyways?”
She was rambling, she knew. It was the most she’d ever said at one time about it since she’d given the report, but she couldn’t seem to stop. “It wasn’t hard, in the end, to find him. Wasn’t too clever. Not clever enough, at least. You know?”
“I know,” said Koschei.
“It was a house in Leeds,” said Theta. “His house. The house wasn’t the kidnapper. That’s where he was keeping everyone. House in Leeds, on Satellite and Fifth, in the basement. Cliché, I guess, but if it ain’t broke. . .” She waited for him to cut her off. He didn’t. She took a big, harsh gulp of her tea, and coughed when it went down the wrong way.
“I didn’t—” Her fingers turned white against the mug. “It was my fault,” she said. “I know that. Jack knows that. She probably did, too.”
“Who?”
Shit.
Theta drained the last few drops of tea. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Obviously it does,” said Koschei sardonically.
“You know.”
“Not from you.” Was it her imagination, or was that softness in his voice? She tried to take another sip from the empty mug. “What are you afraid of?”
Not you, she didn’t say. Not myself. Not her.
Slowly, carefully, she lowered her right hand into her lap. She turned it palm-up, shakily uncurling her fingers. “Her name was Rose,” she quietly. “She was my—” Girlfriend sounded wrong; young, trivial, insouciant. Fiancée hurt. Partner made her want to scream. “She was my friend,” she said softly. “She was my best friend. More than that. She was everything. More than that, even. And I don’t think I ever even told her.”
“Why?”
She bared her teeth bitterly. “Because I’m an idiot,” she said, the mug hot beneath her palm. “Isn’t that what you always said?”
His fingers twitched against his knees. “What happened to him?” he asked. “The kidnapper.”
Theta shrugged. “Ran,” she said. Ran past right in front of me and I couldn’t even get up to stop him. “I don’t think he knew what he was doing, not really. He was half-mad to begin with. They caught up with him a day later.”
“What else?”
She closed her eyes and bodies laid out neatly like books on a shelf metal doors swinging shut blonde hair vanishing behind cold unforgiving steel pain in her hand weight inside her heart and another one in her pocket against it let her breath out through her nose.
“She looked like her,” she said. “That girl. On the wall. She looked like Rose.”
“Do you ever think about revenge?” The question burst forwards abruptly, like water from a split balloon.
She frowned. “Where’s that coming from?”
“It’s a question,” said Koschei, eyes never moving from hers. “Do you?”
Theta tapped her fingers on the rim of her mug. “No point,” she muttered. “Just causes more trouble.”
“That’s changed,” Koschei muttered.
“Be bad if it hadn’t, though, wouldn’t it?” Theta put the empty mug down on the coffee table, then instantly regretted it. She settled for picking at her fingernails instead. “I think that’s what people call growth.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Too bad. It’s all I’ve got.”
“Hypothetically?”
She prodded at a hangnail, and imagined peeling it away. She could see it in her mind, clear as day: the thinnest strip of skin hanging from her hand like a loose thread and a trail of red in its wake. “I hear pushing them off cliffs works great.”
“Yeah?” he said almost before she’d finished speaking.
“No.” She pried at the tip of one nail with another. “It’s shit, by the way. The cliff thing.”
He shrugged. “Same goes for most split-second decisions, I’d wager.”
“Split-second.” He shrugged again.
“I’d assume.” He moved around her, and she shifted back in her chair as he bent over the coffee table. He swept a newspaper from last month and a magazine headlining an article about a man with twelve fingers out of the way and sat down in front of her. “You still haven’t said.” He put his mug down next to himself.
She watched it teeter precariously on the stack of magazines, pinching the tip of her finger until it turned red. “Does it matter?”
“Will you tell me if I say yes?”
She huffed. “I don’t think you’re supposed to say that.”
“Oh, go on, Theta.”
She shrugged. “Kill him, I suppose.”
“You suppose?”
“It’s not like I’ve thought about it.” Not actively, at least.
“How?”
She dragged a breath in through her teeth. “I don’t know,” she said.
“But you would.”
“I would.”
He cocked his head. “That doesn’t bother you?”
“Why would it?”
He shrugged. “Ethics?” he suggested. “Moral code? You’ve got one, haven’t you?”
“You know, sometimes it sounds like you’re one bad day away from being Harold Shipman.”
He snorted. “Well?”
Theta pressed her finger against her palm. The crack echoed through the room. “Hannah,” she said, “said it’s alright. That it’s cathartic.”
“Hannah?” Koschei asked sharply.
“Yup.” Theta popped the knuckle on her next finger. “She’s a therapist. Maybe you’ve met?”
“I thought you didn’t see anyone,” said Koschei, sounding very much like he’d just been tricked and wasn’t too happy about it.
“I didn’t.” Theta cracked her pinkie. “Ianto tricked me into picking Jack up. She was very nice to talk to.”
“Yeah?”
“‘Course. Lovely woman. Like cats. Your chair smells like one, you know?”
“A woman?”
“A cat.”
“Mhm. Would you like me to arrange the funeral now, or later?”
She kicked at his shin, and he stomped on her toes. Theta’s scowl deepened, and Koschei just managed to yank his leg out of the way in time. Theta flopped back in her seat and glared at him.
Koschei leaned back on his arms. His eyes followed the faint shaking of her right hand. “Would you?” he asked softly. And then, “I would.”
Did.
Theta looked down, letting her hair fall over her face. “They thought it was me,” she said suddenly. Her nail throbbed where she’d tugged at it. “They thought it was me that—you know. Glospin.” The name felt foreign on her tongue, misshapen in her mouth. “Somehow.” She dug her nails into the back of her hand until her fingers shook.
He reached forwards and stilled her hands with his. They were warm, feverish, almost, against the cold of her fingers. “Did you ever read my letters?” he asked. “I thought—” He took in a deep, rattling breath, then let out one that sounded like a laugh. “I don’t know. No one else ever said anything about it to me, but I thought that the others were writing you, too.” His hands tightened around hers. “Did you even open them?” he asked, sounding very much like he already knew the answer.
She tried to clench her fists, and he tightened his fingers around hers. “Wasn’t exactly high on my list of priorities,” she muttered.
“What was?”
“Believe it or not, Koschei, you’re not the centre of the universe,” she bit out. “Or mine, either.”
He didn’t let go of her hands, and she didn’t pull them back, either. He toyed with the tip of her pinky—the crooked one, from when she’d broken it punching a cabinet when they were twelve. “Why?” he asked again.
She looked down at their hands. His were fine-boned and calloused, the skin around his nails darkened and bruised. Hers were smaller, but rougher, the dirt under her nails a stark contrast to his careful manicure, and shaking like leaves in the wind.
What a pair they made.
“You’d want to talk,” she said. “You’d want to talk about it.”
His fingers wrapped around her wrist, twining like leaves of grass reclaiming what was theirs. Serpents drawn to the light, closer and closer until the toothy jaws could snap shut over them. “Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black to me,” said Koschei. “You’re the talker. Always yammering.”
She rolled her eyes. “You wouldn’t have let it go,” she said. “You know you do that, right? Grab onto something and just hang on?”
He rolled his eyes. “Pot,” he said, holding up their hands, “meet kettle.”
She snorted, and tugged her hands back.
He let it go. For now.
*
It hadn’t been a gift. Not to her.
He wasn’t an idiot; he knew that.
Still.
Still.
It had been something.
He tugged the oven door open, and a wall of heat hit him in the face. He grimaced and squinted through the wavering haze.
She’d never been good at taking care of herself. He’d bring her something tomorrow.
do you see me now? i’m right here, behind the mirror.
tell me we’ll never get used to it - do you see me now? i’m right here, behind the mirror.
His childhood stood out to him in the forefront of his mind, vivid and still, like a series of photos laid out neatly in an album, or an oil painting of roadkill three days old. What was that they said about time slowing before a disaster?
Something like that, except for a decade of his life.
“Troubled child.” That’s what they’d called him. “Ill. Unwell.” No specific terms—they’d thought him too young—but he had an idea of what they were saying behind the door. He was a doctor, after all.
There was irony in that, he thought. No, not irony—wrong word. Incongruous? Not him being troubled, the other thing.
He’d come to school late, by almost three months—an eternity, back then. What he’d give to have that back.
He remembered the crunch of gravel beneath tires, the chill of the car window when he pressed his forehead against it, the sting in his palms when the edges of the seatbelt dug into his skin.
Be good, he remembered them saying. Play nice. Do well. Yada yada yada. A hug, stiff and awkward, a firm hand on his shoulder that was just a bit too heavy and sent him stumbling. The rumble of a motor, and they were gone, a speck in the distance leaving nothing but a trail of smoke behind.
And him.
He hadn’t gone to class—no point, not on the first day. The woman at the front desk, with the long dress and dangling jewelry, and a smile so bright and stretched so wide it had scared him, offered to stay, to lead him to the library, to show him the grounds. He’d nodded, politely, meekly. The moment she glanced away, he’d turned and bolted, charging down the halls on little legs that hadn’t grown nearly as much as he’d hoped since then.
He’d thought about that day a lot through the years. Strange, the way things happen. What would have happened, back then and afterwards and now, if he’d gone another way. If he’d turned left instead of right, gone up the stairs or out the doors instead of down the hall. If he’d paid a little more attention to where he’d been going instead of glancing over his shoulder so much.
If he hadn’t crashed into her.
A loud yelp, a squeaking, skidding noise, and he was on his back, head throbbing, palms burning. She’d winced as she clambered to her feet, her knees skinned an angry, pinkish red.
For a moment, they’d just stared at each other.
Funny, how long a second can last.
And then she’d grabbed him, thin, pale fingers gripping his wrist tightly enough to cut off circulation, and dragged him into an alcove.
“Hey!” he’d protested, which he thought had been fair of him.
She’d already been on the ground, arranging her skirt over neatly folded legs. Begrudgingly, he’d slid down the wall and slumped onto the ground to face her. Such was the way of children.
“What are you running away from?” she’d asked.
“What makes you think I’m running away from anything?” he’d asked. The alcove had been small, an empty space beneath the stairs you wouldn’t have spotted unless you were looking, really looking. Cobwebs had hung from the slanted ceiling, brushing the tops of their heads, and they were practically squished against each other, but, back then, it had felt like the biggest place in the world. Like a secret cave.
“Well,” she’d said, the perfect picture of reason, “you’re running, and now you’re hiding. Most people don’t do that for fun.”
“You’re doing it,” he’d said. “Sort of.”
“Yeah, but I’m not most people.” She’d tilted her chin up pompously, and he’d felt like hitting her.
“Oh, yeah?” he’d sneered. “What makes you so special?”
“I’m very smart,” she’d said, clearly and plainly, like she was stating a fact.
“That’s stupid,” he’d said bluntly.
She’d nodded sagely. “Sounds like something a smart person would say.” There’d been a band-aid across her nose, and her hair had been a burnt reddish-brown, tangled into two ponytails that bore striking resemblances to the heads of mops. She’d looked about his age and, seriously, what lunatic had thought it was a good idea to lock a bunch of eight-year-olds up in a castle in the middle of nowhere? It was a catastrophe waiting to happen.
(Hardee-har-har.)
“Are you new too?” he’d asked.
“No,” she’d said. “Why, are you?”
“Obviously,” he’d said with a sniff, looking down his nose at her with disdain. Sometimes, back home, when he’d felt well enough to get out of bed, he’d sneak around the house and listen to his parents, the programs they’d left playing all day on the telly, the phone calls that always left his father either strutting around the house, pleased as punch, or sour-faced and growling and snarling at anyone who came near. He’d gotten used to imitating their haughty tones.
“How old are you?” she’d demanded.
“Eight,” he’d said.
“Oh.” She’d beamed—she’d cycled through emotions like they were pairs of socks, back then. Still did, it seemed. It used to send him reeling. “Me too!”
“Okay,” he’d said. Not the starting point one would expect, but a starting point nonetheless. He wasn’t very nice to her, but she wasn’t very nice to him, either, so he supposed it balanced out.
He wondered when it had all gone to shit.
*
“What,” Koschei had said one cold December night.
Theta had grinned, hair fluttering in the breeze. “Hiya!”
“What,” Koschei had repeated.
Theta had gestured at him to move over and, after a brief scramble, grabbed the edges of the windowsill and swung into his room. Koschei had leapt backwards, wrinkling his nose, as chunks of dirty snow tumbled in along with her, landing on the carpet.
“Vansell’s at home this week,” Theta had said in way of explanation, patting her hands dry against her coat. He’d wrinkled his nose at the wet brown stains she’d left and took a quick step out of arm’s reach.
“I know,” Koschei had said, watching her shrug out of her soiled coat (big and bulky and a shocking shade of highlighter yellow that he had no doubt she’d picked out herself) and kick off her boots.
She’d made a humming noise and flopped onto the armchair into the corner of the room. “The roof is nice,” she’d said. “You should come with me, sometime.”
He’d craned his neck to look up at the ceiling. “Is it cold?” he’d asked.
“Mhm.” Theta had been fiddling with the afghan Vansell had left slung across the back of the chair, twisting the fringe between her fingers.
“You’re stupid,” he’d informed her, as was custom at that point. She’d scrunched her face up in his direction, and he’d stuck out his tongue in retaliation. He’d flopped back down onto his bed and picked up the book he’d been flipping idly through when he’d heard the knock on the window. “Are you gonna stay there?”
“Yep,” she’d said, popping the P and pulling the afghan around her shoulders. She’d looked ridiculous, he’d thought, sitting there in pajamas that looked like they’d been through a shredder (knowing her, they probably had), feet not quite touching the ground.
He’d drifted off at some point, lulled to sleep by the rustle of frost-covered branches outside and the mind-numbingly dull plot of his book, her chatter fading into calming background noise.
When he’d woken up, she’d been gone, along with the biscuits he’d hidden in his desk.
*
Koschei supposed that, to some, he would have been considered a bully. It certainly was what he’d fancied himself, at the time. Theta too—partners in crime, in a sense. But only to a few. To most, they were just another duo of wandering weirdos. The nutter who never went to class and the serious one that coughed a lot, he once heard a janitor say.
They’d left a lot of messes.
They’d been close, she hadn’t lied about that. Maybe not him to her in the sense that she wanted, or her to him in the sense that he wanted, but close. Very close.
Predictably, this hadn’t been much help to either of them in their social pursuits.
Scuffles in the hallway were normal, expected, even, and if Koschei had a penny for every jibe and sneer that had made his stomach twist—their friendship, Theta’s family, his condition—he wouldn’t have had to stay at all. Yet, somehow, they were still the ones who’d get into trouble when they’d retaliate.
He remembered the glare that had been on Theta’s face as she’d watched Torvic, in all four and a half feet of compressed smugness and meanness, saunter out of the office, blameless, for the upteenth time. “‘M gonna kill ‘im,” she’d muttered around her puffy lip, and he’d nodded fervently.
He missed those days.
*
Oh, right. That’s when it had started veering off to hell.
*
Theta had grown bolder as time passed, and so had he. Sneaking across the roof of the dorms was, as Theta had declared, with all the smugness of the cat that had gotten the cream, “child’s play.”
“We are children,” Koschei had pointed out.
“Yeah, but we’re better.”
There was scarcely a day when they weren’t clambering over the roof or down the walls, or even through the gap in the gate and into the fields and woods beyond. Koschei hadn’t been foolish enough to believe that nobody knew, or that they were the only ones, though he suspected Theta might have been. He’d just counted himself lucky that nobody had phoned home.
Was it luck, he sometimes found himself thinking sometimes, or the opposite that had led him to follow them that night? Had it been the greatest thing to ever happen to them, or the worst? Philosophical and never-ending, and with more answers than he could shake a stick at, and not a single one of them clearer than a solid wall. Infuriating to no end. Sometimes he thought he’d chosen the wrong profession.
“When do you suppose the aliens are going to come?” Theta had asked. She’d taken her shoes off, despite the lingering chill, and was splashing her feet absent-mindedly in the river. It had been a big river, or big enough, and, sometimes, after the longest autumn storms, they would have to shout to hear each other over the rush of white water.
Not that night, though. That night, the water had been as gentle as a brook or a light spring breeze, breaking around Theta’s ankles and the smooth, worn stones in little ripples that Koschei had loved to drag his fingers through.
He’d contemplated the question for a moment, wrinkling his forehead and staring at the leaf he’d been shredding as if he might find the answer written in the veins. “Soon, I imagine,” he’d decided.
“I think they should hurry, don’t you?” Theta had said. “Earth’s boring. This part of Earth, at least.” She’d flopped back onto the bank, mindless of the pebbles digging into her back, kicking her legs and splashing water all over the both of them. “I’m dying down here!”
He never did learn the full story of what had happened that night. It wasn’t like they could have asked.
All he knew was that, one moment, he’d been sat on the bank, watching her braid a twig into her hair, and, in the next, he’d been knocked to the ground. The ensuing scuffle was but a blur in his memory, something he’d curse until the end of time because fuck.
He’d ended up losing (or what had constituted losing at the moment), and being kicked across the rocks. He still had the scar—a barely-there line, thin and white, across his shoulder—to prove it. There had been shouting, he remembered, and someone had been screaming—him or Theta or Torvic or all three of them, or maybe that had just been the noise in his head.
And then the water.
Theta had maintained that it had been purposeful. Koschei still believed he hadn’t had the faintest clue what he was doing. Not that it mattered.
The whole affair had been ridiculous, something more than clear to him now, looking back. A scuffle on the bank. But he could still appreciate what he’d felt at the time, which had been fear. Fear, and panic, and not much else. Desperation, too, and adrenaline. Very primal of him.
He could have drowned. He probably would have. Or maybe not. Who was he to know what had been going through the other boy’s head?
(Or maybe he knew too well. Not at the time, though. Not enough.)
And then—
And then—
He’d remember that moment for the rest of his life.
He hadn’t realized what had happened, not immediately. But Torvic’s weight had vanished, and he’d hauled himself out of the water, gagging and sputtering and spitting and shivering. It hadn’t been an instantaneous reaction, or one of horror or shock, like he’d seen described in stories. He’d scrubbed at his face with wet hands, rubbing at the sand and grit in his eyes, and it had taken him a few moments more to figure out why the water running down his arms was warm, and what that obnoxious fucking banging was.
It wouldn’t have taken a genius to see he was dead. Theta had still been swinging. Down and down and down and down. Splatters of blood had rained across her chest, her arms, her face, her hair, and he hadn’t been able to see her face.
“Theta,” he’d rasped, then coughed, more water spilling down his chin. “Theta,” he repeated. “Thete!”
A final swing and she’d stumbled back, stumbling on the rocky bank. Koschei had forced himself to his feet and staggered forwards. His legs had been shaking, though whether that had been from almost drowning (he’d regarded everything with a calmness that had almost been hysterical) or the body at his feet he hadn’t known. Still didn’t.
All in all, it had probably happened in a few seconds. But who could blame him for feeling like it had been an eternity?
He’d heard a thud, and the rattling of stones against each other. “I didn’t—” A breath like a death rattle, shaking hands reaching forwards. “He—”
Koschei had stepped over the body and kicked the bloody rock into the river. It had hit the water with a plop, and the droplets from the splash had been cold against his skin. “Theta,” he’d repeated, not for any particular reason—or one that he could think of, at least. Reassurance?
A hand on his sleeve, and he’d pulled her to her feet. How long had they stood there? His hair had been dry and his teeth chattering by the time she’d spoken again.
She’d cleared her throat, and her fingers twitched around his. “Water,” she’d whispered, voice hoarse.
She’d let go of him and crouched, grabbing his (its?) arms. “Water,” she’d repeated, voice stronger, dragging him (it) towards the bank. “Koschei!” she’d snapped when he didn’t move. “Help me.”
He’d heard somewhere, maybe in a film, that the body lost weight after death—the soul leaving the body. Or maybe that was just the water.
It had taken almost ten minutes to wade away from the rocky area by the shore, delayed slightly by Theta slipping and getting her foot stuck between two boulders, and another one to maneuver the body and push it away into the stronger currents.
And then they’d just stood there, waist-deep in a river neither of them were sure they had the strength to pull themselves or each other out of, watching the moonlight break against the water.
She’d never brought it up again, and neither had he.
*
It was almost laughable how desperate they’d been to make everything seem normal. They hadn’t needed to at all.
Not that nobody had noticed—it’s always rather difficult to overlook a missing child. He’d seen maybe one or two police officers on the first day, overheard a phone call on the third, and then nothing. He’d expected them to forget about him, but the speed at which everything had blown over had been astounding—nothing to spoil their good reputation, he supposed. Better to say a troubled child had run away then admit to having lost a perfectly normal one.
Troubled child. That’s what they’d started calling him.
They’d found the body a week later, bloated and rotted almost beyond recognition (or so he’d heard), caught on an overhanging branch a few miles down the River Irvine. Slipped and fell. How sad. This is why you have curfew. Their condolences. Please file all paperwork to a third-party outsource.
Torvic haunted the halls the way a graveyard haunts a highway, which is to say he didn’t. His room was cleaned, his name wiped from lists and his projects sorted neatly into files that vanished into cabinets that would never open again. There wasn’t anywhere a ghost could linger.
Nobody had even looked in their direction, and he’d felt his first stirs of what he’d later learn was called vindication.
*
If Koschei were more poetic, he’d have described their relationship as waves against a shore.
He didn’t want poetry. That had always been her.
There would be weeks where the most he’d see of her would be a flash of russet hair in the corridor, and she’d once gone a month skipping every class they’d shared (Which was, unfortunately, most of them. He’d ended up tracking her down in the art studio a week into the latest session of her silent treatment, and ended up with a tub of paste upended over his head for his troubles). Never for any reason he was privy to, and always coming back on her own terms. Never apologizing, either, or offering explanations; just sliding into the seat next to him or kicking his window open in the dead of night, regardless of time or roommates.
“It’s an asylum,” she’d stated one night, as blunt and self-assured as their very first conversation where she’d proclaimed her own cleverness, after a week of leaving every time he entered a room. She’d been lying upside-down on Vansell’s bed, hair brushing the floor and feet kicked up against the wall. Her heels had left scuffs on his posters that the other boy hadn’t stopped bitching about for weeks. “Clearly.” She’d hit another growth spurt recently, and her limbs had been long and gangly, like those of a newborn foal. She’d relished towering over him.
“Obviously,” he’d agreed, scratching out a word in his essay.
That wasn’t to say that he’d been entirely blameless, though. Fine, maybe he’d made a snide comment or three, and maybe his methods of retaliation were a bit cruel, and maybe throwing her bag out the window after finding her kissing Vansell (ugh) in their bathroom had been a bit much.
In his defence, he wasn’t the only one with a tendency to overreact. No matter what he’d said, the soup in his lap had definitely been unnecessary.
*
He wondered why anybody had been surprised when she started running away.
Not that she’d ever gotten far. Clever though she was, very few people were willing to pick up a hitchhiker in a dirty school uniform in the dead of night, and even she couldn’t walk all the way to Glasgow (though that hadn’t stopped her from trying).
“What the hell are you even trying to do?” he’d asked one night after she’d been dragged back, disgruntled and smelling like hot garbage, by an officer who’d worn on his face the weariness of a man who’d done a job a hundred times, and knew he’d have to do it another hundred times more. “No, don’t answer that,” he’d said, cutting her off. “Seriously, what are you doing?”
She’d shrugged, looking put-together in a way he’d never have expected from someone who’d reportedly been caught chasing a fox into an alley. “The tea’s better in Darvel,” she’d said primly.
He’d stared at her. “We have an exam tomorrow,” was all he’d managed to say.
“I know.”
“And you were in Darvel.”
“Newmilns, actually,” she’d said cheerfully. “Charming couple on the road, they gave me a lift.”
“No, they didn’t.”
“Well, they were going to.” She’d rolled her eyes, and Koschei had considered screaming. “But then the police caught up.”
“Fuck’s sake.” He’d felt faint.
“What?”
“You—” He’d scrubbed his hands down his face. His face had been prickly with the beginnings of stubble that she’d teased him mercilessly for (she’d pretended to sand a block of wood against his jaw at one point, and he’d hidden Ushas’s keys and told her Theta had been the one to take them. The fallout had been extraordinary). “You can’t just walk around Scotland.”
“Why not?” she’d asked. “I’ve been doing it, haven’t I?”
“You’re going to get expelled, at this rate,” he’d said, irritated.
“Don’t care,” she’d said.
“Yes, you do,” he snapped.
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, you should.”
“Why?”
“What are you even trying to do?” he’d asked again.
“There’s a pub in Drumclog I think you’ll like,” she’d said. “The Thursday night barman lets me in after happy hour.”
“Where would you even go?”
“The botanical gardens, I think. Or Loch Ness. We could find Nessie! Ooh, what about the Science Centre? I heard—”
“Theta.”
She’d shrugged. “Does it matter?” she’d asked.
“Yes, actually.”
And, just like that, her face had shuttered and she’d stood. “No.”
The door had slammed behind her.
*
He wishes he remembered the last time he saw her better. ‘Course, he hadn’t known it would be the last time. Still.
He’d never been particularly fond of Christmas, as a concept or in general. He’d liked the presents when he was younger, but even those had lost their shine as he’d gotten older. And that was to say nothing of the whole family aspect. He counts himself lucky that the endless list of uncles and aunties and cousins from his mother’s side hadn’t driven him insane.
He’d gotten into an argument with someone (Cousin? Grandparent? Family friend that wandered in for cake twenty years ago and kept showing up ever since? He didn’t remember, and he didn’t care), and gone to his room to brood (he did not, no matter what Drax said, sulk).
(It had been a spacious room, he remembered. Not the largest in the house, but far from the smallest. He hadn’t been back in years, not since his father’s funeral. He couldn’t say he missed it.)
He’d have been reading a book, probably, or something. Playing the drums, maybe, just to annoy his family, if he’d been really peeved.
He’d heard a knock at his window, and, suddenly, he’d been eight years old again. Snow had piled on his rug and he’d squinted against the blast of chill air as she clambered in.
“What are you doing here?” She’d been shaking, he remembered, and he’d chalked it up to nothing but the cold. She’d been shoeless, socks soaked through.
She’d shaken her head, dragging trembling fingers through tangled, stringy hair. She’d opened her mouth, then closed it again. “See you,” she finally managed. Her cheeks were red with cold, and her lips were tinged a blue that was almost black.
Something worth crossing the country in the middle of the night for, apparently.
He hadn’t noticed the red under her fingernails.
She hadn’t spoken for the rest of the night, something Koschei never would have thought possible before. He hadn’t asked, no matter how much he’d wanted to, and he doubted she’d have told him, anyways, even under normal circumstances. So he’d sat there, next to Theta, trembling in her cocoon of blankets and jackets. They’d fallen asleep like that, and, when he woken up, she’d been gone, along with his jumper.
It had been, in a way, he supposed one could argue, his fault. For not stopping her, for encouraging her, for being a co-conspirator, or an influence (good or bad, he didn’t know—it was up for debate), or whatever they’d deemed to call him.
“I told you that girl was no good,” his grandfather had said during breakfast, eyes on him as he shouted to the whole table. “I told you, didn’t I? Nothing good can come from someone like her, I told you. Told you to drop her, didn’t I? That girl’s no good, I told you, didn’t I? You remember, don’t you, I told you, nothing good comes from hanging around—”
He’d nodded mutely, thumbing the corner of the newspaper with his thumb.
It hadn’t been the most flattering thing, the mugshot. At least they’d spelt her name right.
*
He’d watched him through the window. He’d looked entirely too pleased with himself, nodding in mute delight and false thanks and basking in the shower of simpering sympathy. The bandage plastered on his face had been a stark, sterile white against the muted reds and browns of the rest of him, and he’d shivered at the sight of the mottled green and purple bruising stretching out around it. Atta girl, he’d almost muttered.
It had taken all of his inconsiderable self-control to not barge through the doors and finish the job for her.
(Which he had, of course. Eventually.)
It was almost a shame, he’d thought later as he’d peered over the crumbling edge of the cliff. The polish and shine of the twisted tires had gleamed under the moonlight, crushed beneath the crumpled shell of the stolen car.
He’d have liked to take off the bandage. Her handiwork deserved to be seen.
He’d dusted off his jeans, then turned and began the long walk back home.
Sometimes, when it got to be too much—when she felt like the walls were closing in on her, when she couldn’t hear anything over the pounding of the blood in her ears, when she couldn’t close her eyes without seeing blood and broken bodies and her—she would run.
Not anywhere in particular. Just run.
It was freeing in a way that little else was; to let go, and let her legs take her where they pleased, for her panting for air to drown out the voices in her head and the burning in her muscles wash away the tingling at the tips of her fingers. To just go, and let the world be someone else’s problem for once. At the very least, it let her move, and that was better than nothing.
Running, running, running. Always running. She never seemed to get any further, though.
Sometimes, she felt like she could keep running forever, until the stars imploded and the sun gave out, and the only limit was how far the universe could stretch. Other times, it was like she was being driven up a treadmill on her last legs, and the only thing keeping her up were adrenaline and what passed for will and whatever thing was chasing her.
Today, it was the latter.
She collapsed to her knees with a gasp, lungs rattling as she dragged in breath after breath. Her hands shook as she ran them through her hair, and she realized they were covered in scratches. Her face, too, probably.
She fell on her face and rolled over, throwing her arms out beside her. Her skin would be splotched with dirt, she knew, and her clothes, too, but she just couldn’t bring herself to care.
Besides, dirt was good. Told you things. Hid stuff. Crunchy.
She closed her eyes, letting her breaths even out and her chest stop heaving. Content, for the moment. It would be over soon, she knew, and she would have to stand up and trudge back to her flat and the rest of the world, but, for now, that was what she was. Content.
She let her mind drift as she played with the earth beneath her fingers, sifting through the pebbles and the loose soil. She could hear the branches overhead rustling in the breeze and the air was bitter with the sharp scent of pine. Elsewhere in the woods, an owl hooted, and the bushes nearby rustled.
Something dropped onto her forehead, sticky and warm. She twitched, wrinkling her nose as she rubbed it off. Water? But it hadn’t been raining—
Oh.
She stared at the streaks of red smudged across the back of her hand. Another drop fell onto her wrist, and she watched as it slowly rolled down her arm, staining the hem of her sleeve.
She looked up. There was a man in the trees—or something that had once been a man, at least. She wasn’t foolish enough to believe that that’s what it was, anymore.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone.
“Hi,” she said before it had even finished ringing. “There’s a body.”
*
No ID. Of course there wasn’t any ID.
Or clothes, for that matter. Theta made a note to check Missing Persons. She could only hope Mr. Doe wasn’t a recluse.
Or maybe he was. There’s appeal in that, isn’t there? Easy. Is easy what you want?
Nah. Easy doesn’t cost anything. No one goes to this much trouble for nobody.
So. Who are you, Odysseus?
There was a loud clattering noise, not unlike a box of tin cans being hurled out a window, and a screech of metal on metal that set Theta’s teeth on edge. Martha stood to the side, directing a group of SOCO who stood around a tree, steadying a ladder.
She knocked on his door, and it creaked open.
Branches, huh? Would’ve thought you’d go for thistles. Or is that the point?
Bet he was loud, wasn’t he? Rude? Bit of a dick? Or maybe he wasn’t. After all, you’re not normal, are you? You know it. He knows it. Knew it, at least. Somehow. Some way.
Pity. A mockery of kindness. That’s a theme, is it? Mockery, I mean.
But not quite?
“That’d be difficult, wouldn’t it?” asked Jack. His hands were tucked into his pockets, and his greatcoat buttoned all the way up to his neck. “The sticks, I mean.”
Theta huffed, breath misting in front of her. “I’d say so, yeah.” She licked her lips, chapped by the chill night wind. Her tongue brushed a scratch to the corner of her mouth.
Big lengths to go to. You don’t strike me as an overachiever.
“He’d have needed tools, then. Supplies. Pretty big ladder, too.”
“Mhm.”
What are you trying to prove?
“What do you think?”
“Big ladder,” she repeated. “Yep. Imagine carrying that through the woods.”
“Killer backache,” Jack agreed. Theta glared at him, and he put his hands up. “Okay, okay. But I meant about the body.”
Theta rubbed her wrist, absent-mindedly tracing the path his blood had made. “Fresh,” she said. “Fresh enough, at least. The blood wasn’t even congealed I found it—” she paused for a second. Jack raised an eyebrow, and she continued. “There’s no way he’d have been able to position him like that after rigor mortis.” Theta glanced at the removal team. Two officers held onto the bottom of a ladder, and another was making their way carefully up it. The rest stood in a small circle around them, watching. Absurdly, it reminded Theta of show-and-tell, or maybe the world’s weirdest fairy circle. Maybe. Did people stand in fairy circles? Probably not. “Two hours at the most, I’d say. Maybe more?” She shrugged. “I’m not forensics. Ask Martha.”
He gave her a look. “He worked fast,” he concluded. “Planned.”
Theta shrugged. “Or he knew how to relax the muscles. Or he kept him warm. Or maybe he positioned him while he was alive, or killed him here.”
Jack groaned, dragging his hand down his face. “So, basically,” he said into his palm, “what you’re saying is we’re looking for a either really pissed-off masseuse or an art major with serious anger issues.”
“If you like.”
Jack dragged his fingers through his hair. He looked tired, more tired than usual. But it was—Theta checked her watch—two a.m., so she supposed that was fair. Behind him, SOCO-with-short-arms hopped up and down, holding a saw by the tip of the blade up to SOCO-on-the-ladder. They looked to be struggling.
Jack sighed. “Body,” he repeated. “Arms out, legs together, stabbed through with sticks. . . remind you of anything?”
“No.”
“No, it doesn’t?”
“No, he’s not a martyr, Jack,” said Theta. “He didn’t die for our sins, either.”
What are you to me, a god without a voice?
“You’re sure?” He glanced over his shoulder skeptically. SOCO-on-the-ladder had finally gotten their hands on the handle, and was sawing at the branch the body had been stuck on. The rough, grating noise made the hair on the back of Theta’s neck stand up, and she dragged her palm roughly across the inside of her pocket.
“Yep.” She nodded.
Jack tugged on his ear and cast a weary glance around the scene. With a final creak and splintering crack, the branch was severed. SOCO-on-the-ground began shouting, and SOCO-with-short-arms and SOCO-with-the-lopsided-mask dragged a tarp to lay beneath the tree. SOCO-on-the-ladder yelled something, and threw the saw to the ground. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
“What?”
Jack ground the tip of his cane against the dirt. “It’s late,” he said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
She stared up at him. “That’s it?”
“Yeah. Go home.” He gave her a quizzical look. “What, what’s the problem?”
“Nothing. Just—” Two SOCOs walked by, pushing a stretcher, Johnny covered awkwardly with a cloth that didn’t quite do the job. The wheels rattled against the forest floor and there was a flurry of squawks as what birds hadn’t been scared off by the earlier commotion took flight. “I mean, first on scene, right? You don’t want to ask me anything?”
“You’ve already told me everything,” said Jack, brow furrowed. His expression cleared as it dawned on him. “Wait, are you asking me to interrogate you?”
“What? No.” She jammed her other hand into her pocket. “Just—”
“I mean,” a lecherous grin spread across his face and he wiggled his brows, “not that I wouldn’t mind—”
She smacked his arm and the leer vanished, replaced by a pained wince. “Stop it.”
He rubbed his arm, grimacing. “You’ve found bodies before,” he said. He frowned. “You okay?”
“Hm.” She rolled her heel against the ground, flattening the earth beneath it. “Yep.” She moved her foot, and the dirt sprung back like a sponge. “Yup,” she said. “Gonna head home now.” She turned and marched away, back the way she came. Branches were hanging limply where she’d broken them, leaves scattered over the ground and bushes drooping sadly where she’d burst through. She winced. There was a reason she always found another way back.
“You need a ride?” Jack called after her, but she was already gone.
*
“Another body.”
“Another body.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Is that a follow-up, or unrelated?”
“Everything’s related.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Guess so.” She shrugged. “I’m fine.”
“Are you?”
Theta peeled her hands away from her face and craned her neck to peer at him. He looked back, annoyance evident even upside-down. “Do you actually care?”
“Would you answer the question if I said yes?”
“Don’t need to. Already have.” She swung her legs over the back of the couch and sat up straight in one swift, fluid motion. “Why were you there last week?” she asked, blinking away the dark spots. “At the library?”
“Do you think it’s the same person?” he asked. “The copycat?”
She narrowed her eyes. “It fits,” she said. “Whoever killed these people was careful. Too careful. The Master’s never been this cautious, ‘cause he knows he doesn’t have to be. Desperate, too,” she added. “Younger, I’d say, smart enough, thinks he’s smarter than he is. Trying to make himself more important. Miming manipulation. Why were you there?”
“I told you.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Did you ask Jack?”
“Not that,” she said. “I know how you got there. Why, though?”
He tapped out a beat on his armrest and, right as Theta was sure he was going to change the subject, said, “Because I wanted to.”
“Why?” she pressed.
He shrugged. “Call if a whim. An impulse. I was curious.”
“What, about a dead body?”
“Weren’t you?”
“Sure,” she said. “But it’s my job. It’s not yours.”
“Not exactly a crime, is it?”
“What?”
“Death,” he said. “Being curious about it, that is. Causing it. . .” He twisted his face thoughtfully. “Not so much.”
“You know, most people would be less calm around a body,” said Theta, hooking a foot over her leg. “Especially one that looked like that.”
“You weren’t,” he said.
Her nails skated up her shin, catching on her trousers. “Can I ask you something?”
“Can I stop you?”
“That night,” she said. “Well, day. Week? Not sure, sort of lost track of time.” She shook her head. “What did you do?”
“When?”
She clenched her fist, fabric bunching in her hand. “I think you know.”
The corner of his lips twitched minutely. “And I think you know.”
“Right, wrong question.” She dug her nails into the bundle of cloth until they throbbed. “Why?”
He clicked his pen. “What’s death?”
“Nope.” She shook her head. “No. Not doing this.”
“Doing what?” He spread his hands innocently. “It’s just a question, Theta.”
“Answer mine first.”
He pursed his lips and dropped his hands. She held his gaze unwaveringly. He exhaled hard, nostrils flaring. “Because I wanted to,” he said stiffly.
“Why?”
He dragged his teeth over his tongue. “Try explaining an urge to a three-year old.” He shrugged. “Because I could. Because—” He shrugged again. “Don’t know. I’m the one asking the questions here.”
Theta dragged a breath in through her teeth and sagged back against the couch. “Jack,” she said slowly, “says death’s like a bramble. It clings to you, and holds, and leaves traces no matter what you do.” Or something along those lines. He’d been on his fourth beer, and slurring more than a few words.
“I know what he thinks,” said Koschei.
She cocked an eyebrow. “It’s all metaphors, right?” she said. “Can’t exactly get the answer wrong.”
“What’s your metaphor?”
She ground the point of her tooth against her tongue. Metaphors. Easy enough, right?
“It’s like a drug,” she finally said. “It lingers.”
“Do you think?”
She wet her lips. “It’s there,” she said. “Somewhere in the backdrop. In your memories, in you. It’s not something you can just wave your hand and get rid of. It’s. . .” She tapped her finger against her thigh. “Background noise. Something. You never stop chasing the high.” She wrinkled her nose. “Sort of?”
“Sort of?”
“Sort of. Is.”
“Background noise,” he repeated.
“What about you?” she asked.
“What do I think?” She nodded. He shrugged. “Could be any of those. Means different things to different people, right?” He titled his head by a fraction. “Everyone sees something else.”
Theta plucked at her sleeve. “I did miss you,” she said.
“You could have bothered to show it.”
When she left, she definitely did not slam the door shut behind her.
*
He remembered Theta, in the way a dried-out riverbed remembers the water, or a house remembers a master long since passed, or the Earth remembers space. Gone and far away, but always there, hovering over his shoulder.
He remembered towering stone walls, and empty classrooms, and fields and forests that stretched for what felt like miles. He remembered tires crunching down a gravel road, and chasing dandelion tufts under grey skies and even greyer clouds.
He remembered rocks scraping against his cheek, and the tang of iron, and watching as the river carried a pale, slip of a form downstream.
He remembered blood beneath her nails and holding her hand under a sky full of stars.
