Look Alive, Sunshine

Friday, July 7th.
Twenty days after.

Loathe as she is to admit it, Emmi is used to this level of darkness.

The look and feel stuck behind a blindfold is something you can't truly understand until you've experienced it. They've tied it so tight behind her head that it's increasing the throbbing in her skull ten-fold. The source of it has to be from when they kicked her into unconsciousness, not that she remembers.

Everything is flat and gray with not even a  sliver of light seeping in from the bottom or top. Someone knows what they're doing. Rookies weren't the ones sent on this mission.

They learned the displeasure of that lesson the first time.

Emmi stretches out and leather squeaks under her; she abruptly stills as the sole of her foot connects with a door. She was lying prone on a long back-seat and there was something tied around her - cordage, she assumed, to keep her arms pinned to her side.

Her side flares up with pain and so does her head, but besides that she feels relatively okay. Her legs were still intact and that was usually what mattered the most.

So she could run. That was good. She shouldn't, though. There were three of them, at least, and no way they all happened to be unarmed. They'd shoot her rather than let her get away. As Emmi knew, that whittled her options down to one. To get away it was her or them, and she had to be the only one left standing when that happened.

Not the best odds, and she wasn’t so pig-headed as to not admit it, but doable all the same. Worst odds had looked her in the face and failed to take her down.

She just had to come up with a plan. There were voices around her, but none inside the car - they had stopped for rest, or for a quick break. She needed her hand, first of all, and then a weapon. Both things weren’t going to be so easily obtained.

Her arm didn’t so much as budge when she tried to wiggle it; her shoulder already aches from being stuck behind her back. It’s been a while, then. She can hardly feel her fingers.

Emmi is refusing to allow any panic to find its way into her veins just yet. She hurts, yes, but not nearly as bad as she could, and they haven’t killed her. They’re just biding time until they can.

And she can figure out something in that time.

Whoever these fuckers are, they’re taking their sweet time getting back in the car. Too long for Emmi’s patience, anyway. The fact that she even has any to begin with when it comes to them is ridiculous in and of itself. They just kidnapped her. Her patience right now extends to seeing all of them set on fire and frankly not much else.

She stretches out and slams her foot into the door. The voices outside quiet, so she does it again several times over until the door is tug opened.

A hand locks around her ankle. “Having fun?”

“What are you fuckers doing out there?” she asks, genuinely curious. She wishes she could see. Even a hint at her surroundings would be nice; if they’re still in the mountains, Ria could be close. Not that Ria needs to be anywhere near this, but maybe she could get help.

Or not, most likely. Emmi has to help herself.

“None of your business.”

“Aw, I can’t know?” she wonders. “Rats. And here I thought I could join in.”

“They did say she had a mouth on her,” one comments. It’s like she’s famous.

Close enough, honestly.

“Sure we can’t just kill her now?” There’s another voice. Still three, by the sounds of it. “It’s close enough―”

“You want to risk your own neck by fucking it up?”

“I’m just saying.”

“Still here, you know,” she reminds them. She’d wave her arms about if she could. Emmi settles for wiggling her foot back and forth a bit because no one attempts to stop her. The other hand is still firmly pressing down on her ankle just heavy enough to remind her that like this, she’s got no chance.

“Hey, can I get out?” she requests. “Just for a second, I promise.”

There’s a long pause and then the grip around her ankle tightens. A moment later the man yanks on her so hard she goes tumbling free from the car, landing with a thud in the dirt. All the while the rope continues to burn at her forearm and the blunted stump of her elbow, digging deeper and deeper. She can already feel blood welling.

“Ow,” she emphasizes, blinking despite the futility of it. It’s not like she can see, now that would just be ridiculous. She makes to sit up and stays still instead, letting her back rest against the gravel along the side of the road. She has an idea.

“You wanted out.”

“And you’re definitely single,” she quips, wiggling her fingers anxiously. There’s two things with them - the element of surprise, and sheer brutality. They’ve got both down pat from what she’s seen so far.

Emmi shifts, searching for the rock that’s digging pointedly into the small of her back, and finally her fingers close around it, slightly smaller than the palm of her hand. A lucky strike to the bridge of the nose or even the eyes and it might give her the few seconds she needs to get away.

She clutches it tight in her hand. Even if they notice, what are they going to do? The options are endless, but Emmi has already been on the receiving end of most of them at some point in her life.

Nothing they could do to her is scary outside of death itself, and for now they’re holding off.

Emmi lets the heat seep into her a bit, lets her hands burn with pins and needles. Her time out in the fresh air is limited. She thinks it might actually be dark out. The sun out here is so bright that it would seep even through the best blindfold, and yet she sees nothing.

She was right - it hasn’t been that long. Not even twelve hours. There’s no way she was out for over a full day. A few hours, at most. If she had to be it’s probably not long after midnight.

“Wait a second,” she attempts, struggling to sit upright. The less they have to grab her to get her back in the better; less opportunity for fuck-ups that way.

Two of them grab her under each arm when he’s halfway there and shove her head-first back into the car. She goes easily, as much as she doesn’t want to. Struggling isn’t going to get her anywhere. Not yet.

They continue shoving until she’s all the way in, and then one clambers in after her. She’s forced to fold her legs akin to that of a pretzel to accommodate him. They’re definitely all bigger than him. The one man’s foot alone was practically the size of her head, or at least she thinks it was before he had knocked her out.

She would have been disadvantaged years ago, with two arms. It occurs to her suddenly as the car rumbles to life that she’s never been in a position like this with only one. Emmi hasn’t allowed that to happen. Last time they took her arm. She vowed to never let that happen ever again.

Emmi had practically jumped head-first into her own coffin after the mess in the park that night. Repeated, almost casual attempts on her life were back in full force.

The Agency didn’t take kindly to their own dying, not to the very monsters they hunted. At the end of the day they were nothing more loyal, brainless robots housing human body parts.

They wanted her dead. They would come and keep coming until they got what they want, depleted numbers or not..

And if they didn’t? Well, Emmi allowed herself to imagine that for just a moment, because that’s what was waiting for them. She wouldn’t die. That was the one thing that truly scared her, so she would not cross into that territory.

They were wasting time with formalities, with properly identifying her. They were trying to do this right.

And that was going to be a fatal mistake.

―

The stars aren’t bright enough anymore.

When night fell over him, it felt like they could be. Distant glimmers of light to guide his way, to push him on further down a non-existent path that led nowhere at all.

Better yet, with the stars came the darkness, and a brief respite from the burning sun and the burning wind and the burning inside him.

Or so Icarus had thought.

It was not yet gone. Dark for hours, now, and he still felt just as faded as he had during the middle of the day. Now he was the one melting away into a form of nothingness that was more troublesome than just being gone entirely. His legs still worked enough to carry him, but everything inside was gone.

If it weren’t for the painful, visible thud of his heart in his chest, Icarus would think himself something akin to the walking dead.

A fitting ending for all of this considering he was supposed to be dead anyway.

He’s lost track of time since his phone died. No one was chasing after him anyway. While something in him had almost hoped a message would pop up, or the threat of a call, most of him knew that it was for the best the way it was. Icarus had left for the good of everyone else. Prioritizing himself was no longer important.

He’s come a long way in a short time. Both physically and mentally. It’s tricky to remember the before, the life he lived before he plummeted out of the sky once again, but he thinks above all else the self-importance shined. He never would have put himself in this precarious position.

There was no way to be positive on this, but Icarus was leaning more and more towards the fact that he was going to die out here and never be found. He didn’t want to die. Now that he had lived in the first place and been brought back not longer after, he had no idea what happened. Would he still reincarnate, start another life? That seemed to be the most likely option, but he had no idea.

Like he said, though, chances are he was going to figure it out sooner rather than later at the rate he was going right now.

Heat stroke was a thing that existed, not that he knew what it entailed, exactly. Chances are he had it, or a version of it that was allowing him to still be upright. Soon the worst waves would hit though and he would be left defenseless, unable to raise the strength to even fight it. What was inside him, the embers that still burned despite his refusion to stoke it, would not save him.

They instead would go down with him.

Perhaps that was what fate had intended all along. To get rid of the worst part of him Icarus had to go too. Close his eyes, slip away. He would wake up with a new life where he would continue to hurt only himself.

The way it should have stayed, he thinks.

He has no clear path to dying, though. He’s exhausted, sure, and his legs have cramped so thoroughly every step forward is a struggle. Left behind are the roads and any signs of life - Icarus has now chosen to wander through dirt and sand and rock, a ramshackle, desolate town far in front of him. As abandoned as the rest of them, though standing taller than the rest.

When we said he didn’t deserve any more pain, this isn’t what we meant.

Alarmed, he trips over a rock and nearly sprawls out over the ground. The voices are quiet, as if they too are fading off. It would make sense.

He hasn’t heard even a whisper of them since he left. Certainly they’re not on his side anymore. They’re only here still because he has the ring in his pocket.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, voice coming out a scratchy wheeze. A lot like how Soran’s sounded when they spoke in the parking lot.

He’s trying not to think about it too much.

Predictably, that’s all they say. They had said something vaguely similar just before he had taken off. It was getting harder to remember any of the words, though.

Everything seemed like such a blur. Icarus’ only goal was to make it to that town. There he could sit down, maybe, just rest for a moment and close his eyes…

He knew what would happen if he did for too long, but despite the fact that he didn’t want to, it didn’t scare him as much as it used to. If he was going to die out here then at least he could make it as painless as possible.

Besides, being inside, even if it was an abandoned, broken down building, sounded better than being stuck out here. His lack of knowledge on the subject was one thing, but Icarus was fairly certain hallucinations didn’t go hand in hand with heat stroke. Not the kind he was dealing with, anyway.

He could hear things brought in as if carried by the wind. Voices and further off-putting sounds, a disturbing moaning that sounded as if came from an injured animal. It made him walk faster. His feet hit the broken concrete of a road long forgotten as he stumbles for the first of the buildings.

The further he went the more he could hear water, too. It wasn’t real. His brain was fabricating the very thing he was dying for to use against him. Icarus refused to look for it. There was no possibility a stream was running anywhere around him; all-around him was nothing but the town and a vast, empty wasteland.

Soon he would die in it, he thought.

If he had turned around sooner there’s a chance he could have made it back to the hotel. In his desperation he could have called Emmi and told her to come back for him. Icarus could have done literally anything other than what he did to save his own life.

Apparently it’s not worth that much anymore.

There are lights, too. Those… might be real. Little glowing orbs above his head and drifting around him, like fireflies trapped in a jar. Every time he gets close to one it seems to wink out and vanish.

One, right in front of him, disappears just in time for him to crash into the fence that surrounds the building looming in front of him. It’s so thin he didn’t even see it. Despite that it refuses to give away and he hauls himself over it, the razor sharp wire cutting into his palms.

It barely even hurts. He feels the sting as his skin is punctured, but the warmth of blood feels no different than the rest of him as it slips down his palms.

The building can hardly even be called that. The front and back walls are still standing taller than the rest; the right side is about half as tall, and the left is almost non-existent. Most of its ruins lie in large piles of rubble off to the side. There are no signs of any windows, the doors long gone. Any second now the rest of the solid stone looks like to collapse

It’s clear what the fence means: stay away, danger, you’re taking unnecessary risks going near it.

As if he hasn’t taken enough already.

Icarus practically drags himself through one of the tall, empty archways leading in, and makes it only a few more steps before he finally allows himself to collapse in the next corner over. Having a wall at his back makes him feel slightly better, but that’s where the feeling ends.

The exhaustion is a part of him, hollowing out his bones and making a home for himself. Every breath hurts more than the next despite how shallow they are.

Icarus knows if he closes his eyes right now he may never wake up.

And yet he does anyway.

―

The hours are lost to Ria as the moon rises and then begins its descent.

She tries not to let it take control of her. It’s hard out here during the day even with someone, but the feeling is bearable.

This… this isn’t.

For a few hours she holds onto the delusion that Emmi is going to come back, and once those delusions fade then she begins to make her way out of the valley.

The first thing she notices in the parking lot at the bottom of the hill is the tire tracks alongside their own car, something she doesn’t remember seeing before. It takes her a minute for anything else - she smells the gas long before she sees it, and finds trails of it under the car, a puddle that refuses to sink all the way into the earth.

Hesitation is usually something she’s chock full of, but not in that moment. Ria takes one look at that and flees back into the hills.

She’s not sure how wise a decision that is, but it has to be better than waiting here in the parking lot. Her brain knows a few things - it’s open, exposed, and she already knows deep down inside that someone else was here and they’re the reason Emmi is gone.

The hills are better. At least that way she can hide.

This time she doesn’t go nearly as far, just until the first signs of some old civilization begin to show. A slightly more well-worn footpath, a yawning mineshaft nestled into the side of the mountain fit with old tracks leading into it. She finds the thickest patch of trees she can find, still too exposed for her liking, and ducks into them.

First things first, she needs to think about this analytically. She is okay. Not in the greatest of positions, but okay. Facts are what come in first: Emmi is gone, she has no way of getting out of here, and she is more alone than ever before in her life.

That’s a pretty high bar to beat.

Another fact: she can’t be calm about this. Trying to slow her breathing isn’t going to help.

So a plan, then. She’ll take a few deep breaths and head back down the hill to the car to grab the map. Emmi had the keys and her phone, but so long as she has the map she can pinpoint exactly where she is and find the closest town. Help will be there. She’ll find a way to get back to Amargosa come hell or high water, and then they’ll do something.

Emmi is in trouble. Not dead, because Ria can’t think that way and get anything accomplished. Just in danger. Danger can be fixed.

First step - get back up. She clutches onto a boulder to her left, grabs for the tree to her right, and slowly eases herself back up to standing. No movement or sound erupts except for the dry tree branch, which nearly cracks off in her hand.

She takes a step back out into the open, still holding on for dear life. It’s her only source of comfort at the moment.

And then, “Isperia?”

Hearing her name, her real name, is like being hit dead-on by a lightning strike, or at least what she imagines it to feel like. She goes numb all over very quickly, clutching at both of her inanimate life-lines with a renewed intensity as she swivels back and forth, trying to find the culprit.

They’re just a shadow, at first, tucked into the darkness that begins at the entrance to the mineshaft. The only thing that’s visible is the hair.

White as snow.

Until they step closer to her she can’t make them out and isn't sure she wants to. As the shape of their face is gradually revealed something in her softens. She knew it wasn’t Muelara, but the threat was ever present. Seeing a face that isn’t all the way bad is a relief - good, in fact.

One of the only ones who ever made an effort seems like a favor Ria doesn’t deserve.

“Kyrenic,” she says evenly. He actually smiles. He did smile a lot before, so it makes sense. Seeing him look the exact same is jarring, a reminder of what she should still look like.

He’s still smiling. “Nice hair. Might have to try that myself some time.”

Shame wishes over her, unwanted. She shouldn’t feel bad about this.

Ria takes a long look at her surroundings, but no one else is there. How grateful she is that it’s just him. How ungrateful for everything else.

“What are you doing out here?” he asks. He knows why, or at least most of it. They’re only out here because Muelara put them on orders.

“Why are you here?” she asks in return. If they’re going to beat around the bush and ask silly questions, she might as well save her breath by imitating him. It gives her more time to think of actual, proper words.

They both know the answer anyway.

There’s still enough space between them that she could probably run. Why, she doesn’t know. Kyrenic is one of the good ones, or so she believed. She used to think they were all good until she realized otherwise.

“You never came looking for us,” he says, and something in his voice is almost mournful. “You’re with… a bunch of humans?”

“Not humans.”

“No,” he agrees. “They’re worse.”

“Is that what Muelara is still trying to feed you all?” she asks. Right now, if he thinks they’re worse, she’s going to channel them. She needs something from all of them right now. The tenacity, the strength, the wit, the swiftness.

The longevity.

“Where’s Emmi?” she continues. He’s a good one, she reminds herself.

She still wants to believe that.

Kyrenic takes a few steps closer to her, blinking. “Who?”

“She was here with me. Another girl. I haven’t seen her for hours.”

“Did something happen to her?”

If there’s one thing she knew about him before, excusing how genuine he is, it’s that he was a horrific liar. Not like her.

Relief floods her veins, suddenly, before it’s replaced by something else as he continues to come closer. She can’t even place the emotion, but it’s not good. It’s unsettling something inside of her, trying to encourage her feet to back away. She doesn’t think he would hurt her, but most of what Ria knows has been turned upside down recently.

And now she’s alone, no one coming to her rescue. She has to be on her toes. Every move he makes has to be noticed.

“You shouldn’t be here with them,” he says. “You need to be with us. Where you belong.”

“They don’t all deserve to die just because Muelara wants us to live.”

“So you’d rather us all die instead?” he asks, seemingly bewildered. It seems like a simple equation, she knows. Us or them. Them or us.

Ria and who never held her tightly before, or Ria and the people that finally have.

She’s never been a quick decision maker until now.

“I’m not saying they all deserve to die,” Kyrenic says. “But think about this. You are not safe out here. They left you alone. They’re… they’re corrupting you.”

Apparently he wants to see corruption, then. He takes another two steps closer and she tightens her fingers until the tree branch snaps clean off into her hand. Ria finally takes the first of her own steps forward, and Kyrenic’s feet stutter to a halt.

She never thought something like that could be gratifying.

“She’s corrupting you,” Ria corrects. “Making you look for something that in her hands could get you killed, too. And you know what? She won’t care. Not if I die, or you, or any of us. So long as she lives.”

“Isperia.”

“Don’t.”

“Isperia.”

“I said,” Ria enunciaties. “Don’t.”

Emmi’s gone, and in her place Ria is still pretending she’s here. This is what Emmi would be doing right now. Emmi would have already ran him through, or punched him so hard his head spun clean around.

Kyrenic, hands held up, continues advancing. So placating, like she’s a frightened animal and he is her tamer. It’s like Muelara all over again.

 She could reach out and poke him with the branch, now, but she doesn’t. She can’t. If it gets to that point, it’s over. He may not survive that and Ria definitely won’t. She needs to get out of here and get help.

She needs this to not be happening.

“Compromise?” he asks, voice soft. That's what someone does when they're looking to get your guard down. Gentleness can't possibly be excused for anything else. “We’ll go back underground and find it together. We’ll destroy it. When we go back to the city we can tell Muelara we didn’t find it. And after that, who knows, but we figure it out. You just have to come back with me.”

Ria only registers two words - underground, and back. She files the former away in her brain for later as valuable information. It makes sense. More than she’d like to admit.

The second she vehemently refuses the second it comes out of Kyrenic’s mouth.

Ria will not go back. Not now.

Not ever.

He’s so close. She wishes he wasn’t. Ria clutches onto the branch tighter, brings it front of her.

No one has ever looked scared of her before.

“Isperia,” he murmurs. “What did they do?”

That’s the final straw. He reaches out a hand not for the branch, but for her. He’ll drag her back there. Therein lies the end of both of them. Not Kyrenic, but Isperia and Ria.

Gone like they were never there.

She swings. The branch connects. There’s a sharp, ugly crack as he hits the ground at her feet but his eyes are still fluttering, open. She expected that. She’s not strong enough for one hit.

What Ria didn’t anticipate is the blood.

There’s an immediate spray of it as the branch connects with his skull, flowing down over his scalp and into his eyes. He looks up at her, or at least tries. What little of her that he can still see is looming taller than ever before.

A few drops of blood have already begun to sink into the sleeve of her sweater.

His mouth forms around a word, possibly her name, as his hand stretches up.

She swings down again. Another crack. More blood. Ria knew what panic felt like before this moment and somehow it’s nothing compared to what she’s feeling now. Ice cold dread and frantic hysteria forming into one maelstrom and she’s caught directly in the middle of it.

He wasn’t supposed to bleed.

The third hit. There’s already so much red covering his face she can hardly make out the details of it. He whimpers on the fourth, and then goes quiet. She thinks she does too. A fifth, and then sixth. By the seven she’s sobbing. By the eighth he’s gone quiet for good.

On the ninth she stumbles, pitches forward, and goes crashing to the ground next to him, the pool of blood forming underneath his head edging towards her knees.

A tenth. She’s on auto-pilot. Her brain has shut-down. She wouldn’t still be swinging otherwise. Her arms have gone numb.

Eleven. Blood seeps through her pants and stains her skin. There’s a messy arc of it across the front of her sweater.

On the twelfth, her fingers give out and spasm. The branch clatters away.

Thirteen. Thirteen, thirteen, thirteen. There’s no thirteenth.

Just Ria.

―

Not being able to heal is odd.

He has twin black eyes. Soran can’t remember the last time he looked in the mirror and saw that. Never, maybe? Or at least never with the threat of it lasting for the indefinite future.

He pulls at the cut above his brow with the tip of his finger, watches some of the newly formed scabbing pull apart. Blood wells underneath it.

Tarquin is watching on in silence from the doorway, his reflection seemingly at ease with his decision.

He had been gone for a while there, but judging by the recently re-acquired staff, he’s ready to go.

“You leaving?” he asks.

Tarquin nods. “I know I said wait until morning, but…”

“Still no response?”

“Nothing.” Tarquin sighs. “Bad feeling is only getting worse the longer I sit here. Might as well do something about it.”

Might as well, yes. Not like there’s anything better to do except sit here and pick at his wounds, seeing most of it for the very first time. Tarquin had insisted they both catch a little bit of sleep first, and he had, little as it was, but now it just felt like he was avoiding it.

“Are you going to leave too?” Tarquin asks.

“Sure am.” He sort of has to. He can’t very well sit here by himself, now can he?

Tarquin shifts back and forth on his feet. They both look in similar states of awfulness; not nearly as bad as it could have been, but certainly worse than whatever Emmi was anticipating when she left Tarquin to watch him.

He’s going to get an earful for this.

“You don’t suddenly feel bad, do you?” Tarquin asks.

“No.”

“Good.”

He blinks. Tarquin manages a smile. “If you felt bad, I’d be worried, you know,” he continues. “You’re already acting strangely enough. But no, you’re fine. That’s good.”

“Fuck you,” he says, but there’s no real venom behind it. Does he feel bad? Not really. There’s at least a little bit of regret associated with the action, though, because in the very least he should have found something other than Tarquin to punch.

Then again, he tried. Tarquin just happened to stop him.

That old man has it coming.

“I’ll let you know when I find them,” Tarquin says. When, not if. Such optimism is astounding for how worried he seems to be about their whereabouts. “Just keep your phone―”

“I know, I know,” he interrupts. “I’ll go find my boyfriend, you find your girlfriend, whoever succeeds first calls the other. Got it.”

Tarquin lets out a long sigh. “Please don’t.”

“Don’t what?” he asks innocently. “Find him?”

Tarquin turns around with a roll of his eyes. “I’m going now. Call me when you find him.”

Soran waves. Tarquin, without looking, reaches back to give him the finger as if anticipating the action. He leaves the bathroom after him, watches his retreating back.

“Hey,” Soran says. “I’m sorry.”

An audible snort just before Tarquin closes the door is paired with an equally amused look on his face. “No, you’re really not.”

Ah, well. He tried.

Once Tarquin leaves, it occurs to him quite quickly that he hasn’t been properly alone in some time. Emmi clearly didn’t trust him to be. Yes, he’s leaving, but even once he does he’s still going to be alone. Soran’s had an idea for some time now, letting it steep in his brain whilst Tarquin was around to overrule it, but now that he’s gone…

Well, Soran’s just gonna have to do it, isn’t he?

First things first, he packs up every single thing left here by the four of them into random bags, wherever it fits, and combs both rooms high and low to make sure nothing is left behind.

The decision is a simple one: Soran isn’t coming back here.

Everything else is a bit tricker. He can ensure no one else has to either so long as he collects all of their belongings, but that still leaves him with no car and only two empty arms to take it with him. Not going to happen, clearly.

The next bit had come to him sometime after Tarquin had pulled him up off the floor. He’s seen that old man either pull in or leave every single day since they got here in the same car, a rusted red pick-up that sits just around the back of the lobby for as many hours as the day and night are long.

And he may not have the ability to pop the lock open with just a thought anymore, but he knows exactly where the keys are.

He drops their collection of bags just behind the car, out of sight, and makes his way to the blissfully empty lobby, taking a long look around. Once again he leans over the counter but no one reacts to his sudden intrusion, letting his hand slide over the lip of the counter towards the glint of the key ring that he saw only for a moment yesterday.

The keys slip into his palm without even a jingle as he clutches them tighter, slipping out the back door once again. In and out without hardly a sound.

He’s slowly getting back into the groove of things.

Soran shoves all of the bags into the closed truck-bed and gets behind the wheel, tucking the keys away for safe-keeping. It’s old, but it’ll do the trick.

He doesn’t have the same luxury as Tarquin. He can take off no problem and find the girls as well as the car and get into it no problem. Soran could take off, too, but what happens when he finds Icarus? There’s no way to move him, to get him out of whatever awful situation he’s thrown himself head-first into.

He needs this truck. It’s not so much stealing as it is a simple favor.

So what if he never gives it back? Like he said. Old man had it coming.

Soran tightens his hands around the steering wheel before he starts the truck. “Just give me an idea,” he requests. “Anything you can manage.”

The spirits are far away, now. Maybe too far. After a long enough separation he couldn’t hear them at all, but a few days couldn’t take them away entirely. They had to be able to give him something, or else Soran was going to drive in endless circles and never find him at all.

They were trying to connect, to speak, but all he could hear in his head were murmurs. So they weren’t so pissed at him after all for trying to force severance.

They still wanted to help.

“Anything,” he says quietly. No voice, this time, but a faint image, blurry around all edges, as if projected directly into his brain. A building beyond repair, hardly standing.

Soran can work with that. There’s only so many places, and he can find this one. He’s already done enough research. Finding him now should be easy.

He just has to find him, preferably before the sun rises once again.

Who knows what havoc he could wreak once it did.

―

There’s one thing Tarquin truly knows - human brain, animal brain, whatever one is currently in control.

Death Valley should not exist. People should not live here. You are not meant to make it out.

It’s an odd sense of deja vu, as if he’s been here before and should know the intimate details of it. Specific mountain ranges, a tree here and there, an old broken down well that looks like nothing more than a pin-prick this high up in the air.

Transforming has always been such an odd thing. It’s the form of an animal with human emotions living inside, ones that don’t always make sense, twisting and morphing to fit the current situation.

Most of them have to go away when he’s flying. Comes with the territory. This high up in the air, taking enough control over a different form to wield it properly, those all come at the price of letting mostly everything else go.

It comes with practiced ease, now. It didn’t always. Even longer it took him to properly control the magic behind the shift so that he could come and go as easy as breathing, as if nothing had changed.

It was enough to fool just about anybody. That was why Tarquin had lasted so long without anyone finding out. Nobody expected a bird to hurt them. Nobody expected a bird to suddenly morph into a fully-fledged human with a weapon on their back, either.

He knew the second he landed, whenever that may be, that he would look the same as he did upon leaving the hotel, weapon at the ready, unchanged.

A useful trick to have in your arsenal when you had so many already.

Surprisingly, or not, there are really only so many places to look for them. They never discussed any populated or obvious places amongst themselves, or at least he wasn’t privy to any of those particular conversations. It’s the hidden gems, the places people only flock to if they’re looking for curiosities. Places, ultimately, that would be capable of hiding such an important thing for as long as it’s been here for.

With that, there are a few existing rules - avoid lights, avoid people, avoid streams of cars on the roads.

The most important - look for and notice the things that others wouldn’t.

Tarquin is more than positive that no one else could see what he sees this high up.

And even this up, he knows a body when he sees one.

Descending is easy enough. It’s not as if he hasn’t dozens of thousands of times. He lands a ways away, first in the easy shape of an animal and then down to the ground on two legs, shaking slightly from the transformation, but only just. He’s long grown used to it.

It’s definitely a body. Not that he was doubting that. Down the slope slightly to the left, nearly in the shade of a tree. All the blood makes it difficult to pinpoint any individual details but he tries anyway, at least until he makes out the white hair.

Tarquin freezes. It’s not possible that it’s her, may not even be any of them, but is a coincidence too unlikely to be true right now?

He thinks it just might be.

His hand reaches over his shoulder to wrap around the staff almost subconsciously, fingers finding a comforting anchor in it as always. He creeps a bit closer, footfalls silent through the dirt. What he was hoping for was a sign of glaringly obvious, electric blue, but his eyes are closed. What’s left of them, anyway. His face and front half of his skull have been thoroughly massacred, a branch rolled not far away clearly the culprit. Individual shards of wood have been left behind in his ruined cheeks, the caved-in bridge of his nose.

Someone certainly did a number here. Hell, more of a number. There’s not much left above the shoulders to even mark it as a person.

Or alien. It’s definitely looking like one.

A twig snaps somewhere behind him and he flinches, whirling towards the noise. He’s not keeping in tune with his surroundings. Stupid mistake.

He’ll get himself killed, too. The blood hasn’t even dried yet. It’s recent, which means whoever swung that branch is not far. Possibly still here, even.

The brush rustles for a moment. A shadow passes along the thin, unsteady trunk of the tree.

And then, out of the shadows emerges… Ria?

Tarquin’s brain does a very quick and inconvenient shut-down.

She manages something - it sounds like a choked, garbled version of his name. To put it lightly, she looks a mess. Tears and dirt are streaked across her face, though she’s not crying now. Dark splatters rest in odd spots over her hands and torso, though the worst bit is her legs, dark all over her knees and spreading in ripples up to her thighs.

Dark, but not dark enough. It almost looks like blood.

Tarquin’s blood goes cold so quickly he nearly ices over as he looks back to the body and then  back to Ria once again. The blood. The vicious tremble in her hands.

The way the tears come streaming back down at her face the second he really looks at her.

“Tarquin,” she manages, though at least this time it sounds half-way right. “I didn’t― I didn’t know what to do, he just showed up, and I panicked and Emmi’s gone, and, and―”

“It’s okay,” he tries, making his way towards her, and just in time, too. Her legs tremble, same as her hands, and then her knees give out; Tarquin stops her from hitting the dirt by a precious few inches, dragging her back up into his arms. She tries to grasp at them, frantically, struggling to find purchase.

“It’s okay,” he repeats. “Talk to me, what happened? What do you mean Emmi’s gone?”

She’s essentially sobbing into his shirt, at this point, trying to find air to breathe.”She― she’s gone, and someone cut the gas line and I was going to head back down but he was there, and I― I killed him, oh my God, why did I―”

It trails off into babbling, or sobbing again, or a mixture of both. It’s difficult to differentiate between the two. He squeezes her tighter, unable to tell if it’s appreciated or even noticed as another sob wracks her tiny frame.

He turns back over his shoulder, still holding onto her. It’s a mess, and all the blood… jesus, he didn’t even think Ria was capable of something like that.

One of her own, too. She was right.

Tarquin turns back and wills himself to relax save for his arms curled around her, squeezing as tight as she can. She may just fall apart if he doesn’t. He can’t even risk letting go to check his phone, see if he has service - he doesn’t, presumably. They’re in the middle of nowhere, and Emmi’s inexplicably gone, and Ria just killed someone.

He doesn’t remember how he felt after the first; it was too long gone. Awful, presumably, and that’s just the beginning of it. The first step into an even worse descent.

Jesus. Fuck. Tarquin can’t even wrap his brain around it.

That’s the thing. You’re not supposed to be able to understand this. Messes are just that. Complicated, difficult to understand, almost impossible to get out of.

And look at the one they’ve created now.