bipolyjack

The suit may be water-wicking, but it’s not waterproof, and Jin is really starting to feel the difference at hour five or six of this miserable stakeout. They’re shivering helplessly, crouched in the space between two rain-drenched chimney pots on a rooftop in the Bronx, holding one hand up to their eyes like a visor to keep the water off their face, watching the fire escape outside a top-floor apartment across the street. It’s colder here than in Porto Ouro, and the suit doesn’t trap heat nearly as well when it’s soaked through. 

Nothing is happening on the fire escape across the street, just as nothing has been happening on the fire escape across the street since Jin set up here. Jin is starting to think nothing is going to happen on the fire escape across the street and this is all going to be a wretched waste of their time.

“Sound off,” says Marian quietly in Jin’s earpiece, making them jump out of their fucking skin. It’s been an hour already since the last one? Fuck. “L’Antenne?”

“Still in position, Shepherd,” says Ben’s voice. He’s on the other side of the building, watching the front door. “No change. Nothing to report.”

“Convex?”

“No change,” says Jin through their chattering teeth. “Freezing my ass off, same as before.”

There’s no shiver evident in Ben’s voice, only mild reproach. Bastard. “Didn’t I mention you might want to grab a poncho on the way out the door?”

“It wasn’t raining when we left, asshole.”

“Well, the forecast -”

“Dude, do I sound like I’m in the mood for your shit?”

It’s just Jin and Ben on this mission; Bernard and Cassidy are off chasing the other half of this lead, probably somewhere a lot warmer and drier than this, the fuckers. Marian is running back end for both duos, also warm and dry back at the base, which Cassidy has repeatedly reminded them is no longer Silencers HQ, though that’s still how Jin thinks of it. What they wouldn’t give to be back there now, taking a hot shower or some shit. 

“Wait.” Ben’s voice is suddenly sharp and intent. “Got something.”

“Yeah, I see it,” says Marian, and Jin’s phone vibrates once in their pocket as Marian starts screen-sharing their heat-sig readings. “Is that a motorcycle?”

“Yeah. One rider. They’re parking by the gate. They’ve let themself in. They’re heading up the stairs. I’m gonna lose them as soon as they get inside.”

“Hold your position, L’Antenne.” Jin jumps again, having stupidly forgotten that Cassidy is also on this channel. “If that’s who we think it is, you don’t want to take her in a close-quarters fight.”

“Trust me, I’ve no interest in engaging, I’m just going to get a little closer.” 

“I said, hold position.” Cassidy’s tone leaves very little room for argument.

Ben says nothing. Jin can picture the face he’s making, the muscle tightening along his lower jaw.

“Lost the heat signature,” Marian says, breaking the silent standoff.

There’s another long moment of tense silence on the line, and then a light flicks on in the dark window Jin’s been staring blankly at for the past several hours. “Hey, uh,” they start, and that’s exactly when a lithe and flexible arm wraps around their neck from behind, choking off the rest of whatever they were gonna say. 

“Better not move,” a sibilant voice says against their ear. Jin lets themself be dragged to their feet, out from between the chimney pots, tucking their chin, trying not to strangle. The thing they thought was an arm turns out to be a - tail, or something, furless and a little scaly like a rat’s, apparently prehensile. The Bluetooth is plucked away, the tip of something like a claw pricking the shell of their ear, cutting off the several voices demanding a status report, and the metahuman says, probably into a communicator of their own, “Got one.”

Great. Stellar end to this fantastic evening.

The… rat person drags Jin to the center of the roof, walking them along backwards. Stumbling through the inch of standing water on the gravel-coated rooftop, fighting to breathe around the tail pressing against their windpipe, Jin thinks again, damn, could really go for that hot shower right about now.

"Yep," says the rat person, in response to something Jin can't hear. "Transporting in three, two -"

Jin chooses that moment to slam their elbow back into the rat person, hoping to catch them in the sternum or the tit or somewhere painful, but from the immediate loosening of the tail around their throat and the gargled grunt from behind them, it sounds like they must have got them in the neck instead. Jin whirls around, ready to throw hands; sure enough, the hunched-over figure only comes up to, like, their armpit, which doesn't make a lick of difference when they lunge at Jin and clamp a mouthful of needle-like little teeth into the meat of Jin's forearm.

"Aagh - fuck!"

Jin has about two seconds to whack at the creature worrying their arm like a dog toy before a swirl of deep shadow blossoms around them and swallows them both into a screaming void, black static blasting at them from all sides.

The sudden onslaught leaves Jin's ears ringing and vision swimming even after the portal or whatever dumps them in a heap with rat guy onto a shitty thin carpet, crispy with cigarette burns. Rat guy's teeth are still lodged in Jin's forearm. It fucking hurts.

"Wow," says a low voice, rough with years of smoke. "Biting, Sorga? Really?"

Sorga spits out Jin's arm. Blood beads on the reflective strip. "They went for my fucking neck, what the fuck was I supposed to do?"

"Hey, buddy, you went for my neck first," Jin points out, rising to their elbows and trying to surreptitiously hold the side button on their phone through their pocket, which would ping Marian their location and send up a distress flare.

Sorga snatches their wrist before they can get the button held down for the required three seconds. Up close in the light of a cheap fluorescent bulb, Jin can see their glittering black eyes and the long snout, patchy-furred, tipped with a quivery wet nose and a spray of coarse whiskers. "Want me to search 'em?"

"Suppose you'd better," says the smoker's voice, even as a pad-fingered claw-tipped hand is already patting down Jin's front and working open the hidden zipper at the edge of one of the reflective panels. Kari installed this zipper pocket because Jin was always losing their phone out of their basketball shorts; she'd be pissed that this rat guy found it so quick. Then again, Jin did kind of point it out to them.

The smoker has circled around in front of Jin now and crouched to examine them - a heavyset woman in a long, shiny pvc coat and spike stilettos, face mostly hidden by a fetish mask in the same material as the coat. Only her mouth is visible, an unlit cigarette dangling from lips coated with thick foundation. "So what are your powers, little hero? Besides annoying Sorga enough to get them to bite."

Sorga grumbles, fiddling with Jin's phone. Jin, wet and shivering, says nothing. The smoker's eyes are covered by the mask, which means there will be no use in trying to distract or startle her by reflecting light into her eyes. They'll just have to think of something else.

Sighing like her life is so difficult, the smoker reaches out a gloved hand, catches Jin by the jaw, and wrenches their head up. Jin doesn't fight. After a quiet moment of inspecting the fading bruises up the side of their neck (Ben's work, from two days ago), she says, with a lilt of humor, "You got a sweetheart, little hero? Girlfriend, boyfriend? Someone you care about? Lemme tell you right now, we'll find them. We'll make them sorry they were born, if you don't open your mouth and make some facts come out."

Jin keeps their mouth tight shut, breathes through their nose, and hopes Ben has disobeyed Cassidy by now and is about to bust the door down. The smoker's coat is beaded with rain. This must be the motorcycle rider they weren't supposed to fight at close quarters. Great.

"You're one of Bandit's new litter, aren't you? Thought they were operating out of Brooklyn still. What're you doing all the way uptown on a poor-weather night like this?"

Jin says nothing. 

The smoker brings her other hand to Jin's face, lifts a sodden strand of hair off their forehead, trails her fingertips down their cheek to the corner of their mouth, where she proceeds to force their lips apart. Jin finally allows themself to struggle, jerking and twisting, biting when they can't yank away, but then she gets her second and third fingers pressed to the roof of their mouth and a black burst of noise fills the inside of their skull and knocks them out cold.

***

Jin wakes up on a whole different floor. Linoleum this time. Still cold and wet, still bleeding sluggishly from the tooth puncture wounds in their arm. Head fucking slamming with headache. They drag a hand over their eyes, squint, try to determine anything useful about their location.

Looks like a kitchen. A cramped, dirty one. Their ankles have been zip-tied together, and Jin winces as they curl their cold, numb toes in their wet suit. 

They do seem to be alone. So there's that.

Well - hold on. Shouting from somewhere nearby. Sounds of a scuffle. A yell, maybe an exclamation of surprise or discomfort, maybe Jin's name, it's hard to tell.

They get themself up on one elbow, gritting their teeth at the lancing pain between their eyes (it really does feel like somebody drove a metal spike right through the center of their skull) and then they fall back with a wince as a door bangs open, loudly, and Sorga comes hurrying into the shitty little kitchen, cradling one claw-hand to their chest. Looks broken. Good.

"Get up," they say, reaching for Jin with their other hand. "We're going."

Jin tilts their shoulder like they're offering it to be grabbed, bouncing the kitchen's weak ceiling light directly into Sorga's beady eyes for an instant, not enough to stop them, not even really enough to sting. But they do flinch and hesitate just a hair, and Jin can work with that.

They kick with their hobbled feet and catch Sorga right in the snout. Shouting, Sorga reels backwards, and Jin throws themself into a dive, knocking an already unbalanced Sorga to the floor.

That, of course, is when the black bloom engulfs them both, gulping them out of existence.

"Bro, that sucks," Jin yells, hands clamped to head, the minute the black-static void deposits them at the feet of the motorcycle rider again.

She toes at them with less force than Jin would have expected, and they twist around on top of a struggling Sorga to see what has her so distracted.

It's Ben, silhouetted in the open - no, doorless - ah, he's ripped out the hinges, they're still circling his fist, the hinges and bolts, like a cloud of metal hornets, awaiting a target. His eyes flick to Jin for a half-second, and for only that half-second, there's fear in them, and Jin is transported to the floor of a Nutritech testing bay, teeth aching and muscles spasming from repeated electric shocks, locking eyes with a frightened Ben through the viewing window.

I'm fine, don't freak out, they try to say with their eyes, but then the woman is hauling them bodily to their still-hobbled feet and pressing something cold into the hollow beneath their jaw - the muzzle of a handgun, if they had to guess, and Ben does look scared, visibly, unmistakably, though right away he tries to hide it.

"Aww, is it him?" Jin can feel her grinning against the side of their face. "He your sweetheart?"

Ben lowers the fist orbited by the hinges and bolts (it's shaking). "Why don't we talk about this, instead of pulling guns and doing things we'll regret." He's trying to sound cavalier; it's not going great for him.

Cool, thanks for the backup, asshole, thinks Jin, trying to come up with anything better. Not a lot of wiggle room, with the gun jammed up hard into that soft spot under their jaw, hard enough to hurt. God dammit. "L'Antenne. Just - just do what she wants, man, fuck."

Ben's face doesn't twist - much - but Jin can read the tension in him anyway.

"Want you to put down those metals, first thing first. Sorga, go get 'em. We'll take you both."

She keeps the gun tight to Jin's head while Ben lets the hinges clatter to the floor and holds out his wrists to be zip-tied. Sorga takes his earpiece too, shooting Jin dirty looks over their shoulder all the while.

Cassidy's gonna be pissed. 

Jin tries to think while the woman uses her awful shadow power to swallow them out of the apartment complex and into what looks like the blacked-out back of a delivery van, but the blasting void-noise isn't very conducive to thinking.

"Oh, that's bad," Ben gasps, lying on his side, his shoulder digging into the small of Jin's back. "I get why she's called Black Static now."

Jin almost laughs. "Oh my god, Black Static?"

"That's what Cas- what Bandit said."

When Jin doesn't reply, Ben adds, sounding mulish, "Bandit also told us not to engage her in close combat. In case you'd forgotten."

"Wh-! She's the one who 'ported me inside, I didn't engage shit! You weren't supposed to engage her either, asshole!"

"I thought I was about to watch her shoot you dead," Ben says, in such a venomous tone that Jin stops squirming to try to reach their tied ankles and lies still against his back for a moment because it's not like him to lose his cool this way.

"Dude. You pissed or something?"

"You're shivering."

"Yeah, I'm fucking cold. Don't avoid the question."

"You really -" They feel him take a breath, a long slow one, and then he's shuffling around behind them until he's lined up against Jin back to front, his face in the crook of their shoulder. When he speaks again, it's flat and sardonic and that’s how Jin knows he’s really fucking mad, because he doesn’t usually pull that shit with them these days. "You get a kick out of putting your own life in danger? Is that it? You get off on making me watch you almost die over and over?"

"What? Come on, man, don't be like that."

"Like what? Worried about you?"

Almost funny, how unimaginable that would have been, coming from him, even like a year ago. "In case you forgot," says Jin, knowing it's a shitty thing to say before it even leaves their mouth, "only one of us has actually watched the other one die, and it wasn't you."

Underhanded, maybe, but it does shut him up, which gives Jin time to think. Head still fucking hurts. Never been the same since all those concussions.

Ben lies stiff and angry against them while they bunch their legs up and try to get at their zip-tied ankles again. "Would you stop that," he says finally, a little sullen.

"And what, lie here for the next hour and a half waiting for Bandit and Outflow to hop the A and come rescue us? Nah. Got a better idea."

"Oh, and I suppose I'm going to like this idea?"

"Nope," Jin says grimly, and tells him.

***

Small mercy that Ben's wrists were tied in front instead of behind, but it wouldn't have particularly mattered, since what he ends up doing is feeling around with his powers, finding a pair of wire cutters in the van's glovebox, and floating them over to cut the ties without ever touching them.

"You've had better plans," he grumbles, rubbing circulation back into his wrists while Jin cracks the van door and checks for cameras in the parking garage outside. 

"Yeah, and I've had worse ones. Plus, I don't hear you having any. Looks like one camera on this side, four o'clock, up by that pillar. Angled on the loading doors so we're probably good. You wanna drive, or?"

"I don't want either of us driving, Jin, considering neither of us are licensed, and we are in the Bronx."

Jin shuts the van door and fixes him with a withering look. "Ears wide open for a better plan." 

None seems forthcoming, so they climb over him and settle into the driver's seat, fiddling with the floor pedals. Is it one for each foot, or are you supposed to somehow push both with the same foot? "Look, it's not Manhattan or anything. Now get up here and put your seatbelt on. Safety first."

Ben attempts a scoff, but Jin can see his fingers trembling on the seatbelt buckle. To his credit, he still uses his powers to turn the empty ignition, which, Jin supposes, is all they can really ask.

Not many other cars on the road at fuck a.m. on a rainy night in the Bronx, which is probably the only reason they make it two entire blocks before Jin hops a curb and plows to an abrupt halt against a stoplight pole.

"I am never getting into a car with you again," says Ben, without releasing his death grip on the door handle. His face, under the red cast of the stoplight, is blanched completely white.

Jin unwraps their fingers cautiously from the steering wheel and puts the van in what they think must be park. "I dunno, I see how it could be kinda fun. Driving. If, like, you knew how, and it wasn't raining, and you weren't tryna fucking, escape from a known supervillain…"

The rain is, in fact, drumming very pleasantly on the roof and windshield of the van. Jin has never been much of a white noise person, but leaning back in the driver's seat and closing their eyes and letting the tension of the crash ride out on a long breath, they can kinda see how the sound could be… soothing or whatever. Or maybe Black Static’s miserable power is still cobwebbing up the inside of their skull.

It’s quiet in the van for a minute, other than the rain, and another faint sound that Jin finally identifies as Ben’s rapid breathing.

They crack an eye.

He’s still rigid in the passenger seat. He hasn’t let go of the door handle. His eyes are closed, tight shut, and he’s clearly losing the fight to regulate his breathing.

“Hey, man.”

Nothing, except maybe he squeezes his eyes shut a little tighter.

“Ben.” Jin reaches out, slow, so they won’t startle him. “Hey.” Hand on his arm. Slow. “You’re okay, man. We’re all good. Car didn’t even blow up or anything. Didn’t even set off the air bags.”

He swallows, throat jumping, and the next breath he takes seems slightly deeper and slower than the one before.

"Okay, good, that's good. You're doing good, keep that up."

"I'm fine," he mumbles, a hoarse burr to his voice. 

"Okay, buddy, whatever you want. Keep breathing."

Keeping a hand on Ben's arm while he collects himself, Jin peers out the rain-filmed windshield and tries to get a bead on their location. They don't recognize the street; it's totally out of sight of the apartment complex where they tried to corner Black Static. Looks like there's a subway entrance another half-block down. Could make a break for that, try to lose her and Sorga on the trains - god dammit, they wish they knew more about her power, does it let her appear anywhere or just somewhere she's seen, somewhere she's been? Fuck. Maybe they oughta find a payphone first, let Cassidy and Marian know -

"Oh, shit," says Ben suddenly, and then in a rush of deafening silence the van drops out from underneath them.

Well, drops with them, more accurately. Drops with them still in it. Whatever. Ben has yanked Jin tight against him and suspended them both, keeping them from smashing against the walls of the wildly tumbling vehicle. He's yelling, wordless and terrified, and it's all Jin can do to keep ahold of him and tuck their head and hope he doesn't fuck up.

There's a loud, awful crunch of metal as the van lands back on the ground, on its side this time. The air bags finally do go off, one of them punching Jin in the shoulder, and a few of the windows shatter in on them in a cascade of rainwater and broken glass. There's a strident noise echoing in Jin's ears that takes them a moment to identify as the van's panic alarm.

Ben is still keeping the two of them suspended, arms wrapped around Jin like he's trying to hold them together. Jin suspects he's holding himself together more than anything. 

"Alright, kids," says Black Static's smoker voice, pitched a little louder to cut through the sound of the rain. "Come on out, if you're done playing."

"Yeah Jin, are we done playing?" Ben hisses between his teeth. Jin can feel his whole body screaming with tension against them.

"Maybe not yet. I got an idea. It's totally dependent on your power, and if you fuck it up we could both die, wanna hear it?"

***

Ben hates this idea just about as much as the last one, but he flips the car in the direction of Black Static's voice and maneuvers them out the side door that he rips off of its sliding track while the whole vehicle is still in midair without getting them both tangled in seatbelt straps or gouged by flying glass, so all in all Jin's pretty impressed. He even gets them down the block to the metro station using the dislocated door as a screeching, juddering sled, the two of them crouching and clinging to the inside of it for dear life. 

The van door clangs down the rain-slick metro steps with Jin and Ben still aboard, bashes into the wall at the bottom of the staircase, and throws them both into a stagnant puddle. Jin groans, spits out puddle water, and shoves Ben off of them so that he splashes down on one elbow at their side. "Dude, this mission blows."

He's soggy and shaking as he hauls himself to his feet. His hair sticks to his forehead. "I don't appreciate your accusatory tone, Jin -"

"Convex."

"Oh, whatever! Our earpieces are gone, our phones are gone, Cassidy's not listening, no one is listening, I really don't see why it matters!"

"It's the, the principle or whatever the fuck, and besides, the station could be bugged and anyone could be listening."

"You're really getting on my last nerve today," says Ben, but he reaches for Jin's hand and hauls them up and out of the puddle anyway and they're off and running again, down the dirty white-tiled corridors, following signs for downtown.

***

It’s not until both of them are slumped, soggy and aching and miserable, side by side in the dirty plastic seats of an empty A-train car that Jin thinks to say, “You know, you can get like. Pills and stuff. For the motion sickness.”

Ben’s eyes are closed again. “I’m managing it.”

“Look, man, I’m not trying to like, tell you what to do or whatever, just -”

“It’s under control.”

"Okay - yeah. Okay."

***

They must fall asleep on the A, because next thing they know, the subway car's not moving anymore and Ben's voice is right in their ear.

“...Jin? Hello? Did you hit your head when I wasn’t looking? Don’t fucking pass out on me.”

Jin lets him shake them back to awareness, head lolling a little. “Dude, knock it off, that bitch set off her powers on the inside of my mouth, can you blame me for being a little wobbly.”

“She - she what? God, never mind. Come on. Up.”

He's on his feet now, pulling them up with him. Ooh, fuck, their head hurts, which it didn't while they were unconscious, so they're very much looking forward to getting back to that. 

“You’re mad at me again, aren’t you,” says Jin, letting themself be dragged back out of the metro station, up the stairs (fuck, stairs) and into the fucking rain again. Damn. Just when they were starting to get less wet and cold. At least it's less than a block to their building from here.

Ben hasn't let go of their arm. He's towing them along the sidewalk with single-minded momentum. "Is it so hard to believe I might be concerned? About your - your behavior, your flagrant disregard for your own safety -"

"Alright, alright, I get the picture, can we do this, like, not right now?"

He stops dead in the middle of the sidewalk, spins around mid-step so suddenly that Jin full body slams into him. He catches them by the upper arms and bears down - ouch, right, their forearm is still bleeding. There's hair in his eyes, dark and heavy with rainwater, droplets collecting in his eyelashes and the stupid little hairs in his goatee, and Jin is still muzzling over the way rain has pooled in the divot above his upper lip when he kisses them, hard, bruisingly hard.

It brings Jin back into their body somehow, like they were walking half a step behind themself until he jerked them both to a stop, and now they've kind of slammed into themself, it jolts them awake and shakes loose the last effects of Black Static's power. He tastes like cigarette smoke, familiar, and also like dirty New York rain, which reminds Jin that they're still fucking freezing their ass off.

Ben is pressing his forehead to theirs now. His hands are warm on Jin's biceps. "God dammit, Jin, if she had decided to pull that trigger, there's nothing I could have -"

"I know. Look, I'm sorry." Can we go inside now, they refrain from adding. 

That seems to satisfy him, at least for the moment. He kisses them again, briefly this time, as if just to punctuate his point, and then he's back to towing them down the shiny-wet sidewalk. 

***

The lights in the living room and kitchen are off when Jin and Ben stagger back into the Silencers base. Only the glow of the several computer screens in the far corner, where Marian swivels in their chair as the two of them shuck off their wet shoes in the entryway. 

"Holy shit, what happened? I already called you both in MIA."

"Black Static," says Ben shortly, catching Jin by the shoulder as they overbalance again. "Get the first aid kit, will you?"

Marian bites their lip. "I - I'm still on the horn with Cassidy -"

Their headset lights up - it's a castoff of Bernard's, Jin thinks, with the stupid gamer LEDs on it - and Marian listens intently before rushing out, "No - no, they're here, back at base, no visible major injuries, no, they weren't tailed -" lifting the headset off one ear: "Were you tailed?" 

Ben huffs and rolls his eyes and manhandles Jin to the kitchen, which they allow only because they've had a fucking day and standing upright is getting a little tough. He gets them into a chair and stomps off to the bathroom for the first aid kit, at which point Marian turns their chair a little farther and says to Jin, one hand covering their headset microphone, "Is he - oh, my god, you’re bleeding - is he mad about something?"

Jin is peeling the clinging wet sleeve of their suit back to get a better look at the tooth marks. They're having some trouble closing their hand, but that might just be the cold. "Bro. When is he not."

"Eugh," says Ben, returning with the medkit and seeing the way Jin is trying to pull the inside of their sleeve free of the congealing blood on their forearm. "Stop - stop, stop that. Arm on the table."

He's brought a dry towel as well - surprisingly considerate of him - and Jin falls into a sort of stupor with its warmth around their shoulders as Ben loosens the clotted blood with a damp cloth, disinfects the two semicircles of puncture wounds (it stings, but not enough for Jin to flinch, they've had worse) and tapes it over with gauze, all with a clench-jawed expression of discomfort. A laugh makes its way out of Jin, just a huff of humor, really, and he flicks them an irritated glance.

"Care to share the joke?"

"I just - weren't you gonna be a doctor, wasn't that the, the original plan?" Jin remembers his disgust at the desiccated mouse in the tray. "And you're squeamish?"

"You may recall the discussion where I mentioned that was what my parents wanted for me, not what I wanted for myself, yes?" They're both speaking quietly, trying not to interrupt Marian, who is still glued to the monitors and occasionally answering questions from Cassidy over the headset. 

"I was just thinking, maybe it all kinda worked out, like, you don't have to be a whole ass real doctor, and it sure doesn't hurt to have a couple of former pre-meds on a hero team."

For the first time today, a little wry twist of a grin appears at one corner of Ben's mouth. "True enough. Though somehow the rest of us seem to be far less injury-prone than you."

"Weird," says Jin, watching him roll the excess gauze into a precise cylinder and tuck it back into the med kit. "Must be all those superpowers I don't have."

That earns them a severe look. "That's what worries me, Jin."

“Hey, you do have superpowers, okay, and I have you to back me up, because we're a team, right, isn't that, like, the whole point? So quit freaking out.”

He huffs. “I am not freaking out.”

“Kay.” Jin leans back in the kitchen chair and closes their eyes, but only gets about halfway to unconscious before Ben's hands are on their towel-swaddled upper arms again, lifting them to their feet.

“Jin, for the love of - Go dry off. Clean clothes. Then bed. I'll bring you an Ibuprofen.”

“Aw, thanks, Nurse,” mumbles Jin, and they can feel Ben rolling his eyes, but he supports them to the door of the bedroom and a couple minutes later he really does bring them a bottle of pills and a glass of water, and he even helps them sit up to drink it.

And he settles into the room's only chair with a textbook after, without them even having to ask.

Time is a slippery eel of a thing. Azariah can never seem to remember how he got here, or when, or why, or how to get out. For all he knows, he's been here for decades. Or maybe it's been a single night of dreaming. 

Branches bend back under the weight of his arm, the moonlight filtering through them silver-cold and shivery. He can see his breath here in the forest, lonely little puffs of steam. He's pushing through a thicket, twigs scratching at his face and hands, fallen leaves crunching under his feet. He's looking for something. He's always looking for something.

Amazing what your brain will fill in for you, when a dream doesn't quite make sense. When the trees of the thicket start to melt and run and pool like slag around him, Azariah's brain supplies, well, obviously, trees aren't real.

The ground has become too soft, too pudding-like, to hold him up. He slips down through it in one horrible quick slurp and lands on his hands and knees, dripping slime. Metal grating, sharp-edged, cuts into his palms. The slime drizzles through it, down into the dark. 

Azariah scrambles to his feet. An engine bay, almost familiar to him in its layout, in its particular textures and colors, in the shapes of massive machines in repose. Warning lights throw wild red kaleidoscopes across the corrugated walls. Pilots and technicians sprint past him, shouting, gesturing. There is an oppressive air of panic. 

Azariah stays still and closes his eyes, tries to pick out the voice coming distantly over the loudspeakers, obscured by the piercing sirens.

" - breach, hull breach, hangars 5c and 5g, additional projectiles incoming, hangars 6c and 8c evacuate immediately, scramble all available engines, non-essential personnel proceed quickly and orderly to deck 15 -"

Something rips away a huge swath of the hangar wall in a ragged scream of tearing metal. Oxygen howls out of the breach, sucking people and equipment with it. Azariah's feet lift away from the grate and gravity becomes a forgotten concept, a pleasant faraway dream. A chunk of loose debris slams into his airborn body, knocking the air out of him and tumbling him wildly out of control. Azariah flings both arms out in a desperate grab for something to stabilize himself. There is nothing. Everything is moving with him. He's already in space, and pressure builds instantly and unbearably in his skull as his eyeballs begin to boil. 

In his last instant of consciousness, Azariah knows only fear.

Stars and ships and floating corpses streak into long perspective-lines around him.

He wakes up in an alley, frost crackling on his skin, melting away with each drop of rain that strikes him. An overflowing dumpster looms on one side, a weeping cement wall on the other.

Azariah's heart is still pounding. His lungs still haven't registered the air in them. He coughs, chokes, breathes. Rainwater plasters his clothes to his body and slicks down his hair. He claws water out of his eyes and stands. Starts walking, one hand skimming the smoke-stained wall of the alley for balance. He's looking for something.

It goes on like this for years.

Azariah never sleeps. He can't even remember what it feels like. 

***

There's a puckered scar at the base of his skull where the spike went in. The first time he sees it in the mirror over his shoulder on his way into the shower, Azariah laughs out loud.

It looks like an asshole. A second little sphincter at the back of his neck. Azariah finds this hilarious. He pokes at it with the tip of a finger. The med-techs did their work well; it's completely healed shut.

It's funny, Azariah thinks, soaping himself down in the shower, his hand lingering over the scar again, learning the pleats and ridges of it. All of the stuff in the simulation, the absolute wildest shit, he can bring up in full and vivid technicolor whenever. The actual physical reality of what happened to him inside the fallen engine, though? Hazy. Indistinct, like a steam-fogged mirror. He has zero memory of receiving the spike. The sensation of it exiting his muscle tissue is a little firmer, but until he saw the scar just now, he still could have believed he dreamed it.

Well. Showing off his little neck sphincter would be a cool party trick, if he had anyone to throw parties with, but something tells him the only other people on this station with their chips deactivated won’t find it quite as amusing as he does, never mind want to throw a party with him. That’s fine. Just his little joke, then.

Jin towels their damp hair, dripping water on the bath mat. They always feel a little sticky after a visit to the mall. Probably a holdover from when their mother would take them shopping with her as a kid and tell them not to run their hand along the railings or touch any part of the escalator or sit on the dirty floors, and then insist on plopping them straight in the bath when they got home. She was very conscious about germs. 

Looking at themself in the bathroom mirror in their Elysium quarters now, at the scars they've been racking up in the past months, at the inhuman ripple of muscle in their arm when they raise a hand to push their wet hair off their forehead, Jin can't help but think that one day they're going to go home to visit their parents and be completely unrecognizable. Their mother is going to look at them the way she used to, when they first asked her to buy them boy’s clothes, with both perfect eyebrows arched like, didn’t I raise you better than this. She bought them the clothes, and she never said anything, not out loud, but Jin knew she was disappointed.

They’re prepared for that, at least. It’s always like that with parents. But it’s kind of nice that Marian has only known them the way they are now. It’s nice - freeing - to start without all that baggage of whoever the fuck they both were before.

They kissed Marian in the Hot Topic dressing room. It was kind of an accident, but also, it wasn't.

One second it's Marian in the doorway, blue hair a little messed up, a few strands over one eye, asking Jin what did they think of these jeans, turning a half-circle. Jin following them into the little room, letting the door shut behind them, Marian backing away with a grin, drawing them in with just the magnet-pull of that fucking irresistible smile. Don’t they know Jin’s full of metal.

The stall isn’t big. Marian takes three steps back and hits the mirror and then Jin’s right there up against them and Marian’s still grinning and there is absolutely no space between them anywhere except the fucking tiny sliver between Jin’s mouth and Marian’s mouth and now the smile is parted lips and a hot breath and now, only now, Jin is realizing how fast it all is, and they try to deflect away the inevitable by tilting their face so their temple comes up lightly against Marian’s cheek, high, almost at the corner of their eye, and they freeze there, waiting. Marian’s breath is on the lobe of their ear, Jin can’t fucking move, and then there’s the light brush of a hand at the outside of their elbow, just below the hem of their t-shirt sleeve, the brief electricity of bare skin, of fingertips, and Jin jerks just a fraction and Marian says “fuck,” breathes it out like it’s some kind of surprise when in actuality there’s nothing at all surprising about this, about literally any aspect of this situation, because Jin just can’t not be like this apparently. Can’t not be pulled in by magnets, not when they’re fucking full of metal from head to foot. 

And Jin gives up and takes Marian’s face in their palm and draws their two mouths into alignment and it’s so easy, it’s so, so easy, Jin can’t remember why they tried to stop this from happening in the first place. Marian tastes sweet, a little like blackberry, from the fancy stupid novelty ice cream they ate together twenty minutes ago, leaning on the railing of the mall’s second floor and watching people pass by down below.

(Jin dropped their lighter. Like their hands just didn’t want to hold it anymore.)

Marian’s hand is at the back of Jin’s head, keeping them anchored, them against Marian against the mirror. When they pull apart to breathe, Jin can just catch sight of their own reflection, open-mouthed and heavy-lidded, panting a little, and then they take in Marian, whose eyes are still closed, making them look young and vulnerable in a way that catches Jin completely off guard. And then their eyes flutter open and they’re looking at Jin the way Jin normally hates when people look at them, like they understand, everything, completely.

Except Marian does almost understand, actually, and that’s, fuck, that’s a weird one. Closest anyone’s ever come, anyway, besides. Besides. No, you know what, fuck him.

Fuck him. 

Jin wraps the towel around their hips, settles their glasses back on their nose, frowning as the lenses steam over immediately. They open the bathroom door and let the cloud of steam vent out into the cooler air of their bedroom. 

Maybe this is a bad idea, this Marian thing. But it’s so easy, and it seems like it’s been so long since anything was easy for Jin. Aren’t they allowed to want something easy for once?

It can hardly be called a real Thornwallow family dinner unless someone loses their temper, can it.

“Useful? In what possible way?” says Elerith, tilting his chair back on two legs, which Alphiriel knows their mothers both hate. A human sort of gesture, thought Elerith would never admit it. Impossible not to pick up a mannerism or two when you spend so much time around them.

Alphiriel delicately spears a perfectly roasted miniature squash off of a platter and transfers it to their plate. No need for their family to know they will be utterly unable to taste it. “They have the aptitude. With a bit of direction, I imagine we could, in short order, construct ourselves quite the serviceable force of foot soldiers.”

“To what end? To fight the Order?” Elerith laughs, an objectively beautiful sound, which Alphiriel finds nearly more irritating than being laughed at. “They fight each other already. Why expend the effort? Why insert ourselves -”

“They will tire of battering away at each other sooner or later, and that is, apparently, the absolute soonest we will think to be sorry for not cultivating allies among them,” says Alphiriel sourly, never mind that they held the same opinion as recently as a few days ago.Their younger mother, at one end of the long table, gives them a stern look, which Alphiriel ignores. Aethyr, who dislikes these sorts of dinner table disagreements, has ducked their head and engaged themself with their vegetables behind an intentionally-placed curtain of hair. Alphiriel is prepared to ignore them also, as they often do. When Aethyr has anything to say about anything, it tends to be the recycled rhetoric of their older brother, and as far as Alphiriel is concerned, one of Elerith is quite enough.

Elerith, lowering his chair back onto all four legs, leans forward over the table and rests his chin on a fist, looking Alphiriel cooly in the eye. “Don’t think I haven’t seen you with that witch. The one wearing the shoddy illusion at the ball last week? This wouldn’t be the first time a dalliance swayed you away from the well-lit path, sibling.”

“As if you’ve never dallied with a human,” Alphiriel snorts.

At that, their older mother finally interjects, “Children. Enough.”

“I saw them in the labyrinth,” pipes up Aethyr from behind their hair, the little traitor. “With a human. From the Order.” 

Elerith’s eyes take on a hunter’s single-minded intent. “Aethyr. Do tell.”

Aethyr already looks as if they regret speaking, which they should, thinks Alphiriel, glowering in their direction. “She was in attendance at the ball as well. You danced with her, brother.”

Alphiriel sees the exact moment when Elerith remembers the Lieutenant’s face. A grin, subtle, just a hint of canines. “Ah. Whose bed have you not stumbled into, dear Alphiriel?”

Alphiriel does not deign to answer the question, though the desperate battle between the witch and the alchemist is quite fresh in their mind. A true pleasure to observe. The witch who called themself Winters, holding the clear upper hand, wild with fire and lightning and triumph. The bitterly stubborn alchemist, taking her beating with her teeth gritted and blood in her hair. An encounter of the most mundane sort, despite the charged blasts of magic crackling through the air. Just fury, raw, unforged. No elegance to it at all.

That was what gave them the idea. That microcosm of the whole thing. The witches and the Order, flinging themselves impotently against each other, the Lords and Ladies looking on in mild to moderate amusement, confident in their security at society’s zenith. Now, for once, there is something to fight over. The new ley line. Untapped. Unclaimed. 

Alphiriel sets down their fork, watching Elerith across the table. “If the Order were to lay claim to the ley line, the worst they could do would be to put it off limits to the rest of us. If the witches prevailed, however - that sort of rampant use of unshaped magic could quite easily level the city. Imagine, in contrast, a ready force of well-trained -”

“Pets? They would hardly be good for much else,” says Elerith. “Trained birds with clipped pinions, unable to hunt.” 

“Falcons,” counters Alphiriel, “obedient, dependent, natural talents honed to a thorn’s point.”

“Bit of a human impulse, don’t you think? Domesticating that which ought to be wild.”

Aethyr snickers.

“Shut up, Aethyr.” Alphiriel pushes their plate away, fed up with the pretense of eating. “This dismissal of human ways and habits serves us poorly in the long term, you know. One day we will turn round and discover that the humans have evolved behind our disinterested backs and now find themselves capable enough to roust us from our roosts. I know how you despise looking stupid, dear brother, and I cannot tell you how stupid you shall look the day a human gets the better of you.”

Elerith tilts his head back and laughs, a long bell peal. “Oh, Alphiriel. Imagine genuinely believing that a mortal pus-bag could ever best one of us -” The laughter cuts off so suddenly, Alphiriel can almost still hear it echoing off the high vaulted ceiling of the dining hall. “Ohhhh. It’s that witch, isn’t it. You think they could do it, don’t you. You think, for some unfathomable reason, that if I stood face to face with that stinking rat, they would be capable of doing anything besides choking slowly to death with a thorny bramble about their throat and tendrils crawling into their mouth and ears and eyes -”

It takes Alphiriel a moment to realize that they’ve risen from their chair. “Elerith.”

He rolls his eyes. “Honestly, sibling, it doesn’t even bother me that you’ve decided to consort with the Order, they’re in our pockets as it is, but all this talk of training up witches? Of granting them access to the knowledge and power held sacred by our people for centuries? You’re talking about making them dangerous. Forge weapons of this rabble and we might actually have to expend some measure of effort to turn the blades from our necks. Perhaps I ought to seek out that witch of yours -”

“They’re not mine.”

“Well, isn’t that precisely what you’re proposing? A well-trained witch on a leash for every self-respecting noble in Vandarael?” Elerith stands as well, steps to the side to allow a servant to scuttle forward and push his chair in. “Well, luckily for your little infatuation, I’ve more pressing business to attend to than chasing down your new toy. Do be assured, however, that should they cross my path again…” Here he smiles, and his eyes are full of ice. “I’ll not spare them on your behalf, sibling. Nor the good Lieutenant.”

Alphiriel grips the edge of the heavy oak table, talons gouging the varnished wood. “Then perhaps you ought to be thorough in your extermination, for you shall never discover from me which of them knows your true name.”

Every other member of the Thornwallow bloodline bolts up from their seats. Before Alphiriel can steel themself, Elerith has already vaulted the table and slammed them full-bodied to the floor, crawling black roots bursting from the fine mosaic stonework beneath them to lash them down securely. Elerith’s unglamoured claws are digging into Alphiriel’s throat, pressing into the arteries at each side. “I’ll kill you,” he says, his voice perfectly even, bordering on conversational, but his lips tremble with fury as he speaks. 

“Alphiriel, you didn’t,” says their younger mother, aghast.

Alphiriel can’t taste the blood on their tongue, even as it coats the inside of their mouth, thick and hot. They smile up at their brother, dropping the glamour that hides their pointed teeth. “Go on then. I may not be around to see you fall, brother, but don’t think I shan’t be enjoying it from the other side of the veil.”

***

Alphiriel only staggers a little as they look for a place to sit in the courtyard. A glamor is covering the four ragged wounds in their neck and hiding the iridescent splash of fresh blood on their clothes, still pearly-clear, not yet dried to rust. But hiding is not the same as healing. That will take time, and more magic than they currently have.

This is almost more humiliating than if Elerith had killed them outright. No, not almost. Definitely more.

Dinner arguments in the Thornwallow household usually stopped short of coming to blows, but to be fair to Elerith - distasteful concept - what Alphiriel has done this time is truly unforgivable. 

Alphiriel draws the wide hood of their cloak up over their head and settles cross-legged on the ground in a patch of shadow. No dancing humans here today, but Alphiriel hopes the witch, Winters, might happen along sooner or later. Thanks to the glamour holding their throat closed, Alphiriel can afford to wait, at least for a little while.

They're quite finished with the Thornwallow family. And the Thornwallow family, and the elven nobility by extension, is quite finished with them.

It has been strange settling into the Elysium living space. The Aegis bunker hadn’t exactly been glamorous, but it had still been Soul’s first home and she’s sad to leave it behind even if the new place is at least as nice. Sometimes she finds herself just sort of pacing, browsing online in her mind and letting her feet wander the team’s new space.

That’s how she finds herself knocking on Jin’s door.

“Yeah, what’s up?” Jin pauses a round of Guitar Hero on an embarrassingly low score and comes to the door with the big plastic controller in hand. They’re not sure who they’re expecting to see on the other side, but Soul in an unzipped, oversized hoodie definitely isn’t it. “Oh, hey - hey.”

“Hi.”

Soul looks at Jin, not quite sure what she wants. Company or something, maybe. Feeling like she did when the team had first moved into the Aegis bunker.

“Hey. You, uh. Doing okay?”

Soul considers the question for a moment. “I think so. May I come in?”

Jin realizes they’re blocking her out in the hallway and steps aside. “Oh - yeah, totally, I was just - I grabbed Astin’s Playstation from the old bunker and, you know. You wanna play? Or is there like. Something on your mind?”

“I would like that, thank you. I am just trying to get used to our new home, I think.” Soul takes up the second controller and waits for Jin to sit again before planting herself next to them.

It’s kind of weird, to hang out with Soul one on one like this. For the two weeks Jin had been in the infirmary, during which they’d slept a lot and seen barely anyone, they’d done their best not to think too hard about what Soul might be doing, or thinking, or feeling, with mild to middling success. But with her sitting next to them on the floor, attention fixed on the tv screen Jin had leaned up against the wall, they’re having a tough time keeping a lid on the speculation. “So whatcha been up to? With Elysium, and, and whatever.”

Soul answers without looking away from the screen. “Orientation.” She fails to elaborate.

“You play ‘get down Mr. President’ this time?”

“Oh, no. It’s mostly been meetings.” Soul almost kinda smiles.

The two of them play without speaking for several minutes, buttons clacking on the controllers, before Jin gets up the gumption to say, “It’s like when we moved into the bunker, huh.”

“Mhmm. I miss that, I think. It was nice.”

“Yeah.” It was nice. Before all the shit went down, when they were still getting to know each other. Before Soul saw Jin for what they were: a motherfucker.

The round ends. Soul won. Jin goes back to the menu, picks “Heart Shaped Box” without really thinking. “You, like. Doing okay?”

Soul nails the first few notes before stumbling over most of the intro phrase. “Why do so many of the songs about love sound angry as well? Is love not a good thing sometimes?” The memory makes her gut sink, metaphorically.

“There have been a lot of changes recently.”

“Yeah,” says Jin again, because what else can they say to that? Soul’s scoring lower this time, and Jin remembers when she asked them about this song, about what it meant. Months ago, now. Funny how time passes different when you’re not going to class every day. How it starts to slip away from you. Though that could be the concussion talking.

By the time the third verse rolls around, Soul’s score is barely passing. “Does love make people angry sometimes?” She only notices she’s crying when her finger flickers out so bad she loses her grip on the guitar neck.

Jin sets their controller aside without bothering to pause the game. It fails them both out as Jin lays a hand on Soul’s flickering knee, second-guesses and pulls back, then lets it land again. “Aw, Soul, you’re - hey, I’m sorry.”

Jin hasn’t touched her in weeks, not since she broke up with them, which makes sense of course but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t missed it, hasn’t missed them. She lets herself cry and tilts over towards them, hoping to find a shoulder.

Oh no, Jin thinks, but lets her lean on them, puts an arm around her, draws her up against them, against their better judgement. “I’m sorry,” they say again, like it will change anything or fix anything or matter whatsoever, as if saying I’m sorry has mattered any of the other times they’ve said it, to any of the other people they’ve said it to. They’re not even sure which of their mistakes they’re apologizing for. Any of them. All of them.

Soul lets herself be drawn in. It feels good and familiar and she doesn’t stop crying but after a moment it does downgrade to a bad sniffle. Her face is pressed against Jin’s shoulder, and without really thinking about it, she whispers what she’s feeling. “I miss you.”

Dammit. “Yeah,” says Jin quietly, and lets their cheek rest on the top of her head, knowing they shouldn’t and doing it anyway, like always. “Same.”

Her arms have been pressed up between herself and Jin, and now Soul lets herself wrap around them. She feels like she should be thinking about what she’s doing. She doesn’t really want to though. She shifts her head, still pressed against Jin’s shoulder, but looks up towards their face.

Her eyes are so big and round, glowing purple. Jin gets lost in them for a hot second before taking hold of her arms and gently distangling themself, which is damn hard because it feels good to be held. They want that hug so bad. But they shouldn’t. “Soul, I thought you didn’t - I know you don’t want -”

Soul starts to let Jin move her arms, but after a moment she puts up a gentle resistance, not asserting herself necessarily but asking to stay. She knows she doesn’t know what she wants. “I do though.” They don’t have to kiss her, she’s not going to die if they don’t, but she does lean in hoping they won’t lean away.

“Soul,” they say, but it comes out so quiet, all air and no spine, and they still have a loose grip on both of her arms but they don’t stop her from holding onto them, and they let her mouth meet theirs, and they don’t exactly not kiss back.

Soul let’s herself sink into Jin’s kisses, clears her mind of anything but those and their arms around her. It’s easy. She’s missed them. “I miss you.” She doesn’t stop kissing them.

Fucking hell. Jin should stop her. Shoulda stopped her already, but they want it just as bad and their mouth remembers hers even though it’s been weeks because they’ve never kissed anyone else whose mouth is like Soul’s but god fucking damn it, they’re not together, they’re not together anymore, how did their hand wind up on her face? Shit, fuck.

There’s a moment, the briefest moment, when Soul almost pulls away, almost needs more time to think, but then something she does makes Jin gasp and both their hands start to wander and then it’s far too late for critical thinking.

---

Soul doesn’t want to stop, but the certainty that this has all been a terrible idea settles in suddenly and without room for argument. She feels herself freeze up against Jin and before she knows it she’s crying again.

“Aw, hey - hey.” Jin tries to lay a hand on her cheek, but she’s flickering so wildly their palm keeps clipping through. “Soul -”

She’s not sure what to do, what she wants. Her first instinct is to hug Jin tighter, find that comfort, and she does almost feel better for a second but then it just feels even more wrong. “I- I should not have . . .”

Jin doesn’t stop Soul from extricating herself because she’s right, she shouldn’t have, and Jin shouldn’t have let her. It’s just that Jin was alone in the infirmary and alone in that NutriTech cell and alone before they came to Porto Ouro and if there’s anything Jin has learned after all this shit, it’s that they’re not too great at being alone.

“Soul,” they say, and even to them it sounds guilty.

She wants to say something back, but she can’t even bring herself to make eye contact as she untangles herself from the sheets and grabs her hoodie off the floor.

“Come on, Soul, you don’t have to - it’s not -” Oh yeah, it's not what, fuckwad? That was an ill-advised hookup with an ex and you, at least, should fucking know better. Jin doesn’t reach for their clothes yet; just sitting up in bed feels like swimming through cold mud, almost like the nanobots are resisting their movements. They sit with their knees drawn up and watch Soul gather her hoodie into a bundle under her arm, because what are they gonna do, stop her?

Soul moves for the door, still trying to say something but not knowing what. She pauses just before she opens it, turns her head not quite far enough to see Jin in her peripherals. It’s not their fault, or maybe it is? It’ll be okay later, or maybe it won’t? She settles on saying nothing and leaves, grateful that there’s no one in the hall between her room and Jin’s.

“Hello. You have reached the voicemail of Ichiro and Michiko Saito.” Though it is Jin’s mother speaking, she lists her husband’s name first. “We are unavailable to take your call. Please leave your name and telephone number and a brief message and we will return your call at the earliest opportunity.”

“Hey, Mom,” says Jin into the phone after the beep and a brief consideration with their thumb over the end call button. “You’ve, uh, probably seen the news. Just wanted to let you and Dad know I’m okay.” They hadn’t thought farther ahead than this, which is resulting in an overly long pause at this point. Thumbing at the edge of the bandage taped over their bicep, they stare blankly for a moment across the wide room at the diagnostics table where Soul is sitting, swinging their legs with perfect rhythmic accuracy and glowing that pale minty seafoam color. “I missed a little school but I’m doing the catch-up work - my adviser doesn’t think I’ll need to add a semester or anything. Maybe a couple of summer classes.”

If they’re gonna be spending more time here in the future, they should ask Jess if Lord Midnight has any rules about smoking in his super secret base.

“I’m fine,” Jin says again, after another extended pause, chewing the inside of their lip. “Don’t worry too much about me. I have friends here, even. You’d be proud.” That’s not strictly true. Thinking of Jess and Astin getting smashed at the party, of smoking with Ben on the edge of the pier, Jin almost laughs, but swallows it back. “Hope you guys are doing g- doing well. Talk to you later.” They hang up.

Hopefully that will head off most of the questions.

It hurts, even in the dream.

Jin clenches their teeth, but the impact of the jolt stick knocks a grunt out of them anyway. The broad-shouldered woman has been at it for a while, white ceramic armor plates protecting her chest and knees, a visor over her face. Every time Ben or Sue Ann flags in their attacks, glances towards the window separating their lab and Jin’s, the stick connects again, sending another brutal bolt of electricity through Jin’s body.

In the dream, as in life, the nanobots do nothing in this moment to soften the blows. They are inert, useless, and Jin’s limbs tremble with the catastrophic effort of staying upright on their knees. They tried to remain standing at first, but that only lasted so long.

Circling Sue Ann with a hand outstretched, steel orbs flashing around him, Ben’s eyes flicker to Jin for half an instant. The woman with the jolt stick doesn’t see, but Jin does. The fear in that flick of a look. Before coming here, Jin has never, never seen Ben afraid.

The pause lasts long enough to warrant another blow to Jin’s back, and they arch helplessly, pain ripping through them. And then, in dream fashion, they are abruptly on their stomach in Ben’s bed, head turned to one side, watching him through lazy half-lidded eyes as he steps out of his clothes, trailing a perfunctory hand over their bare shoulder. And then they’re kneeling over him on the floor of the Nutritech lab, blood on their knuckles, on his face, and their muscle-swollen hand is around his neck, bearing down. And then they’re kissing him in a dark corner of someone’s basement, and he tastes like beer and cigarettes, and his teeth are catching at their lower lip, on the edge of painful. And then they’re on the beach, Jin’s fist still thick with muscle, Ben lying in the shallows, wet hair in his eyes, wheezing. And then they’re in a skeletal concrete frame of a building with open air behind them and Jin is drawing him in with a hand cupped to the back of his head. And then they’re arguing in raised voices, fists clenched, facing each other across a NutriTech lab, because Jin wants to leave and Ben wants to stay and neither of them really have a choice.

“Jin?”

“Jin! Have you finished your homework?”

“Not yet!” Jin shouts down the stairs, returning his pencil immediately to his mouth afterwards. He’s developed a habit of chewing on the metal thing that holds the eraser on - not even really chewing, just clicking his teeth against it. Nibbling. It’s a stress thing, he suspects. Some of the kids in his grade have taken up smoking, which would be a lot more intriguing of a concept if he thought he could ever in a million years get away with it.

Taking the pencil out of his mouth, Jin scratches his temple with the damp eraser and copies out the calc problem onto a fresh sheet of notebook paper. Four more problems. The last one took him seven minutes. These last few look a little harder. Maybe half an hour, if he really bears down on it. Dinner was three hours ago, at six-thirty sharp. He should be in bed by ten if he wants eight hours of sleep. But he’s got another round of edits on this English essay left, and a fresh set of notecards to make for the bio reading, and it takes six minutes precisely to get into his pajamas, brush his teeth, take his hormones, and get into bed.

He knows he won’t be in bed by ten.

Jin leans back in the ergonomic office chair his parents got him for Christmas and blows out a sigh. Outside the window of his bedroom under the eaves, clouds scuttle aside to reveal the moon, as if the moon blew them out of the way, also sighing.

Jin is tired. He can’t remember the last time he slept more than six hours in a night. But his grades are impeccable, and he does well at math bowls on weekends, and sometimes when she thinks he’s not looking, he catches his mother watching him with pride in her eyes.

That makes it all worth it, right?

There’s no cell service down here, obviously. Jin shakes their head in disgust, pockets their phone, and leans back against the wall, blowing a sigh.

If hard-light AIs could sweat, Soul looks like she would be sweating, holding the huge pillar construct together with all her might. Jin doesn’t want to risk breaking her concentration, so they leave her to it, fishing shakily in their other pocket for cigarettes and lighter. The nicotine does its work quickly, as always, but it doesn’t stop their mind from racing as they tilt their head back and close their eyes, breathing out smoke.

It’s been, what, five, six hours? Since Belle confirmed it, not since she took him there. Jin isn’t sure which was worse, the hours when they didn’t know where he was, or the hours when they did. The stomach-clenching anxiety of before has calcified into a spike of restless rage, and now they’re sitting on the floor at the foot of the watchtower in the ass-end of this fucking death trap prison, paralyzed with exhaustion, not sure if they could get up no matter how badly they want to.

They could, of course. The nanobots have gotten them up from worse.

Jin takes a long drag of the cigarette and feels the barely-healed edges of the sword wound in their chest tug and sting on the inhale. The thing is - the really shitty thing - is that they’re in no shape to storm NutriTech. And NutriTech might have been the last place they wanted to be as recently as this time yesterday, but right now in this second they’d shove that fucking bullshit angel sword up their whole ass if it meant they could get there faster.

There’s a shout from outside the chamber - “Soul? Jin? You guys still there?” and Jin calls back, “Yeah,” without getting up. Might as well save what little energy they have left, for when it matters.