Crucible

by hansolo18

After the world ends in a rush of fire, Rook finds himself trapped in a bunker with a man he intends to kill. It is seven long years. Sequel to Inferno

—

Crucible

—

I may think if you kindly from time to time. But I'll cut off my hands before I ever reach for you again.

The Crucible

It is the distant sound of radio static that pulls you awake, pulls you harshly into reality. Ease open eyelids and find yourself in a dimly lit room, laid out on cold concrete and naked but for your underwear. Shiver away the Deja vu of waking chained to the bed frame in Dutch's room, in Dutch's bunker, with muscles sore with use and bullet wounds taking space on your skin.

Take account of yourself in the shedding darkness, work your mind awake in solitude, and catch yourself up to this moment.

You remember the fight outside the Eden's Gate Church, where Joseph Seed had stolen, drugged, and threatened you with the lives of your friends and then with their martial skills. You remember winning, just barely, as you stole your friends back and forced Seed to retreat with overwhelming numbers. You remember the bombs that fell and the mad scatter to the nearest vehicle. You remember driving and racing and speeding your way through terror, and burning, and animals that died in an instant before your eyes. You remember crashing, and it is there your mind goes kind of watery, loses track of things. You remember seeing Dutch, seeing him pull open the bunker door, you remember...Joseph? Joseph. You remember him now. Preaching to you, crowing his rightness, his correctness about the coming nuclear war. About the deaths, and the destruction, and about how so much of it was your fault.

Scoff at that and pull against the handcuffs pinning you to the bed frame, wince at the shock of pain that rolls through your shoulders, wonder why Dutch has you chained up here, why it's you, not Joseph Seed that's tied tight and left in the dark.

Press your eyes closed, breathe deep against the nausea riding low in your stomach and the clock like pounding in your head. Take a moment to settle yourself; to take stock of the latest tragedy you call your body.

Lifting your head off the concrete, your eyes are immediately drawn to the thick white bandaging clinging to your thigh, your ribs, and your forearms. Take stock of the constellation of bruising that trail up your legs, marble your torso and scatter down your arms. Your left ring finger is still strapped tight to a splint, the tape holding it down gross with ground in dirt and blood.

Your arms are the most immediate offenders, trapped as they are against the bed frame, raised high above your collapsed body, they tingle painfully with blood restriction and the ends of your fingers feel puffy, swollen, and cold.

Pull your legs under your torso with difficulty; struggle to bend the leg wrapped in bandages and groan out when the motion sends a sharp dagger of pain through our nerves and a rush of blood through the bandaging. Kneel there, propped against the metal bed frame, as you release the incline in your arms and blood rushes into your extremities, wince as your arms go pins and needles and buzz like jarred bees along your nerves.

Swallow down the rust flavored muck in your mouth and call out with a weak voice. "Dutch?"

Regret it instantly, as the movement of your lips pulls at the thick, swollen, mess of our face and collapse on yourself as your nerves turn to fire and you can feel every fucking cell revolt. Feel the pain slither up into your eyes like a spike, feel the skin pull and tug against tight stitches, gag on the blood that fills your mouth and hack spittle onto the floor.

Hear footsteps drawing nearer as you blink the blackness away from your eyes and wince as a hand presses itself against your shoulder. Tilt your head up and squint against the dim light "Dutch?" you slur, doing your best to speak without moving your lips, but really only succeed in buzzing the spit in your mouth.

"No." Seed says, and now that you've heard his voice, you can tell that the silhouette is all wrong. Too skinny, too gangly limbed to be Dutch.

Flinch away from him, slam your shoulders into the concrete wall behind you, and tilt your head up and away, exposing your throat yes, but all the better to avoid his questing hands as they follow you back, and run along your forehead, blooming soreness in their wake.

"You knocked your head in the crash, Deputy." The Father says, "Concussed yourself."

Jerk away and bare your teeth, ignore the driving pain the motion brings. "Where's Dutch?"

Joseph stares at you for a long moment, halo lit by the hall light, but shadowed before you. "He's not with us. He went to gather the others from the car wreck. Never came back."

"Fuck off," you hiss, "He wouldn't just…"

Dutch wouldn't just leave you here. Not with Joseph, not without protection. Not where Joseph could easily lock him out of his own bunker. Dutch wouldn't do it, not for the rest of your coworkers, not for them, not for those he didn't know. Didn't care for, personally, not like he did you. Wind yourself in circles as your brain follows that thought process, wind yourself and wind yourself even as the preacher regards you with an inscrutable expression.

"He did." Joseph says from where he has crouched before you, "I promise you, he did."

Snarl at him; ignore the way the tight stitches pull at your skin and blood flows down your face. Snarl and struggle against the bindings holding you down, holding you close to him. "Shut up!" you growl, "fucking let me go you psycho-"

"No," Joseph says, standing, cutting you off before you could get a proper tirade going, "Think what you will of me, but I am not crazy. I foresaw the end of the world, and I prepared for it. That is not the mark of an insane man."

Suck deeply at the blood and saliva in your mouth and spit at him, strike him just above his pant line, where the skin of his abdomen lays bare.

With a grimace he wipes your spit away and then smears it onto his jeans. "I know you are a stubborn man. Jacob would always complain about it. The extra little steps he had to take to keep you in line." Joseph sighs, as if this is a great burden to him, as if you acting up is nothing more than a child misbehaving at a supermarket, "Do not make me resort to his practices Deputy. Our time together will be long, but it doesn't have to be painful."

He turns away then, and walks, he passes through the open door and you can hear the slow fade of his booted feet on the hard concrete before the sound of radio static overtakes the bunker once again.

—

Watch the doorway with unwavering attention until the adrenalin in your body has settled and your wounded leg has given out beneath you. Sit in a tangled pile of limbs at the base of the surplus cot and twist your hands against the too tight cuffs constricting them.

Lose yourself for a moment in the frantic pull and twist, and struggle of liberation until your wrists are red and the skin is rubbed raw and you are filled with the growing certainty that nothing short of dislocating your own thumb will lead to freedom.

Contemplate it for a moment until your mind flashes to a stomach turning memory of your dislocated knee. Of the feeling of Doc Lindsay snapping it back into position, of his words about MRI's and ligaments and permanent damage. Know without a doubt, that you cannot risk that kind of damage, not without knowing how far into the past death will reset you.

Let out a shaky breath and settle back against the concrete, stretch out your wounded leg, and take the pressure off the newly formed pain at your wrists. Lay your head against the edge of the mattress, press your cheek against the scratchy acrylic yarn and wait.

Wait and wait and wait. Count seconds by the ticking clock, out of view but not out of earshot. Try to hear past it, strain to hear the static of the radio and yearn for it to become words. Settle after an endless percussion of tick tick tick for Joseph to return, for something to end this nightmare.

Lift your head off the mattress and crush your eyes against the nausea that rises within you with that movement, swallow back the sudden influx of spit that preludes vomiting and struggle against the urge. Don't trust Joseph to clean the mess if you were to throw up; don't trust him to do much of anything for you really.

The bandages wrapping your wounds were bled through and old long before you returned to consciousness. Oversight on his part maybe...a lack of supplies possible but unlikely knowing Dutch.

Pull at the cuffs again, lubricate your wrist in spit and try and slide your hands through the tight metal. Stop when all you manage to do is draw more blood and rip a gouge into the thin skin.

Swear quietly under your breath and press your other hand to the wound. It stings underneath the pressure but the blood stops long before Joseph returns, looking wild eyed and jittery at his edges. As if whatever he was doing previously unsettled him more than he was prepared for.

"I need to take a piss." You bark at him when he stutters to a halt in the doorway.

His head snaps towards you, as if he had forgotten your existence for a time. "Right, of course…" He walks towards you, hand sliding into his pocket and pulling out the small, ubiquitous handcuff keys. He stops a foot away from you, staring down at you with returning clarity. "You will behave," Joseph says, glowering at you, "or there will be consequences."

Roll your eyes at him and push your hands out towards him. "Bathroom." You insist.

His eyes find yours and after a long moment of mutual glaring he bends to unlatch the left cuff. He steps back and returns the key to his pocket, eyeing you the entire time.

"I trust you know where it is."

Scowl at him and struggle to your feet, brace yourself against the concrete wall as your legs shake and wobble and threaten to fold beneath you as you take one step, then another, until you are halfway across the room, limping toward the open doorway of the bath.

Joseph follows you, a few steps behind and slams his hand against the wooden door as you make an attempt to close it. "This stays open."

"Perv." You growl and pause in the doorway, turning around to stare down at him. Juggle the thought of making your move now, of riling him up with continued schoolyard invective and taking him down with a few well-placed hits.

Consider it, and then tuck it away, a momentary hold. The pressure of your bladder is getting painful, Seed can wait.

Find your relief in the scrubbed porcelain bowl, then turn to wash your hands, scrub soap into the torn skin of your wrists and watch Joseph in the mirror.

His blue eyes are trained on your back, hyper focused on the twitch of your muscles as you scrub and less on the calculation in your eye.

The older man's shoulder is wrapped in bandages, a dot of pink appearing on the white cotton, a left over from when you shot him at his church. His ribs and torso have suffered similarly since you saw him last, trauma condensing into bruising and raw scrapes hidden under Band-Aids. He'll be slower, due to the shoulder, you figure, as you shut off the tap and wipe your hand on the towel hanging off the hook on the wall.

Seed better be slower, you pray, as you turn towards him, and lunge, fist connecting with his temple with a follow up to the bruised skin of his stomach. He collapses, and you follow him to the ground, knocking aside his wild punch and pinning him there with experience but not with weight.

Scramble to get your hand around his throat and end this. But his hands have become vices at your wrists, yanking your cuffed hand to the side so quickly you lose your balance, slamming face first into his rising skull with a crack.

Let out a yelp at the sudden pain, and struggle to right yourself, but Joseph sees his chance and takes it. Slamming a foot into your knee and wrenching your still cuffed arm up and back and near dislocating your shoulder as the loose cuff is shut tight around the decorative leg of a heavy dresser and you are again trapped on the floor.

He stumbles up and away from you, panting heavily, as you force yourself up to your knees and claw for him.

"Nice try." Joseph gasps, hand pressed against the split skin at his temple.

Snarl at him and pull against the chest of drawers, it squeals heavily as the wood grates against the concrete floor but budges no more than an inch.

Joseph retreats from your hissing form and collapses down on the cot at the far end of the room. You can hear him swallow and pull his bloody hand away from his head. He eyes you, warily, clocking your location in front of the bathroom door, and coincidentally the majority of Dutch's medical supply. You can see the wheels turning in his head, whether he should try to pass you to get at them, or heed the venom spitting from your lips.

"There will be consequences." The Father says eventually to the open room, eyes caught on the cherry red blood staining his hand.

—

You're trapped. Caught like a fucking rabbit in a snare. You need out. You can't stay here, like this, where Joseph has you caged. Has you trapped like Jacob, like John, has you at his mercy and his bizarre fucking wiles like every other Seed brother, like every other attempt made to subdue, to silence, to control you in the past.

There are three things you need. Three things you must obtain. Your freedom, his death, and a restart. Easy. Easy, it's so easy, if only you could-

Plant your foot against the dresser's face, and brace with your wrist with your free hand and pull until you are shrieking obscenities into the air, until tears are streaming in rivers down your face, and the cuff is cutting into the raw skin at your wrist. Into the meat of your hand. Rage and snarl and thrash and be glad that Joseph has vacated the room.

Be glad that you are alone in the room with a trail of blood that marks the Father's departure and length of your failure in scattered droplets. That you can cry out in self-inflicted pain, and sink into the state of frenzy and fear that lets you pull again and again against the cuff until you have gouged a cavern into the flesh of your thumb and the muscle beneath has begun to swell with the repeated abuse, swell from continual attempts to pop your thumb from its socket.

Forget Doc Lindsay; forget the necessity of keeping your hand intact, of keeping both hands mobile. Of the dangers of torn ligaments, and ruined muscles, and the fact that should you damage yourself so severely, there is no one to set things right. That to truly heal, you will have to reloop and do things, all. over. again.

Think only of your escape, of being able to crush Joseph's throat, to finally, finally put him in his place. To truly end his life in a way that feels like a win and not just a consolation prize.

Roar away the growing pain, the cutting agony and tear.

Don't stop when you hear frantic footfalls, when you see Joseph standing in the doorway, white faced, from the corner of your eye.

"I'm going to fucking kill you!" You scream at him, "Just fucking wait. I'm going-!"

You've lost it now, any semblance of control. Wrath has overtaken you, just like John always knew it would, just like he has tattooed it onto your skin for. A warning, a judge met, a fucking prophesy.

Joseph looks at you like he has never seen you before. Like you are both a bug under his microscope and a child amidst a tantrum. It's like he's embarrassed for you. Embarrassed and put off. Like the sight of his greatest enemy, the goddam snake in his garden, near hyperventilation and trembling with exertion is an ugly stain that needs covered. Something to be hidden from houseguests, not taken at face value.

"You're hurting yourself Deputy. You need to stop" Is all he says, his hand dipping down into his pocket and closing around something small.

He steps towards you, snagging a Kleenex from the dresser top and Shit! Fuck! That thing in his pocket is Bliss, a vial of oil. He's going to-

Lay off the bloodied mess of your hand, let your arm hand uselessly against the chain and lunge for him gracelessly. Your muscles falter despite your rage. He scruffs you, easily, thoughtlessly, like you are little more than a kitten, and bears you down, pressing the Bliss laden tissue to your face, he shushes you. "Easy now, you need to stop. Easy now Deputy, you're okay."

Your head touches the ground and white has overtaken your vision, sparkles flooding thickly to the point you cannot see beyond them. "Just go to sleep, you're okay. I've got you." Joseph says.

But no, he's wrong. The Bliss has you. It is the Bliss that pulls you under, and exhaustion that holds you there. Fall asleep on the hard ground, stretched out on cold concrete that steals the warmth from your skin and leaves your muscles stiff. Succumb to the gentle pull of Bliss, of your concussion, to the wear and tear of the last few months, to the no man's land of a possible coma, of unattended head wounds and warnings your coaches had lectured you on time and time again. Fall into an endless sleep and hope distantly that it keeps you.

—

Wake up and you are alone. You are alone and your wrist is swaddled in layers of fabric. The material is so thick up your wrist and hand that you cannot bend it, can hardly flex your fingers. That you cannot even feel the pressure of the cuff from where it strains around the thick cotton swabbing.

Curse Joseph, curse Joseph and press your eyes closed. Press them tight until they hurt, until the pressure has built and red has burst into the darkened screen of your eyelids.

—

"There will be consequences," Joseph had said hours ago. Consequences were things you were ready for, things you had been well versed in after fifty three lives. You knew all about consequences, the give and take of actions and inaction. You are prepared to be starved, to be beaten, to be locked away and ignored. To be denied the most basic rights of a human being, to be degraded to an animal living in its own filth and squalor.

You are prepared for the actions of his brothers; you are not prepared for Joseph.

Joseph who places a folding chair just outside of your range of movement and sits in it. Joseph who had pulled a white covered book from the bookshelf by Dutch's bed and peels back the old prepper's many post-it notes to read.

"...If you want to live you need to ignore the slander. You need to believe me. You need to follow me."

Joseph whose voice is strong and cadence steady and the words, the words, those fucking words take you straight back to the room, where Jacob kept you, where Jacob ruined you, where Jacob molded you into the perfect little Hunter, his own goddamned Chosen on a leash.

The room where those words crawled out of too loud speakers and you lost every last shred of self. Now again, in a room with no egress, you find yourself surrounded with too loud words, and a voice that will not quit. Forget for a moment, just which nightmare it is you are living.

—

Joseph stops once he has read the book through and you have long stopped struggling and snapping and fighting at the sound of his voice. The preacher stands and pulls his chair away and places it in an empty spot against the wall, far on the other side of the room. He places the book on top of it, and leaves you, leaves you to go fiddle with the radio, which fills the bunker with empty static and loneliness.

Time passes, though you don't know how much, you have lost track between the endless static and the mindless tick of the clock. Spend the empty time struggling to lift the chest of drawers off the floor high enough to pull the cuff free. Spend it cursing Dutch and the woodworker who made it, the wood heavy, and drawers full of what you could only assume was ballast, for all your futile attempts at budging the thing.

Strain and strain until you wear yourself out, falling prone onto the concrete ground, bleeding sluggishly into the dirty bandages around your leg, and choke on the festering blood that leaks constantly from your ripped cheek.

Prod the too hot flesh, and swollen skin with gentle fingers and wince at the lance of pain that bursts up and down your nerves with the slightest of pressures.

Wonder if Joseph means to kill you this way, wonder how far into the past that death will take you.

—

You find yourself sleeping endlessly those first few days. Find that months of long continuous fighting will do that to a body, exhaust it down to its very core. Pass out for hours without intention, gracelessly and uninhibited. Sleep away hours and days, lose track of Joseph and the hum of the radio. Wake up only when the Father presses a cold water bottle against your skin, drops watery plates of rehydrated scrambled egg in front of your face.

He sits with you as you eat and he reads out loud from his personal bible. Intoning each chapter paragraph by paragraph, pausing after each grouping of sentences to wait and see if you'll comment.

Let the Preacher stew in silence until he reaches the final few words and asks you,

"Having heard my words, having listened, do you still think I have done wrong?"

As if this were fucking book club, a fucking college reading assignment.

Scoff at him and shove the empty plastic plate his way.

"I think you did wrong by these eggs," you snarl, and ignore any attempts at further discussion.

—

Your days are limited by your reach and your chained location, three feet outside the small bathroom, which you can inhabit with your legs if you stretch out on the floor. Claiming it as your space, though not possible for your use, through your sheer size. Take petty joy in the discomfort this causes Joseph, in turning the bathroom into a place of contention, into enemy territory.

Spend your first full day of consciousness shuffling through what dresser drawers you can reach. Pull open the first drawer and sort through Dutch's clothes until you find a pair of old cotton joggers that should mostly fit you. Pull them on and ignore how short they are in the leg. Even when sitting low on your hips the fabric still climbs high up on your calves.

Pull open another and find it near bursting with old papers. Struggle through his sloppy handwriting while marveling over old tax documents and land disputes. Find odd amusement in reading forgotten take out menus and birthday cards interspersed with holiday greetings. Gaze over loopy signatures then tuck the glitter coated cardstock back into the smallest drawer and shove it carefully closed.

Open another and find a treasure trove of old blankets which you quickly pull out and turn into a nest. Settle into the old quilts and listen to the clock tick.

Then find yourself searching through those drawers the next day, and the next, until you have read through all the hallmark cards, and weighed each line of the official papers, and have done pushups, and sit ups, and planks, and every other floor exercise your battered body is capable of and find yourself bored.

Find yourself so bored that you turn to yanking and pulling at the cuff on your wrist for the sheer joy of feeling something other than monotony. Yank and pull until you have broken open the damaged skin beneath the thick bandages and start to bleed endlessly. Bleed without pause until Joseph has stepped into the room and has turned to you with cautious eyes. Bleed until he has pulled cloth bindings from his pocket and he stoops to rewrap your arm in linen. Wait until he has tucked the fabric beneath itself and has gone to take a step away to trip him. Trip him and smash your unbound fist into the corner of his mouth, again and again until he's bleeding and you can't help but laugh at the sheer joy the flicker of surprise in his eye has caused you. The fucking thrill of seeing him scramble away and the cagey way he shields his face.

Laugh and laugh and gasp out, "What would Jacob think? Seeing you getting your ass handed to you by a guy with one hand?" choke on your own laughter here and stutter out between gasps. "Bet he'd call you weak."

That's when Joseph snaps, the mad preacher, he snaps and he falls on you with all the wrathful fury you remember from the church. He hits and claws and punches and you two tear each other apart. Split lips, bruise eye sockets, and spot abdominals with red. Until you have pinned him down with his hands under your knees, and you're rifling through his pockets in order to find the handcuff key.

"Where the fuck is the key?!" You snarl, as your hand claws against his neck, "Where the fuck is it?"

"You think I still carry that?" It's Joseph's turn to laugh, and he smiles at you with blood soaked teeth. "I've got that hidden away somewhere nice and safe, Deputy. Attack me all you want, but you won't get free that way. You'll die stuck to this dresser if you kill me. Is that really how you want to go?"

Snarl out a swear and roll off him, seethe as Joseph scrambles away and stumbles out of the room.

—

For three days Joseph avoids Dutch's room. He leaves you to starve, and thirst, and think.

He leaves you to stew in the loneliness, in the dimly lit solitude and worry. To worry about could haves and might-have-beens. To worry your friends, about your animals, your acquaintances. He gives you time to wonder, and speculate if your friends that fought with you at Joseph's church, if they made it home, made it safe to their bunkers.

If Nick Rye made it back to Kim and Carmina. If Grace got to her bunker, if Hurk and Tracy and Jess and Wheaty and Jerome and Mary May and Tammy all made it home safe, or if they ended up like your coworkers, dead ingloriously and by your hand.

Wonder if you have to add their blood to your ledger, if you are guilty of killing them as well.

—

It is day two of your Joseph-imposed solitude that you contemplate killing yourself. It would be hard to do certainly, without a gun or knife to ease the transition, but you could pull it off. Not as quickly as after Grace, or as quietly as your last death, but you could do it.

You could do it, and step back into time, into freedom, into a chance to save the other Deputies. To ensure your friends remain safe in their homes and near their bunkers while you leave to deal with Joseph.

Or: your traitorous mind suggests, you could fall right back into Jacob's clutches, back into the cage, and the starvation, and the endless cycles of the maze, with endless repetitions of Only You seeping into your ears, your mind, pulling away your sanity, your free will, until you are killing your way through the Wolf's Den, killing your way through the Whitetails, killing Eli. Again.

You would have to kill Jacob again. Have to see Jacob again. Have to listen to his voice, and feel the stomach turning nausea and unwanted pleasure of his voice growling out, "Good. Do it again."

And you cannot help but choke on your own spit, on your own fear, on the deep seated terror that the eldest Seed brings you. You never died after killing Jacob. You managed to take down Joseph on your first try. You don't know how far back a death will send you. To the morning of Carmina's birth? To Jacob's cage? To the car crash that killed your coworkers? To the first day locked in this bunker?

You don't know.

—

Then, finally, Joseph returns.. He steps into the room with a bottle of water in his hand and a look of relief on his face when his eyes pass over your form. It's as though he has been missing you.

—

Pick at the crusting bandages on your leg and stare Joseph down.

Stare him down until he has no choice but to lift his head from his reading and return your gaze.

"What do you want, my child?" He finally asks, drawing his words slowly in a way that makes his voice even more southern.

"I need to tend my wounds, Father. Lest they get infected." You sneer in disdain, doing your best to match the high handed diction you remember from yearly forays into Christmas Mass.

Joseph watches you, and you can read the calculation in his eye. The wandering thought process as it plays across his face. Stare him down.

Stare him down until he, with a sigh, places his book on the chair and shuffles past you into the bathroom to grab the med kit and a plastic bucket of lukewarm water.

He dumps both near you and steps away, arms crossed over his bruised chest and eyes intent.

"Do you have much medical training Deputy?" Seed asks as you struggle to ease away the week old bandages with your one free hand.

"Enough." You allow as you place aside those bandages and start to gently wash out the old wounds, rubbing gently with an old washcloth until dried blood lifts away. "More than I did before you started a war."

"It was the government that started the war." Joseph states like a mantra, "It never would have happened if you didn't attempt an arrest."

Douse yourself in hydrogen peroxide and glare at him, transfer the energy of the bubbling pain to your eyes. "Marshal brought a warrant. I was doing my job."

"You were given an option; you could have made the choice."

Slather Neosporin then rewrap tight in bandages. Bring your eyes off the task long enough to look him in the face and ask, "Do you think that was ever a possibility?"

Hold his gaze for a long time before turning away. Work your way methodically though the rest of your wounds until only one remains.

You cannot help but pause when you get to your face, brushing careful fingers over the cotton wadding Joseph had taped over your cheek a long week ago.

"Is there a hand mirror?" You ask, swallowing past the growing unease in your stomach.

You must admit to having a streak of vanity, long hours spent at the gym, keeping your body just so, carefully meal planning and drinking endless protein shakes to ensure your muscles remained thick. After lives of struggling to keep weight, and then later on struggling to gain it back after Jacob starved it off you. You have put a pause on maintaining that athlete's body; have been forced to settle for the starvation muscles, and gaunt cheeks, and hands that feel nothing like your own. You have suffered before with a body that felt like a stranger, but your face at least, has remained yours. And now…

Now you are afraid of what you'll see under the bandaging. Afraid to see how much more of yourself the Seed family has taken. The wound feels bad enough under your tongue when you brush against it, when you chew, or swallow, or talk. The flesh, hot and swollen, and absolute agony. You can't imagine it looks much better.

"I haven't seen any," Seed draws in that slow way of his. He presses his lips together and tips his chin at you.

He pauses for a long few seconds, seeming to weigh his options. "I'll tend to you, my child."

"No." You growl, "You won't. Just let me use the bathroom mirror." Tug at your right wrist, the one still cuffed to the dresser pointedly.

Joseph shakes his head at you. "I've given you two chances already Deputy Rook and you broke my trust both times. You went so far as to harm me, when my intentions were always to help."

Scoff at that and roll your eyes. "Forget it then." Drop your palm and set to putting the Med Kit back to rights.

"Is your pride really worth the infection, Deputy?" He tilts his head and his eye catches the light, making the blue glow like a Vegas sign.

He takes a step towards you. "I am offering my trust to you one more time and expecting you to share some in return."

He talks at you, calm and steady, like you would a crying child, or trapped animal. "It is not my intention to harm you Deputy. I told you once that we are family. That you are all I have left. I meant it then, and I mean it now. You are my child, mine to care for and to teach for the benefit and directive of God."

Joseph comes to a crouch beside you, hand coming to rest on yours, tugging gently at the blood stained cloth within it. "It is time to put away your pride and to let me take care of this."

Catch his stare and hold it, consider him, weigh the truthfulness, the veracity of his words and loosen your grip, let the rag slide between your fingers and let your eyes fall closed.

Turn your head, just so and let his fingers pick at the tape on your cheek and peel it away, let him ease the cotton away from the crust of blood and pus that clings to the wound and days of beard growth.

Let him hold a damp cloth to our face, and press gentle fingers against screaming skin. Let him and let him and let him until a fresh bandage is in place and he pulls back from you and steps away.

Allow him this concession, let him take this ground. Trust is a two-way street, after all. Give it time. Give it time, soon you will be able to strike.

—

It has been two weeks and finally the endless buzz of the long range radio has turned to words.

Joseph had been doing his daily reading, breaking every few paragraphs to preach beyond the written words, boring you near to death with the repetition of his daily lecture.

Then suddenly between breaths you hear a woman's voice, too far away to understand but shocking in its appearance. Joseph's head snaps up, he drops the book and sprints from the room.

"Wait!" You call after him, "Don't just—"

Groan and lean back against the dresser, shut your eyes and strain to hear the words.

"Hello! Hello!" You can hear Joseph call out. "Yes-Yes this is the Father! How many—"

And then his voice goes quiet and no matter how much you strain you can't hear the rest of his words.

Wait and strain and listen to the rise and fall of his voice until finally the radio clicks off and he stumbles back into the room, stumbles over to you, and slides down the face of the dresser to sit by your side.

His arm, wrapped in an old flannel shirt of Dutch's brushes against your naked skin and his face, when he turns to look at you is ecstatic, rapturous in its joy.

"They survived." He says, turning to you, teeth bright and white as he smiles. "That was John's Gate." He says and a tear breaks from his lash line, "They survived."

—

Joseph begins a daily radio call with his followers, preaching over airwaves, for an hour each day. You can hear the passion in his voice, the absolute certainty in his words, and the fire in his speech, see the passion brimming within him as he pours through the Bible and writes sermons into a spiral bound notebook. It would be inspiring if it weren't so self-righteous.

Wait for him to bounce back into the bedroom, to share with you the apparent flourishing of his people then ask, "Have you checked the other channels? Have you heard from anyone else...the Resistance?"

Watch as he pauses, and he turns to you, smile smoothing into seriousness as he says, "No, there's been no one else."

Watch as he shrugs and says, "With the radiation, maybe there's been too much interference. I'll tell you if I hear them."

Nod at him and turn away, tuck yourself into your own space, fold into your own body. Know that his words are lies, that he will never share your people's existence, just as he will never share yours with them.

—

It had been a month by Joseph's count and you are so tired of being angry.

Rage is exhausting; keeping yourself in a state of wrath is exhausting. Had been, long before Joseph and long before this bunker. It used to be easier too, between the Bliss withdraw, and residents of Hope County to protect. Righteous anger used to be so easy, but now it sits more like regret in your chest. Heavy and unrelenting.

Joseph seems to notice the despondency in you, in the lessening of you lashing out with words and sometimes body when he wanders too close, when you subside and let him tend your wounds without fuss, when you let him close to your face with scissors so he can remove the dental floss stitches in your cheek. When he brushes a hand through your beard and holds your face in his hands and stares you in the eye.

"I was so angry when you killed my brothers, my sister, I was so very mad." He says to you one day, "I'm still angry. You took something precious to me and you destroyed it. But I know why you did it, why you thought you were right to do so. You were led astray, led down the wrong path. I want you to know that I forgive you, that I understand it wasn't malice that drove your actions, but misinformation, that you were misled, and turned from the path of righteousness."

He takes your free hand in his own and squeezes gently, he is crouched before you, too close for comfort, but what even is your comfort anymore.

"Do you ever get tired of hearing yourself talk?" You sigh and shift and pull your hand away.

Joseph smiles at you but doesn't reach for you again. "I'm a preacher Deputy, talking is what we do. But...I'd like to talk about you for a while. Get to know you some, like you know me, like you know my story."

Shake your head and stare off over his shoulder. "Not interested."

"Just a little something, it doesn't have to be important. How about...how about you tell me your name? I don't want to have to keep calling you Deputy."

He smiles at you gently, beseechingly.

Huff and tilt your head back, rub your tongue over the rough scar tissue in your mouth and say, "Deputy is my first name."

He's still smiling at you when he pats your knee and stands. "Alright Deputy, alright."

—

Things become better between the two of you. Better...but not really better, more like stable. Things have stabilized between you two. You have fallen into a pattern.

Wake up when Joseph plants a plate of food near your face. Eat the soupy oatmeal while he reads to you from his self-written book, or occasionally actual passages from an old pocket bible of Dutch's. Shake off his offer to pray together.

Do what exercises you can while Joseph scribbles down the final few touches to that day's sermon. Drip sweat onto the floor as he drips fervor onto notebook paper. Finish up your routine around the time he disappears into the bathroom then leaves you for the long range radio.

Give yourself a whores' bath in the bucket of water Joseph draws from the bathroom sink, then relieve yourself in it when you're done, push the used bucket as far into the bathroom as your limited movement will allow and wait for Joseph to return from his daily radio check in with the Peggy survivors.

Nap for a while, snug in your layered quilts until Joseph wanders back in and decides it's time to play twenty questions. Ignore him for the most part; let him draw his own conclusions from your silence and occasional twitching. Find amusement in the weird depths your muteness leads him to. Let him fill the silence, Interrogation tactics 101, laugh when in his desperate attempts to get you to interact leads to bizarre questions.

Favorite flavor of cake? Preferred era of history channel special? Favorite superhero? Surely, Deputy, you must have had one!

Ignore him until he gives up and departs the room in order to work on the next day's sermon. Do another workout set until the distant smell of propane informs you of the coming dinner. Eat whatever canned meat and veg he places before you and wish he was a better cook.

Wait for an hour after dinner and then be treated with a preview of tomorrow's Peggie sermon. He reads it to you, pausing to rework certain wording based off the minute twitch of your face and whatever mystery he reads there in.

Let him attend your mostly healed wounds, make use of the bucket toilet one last time, then settle into your nest of quilts. Lay there in the throes of boredom, until Joseph flicks out the lights and settles in for bed.

Lay there in the crushing blackness and let your mind wander. Wander and wander until memories flash before your eyes, of trees and rocks and mountains. Of blue and open skies. Of your friends, and then their houses, and their bunkers, and wonder if those places are still standing. If they are inhabited, if your friends made it, if they survived. If in seven long years you will be able to cut your ties with Joseph and walk free. If you will be able to find them, tucked safe in those bunkers, at their houses. Lay in the darkness and dream.

—

The silent treatment is getting to Joseph. He is not a man used to being ignored.

It's benign enough at the start. An increased amount of time in which he attempts to interact throughout the day, the extra time he spends talking to his faithful over the radio, the little attempts made to garner your favor. A pudding cup here, an old bit of newspaper to read there. A blank piece of paper and an eight pack of stubby crayons.

Spend a few days near ecstatic with environmental enrichment before it comes to a shambling halt. Be woken one night by Joseph twitching frantically in his bed. Aborted words slipping from his mouth as he seizes and shakes catch the glint of his open eyes in the red emergency lighting from the hallway.

"Joseph!?" You call, too far away to shake him awake, but concerned none the less that this will be a seizure that will strand you here, trapped in a room with a dead body. "Hey! Wake up!"

Call and call until Joseph's body makes one last desperate jackknife then settles against the thin mattress. Listen to him gasp in the darkness and pause a moment before asking. "You okay?"

You can see the full bodied twitch his form makes in response to your voice and he pushes himself up, feet planted on the ground as he sits. "Yes." He takes a moment to catch his breath, wipes a hand across his face. "Yes, I am better than okay. The Lord has spoken to me, I have seen our way forward."

You can hear the smile in his voice as he says, "There is so much to do Deputy."

Watch him stand and stumble through the darkness, weak legged and jittery as he passes out the door and down the hallway. Listen for the distant click of a light switch and a familiar rustle of paper. Know without a doubt that he is writing more into his notebook. The one he uses to plan sermons, the one probably filled with ideas and half mad ravings for the next testament in the Book of Joseph.

Heave out a slow and shaky breath. Know that this will end badly.

—

Wake up to a finger skimming wetly over the beard growth on your upper lip. Take a surprised inhale and wake to a world bursting in white. The room shakes and shudders in your vision, your eyesight nearly whiting out in the Bliss sparkle.

"Fuuuuck." You moan, raising your free hand to your face to try and wipe away the Bliss Oil sitting under your nose.

Struggle weakly as Joseph grabs that hand and holds your wrist tight. He leans in close, eyes peering deep into yours as he murmurs. "There now, you're okay, easy does it." and he tilts you back back back until you're pillowed in your nest and weak under his hands.

"Shh, there now, "Joseph says, "the Bliss is very different when taken properly now isn't it? None of that nasty adrenaline to skew things hmm? Why, things are looking quite nice now aren't they?"

He turns his head and looks towards the ceiling and yeah, he's right. The concrete above you is crumbling away to gently falling dust and you can see the sky overhead, perfect and blue and dotted gently by puffy clouds. You can feel a gentle breeze upon your skin and the scent in your nose is sweet, so wonderfully sweet and you can't help but lick your lips.

"We have so much work to do."

Joseph is smiling down at you, his eyes crinkling and bright and his hands are no longer holding you down, but stroking gently at the sides of your face. And fuck. Fuck it feels good. It feels so good to have the touch of another.

Sigh gently under his ministrations and fall into the grasp of the Bliss that Faith had primed you for countless months ago.

—

Joseph takes your hand in his and leads you down deer trails, through forests thick with greenery and gently swaying flowers. He leads you to a wide field, grass thick and high, and a proud oak tree claiming the center. Its branches are widespread and shade the space beneath its trunk. You settle into the grass under it, rolling, twisting your body against the blades, drowning in the sensation of it.

Joseph takes a seat near you, back pressing up against the rough tree bark and he smiles at you indulgently, like you are a puppy gallivanting for his enjoyment alone. His look doesn't stop you from pressing your face into the grass and breathing deep, nose alight with sweet and sugar and the distant memory of fresh cut lawns.

"Did anyone ever tell you about New Eden, what the Project was intended for?" Joseph asks when you finally roll over and stretch out on your back, basking in the warmth of the day.

Shake your head and let your eyes fall closed, hear don't see Joseph reach for you, to place his hand on top of your head and card his fingers through your too long hair.

"We prepared for the Collapse at Eden's Gate, we prepared so we would be ready, ready for a world made new, a world recovered and perfect, just as God intended. It was planned that we would build a community in this new world; make a place without sin, without the governmental swamp, to return to simpler times. More honest times. We would live mindfully and off the land. We would farm, and hunt and build and grow, and we would do it under God's directive, with his teachings in mind."

"Could have joined the Amish." You sigh out.

"We looked to them, certainly, when we were gathering our supplies, took note of their methods...but their ways wouldn't have protected us from the collapse. We had to start new; we had to make Eden's Gate to ensure our protection."

He strokes his hand through your hair, working out the tangles as he goes. "I'm going to need your help. I'm going to need your help to make New Eden a reality. Do you think you could do that? Do you think you could help me?"

Your lips twitch, an automatic 'Yes' almost falling from them before you catch yourself. Before something in his words doesn't hit you quite right. Lick your lips instead, wet the chapped skin, and catch a hint of sweetness on your tongue. "What about my friends? The other survivors? They'll need my help. Need me more. They don't...they don't have supplies stockpiled, they weren't ready for-for…'' raise your right hand to wave it loosely, to encompass the general destruction with a gesture, but find yourself stopped short. Hand yanking to a quick halt.

Frown and tilt your head up, so that you are looking to your arm, stretched out above you. Yank again and fail to move it. Stare at your wrist laying on the golden grass and pull pull pull against the unseen binding.

"Hey no!" Joseph says, leaning over you, his hand fitting into yours, palm against palm. "Look at me, okay?"

"But my hand!?" You snap, fear rising up inside you.

"Shh, nothings wrong. I promise." His free hand slides into his pocket and he pulls forth a glass vial. He uncorks it with his teeth, presses his thumb against the opening, and then swipes the finger under your nose.

Breathe in and lose yourself in the sparkle, fall deeper into the Bliss.

—

Open your eyes and you are in Joseph's church. Kneeling before the altar, hands clasped in prayer before you, you stare at the eight pointed cross. Joseph is kneeling beside you, eyes closed, breath slow, he asks you, "What have you come to confess?"

"Confess?" You say, confusion bubbling slowly within you. "I don't….what?"

"You told me you wanted to confess, my child." The preacher turns his blue eyes to you, so very solemn, so very serious. "You had a weight you wanted to unburden yourself of. I am here to help, here to listen."

"I-I don't...there's nothing?"

"There is no need to lie. You're safe here. No harm will come to you." He soothes. "I know you have been worried, been feeling guilty."

"Guilty?" Shake your head.

This is wrong. Something is wrong here. You can see it in the looseness of the details, the perfect framing of the altar, the cross, the light that streams in the from window, setting the room alight in gold.

His hand settles against your wrist, gently like a reminder. "You killed a lot of people. A lot of good people."

Shake your head again, certain, now. "No. No I did what was necessary. I had to."

"You didn't have to kill them, Child. You took so many lives; your hands are stained in blood."

Joseph is watching you intently, eyes like blue embers as they stare into yours. He wants something you cannot give him. Will not give him. Swallow the thickness rising in your throat and bite out,

"I did what was necessary. They were killing people. Trying to kill my friends! Kill me!"

He turns to you, taking your shoulders in his hands and even in his rising ire he is perfect. He is Bliss perfect.

"But how many fell to your guns? To your hand? My child-"

Bare your teeth and snarl, "I am not your Child!"

—

Wake up and you are in the Henbane, nestled deep in a field of Faiths flowers. Push yourself to your feet and stumble through the white blooms. Trip your way down the mountain as sparkles overtake your eyes and make traversing the uneven grade harder than normal.

Breathe out a sigh of relief when you see the distant arch of the trailer park. Pick up pace and jog your way to the safety of Sharky's home. Envision his wide smile and good cheer, the beer he'll press into your hands and the disco that will help you unwind.

Stumble past the first trailer home just as the bombs fall. As fire tears through the trailer court, as double wides flip and twist and toss like clothes in the wash. Stop dead as the blast rolls through you, rolls past you, and ignites the world. Watch it burn and burn and burn. Watch the smoke rise, and the glass shatter, and the paint evaporates off the vinyl siding. Stand there amidst destruction until the world calms to a smolder. Step forward and forward until you are pressing open the door to Sharky's trailer. Until you step inside and see his corpse.

The flesh black and red, charred like the Angel's he liked to burn alive. Face a rictus grin of pearly white teeth and remaining muscle. A second passes and the corpse moves, Sharky moves, his head snapping towards you, eyelids peeling open to reveal round white globes.

"Why?" Sharky says, voice ghastly and dry as the desert night, "Why did you do this to me?"

"I didn't! I didn't!" You plead, "This isn't my fault! I promise! I-"

"Why did you kill me Rook?" Sharky asks as the world falls away, and you are standing in Falls End and the town has been leveled by the bomb.

Stumble down the main street, passing charred bodies, laid out where they fell, still in mid run. Stumble your way through town toward the Spread Eagle, the only building still standing.

Force the door open and there is Jerome and Mary May, and Boomer at their feet, and for one split second they are perfect, whole and safe and then they burst into flame before your eyes. They scream and howl and writhe in their suffering and they keep screaming,

"You killed us!? Why did you kill us Rook!?"

And it happens again and again. Until you have seen each of your friends' burn before your eyes and each and every one of them has laid the blame at your feet.

—

Scream yourself awake, scream and struggle and thrash. Near deglove your cuffed hand as you yank and tug and try to escape the nightmare behind you. Scream and wail even as Joseph straddles you, forces your cuffed hand down and still and cradles the back of your head with the other. Draws you up and holds you safe against the soft cotton of his shoulder. As he shushes you, and holds you carefully to him, as he promises you're safe, you're okay, you're with him.

Hyperventilate yourself into oblivion. Wake up screaming two hours later when your dreams are filled with fire and blood and corpses and corpses and corpses.

Joseph is there to comfort you then too, pulling you close and wrapping you tight.

—

You're set free the following morning. Joseph unlocking the cuff around your wrist to better tend to your flayed skin. He leads you into the bathroom with a firm hand on your elbow and seats you on the closed lid of the toilet, before he turns away to dig through the medical supply. Reach out and pull a washcloth from the nearby rack and wet it. Hold it to the crusted blood at your wrist, let it soften then wipe away the dried rust. Once clean the father takes hold of your arm, moving it over the sink and drowns the circular gash in disinfectant. Try to shutter your gasp at the sudden burn but Joseph makes sympathetic noises despite your attempt at silence. Let the cleaner drip off your skin while he reaches for the bandages and rings them round your wrist and up your palm.

He stills then, your hand in his. "If you're allowed a shower, will you behave?"

Take a moment to think about it, to weigh your options before nodding once sharply.

"Alright then. Stay here." and Joseph steps away, wanders out of the bathroom, out of the bedroom and into the hallway. Lose track of him then, frozen as you are on the toilet lid.

You are untethered, unchained, have freedom within your grasp and within your ability for the first time in weeks and yet you find yourself afraid to move. Afraid to stand up, and walk out of that room and further into the bunker where nothing but mystery and loneliness await you.

Here you are safe. A zoo animal in its exhibit. You know the landscape; understand the rules and the schedule. If you were to step outside, to venture forth, what cruel reality would make itself known? What lie of Seed's would you uncover?

Remain frozen where Joseph left you, bogged down with uncertainty, until the man returns with a long cardboard box in hand. A familiar brand of saran wrap, which he uses to shroud the new bandages about your wrist in plastic.

He places the box down on the countertop and tilts his head at the white tiled shower. "Go on then."

Ease yourself to your feet, and skitter a loose orbit around him, careful not to brush up against his skin as you pass. Step onto the cold tile just as he steps out of the bathroom and walks across the bedroom to the bedside table.

Slide off your pants, strip free of your old underwear and drop them to the floor outside the shower, slide the obfuscated glass door closed and reach for the tap. Let loose a ragged gasp as freezing water falls on you and shudder against its icy fingers. Brace against its cold chill and shock yourself awake.

The water warms quickly however, turning scalding in the few moments it takes for Joseph to reenter the bathroom. Bask in the sheer joy of hot water. In the play of it across your skin, the sensation of it dripping off your nose.

Don't mind that Joseph has chosen to wait outside the shower stall, sitting on the closed seat of the toilet, bible in hand as you scrub months' worth of blood, sweat and grime off your body. Don't mind that he can see every scrawny inch of you, more bone than muscle, more scar than skin. Don't mind that he watches as you step out of the shower and towel yourself off, don't mind that he hands you clean clothes and watches as you slide them on. Boxers, then sweatpants, then finally the first shirt you've worn since the bombs fell.

Don't mind that he wraps your uninjured left wrist in thick bandages before sliding the handcuff back around it.

Mind though when his hand trails up your arm and he brushes a lazy thumb across the fifty you have scarred under the crook of your elbow, and the three tally marks that sit below.

"What's this from?"

Yank your arm away with a scowl and ignore him in favor of riffling through Dutch's cabinet drawers.

"Deputy." He chides, "You promised good behavior."

"Didn't promise answers." You bite back as you pull out a razor blade and shaving cream and place them on the worn Formica sink top.

"I think the beard is a good look." Joseph comments, mouth tilting up at the corners as if he has come to find your terse dialogue endearing as opposed to the standoffish salvo you meant it to be.

"What? A beard is Seed Family approved?" You shoot back as you wipe the back of your arm against the fogged mirror and catch sight of yourself for the first time in months.

You don't cut an impressive figure. You don't even look like yourself.

Months - No lives of war and trauma and desperation has stolen the youth from you. Your face is gaunt beneath the beard, eyes sunken and smudged in black under the socket. Stress lines have settled into your forehead, cutting deep between your brows. Your too-shaggy hair has greyed with abandon in the weeks since Addie noticed the first silver stand. You are a quickly developing patchwork of salt and pepper. You look more than a decade past your twenty three years.

You are stunned to realize you wouldn't even recognize your face, were it not for the fact the body in the mirror matched your movements and your eyes were the right color. It steals your breath away and you haven't even gotten to the scarring hidden under nearly three months' worth of facial hair.

"You'll want to keep the beard." Joseph says, as he closes the bible. He leans forward, resting his arms on the tops of his legs, and goddamn him but his face is earnest. "It hides the worst of the damage. Trust me when I say I wish I could have done better."

It is those words that seal your course of action. Spray a pile of foam into your hands and slather it onto your cheeks.

Joseph just sighs heavily and leans back, head shaking back and forth minutely. "Do what you will, but don't say I didn't warn you."

He right in the end.

It is so much worse than you imagined.

—

The scar stretches from the corner of your mouth, across the cheek, under the cheek bone to the lobe of the ear. It distracts from your face, hell it distracts from your everything. It's just ragged, pink and puffy, and it swallows the entirety of you. Pins you down to just one characteristic.

Your face, a horrendously curving scar.

Stare at yourself in the mirror as your skin stings after an irritating shave and your worst enemy places a careful hand on your elbow and tries to gentle the roaring in your head with a few soft words.

Stare and stare and stare.

—

Joseph has chained you to the bed frame again. Pushed you down on the thin mattress and clipped the free handcuff around the spokes of the headboard.

"Try and get some sleep." He says before he walks across the room, stoops to pick up your bloodstained blankets, and disappears into the darkened hallway.

Swear under your breath and lean back against the cold wall and the American flag that hangs there. Rub your fingers against the cheap synthetic fabric and enjoy for a moment, the difference in view this position in the room gives you.

You can see out the doorway, can catch a glimpse into the room across the hall, and see the way the fish tank you know resides there sets the dark room off in a bluish glow.

You can better hear the low buzz of the radio, the hum and liquid swish of the washing machine as it starts up. You can follow Joseph's footsteps from the laundry room near the bunker entrance to what you assume is the kitchen.

Let your torso slide down the wall until you thump against the thin pillow at the head of the bed. Breathe in the stale scent of a pillowcase not your own and pull your legs up onto the cot. Curl them so that your legs aren't dangling off the end and wait there. Blink slowly, and count each tick of the distant clock. Sleep will not take you; you won't let it take you. Blink slowly. Count minutes under your breath.

Don't fall asleep. You cannot fall asleep.

—

A hand brushes across your face and the suddenness of it makes you jerk. Blink frantically to clear the dry eyed blur, to ease the sting in your pupils and the bloodshot whites, blink and blink and blink until your eyes focus and you can see Joseph kneeling before you, face drawn with concern.

"Welcome back." He murmurs when recognition floods back into your face and pulls your expression closed and pinches your lips taut.

"I didn't go anywhere." You say with a sigh and shove an elbow under yourself to rise.

"No, of course not." Joseph allows, rising to his feet he pulls the keys from his pocket and undoes the handcuff looped around the bed frame. He returns the key to his pocket and steps back, hand held out to you.

Pause for a moment and then take it. Frown as he draws you to your feet with ease, at the disparity in the height you find yourself at, you could have sworn you were taller than this, that his eyes didn't usually land so close to your own when you stood face to face.

Look away with a frown, scrub your right hand across your smooth face and gesture weakly at your corner by the bathroom door. "Vacation's done then?" Try and fail to smile.

"It doesn't have to be." Joseph smiles back at you, teeth white and maybe just a little too wide. He seems inordinately pleased by your attempt at a joke, or maybe he's just pleased that you attempted to further the conversation on your own, as weak as it may have been.

He is still holding your cuffed hand in his.

Seed steps away from the bed, pulling you with him, across the room and into the hallway. Your legs shake with each step; you cannot help but feel as though your knees will give out on you with each footfall.

He leads you into the kitchen and you assaulted by scent in the doorway, by the bright homey colors of the walls, the dish towels, by the stacks of pancakes that steam with sweetness and little pats of butter.

Joseph leads you into the nearest chair and drops into the chair across the table. He regards you with too blue eyes and a wry smile. "I thought we could try something different. I realize now that I may have gone about this wrong…"

He picks up a knife and spreads the butter around on the fluffy discus. He drenches his pancakes in syrup out of a bottle shaped like a lady and places it gently before you.

"We need to be partners, Deputy Rook. To survive this mentally, physically...we need to get along. I know that being friendly may be beyond what you're comfortable with. I understand that…you're not the forgiving sort. That I've...sinned, for a lack of a better term, in ways that you cannot forget nor would you normally allow. But we are here, together, and we will be here together for seven years. We need to make a truce."

He shoves a bite of pancake in his mouth as if he wants to smother his words like he smothered his pancakes.

Watch him across the table, catalogue the look on his face, the fervent...something in his eye and nod once.

"Alright." Reach for the bottle of syrup and trail rings around the melted butter. Take a bite and then another. Clear your plate under the hungry gaze of a man you loathe.

The pancakes taste delicious.

—

The bunker isn't that different from what you remember. A winding series of rooms that sit in pitch darkness when not in use. Walls littered with Americana and pretty vistas torn from hunting magazines.

Dutch's fish seem to have multiplied since you last saw them, numerous orange and white goldfish that swarm the surface when you sprinkle fish food for them. You find yourself staring at them for hours, laid out of the old cracked leather couch in the dark living room. Blink your eyes against the gentle blue glow of the aquarium, count seven goldfish, no thirteen. Blink again and its five Nemo and a Dori. Blink again and it's a Largemouth Bass flapping its gills at you. Blink and blink and blink and see an oceans' worth of fish.

—

Wander and wander and wander a loose circuit around the bunker. Each spiral finds you someplace new, someplace different. Discover a library hidden behind a cupboard door. Spend an hour gazing over the spines of books, reading titles that nearly make sense but trickle away on further inspection. Flip through pages and pages of gibberish until your brow is furrowed and your eyes are dry with the strain of trying to make sense from madness.

Joseph always comes to you, when you've gotten lost in the bunker, found yourself in rooms off the blueprints. He comes for you with a soft smile and a gentle hand around your wrist and eyes that are blue like the sky, like the ocean, like the paint that has overtaken the bedroom walls.

"Would you like to pray Deputy Rook?" He always asks when he finds you, when he draws you back to the bedroom and your pile of quilts. He lays you down and sits beside you, back pressed up against the wooden dresser and he holds your hand in his.

But no, you wouldn't like to pray, and you tell him that, but he just smiles at you and brushes his hand across your face, across the top of your lip and he smells like sugar. Like summertime fairs and cotton candy, and you cannot help but chase that memory, to lick viscus sugar from your lips.

To be caught in a memory of carousels and thick Edison bulbs sending flashes of white into the corners of your eye as the wooden horse takes you round and round and round.

—

You have been wandering the bunker again, floating from room to room as your mind wanders. It's always little thoughts, tiny thoughts, inconsequential thoughts. Your world has become so very small, child.

You wonder why Dutch's kitchen looks just like the Rye's. Why when you peer inside and see the yellow walls, and soft white curtains you think: Kim and handmade sandwiches and 'Another cookie before you go?'

You get stuck working out why the room doesn't make you think Dutch. When you would have spent time there with him...consider why it doesn't make you think of his sloppy joe goulash or shots of cheap whiskey as he patches you back up under the bright fluorescents.

At times you wonder how Joseph managed to get grass to grow in the hallway. How he managed to get the sky to paint itself across the ceiling in the aquarium room. How he managed to disappear the door to the armory, to the War Room, even though you can still hear the persistent hum of the radio housed inside.

Ask him about it one day, when the distant rise and fall of other people's voices settles back into empty static.

"Where do the rooms go?" You say to him, when he comes back into the bedroom to read to you another chapter of his book.

"Rooms?" Joseph asks as he kneels beside you. Find yourself looking up to catch his gaze, pause a moment because you don't remember him being taller than you, being all that much bigger than you, but he seems oddly monumental as you look at him. Huge and powerful, and austere, like the sculptures of horse riding generals you find in old city parks.

"They just disappear sometimes." You say, and you blink, and you find that he is right sized again. "Like the radio room… I know where it should be and I can hear it but I go looking and it's just...not there."

Joseph is silent for a long moment before he smiles at you calm and warm. "I asked God to hide it away. It was a distraction from what was really important, so I asked God to hide the room from you, until you were ready..."

Frown slightly at that, rub a hand across your face and blink away the light in your eyes. "Ready for what?"

He takes your hand in his and pulls it from your face. "New Eden, my child. Don't you remember? We are going to build a new world, and you will be at my side. You will be my right hand, you will help me judge the living and free them from their sin."

"How?"

"By freeing you from yours."

—

Find yourself in Hurk's room, sprawled out on his king size bed, under sheets of hunters camo. You are laying on your side, turned towards Joseph who is sitting propped up against the headboard beside you, his legs under the covers and his hand clasped tight in yours.

Stare past him to the open windows, gentle breeze agitating the posters tacked haphazardly to the wall and making the good luck charms on the adjoining wall sway in the breeze. Breathe deeply and enjoy the quiet sound of paper being turned as Joseph thumbs though his white covered book.

"Do you ever think about regret?" the preacher asks you after a long moment, in which he places the book down on his lap and turns his face towards you.

Twitch your fingers against his hand and tilt your face up, catch his eyes with yours and lose yourself for a moment in the deep blue. "Doesn't everyone? Like 'I regret the haircut I had in seventh grade' y know, that kind of stuff?"

He smiles at you, a quick twitch if his lip in amusement and a quiet puff of air. "A little bit deeper than that. But sure, little regrets, big regrets."

He sighs out and his eyes wander slowly over the walls of the bedroom, but they don't settle on anything in particular. Though you know the statue of the monkey god is always a conversation starter, and the good luck charms with their handmade fervor can come off a bit serial killery if not for the pure hearted goodness you know was behind their creation. Feel for a moment, as if Joseph is not seeing the same room as you, as if he is not truly in the same place as you.

"I regret the loss of my family." Joseph says eventually, pulling your hand more firmly into his lap and gently fiddling with your fingers. "I regret that God had to take them from me, that he wouldn't let them see the newer better world we had strived so hard to prepare for."

Weight his words for a moment then say, "I think about the people a lot. Like…if the rest of Hope County made it through the bombs, if they got to their shelters in time. I worry about my friends, y'know? The ones who were - who were with us in the end. If they made it back safe. If they're still alive, just counting down the days until they can leave their bunkers and go back into the world."

"You regret their death?" Joseph asks, eyes sharpening slightly.

Shake your head fervently. "They aren't dead!" swallow hard and breathe deep, take in that calming sugar scent that comes strongest to your nose when the Father is near. "I regret that they could have gotten hurt because of me. That maybe, they were just a bit too far from home and didn't make it back in time."

"I understand," Joseph says after a pause that was just a moment too long. "You do realize though, that a lot of good people were hurt because of you. Didn't make it home in time, didn't get to their shelters in time because of you?"

Pull your hand out of his and slide it back under the covers, curl in on yourself, huddle against his words as they fall heavy on your eardrums, against the curve of your spine. "It's not my fault."

"Oh my child…"Joseph sighs, "It really is. The bombs fell because you fought and you killed. People died because of your actions. Because you destroyed bunkers and removed supplies, because you killed leaders and followers, fathers and mothers and beloved children."

He slides down so that his body is lying next to yours and your noses are maybe a hands width apart. "You need to be aware of your sins so that we may cleanse you of them. You need to be aware that your Pride led to the death of millions and that your Wrath killed them by your own hand."

He reaches for you, and tugs your hand out from under the covers, and you can see the blood on them. Heavy and so thick that you cannot see the skin beneath it.

"You have so much sin to make up for." Joseph tells you as the walls to Hurk's room crumble away and the world is washed in fire.

—

F

A

L

L

and fall until you crash land into a pit of ash and bone. Until the sky opens up like Pompeii above you, a horrific conglomeration of smoke and lightning and blazing fire.

Push your feet into ember warm ground and rise against the thick smog that clouds your path, which fights against your legs like the tide. That hides frightful mysteries in the darkness because all you can see is the horrifying inferno in the sky. Struggle forward, and forward, pass dark shapes that stumble around in the darkness beside you but never solidify, never clear up in your vision.

Walk and walk and walk through endless darkness, in deafening silence and pure cacophony until you open your mouth to scream out your fear and frustration and loneliness.

Stumble though that darkness for an eternity. Scream yourself hoarse and then to silence. Your voice abandons you entirely.

—

Find yourself wandering through the ruins at Falls End. Shift rubble and search the intact buildings for any sign of survivors. Start at the far side of town, by Jerome's church, and work your way toward the Spread Eagle.

You find Jerome inside the church, or at least Jerome's body. Tucked tight behind the pulpit, battered, worn, and marred by fire. He doesn't look like himself, after endless days of decay, but no one else would be wearing a priest's collar and a bullet proof vest.

Tuck your arms under his corpse and move the body to the first wooden pew. Set it down on ash covered wood and feel as though you have left a piece of you behind with it.

Leave the church and dig through the ruins of each foundation, tear your hands apart on brick, and shattered glass, pierce yourself on rusted nails and bone fragments. Pull bodies from the wreckage. Each wearing the face or marker of a person you know. Take them all back to Jerome's church, lay them out on pews, and then between the aisle ways until the church is over run with bodies of the people you knew.

It takes you days, months, a year, two years, endless hours, and countless minutes. Lose yourself more and more with each body found, with each body placed. Until all that is left within you is the tiniest grain of sand, the rest spread between the people you fought for, the people you saved, and the people who stood by your side, but most of it, most of it went to the perfect, tiny body of Carmina Rye.

Sit outside on the church steps when it's all done, sit and blink and watch the desolation.

Joseph comes for you after a time, looking worn and tired in a way that was unfamiliar to you, uncomfortable for you.

"There you are." He says when he stops in front of you. Kneeling on the cracked concrete before you, hands tight on your knees and eyes boring into your own. "I've been trying-"

He cuts himself off, frowning marring his features. "You have been very hard to reach. I was worried."

"I didn't go anywhere." You respond with a sigh, "I've been right here."

"Here? Where is here?"

Scowl at him and thrust your hand pointedly down the rubble streets. "Falls End. Where do you think this is?"

"Of course. Okay. Deputy, I need you to listen? Can you do that for me? I need you to wake up for me now? Okay? I need you to wake up."

His hands are tight on your shoulders and they shake you roughly.

"But Joseph," You bat at his hands, get him to stop his frantic convulsion. "I am awake."

"No Rook, you're not, you're really not. You went too deep-"

—

The bombs are falling. The bombs are falling and you have nowhere to go, nowhere to move. You can only stare up up up as the sky ignites and the world burns.

The world burns and you hear a voice begging.

"Deputy please! You need to eat!"

Your skin

"Wake up!"

ignites

"The Bliss - It's just-"

and you burn

"I can't do this alone!"

to your bones, to ash, to nothingness.

---

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