The tagging system is still pretty primitive, so I want to clarify that this is a polyamorous story with Pariston/Cheadle/Ging as the OT3.

Enjoy.

Outside the Hunter Association tower, the setting sun burned a flaming hole in a melting purple sky, setting the glass façade of the building on a psychedelic frenzy of reflected colors.

Cheadle pulled the drapes shut and called off a meeting with a gaggle of foreign investors, stood in the doorway of her office watching Beans scuttle across the hallway to relay her change of mind to the suits on the fifth floor. Escort them out, she said.

The stone ring around her ankle stung, stung in the way it does when she becomes aware of it, when she remembers its existence, when the presence of it takes her off guard, and it's been stinging her all day.

Her toes curled from the prickle of pain, and all of a sudden she felt exceptionally old and tired, wanted the day to be over already as she walked back into her office and closed the door behind her.

A day-old, novella-length printed digital report sat ruffled on her desk, one picture within its unfolded pages stared back at her, that of a dead child, eyes closed and mouth agape, dead in the middle of an inhale, dead before he was able to take a last breath.

There were other pictures, too, some more gruesome than this one, and she was exhausted from looking at them and pouring over the long, duly-documented list of symptoms, failed treatments, diets, side effects to said treatments and diets, resultant behavior, followed by detailed descriptions of the last death throes.

But this was new. She thought of all the people and things that were brought back with them from the Dark Continent, of the ill who did not survive and the creatures who began a slow process of disintegration and then fizzled out of existence, as if sucked into the vacuum of space, as if having exited the stratosphere without proper equipment. Others, however, thrived in strange ways, reacted with vigor to the new atmosphere in the mainland, germinated and spread and had to be exterminated.

Cheadle knew better than to believe she'd seen it all. There were always new things like these that gave her a stop, new things that made her return to the library, cases that revitalized love for the practice, in selfish, roundabout ways.

But it wasn't the report or the pictures that made her heart sink, that left her so agitated and unsure. It was something else, something that had found its way inside the report, perhaps, she'd wager, without the knowledge of those who'd compiled and sent it.

The secret letter had been in her pocket since yesterday, had been in her hand for hours, and she checked that it was still there every other minute, the possibility of losing it making her palms clamp in anxious fear.

It was him, no doubt about it. The hermit had finally come down from his cave to send her a cryptic letter in digital code.

Ging Freecs didn't retire. Never officially, anyway. Never entirely. Last she's heard of him he's been inhabiting some godforsaken mountain on the Dark Continent, turning into moss and sludge for all she knows, and that was years ago. He still enjoyed a privileged status as In-Commission despite the fact that he was, and under all relevant clauses, missing and out of service.

Nobody really knew where he was, or if he was even alive to begin with. No reports turned up but neither did a dead body, yet here he was, reminding her of the ancient certainty that, barring any abnormal circumstances, she was definitely going to die before him.

The team of civilian scientists who had sent her the report did not ask her to come, personally, perhaps believing that the Chairman of the Hunter Association has no time for them; all they requested was assistance from their benefactors, but Ging requested something a little extra, and he requested it personally.

He wanted her to come to the Dark Continent, and for reasons only he knew, Ging didn't bother mentioning any whys or hows or whens, only that he wanted her to come.

In these matters she felt terribly alone, once again sensed the walls pressing down on her, and then, in a way that was familiar and came almost naturally to her, Cheadle felt great resentment for Ging, for asking this from her, for even sending that letter the way he did—privately and secretly and concealed within another letter—leaving matters open-ended so that she only had two choices, and could only get closure by seeing him in person.

Something about it told her that he didn't want anybody else knowing about this little detour, if she chose to respond. Cheadle already wouldn't have told the Zodiacs if there were still any to speak of. Dismantled by her four years ago, the council founded by Chairman Netero was no more.

Although Mizaistom was her advisor, he too did not learn about this. Not for the first time her voice of reason wasn't privy to the smatterings of madness that surrounded her position. It's not that she was afraid of hearing the truth when he says it—and he always says it—but afraid that she won't listen. Was she being duplicitous, she wondered, because, worst of all, Ging didn't want her to come alone.

He wanted Pariston to be there, too.

Ging wasn't there during the trial and the subsequent settlements, plainly declined to be a witness, and then disappeared.

She hadn't asked him what to do then. Back then she did something by her own accord, made a decision shared by nobody else, and she made it quickly and ruthlessly.

In court, and after a long, rigged trial that lasted months, Pariston finally stood and handed her his license, and only smiled when it was in her hand, smiled down at her and only her. His expression was incomprehensible, and he appeared neither resigned nor dejected, broken or defeated; he was as himself, a cornucopia brimming with everything she hated.

After that, the remnants of Pariston Hill were slowly but surely cleaned out of the Association. Bit by bit, she removed him out of everyone's existence, politically, financially, aesthetically, even, swept him away so that no footprint remained. His supporters and loyalists and goons were dispossessed and weeded out, his policies altered and overturned. Under a wave of quiet, bottled-up rage, she erased him, because he deserved it, she believed, because he'd done numerous things that warranted retaliation, and because not doing so would have been selfish and dangerous. And in doing so it did not matter to her whether she was like Netero or not, or if the late chairman would have done it.

Thus Pariston Hill had disappeared; except he was lodged deep in her spine, as impertinent and imperturbable as ever.

The ankle monitor stung yet again, reminding her that she had another decision to make, reminding her that in her quest to vanquish her nemesis she had inadvertently allocated herself as his only window to the outside world, chained herself to him, literally and figuratively, chose to be the jail and the jailor and the inmate.

In more than ten years, Pariston had not seen any human being other than herself. Alone in his sprawling villa, she was the only person he was allowed to see.

He called her sometimes but she never called him. Last time she picked up the phone six months ago (a point-to-point landline made specifically to connect them) he asked her for books, because he'd read all the ones in his library. Twice. She dared to believe there was a hint of plea to his voice, and so she was tempted to refuse him. Read them a third time, she wanted to say, but she didn't. Cheadle asked him what kind of books he wanted, so he asked her what she was reading, and when she lied and said that she wasn't currently reading anything he sighed dramatically.

Eventually, at his request, she sent him a large package full of recently published YA bestsellers and classics in niche genres, all fiction because he admitted to being tired of all things academic. Cheadle wondered if he—almost completely alone with no links to the world around him—was reverting to some kind of boyhood with the type of books he asked her to select. Nonetheless, she made true on her word, and once the package arrived he called to thank her with a voice that sounded a little perkier, a little less bored.

For all she knew, he was a calamity in a bottle waiting to break free. She didn't trust him an iota and for that knew the importance of keeping his mind sedated and his needs minimally fulfilled. At least that's what she told herself.

Pariston was her own personal plague, something that she viewed as a personal responsibility and a personal failure. She could have killed him, she believed, if not legally then by other means, and it was a possibility long-pondered, frequently and in stark detail, but one that would have put an end to her career. Killing another Hunter was a crime, but the Chairman killing another Hunter would have been a political scandal, even if the Hunter in question was a criminal. The next best thing was to kill him spiritually. Break him and lock him away and rob him of all the joys of breaking others. She was doing the world a favor, of course she was. She did the right thing, the responsible thing, and she believed it whole-heartedly, supplanted personal grief with the greater good, had transformed her hatred of him into policy, banished him from everywhere except her own mind.

That she enjoyed his suffering at times, devilishly and callously and with a relish of the basest sort, was the worst of Cheadle's capacities, the frailest of her inclinations, but she didn't know that yet.

III

Next day, unknown but to the rising sun, Cheadle took her car and set out towards Sivan, a small town next to Swaldani, heading specifically for the Langres district, a small, gated community of about five residences stretching across thousands of acres, separated from one another by kilometers of grand pine forests. With the exception of the villa in which Pariston currently resided, the Association had bought out every other residence with its surrounding forests and courtyards.

For miles and miles across the outskirts of a once flourishing pocket of an unimportant port town, inside one of his own properties, Pariston Hill lived completely isolated from other humans.

Having not seen him in six years, Cheadle didn't know what to expect, didn't know what to feel except suffocation and dread. With each meter inside Langres the forests grew thicker and the paved roads between them narrower and the sunlight dimmer. Replace the tarmac path with cobblestones and the pines for oaks and she would have been back home, in the grand manor of her family, walking beside her bike, pebbles in her shoes, hair amess, dirt under her fingernails.

Her hands pressed on the steering wheel. It was like returning to the womb, a journey into a threshold that simply led nowhere because one can't go back to the place of formation. For some reason she didn't put on any music in the car; only the window at her side was open, only the cold, rolling winds of the district plied at her ears.

Cheadle was strung deep in a bizarre amalgamation of recollections so specific yet disparate that her view of the road before her grew blurry and watery. So lost was she in that state that when her phone rang her heart jumped out of her chest so violently she had to stop the car at once, the last memory flashing in her eyes one of herself as a teen crouched behind an oak tree, pretending that a fat cherry was a pair of lips.

When she saw the number, her eyes closed almost instinctively, as if in the darkness behind her eyelids she could pretend it was a different number on her screen and a different person calling her. Cheadle muted it and tossed it on the passenger seat in frustration, then leaned down over the steering wheel, taking a breath, trying to calm the wave of anxiety that had gripped her.

For a moment, seized by an adolescent fancy stirred up by her memories, she pondered exiting the car to walk into one of the mansions whose turret attics were jutting out behind rows of trees. Hoping to find what, she wasn't sure—Perhaps the assertion that this place was nothing like her childhood home, or perhaps because she was afraid and apprehensive and wished to stall the inevitable, or, perhaps—and she did not like this at all— to know why she suddenly felt seen and watched.

Cheadle looked outside the window, her eyes wandered over the scenery, now murkier than before, even more obscure and ominous under the midday sun.

There was nobody here, not among the trees and not inside that baronial mansion hidden by the forest. That specific thought, however, that nobody was there, that every inch of this place was abandoned, made her turn the engine immediately because for a second, just a second, the idea of not finding Pariston in his villa sent a wave of fear up her spine.

From the corner of her eye, the little screen had stopped blaring, and around her ankle the monitor stung, and because of the utter loneliness and desolation along the road, seeing the bedecked oriel windows of Pariston's villa rise in the horizon loosened her shoulders and unwounded her stomach.

Beyond the outer parameters of the residence, surrounding the villa, along the nen-inscribed gate, was a long chain of laburnum trees, crisp and distinct amidst the dreary monotony of the pine forests, their bright yellow flowers raining down in rich clusters from high branches, little capsules of sunshine and virulence. Hundreds of these golden tears followed over her head as she entered the open gate and stepped under a seemingly never-ending pergola that extended all the way to the main entrance.

How like Pariston to line and canopy his walkway with beautiful poison.

The place was quiet, peaceful, even, she dared think, for when her fears of not finding her old colleague resurfaced her ears picked up a song. Some tune or other was playing in the distance, reaching her in splinters and chips, growing clearer as she walked closer, then coalescing into a familiar melody once the tips of her boots hit the square of sunlight that unfurled after the pergola's expansive shade.

Otello Barezzi. How gauche. Cheadle wanted to break out in mad laughter; she could swear her parents were here somewhere preparing themselves in awkward, suppressed joviality for their yearly summer trip out of the country to attend one of those mysterious opera shows the audio versions of which she only got to hear on vinyl and secretly hated every minute of it.

Cheadle knew that Pariston wasn't inside the villa but somewhere in the surrounding garden, if the roaring, weepy voice of an aging opera singer had anything to say. Thus she ignored the large, ornamented wooden door in front of her and rounded a corner, coming face to face—perhaps too soon and a little before she was emotionally and mentally prepared for it—with a scene that was going to stick with her far much longer than she'd ever like.

Under a domed, wooden gazebo, among lush greenery that touched everything but the elevated pad, bathed in patches of sunlight was Pariston, sitting at a table, drinking what she assumed was tea, the whole set before him, and if not for the choice of book between his hands she could've taken this view for a classical painting.

"Mandango? Really?"

He was looking at her before she even said it, and for a long moment the two of them just stared at each other—she, glad that he was in fact where she had left him, an ephemera found in the haze of cleaning a room. He, perhaps befuddled to see her face, stood up suddenly, bookmarking the novel with a finger, and smiled wide enough she could see that no length of time could dim the whiteness of his teeth.

"Cheadle!"

"Pariston," she walked closer to him as he descended the three steps from the gazebo down to the ground, hurrying towards her with large steps, and without warning, without a sliver of foresight, she was unceremoniously pulled into his arms.

"I've missed you." He said, squishing her nose against his chest, then after a moment he drew back and held her face between his hands, his brown eyes as familiar as ever, twinkling in the sunlight, staring down at her with something akin to awe. "I had a feeling you were coming."

He had the gall to twirl her around. She had the gall to let him do it.

"You've cut your hair. Again." Pariston said, holding her at arm's length to inspect her even further. "How long has it been, five years?"

"Six."

"Right." He let go of her.

She noticed how his once shiny, lustrous hair has now dulled into a grayish, weary blond, although no less cared for, and, she imagined, no less soft, although she had only touched it once. Has loneliness affected him? The years have certainly left their mark.

The man himself looked older, donning a different kind of poise than the one he sported so effortlessly back in the day; now he possessed the quiet poise of someone who had only themselves for company, for years on end. His hands were somewhat frailer, and creases framed his mouth when he smiled, and his gait was slower as he walked her round the garden and to a back door that led to a small, homely kitchen.

Her eyes sought the monitor around his ankle, hidden under a pair of simple brown pants. His style was different, like a primordial version of what he used to wear, stripped down and more befitting of middle class rurality than urban life. A white shirt, collar unbuttoned, under a casual vest, sleeves rolled up and she thought how it was the first time she saw his forearms. He was thinner, looked visibly weaker, more obvious now with his back turned to her.

Like a small town boy from the prairies, it all suited him awfully well. He looked handsome in a subtle, understated way, in a way that would have seemed alien to him only a couple years ago. He looked like himself yet not at all. Has his mental fortitude begun to collapse? She doubted it. Besides a simpler getup and a quieter voice and a longer period of silence between sentences, Pariston appeared as himself. To parse him so soon, Cheadle knew she couldn't.

"Tea?" He asked, setting a kettle on a stove.

Cheadle sat to the table, watched him make tea without waiting for her answer, then he turned to her and smiled.

"How about matcha tea?" Pariston said, stretching his arm up to open a cupboard over his head. "I'm sure we have time to waste on making it."

Yet still, Cheadle said nothing. Her eyes wandered the barren kitchen, landed at the counter and the fridge and at every cabinet, wondered what each of them held, wondered about the colors of the walls behind them, then she scoffed internally. She'd gone far to keep him alive; besides his vegetable garden, all that he needed to survive was dropped to him quickly and covertly at the gates of his house, and as she thought about it now it sounded ridiculous to her.

"Would you like to have it here or outside in the garden?" He asked her, holding a large tray between his hands.

"It's become quite hot."

Pariston looked outside the window with diffident eyes, as if he's playing some previously rehearsed role. "Indeed," his eyes shifted back to her and he smiled. "We'll have it here, then."

He placed the tray on the table and sat opposite her, then began the tedious process of making the tea. He had everything prepared; the caddy and the bowl, the spoon and the whisk.

"I've been trying to make wagashi, but to no success, sadly." Pariston lamented, pouring the hot water into one of the bowls. "So, petit fours?" He nudged a small plate full of glazed biscuits in her direction. "They're closer to my fort; we used to make them all the time as kids."

Cheadle eyed the confectionary but didn't take one. They looked delicious. "I see you've been keeping busy."

"I am!" Pariston chuckled. "I've been baking all sorts of things lately; macarons, éclairs, lemon cakes." Once again he nudged the plate towards her. "Go on, try one of them. I believe they're good but I'm desperate for another opinion."

And as if joining him in this little imaginary play of courtesy and civility, Cheadle took one of the petit fours—the round one with lemon jam and almonds and powdered sugar sprinkled on it—and bit into it, savoring the way the hard parts flaked and rifted between her teeth, the jam cold against the roof of her mouth, the powdered sugar clinging to the edges of her tongue, how it neutralized the bitterness of the fruit preserves and coalesced with the chewed biscuit base.

After a moment, she swallowed, kept her hands at her sides.

"It's alright."

Pariston smiled. "That's good to hear! I had no idea the lemon jam would be so bitter." He hummed, disappointed at himself for this great oversight. "I wonder if there's a way around that?"

If there was one, Cheadle didn't know it, wondered if he actually cared at all or if he was just upholding this charade. After all, he most certainly knew that she'd never visit him just to drink tea and chat about his latest baking endeavors.

She watched him scoop the green powder out of a small container and sift it through a sieve over the bowl. The powder snowed down, as green as the way her dye looked before she mixed it and applied it to her hair, its scent filling her nostrils.

This had to be the most modest tea ceremony she's ever attended, felt forcibly invited and yet sat quietly, lulled into the serenity of observing the wooden whisk circling the inner edges of the ceramic bowl.

"I like your haircut." He said, placing the bowl in front of her.

"Thank you." She said, lifting the bowl to her lips.

Pariston picked up his own bowl, glanced at her over it. "Is it new?"

"Only a couple months old."

He hummed. "Short hair suits you."

"Yours has grown longer."

His hand went to the long strands that caressed the nape of his neck. "I'm a bit of a flittermouse about cutting it myself." He said. "I should have cut it before you came to visit me, no?"

"You did sense that I was coming."

"I did." Pariston nodded, taking a sip from his tea. "Something about the changing of the seasons."

"Aha."

His eyes wandered over her face in that old way of theirs, the glaze of perpetual amusement and frayed curiosity, interested in their subject and not, veering into chaos, one foot into entropy, the other upon a cliff.

"I really like the change of appearance. Or should I say return?" He said after some silence, after he realized she won't break her gaze. "I was never a fan of that dog getup you were so agreeable about adopting. It made you look dull and fat."

"Are you trying to offend me?"

"I wouldn't dare." And when she didn't reply with anything, he went on. "What made you move on?"

"My appearance isn't something I wish to discuss with you."

"Why not? Isn't it something that matters to us both?" He inquired with childlike curiosity. "At least I've always imagined so. We both know how important it is, don't we?" His eyes curved in a distant smile. "We're all about appearances, you and me, so I find it curious that we're sitting at my kitchen table, looking like two very normal people, without the armor of outlandish fashions, yet it feels more illusory than ever." He hummed. "Or maybe it's only because I haven't seen your actual face in such a long time?"

"Maybe." Cheadle murmured, her palms growing clammy around the hot tea bowl. She imagined her hands merging with the ceramic, becoming the ceramic, dissolving into it.

No face she ever had was one she liked; to her they were all interchangeable, some only slightly more protective than others, offered more comfort because they were a sturdier cover behind which she stuffed everything she hated about herself. But now, for a while, she only had her face, the basest of them all, the one her mother would recognize, despite, she liked to believe, the great changes it underwent through the years. In the haze of it, she thought that she felt nothing about any of it, not at that particular moment, anyway, and so she wished to finally end this hoax of domestic civility and just broach the reason behind her visit.

"Ging sent me a letter." She said, and at that point decided to pull out the scrap of paper from her pocket—mangled with her sweat and loose threads from her clothes; it had not left her palms until now—and gave it to Pariston, their fingers touching ever so slightly as the letter passed from her hand to his.

With a reverent gesture he took it, as if she was passing him a ceremonial sword, and his visage of mirth and cordiality fell into something more natural, more contemplative, the face of a man eager for words and communication, for this letter precisely, perhaps.

Pariston felt his own heartbeat, thumping incessantly, reminding him that he was alive and that the world was alive as well, and that it has—thumping incessantly to a rhythm far greater than his own—went on without him.

He could almost taste every anxiety and fear dwelling in the chest of his visitor on this letter, the words not hers neither the paper but only the hopes that any of this meant something beyond itself. So palpable it was that he felt it pass to him, and without any resistance accepted it, halved it between them, let it settle into his chest as well.

Oh, to know that Ging was still alive, still out there, his written, decoded words under Pariston's finger and Pariston's own name under Pariston's finger and the paper felt like an antidote against his skin.

Something of his old self returned to him, the potential of a request fulfilled, and he returned the paper to her, setting it on the table between them, a hatchet of peace, perhaps, or a truce. "So like him, to be so cryptic."

"It came with a report from the scientists in the southern settlement." Cheadle said, folding the paper, shoving it back in her pocket, and he knew that she remembered it as well as he did, did not have to look again. "I believe he'd slipped it in there without their knowledge."

"Does that change your decision?" Pariston asked.

"I haven't made one yet."

"Oh but you did," Pariston tilted his head and smiled. "Why would you be here if you didn't?"

Cheadle brought the tea bowl to her lips but didn't take a sip, let it settle there for a moment before she put it down again. "I haven't made a decision about the terms of it."

"You want to discuss them with me?"

"There is nothing to discuss with you. You are a criminal." She said, shifting her eyes from the distance between their hands on the table to his face. "Taking you with me won't change that. Your legal status would remain as it is."

Pariston hummed, unperturbed by her assertions. His legal status did not matter to him because he was no longer a public figure of any importance. How strange, he now realized, to be free of that. He may still exist as he was in the few who remembered him, but mostly in Cheadle's eyes, which swam with a quiet viciousness that he enjoyed immensely. Looking into her eyes made him feel unchanged, and perhaps he has not changed at all, or only changed so far as it made the life she's condemned him to more bearable.

"You must be asking what's in it for you if I go," he said. "Or wondering why Ging wants me there in the first place. He knows my situation, after all." He watched her face, sought her eyes but they were distant. Did she want to comply with Ging's wishes against her own? She was the type, unfortunately, and she was the type because she was worried that their old colleague might truly need them. But then why would he need Pariston, she must be thinking, and Pariston did not mind that for he knew that Ging needed him for nothing, but Pariston also knew that anything can be made from nothing, and that nothing was never just nothing. "It would be illegal to take me with you."

"I'm perfectly aware." Cheadle retorted.

"Of course you are," Pariston said, splotching his finger with the jam he's made, bringing it to his lips, sucking on it. "You're the one who drafted the law, after all."

Not a truce, it seemed, but a wedge. Pariston sighed.

"Come with me," he said. "I want to show you something."

And she did. With his hand on the small of her back, Pariston led her once again to the garden and towards an underground cellar the door of which was hidden under flowering shrubberies.

Descending the stairs, unease filled Cheadle's heart. She felt like she was passing through spider webs, the way the thick air crept over her skin, how the darkness intensified the acidity in every breath she took. The heels of her boots clicked on the stone stairs, her fingers touched and did not touch the stone walls to her left, the fabric of Pariston's vest to her right. The square of light behind her grew smaller and smaller and she didn't turn back to gaze at it for fear that it would remind him of its existence and thus he would shut it over her, leaving her alone with him in the claustrophobia of tunnels and basements and cellars.

At last, they reached an underground room, and with a simple flick Pariston lit up the elliptical ceiling and the insulated walls.

A wine cellar with a long wooden table in the middle, stretching all the way across the rectangular space. She wanted to snort, in anxiety and amusement and to dispel the immediate thought that it all looked like an altar and that she was going to be served wine generously and then sacrificed in the stupor of inebriation. But to what gods did Pariston Hill pray. Which one of his gods would accept her as offering.

"I recall you have a taste for wine," Pariston said, behind her and close to her and distressingly his hand was still on her back. She stepped away from him. "I haven't shared any in ages, and it's a shame because some of them are truly extraordinary."

He wandered over to one of the farthest shelves, pulling out one of the bottles, examining the words written on it, returning it, pulling out another one. "Sivani or St. Denoir?" he glanced at her, ponderous. "Something tells me you'd like Sivani because of the subtlety and simplicity. It has a misty, almost mercurial taste about it, a trustworthy wine with a twist, but St. Denoir is simply the more sophisticated one; the nutty and fruity notes in it are marvelous. We can have a good old rosé if you wish, but if you're feeling a bit more adventurous there's always Kisreiya."

Cheadle ignored him, her fingers trailing the wooden shelves, her eyes catching the glint of wine bottles, their mouths all turned towards her like cannons. Finally, her eyes landed on one, peculiar among his collection, the cheapest of the cheap and the worst of the worst, but with the leftovers of nostalgia from her car ride she pulled it off the shelf. Pariston made a face.

"Trotter?" He asked in a disappointed tone. "You know now I will be forced to drink it with you, it's etiquette."

Cheadle smirked and set the green bottle on the table. "Exactly."

"You love to torture me," Pariston said, removing two glasses from a corner rack with a resigned sigh. "The name is vulgar for wine, don't you think? More befitting for a whiskey brand, but I guess this one can hardly be considered wine." He brought the two glasses and set them on the table, passing her a conspiratorial smile. "I've always suspected you have a taste for the baser things in life."

"You'd know, of course." She said, following some unspoken codes, letting him pull the chair out for her, then sat on it, waiting for him to take the seat opposite her. His presence right behind her was one of the worst sensations she's ever experienced, and she almost let out an audible sigh when he removed his hands off the chair and moved to the seat across from her.

Pariston opened the bottle, filling her glass then filling his, bringing the wine closer to his eyes for inspection. "The color is horrid, no?"

By the time he finally managed to bring himself to take a sip, Cheadle had already downed the contents of her glass. She went for a refill.

"How's the Association doing?" Pariston asked. "Been running a bit of a police state there, Cheadle, haven't you?" He whispered as if what he said ought to remain a secret, as if he was the only person privy to it.

She gritted her teeth but her face remained impassive. "Maybe you should stop watching too much TV."

His shoulders rose in a defeated shrug. "What can I say, you haven't left me much else." He tilted his head and regarded her with a small smile, holding up his wine glass against his lower lip. "There's only so much that books can tell you, don't you agree?"

"News broadcasts don't have access to any valuable information about the Association," Cheadle said, trapping the bitter taste of her first wine against the roof of her mouth before swallowing. "So I'm not certain how much truth you can glean out of them."

"I'll take what I can get." Pariston said. "Besides, speculation is just so much fun; I've always wondered if your authoritarian tendencies were just a figment of my imagination. It's certainly more interesting than whatever placid thing you would've had going."

Cheadle glared at him. "Why don't you just say what you think, Pariston?"

"Do you think Chairman Netero is happy?"

Oh. That card he loved to pull. "Dead people don't have feelings."

"But you think about it."

"I don't." Cheadle lied, watching the last of her wine pool in the bottom of the glass like sediment. "His was a different era. We live in a far more sinister world than the one he left, and I'm only trying to adapt."

"I can tell," Pariston said, taking the bottle to refill her glass. "You've become shrewder, more vicious, just like him. But not to the same ends."

"I've only become more pragmatic." Cheadle stared at her glass, the liquid inside it still wheeling along its walls. "Netero's ways and methods no longer matter."

Cheadle could tell that stripping Isaac Netero of his title gave Pariston a stop—and done by her, of all people. He regarded her curiously for a moment then leaned back in his chair, uncharacteristically silent.

Why was she conversing with him? She owed him absolutely nothing—no information, no insight, not even the simple pleasure of casual conversation. He was a criminal, a part of her mind duly reminded her, and you aren't treating him as such , it added. But there's more to it, she retorted; he has to come because she wanted to know why he has to come, and knew that if he hated her truly he will say yes, because, against that want of hers, she loathed the idea of him being anywhere except imprisoned here, and he knew that well enough.

"It's my turn to choose the wine, don't you think?" Pariston said, was about to stand up then slammed back on the chair almost instantly and clapped his hands. "Let's play a guessing game! You circle the shelves, and you have to guess which wine I'm thinking about, and each time you get it wrong I take three step closer to you, and if I touch you, you lose."

Cheadle twisted her mouth. "That's a bit rigged. I can know which wine you're thinking about, but you can just as well lie to me."

"Well, wouldn't you like to know if I'm still good at it?"

"I don't need to know, Pariston."

He slumped back with a boyish pout. "You're still so strict."

"And you're still insufferable."

Light flickered in Pariston's eyes. "What if I raise the stakes?" He stared at her with a wide smile. "If you win, I will go with you to the Dark Continent. On your terms. No questions."

She stared at him for a moment. "And if I lose?"

"Nothing!" Pariston laughed. "The world just goes on as it is, but I suppose that's the most awful of all things, no?"

Cheadle stood up. "Fine. Any clues?"

"For you, yes. But only three, and I'll do to you as you did to me, victim to nostalgia." He smiled. "One: adolescence."

He was born on October 20th, 1974, on the island of Gutedel, an overseas territory that was once under the mandate of Caledonia, a country that neighbored her own, one enjoying the lucky fruits of a better geography and a kinder climate. She found it weird, how they were born so near each other, only two years apart, and grew up during the short intermediary periods of wars and conflicts undergone by their respective nations. Wars preceded and followed them, but they did not live them, had the privilege of existing far away from war zones and trench lines. She lived in the countryside of a misty town, farthest away from the borders, while he left his birth island just before the eruption of a liberation movement, taken by his family back to the country's capital.

But, childhood. They were on an island but it did not have to be a fortified wine; affluent colonial families enjoyed regular acquisition of different varieties from outside the island, yet the island itself wasn't without worthy produce, so for all she knew, Pariston could have loved either. It could be Margnat Vosné, but it could also be Pinot Dureza, the two most widely known products of the island, much less known nowadays, light and fruity varieties that would have appealed to a teen sneaking their first taste of alcohol. Or perhaps it was a simple but expensive rosé, imported, Sauvignon Nuit or Sance Gris. She suspected that it might also be a wine made in large quantities and for immediate consumption, meant primarily as army imports, not necessarily of low quality but not one made for cellaring. However, it would have been one that could withstand the heat of Gutedel and still taste fine. Something summery, bucolic, even. Her hand finally settled on one.

"Domaine Silo ?"

Pariston clicked his tongue. "No, but a perfectly logical choice."

A grimace suppressed behind a controlled expression, she watched him get up from his chair and take exactly three steps towards her, large and leisurely, like he was measuring the floor's width by foot.

"Second clue: summer."

White wine then, probably, and if so then it was most definitely not produced in Gutedel, which only had red wine varieties. Pariston loved white wine, she knew that, at least.

Her eyes surveyed the shelves, and she walked closer to the racks lining the back end of the cellar, pulling out one bottle after the other only to return them, unsatisfied with the educated guesses her brain conjured, Pariston following her every step, maintaining the exact same distance between them.

Loire Blanc , it could be, or Chardonnay Galet . Neither.

"Sweis Magritte ?"

"My mother's favorite! But wrong yet again." Pariston hummed in disappointment. "Although we should drink it, it's delicious. I almost forgot about its existence."

Their eyes met as she turned around to face him, chest constricted, growing annoyed with this game. He smiled at her, moving three steps closer. "I'll give you a bottle to take with you. I have a feeling you'll like it."

One more chance left.

He could be lying. No, he was most definitely peddling a lie somewhere, and Cheadle had learned a long time ago to stop searching for it, because it didn't matter whether it existed or not, whether she discovered it or not. She also knew that she could win this and Pariston might still not come with her, but she had faith in one small thing: he had more to lose by remaining here than she did. She could always leave him here to rot for the rest of his life, but knowing that made her question why she had agreed to play this in the first place. Did she not want him to stay here? Wasn't it always her dream to bring him to justice and lock him away?

He was close to her now, one more wrong answer and he will trap her against the wall.

"Just give me the third clue."

"Cheadle."

"What?"

"This is the third clue. Cheadle."

She gritted her teeth. "What the hell?"

"What?" Pariston chuckled. "It's the easiest clue."

During childhood, Cheadle enjoyed tracing maps. Along some of those maps she had circled all the places where her name appeared. They were few, because it wasn't a common name, and because it belonged more to trees than towns. She was born during years where the name Cheadle was enjoying a resurgence of sorts, mostly as a boy's name, and only after the massive, destructive fire that devoured the sprawling Cheadle Forests, the happenstance after which she was named, in commemoration, because that's what politicians did, naming their newborn children after national tragedies.

Cheadle, as the forests. Cheadle, as the town in Berkdire, Manchess. Cheadle, the garden, named after her. Cheadle, as herself.

At that she stopped. Had they ever drank wine together? They attended the same parties and hung out around similar bars, and had sat together at a couple, even, but all that came to mind were images of him, beside her on a high stool, ordering her a drink like the one he held in his hand, but not the drink itself. What was it? She stared at him, and he stared back with a mild smile, still awaiting her answer.

"Wes Vitis ?"

Pariston took three steps closer.

He towered over her, blocking the overhanging light with his stature, drowning her in shadows, looking down at her while stretching his arm out, his hand reaching for something just behind her head, his knuckles brushing against her ear as they pulled out a bottle from the rack, glass dragging across wood.

"Finé Vitis ." He said. "You were looking at it. Why didn't you pick it?"

Cheadle ignored his question. "Step away from me."

"Don't be a sore loser now."

He stepped closer, bottle still in hand, still the only thing between them.

Little by little, Pariston pinned her against the wall of shelves. It was suddenly so dark and despite eliminating almost all distance between them, she sensed him still approaching.

Why did she suddenly fear him? He was nenless, he was powerless against her, there's nothing he can do to hurt her.

Why was he scary? Why did she feel his killing intent as if it was coming from within her, from the deep recesses of her memory, from the monitor that burned a ring around her ankle?

His face, devoured by shadows, inched closer to hers, down, down so that his dark brown eyes were entirely black, and then he gently poked her forehead. "I will go with you," he whispered. "I don't want anything in return. Nothing that ever belonged to you, anyway."

"What do you want?" Cheadle asked, knowing the answer.

"My nen."

III