Pariston had not slept.
Quietly, sitting beside the window of his room, sharply aware of his breathing, he watched a timid, lovely blue sunrise spread across the horizon. Beside him was a traveling bag.
In the long stream of thoughts he was having, in one of the quietest corners of his mind, he wondered who is going to take care of his garden once he leaves.
He could see it, under the window, immaculately landscaped and tended, the green of it a dark, muddy blue in the first minutes of light, the colorful flowers pale, some drooping, still asleep, others perky only because of the dissipating darkness. He had come to care about it in a way that he rarely cared about living things which did not directly give anything in return. They were aesthetically pleasing, but he had no use for them beyond sensual pleasure, yet he hoped for them to thrive in his absence. With the sunrise he went out to the garden, fully dressed, and watered them.
As for the rest of the villa he did not care much. It had very little of interest to him, and besides clothes and personal items and some wine and the book he was currently reading, Pariston was going to abandon everything. He had spent the last couple days laying ceremonial white shrouds over his furniture, his books, the gallery and the music room, the office and the salon. It all sat, surrounding him silently, faceless, voiceless, object ghosts and ghosts of objects.
While his hands worked on cleaning and packaging and covering, he wondered about why he had kept so many things, about the history of all that existed with him for years in this place. So many were gifts, and it didn't surprise him that he remembered every single one of those people with their offerings and presents.
Dousing a flowerbed in water, Pariston thought of how he felt no attachment to any of it. The whole villa could crumble in a raging fire right now and he wouldn't feel anything. Was it the way it has become a prison or was it the sheer unfulfillment of living alone with countless objects destined to perish; was there a difference?
Pariston was living in a status symbol, surrounded by other, smaller status symbols, and he had built a home, or several, upon all the bodies he'd left behind.
He smiled up at the blooming purple bougainvillea that twisted over wooden beams, its paper flowers lighting up as the sun rose behind them, as a cold wind blew past, plucking some of the fragile flowers off their branches, scattering them about the garden floor.
The idea was so bizarre and instantaneous that it made him laugh. To become a plant. To be devoid of everything but effortless beauty, but he knew that not even plants were effortless, that not all were beautiful. There was a need in everything, and Pariston didn't need anything. Pariston only wanted.
Another gust of wind blew away more paper flowers, and this time he caught one, didn't close his fingers around it knowing it would crump\le if he did, instead kept his palm open, contorted his fingers ever so slightly to bar it from sudden flight, lifted his face to catch the cool warmth of the rising sun on his skin.
The gardenias and roses and the lemon trees and the sweetgrass and the blue fescues all shook around him, swayed and straggled. The shackles around his ankle felt heavy.
For what will be the last time in his life, Pariston made coffee and sat in his garden, reading.
III
Under the pergola he stood, watching Cheadle pull over in his driveway in her small gray car. They were only separated by a gate that he had not crossed in a lifetime. It wasn't something he could open.
"Good morning," he greeted her from behind the carved metal bars, waited for her to exit the car and come open the gate for him.
She looked exhausted but determined, stepping out of the car and walking towards him. He knew she drove for hours to get here, had nothing on her, it seemed, but the clothes she wore, perhaps the most practical outfit he'd ever seen her wearing. Cheadle in pants. It was delightful.
For a second, his heart jumped. As her fingers worked through the nen-locked gate Pariston felt ill. His stomach turned. They were still on his property, he was still in his prison, but it seemed to him as if the world was slowly unfurling before him, once again open and possible.
"Are you ready?" She asked, pulling the gate all the way through, and its old hinges squeaked and the gravel under it crackled like firewood and the metal bars rumbled.
Pariston didn't know if he was. For a moment the world was a block of ice that didn't let him through, so he stood frozen before it, having reached a strange border, one that was invisible and fragile and all too easy to cross, yet he couldn't cross it. He was a newborn deer, a small creature struggling to stand up in the grass.
What a daze, he thought, and smiled. "I'm ready."
Cheadle eyed his suitcase. "Why all the luggage?"
He chuckled. "A good fashion sense goes a long way in making the world less barbaric, no?"
"Sure," she rolled her eyes. "Get in the car now, will you."
"Yes ma'am," Pariston picked up his suitcase and placed it in the backseat, then rounded the car to sit in the passenger seat next to Cheadle.
Silence fell as she closed the door behind her. He took a moment to adjust to the scent of her all around him. It's been years; it was terribly predictable that she still rode the same car, but again, it was the kind of reliable object that Cheadle cherished and would feel bad for replacing. Pariston felt like he was wearing one of her coats, not his style and a little too small but not entirely unpleasant.
"You have everything you need with you?" Cheadle asked. "Once we're at the port we won't be coming back for anything."
He looked at her and nodded. "I'm all set."
Out of the driveway, the car sped past tall, ancient pine trees. Pariston rolled down the window, reclined his head back, took a long breath, filled his lungs with rarified air, with the scent of old things renewed, with the history of the place.
He told Cheadle about the old residents of every mansion they passed; about the Muscovies and their talented twin sons, the architectural advice he offered them about their turret attics; about the Allenis' girl who was always in her room, the time he accidentally—but not really—spilled wine on their sofa; about the massive willow in the Pipmans' chateau. She didn't reply to any of it except with intermittent hums, and halfway through he realized that he was mostly recounting those tales to himself.
His neighbors were not exceptionally interesting people, but Pariston has a propensity for finding all kinds of people fascinating, an aptness for wheedling himself within all sorts of communities, and he was perfectly placed among those families. They were wealthy, affluent, cultured, and apathetic—like himself, he believed—but they did not know that he was a Hunter. It did not matter if they did, so he never told them, and besides, it was always much more fun when people thought that you're like them in every way. It made him palatable, lovable, even, he dared think, and they enjoyed the existence of the obscurely rich, one that made their secrets few and far between. The earth under their feet was shallow, and whenever he finished digging for filth only to find none mucky enough, he simply created some. They were decent, respectable entertainment. How unfortunate, to be gone like this.
By the time the car exited Langres, he realized that none of his attempts at casual conversation were going to persuade Cheadle to pay attention to him. She was focused on the road ahead, completely silent, almost unblinking. What was she thinking about, he wondered. Besides cursory information about their travel plans, she said nothing to him during the past couple of days.
Pariston stared long at her, a part of him trying to reassemble old images in his head, bring her back not from the present but the distant past, as she was on the day he first saw her, which wasn't the same day as their first meeting.
He knew her before she knew him, learned of a Cheadle Yorkshire—then nameless to him—in a dingy hospital after an almost fatal insect bite, in a country that's no longer a country and a room that was barely anything besides four walls. On a bed he had glimpsed her, he a new Hunter fresh off his exam wandering in search of anything and nothing, she in a place she shouldn't be, clutching her injured arm with solemn determination, knew more than the doctor trying to treat her but deferred to him anyway, in the manner of opinionated but agreeable children battling to utter their protests but ultimately choosing to remain obedient. She didn't notice him, then, while he was lurking behind the ajar door, or perhaps she did, or perhaps he wasn't there at all to begin with, perhaps he saw her first somewhere else entirely.
Memory had begun to fail him, he believed. At times it was sharp in a specific way that irritated him, because the details it brought up were wildly, almost purposefully unimportant. His memory had a mind of its own, refused to serve him when he most needed it, was distant and muddy when he tried to conjure certain parts of the past. Were ten years enough to annihilate his once-unparalleled capacity for memorization and recollection? In the past his ability to store almost all surrounding details verged on a cosmic curse.
In his prison Pariston had no targets to categorize and nothing of importance of which to keep track. Days passed similarly and at times did not pass at all. Rooms became cells and the TV was galactic static. He swore once he was in a time loop. Not even he could escape these things, which surprised him years ago, once he realized it and accepted it.
He was as susceptible to damage and dementia and decay as the best of them, as susceptible to indifference, which he loathed. Yet, he did not kill himself. He did fantasize about ending his life but they were mostly the stuff of fancy, more a movie reel than legitimate plans, more out of sheer boredom and existential inertia than suicidality. He did not want to die, except at times he did. Later he recalled that he simply wished to die on his own terms. Killing himself within the confines of his prison would have been an outcome that Cheadle expected and perhaps desired. To get rid of him without bloodying her own hands with him. He understood that, so he refused to die out of desperation, and he was struck by just how desperate he became at times, by the heights of solipsism that one reaches in isolation. He had no purpose, and after that came to realize that his whole life had moved without a great purpose, something bigger than himself. Everything was always replaceable to him, people and objects and plans alike. If one fails he acquired ten, if few died he gathered around him more, and success did not matter because success was boring, and he knew that because he had succeeded more often than he wanted.
It was a world of means to him, and he functioned best in the throes of chaos and uncertainty—and perhaps, he thought now as he thought in the past—this was the best of Cheadle's revenge, to have robbed him of that, to have condemned him to the mundane and the predictable of forced domesticity, to make him realize that he did not exist without those who perceived him.
He had dulled, but one can still hammer a skull with a dumb tool.
"Can we put on some music?"
"No."
How did she see him for the first time? He wondered as he looked at her, the shine of her hair locks under the morning sun a pretty sight. Did she also catch him—accidently, discreetly, without being seen—in a moment of pain and loneliness? Was she truly feeling those things back then or was he just projecting on her? She appeared lost and ridden with guilt, then, clutching the damaged evidence of some transgression or another, a thing he supposed was still there, still where he'd last seen it.
His eyes wandered to her right arm to see it, to seek the threads of that memory, but her long sleeves barred him from the hidden scars.
"What are you looking at?"
"Nothing, I love your shirt." He answered. "Is it going to be hot in there?"
"Where we're landing, yes."
Pariston glanced outside the window. "The weather there has always been unpredictable."
Now they were nearing the city but he knew she wasn't going to take him there. She was going to skirt the edges of it, avoid its passages and drive them to the port right away. For a moment he considered asking her to drive him around, to let him see the city again because he loved it. Did it still exist as he remembered it? He knew that the past doesn't exist, that everything now belongs to other people, to strangers; that now, he owned nothing but himself. If he and the city were to look at each other, they would be strangers.
"You're going to be piloting the seaplane?"
"Yes."
"Is it safe?"
"Yes."
He hummed, watching the concrete road under the car wheels turn into endless stretches of gray ribbons. "The sea levels have been rising."
"You think you're going to drown?"
Pariston chuckled. "I hope not." He caught her gaze, finally, when she glanced at him from the corner of her eye. "I trust you to get us there safely."
"I can't promise anything." She said with a familiar kind of seriousness. "We're going to be crossing turbulent waters for five days, maybe even more than a week if the weather is unfavorable."
"What's the worst case scenario?"
Surprisingly, she chuckled. "You'd love to know, wouldn't you?" He smiled at the way she side-eyed him. "Worst case scenario, the seaplane malfunctions, we run out of fuel and become stranded at ocean, surrounded by nothing but undrinkable water. We would send for help but there would be no signals, perhaps we catch some disease or another, but more likely after three weeks our food and water will run out and in a desperate fit of hunger, dehydration, and complete dissolution of my dignity, I eat you alive."
He laughed. "Honestly, I thought you'll say you'd throw me off the board."
"That, too."
"I have a feeling it will be a great trip." Pariston asserted. "Besides, you and I never went on trips together, barely even went on missions. How many, do you remember?"
"No."
"I do," he said. "Two."
"Is that so?"
"Yep. One in Yelvin, when Chairman Netero sent us to negotiate with the local government over disputed territory, and the other in Kanawa in the desert, where I suffered a sunstroke and you saved my life."
Cheadle snorted. "What a blunder that was, on my part."
"Oh well," he smiled. "We all gotta live with our mistakes, no?"
To that she gave no reply. Pariston knew that she needed no reminders of those missions, that she most likely remembered them better than he did, through her own eyes and her own reasoning.
They had never gotten along, not since their first handshake as fellow Hunters. She had a good nose for bullshit, a nose sharper than most, and with one glance from her he knew she detested him; not him, specifically, but people like him, what he represented, how his ilk came to be, perhaps more so because the two of them had hatched from similar eggs and she could tell that. She could tell that he was closer to her past than she'd ever like anyone to be. He carried with him something from what she could have been, from what she was meant to be.
The child of inherited glory, undone.
"Got something we could eat?" He asked her, glancing at the backseat, wondering if the bags there were food.
"Sure," she said, pointing to the white bags he was looking at. "Didn't eat your breakfast?"
Pariston twisted his torso awkwardly to reach the food in the back, pulling the bag towards him then onto his lap, unknotting it to see its contents. "I usually wake up hungry, but today was different." He pulled a wrapped sandwich out and smiled at her. "Guess I'm just antsy. Want some?"
She shook her head.
"You made them?"
Another headshake. Again with the noncommittal replies. Pariston sighed and began eating, deciding once again to just stare out the window, take everything in, and then remembered something that had wandered in his mind intermittently ever since she mentioned it. "Do you think I'd make a good nurse?"
"No."
A laughter burst out of his chest. "I think so too."
"You'll be competent enough, I imagine." Cheadle said. "The patients there are probably going to be too ill to think of how pathologically lacking in empathy you are."
"That's what you think of me?"
"I'm being charitable."
"Of course." Pariston nodded. "Want some of the cookies I made?"
"Sure,"
He opened the tin box sitting between his feet, picked one with a lot of chocolate chips on it and held it against her mouth. "Open up," he sang, reveling in the glare she tossed him.
"I can feed myself, thank you." She growled, snatching the cookie out of his hand and taking a large, angry bite out of it. Pariston watched her chew on it, watched as a spark of light made her eyes brighter for a moment. He decided to take her utter silence as praise for his evolved baking skills, inching his fingers close to her mouth to brush a bit of chocolate that got stuck on her lower lip. Soft, he thought.
Her shoulders tensed instantly against his touch, and he imagined that if he still had his nen about him he'd be able to see her aura flaring larger as her body shrank away from him. As far as the driving seat would allow her, Cheadle recoiled away with her whole being. He was repulsive to her, almost like a disease, her reaction to his physical proximity almost instinctual, like he's the same predator that chased down every single one of her ancient ancestors.
"Do that again and I will kill you, Pariston." She hissed at him, feeling her aura whirling just above her skin, feeling the ankle monitor stinging her down to the bone, and hated how he elicited from her the exact reaction he desired. How susceptible she was still to the little annoyances he visited upon her; the unwanted, sudden touches and the purposeful verbal teases. She knew very well that he enjoyed her discomfort and that alone made her livid. When was she going to get better at his game?
"We're getting close." Pariston said, an external voice to her own thoughts as she watched the seascape expand right in front of her, her gaze wandering over the glimmering surface of the water, her heartbeat suddenly increasing.
She took a breath, didn't have to wonder about what scared her, about the little fears that clung to her spine and the nape of her neck.
Once they boarded the seaplane, there was no going back. If she were to die in the ocean for whatever reason then she was going to die with Pariston, the last person on earth that she'd want to witness her death, if she was unfortunate enough to have witnesses. That was her motivation to make it through the sea trip successfully.
Down at the seaport, their seaplane was floating alone beside the dock, white and red and flagrantly emblazoned with the Association's insignia. Cheadle stood on the creaking wood, looking out at the ocean, at the way it extended, hearing Pariston take a long breath beside her.
"Can we stand here for a moment?" He asked, a bit out of breath, a bit in awe, his eyes affixed to the view. "I haven't seen the ocean in a while."
Cheadle stared at him for a minute, at his moment out of captivity, as if he's only just now believed for good that he's out of his villa. She sighed but the sound of it was lost to the waves, and perhaps he'd heard her or perhaps he didn't, and either way he didn't look and she didn't say anything, turned her head to watch light flakes dip in and out of the water, caught a small boat floating in the far distance, a silhouette against the bright sky. She thought of the sky seemingly flat above the ocean, rounding over it like a hand, cupping, the blue of both almost mending into one.
Tip of his feet inching over the dock, Pariston smiled, the blond locks over his eyes fluttering with the breeze. "I hope Ging is waiting for us."
She was hoping for the same thing, but she didn't tell him.
The breeze ran between her fingers, at the length of her jaw, at the opening in her collar. Somewhere in her chest, the dread settled if only for a little bit, and although her heart beat wildly—in anticipation of things she knew and things she didn't—nothing today, she thought, had business being this beautiful. The peace of it was almost sinister.
Pariston finally looked at her, somber, one hand grabbing his upper arm in a vulnerable gesture. "Are you and I idiots for going?"
"Probably."
"I'm excited."
So was she, but she didn't tell him, didn't have to. He already knew.
III
Pariston's eyes wandered over the surface of the sea, dimming, staring at the blue, molten lead that stretched under the night sky, under his eyes. The seaplane was moving quickly, on autopilot, Cheadle going through their packages and luggage, checking everything and rechecking because she was neurotic and because she didn't want to sit silently and be forced to engage with him in any capacity. He admired her tenacity and sheer stubbornness in that regard. If she so wanted they could go through this whole trip without exchanging a single word. He could annoy her, he thought, and still not make her talk.
The moon was invisible that night, which bored him. At times, looking down from the small window in this little metal tube, he couldn't tell the height at which they were flying, at times they seemed simply suspended in place, the engines whirring uselessly around them.
At one point he had just whipped his book out and lay down on his bed to read, waiting to fall asleep, or for the night to end, or for Cheadle to talk with him. None happened. His brain as well seemed perversely averse to planning—it, too, in a state of suspension, and he had to admit to himself that he didn't have much on which to build a plan, and Cheadle appeared quite determined to make as much noise as she could.
Meanwhile, Mandango was falling in love with a peasant girl whom Pariston already predicted would betray the protagonist of this novel. His dearest friend, one Zweil, had warned the spunky lad, but Mandango's whole shtick was that he was an idiot who always somehow managed to get himself out of sticky situations in surprising ways, surprising enough that it kept Pariston, an almost forty year old man—a fact which he loathed—reading.
That thought made him turn the book around to see the intended ages on the cover. 13-17. He laughed.
"Cheadle," he called for her, waiting for the noises of decluttering and cluttering to stop. They did. "What's your favorite novel?"
She stopped, a folder between her hands, and seemed to take a minute too long to reply to a question with an answer she already knew, as if she was making absolutely sure that the title which must be dwelling in her head right now was , indeed, her favorite novel, or maybe she'll just deny him the information and was pondering some sort of rebuke.
After a moment, she answered with nonchalant confidence. "Twenty Days to Ashkara."
"The one by Joan Ian?" Pariston asked, recalling the bright orange cover of the novel, iconic by now, often confused with another, lesser book. There was a hint of surprise in his voice. The book was a classic, but it wasn't something he imagined someone like Cheadle would love. It was, after all, populated by petty characters walking steadfastly towards their ruin, or perhaps she loved it precisely for those reasons, to indulge in chaos without being touched by it, but then that thought struck him as quite pedestrian for a Hunter, so he thought there must be other reasons.
"Why?"
Cheadle shrugged, turned around to place the folder back in one of the packages. "I don't know, I suppose I read it at a formative age when I was still too young to read it."
"Those are always the best, no?" He smiled. "I remember reading it when I was in high school, found it boring but then I gained a new-found appreciation for it. It's a good choice."
Does he tell her his favorite or does he wait for her to ask, and she might never ask but after realizing that there were no more packages to attend to and that she was alone with him on a seaplane flying towards a deathtrap, she offered the question.
"I don't know," he said. "I never had a favorite book." Pariston looked down at the cover of Mandango, at the drawing of a man in a cape and a damsel in distress. "I like the early works of Samzi Kerna but they're considered quite outdated by now, right?"
"Right." She gave him a face at which he laughed.
"Yeah, I know, but they were important when I read them." Then he side-eyed her, playfully, challengingly, egging her to engage with him. "But at least his stories don't end with a woman killing her children."
"The filicide is symbolic." She retorted, squaring her shoulders.
Pariston hummed. "I had a feeling you were gonna say that."
Her eyes narrowed. "Because you're trying to put me on the defensive."
"Not at all, but you're already being defensive about it."
Cheadle turned away from him, done with the conversation, but Pariston still wanted to talk.
"I have to admit, though," he started. "Never took you for an edgy teen."
That made her scoff. "I don't need you to take me for anything."
"Of course, but it's still amusing to know you've occasionally done things you weren't supposed to do. But again," he stopped, laying back on the bed, staring at her turned back. "The uniformly obedient never become Hunters. Never good ones, anyway."
And as they always do, his back-handed compliment left her tight-jawed and simmering in silence. She said nothing.
Cheadle had failed her first Hunter Exam, so did he, only he did it intentionally, and only because he—then eighteen with much money to his name and fantastical ideas about death—knew that he wanted one person to pass him, one person who was not present then for long and did not care to be.
Isaac Netero was always an old man, back then and just before he went to his death, and in his heart Pariston sought the man's attention and desired his validation above everything else. No one there seemed to matter, particularly, despite the fact that any of the senior examiners could kill him in ways that matched his age in number and his spirit in cruelty. No. The ability to kill efficiently was never a hallmark of anything to him, any low-tier Hunter could kill. Killing was the easy stuff—it was the long game Pariston loved.
In the end, he got what he wanted. Netero did not only pass him but praised him, directly, the twinkle of promise in his eyes, as if even back then he knew Pariston was going to become big and important, yet intentionally held back on the things he knew Pariston wished to hear from him the most. It's what he always did; give with one hand, take with the other.
There was a bit of silliness to it all, a silliness of such grandeur and allure that Pariston spent the next decade of his life pursuing it, leisurely, indulgently, because he had all the time in the world. He always believed that, even if all the time in the world meant he was going to die tomorrow, or next year. The moment as it is was always all the time he needed for anything. That had changed, he thought, but not in radical ways.
The weight of that old hand on his young shoulder still felt heavy almost two decades later, even heavier, intentionally weighing him down to see if he could hold it up, hold up all the history that followed it.
He rolled his shoulders, put the book down, decided to go to sleep. At such moments he used to feel his nen. He no longer did. With eyes closed, he spoke to Cheadle, envisioning behind his eyelids the soft rise and fall of her chest. "Do you think twenty is too old to take the Hunter Exam?"
"I believe it's the right age." Cheadle replied.
"Yeah but is it too old?" He insisted. "Didn't you take yours at sixteen?"
"I did." And after a moment she added, "But today, sixteen-year-olds won't be admitted into the exam."
"You were lucky then."
She scoffed. "Of course."
"You implemented that policy?"
"Yes."
Behind his eyes, Pariston allowed for the sudden deluge of memories to flood his mind; memories of himself, of his decision to take the exam, of why, of when. It was November but in his mind it was summer. "I think sixteen-year-old me would have died in the first phase of the exam. I'm sure of it." He threw her a glance. "You must've been so competent to survive it twice, and pass."
To that she said nothing, and so he closed his eyes again and asked her when they were going to arrive.
"Tomorrow."
"I'll see you tomorrow then."
A fragile sunflower , he remembered with a voice not his own. What an old memory, now, a part of him quietly, sincerely glad that it had not evaporated into something he couldn't grasp. To that, he slept.
III