He doesn't come back for a long time and Shilo gets used to it without him. She keeps herself busy, it is what she has always done and it comes second nature to her now. She has gone outside, does it every few days to pick up groceries, slowly making her way further and further from the house with each trip. She acquaints herself with the streets around her home and it is not long before her feet can find the way home without her having to pay attention to it. So she can look around, she can enjoy the watery sunlight brave enough, stubborn enough to force its way through heavy clouds of smog and pollution. They say that the earth was green once but under all the grey brown olive drab filth she sees Shilo cannot quite believe their words are true.
It's not just the outside world that Shilo is taking on however; it's the home that was a prison. The home that trapped her father just as surely as he trapped her. Forcing them both to live in the unending loop of despair that surrounded her mother's death, murder, the accident. The blackout curtains go first, torn down in a fit of pique and left, not quite forgotten, in the living room until she can figure something to do with them. There is dusting to do, seemingly years of it and years of things that her father has collected, macabre medical supplies, macabre memories of her mother's life, pictures, articles of clothing, a lock of hair. The house benefits, slowly, over days of steady focus and she almost doesn't notice all the progress.
It is midmorning when the changes really hit her, when the sun slants, intrepid and milky through freshly washed windows across her kitchen table, across breakfast dishes and a half finished piece of toast with raspberry jam. Shilo realizes, for the first time, that she can breathe. She goes to it with a vengeance then, inspired by the thought that maybe some of this is making a difference and she tears into repairs with renewed vigor.
It is only her father's room that she leaves untouched, respecting the memory of him and unready - or perhaps just unwilling - to deal with the ever present ache in her heart. Or the guilt of facing the uneasy truth that the ache is fading, that some hours aren't as bad as the rest and she doesn't hurt with missing him. By the time the sun has set two weeks - longer, sixteen all alone in the silence days, not that she's counting - after Graverobber last dropped by Shilo has cleaned the house top down, sorted the bits of her parents' lives into piles that she doesn't quite know what to do with yet.
It doesn't feel like a prison so much anymore and sometimes she forgets entirely to be torn between wanting out more than she wants to breathe and being too terrified of everything out there to leave. She is not changing the world yet, but she is changing her life and Shilo thinks that it's a good enough place to start. Crawl before you walk, walk before you run. So she's crawling, digging her heels in and making a go of this.
Of course, when she stops, when she sags onto the staircase, tips her head back and lets herself rest the loneliness creeps back. It has been days and she doesn't know what she expects, she just knows that his uninvited, unscheduled visits filled the empty space in the night, filled the house with something other than herself and the ghosts and now he's gone. She extends back, lets her body unfurl over the not so comfortable slope of the stairs, arms spread at her sides crucifixion style and lets herself just sink into the wood, just melt bonelessly against the grain of it. Her skin feels dusty, her muscles faintly sore, as if her body is angry at her for working it so hard after a life of bed rest and forced illness.
The door creaks and there are heavy footfalls and then the sound of a falter, a stumble, cussing. She knows that voice so well, can feel the low vibration of it against her skin already and she scrambles up, smoothes her shivering hands over her skirts to settle them back as they ought to be. He is as he always is, make up stark, hair wild but there is a smile on his face that is too easy, unprovoked and it makes her skin tense makes her nervous. He takes a half step, tucks his hands inelegantly into the front pockets of his pants and rocks back on his heels. He lets his head roll to one side, examines her as if she is of the utmost interest and wets his lip with a swipe of his tongue. For a moment she doesn't know what to say to him, it seems to her that there are still days between them, catching in her throat like candy floss. Cloying, choking, nauseating.
"D'you have ... " his voice trails off his, gaze slides away from her, slides heavenward and he is so still and so silent that for a moment Shilo dares to think that he is praying. She can't for the life of her figure out who would listen to the prayers of a man like him but whoever it is she hopes they're in a giving mood. From all the way across the lobby - not quite hiding at the base of the stairs - she can taste something like desperate on her tongue. She still hasn't figured out if the iron tang of it is her own or his, airborne and inescapable. He snaps, a sharp sound that startles her out of the study she has been making of his jaw - he needs to shave; there's a dark shadow of hair on his skin that partially obscures a tiny white scar high on the curve of his chin which she is entertaining thoughts of licking - and it drags her attention back up to his eyes, not as sharp as they once were, burned warm at the edges and unnaturally bright, "D'you know it's been 379 hours since I saw you? In the laundry room?"
Her skin feels tight and warm when he counts the spaces between them in hours and the only thing keeping her from reaching out to him is the fists she has balled in her skirt. He takes a half step towards her and hesitates. When he tugs a pocket watch from his pocket he snorts, shakes his head.
"380," he amends, sounding almost sheepish that he's been counting wrong. He makes as if to take another step towards her and sways, feet planted fast to the floorboards and body seemingly rebellious about that. His eyes close and a crease forms between his brows. When he looks up at her again Shilo is struck by the weight of years behind the zydrate blue of his eyes. The man is weary, aching with the press of time on him and Shilo seems to realize, for the first time that he is almost her father's age. She rubs her finger across the crease in his brow before she realizes that she has made her way across the room to him. His skin is hot to the touch and when her flesh presses against his - forcing her up onto her toes to reach because he will not bend for her - he just leans.
One large hand comes up and ghosts against her hip. For a moment in which Shilo goes vibratingly still, breath held, heart choking in her throat, she thinks that he will touch her. She has a few glorious heartbeats in which his fingers promise to curl hard against her skin, drag her close, remind her what his skin smells like - although she's hardly forgotten, it haunts her on the blanket he used, the one she's moved up to her room- but he never follows through. He pulls away to quickly, talks a half dance step around her body and heads, on uncharacteristically clumsy feet, towards her kitchen.
She considers this, lingering in the entry way so that she can go on feeling the heat of his hand hovering over her skin just another moment longer. Graverobber is consistently graceless, rough around the edges and forceful and yet - somehow - never clumsy. When she does eventually join him in the kitchen, sneaking after him on quiet as mice feet to linger in the doorway, he is leaning heavily on her table, hands braced on the edge. His knuckles have gone white with his grip. He hears her, despite her try at utter silence - if boneyard spooks can't sneak up on him all incorporeal and haunting, who is she to try? - and regards her with fogged eyes. His jaw is slack.
"S'your fault," he tells her, voice coming rough, burning the edges off of his words and robbing him of his hard edge. She licks her lips, slicking them bright and shining as she tastes the velvet edge of the syllables. She breaths in his letters. His head falls forward, his eyes falling closed and he shudders.
"Are you high?" it comes sharper than she intended, more of an accusation than she meant it to be and for that she is sorry. His head jerks back, a snort of laughter tossing his hair back over his shoulder and he turns to face her, a great show of concentrated effort. His hips sink back against the table top, arms folding crossed over his broad chest and he regards her with eyes going steadily darker. It seems to her that all the zydrate vitality is going out of his sneer and she feels as though maybe she's seen the man behind the bravado and her stomach twists.
These are no butterflies. She thinks that perhaps there are bats swirling in her stomach, choking down all of her bravery so she is frozen, childish in the doorway.
"You're young," he says it not as if he's just realizing it but as though he ought to be reminded of it. She can feel the way he tastes her years on his tongue and her chin tilts, throat stretches, gives him better access. He watches her as though he wants to shoot her up, drink her down, possess her. She wonders if her eyes have taken on all his zydrate blue. He seems to shake himself, makes a show of bustling around the kitchen. Drinks two full glasses of water in breathless drags before wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, not daring to face her when he speaks again, "not high, kid, just drunk. Good dealer never messes with his own shit."
"I'm not that young," she's ignoring the logical parts now, the convention of conversation which demands that she focus on the parts that he's safe with. She has no stomach for polite now, with the bats eating her courage in moments measured by his heart beats. It's now or never, leathery wings beating against her guts "I'm not that much younger than you."
His head falls back, his eyes fall closed and his lashes are a dusky shadow on skin pale with powder. She wants to brush her fingers across them, see if he's even real - she's had more than a lifetime worth of dreams in which he is at once Big Bad Wolf and Woodsman, savior and devourer - but she doesn't, she presses her hands flat against her stomach. Holds the bats in. When he looks at her the glow is gone from his eyes. Like this she can see that they are more gray than blue, storm clouds instead of eyes and his is tired.
"Yeah, kid," his voice drags, still burned around the edges, still smoldering but going out in a wash of smoke. She thinks he'd prefer a blaze of glory. Perhaps that is what has stolen the glow from his eyes, "you're that much younger than me."