DAY TWO
-continued-
-ooo-
"We all create stories to protect ourselves."
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
-ooo-
He met a devil in the depths of Schwarzwald.
When he came upon him in a clearing, the devil was sitting upon a fallen tree trunk as if he had been waiting there for hours for him to arrive.
When he had walked into the clearing, the devil had greeted him by name in the first moment, both voice and expression flat and disinterested.
"I have come to bargain with you, Gundham Tanaka."
The devil had spoken German flawlessly, without even the barest hint of foreign accent, and had spoken Japanese with the same precision when the devil switched seamlessly to it following that initial greeting.
"In respect for the power you have demonstrated in managing to see through my cloaking spell and discover my whereabouts, I shall allow you to leave here with your life."
The devil ignored his generous offer and continued to speak as if he had given a different response altogether, "You will go to a place of my choosing."
He could not hope to stifle the laughter that bubbled up within him. How long had it been since someone had dared defy him?
"And what do you propose to offer me in exchange for my cooperation?"
The devil did not flinch, did not even acknowledge the mockery in his tone. The cadence of the devil's voice remained flat and unimpressed, his expression as placid as still water, "You ask what I would offer, but you already know that there is nothing left in this world that would be of interest to one such as yourself."
He murmured a spell of banishment making the necessary signs with agile fingers, but the devil continued to stare at him unblinking as if he were waiting for an answer though he had asked no question.
"You are not wrong," the devil had continued eventually, seemingly unperturbed by his lack of response. "You will attack me and you will be rewarded with only the despair and frustration you will glean from complete and total defeat."
He startled, his blood already racing at the prospect of battle, at the offer of a challenge.
Defeat... it was an intriguing prospect.
A contest of strength or will between powerful creatures of darkness to see which would reign supreme.
He called to him the beasts that followed him, that dwelt always in the shadows near at hand and leapt to confront this foolish devil to gift it the end it so richly deserved.
Defeat- when it finally arrived, hours upon hours later- tasted of blood and bile and dirt.
Those beasts that had been foolish enough to answer his call lay broken or whimpering all around them. He could see their still, limp forms from where he lay, bruised and broken, at the feet of his foe.
Could hear those that lived as they whined and begged, entreating him to end their misery, but he found himself too weak to answer their call.
Every breath seared pain into the very fibers of his being and his muscles were caught in a screaming agony from which there was no relief even while he lay motionless upon the churned earth that had served as their battleground.
"You survived twenty-three seconds longer than expected," his opponent stated, soft words delivered with the same flat recitation as every other syllable he had uttered since he had come upon him that morning.
The devil was not even winded.
If he'd had the strength left in his faltering body to lift his head and look upon him, he was certain the devil would appear as unruffled as he had when he had first appeared before him. His suit and hair still dark as a moonless night, untainted by blood or dust, untouched by even the most cursory of blows, lacking even the faintest indication of the battle that had raged between them.
"You were more stubborn than I had anticipated you would be."
"What will you do with me now that I am at your mercy?" He would have asked if he had still had breath and power enough to push the words from his lungs, but even in silence his enemy seemed able to anticipate his thoughts as the devil had read and countered his every move.
A light blue folder filled with white paper was placed gently on the ground beside him, close enough that his panting breath ruffled the pages within with ever exhausted exhalation, "You will read this. When you are done, you will turn yourself over to the custody of Naegi Makoto of Fourteenth Division. We will not meet again."
The devil's footsteps were slow and measured, crushing dead leaves beneath a heavy, purposeful tread as he left without bothering to wait for a reply.
There was little doubt the devil already knew what he would do.
DAY THREE
03:50:47 UTC
-continued-
-ooo-
"Hey," the creature above him called out, loud and abrupt, summoning his attention back to it once more and away from the deepening swamp of memory. "Why won't you talk to me anyway? Are you mad because of what I told Hinata?"
Hinata...?
The word tumbled over and over inside his head like a falling rock tumbling down a long, dark well.
It took far longer than it should have for that word to return an image from the dark waters of his memory.
Hinata.
Yes, he remembered Hinata... from the island.
Which seemed strange given all he had remembered since.
Who or what had he been?
Not one of them, to be certain, but there had been something familiar about him nonetheless.
Something beyond the memories of that island, a truth at the core of whatever lies clothed him, a truth he could not yet reach.
He remembered well how he had approached him during that first day and after. The way he had sought him out and spoken with him while he tended to the creatures of the farm, his interest in him a puzzle he could not begin to understand.
He could recall with startling clarity the way the late afternoon sunlight had fallen across this Hinata's stiff, white-clad shoulders as he'd perched upon the wooden fence, the way it had cast long shadows before him as if he were far larger in spirit than in body.
All this, yet he found he could not remember his words.
Could only recall the way he had said them and the careful, cautious way he had approached him, as if he were an animal likely to shy or spook if exposed to sudden movements or loud noises or the force of too much interest.
And perhaps there had been some truth to that.
He had, after all, reacted poorly each time Hinata had reached out to him, flinching back instinctively to stutter through explanations that had always tasted as much of truth as they had of fiction. Night after night, he had lain awake trying to sort one from the other, failing again and again, the truth lost in a dark mire of his own invention.
He was Tanaka. He was the Forbidden One. Master of the Four Dark Devas of Destruction. Dark Overlord of... something.
The world, yes, that sounded about right.
All that he had known to be true, but the rest...
He hadn't been certain.
His uncertainty made more sense now that his mind was slowly being filled to the brim with jagged, relentless fragmented memories of missteps and horrors and a life lived filled with rage and regret and glimpses of the sins he had committed while locked in the clutches of despair.
All he had known during his time on the isle of the damned was that it was dangerous to be touched, to allow others to come too close and that Hinata must have been a truly extraordinary entity to be able to stand in his presence for so long and emerge unscathed.
He remembered standing beside him on the beach, in the amusement park. He remembered speaking with him on that strange joyless playground during those final days as he made a futile effort to ignore the hungry beast consuming him from within, the ever-growing discontent of a body whose energy stores had already been utterly depleted.
The quiet resignation in his eyes as he'd cast his vote in that farcical trial.
Who was Hajime Hinata?
What had he done to deserve confinement amongst the damned?
Had they been friends?
Foes?
Strangers?
Perhaps the creature lingering above him knew his questions, knew the answers to his uncertainty.
"What are you-" he began, the desire to ask, to know, triumphing over the will to remain silent for one brief moment before he remembered himself and choked back the rest of the question, snapping his jaw shut with a fierce clack of teeth. He let his frustration and confusion expire in silence within the cage of his mouth, fury smoldering within him as he turned away from its triumphant grin.
He turned his glare to the dark water sloshing around his booted feet and cursed himself a fool.
He had sworn an oath to himself upon the memory of those he held most dear that he would not fall into the trap of this fiend's false company again no matter how it persisted.
He was not there.
It was not him.
It was not him and it was not her, it was not anything of importance. It was merely a nameless minor demon making mockery of his pain, a sinister shade that appeared to test his resolve only when he was at his most vulnerable.
Many a night he had lain awake in his bed, unable to sleep no matter how thoroughly exhausted he was by the day's endeavors. And as he lay there in the darkness of his cabin, he had often wondered if there were no demons at all. If instead every moment spent in their presence were only his own mind crafting castles in the air to ease his suffering when he was at his lowest. Comfort and torment married together to taunt and console him in equal measure within the frame of each new specter that arrived to plague him with its presence.
His teeth ached as he drove the shovel into the muck once more, shoving at the base with his booted foot to bury it deep within that sodden earth once more.
Why did it linger?
What did it hope to gain?
Why did it continue to plague him time again?
Did it wish to draw him out?
What terrible satisfaction would it gain from the breaking of his resolve?
Twice he had allowed this shape-changer to fool him into forgetting even after he had guessed its true nature.
He would not be fooled again.
Not again.
DAY TWO
-continued-
-ooo-
A shadow fell across him, the relief from the burning heat of the brilliant sun above so sudden and abrupt that he startled, slamming back against the edge of hole, bringing his shovel up defensively, his heart fluttering wildly in his chest like a panicked bird.
The sun shone bright behind the shade's head, blinding him and casting its features into shadow as it came just a bit closer, scuffing the sand at the edge of the whole and sending it cascading down around him.
"What are you doing?" It… she asked in a voice that was both familiar and foreign at once, a voice that seemed to echo around him, garbled only slightly by the crash of the sea beyond.
It had been so long since he'd heard anything beside the roar of ocean waves and the scrap of sand that for too long he could only stare up at her in stunned silence. He wasn't sure how much time passed, whether it was minutes or hours or a mere handful of seconds, but once he was finally able to claw his composure back into place, she still stood there before him. Towering above him, looking no less herself for the strangeness of her clothes.
It made his eyes ache to look upon her, to see the strange longing in her expression and the way the sunlight made her hair glisten beneath its heavy glare.
He wondered why it was so difficult to look upon her.
They had only ever been….
"Hello," she said, her enunciation crisp and precise as she bowed, her hair falling forward around her, hands clutched and knotted nervously at her waist. "This is the proper method of greeting, is it not? I was told…" she trailed off, frowning, her brow knit in something between confusion and determination.
Was it?
He had seen men bow to one another before, he was certain, but no one had ever bowed to him.
Was he meant to bow in return?
There was a small burst of sound, quickly muffled and he glared at a small girl with a high ponytail who was poorly muffling giggles behind her hand.
The girl before him was flushed red as she squared her shoulders, tipped her chin upwards and continued to speak undaunted as those poorly muffled squawks turned into full-blown laughter.
"I am Sonia Lola Michalina Isabella Marieke Eliana Nevermind and I… oh, goodness, that was too much, was it not? I have forgotten myself. Clearly, it is customary to only introduce oneself with a given and surname here. Sonia Nevermind. I am Sonia Nevermind and it is very pleasant to meet you."
Her efforts were admirable and it was not difficult to make the decision to return her greeting in kind. He took a moment to murmur an incantation to safeguard that name which he had chosen for himself, to keep it from being turned against him should it one day become his true name, the name that could invoke his presence through its mere utterance.
"I am called Tanaka and I am…."
"My word," she breathed, cutting through his words with the sharp efficiency of a falling blade, her eyes widening as Cham-P poked her head from the depths of his scarf, uncharacteristically early on her entrance. She blinked, eyes widening as if just realizing he had stopped speaking, "Oh my, I apologize, that was rude, was it not? I... interrupted- yes, that is it- I interrupted you and did not intend to. Apologies, Mr. Tanaka, for my distraction. It is just..." She trailed off, her gaze shifting away to lock upon Cham-P's generous form as she emerged fully from his scarf to settle upon his shoulder. Her eyes seemed gleam with a light they had lacked before, the fire of interest bringing her to life, making her real in a way she hadn't been until that moment. "Are you the one who cares for her? She is magnificent."
His momentum was broken, the introduction he had been prepared to give stalling into silence as she leaned forward into his space, offering her fingers for Cham-P's inspection.
His breath stuttered as he fought the instinctive urge to sway back away from her reaching fingers.
So rare was it that they were treated as the marvelous creatures they were, with the respect and admiration they so obviously deserved. He had grown sued to humans demonstrating their ignorance and overlooking their many gifts, viewing them as little more than common pets or- worse yet- inconvenient pests.
"I apologize. Is this quite alright? I do not wish to impose."
His face felt very hot despite the brisk chill that had lingered in the morning air.
What other answer was there than….
His head throbbed and his chest still ached even as the beat of his heart slowed to something slightly less riotous and the school room faded around him, the weight upon his shoulder vanishing as suddenly as it had appeared and leaving an aching coldness in his belly in exchange.
They were gone.
Long gone.
And he stood waist deep in a hole of his own creation once more, face and shoulders burning beneath the heat of the endless summer sun. She towered above him, sand falling between them as she shuffled nearer the edge of the hole, the toes of her shoes poking just over the edge.
They gleamed a brilliant red beneath the bright light of morning.
Her shoes had always been polished until they gleamed like that.
The past was so close and the present felt so distant and he belonged to neither and neither belonged to him.
She had asked him a question.
The least he could do was answer it.
"I…." He began slowly, uncertainly, his voice rough with disuse.
She gave him an encouraging nod, her hands knotted in front of her as if they were clasped in some prelude to prayer.
What are you doing, she had asked.
What was he doing?
He glanced at the shovel in his aching hands, hands that were sore and bore the calluses of many days of fruitless toil.
What was his purpose in this endeavor?
Was everything he did simply a way to keep busy his idle hands?
Or was he trying to lose himself in fog of exhaustion?
Was he attempting to forget? To remember? To reconcile the memories of two lives within one cursed body?
To what purpose?
What would be the point?
He had no answers.
Perhaps he had simply been trying not to think on it too deeply, not to dwell on those conflicting memories warring for dominance within him. The harsh and undeniable truth that he could spend an eternity digging on that deserted beach and it would never make the slightest bit of difference, for them or for him.
In the end, perhaps all he was doing was finding a way to endure his solitude.
Weak effort though it was.
He must have given her an answer, but even as the words passed his lips he forgot them, lost them or dismissed them for the poor excuse they inevitably were. It was impossible to put into words what he was truly attempting when he himself did not even fully grasp the scope and purpose of it.
She must have thought so as well, for she retreated from the edge in silence and left him to it.
He could still sense her there as the relative cool of morning gave way to the sweltering heat of afternoon. Saw her sitting in the distance- her expression blank and listless- as he trudged across the beach digging pit after pit, his thoughts weighted down by heaps of imagined words. A thousand different foolish attempts at conversations that he would never have and actions he would never take. Eventually she would vanish as his companion in the darkness of his first awakening had vanished and he would find himself alone once more and he would suffer more for the lack than he would have if he simply refused to engage with her in the first place. So he remained silent, grimly going about his work, ignoring the mild pain caused by every movement, the hundred tiny gapping holes stretching and stinging as the salt of his sweat dripped upon them and the unpleasant grit of sand rubbed across them.
Every movement, every breath he took was a punishment, a pointless penance to be endured, lacking even the faintest whisper of a thrill.
Sometimes his mind drifted to all those faceless many who had met their untimely ends by his command. All those magnificent and unique creatures who had suffered and died in his care. To all those faceless, anonymous humans whose blood soaked the fields and streets of his dreams.
But those thoughts never lingered overlong, overwhelmed by exhaustion and the constant aches and pains that, with each passing day, began to seem more and more like trusted, well-met companions in his journey through the afterlife.
Never did he allow himself to dwell overlong on the Devas, so notably absent from memories of those dark and terrible days, or on her presence lingering still as the sky grew dark and darker still.
Even as night fell, he could still feel her gaze upon him, intent, a heavy and unforgiving weight.
Had she lost her life to that game as well?
Or was she merely the same demon wearing another familiar visage?
When he finally gave in and turned to look upon her once more, he found her sitting in the deepening shadow beneath a bent palm, her hair loose and shining around her in the fading sunlight.
She had always been beautiful.
Though he always thought it to be the least of her many admirable qualities.
She had worn the blood of their enemies smeared across her fair skin like war paint as she'd stood wreathed in smoke, dressed in blood and soot-stained silk and lace as she issued orders to her troops from atop the remains of one of her mighty war machines. The armies of a dozen conquered countries, a thousand warriors drenched in despair, had knelt at her feet, had praised her name.
Her eyes had been wide and bright, her smile wide, as she'd ordered them to kill for her, as she condemned them to die on her behalf just as she'd commanded hundreds and thousands before them. They were cannon fodder, nothing more than a means to an end.
Her end.
If despair had a scent it would have been smoke and gun metal, blood and rot.
He had watched it all from close-by, fingers stroking absent-mindedly over the course fur of the monsterous hound at his side.
An arm had settled across his shoulders, a warm breath against his ear as a familiar voice had whispered words he could not hear over the roar of gunfire and the howls of the dead and dying.
But the scent of engine grease and motor oil was strong enough that it might eclipse the reek of despair if he closed his eyes and turned his face from the battlefield.
He woke from memory to find himself standing on the beach, shoulders burning beneath the light of the moon.
She was staring at him and even though he could not see her clearly, he thought her expression was expectant.
What do you want from me, he thought, but did not ask.
Waves lapped against the shore.
They always sounded hungry, those waves.
Sometimes he dreamed they were slowly consuming the ground beneath his feet, rising higher and higher with every passing day until one morning he would wake to find the water rising around him, the vile island beneath his feet finally vanishing beneath those thirsty waves once and for all and he along with it.
Hell was high water and an inability to swim.
Hell was a puzzle full of holes and no pieces left to fill them.
"Yours shall be separate from the rest, She-Cat," he told her and while he'd meant that declaration to be a comfort, he could tell by the way her entire body flinched from him that he had chosen his words poorly.
He'd never been good with words.
Or people.
It was difficult to look upon her, so he turned back to his work once more.
He had continued to dig long into the night.
Once or twice he thought he'd heard her sobbing, the sound muffled by distance and the ocean waves, but he did not dare look back again to be sure.
It felt as if something inside him might break if he did.
Eventually night fell and silence with it and as he retired to his cabin to fall into an exhausted slumber there had been no ghosts left to haunt him but those that existed solely within the depths of his own tattered mind.
DAY THREE
03:50:51 UTC
-continued-
-ooo-
Though he understood each word that passed its lying lips, he could not begin to fathom the meaning or the purpose behind any of them. He kept his silence, endeavoring to ignore it, but still it persisted as if it might make itself understood in quantity where it had so obviously failed in quality.
"Because, I mean, I get it. I probably shouldn't have told HInata all that about all the... you know... touching and stuff…."
It just kept speaking and speaking and speaking, issuing forth a spill of words seemingly without end as if he were meant to know, as if everything it spoke of should have been obvious to him as if it could not imagine a world in which its words were not understood.
If he were one to fear things, he might fear that it would never stop as much as he already dreaded the moment when it finally, inevitably, would and he would be left alone again to the mercy of his own thoughts and doubts once more. Abandoned yet again to the hopeless trudge through this endless punishment and the perilous mire of half-remembered yesterdays.
He did not long for the fiend's companionship, but he would be foolish not to recognize the fatal and very human weakness at the core of his being that doomed him to feel its absence so completely during the silent hours of the times between.
"That was my bad. I mean, I probably shouldn't even have been thinking about you like that anyway, right? But I mean, c'mon, it's not like... it's not like I meant anything by telling him, you know? I was kind of- I don't know- just trying to make him feel better. We're supposed to be friends, right? And that's what friends do, isn't it?"
As if he would know such a thing.
"I mean he's gay for Komaeda. That's gotta be rough, right? I mean, I guess we all kind of knew they were... whatever. None of us even wanted to be near the guy after what he did to Togami, but Hinata was all… oh, oh! I met the real Togami. Like the really, real one. Cause, you know, ours was an imposter so, of course, there was a real one, right? And, man, he is just a total dick. Ours was way cooler. Is way cooler. Whatever. Anyway, the real one is just… kind of the worst. I mean Naegi seems alright, but Togami? I'm pretty sure he'd of been happy if none of us had made it out. But, whatever, that's fine. It's not like we need his approval or anything, right?"
He cast a glare up at it through the ruin of his hair, sparing a hand to swipe the loose, sopping tendrils from his face with a quick, impatient jab.
His attention kept falling away from it, washed away by memory or exhaustion or both, dragged free by the ache of muscles or the needling pain of open wounds.
And still it sat there, blathering on, oblivious, it's bare, muddy feet dangling over him like a portent of doom. Absently chewing on one nail as it stared off into space like it had forgotten about him altogether. As if his presence were completely unnecessary and unremarked. It barely even seemed bothered by the rain splashing down across its face as it kicked its bare heels against the side of the grave, sending bits of debris cascading down upon him.
The smile wilting across its lips was shaky and self-deprecating and terribly, terribly familiar.
He gripped the shovel tighter so his hands would not tremble in sympathetic response.
Fool.
Don't look at it.
He turned his attention back to the darkness, to the water rising around him.
His hands ached where they gripped the shovel.
The creature glanced down at him and cleared its throat, a parody of embarrassment twitching across its face. "A-Anyway, so, um, like I was saying... liking Komaeda is kinda like wanting to bone a bear trap or something, so I, you know, I felt bad for him. I mean, sure, we're all kind of nuts, I guess we'd have to be to do all that stuff they said we did, but Komaeda lopped off his freaking arm and replaced it with hers. I haven't seen it yet, but... I kinda... remember it a little, I guess, and that's just… that's next level crazy. I mean, what are the chances he's gonna wake up less crazy, you know? It's not like he was ever anything like normal even when we were there."
He did not know.
Not what he was talking about or about Komaeda or about anything else.
Nor did he wish to.
All he wanted was to be left alone.
He lifted another shovelful of mud and heaved it out of the hole, narrowly missing the tenacious fiend who didn't even bother to flinch away from the mud and water this time. It just kept speaking, words tumbling out to fill the silence.
"I mean he was kind of just always like that, wasn't he? Like even before all that despair stuff there was something just... really off with him. He was always… weird. I used to go up to the roof sometimes, when I needed to think or just wanted to get away from stuff and this one time he just standing up there, right at the edge, looking down. It was raining and he's just standing there, no coat or anything, singing while rain poured down on his stupid fluffy head. And I…."
It trailed off into silence, muttering something so low that he wouldn't have been able to catch it even if he'd cared enough to try.
It heaved an enormous sigh, feet kicking back against the walls and sending mud cascading down upon him.
"This sucks. It's like... it's like I think I remember something and then it just kind of... falls apart. Like it's all just pieces and none of them really fit right. Like I'm sure I remembered stuff last time I dreamed about you, but it's… I can't…."
DAY TWO
-continued-
-ooo-
He was not certain how much time had passed only that the pain had finally faded to a dull ache and the tears leaking from his eyes had dried at last, leaving his skin feeling stiff and strange, his sinus' clogged by an infernal plague of unshed snot.
Still, even with the worst of the ache abated, he saw no reason to move too quickly and risk the return of that exquisite agony.
It wasn't as if he had anywhere to go, after all.
Strange that for all his differences, his body should still hold the same weaknesses so common in humans.
It was disappointing.
It always had been.
It had always seemed as if his body should be made of sterner stuff, that that evolutionary quirk which had made him so different from others should have also made it so he might withstand such blows with ease. It was almost comical to find that he had retained that same inescapable weakness even in this bitter purgatory, as if this Hell were being scored points for accuracy.
Though perhaps he should have expected that, since it had put such thorough effort into the creation of that loathsome-
The door was shoved open and- as if summoned by his thoughts- the creature that wore Souda's familiar features stumbled through, red-faced and panting with exertion, holding out a dripping plastic sack filled with dark containers before it as if it were a shield or an offering.
"The…" it began, before shaking its head and waving a hand at him as if he were supposed to instinctively understand what that gesture was supposed to mean.
Supposed to know what it was doing as it blew air like an enraged bull and began rummaging through the unfortunate bag as if it were far larger than it seemed and filled with far more choices than it appeared to be. A bag of infinite holding, perhaps.
"There was," it tried again with a heavy breathless pant that matched perfectly the heave of its chest and the exhaustion painted across its stolen face.
It was ridiculously realistic, a truly masterful touch.
He would admire it if it hadn't felt quite so much like the familiarity of each of those careless motions were a needle punching through his chest cavity.
He could only make out every few words, but they were enough to paint a picture.
"Wasn't any… ice… at the… had to go… market… here."
It dropped to its knees before him, uncomfortably close and completely heedless of that fact, as it thrust a damp black carton into his face.
Ice cream?
He squinted at the label and while the text was blurry so close, the brand was passingly familiar.
"Oh man, I'm gonna be sick," the shade complained, still playing at the fragility of humanity, as it bent over to rest its free hand against one knee, it's head hanging down as it took great, heaving breaths.
He turned his gaze away, back to the carton still hovering between them.
Grilled Eggplant.
A truly repugnant flavor.
Likely unfit for consumption by even the most vile of beasts.
Perhaps the only truly suitable end for such a terrible flavor was to cool the ache in his nether-regions.
The demonic entity at his side made a passable imitation of a cat working free a hairball though nothing more than a few long strings of spittle actually made it past its chapped lips.
"Ugh, that was gross," it muttered, wiping at its mouth with the back of its hand when it was done.
It frowned when it realized he had yet to accept its offering. "C'mon, it'll…"
It paused, lips trembling in a way that made his chest tighten painfully.
When it spoke again its voice was thicker, heavier and it pushed the damp cool of the carton against his cheek more forcefully as if perhaps he simply hadn't understood that he was meant to take it. "Just let me do this, okay?"
It sounded almost like a plea.
The accuracy of its impression of him lent a level of unrelenting cruelty to the moment.
He found himself taking the offered container gingerly, frowning at how the damp cardboard squished beneath the pressure of his grip.
"Look, I'm… I'm really… I'm sorry, okay?" The fiend grimaced, scratching at the back of its head, fingers yanking at that ridiculous knit cap he had always worn. "Sorry, I know, it's kinda… I mean, it's really hot out there. I ran as fast as I could, but… that's the best I could do, you know? Sorry I'm… sorry. I know it's…"
It trailed off, shrugging listlessly.
He supposed it was better than nothing.
Not that he was grateful for the effort.
Not when he wasn't even certain why he was willing to take such a suspect offering, to hold it close against his body, not even if it were as it seemed, merely a balm for the damage it had caused him.
He flinched as he pressed the damp chill of the package between his legs.
It was surprisingly pleasant though it did little enough to sooth the vicious ache within.
Less effective than it might have been to return to the brisk waters of the shower, perhaps, but this at least did not require the inevitable torment of that short trudge.
"I, um… I grabbed a bunch, because I didn't really know what to get," the creature shrugged, tugging off its hat and wiping its brow with the back of one arm, before poking listlessly at the sack and its contents. "When I… when I was, uh, little I used to use like bags of frozen vegetables or cans of beer. So, I thought maybe that'd work… but there wasn't… there wasn't anything like that there so it was kind of... ice cream or bust."
If the fiend were waiting for a reply, it gave no sign as it sat there beside him, silent at last.
Not quite close enough to touch, but within easy reach all the same.
"What do you hope to gain from this?" He asked finally even knowing he could not trust any answer it might give.
"I don't know," it sighed and there was a desperate honesty to that statement, to the way he felt it echo within him. "Why're there so many holes in the beach?"
"They're not holes," he replied simply.
"Then what…" It trailed off and then there was an audible gasp as the fiend's head snapped up, mouth open and gapping as it stared at him with wide eyes. "N-no way… they're graves, aren't they?"
He allowed himself a small smile, inexplicably pleased to have his intentions understood so effortlessly, "For all I have lost, it seemed a fitting way to pass the time."
It snorted, rolling its eyes and glancing away, "You were always so freaking morbid…."
He let the word linger unremarked in the air between them, part compliment and part insult, true and false.
The next question - when it finally allowed the words to slip from its lips - was asked so softly he barely heard it at all and with such hesitance that it seemed as if it were asking something else altogether.
"Does it help?"
It was the sort of question he would have asked.
In moments like these, the accuracy with which it mimicked him was startling and terrible and he found himself turning the question over and over in spite of himself, considering his answer carefully even though he knew he should have simply ignored it altogether.
Did it help?
When he'd first woken up, there had been nothing.
Nothing and no one when the darkness had retreated taking that brief illusion of companionship with it and leaving him to pain and the chill of ocean waves, the grit of sand beneath his fingernails.
The island had been quiet and barren around him and he had been - for the first time in a long time - defenseless and alone.
He had lain upon that damp sand with the feel of that touch already fading from his skin, washed away by the creeping ache of his wounds and the lap of chill water against his skin.
And he'd known, even in those first moments, that there was nothing for him there.
Nothing but that shovel, sticking out of the sand, as if it had always been there.
As if it always would be.
A constant reminder of all he had done and all he had lost and all he deserved.
It had seemed only natural that he should dig when the universe offered a shovel.
It was, at the very least, a way to pass the time.
Days had passed before he'd realized he was digging with purpose.
That he was….
It wasn't atonement.
Not precisely.
He had no desire to be forgiven and- even if he had- there was no one left to provide absolution. There was no act of contrition that he could perform to absolve himself of his part in all that had been done in the name of despair, that could erase his mistakes or return the dead to life.
There was nothing and there was no one and time mattered not at all.
But it was easier to ignore the conflict raging within him when he had a purpose.
Benign and pointless though that purpose had been, it still made it easier to face the images that haunted his dreams, that had invaded his waking hours and left him standing on lonely battlefields littered with the dead and dying, the corpses of men and beast alike, the scent of rot and gunpowder thick in the air again and again.
Stranded him in dark rooms where a rough voice murmured soft, meaningless words as they stripped his armor away, as they sometimes slipped deep inside, into places no human had ever dared touch.
That had drenched his hands in blood, thick and wet, and stained the wooden handle of his shovel making the unfinished wood damp and spongy in his grip.
Sometimes he stood in an open field.
Sometimes a slaughterhouse.
Sometimes he was deep within a forest and there was only the snuffle of beasts around him to break the stillness of his thoughts.
The scattered memories blew through and around him, no sooner settling than they were gone again and he was left with only a fading impression of might have been.
Sometimes he knelt in a warm, noisy room and there was the feel of sweaty hands against his thighs, the scrap of ragged fingernails scratching anxious shapes along his tender flesh.
"Not really," he answered finally, shrugging as he turned his gaze away to study the far wall, the open door and the malformed rectangle of sunlight the late afternoon sun cast across the dull tiles of the beach house floor.
Silence descended between them once more and he was grateful when the fiend didn't rush to break it with his increasingly confusing words and his thoroughly unnecessary questions.
Perhaps he and the boy whose shape it had stolen had often passed hours in such a manner- each tending their own concerns, loneliness eased simply by the quiet company of the other- for that silence had the comfort of long habit.
Perhaps it was sometimes enough just to know someone was there even if they had nothing more to offer than their presence.
Those strange disjointed memories that were slowly emerging from the dark, unchanging abyss within him, rising like mighty Leviathan to break the ocean's surface, so often impossible to ignore, had seemed to return to the deep within his presence, to fall into a brief slumber that eased the knot of tension in his bones.
If he did not think on it too deeply it might even be pleasant to lie there, listening its every breath grew deeper, slower as overexertion wore away into exhaustion. Perhaps it was unwise to relax his guard even that much, but it was difficult to imagine that the creature at his side was truly capable of visiting upon him a fate worse than that which had already befallen him. And so he lay there beside it as afternoon faded to evening, allowing the chill of melting ice cream to smooth his aches, ignoring the vague discomfort as it slowly leaked out to puddle across the sand-covered floor.
"Sorry," the fiend muttered eventually, the word dragging slow and reluctant between them.
He blinked his eyes open, turning to find him staring up at the ceiling and the fan turning lazily overhead.
Had there always been a fan there?
He could not recall.
Fingers brushed against the soft of his drying hair, sweeping across his forehead before settling against the curve of his neck, tracing the mound of scar tissue there, "Hey... can I tell you something?" It asked, voice hushed and quiet as if the coming of darkness had made it soft and docile.
It must have taken his silence for acquiescence, for in the next moment it was speaking again, soft and hushed as a trespassing child.
He snorted, rolling his eyes at the implication, "Who do you believe I would share your words with, fiend?"
The comment seemed to catch him by surprise, summoning a watery smile and a weak laugh from his lips, "Oh, right, yeah, I guess that's true, huh? Yeah. Okay. So, I… I think I built them. The pods, I mean. I mean not… not them exactly, but maybe something... something like them. They're just so… familiar, you know?"
"…-are they?" He murmured as darkness swept across his vision, the soft cadence of his... its voice muffled, words impossible to decipher beneath the ringing of the bell.
For one strange, perilous moment, it felt as if he were dangling between memory and reality, a sword of Damocles waiting to fall as those fingers pressed against his throat, the salt of its skin stinging against the wounds there as the sound of static filled his head and the darkness finally swallowed him down.
-ooo-