Chapter Text
There’s a bang, the sound of thunder contained within metal, the smell of fire and ash leaving a sour, burning taste at the back of his throat, his hands frozen on the handle, one finger hovering above the trigger. Blood splatters against the old wooden floor and seeps through the cracks before the body hits the ground.
Wide, purple eyes remain unfocused, as if he can’t quite process the image of golden hair beginning to stain red, as if he expects the man to blink awake at any second now. He doesn’t move, neither of them does, and soon there are hands pulling him out of the dilapidated room, screams surrounding him, but he can’t hear a thing. He lets himself be moved along only because he can’t get himself to struggle and the arms holding onto him are strong and firm, but something is wrong and the gravity of just how wrong it is hasn’t set in yet. The yellow headlights of a vehicle blind him and, momentarily, the shock brings him back just enough for a gasping breath to be drawn in past dry, trembling lips, and then Zedaph begins screaming.
He wakes up with a gasp, shooting up straight in bed, his body covered in a cold sweat and his muscles shaking with the strain of remaining upright. It takes Zedaph a few minutes to realise that it had been a nightmare and that he’s alone in bed, that Impulse must have already left for work.
Breath stuttering in his chest because no amount of air feels like enough for how fast his pulse thrums through his veins, Zedaph crumbles in on himself, drawing his blanket-covered knees up to his chest and hiding his face, burying his hands in his own hair.
It’s just a nightmare, he reminds himself, he’s not back there again and-
But it’s not just a nightmare, is it?
He tries to crawl further and further into the blanket, if only to chase the chill that radiates from within, where a lingering terror remains.
Zedaph stumbles as he makes his way towards the entrance, one boot on, the other having just been thrown away to where it is now resting against the wide wooden doorframe. He can already feel the sweat building on his brow from all the clothes he is wearing, the ill-fitting beanie, the knitted dark grey and red scarf, the long coat, but he also knows that he will be grateful for all the layers once he steps outside, if the way he’s been sneezing since he’s opened the windows this morning to get a breath of fresh air - and a face full of snow and frost - is anything to go by. Mumbling under his breath, he makes sure that he’s got everything he needs, his backpack, his wallet, keys and phone in his pocket, and then Zedaph bends down to claim his lost boot, grunting as he struggles with it, but finally, only panting slightly and fully red in the face from all the moving around and from the heat, Zedaph opens the door.
Immediately, his nose twitches and he narrows his eyes, burying his chin even deeper into the scarf wrapped around his neck and pulling the beanie down a little bit further, exposing as little of his face as possible to the freezing weather, but it’s only once he’s locked the door behind him that Zedaph realises he’s forgotten to bring a pair of gloves. With his hands on his hips, he sighs and shakes his head, though he is smiling beneath the scarf. It’s supposed to be a short walk to visit Impulse so he can bring him the lunch he’s forgotten and then he’ll mostly be indoors as he tries to navigate the local shops in the heart of the little city. With that in mind, Zedaph shoves his hands in his pockets and starts walking, his pace a bit slower than usual because of the snow layer having grown thick and solid overnight.
Once he reaches the main road where the sidewalks are already cleaned up and more easily manoeuvrable, Zedaph starts humming a melody under his breath as he continues walking, clenching his fists in his pockets. There are only a few people around, but Zedaph will take any chance to not be alone with his thoughts in the old house.
‘Hello, hello and hello , miss Pearl, how are you?’, Zedaph says with a bright smile as he steps into the office building, his fingers only mildly numb with the cold as he unzips his coat. Pearl smiles back and waves from where she’s seated at her desk, her big teal eyes sweet, but with a little spark of playfulness in them.
‘Hello, Zedaph. If you came for Impulse, you’re just in time, he went on his lunch break a few minutes ago’, she explains as she pushes aside an intimidating stack of papers, notes and terrifying bureaucratic things that he chooses to make a disgusted face at. Pearl giggles and pats Zedaph on the arm, but he makes a show of blinking a few times before his expression turns serious. She seems worried for just a second before Zedaph starts speaking in that usual dramatic voice that he does when he’s taking the piss.
‘Impulse? On a break? Of his own accord ? What happened to my dearly beloved work-addicted man and why did no one call me?’
Pearl glares jokingly at him before she punches him in the arm too, for good measure. They both laugh after that while Zedaph busies himself with simultaneously trying not to stumble over everyone and everything and with searching his backpack for the lunch box Impulse had left on the counter in the morning, chatting with Pearl and greeting some of Impulse’s other co-workers who happen to pass them by.
Finally, the long hallway lined with walls of glass takes a turn to the left, opening up into the kitchen and lounge area that is too perfect of a mix between casual and business-y, and there, in the corner, Impulse is leaning into the corner, munching on a chocolate bar. Zedaph’s heart drops a little bit at how tired he seems and at how it looks like he is keeping himself away from the other people that Zedaph knows he is, or used to be close to, Scar and Mumbo talking animatedly next to one of the couches. They don’t look oblivious to it, and Zedaph has to wonder if they’re trying to give him space.
It’s not like he’s not seen these changes over the years, and it’s getting better, now, Zedaph knows Impulse is slowly trying to go back to a relative sense of normality where he can live his life without everything remaining coloured in shades of grey around him, he does know this, but it hurts when Zedaph remembers how Impulse’s bright smiles lit up a room, how-
He stops himself there, takes a deep breath and makes sure his smile is still in place before he nods to Pearl. There’s something indecipherable in her smile, but Zedaph winks and opens the door, Impulse’s head instantly turning until he notices Zedaph.
A tentative grin stretches onto Impulse’s lips and Zedaph all but runs up to him, lunch box held tightly in his hands, kissing his nose and crouching down before Impulse can wrap his arms around him before jumping back up a few feet away. At this, Impulse’s smile widens and that’s all Zedaph needs for his breath to start coming a bit more easily. He winks at Impulse and ignores the muffled laughter from Mumbo and Scar as they leave the room with the most ridiculous expressions Zedaph’s seen. The distraction is enough for Impulse to catch Zedaph in his arms and trap him in a tight hug.
‘Oh-’, Zedaph gasps before his muscles relax and he makes note of how heavily Impulse is leaning into him, as if he’s needed this, and all at once, Zedaph’s little heart breaks all over again for him, so he simply pulls Impulse closer towards himself, hands coming up to rub gentle circles into his back.
‘Hi, Zed’, Impulse says quietly, and though he sounds happy, Zedaph can tell he had been thinking bad thoughts again, trapped in that dark place in his mind that Zedaph cannot deny being familiar with either. He squeezes Impulse a bit harder.
‘You forgot your lunch, Pulsie. Again’, Zedaph whispers with a hint of reprimand in his voice and the tension in Impulse’s shoulders lessens, so Zedaph counts it as a win.
When Zedaph draws back from the hug to look at Impulse, the exhaustion from before is still there, but it’s also accompanied by that softness that Zedaph had fallen in love with years ago. He runs a hand through Impulse’s short, dark hair before he cups his face and pulls him down so he can lay a kiss on his forehead too.
‘Thank you for making the trip then, sweetheart. I mean it.’
Zedaph makes a show of winking very slowly before he pushes the lunchbox towards Impulse. There’s a sigh that Impulse tries to hide by biting his lips as he unwraps the meal and Zedaph winces sympathetically.
‘Appetite bad again?’, Zedaph asks and rubs his hand against Impulse’s arm, almost sad that cold winters like these mean that he’s wearing a very soft turtleneck instead of his usual tight t-shirts, but he’s too drawn in by the warm brown eyes in front of him for the thought to be anything more than fleeting.
‘A little, but I’ll live. Don’t worry too much about it, Zed.’
Zedaph shakes his head.
‘I will absolutely worry and there is nothing you can do about it, mister Impulse’, he rebukes with crossed arms and a barely contained smile. Impulse snorts and ruffles his hair before he digs into one of the sandwiches he’d packed.
Zedaph thinks he could absolutely just hang around to watch Impulse eat and maybe to give him some more smooches and bribe Scar into making Impulse that overly bitter coffee he really enjoys because he looks like he needs something to indulge in right now, and he’ll probably send a few texts in regards to the later anyway, but he also remembers how early some of the stores he wants to visit close and he jumps away from the counter once he lays eyes on the clock in the lounge area.
Impulse looks in that direction as well and when he turns back to face Zedaph again, he looks understanding and soft enough that it makes Zedaph want to leave even less.
‘Sorry, I wanted to go do some groceries and stuff too, I-’
‘I’ll see you tonight, ok? And get yourself something nice, if you’re out in the city today’, Impulse prompts, probably ready to make some joke about how frugal Zedaph can be sometimes, but he must think better of it because he leans in for a kiss instead.
It’s short and sweet and Zedaph feels like his legs are made out of lead with how hard it is to move away from Impulse, but he finally does and he bids him goodbye, somewhat comforted by the promise of seeing him in a few hours anyway.
Thankfully, the one place Zedaph had been looking forward to seeing today after getting some essentials, the library, is still open by the time Zedaph trots his way through the snow of the little alley where the entrance of the library is hidden.
A bell rings overhead, the sounds soft and melodic. Otherwise, the library is silent, but it’s not the same quiet as the one back at the house, because if he listens closely, he can hear just the softest thudding of footsteps and the turning of pages and hushed conversations.
‘Vă pot ajuta cu ceva?’
He shakes himself out of the trance-like state when the librarian addresses him.
‘No, uhm, nu, I was actually just-’
‘Ah. Not from here, then. May I help you sir?’, they ask, eyes widening slightly when Zedaph turns to them, but they return to the polite smile from earlier and Zedaph grins sheepishly towards them before gesturing at the bookshelves. They nod, though something about him seems to have caught their attention. Probably the fact that he isn’t from here, but they seem nice enough.
He’s only here to look around a little, really. He’s read most of the books they bring with them when they move and, surprisingly, they’ve stayed here just long enough that, although habit hasn’t become familiarity yet and they’re still learning the language, even if Impulse is lucky that his whole team had been relocated here with him for some legal reason that Zedaph doesn’t fully understand, Zedaph actually thinks about buying some things to make the old house a home, much as that turns an old knife in his heart, a bittersweet pain following. Or maybe he simply wants something new to read and a book he can hold. He’s always liked the smell of books and the feeling of a page beneath his fingers, as impractical as that may be sometimes compared to the books he has in digital format as well.
Right. Perhaps he should take a leaf from his own book of not letting Impulse get into his head too much. Zedaph sighs for a long moment and gets to browsing the shelves.
He turns away from the foreign literature section, because even if it’s one of the few things he can read, it’s mostly young adult fiction, and though Zedaph doesn’t mind the genre, he wants something different. That is to say, he isn’t really sure what he wants , per se, but he thinks he’ll know when he finds it.
And, in the end, Zedaph somehow ends up in the children’s section, an old and barely held together book of illustrated fairy tales in his hands, and he isn’t entirely sure why, but Zedaph looks at it and something catches his attention and holds it.
Maybe it’s curiosity that has Zedaph bringing the dusty book home after asking the librarian whether he has to sign up to borrow the books of the library and after they tell him that it’s for sale, actually, and for a pretty good price too. There’s something about them, about how excited they seem to be for Zedaph, perhaps Zedaph’s own enthusiasm catching on, but it makes him smile wider as he walks out of the library, their eyes still following him until the bell above the door jingles again.
Evening finds Zedaph curled up in a big armchair, a mug of tea that had, at one point, been too hot to drink, but which is now lukewarm due to lack of attention, and a vest that is just slightly too big on him slung over his shoulders, the book he’d gotten today laying open in his lap. He doesn’t think about how the vest smells familiar and safe, doesn’t let himself follow that sort of train of thought and, instead, Zedaph focuses on the pages of the book and on the scribbled illustration drawn on one of the pages, one framed by intricate patterns of twisting grape leaves.
This could definitely be a fun way to try and get more acquainted with the language, if only he wasn’t too comfortable to get up and bring a dictionary down to the dining room, Zedaph thinks, but he enjoys this too. He smiles when he finds one word or another that he already knows and he looks at the drawings for long periods at a time, tracing fine lines gently.
The book is old, yes, but it’s holding together well enough, the hardback cover of it having suffered most of the damage and leaving the contents it protects only yellow-stained but otherwise intact.
Zedaph hums and continues shuffling through the different tales until, by the time he finally forces himself to down his awfully cold tea, he reaches the end.
Tilting his head, he lets his fingers rest on the wavy surface of the last page glued to the cover and he squints at how it doesn’t quite feel right. It makes him remember the old textbooks from school back home, the ones that would be passed down from cycle to cycle, and how sometimes, if one was unfortunate enough, and Zedaph often was, they’d even have pages glued together because of water being spilt on them at one point.
Very carefully, Zedaph digs his fingernail under the corner of the clump of pages and, with a small cheer whispered to himself, he manages to pry it away from the cover. Just as slowly, he unglues the pages one by one, noting that the last few of them contain only the table of contents, but somehow it doesn’t detract from the mild sense of child-like wonder the action instils in Zedaph. He continues until he finally reaches the last, last page and, then, he gasps.
A paper pocket that seems hastily glued onto the last page stands out against how well crafted the rest of the book is and Zedaph looks at it with intrigue. It’s, well, it’s clumsily made, its corners not entirely straight, and there’s a dark stain that Zedaph assumes to be mold. It stands out to him and Zedaph has always enjoyed a little bit of mystery, so he finds the free edge of the pocket and pulls at it slightly, extracting a folded up page. It seems close to crumbling with how old it is, so Zedaph holds it in his palm for a bit before stretching out and leaning closer to the coffee table in front of him, pushing his empty mug further away so he has enough space to unfold the paper.
And, finally, Zedaph realises what it is. There are wiry lines and even more mold stains in the indents left on it from how it had been folded, and though it’s obviously made by an amateur, Zedaph realises that it’s a map . It shows rectangles of little houses and outlines some of the terrains, but the small bits of writing scattered all throughout it are too faded for Zedaph to read.
He can imagine whoever made the map hadn’t written it for anyone else to see as much as they’d simply made something for themselves. It doesn’t seem to be a very big settlement, maybe a village, but Zedaph doesn’t know the geography of the surrounding area enough to be able to tell whether it’s somewhere close by, and he can’t even be sure that the library doesn’t get its books from all over the country, so perhaps him trying to figure this thing out is a bit of a useless endeavour. It’s not something that’s ever stopped him before though, is it? Perhaps not lately, not as much as he used to.
He smiles to himself, then scratches at his chin and blinks a few times.He wonders if a kid might have made this map, because he remembers doing similar things when he was younger, but he would have never been able to make something this complex. Zedaph has never been particularly artistically gifted beyond dipping his small fingers in paint and making a mess of any flat surface he could reach before his mum caught him.
He sighs as he gets up and pulls the vest a bit tighter around his body, making his way to one of the free rooms he’s decided to use as an office.
Zedaph turns on the light switch and some of the earlier excitement fades when he is greeted by still unpacked boxes, the lone lightbulb hanging in the room moving slowly, the shadows moving with it. Thankfully, he’d organised his things quite well when he’d realised he might as well pack them up since he isn’t using them, so it’s not hard to find a fresh pack of larger plastic files.
Throwing one last look at the unused office, Zedaph can almost hear his voice whispering in his ear:
‘ You always keep this place so clean, I think we should make a mess of it, don’t you think? ’
‘ And how do you propose we do that? ’
‘ I can think of a few ways... ’
Zedaph winces, his free hand clenching into the front of the vest until his fingers shake with the tension. With a controlled exhale, he shakes himself out of it and turns the light off, going back to the dining room where he makes quick work of storing the old map inside the plastic without damaging it any further, his hands shaking with how cold he suddenly feels.
Once that is done, Zedaph is standing over the coffee table, not entirely sure what he should do next. He’d cleaned the house, the exception being his own office, which isn’t really being used, if he is being honest with himself, and there’s a covered pot of steaming broth on the kitchen table for when Impulse comes home, and…
He closes his eyes, keeping his face as blank as possible. It used to be one of the things he loved most about being a teacher, the fact that he’d have this much free time, and considering that he’ll only start teaching biology again at one of the local schools when the new semester starts in March, he’s left mostly to his own devices, and Zedaph often finds himself in this very same position, his brain muddled with thoughts of the past, but his body restless with nothing to do. He’d started picking up a lot of hobbies, the knitted, still unfinished blanket thrown over the back of the couch a bit further away being a testament to that, and he’d been the one to do most of the repairs to the house while Impulse was at work when the idea that they might actually stay here had started becoming more of a reality, but right now, Zedaph can’t quite get himself to move, so he continues looking at the map, eyes unseeing and his thoughts somewhere far away.
Distantly, Zedaph wonders if he could call Impulse, but he tells himself that he’ll be back soon, anyway, though his phone hangs heavy in his pocket, and he feels so small in the vest that doesn’t belong to him in a house that isn’t a home for the two of them, not without him .
‘Damnit, Zedaph...’, he tells himself, breathing in through trembling lips and biting at the insides of his cheeks. The mild sting is the thing which finally pulls Zedaph outside of his head, and, with another mumbled curse under his breath, Zedaph looks at the clock. It’s getting a bit late and Impulse will be back at any moment now. Part of him wants to go to bed right now regardless of that, a weight that he can’t shake off pulling at his muscles, but he knows himself enough to know that he needs someone right now, needs Impulse if he doesn’t want a repeat of yesterday’s nightmare, and if the way Impulse had acted today means anything, then maybe Impulse shares that need as well. God, it’s been five years and something is still broken deep down, and Zedaph doesn’t know that it’ll ever be fixed.
Blinking the wetness away from his eyes, Zedaph reaches out to dig his fingers into his work-in-project blanket, feeling the metal knitting needles under his hand. It’s better than letting his own thoughts drive him more than a little mental.
Without any words exchanged between them, Impulse toes his shoes off and joins Zedaph on the couch, the TV casting him in a bluish light, accentuating the dark bags under his eyes. He’s as handsome as ever, but he also looks so tired. Zedaph welcomes it, adjusting his grip on the needles in his hands and moving so there’s enough space, the way Impulse settles his head in his lap with a long exhale. He’s just about done anyway and, by the time he cuts off the rest of the yarn and sets it and the needles aside, Impulse is breathing in and out slowly, already caught in the tendrils of sleep. Zedaph doesn’t wake him just yet, reasoning that he can warm the food up later, but what he does do is awkwardly bend over Impulse’s body so he can kiss his forehead. After that, he throws the freshly finished blanket, a pattern of black with yellow detailing on the sides, on Impulse’s frame and settles against the back of the couch, carding his fingers through Impulse’s hair, knowing that he always likes having his hair played with, even more so when he’s sleepy and just needs a bit of comfort.
‘I love you’, Zedaph whispers, even if Impulse can’t hear him, and turns his attention to some cooking show playing on the TV. He’d already turned the subtitles on, but he finds that it’s only background noise to him at this point. Still, it's better to have this distraction together with Impulse’s warm weight on him than to be left to his own devices.
His eyes still sting, and the moment he closes them, Zedaph feels numbness overtake him.
There’s a scream.
Zedaph comes to with a jolt, panic already setting in when he realises that what to his sleeping mind had registered as an agonised shout is actually pained whimpering, and he doesn’t wait before he is shaking Impulse awake, hearing the pleading tone in his own voice.
Rationally, Impulse could very well be having a nightmare, and to shock him out of that isn’t the best way to go about it, Zedaph knows, but, somehow, the fear gripping at any remaining logic is too overpowering, and then his brown eyes shoot open, Impulse’s pupils small pinpricks of pure black. Tears are streaking down his cheeks that Zedaph feels when he cups Impulse’s face with both hands, letting out a trembling gasp when he finally seems to be back to himself, looking up at Zedaph while his breathing evens out, although he still lets out the occasional sniffle.
‘God...’, Impulse says under his breath, voice raspy and his brows furrowed.
‘Are you ok?’, Zedaph asks with no small amount of uncertainty, caressing Impulse’s cheeks with his thumbs, his worry not entirely gone even when Impulse smiles under the ministrations and closes his eyes, relaxing where he's still resting in Zedaph’s lap.
‘It was just a bad dream, don’t worry so much, Zed’, he laughs softly, wiping his tears away with one hand before resting his warm palm on top of Zedaph’s fingers on his face, ‘I can’t even remember what it was about, really.’
He sounds honest, but Zedaph also knows how Impulse’s concern sometimes has him hiding his own feelings, and they’d promised each other, even before-
They’d promised to be honest.
‘Are you sure?’
At that, Impulse’s smile softens and he raises himself to stand up. Zedaph is still holding his face between his hands, almost as if to combat the childish fear that something bad will happen if he lets go, but Impulse imitates the gesture and, framing Zedaph’s jaw and neck with long fingers, he brings their foreheads together. They’re standing close enough that Zedaph can feel his warm breath against his lips.
A few seconds pass like that.
‘We should probably wash our teeth’, Zedaph says and makes a face, but he doesn’t pull away. If anything, Zedaph inches closer to him. Impulse’s laughter is louder now, fuller, and Zedaph basks in the sound.
‘Maybe we should. We should also get to bed, sweetheart.’
Zedaph nods slightly and decides to take the initiative, already missing Impulse’s warmth as he stands up, folding the blankets and rearranging some pillows on the couch while Impulse places the needles and remote on the coffee table after shutting the TV off.
A lull in their conversation settles, but then Zedaph feels one of Impulse’s hands coming to rest on his hip and he turns his head to look back at him over his shoulder. The only light still on in the dining room is a lamp in one of the corners of the room, but the map he’d left on the table is all too visible and Zedaph looks at Impulse, then at the map and then at Impulse again.
‘Where’d you find this relic?’, he asks, not without humour, one eyebrow raised and Zedaph grins awkwardly.
‘I got a book from the library and this was glued on the back cover.’
‘You think anything will come of it?’, Impulse muses and Zedaph shrugs, but he’s smiling again when Impulse gives his hip a squeeze before he lets go.
‘Maybe. Probably not’, Zedaph explains and once everything is back in order, he drags Impulse to the kitchen so they can eat.
They’re mostly done and Zedaph is putting the dishes into the sink when he notices the curious look in Impulse’s eyes. He turns back to the dishes.
‘ My running theory is that some kid drew it and left it there by accident, probably a map of their home. It was in a fairytale book, you see?’
Impulse nods and says:
‘You always did love a good mystery.’
It’s said cheerfully, but Zedaph’s eyes widen. He has his back to Impulse, and he can only hope that the way his features turn blank isn’t visible in his body language. Or maybe he wants Impulse to know. He isn’t sure. All Zedaph can think about in the one second that passes before he can gather himself is where his curiosity has brought him before, and the memory of the smell of gunpowder and decaying wood and rust burns his nose.
‘Very much so’, Zedaph finally answers, ‘But how was your day, Pulsie? You didn’t seem too… Well, when I saw you earlier, was everything alright?’
There’s a heavy silence that lingers. Impulse doesn’t speak. When Zedaph has finished with the dishes and faces at Impulse again, he seems caught in thought, and when he looks up at Zedaph, there’s pain obviously written in the shadow it casts over his features. He’s slumped in on himself on the chair he’s pushed away from the table and it all paints an image of suffering that Impulse always does his best to hide, even if Zedaph can see right through him.
‘This summer’s gonna be harsh, that’s all. Some people were talking about their vacation plans and...’, is all Impulse says, and Zedaph understands.
He steps closer to Impulse, taking advantage of the space between his legs and coming to stand between them, placing both hands at Impulse’s nape and gently making him look up.
‘It’s… Well, maybe it’s not gonna be ok, but we’re gonna get through it. We will, Impulse’, he says in the softest voice he can muster. For a second, there’s a flash of something in his eyes, but Zedaph doesn’t allow himself to think about it. Not here, no right now.
‘We will. Bed, now?’
Zedaph forces himself to chuckle.
‘Brush your teeth first, you brute!’
‘I love you, Zed.’
The words sound genuine, and Impulse feels warm in his arms. Zedaph holds him tight.
‘Love you too, Impulse. So much’, he whispers the words into a naked shoulder.
He’d hidden the safe box beneath layers and layers of summer clothes he hasn’t finished unpacking yet, and when he digs it out, carefully holding it in his hands before he sets it down on the floor of their bedroom, he is forced to remember how heavy the contents of the box had felt in his hands on that day, five years ago.
Slowly, Zedaph unlocks it and opens it, taking the gun out. Impulse thinks he’s thrown it away, and maybe he should have, but it’s the sort of reminder that he needs, especially now. When they came back to Europe, he’d gotten a permit to carry it and the incident back in America had apparently been enough to justify it, especially since it has no bullets. When he pushes the trigger, the weapon makes an empty clicking noise and so Zedaph does it again and again and again. Sometimes he wishes it wasn’t empty because he remembers exactly how the last bullet had been used and it just…
His hands twitch and a sudden clarity breaks through the mist of guilt and fear. It has Zedaph going very still.
It’s a conversation they’ve had before, God, at one point it had been the only thing they talked about, but Zedaph can’t help but sometimes wonder if Impulse blames him for it, for everything that had happened and, God, Zedaph wouldn’t blame him if he did. Putting the gun down for a moment, Zedaph looks at the only other object in the safe box.
A photo with slightly bent corners and, in it, there are three people.
Zedaph flinches but then makes himself look at it, to really look at it, to take in the person standing between him and Impulse with an arm thrown around Zedaph’s shoulders and a hand resting on Impulse’s hip, his smile sharp and bright and his eyes sparkling with that combination of joy and mischief that had made both Impulse and Zedaph fall for him in the first place back in university. He’d been the one to, as he’d put it, cut the bullshit and get the three of them together when friendship developed into more, and he…
The photo doesn’t do Tango’s red eyes justice.
Holding himself together, somehow, Zedaph gently places the photo and the gun back in the safe box, swallowing around the weight of his own tongue lying heavy in his mouth, unwilling to curl around the words that bubble up in his chest, but he thinks them anyway, repetitively, obsessively. He should have been the one to die that night, not Tango, despite what he’d seen, what he’d thought he’d seen.
Zedaph stands up on shaky legs and takes a couple of deep breaths before he can move again. He needs to get out of the house, he can’t be alone right now.
An idea of where to go starts forming itself when Zedaph reaches the dining room, his eyes falling on the map still on the coffee table. He’s stored the book he’d found it within on the small shelf in his and Impulse’s bedroom. Maybe he should just go back to the library and ask about it or even return the map, should anyone be looking for it, either for sentimental reasons or something of the sort.
Anything, so long as he doesn’t have to stay here and endure the resounding silence of his thoughts, which leave him to come to his own conclusions, and they aren’t pretty.
Zedaph barely enters the library again, book and map held securely under one stiff arm before he’s already looking for the librarian with a small smile on his face.
‘Hi, hello’, he says, and the librarian arranges her glasses. It’s a different person than the one from yesterday, ‘I happened to buy this book yesterday?’
He places the fairytale book on the counter in front of her and she looks at it and at Zedaph with curious eyes before Zedaph continues with his explanation while showing her the map wrapped in its plastic file as well.
‘I happened to find this in a backpocket and was wondering if you happened to know why it was there or whether someone might look for it in the future?’
At that, she takes the map and runs her fingers over the lines of it, and then she squints before she looks at the book, checking the back to see the paper pocket herself and then flipping through the pages for a few seconds before she reaches the front cover, her hand splayed on the first page of it, which is blank under her palm.
‘Uh… Sir, are you sure you bought this from here?’, she asks with a thicker accent, looking at Zedaph.
‘Yes? I sure did! I have the receipt too, just-’, Zedaph explains, fishing out his wallet and looking through one of the pockets where he keeps more recent receipts, but in a strange twist of fate, he finds it entirely empty. Zedaph frowns.
‘Huh...’
She smiles a bit awkwardly and looks at the book again.
‘It’s just that we’ll usually put the information for buying at the front of the book and there’s nothing here...’, she explains, taking her time, and now Zedaph is frowning too.
‘Ah. That makes sense. Should I return it and the map then, or?’, he asks, ignoring the way his heart rate picks up, as if the book were important, and he has no reason to be this attached to it, but-
‘Maybe, maybe not. I could try and look for it in one of our inventory lists, but it might take a while, since we store some of our stock in another city and all that? And it takes a bit of time, you understand how it is.’
Zedaph nods.
‘Is there any way we could maybe ask the librarian from yesterday about it? Not that it’s anything urgent, just… They might know… Something… About it, since they sold it… And all that’, Zedaph trails off, feeling a bit embarrassed by the situation already.
At that, the librarian’s eyes widen and she looks at Zedaph like he’s said something outrageous and his face grows red under her shocked gaze.
‘I… Was the librarian yesterday as well, sir. In winter season, there’s just one shift in the day. When did you get the book?’
Zedaph has to think for a second, something nervous fluttering in his belly uncomfortably.
‘Later in the afternoon, maybe?’, he answers, cringing internally but trying to keep a polite smile on his face regardless of that.
He hadn’t thought that her eyes could get any bigger, and with the thick lenses of her glasses, she reminds Zedaph of an owl. It would be fine, were he not feeling sick to his stomach with unfounded anxiety.
‘Huh. It should have been closed at that hour. Perhaps you went to the, the - uh - supply shop? The one further down the main street? They also sell books, and sometimes they’ll sell older books donated to them at low prices!’, she says helpfully, and Zedaph just nods again, despite knowing for a fact that he’d gotten the book here. Where yesterday, he’d felt captivated by the sense of mystery of the map hidden in an old fairytale book, now it’s shifted into something more worrying. Maybe he is misremembering, but the idea of something so real being a figment of his mind makes him feel even more uncomfortable. He’s experienced enough of that. He turns to the librarian one last time
‘Right, right. I should probably check there. Thank you for your time, though!’
The librarian smiles and waves him off and Zedaph leaves with quick steps, the bell ringing behind him.
He ends up just heading back home. Maybe he should just forget about this whole situation. Stranger things have happened, after all, and Zedaph should know that all too well.
When Zedaph comes home in the evening, he’s surprised to find Impulse’s shoes already thrown into the tray near the front door, his coat hanging in the wardrobe beside it. He more often than not stays late at work, because he’s a workaholic and, where years ago, he would have been scolded for it, Zedaph knows that now they’ve all become sort of a way to cope, the things he keeps himself busy with.
A little smile pulls at the corners of his lips and Zedaph toes his shoes off, though he keeps himself bundled up for a little while longer. It’s cold, and maybe Impulse hadn’t arrived much earlier than he has if he’s not yet turned the heat on.
Zedaph is doing just that, fingers shivering as he turns up the thermostat before he places a hand on one of the radiators, feeling it slowly begin to warm up underneath his palm, when arms wrap around his middle.
He lets out a cut off yelp at how cold Impulse’s skin feels even through all of the layers of clothes between them and nearly jumps out of his skin at the low chuckle that echoes right in his ear.
‘Goodness, but you scared me, Impulse’, Zedaph laughs once he can breathe normally, clutching at his rapidly beating heart, ‘I didn’t think you’d be home early...’
At that, Impulse nuzzles the side of his neck and Zedaph places his own hands over Impulse’s, leaning further backwards and letting the solid frame of his partner support him. When he feels movement behind him, one of Impulse’s hands drawing back, Zedaph wants to turn around, but Impulse’s one-armed grip is still solid, and so Zedaph is left to stare in surprise when a small bouquet of yellow flowers, small and delicate, is pressed into his own hands.
‘Thought I’d surprise you’, Impulse eventually murmurs, voice soft as he buries his face in Zedaph’s shoulder, nosing some of the fabric out of the way so he can kiss at warm skin tenderly, his lips a bit cold, and Zedaph has to wonder if Impulse has caught a cold, because he’s usually an oven in human form, as they liked to call him, but he’s a bit distracted by how choked up he feels.
‘Flowers…?’, Zedaph asks dumbly, shivering when he feels a peek of a wet tongue against the tendons of his neck.
Impulse nods and hums his affirmative into Zedaph’s skin before he squeezes Zedaph just a little bit harder.
In a way, Zedaph is both sad and thankful that his back is to Impulse, sad because he wants to look at Impulse, but very thankful because there’s too much emotion on his own face right now and his cheeks and eyes are hot. Something about the gesture, something about it nearly feeling normal, it pulls at his heartstrings and it tugs until they’re ready to snap.
‘That’s awfully sweet, Pulsie’, Zedaph closes his eyes, taking a long whiff of the sweet and mildly odd perfume of the flowers. He’s never felt a scent like this before and he wonders if they’re native, knowing that somewhere higher up in the mountains here, there are enough flowers that grow even during the harshest of winters, ‘But is...’
Is everything alright?
He can’t quite finish the question, but Impulse gets it anyway and he sighs, his body relaxing a bit more behind Zedaph.
‘Yeah, I’m fine, just… I missed you’, he says, and Zedaph has a sneaking suspicion that he’s not just talking about today, because it’s not like things had ever gone back to normal after they left America, and it’s not that Zedaph expects them to, and he was, is happy, as happy as he can be considering everything, but something about Impulse voicing a certain thought, something about the emotion in his voice that sounds like it runs so much deeper, it makes Zedaph gasp, ‘Wanted to do something nice, wanted to feel you again...’
This time, when Zedaph makes to turn around, Impulse lets him, and he lets Zedaph go. He carefully places the flowers on the kitchen table after breathing them in again and, when he looks at Impulse again, he smiles shakily and opens his arms, welcoming Impulse and turning his face upwards so he can kiss him.
It’s a soft thing, just lips moving against lips in the barest of touches, and Impulse still feels a bit cold, so when they part, Zedaph places his hand on his forehead, humming when he feels oddly normal.
‘You just turned up the heat, it should be getting warmer soon. Today was particularly cold at work, that’s all’, he explains before he kisses Zedaph again, pushing him until his back hits the table, his hands holding onto Zedaph’s hips.
‘Yes, just’, Zedaph says between kisses, trying to give back as good as he gets, but barely keeping up once Impulse starts kissing him more deeply, ‘Don’t want you to get sick, you know I worry.’
With a smile against Zedaph’s lips, Impulse nods and lifts Zedaph up, depositing him on the table. Zedaph blushes and hides his own face away in Impulse’s neck. It’s not… They haven’t done this in a while, and the day has been long and just a bit much, and though they’ve had the rare night of trying to bring each other comfort with their bodies, though they’ve had better days where they could just be with each other, now, the only thing on Zedaph’s mind is Tango, despite what Impulse hands and lips on his body do to him. Still, it’s… It definitely feels nice, that much, Zedaph cannot deny.
Impulse runs his hands down his thighs and then steps in between them when Zedaph opens his legs. Zedaph thinks about how, if Tango were here, he would tease Impulse for being eager, would stand behind him and use clever hands to trace the contours of Impulse’s body while looking at Zedaph with fiery eyes.
‘I want you’, Impulse whispers again, so quietly that Zedaph barely hears it over the memory of Tango’s laughter, which is somehow still so clear five years later. He can tell Impulse needs this right now, and though they’d usually ask each other first before letting things get this far, sometimes more explicitly, on better days, if this was something they could do, Zedaph nods when Impulse closes his eyes and kisses him, pressings his hips even closer until there’s no space left between their bodies.
Zedaph assumes that something is on Impulse’s mind as well, with how strange he’s acting, and he wants to do whatever he can to alleviate whatever’s ailing him, especially after today, so he sighs breathily and sneaks his tongue in Impulse’s mouth, opening his legs just a bit wider for him.
The smell of the flowers lingers in the air that steadily grows more heated and it’s when the table creaks beneath him that Zedaph wants to ask whether they should move things to a slightly more comfortable setting, and he barely thinks about it before Impulse hauls him up. Then, Zedaph is being dropped onto the couch with an oomph , looking up when Impulse sits himself on his lap.
There’s something about the look he gives Zedaph, brown eyes nearly black with what Zedaph assumes to be arousal, and yet there’s a glimmer to them, and his face is so calm that it’s almost blank when he brings his hands to Zedaph’s face to keep his head in place as he leans down to kiss Zedaph stupid.
Impulse’s weight keeps him pinned on the couch beneath him, but Zedaph doesn’t have any complaints, not when Impulse grinds down and lets Zedaph catch his breath once he fists a hand in the back of his shirt, not when he kisses his neck and pulls the coat Zedaph had forgotten he was still wearing aside, only so he can run the pad of his thumb around Zedaph’s nipple over his cardigan.
‘Missed you’, Impulse growls into his skin again, the same statement from earlier sounding a bit desperate this time around, ‘Missed you so much, my love.’
Zedaph breathes out sharply at the endearment, but he melts into the back of the couch when Impulse rubs his arse against Zedaph’s groin. He twitches in his trousers, but he knows himself enough to realise that he probably won’t get hard for a while longer, despite how much he loves Impulse’s touches.
‘Impulse, Impy, I-’, Zedaph chokes when Impulse unbuttons his cardigan and pushes his shirt up until he can place both of his palms on Zedaph’s chest, his still cold fingers making covering rosy nipples and making them perk up, ‘Slow down, Pulsie, ah-’
Impulse doesn’t say anything, he continues to massage Zedaph’s chest and continues moving in his lap, seemingly determined to make Zedaph get hard beneath him, but the stimulation feels like too much and Zedaph doesn’t have enough air in his lungs to keep up with the sensations, so he just lays there instead, trying not to squirm.
‘Touch me, I need you, just. Need you ’, Impulse half whispers, half moans, fumbling with his own jeans enough to get his erection out, long and thick and leaking at the tip before he moves on to Zedaph’s trousers.
He’s only half-hard, but he still nods and whimpers low in his throat when Impulse wraps his hand around both of them and starts thrusting into his own fist, Zedaph having no choice but to make small, breathless sounds at the friction against his sensitive cock. It’s still too much, but the way Impulse seems lost in ecstasy makes Zedaph feel warm and he entangles the fingers of one hand with the one Impulse still has on his chest, arching into it when the fast, slick movement of Impulse’s other hand get the best of him, and then he is coming between them.
Impulse follows not long after, letting out a small noise that makes Zedaph smile loopily, even as he still twitches with the continuing overstimulation until Impulse’s release lands in hot stripes on Zedaph’s exposed stomach.
He crumbles and collapses against him, but Zedaph holds him tight, running his hands up and down his back until his breaths calm. The orgasm had felt nice, but Zedaph likes this better, likes holding Impulse in his arms, knowing that he’s there, and when a thought about the safe box he keeps hidden from him pops up in his mind, Zedaph thinks about Tango again, too.
Somehow, he doesn’t break down, and for a second, he wonders what he would think, whether he’d be happy about all the snow they have at their new house, he probably would, he’d probably wake Zedaph up with a snowball to the face as often as he could. He asks himself if he would be eager to explore the small city. He wonders if…
If…
If it’s ok, if it’s fine to enjoy this moment when all these what if’s are little more than lies, because Tango isn’t here.
There’s a gun in a box upstairs, and Tango isn’t here.
Zedaph holds Impulse just a little tighter.
‘You ok?’, Impulse asks quietly, breaking the silence, and Zedaph deflates with a long breath, ‘Lost in thought for a bit, huh?’
Zedaph nods slowly, but he manages to smile.
‘Was thinking about Tango...’, Zedaph says, wincing when he hears the name. He’s not heard it being uttered aloud in so long and he’s forgotten how it still feels like a slap to the face, but he embraces the sting of it, ‘He’d love this place.’
Impulse is silent for a moment, and when that moment stretches on for a worrying couple of minutes, Zedaph finds the courage to look up at Impulse, and suddenly he realises his mistake.
Zedaph had seen it, had seen his body hit the floor, had seen red eyes clear and then had witnessed the light in them dim, he’d been there , but Impulse only knows an empty grave. After five years, Zedaph had realised that, somewhere deep down, Impulse still kept some semblance of hope, and he knew it was hurting him, it’s still hurting him, the remaining uncertainty.
He thinks about all the time discussions had turned into arguments, about every time he’d heard and seen the hope in Impulse’s gaze flare out and then extinguish itself the more time passed and Zedaph wonders if this will be what happens now.
‘ He’s still out there, I know he’s still out there. ’
‘ Impulse… ’
‘ Zed, I know him, h-he’s strong, he could still- ’
‘ Not enough to survive a bullet to the skull. ’
‘ Why are you giving up on him so easily? He’d never give up on you, even if there was just the slightest chance of… Of... ’
‘ Impulse! ’
Zedaph acts dumb, and he knows he doesn’t always notice the obvious, but he’s not stupid enough not to know that Impulse had never given up on Tango, knows that he still looks for him, knows that...
‘Oh, Impulse’, Zedaph says, as quietly as possible, letting Impulse tuck himself in the nest of his arms, ‘I-I’m so sorry, Pulsie...’
Impulse doesn’t say anything for a long time, and then he simply shakes his head, smiling weakly and threading his fingers through pale strands of hair, combing it back and away from Zedaph’s face and kissing his forehead.
‘No. It’s fine. I think we’re both just tired. Why don’t you go ahead and wash up and I’ll make the bed? No reason to have this discussion now.’
Zedaph isn’t fully convinced, but he can’t help but go boneless with more than exhaustion when Impulse kisses him sweetly one last time, extracting himself from Zedaph’s lap and stretching and buttoning up his jeans again.
‘Don’t you want something to eat?’, Zedaph asks, cringing at how quiet his own voice sounds.
‘Nah, I’m not that hungry. I just want some rest now, I think.’
Zedaph nods and gets up on shaky legs, the floor feeling cold beneath his feet, but at least the air is warmer.
He leans up on his tiptoes to plant a kiss on Impulse’s cheek before he finally begins making his way upstairs, heart heavy in his chest and his head stuffed with cotton.
Maybe he really does need sleep.
But first, he should wash up, and a hot shower doesn’t sound too bad, as long as he manages to keep himself on his feet throughout it.
He hears the water running but his eyelids are too heavy for him to open, though he does cuddle into Impulse’s frame once the sounds stop and Impulse is climbing into bed next to him with a shift in the mattress.
He’s warm again, now, after his shower, and he’d usually like to face Zedaph after moments like this, even if it means always finding Zedaph’s hair in his mouth in the morning, something that they both laugh about, but this time, he just hugs Zedaph from behind and holds him tight enough that it almost hurts, were it not for how comfortably heavy and numb with sleep Zedaph’s own body feels.
‘Try to rest, my love.’
Zedaph mumbles something back, and he feels the vibrations of a chuckle against his back, but he’s gone before Impulse speaks again.
‘Tomorrow will be a big day for us.’
He’s back there, surrounded by creaking wood stained with blood, and when he opens his mouth to scream, the scene shifts. Darkness, thick and fluid and oppressive, surrounds him and it feels like it fills his lungs, making him choke, and there’s…
There’s something hidden in the shadows, Zedaph is sure of that, but he can’t see it.
He hears a groan and a raspy breath, a sharp exhale, then silence.
The silence goes on for so long that Zedaph wonders if it will ever end or if he will be lost to the nothingness for the rest of his days, if the heavy weight in his lungs that keeps him quiet will be the thing to kill him or if he will lose himself in the darkness before that happens.
Then, something else. He still can’t see, but there are movements, there are sounds, the pitter-patter of the rain muffled and the smell of dirt and wet earth is all Zedaph knows. Things change again, and he feels like something is ripped from inside his chest before he can open his eyes.
‘Ugh’, Zedaph moans, pressing the heel of his hand into his aching temple, eyes squeezed shut. He’s seen the old house before, he’s been back to that place of old wood and of broken walls and of spilt blood far too many times even in the waking world, his eyes wide open but his mind wandering, let alone in his dreams, and he’d dreamt of being buried alive but still breathing, only to wake up to something he can never recall, but he’s never had these dreams come together like this.
Part of him interprets it as a symbol of his guilt, part of him is confused enough that it makes his head throb even worse than before, the ache just behind his eyes and inside his skull making him want to go right back to sleep.
He decides to wait it out for now though, and it begins to fade after a few minutes.
Zedaph stands up and lets out a long sigh, shaking his head slowly.
He’d not gotten dressed yesterday night because he’d all but passed out the moment he was close enough to the bed after his shower, and so he shivers at the chill, burying himself back into the blankets, spreading his arms and feeling the mattress in the darkness of early morning, looking for the warmth of another body, and Zedaph doesn’t start panicking until he realises the mattress is cold.
He has to remind himself to breathe, because he knows Impulse wakes up early for work, and mornings are dark and it always seems early because of it, and it makes sense , but he still can’t help but be afraid whenever he wakes up alone sometimes. Zedaph checks his phone after that, noticing that he’d received two messages from Mumbo. The clock displays a glowing 9:30 , but it’s so dark that Zedaph has to blink in disbelief before he goes to see Mumbo’s messages.
Zedaph expects to be told that Impulse had forgotten his lunch again and that his phone is dead, and he almost smiles before he reads the actual text. Almost.
Hey, Zedaph. Have ya seen Impulse around? It’s fine if he’s late, but he’s not answering our calls. Some of the lines are down because of the snowstorm last night, but still, decided to ask since you’d probably know if that were the case here too!
Zedaph frowns. He continues.
Most of us are going home since there’s no power at the section. If you manage to get ahold of Impulse, please let him know that we’ve got the day off today.
Worry spikes in his chest, but knowing the roads here, Impulse may have just arrived late at work, only to find the place closed for the day, and he’s probably making his way back right now. He tells himself that multiple times, taking deep breaths to alleviate the budding panic in his lungs, but it still barely helps. He’s shaking.
Stumbling as he tries to get himself upright, Zedaph rubs at his face and looks for the nearest heap of clothes he can find, settling on the turtleneck Impulse had worn yesterday. It must have been washed not long before he’d worn it yesterday, because it smells more like their fabric softener and the flowers he’d given Zedaph than it does Impulse’s own unique smell, but that’s ok too.
Zedaph goes downstairs, already expecting the smell of coffee, but then his phone begins buzzing in his hands and Zedaph freezes in the middle of the staircase.
He answers immediately, but can’t find his words in between all the chaos in his mind right now, and when Scar’s voice comes through, it’s broken up by static.
‘Zedaph, you have - Leave the house - Hide’, he begins and Zedaph’s eyes widen, ‘Don’t - Anything - Else - it’s - Impulse. ’
Somehow, he manages to slap a hand over his mouth before he begins hyperventilating. The call beeps three times with lack of signal and then ends and, suddenly, the silence filling this house changes.
It’s like the air itself drops in temperature.
Something is wrong, something is very wrong and Zedaph can’t make sense of what Scar is trying to tell him, but the words leave and hide ring clearly through his head and Zedaph has to force himself to move, has to pinch himself until he regains control of his body, hard enough that his skin stings afterwards, but finally, finally , Zedaph makes his way back upstairs.
A snowstorm. Mumbo had mentioned a snowstorm.
He can grab his clothes so he won’t freeze to death and, if he jumps from their bedroom window, the snow should soften his fall. Maybe they’d gotten involved with some dangerous people due to one of their cases, it’s not like that’s never happened before.
It will be fine, it will be fine .
As quickly and as quietly as he can, Zedaph digs through his closet and gets dressed, sweating and swaying on his feet. He takes a few more steadying breaths before he can approach the window, his ears trained on any other changes in the house that he might be able to hear, and only after he’s made sure that everything is relatively safe does Zedaph open the windows. They’re new, despite the rest of the house being quite old, so they make no sound, for which Zedaph is grateful, and the cold air hits him directly in the face, the dark sky covered in darker yet clouds that signify that whatever storm had gone down last night might not be entirely over yet.
He swings one of his legs over the window sill, his hands shaking and his nausea flaring up, but there’s no time for that. Zedaph is just about to jump before he hears him
‘What’s going on?’
Impulse .
Zedaph almost cries with relief as he sends him a look over his shoulder. Impulse stands in the doorway, dressed as if he’d just arrived home, snowflakes sticking out from his dark hair.
For a moment, Zedaph forgets that he was supposed to leave, that something had happened, must have happened, because Impulse is safe and that’s all he can think of as he jumps back into the bedroom and runs straight into Impulse’s open arms. He looks concerned, but he still tries to smile, even if it looks forced, as Zedaph shakes like a leaf in the embrace. Zedaph closes his eyes.
‘Oh God, when Scar called, I thought something-’, Zedaph says, too choked up to continue, but Impulse must understand, because he runs a hand down Zedaph’s back.
‘What happened, my love?’, Impulse asks carefully and Zedaph has to sniffle.
‘You weren’t at the section, and the snow brought down some of the lines, so no one could get ahold of you and Mumbo asked about you and then Scar called and said… But y-you’re safe, thank God.’
‘Huh. That’s a bit awkward. But why were you climbing out the window?’
Zedaph laughs quietly before the words sink in.
Leave the house. Hide .
‘What did Scar say?’
‘Impulse?’
The only answer he gets is arms tightening around him. Everything goes very still. He still doesn’t open his eyes.
Zedaph attempts to pull himself away, but Impulse won’t let him, and whatever sense of calm he’d felt moments earlier vanishes immediately.
‘What did Scar say, my love?’, Impulse says again in a harsher tone, but before Zedaph can say or do anything other than look up at Impulse’s uncharacteristically hard expression, a high, muffled bang takes them both by surprise.
They freeze. Impulse lets go, both of them staring at the spreading red stain at his shoulder.
‘Oh God’, is all Zedaph can whisper brokenly as he takes a few steps backwards.
More shots follow and Zedaph can’t help but let out a terrified scream when Impulse falls backwards in front of him, brown eyes fixed on the ceiling.
‘No...’, steps are thundering up the stairs, the sounds of commotion following, but Zedaph can’t process anything other than Impulse’s body in front of him, entirely motionless and bleeding and - ‘ No! ’
People flood the room and someone comes in through the window behind him, and they’re gunned up to their teeth and-
One of them, their face concealed behind a green visor, comes up to Zedaph and he tries to push back against them when they grab him by his shoulders.
‘You killed him!’, he screams, but the person squeezes his shoulders tighter, saying something, but none of their words registers, ‘No, no, no, NO! ’
He tries to dash past them, but that’s when they push him back with enough force that Zedaph falls, his head hitting the wood before the adrenaline in his bloodstream has him attempting to jump right back, because this can’t be happening, he can’t lose Impulse, he can’t -
They shoot at Impulse’s body a few more times, more blood splashing against the walls before they turn to face Zedaph.
They’ve taken their helmet off and dark green eyes are trained on him with a mix between sadness and scrutiny, but he sees the way Zedaph is trying to escape and he pins him down with a boot to his chest, pointing a gun Zedaph hadn’t noticed before towards his head, the barrel inches away from his skull.
‘Scar...’, Zedaph whispers, and Scar flinches.
’Zed, you don’t understand, that wasn’t-’
But Zedaph can’t hear him. Suddenly, every bit of fear is replaced by anger.
Zedaph stops trembling, and he presses himself closer to the gun, feeling cold metal against his forehead. It’s too much, it’s too much and it feels like it’s all just happening again and again and again and-
And Zedaph’s message is clear.
Finish the job .
There’s disgust in the way he narrows his eyes at Scar, but he can still see Impulse’s body behind him and it’s enough to have every emotion Zedaph feels catch fire.
Waiting for the moment when Scar averts his gaze for just a second, Zedaph moves.
He wraps his hand around Scar’s and presses his finger clumsily against the trigger of the long pistol, but Scar is faster than him and he points the gun up before Zedaph can fire it.
Now free to move, Zedaph gets up and makes to grab Scar who has a horrified look on his face that is quickly replaced by something more sombre, but someone else grabs Zedaph and twists his arms behind his back.
He barely feels the pain of ligaments pulled too tight and he begins struggling anew. Everyone else in the room is looking at the exchange, their guns aimed at Zedaph.
‘Knock him out’, Scar orders.
A sudden impact against the side of his head has Zedaph going limp, his eyes closing, but he hears one more thing before he passes away.
‘Take them both to the headquarters’, Scar’s voice echoes, and the reply is barely audible with how distant everything sounds, but Zedaph knows it must be a question.
‘No, we can’t take any risks, not anymore. Take them there. Now!’
Everything goes dark.
He has no recollection of waking up, but all Zedaph knows is that he suddenly finds himself awake, his hands cuffed and two seatbelts pulled around his body. He’s in a car, in the passenger seat, more precisely, and the windshield is nearly entirely dark grey, the headlights only barely making a difference in the heavy combination of snow and mist. They’re driving through a road flanked by fields.
Moving hurts, but Zedaph tilts his head to the side just enough to look at the driver, groaning slowly as he does. Everything is fuzzy and he can’t feel most of his body. Still, he recognises her by the streaks of honey blonde in her light brown hair.
‘Pearl...’, he says, or he thinks he says, he can’t hear himself over the ringing in his ears, ‘Pearl, they killed him...’
She doesn’t say anything, or maybe she does but Zedaph can’t hear it. His eyelids are drooping. He closes his eyes and after a few minutes, the ringing subsides a little, but he doesn’t have the energy to open his eyes.
He can hear her speaking, quick but soft, very much formal. Zedaph feels like vomiting.
‘-ble, but he’s awake. No, passive. By sunset, at the latest, yes.’
There’s movement behind them, but Zedaph falls unconscious again before he can figure out what it is, before he can beg Pearl to, to…
‘Find me.’
Someone touches his face, and their fingers are so cold, but they’re gentle too. Zedaph opens his eyes, but he only sees a dark figure standing before him, his vision refusing to focus. It’s cold outside too, and when more sounds of shots being fired echo in the distance, they startle and leave, their cold hands which had been wrapped around one of Zedaph’s closed fists leaving him even colder.
Zedaph thinks he can see headlights, but everything is dark again. There’s something in his hand and he clenches his fingers around it.
‘Încă respiră?’
‘Da. Nu putem să-l lăsăm așa.’
The world moves around him in dizzying motions. Or maybe he is being moved. Zedaph can’t quite tell.
Zedaph wakes up slowly, and the first thing he notices is the numb pain he can feel everywhere in his body, but his head is particularly tender. He is warm, however, wrapped in blankets and with a cold compress placed carefully on his forehead.
He makes a sound, but it barely comes out with how dry his throat is, so he clamps his mouth shut and pushes himself up with his hands. Dark spots are dancing around the room, but at least he can see, and so he looks at his surroundings. He is laying on a blanket-covered and pillowed segment of a terracotta furnace and, below him, the rest of the small room has a cabinet pushed into one of the corners and a tiny table in the middle, a couch in the only other bit of free space left, more pillows piled onto it.
Blinking a few more times and just barely managing to push the blankets aside, Zedaph carefully climbs down from the furnace and onto the couch, noticing a pair of shoes placed before the door.
He regains his strength quickly enough after he gets through the harrowing task of putting his shoes on, and then Zedaph opens the door that leads to the frozen outside. It’s not dark enough to be night just yet, and it’s not snowing anymore, but the scene of frozen white and dark shapes in the background doesn’t help him too much with figuring out where he is.
Zedaph looks around. The room he’d just been in belongs to a small house, and there’s another door a bit further away, so Zedaph wraps his arms around himself and slowly makes his way there.
This room is like a slightly bigger copy of the one Zedaph had woken up in, the only differences being the desk set up in front of the window and the small computer screen that sits on it.
And the two people sitting at the table, a game of cards taking place between them, a very old, little lady and a younger man, barely more than a teen.
Zedaph opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.
The boy turns a sharp gaze on him.
‘We were wondering if you were gonna wake up’, he says with barely a hint of an accent, but his words are quick and cutting. The woman turns to him with a more friendly expression, her round face rosy in the cheeks and her white hair pulled in a braid underneath a flowery kerchief.
‘Uh...’, Zedaph manages to get up, trying to clear his throat. The woman murmurs something to the boy and he rolls his eyes, but he still gets up and, before Zedaph knows what is happening, he presses a glass of water in his hands. Zedaph gives them both a thankful look and takes a sip.
‘Sorry, thank you for… For bringing me here?’, Zedaph says, wincing. The boy goes back to the cards, placing another couple of them down before he answers, almost sounding annoyed.
‘There was an accident, but whoever was driving left. Ha’, he laughs a little, ‘Wouldn’t be the first time a drunk gets hit by a car and ends up in a ditch. If only I had a coin for every one of them...’
The old woman doesn’t look like she quite understands, but she gives the boy a warning look. The boy sighs.
‘Yeah, I know, be good, blegh.’
‘I wasn’t drunk’, Zedaph mumbles, frowning, ‘I was...’
‘That’s what they all say.’
Zedaph looks down at his feet as his memory kicks in, and he feels his fingers clenching around something in his hand. The boy notices the movement and says:
‘You had that in your hand, but wouldn’t let go. Thought it was important.’
He doesn’t ask it, but the question is evident and he tries to mask his curiosity, but Zedaph can tell. He feels ill again, but he swallows the bile that comes up and opens his hand. It’s… The map, the one he’d found in the old book.
One of the corners is stained in blood, and Zedaph isn’t sure whose it is anymore.
He can see Impulse lying on the floor, Scar leaning over him, can-
A location on the map is circled in dried blood.
‘Yeah, uhm-’, Zedaph tries, voice trembling. The woman furrows her brows and smiles gently before she pats an empty chair next to her, ‘Sorry, it’s just been a long day.’
‘Long indeed. You’ve been sleeping for twelve hours’, the boy puts on a mocking voice, but Zedaph can sense concern beneath it.
‘Must be the alcohol’, Zedaph says with a small smile, deciding that it’d be easier to explain a drunken escapade than what’s actually happened, ‘Thank you for taking me in.’
‘Zice mulțumesc’, the boy tells his grandmother, and she smiles so brightly that Zedaph can’t help but feel a little better, before he turns to look at Zedaph again, ‘But you’re not from here. Tourist?’
Zedaph shakes his head and shows the boy his map. His eyes narrow and the woman blinks before she makes a sign with her hand.
‘No. I’d moved here with my partner, though perhaps further away. I think I was trying to follow this random map I’d found, and I was wondering if you may happen to know where-’
‘Nu.’
The woman’s firm answer scares Zedaph and he flinches, but her lips form a thin line and she looks at her grandson, urging him to explain.
‘It’s not a place to visit.’
Zedaph looks between them.
The old woman begins saying something and both Zedaph and the boy are quiet. The boy translates it and Zedaph feels his stomach drop.
‘Some of the older people here say there used to be a village up there, but it’s isolated. Terrain is too treacherous to get to it easily. My grandmother, she… She says that place, that forest, it’s… Cursed or some other crap, but never mind that. We know someone who could drive you to the nearest city though, if you want?’
Zedaph takes a deep breath and looks at the circle drawn in blood again. It makes no sense, but there’s a voice inside him that’s telling him to go there, and it’s getting louder by the second. It sounds like Impulse. Zedaph is just desperate enough to listen to it.
Stranger things have happened. Zedaph should know that all too well.
‘No, I… Thank you for helping me and for taking me in, you and your grandmother are very kind people’, Zedaph looks at the woman and at the boy and smiles warmly.
She looks sad, as if she can already predict what he is about to say, and so Zedaph continues.
‘I’ll go on my own. Thank you, I won’t be in your hair for long, I just need to… To gather my things and-’
The grandmother stands up, suddenly, and both he and the boy look at her in shock. The lines of her worry look as much at home on her face as the smile wrinkles do, and Zedaph takes in a small breath.
She says something to the boy and his eyes widen. He argues something, but the woman looks firm in her decision. For a second, Zedaph wonders if she’ll get the authorities involved, if he’ll have to face Scar again, and he can’t bear it, but he snaps back to reality when the boy scowls and speaks to him again in a lower voice, almost angrily. There’s fear there.
‘She won’t let you go.’
Zedaph is ready to interrupt him, but the boy raises a hand.
‘Not on your own, she knows you’ll go anyway, but you don’t know the terrain and you’re not… In the best of states. One of our older dogs can help you along. At worst, he’ll know to come back and let us know if something’s happened. You’ll get your things, you’ll follow along the river until you reach a dirt road. Head towards sunset from there.’
‘I… I don’t know how to thank you-’
The woman shakes her head and pulls Zedaph up to his feet with surprisingly strong arms. He towers over her, but she pulls him down to kiss both of his cheeks. She whispers something, and Zedaph thinks it’s a prayer before she sits back down on the stool, gathering the cards.
The boy tugs at his sleeve and Zedaph follows.
‘Come on, your things are in the barn.’
There are quite a few more dogs in the barn, big shepherd dogs with clean white fur and sparkling eyes, and they crowd around Zedaph’s feet except one, an older, more mangy looking thing that is at least a head taller than all the other dogs.
‘His name’s Clifford, my older brother named it after a cartoon when we were younger. So long as you act firm, he’ll follow.’
The dog gets his own winter equipment, even if his fur already looks thick, and the boy feeds him a treat before he lets Zedaph try as well.
Clifford stands back, but Zedaph waits. When he finally comes closer, he lets Zedaph scratch him behind one of his fluffy, wolfish ears.
Things move quickly from there, Zedaph looking at the small, but heavy backpack the boy says they’d found alongside him. Zedaph stands there and looks at its contents for a long while, until Clifford starts pawing at his legs and the boy is calling after him.
Then, in what feels like no time at all, he’s standing on the road in front of the woman’s house with Clifford, her and the boy waiting at the gate.
‘I’ll bring him back safe’, Zedaph says, and he isn’t quite sure if he’s saying it to reassure them or himself at this point. He means it, regardless. Whatever had happened, Impulse’s department was involved and it had looked nothing like the business they usually handled, not when all Zedaph ever saw of it was paperwork and even more paperwork. Zedaph knows there are things he doesn’t know about what Tango used to do, about what Impulse does - did - for work, but he’d never thought it’d be something that could lead to the disappearance of one of his lovers and the death of the other. Even if he somehow gets involved with something more dangerous, something he can’t escape, he’ll make sure this dog makes it back home.
He just has to know more. He has to...
Find Impulse.
Impulse is dead. But he needs to know why, and somehow, whoever Zedaph had seen when he was lying in the snow after the supposed crash, delirious with pain, they’d found the damned map, they’d marked it for him. Maybe it’s a wrong assumption, to think that everything is tied together, to hope that he’ll find a reason, to desperately need the resolution of it, but Zedaph has nothing left to lose.
At worst, he’ll find nothing but forest. At best...
The woman waves at him, eyes glassy with tears and the boy clicks his tongue. Zedaph doesn’t wait a second longer.
Clifford starts running in front of him, stopping only to wait until he catches up. Zedaph can hear the whisper of running water from here, and soon enough, he finds the river the old woman had mentioned. Behind him, night falls quickly and Zedaph gets a torch out of the backpack.
Zedaph hadn’t told them that the name carefully stitched onto the label of it was Pearl’s. He hadn’t told them about the gun carefully hidden in one of the inner pockets of the backpack, its weight heavy in his hand. Perhaps, before taking Zedaph away, they’d searched their house for clues or hints or whatever the hell they thought they could find to justify what-
There’s far too much he doesn’t know, and yet, he still hopes they’re safe. As much anger as he holds for everyone, for Scar especially, the empty look in his eyes when he’d shot at Impulse’s corpse flashing before Zedaph’s eyes, he still knows they cared for Impulse. They’d cared for Tango when he was part of their team too. Zedaph had seen them grieve for him, and he can only hold onto the hope that there’s a reason for all of this.
It’s too cold to cry out here. Zedaph tightens the red and grey scarf around his neck a little bit more.
He reaches the dirt road just as the terrain gets even more difficult, but there’s no wind and the mist is much thinner here, at least. Clifford also makes navigating the mountain grounds that much easier by finding better ways to avoid most obstacles on the road ahead without too much effort. By the time the path disappears, entirely enveloped by snow, Zedaph follows the directions given, heading towards the direction of the setting sun, the image of the bloody map burned into the back of his mind as well. The torch’s light doesn’t shine particularly far, only illuminating dark tree stumps and barely giving Zedaph enough time to dodge to avoid the lower hanging branches, but it seems stable and the batteries seem full, so he can only be grateful for it. He gets a couple of cuts on his check and the old winter jacket he’s wearing, something he’s had since moving away from home, has seen better days, but Zedaph doesn’t care much.
It’s certainly getting to him, the sound of his own feet digging into the frozen snow, the mild wind that whooshes past the trees, the sounds of animals skittering away, but it does help that Clifford sticks by his side.
When he hears a sound that resembles a growl in the distance, both of them stop and Zedaph has to breathe in a few times before he can convince his legs to move. Clifford’s ears are perked and he seems entirely alert. Of course, the woods aren’t deserted, but Zedaph can only hope that whatever is out there isn’t hungry enough to go after them. Zedaph isn’t sure he’ll have the nerve to fight anything, so he tries to just move more silently and at a quicker pace. Clifford walks ahead of him.
The black, skeletal trees grow closer and closer together and the snow gets thicker the deeper into the forest they go, and as much as the torch helps, the shadows it casts over the glistening white expanse move with them and Zedaph has to keep himself from looking at them for too long. He has to keep moving.
Things take a turn for the worst half an hour later when Clifford barks loudly a few times somewhere in front of Zedaph, just outside of the range of the torch’s light, but when Zedaph reaches him after breaking into a sprint, he is still growling at a dead crow, its black feathers and its blood standing out against the snow. Zedaph is glad for the way the cold air helps settle his stomach. Clifford paws at the snow around it, leaving it half buried as they continue on their way.
Then, they find more of them.
It must have been traps set up by a recluse, he’s heard of the hermit monks living in the solitude of the mountains as part of their own dedication to their spirituality, but the sight of the birds hanging from wire lines by their feet or by broken wings or by their necks from strings that stretch across tree branches, some of them still bleeding, the steam emitted by their blood almost more unnerving than the scene itself just because it indicates a time frame, it’s certainly something. Zedaph looks at his feet as they pass by the hung birds, and thankfully, Clifford doesn’t linger either.
The first sign of human life they find is a small cabin nestled into a cliff, its windows dark and its door left wide open.
Zedaph looks at Clifford as he considers whether he should check it out, just in case, taking out his map. If he is where he thinks he is, he’s not yet reached the supposed village, though he’s almost there. But if there is a person living here, maybe it is worth looking into. The open door isn’t the best of signs, yet there are enough reasons why it would be open. A toilet break, a sleepless inhabitant, Zedaph can’t say, but this is the first trace of human existence he’s seen in miles and he can’t help the way it sparks some amount of hope in him, flickering and unsure though it may be.
Clifford licks his nose and looks around before finding a couple of fallen branches gathered under one of the windows, the small nock mostly snowless dry, then he settles there, head pillowed against his paws. Zedaph nods and enters the cabin.
Some of the furniture is oddly angled, as if it had been broken and then repaired, though perhaps it’s just bent with age, but besides some of the snow that had made it through the open door, the place looks clean enough.
Zedaph advances through the house, shining his light on everything, sneaking a larger knife he finds in the tiny kitchen out of a drawer and holding it tightly in his free hand. It isn’t until he finds a closed door that he wonders if he should press on.
He doesn’t let himself think for too long, knowing that there’s no time to hesitate, should anything happen, and so, when he finds himself standing in the bedroom, the mattress on the bed ripped apart and bloodied, the feather filling sticky and stained dark red scattered on the floor, Zedaph thinks the most likely culprit would be a wild animal. His mind still reminds him of a small, barred room, a dirty bed and a bloodied Tango. There’s nothing tying these situations together, and almost as if to prove it to himself, Zedaph opens the closet door.
It opens up to a basement. His hair stands on end.
Something bumps against his legs and Zedaph almost yells before he realises it’s just Clifford. He looks agitated and he’s nosing at Zedaph’s ankles pushing him towards the basement.
‘Hey boy, what’s wrong? What happened?’, he asks him, but Clifford urges him further, nipping gently at Zedaph’s hand when Zedaph tries to pat him.
Zedaph is about to say something when he hears it. The front door is slowly closing, its hinges creaking loudly. There’s someone or something here, and if Clifford is this afraid of it, it can’t be friendly. Zedaph bites the insides of his cheeks and lets Clifford go down the stairs and into the basement below the little house first, following after the dog and closing the doors behind them. Thankfully, there’s a latch on the inside of the doors, which Zedaph closes immediately before finally following Clifford down.
The small, stone room of a basement is nothing special, and it seems empty.
Zedaph sits down in one of the corners when the creak of the door is replaced by it being slammed shut and Clifford huddles in his lap, eyes focused on the basement door. The stone stairs leading down hide them well enough, but there’s nowhere to run if it breaks through the door.
Zedaph frees one of his hands from thick white fur and clutches the kitchen knife which he’d placed on the floor beside him instead, not caring for how his fingers tremble around the hilt.
The sound of heavy steps is more than audible down here, once it begins. The floorboards creak and groan under the weight of whatever is up there and dust and debris rain down where it moves through the house.
It sounds like it’s sniffing around, looking for something, and Zedaph prays that whatever is out there has a particularly bad sense of smell. Clifford goes rigid in his arms.
Zedaph holds his breath when the thing is right above their head.
It’s just a wild animal , Zedaph repeats it to himself ad nauseam, and if it were looking for prey, there’s the already dead birds outside ...
And if it’s a someone…
Zedaph closes his eyes when the lack of air makes sight go gradually darker, but he still doesn’t dare breathe until the thing moves again. It tears something wooden apart and it breaks into a run, its steps getting more and more muffled until Zedaph can’t hear it anymore.
Until it howls.
It’s a wolf, or something close to a wolf, that’s all it is, and its terrifying howling is barely audible at this point. It’s getting further and further away. Clifford jumps out of his arms and Zedaph takes a big breath before he runs up the stairs, two steps at a time, unlocking the basement door and sprinting after Clifford who takes the lead, running ahead into the deep, dark forest. Zedaph’s light moves with his steps, but the adrenaline keeps him going.
The sky is starting to lighten, finally, and by the time he catches up to Clifford, Zedaph takes a second to rest and to store the torch in one of his jean pockets while strapping the knife to his belt. His muscles ache and his fingers hurt from the cold, but he can’t stop now.
They don’t run anymore, but they take up a quick pace, Clifford moving quite a bit more gracefully over rocky terrain and under fallen branches while Zedaph follows as best as he can.
And then, the treeline clears.
The sky is a grey amalgam streaked with the orange and red tones of sunrise and its muted light falls over a gathering of houses beneath the cliff the two of them are standing at the edge of, their roofs glistening in the early daylight where they aren’t covered in thick blankets of snow. But, at least as far as Zedaph can see, there is no sign of anyone inhabiting the settlement, there’s no smoke coming from the chimneys, no sound of a waking people, nothing , and Zedaph’s heart drops a little further downwards into the cavity of his chest. It’s not just forest, though, there is something here, and that’s the only thing that keeps Zedaph from crumbling.
In the distance, at the edge of the village, Zedaph can see the high, imposing towers of a small castle, the mountains tall and proud and dangerously looming in the background of it all.
Clifford barks, stirring Zedaph out of his trance, and the dog waits only a few seconds before he makes his way down, jumping with an agility Zedaph knows he doesn’t possess, but sliding down and suffering a few bruises along the way is fine with him as well. This time, Clifford does let Zedaph pet him, and he licks at Zedaph’s palm when he does.
He has a bad feeling about this place. His gut is telling him to leave immediately.
Zedaph can almost hear the old woman’s gentle voice in his ears, her grandson explaining that whatever is supposed to be here is bad , and no one has been able to make contact with the people living in this place anyway.
Still, he doesn’t allow himself the choice to act upon the budding sense of dread, only looking at the blood circle that indicates a place somewhere in the middle of the abandoned village. Whoever had wanted him to come here must be nearby.
He’s here for a reason, for a motive, he’s here for Impulse, because of Impulse’s death and nothing else matters.
The roads of wet, slimy dirt are easier to travel on than the forest had been, and with the clearing clouds allowing more sunlight through, it’s easy for Zedaph to make his way through the village, checking the gates of the houses he passes by, but unsurprisingly, most of them are locked. Clifford walks alongside him, head held down and his nostrils flaring.
Not looking back is the only thing Zedaph can do to keep his courage, but at least the village is small, and with Clifford as his companion, even given the eerie tension hanging around him like a lead weight , Zedaph makes it to the small village square easily enough. He only makes note of a painted wooden church somewhere off to the side and the stone gates with a carved insignia of whoever had once owned the castle carved above the heavy looking gates that seem to lead up to the small castle, sealing the grounds if it off from the rest of the village with a stone wall, but what holds Zedaph’s attention is the statue in the middle of the square.
It represents a woman wrapped in flowing fabrics of molten metal holding a sword and a shield with a ram’s head sculpted onto it. It’s detailed enough that it almost looks real, and so Zedaph takes a few more steps towards it, making sure that he can still see Clifford who is just sniffing around, his ears perked.
It’s when he’s just a few feet away that Zedaph realises all the detail isn’t just indented metal, it’s-
Fuck , he can still see the blood dripping down the dark material of the statue’s shield from where the head of the ram had been cut clean off its shoulders, its black wool stained even darker with blood in places. Zedaph’s stomach lurches and he gags, looking up at the sky if only to allow the wave of nausea to pass before he passes out. First the crows, and now this…
He forces himself to look at the head of the decapitated sheep, its lifeless eyes still coloured a dark brown. It’s a bad omen, Zedaph realises that much, but that doesn’t mean he’s ready to dismiss this for what it is: a sign.
The crows had been caught in wire traps, traps which could have lain unsprung for God knows how long before actually capturing something, but this is different, this is… Someone must have taken the time to do this, and they must have done it not long before Zedaph would be here to see it. He has to believe that it’s a coincidence, because the other option is too much to consider.
His nose wrinkling, Zedaph looks at the head more closely, burying the lower half of his face deeper into his scarf, if only to block the stench of rotting death, his eyes widening as he notices the corner of something hidden just behind where the ram is pinned in place with iron nails. Oh God, he will have to-
Zedaph blanches at the thought of having to move the head of the dead animal, but he gulps and looks inside the backpack, grabbing what looks like a raincoat, holding it over the ram’s head and grabbing onto it by the horns, feeling the ridges of them beneath his fingers as he pulls.
He’s looking away, eyes squeezed shut, but the gentle application of force he’s trying to use is barely enough to make it budge. He won’t be able to move it like this. With a sickening feeling burning up his esophagus, Zedaph steels himself and grunts as his muscles tremble with the effort.
Off to the side, Clifford begins growling lowly, but Zedaph is too focused on trying to move the head while also not emptying the contents of his stomach, so he ignores the dog for the few more seconds it takes him before the nails finally give, screeching as they’re driven out of the metal.
Zedaph collapses into the muddy ground, the sheep’s head held in his arms and wrapped in cellophane, and he all but throws it away before he swallows down the bile at the back of his throat, deciding on just placing it gently near the foot of the statue’s pedestal instead, trying to give the poor animal some modicum of respect after all it’s probably been through.
His stomach is still turning when he stops dry heaving where he's bent over, his hands clutching at his own knees, and Clifford comes back to Zedaph’s side, having seemingly quieted down.
After one more huff, Zedaph runs a hand through his hair, pushing it back and letting himself feel the cold winter air around him. It settles his nerves at least a little bit, though there’s still the slightest of tremors left in his knees when he fully straightens himself out and looks at what had been behind the ram’s head.
He stares.
Clifford tilts his head slightly, but Zedaph can’t see anything other than the photo pinned to the statue’s shield.
Bringing his hands to his mouth, Zedaph feels the world spin beneath his feet. Three people stare back at Zedaph from the photo, and he can distinguish himself, Impulse and-
The blood on the image is vibrantly red, red like the setting sun on a summer’s eve, red like fresh strawberries, red like a pair of eyes crinkling with laughter, leering with hatred, red like-
Zedaph rips it off of the shield before he can spiral down even further, his heart feeling as though it’s stopped in his chest. They’d taken the gun, and at least that had been - it hadn’t, it isn’t fine , but Zedaph could understand why , he can see how a weapon would be a danger that would require confiscating, which is how it probably ended up in Pearl’s car before they crashed, but this is-
The map is left forgotten on the ground, mud and water and frost pulling at the threadbare paper of it, leaving it unreadable, but Zedaph doesn’t care anymore. If this is what he was meant to see, if this is why he’s here, it really doesn’t matter.
His mind is spinning and Zedaph can barely catch half-formed words before they disappear in the sea of anger and absolute desperation that envelops him completely right now, but the one thing Zedaph can hear clearly in his head, first as a gently whispered question, then as a loud accusation, then as a shouted wail, is why .
Impulse’s team had been the last people to be in their house, they’d been the last people Zedaph had seen before everything had turned on its head, and someone had given him his map with this exact location circled on it in blood and Zedaph can’t understand why .
Until he looks at the back of the photo.
He looks, and his heart kickstarts again, beating behind his ribs until he fears the force of them might just break through the cage of bone and cartilage.
Clifford whimpers beside him and Zedaph turns to look at him, his mouth slack and his eyes unseeing beyond the words drawn in blood, his or Impulse’s or.
Or.
I’m here .
Two words. Zedaph turns the photo around with fingers that are frozen because of more than the cold weather. Impulse’s face is suspiciously free of gore and Zedaph thinks he’s about to faint.
Here. Impulse, he’s… But he’d been dead . Zedaph had seen him laying in a puddle of his own blood, he’d looked into Scar’s eyes before he’d shot Impulse as if to make sure he was truly dead. He can’t be…
And yet Zedaph found the gun that had bore witness to the worst sin Zedaph has committed in his life. Zedaph found a photo of the three of them. Zedaph found a map.
Clifford paws at Zedaph’s shoes, leaving them covered in wet dirt, but he couldn’t care less, even if he knows he should.
People won’t rise back up again after being shot in the head, that’s what his doctors had told him, that’s what he’s had to argue with Impulse while seeing the conflict play across dark brown eyes just before they’d be swallowed by tears. After he’d shot Tango, but after Impulse had taken him out of the collapsing house, Zedaph had seen him as they speed away in the helicopter of some emergency rescue team, he’d seen golden blonde hair being tousled by the wild winds of helicopter blades, he’d seen Tango stand up and look at them, had seen red eyes swallowed into black sclera focused on them from a blank expression, no gunshot wound to be found in his forehead, only a trail of dried blood, and it hadn’t been real .
It hadn’t been real, it hadn’t .
It…
Zedaph is jerked out of his own brain when Clifford begins barking once more, clawing at Zedaph’s legs. He’s heard something.
Adrenaline and an instinct to flee replace the momentary sinking feeling, just enough that, without much direction, Zedaph runs towards the small church, its wooden roof looking collapsed even from the outside. If any of the houses and buildings around here are unlocked, then the most likely candidate is the church.
Clifford runs alongside him and, after struggling with the heavy entrance doors, they slam shut behind the two of them and Zedaph leans his whole body weight on it, using one arm to balance himself against it, barely catching a glimpse of the destroyed interior of the church.
The photo is crumpled in his fist and he looks at it again.
It’s not real , he tells himself, over and over again, whispering it obsessively as the dog stares at the door Zedaph is leaning against like prey waiting for its predator to show itself from whatever corner it is hiding in. It hadn’t been real. Tango had died, his corpse had been snatched away by wildlife most likely and Impulse…
But when he looks at the writing on the back of the photo again, all Zedaph can do to not burst into tears at the blocky script that Zedaph recognizes as Impulse’s own, despite the crudity of the attempt which could be excused by it probably having been written with fingers, is to close his eyes and think, just think for one second.
Zedaph, you have - Leave the house - Hide - Don’t - Anything - Else - it’s - Impulse.
Impulse had gone to work. There’d been a snowstorm and no one could find him.
Else.
It’s.
Impulse.
Scar’s words ring in his head, the gaps between them becoming more and more pressing.
Impulse had come back and he’d been acting strange, but Zedaph never got to confront him about that. They’d shot him. They’d knocked Zedaph out and then something else had happened. The boy had said it looked like a crash site, but Pearl is a good, cautious driver.
His head hurts.
Finally, Clifford appears more at ease, whatever danger he’d felt having passed, because he looks at him now and Zedaph looks back at him blankly, adrenaline having left him stiff and unmoving, blood still thrumming in his ears, the same image replaying in his head like a broken record, of Scar shooting Impulse.
He had shot Impulse.
Zed, you don’t understand, that wasn’t-
Hadn’t he?
Impulse’s smile had seemed off...
Fingers shaking violently, though Zedaph suppresses the jerky movement as much as he can, his knuckles white with the effort, Zedaph raises the photo to look at it again, Impulse’s smiling face returning his gaze.
‘Oh God...’, the words slip past Zedaph’s lips before he can stop them. Traitorous and rotten, a wretched sort of hope flares up in Zedaph’s mind, like a lone light at the end of a never-ending tunnel, the sort that will flicker before moving away again once Zedaph is in reach of it. Yet, it’s enough for him. He clings to it, to the idea of it.
He startles when he hears the howling again, the noise all too similar to what he’d heard at the lone house in the forest. Zedaph looks at the door of the church and then down at Clifford and gulps.
‘Is that what you heard, boy?’, he whispers, gently, and Clifford huffs, eyes flicking to the door and back to Zedaph. His nose scrunches up and he bares his fangs, but he doesn’t make any sound and, suddenly, it feels like even Zedaph’s own heartbeat is too loud in the tense silence. It’s then that Zedaph hears it, the slow, rhythmic thud , thud , thud of heavy footsteps.
The howling has stopped, but something else follows it, a low growling that all but makes the wooden pillars still supporting the church shake, and Zedaph can feel it in his bones. He stands up slowly, holding a hand out and gesturing for Clifford to move backwards and away from the church’s entrance. Zedaph doesn’t breathe as he looks around the small, caved-in room, taking in the barely standing iconostasis and the candle stubs littering the table laid in front of it which have long burned out. There’s a key on the table, just hanging off of one of the dried flower stems bundled in a bouquet of old flowers, and the position and the dusty note Zedaph can see resting below it suggest it’d been left there for someone at one point.
It’s getting closer, but that’s about the only thing Zedaph can tell from the sound as his eyes fall on a smaller door at the back of the room that probably leads to its yard and Zedaph walks backwards towards it, minding his steps and avoiding any debris that could alert the thing outside of their presence. If it’s the same thing he’d heard back at the abandoned house, Zedaph can only ask himself if it’s looking for them. The idea is just slightly ridiculous because it had more than enough opportunities to strike since then, but his paranoia won’t let him push the option aside.
When he passes by the flower vase, he only spares the key a short glance before he just goes for it and grabs it, stuffing it in one of his pockets, next to the photo, and he can feel some sort of model carved into the flat end of it. He should make use of everything he finds, Zedaph reminds himself, and for a second, he wonders if it could be the same insignia as the one he’d seen above the castle gates, but his thoughts don’t manage to go further than that, not when terror overtakes them instead.
Finally, one of his extended hands hits smooth, rotting wood, and the door opens with just that touch alone, the slightest of creaks being heard throughout the wrecked church.
Zedaph winces and closes his eyes, standing impossibly still.
The thing outside continues walking and Zedaph doesn’t dare breathe out a sigh of relief. As soon as Clifford stops glaring at what Zedaph assumes to be the church’s yard and wags his tail, finding no immediate threat, Zedaph takes the lead, only holding the door open so the dog can pass through and then closing it behind them ever so slowly.
He hadn’t been entirely right. Zedaph finds himself looking at hundreds of stone tombs. This is the church’s graveyard, and the stillness of it and its overgrown, snowed over greenery feels wrong somehow.
The thing patrolling outside of the church lets out another sound, but this one sounds more like a roar than it does a wolf’s howl. It leaves Zedaph’s ears ringing and he realises it must have reached the village square. Zedaph just catches a hint of dark grey fur in the space between the church and another house, and his brain already stops working, fear taking over.
Hearing the mildest of noises from the dog beside him, he gently picks him up and clamps a hand over Clifford’s snout to stop his whimpering before it catches the thing’s attention and drops down to the ground behind a wider grave that shields them from view of the square. Clifford stops struggling in his arms only once the thing lets out another guttural growl that makes Zedaph’s skull shake.
Standing in one place and hiding had worked earlier, when a locked door had stood between them and the thing, but now Zedaph can hear it come closer, sniffing the air around itself, and he isn’t sure it’ll care whether it has already captured other prey. Something tells Zedaph that all it’s looking for is fresh blood.
Nearly letting out a small noise, Zedaph moves, as slowly as he can manage with Clifford still in his arms, hiding behind another grave somewhere further from the thing prowling through the square, and every step feels like his last one, especially when it changes direction seemingly at random, its shadow the only thing Zedaph can see of it. It’s the fact that he can’t even begin to predict its behaviour and what it might do once it finds them that scares Zedaph.
Somehow, he makes it to the very edge of the graveyard where a couple of trees offer a more concealed hiding spot, the roof of a small building just barely visible from where they are, and escape is so close that Zedaph can taste it.
But Zedaph is so preoccupied with the beast roaming through the village that he’s not had the chance to stop and wonder if it’s the only one of its kind out there. He’d not looked closely enough at the small graveyard, at the dried branches being moved by the wind, at the movement that Clifford sees as he begins struggling in Zedaph’s arms anew.
And so, when it charges at them, it's with a cold wave of shock that pulses through Zedaph’s entire body that he freezes in place. The other beast breaks stone as it jumps over the graves once it’s spotted them, charging at them.
Zedaph’s eyes widen and his muscles lock up. He doesn’t get a clear view of it as it closes the distance between them, snarling all the way as it does, and it’s only once Clifford manages to free his snout and bite Zedaph’s arm hard enough to break skin that he manages to get himself to move.
Just in time too, because the thing smashes against the grave they’d just been crouching behind, the stone cracking and dust rising up in the air as it lets out a blood-chilling growl. The fence stands just a few feet away and the beast needs more time to actually change directions before it charges at them again, but his heart is beating too hard and his muscles burn as Zedaph runs through the graves still left intact, Clifford moving faster than he does.
Once they reach the fence, Zedaph grunts and just barely manages to lift himself and stumble to the other side, falling to the ground, but Clifford whimpers as his paw gets caught in some of the wiring of the fence and Zedaph jumps to free him as fast as his body will carry him, fingers trembling as he tries to not dig the barbed wire further into his paw, but the thing has started running at them again, just a dark blur of für adorned with eyes that look like they glow and fangs that snap with every one of its steps.
No time, there’s no time-
Zedaph pulls Clifford away with every bit of force he has, holding the dog tight against his chest and sprinting deeper into the small gathering of trees, taking as many turns as he can because he can fucking hear the thing’s growling and panting breath even over Clifford’s sharp, pained yowling.
The trees sit just close enough together that whatever is chasing them has to keep finding different routes to follow them and so, steadily, Zedaph manages to put more distance between them and it, even as his lungs feel as though they’ve caught fire, but he has to keep going, just a bit more, just-
He slams into the door of the small building he’d seen just the roof of, a toolshed, judging the size, shoulder first, and he manages to land on his back when he stumbles through it, at the very least pillowing Clifford’s fall before he lays the dog down and shuts the door, holding it closed with his own body until he notices a shelf just near the door.
It’s not a particularly hard decision to make, and soon, with the door barricaded and still panting, Zedaph turns to look at Clifford, his shoulders shaking violently.
He falls to his knees beside the bleeding dog, bottom lip trembling as he lays a hand, as softly as he can, against Clifford’s heaving side, stroking gentle fingers into white fur stained red with specks of blood.
‘Oh you p-poor thing...’, Zedaph tries to whisper, his voice breaking, ‘I’m so sorry, buddy...’
As far as he can tell, it’s just ripped skin, but his heart breaks at Clifford’s visible pain, at the way he pulls his paw back when Zedaph tries to assess the damage more closely.
Zedaph makes to take off his backpack, but he realises he’d left it at the statue after taking the raincoat out of it. He wants to slam his head against the wall, but instead settles on sitting down next to Clifford, letting him settle his head in Zedaph’s lap, his breathing slowing down gradually.
This silence is not as heavy as the one in the church had been, when they’d been able to hear the beast creeping outside, and though it’s not like the shelf Zedaph has pushed against the door would do much if one of the things were to slam against it hard enough, Zedaph clings to this momentary peace. It’s because of the silence that Zedaph takes note of the shuffling. He’s not sure his heart can take much more of this.
He tries to get up, but Clifford whimpers and Zedaph can’t find it in him to abandon him, so he tries to call out softly enough that he doesn’t attract any unwanted attention, slowly drawing the knife and holding it where it’s obvious enough that, if it’s another person, they won’t try anything. Clifford noses at his thigh and curls into a ball of white fur. He doesn’t get to say a single word, the other person sneaking out from behind a couple of stacked crates in a corner. There are two people and Zedaph is this close to just fainting.
‘Who’s ther-’, the first one, a tall, blonde woman asks before she interrupts herself as she notices the gleam of the knife. Suddenly, Zedaph is frozen in place by the barrels of a shotgun pointed directly at him. The other person, a smaller, bulkier man with dark brown hair pulled back into a ponytail is half-hidden behind the woman.
The weapon clicks, but she doesn’t pull the trigger yet and Zedaph drops the knife. This isn’t a fight he can win. He raises both hands, wincing when Clifford whimpers. The man mirrors the pained expression sympathetically.
‘F-friendly’, Zedaph gasps, only breathing again when the blonde woman lowers the shotgun, ‘We’re friendly...’
‘What happened?’, the man says, pushing past the blonde, giving her what looks like a reassuring smile, but then he looks at Zedaph as he kneels on Clifford’s other side.
‘Ren, he’s an outsider ’, she growls, but the guy, Ren, just shrugs and lets Clifford sniff at his hand before he gently brushes through the fur on his back.
‘And’, he says, looking at Zedaph and holding his gaze with an almost eerily intense set of indigo eyes, ‘I don’t think these guys are dangerous, False.’
Zedaph swallows past the knot forming in his throat when Ren looks through the satchel Zedaph hadn’t even noticed was slung over his shoulder, pulling out a small medical kit. He’d already been inclined to trust Ren simply for standing up for him, but this…
He holds out Clifford’s paw for Ren to study while False stares, clicking the safety back on and slinging it across her back. She crosses her arms over her chest and settles in to look at them instead, keeping her focus on Zedaph as Ren talks softly to Clifford while upturning a dark glass bottle over a piece of clean bandage.
The hand that lands on his shoulder surprises him and Zedaph nearly jumps out of his skin before he realises False is turning him away from the situation. As slowly and carefully as he can so he doesn’t disturb the dog in his lap, Clifford looking sleepy now, with Ren cleaning the wound from the barbed wire as gently as he currently is, Zedaph manages to free himself from the mass of white fur and stand up to face False.
She is more than intimidating, and it’s not just her stature or the obvious strength in her frame, but it’s the way she looks at him, as if she can see through him. She pulls him aside as much as the small toolshed will allow and then she speaks:
‘I don’t trust you, you’re not from here.’
Zedaph nods, biting at the insides of his cheek and trying to look anywhere but at the severe blue gaze False keeps trained on him, and her eyes are lighter than Ren’s, almost glowing in the shadowed shed, and that much less welcoming to boot.
‘I… I understand’, Zedaph says, unintentionally ending his response with the uncertain tilt of a question.
‘Ren’s fixing up your dog because he’s a kind man, but’, she pauses, tilting her head to point at the shotgun strapped to her back, ‘That’s all this is. What are you even doing in a place like this?’
I’m here .
‘I’m looking for someone, for my partner. He, uh… I have reason to believe he might have been taken to, well, here.’
False’s eyes narrow further, but her posture seems a bit less aggressive and Zedaph will take what he can get. The sternness in her voice softens just enough around the edges that Zedaph can notice the difference. She looks like she’s lost someone too.
‘For your sake, I hope you realise that the chances of someone surviving out there given the situation are less than favourable.’
Zedaph thinks about the wolfish beasts outside. He doesn’t tell her that he’d thought Impulse was already dead when he came here. He doesn’t tell her that he isn’t sure he’s not dead regardless of the things outside. He doesn’t tell her that he doesn’t care, so long as there is even the smallest possibility of seeing Impulse again. And False doesn’t ask.
‘All done, my dudes!’, Ren calls out, but he’s still kneeling on the hay covered floor, petting Clifford’s head and letting the dog lick at his palm while chuckling softly. Zedaph and False look at him, and he looks oblivious to the conversation they’d just had. Purple eyes study the bandaged paw and front leg that Clifford sports now and with a sinking feeling, he thinks that he won’t be able to accompany Zedaph from here on out. Zedaph won’t risk it. For the first time since seeing them, Zedaph wonders where False and Ren come from, wonders if there are more people like them in this seemingly abandoned village, wonders if something happened to make it appear that way in the first place. With a few assumptions that Zedaph prays won’t come back to bite him, he asks, hesitantly:
‘Are there more people in this village? It’s just that you’re the first people I’ve seen since coming here.’
Ren opens his mouth to answer but False hisses at him.
‘Ren-’
‘Falsie.’
He looks certain. Of what, Zedaph isn’t sure, but he’s got a simpler smile on his face that doesn’t quite click with the fact that he carries medical supplies around, as if it’s a necessity rather than a choice, and Zedaph thinks it may be just that.
‘He. Could. Be. Dangerous’, she says through gritted teeth and Ren looks at Zedaph, then down at Clifford who’s raised his head off of the hay.
‘And so could we! To him! You have a weapon, Falsie!’, he says almost too cheerfully, but then he switches to something more serious and Zedaph feels like he shouldn’t trust him as much as he does, but he wants to, ‘If Mother can’t protect us anymore, then all we can do is be kind. Help each other.’
Mother? Zedaph doesn’t ask, but somehow, he has the sinking suspicion that they’re not talking about their parents, the word sounds like a title, it holds a different sort of weight.
‘And if it gets us killed?’, False asks, but Ren chuckles and after a second during which the air comes to a halt around them, False’s mask breaks and she smiles too, the softest quirk of her lips lighting her entire face up.
‘Guess we’ll have to plan our last dinner a bit early with the others, hm?’, Ren says, and it takes Zedaph a few long, embarrassing seconds to realise it’s a joke. False turns back to Zedaph, her smile gone once more, as if it had never been there in the first place.
‘Why do you ask?’
Zedaph shrugs, wetting his lips and stalling for time while trying to get his thoughts in order.
‘I don’t know that I can… That I can take care of him. So if there is a safe place where...’
‘Ah’, Ren clicks his tongue, then exchanges a look with False, her face unreadable, but after a few seconds that feel infinite, she nods, though Ren looks at him again, confused, ‘And you’re gonna… Go out there on your own?’
It sounds like worry, but Zedaph doesn’t really care what happens to him. He’s not cared as much as he should have since seeing Tango’s body drop to the floor, blood dribbling down his face, and he’d stopped caring altogether when he saw Impulse fall as well. No, he’ll find a way to stay alive, if it means seeing Impulse. He won’t risk the dog’s safety if there’s another option, though.
‘I have someone to find.’
‘Well, ok, dude, but… If, when, you find ‘em, come to Stress’ house, yeah? The big one, just up the road next to the castle grounds from the village square onwards. It’s where all the survivors are right now. And if you just need some help, come whenever. Gotta stick together, no?’, Ren says, sounding pained, but optimistic. Zedaph nods and tries to force the muscles of his face into a smile that feels ever so foreign to him right now.
From there, Zedaph watches Ren pick Clifford up, watches him and False leave as quietly as they possibly can, False already drawing her weapon again, and the moment he is alone in the toolshed once more, he falls to his knees.
Shoving his hands in his pockets as the events of the day roll over him, leaving him shaking and barely able to breathe in their wake, Zedaph can feel the key he’d mindlessly taken from the church. The castle sounds like as good of a place to start as any, if he's been right in assuming that this key unlocks its gates. Maybe… Maybe someone lives there. He’d assumed the village to be abandoned, but then he’d met Ren and False. If someone lives in the castle, they might be able to offer some help, and if not, at least Zedaph will be able to cross one location off of his mental list of where Impulse isn’t.
Zedaph spends a few more moments in the solitude of the shed before he picks his knife up from the floor where he’d dropped it, ready to face the wild animals outside if he must. He can do this.
He has to do this.