Chapter Text
Lying awake in the quiet darkness of the Canadian suburbs, my mind warred with itself.
I had been under immense pressure for so long - a wanted fugitive, who leapt from one fight to another. I was still under pressure, of course. There is very little that is relaxing about a global war for the sake of humanity against ancient beings from another plane. Right now though, there was nothing for me to do but train.
The only moments of peace I had had in the past few years were always with Arcturus. Around him, I could be small, I could allow myself to take shelter in his presence and rest. Now that I wasn’t in active danger, my subconscious kept expecting him to be here, like I was running my tongue over the site of a missing tooth.
I missed him like it was a wound, not a missing tooth. It felt like my spirit wanted to leap out of my dreamscape and fly across the Atlantic on its own to be by his side. I wondered if he was alright, how he was feeling. A gentle prod at the golden cord rewarded me with a very faint hum of reassurance, like it was the words of a conversation in the next room that were just too faint to make out.
This far away, the golden cord barely sent me anything. I was lucky to get even a faint impression of emotion.
I sighed, staring up sightlessly at the ceiling. After a while, I gave in to the irrational temptation to let my spirit seek him out.
Within my dreamscape, I unfurled from where I had been curled up tight on the bed of a Parisian safehouse. Slowly at first, then breaking into a sprint, I took a running leap from the room, windflowers brushing my bare feet.
No matter how far I strained into the darkness of the æther, my silver cord always tugged me back to my body, a mother with a firm hand on a wild and rebellious child. I could sense Zeke and Nadine downstairs, asleep already. Besides that, the house was empty. To overcome my own silver cord was to sever my spirit from my body for good. To die. I lay there for a long time, gasping for air, sleep further away than ever.
My silver cord wasn’t the only tether my spirit had. Another reckless idea began to form. Slowly, more carefully this time, I left a shadow of awareness on the safehouse bed. It wasn’t hard, these days. In a way, it felt like part of me was always curled up in that bed, that safe place.
Reassured that my body would keep breathing in my absence, I walked to the edge of the room, my toes right up against the edge of my hadal zone. The golden cord hung from my spirit towards the infinite darkness before me, trailing off into the distance. Gently, I grabbed it with my hands and stepped out of my dreamscape.
It didn’t work that night. It didn’t work the next time I tried it, either, when sleep evaded me and I missed Arcturus desperately. The first few times I tried it, I failed to even grip the cord longer than a few seconds before falling off it. Something made me keep trying.
The first time I managed to put one hand over the other, like climbing along a rope, it felt like a victory.
A few weeks passed. During the days, I trained. During the nights, I made it further and further along the golden cord. Further than the silver cord had ever let me roam. It didn’t hurt. I always returned to my body safely.
When I sensed Arcturus’s dreamscape, I knew it immediately. Pure delight and relief flooded me. He was there! He was alive, safe, I sensed no distress or urgency from him, and now that the golden cord was so short between us, I could sense far more from him.
Arcturus noticed me quickly, and immediately the feelings from the cord switched from calm to alarm. What was wrong? What emergency had brought me here, driven me to do something as drastic as crossing the ocean with my spirit?
Nothing’s wrong, I tried to send, hoping the cord was cooperating enough to send him the feelings I was trying to express. I missed you.
Arcturus’s dreamscape was similar to any other Reph dreamscape in the æther - old, armoured and deep - but to me, it may as well have shone brighter than the sun. I was taking in every detail I could. So when his defenses began coming down, like they had in Oxford when he’d agreed to let me see him, or in Paris when I’d possessed him, I noticed at once.
The need to stop him from doing this because he thought it was what I was here for was immediate. Horror at my actions began to knock on the door of my heart. Why hadn’t I considered that this was the obvious conclusion he’d read if my spirit showed up in his room, brushing his? How could I let him open his dreamscape to invasion again, his private sanctuary that had been invaded so thoroughly by Cade, just because I missed him?
I do not fear your gift, he had told me in Orvieto. Right on the heels of that memory, another, at the bottom of a well: He tore down the drapes.
The thought that something in me was capable of inflicting such violence on him horrified me. Nothing in you is terrible, he had said, yet I flinched away. My grip on the golden cord slipped, and I was tugged back across the world.
The next time I visited him, he was in the same place. For a moment, I worried he was trapped in a cell, but I sensed Eliza and Maria nearby, asleep in what must have been their own bedrooms. They wouldn’t let him be locked up again. The time difference between London and Canada, and Arcturus’s inclination towards a nocturnal sleep cycle, made me think I must have been visiting him just as he began to get ready for bed, on nights where he chose to sleep.
As before, when he sensed me, he began lowering his defenses. This time, I didn’t panic, but I also didn’t enter his dreamscape. The cord was full of his calm, his welcome, but I needed him to know that I wasn’t here to enter his dreamscape, that I would never expect it. For a while, we just existed near each other, close. Often, after a hard day at seven dials, Nick and I would sit somewhere high up in silence, too exhausted to speak, but taking solace in each other’s company nonetheless. This felt like that. Feeling him near me, calm and alive, was invaluable.
Twice more I visited at the same time of day. He always lowered his spiritual walls the moment he sensed me, and each time I opted instead to just be near him, soak him in. After each visit, when I returned to my body, I slept like a baby.
The next time after that was after a visit to some ice caves Nadine had taken me to. “You can’t spend your whole life working and fighting, Paige, this is supposed to be a chance for you to heal,” She had said. Maybe I should have taken exception to that - I take breaks, sometimes - but whatever ire I may have conjured up was drained away completely by the beauty of the ice caves.
The endless, timeless blue of water that had been frozen for millennia. Our breath hanging in white clouds in the air as we stood before the cold, crystalline expanse, our steps echoing along the walls. It felt like we were alone in a quiet world of our own.
This has been here long before me, I thought, And much of it will still be here long after I’m gone. It made me think of Arcturus. It was a raw feeling.
When he lowered his defenses again that night, the desire to see him, talk to him about such a beautiful thing that existed in our world despite everything, warred with the fear of what Cade had done to him. Arcturus tended to like history and art more than indifferent wonders of nature, but the soft delight in beauty was present in him for all things. Perhaps what he didn’t like in the immortal apathy of nature was the same thing I had seen in the ice caves and loved.
I sent my uncertainty, my caution, along the cord. I received only certainty and trust back. I stepped into his dreamscape. The last time I had been here, it had been to try to pull him back from death. It had been as dark as a crypt. I had lost my glow.
This time, I glowed less like a candle and more like a roaring hearth. As I walked through his hadal zone, midnight, twilight, I took note of what I hadn’t been able to on my intent journey to his spirit last time. His dreamscape took the same form - silent and empty, red drapes the only adornment - but as I brushed past the red drapes, I saw they were torn in places. Ripped, mauled, like something feral had taken its claws to it. A furious bear rampaging through Arcturus’s protection.
He was waiting for me at the center. He always was. His dream form was riddled with even more scars and cracks than it had been, a desecrated statue. It made my heart hurt for him. The urge to embrace him was immediate and powerful, but I held back. This was his spirit, the essence of him. Giving him too much space had bitten us in the ass before, but I refused to be careless with his spirit.
He made the decision for me when he opened his arms and stepped towards me. Running into his arms was the easiest thing I had ever done. As his arms wrapped around me, I felt something in his posture relax. We melted into each other.
Touch between spirits was a dangerous thing. Make one mistake, trigger one bad feeling, and it could change how a person viewed themselves at their core. The memory of Cade’s hands on my spirit still made me feel an odd kind of helplessness. As we pulled away from each other enough for me to look him in the eyes, though, I couldn’t resist reaching out and gently tracing my fingers along the cracks in his face. Could he feel my pain for him?
As I traced the crack, it began to fill with pure gold, like mortar between two bricks. I stopped, startled, with my hand on his cheek, but he just leaned his cheek further into my palm, his eyes glowing softly in contentment. I traced that crack, then another, until his face was lined completely in gold, the evidence of the cracks not gone, but transformed.
Finally, he spoke.
“Paige.” His voice was a balm on my spirit. “How did you get here, little dreamer?”
All of a sudden, it caught up to me. The long nights of longing, the days of training, worrying for the future, still looking over my shoulder because of Incrida, missing Arcturus deeply. I laughed a little wetly and rested my forehead against his collarbone.
“I missed you,” I said, both as an answer to his question and a confession.
“You are safe? You do not feel like an untethered spirit, but I do not see your silver cord.”
“I’m safe,” I said, “I used the golden cord. It’s hard to explain - It shouldn’t affect how far I can get from my body, but it does, in this case.”
“You went further than your silver cord would let you without knowing whether it would snap?” He murmured.
A hint of guilt surfaced. This was the kind of reckless behaviour I had decided to move away from.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “The cord feels benevolent. Not something that would kill me. When I climbed along it, it didn’t feel like the tension of my silver cord nearly snapping. It was still reckless, though. I shouldn’t have risked my life on a desire.” It was only a mite better than rushing into captivity on Cade’s word alone in Paris. Cade. I looked up.
“This is really fine for you?” I asked. “Having me here?”
He gently drew me back in and laid his cheek on the crown of my head.
“More than fine.”
I wanted to ask more, but I was too relieved simply to be there. The rawness from earlier that day resurfaced.
“Nadine and I went to some ice caves today,” I told him.
We spoke about the caves. He listened to my descriptions with his usual intent focus.
“I wish I could show you,” I said quietly. “I wonder if you could use your gift through the cord despite the distance, like I’m using mine?”
We had moved to sitting next to each other on the floor, curled into each other, sunflowers drawn to our own personal suns.
“Perhaps,” Arcturus agreed. “I would be more confident in making the attempt, however, if we were to try it after confirming that you can return to your body safely from this particular endeavour.”
“Of course,” I said, that little worm of guilt in the worry that I had caused him rearing its head. “I’ll go back now. The cord should at least tell you I’m fine when I return. Either way, I’ll be back tomorrow.”
He nodded, eyes blazing as he looked down at me. Slowly, giving me time to see what he was doing and draw away, he put his hand on my cheek and drew me into a soft kiss. A man who had had his very spirit tortured and violated at length, and still he was this careful with me as I kissed his spirit.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” I said again, not sure whether I was telling him or myself.