Chapter Text
You camouflaged or clearly seen
And nameless in the in-between
And I can hear the rustling as you go
The firing of rifles off
The echo hits you hard enough
And I can hear the rustling as you go
A soft and skittish self inside
Shines golden, opal, chrysolite
And I can feel the rustling as you go
Oh, go slow
-Hotelier Soft Animal
Take a breath. Exhale. Take a breath. Hold your breath.
These things are always too fast, he thought, trying to do as he was told without moving, without inhaling too deeply, and above all, without opening his eyes.
They'd underdosed his sedative this time, and like an idiot, he'd decided to gut it out. But then he had blinked on the way into the machine, and that was that. The cool fan didn't matter, the hours of meditation practice didn't matter, simple reassuring logic didn't matter. Not once he'd seen the beige medical plastic housing a scant inch from his face and terror ricocheted through him like lightning. The whole scanner tube contracted around him like the artery they were all trying so hard to look at, and a blind animal panic took over. His legs weren't even all the way inside the machine before he was hammering on the alarm for them to get him out again.
Stupid idiot. Why couldn't you keep your face shut? It's been years since you made a dumb mistake like that.
Outside, five minutes after with an ice pack on his head and the techs soothing him down in calm, practiced voices, he could laugh about it.
Feels like a coffin in there.
And then, because he had to, he went back in. But this time his eyes were closed tightly, and he focused all his will on keeping them that way, bearing down on them like two coins to weight a dead man's gaze. And for the next forty five minutes he breathed when he was told to, moved as little as possible, and thought about stars as hard as he could.
Infinite space in front of him. Endless cycle of the moons. Visible, unfathomable, unenclosable distance above and around him, all decked out in streamers of blue and purple and red and silver on silver on silver. One red moon with a cyclops stare. He was looking up at the sky, with only the starless blackness under his feet to indicate the plain of desert below. He willed himself away from it, up into the stars, until he was floating in it, effortlessly.
Okay, we're starting your injection.
The contrast fluid bloomed in his hand like a flower made of ice, and spread its leaves up and down his spine.
Exhale.
He tried to remember practicing this, to focus, but he was no good at it and he was losing it. His hand was so cold. Because they've injected the dye and it's cooler than your body temperature and you are not in space because you are wedged in a fucking boba straw and you can't move for another hour and it's so small oh god it's so small it's-- He took a breath out of order, but the techs would have to cope. Better that than having to get him out again. Okay. Okay. Stop. You're all right. Don't focus on the panic. Try to use your goddamn imagination for something besides freaking out. You're in space, so what are you holding? Look at it. Don't open your eyes. Open your hand.
It was a star. An oscillating and crystalline burst of gold in his hand. Prickly and almost painful, like the blood coming back to a deadened limb. Because your hand is crammed against your leg in this godforsaken torture device and there's a needle in it and it's not a shooting star, you idiot, that would burn off your arm it's a--
--Hand. The shooting star was someone's hand. Someone was holding his hand. He could not remember the last time that had happened, but he could not forget how it felt. Safe. He could not see the person--if they could be called a person, a human-ish shape cloaked in radiant golden needles of light in the corner of his vision--but they were so wonderful. So full of love, as full of love as space was full of openness. The muffled racket of the machine faded into an infinite and singing silence. They held hands and kept going up, but the stars never came any closer.
"All right Nicholas, we're all done for today, bringing you out now."
Nicolas D. Wolfwood woke up, and the singing universe winked out around him. It was over. He was out.
"You did great," one of the techs said, easing the needle from his vein and wrapping up his hand in a clingy crimson bandage.
"Ha. No I didn't, but thanks." Wolfwood blinked hard at the nondescript hospital ceiling. It was a blissful, dizzying ten feet away.
The other tech was more emphatic. "Come on, you actually fell asleep this time. You're never done that, right?"
Wolfwood let them get him upright, handling him like a weak and pliant child. He was too relieved to hate it as much as he should have. "Must be your dulcet tones telling me to hold my breath."
"Well, you're all done now! I'll walk you out and then we'll see you next July, right?"
"Thank Christ," Wolfwood said, but it was under his breath. He'd embarrassed himself enough today, and his whole body was watery with relief. Some fears can't be reasoned with.
Back in the waiting room, Livio got one look at Wolfwood's face and didn't bother to ask how it went. Instead he stood up, shoving his phone into his back pocket and pulling out his keys. "Told you they shouldn't have skimped on your valium," he said.
"Fine, fine, you were right, congrats, you can buy me a fucking croissant." Wolfwood put his bandaged hand over his face. "Get me out of here so I can have a smoke."
It would have been within Livio's rights to press the argument, but he didn't. It might have been self-preservation, as picking a fight with Wolfwood in a moment like this was a good way to get a black eye. Or it could have just been the circles under Wolfwood's own eyes. He never slept well before the tests, not even as a kid. In his car (where smoking was strictly forbidden, to Wolfwood's chagrin), Livio rambled about nothing in particular as they wound their way through December's morning traffic, and Wolfwood stared out the window and tried to remember what he had dreamed in the machine. All he could remember was stars.
"...Are you listening?" Livio asked, waiting to make a left turn. It was storming in December, a midsummer cloudburst, and the car's wipers thudded softly in counterpoint to distant thunder, the growl of traffic.
"Sure," Wolfwood said. He hadn't been for several minutes, and they both knew it.
"Good." Livio had a smug note in his voice. "I knew you'd help out."
"Hey, wait." Wolfwood peeled his face away from a billboard for Kitty Queen Donuts and back to Livio, who was serenely navigating the car around a fender-bender. "What am I--"
"I thought you were listening," Livio's face was angelic, which was a little unnerving on someone so physically immense. "But never mind, I'll tell you over that croissant."
Wolfwood scrunched down in the passenger seat, glowering. Whatever it was he'd just agreed to do, he had a feeling he wasn't going to like it.
Two days later, he was certain of it.
"I'm gonna kill you, Livio," he said, as the motorcycle died underneath him, and its cooling engine made a series of plinks and hisses in the chilly evening air of the desert. But Livio wasn't there. Nobody was, not for at least five iles.
Behind Wolfwood, far in the distance, lay the outskirts of December, glittering with light and movement and all the comforts of civilization. In front of him, hulking and black and unfriendly, was a building he knew all too well. It looked even worse than the last time he'd seen it. The broken bell tower jutted up to the cratered fifth moon like an admonishing finger thrust towards the very eye of God, and below it in the darkness, the trash-strewn chain-link fence ringed the property like a rusty shroud. The empty building sang softly to itself as the night breeze slipped through broken windows and cracked doors in a low, thoughtful moan, but other than that, it was utterly silent.
For a moment, Wolfwood was back in the hospital tube, and every instinct in his body was telling him to hit the emergency button with everything his life was worth. It was the same contracting panic, the same inexplicable fear, the same silent cacophony of get out get out get out ringing in his mind.
I promised Livio, he told himself, the same way he told himself that the testing machine was not too small, that he could breathe just fine, that it wasn't even going to hurt. I need the money.
Somewhere inside the building a door slammed, and Wolfwood gripped his bike handlebars hard enough for the chrome to squeak in protest.
It's the wind, the place is wide open, and that's why you need to be here so someone doesn't come in and try to raise Satan or burn it down or spray-paint dicks on every surface. You are not going to be afraid of a motherfucking building, Nicholas D. Wolfwood. Much less this one.
Ten years of his life. Eight of Livio's. He tried to plaster over the vision in front of him with happier childhood memories. He'd been happy here, right? They all had been. They'd all been sad when the Government insisted the orphanage needed to be closer in the city, modernized and near vital services, not out here in some ancient building in the desert in the middle of nowhere. They'd all cried to leave it behind. Nowhere had ever felt like home since. Nowhere but here, this blackened shell that was now sitting in front of him like a forgotten childhood nightmare, freshly appearing in his adult life with all its attendant horrors.
Wolfwood closed his eyes, and swallowed hard. When he opened them again, he was looking at the sky, and for a second he forgot everything else.
There were so. many. stars.
Brighter and more numerous than could ever be seen in December, than he had seen them since leaving this place behind all those years ago. Like the ones he had seen in his dream, during the test. He had not imagined it, he had remembered it, looking just like this. Everything else shrank below that heavenly infinity, even the unwelcoming shape of the abandoned orphanage, even his own fear. When he looked at the building again, it was less of a threatening animal than a wounded one, curled in on itself, claws out only to protect its wounded heart.
"Fuck," Wolfwood breathed, in one last signal of protest, and got off his bike. His kickstand scratched a line in the parched red earth, and up in the silent bell tower, some kind of roosting night-bird flashed yellow eyes in his direction before taking off in a ragged flurry of indignant wings. Wolfwood watched it vanish into the starless black of the desert, and with a half-remembered cross gesture over his chest, he walked under the archway and through the gate.
"I'm home," he said.
Nothing answered, and Nicholas D. Wolfwood wasn't sure if he was relieved or disappointed.