There has never been a time that Rivin wasn’t dying. Starvation, fatigue, disease, all loomed atop him daily, had since he was small. It was the harsh reality of all born beneath the crust of the earth.

  Inevitable.

  He never thought to fight it, rather he adapted. He wouldn’t live long but he could live longer if he was smart, fast, strong.

  He didn’t want for anything much. He didn’t dream of the future. He’d trained himself not to, to carve such things out as weakness and yet in this moment where the very muscles in his body resist against him, it’s all that keeps him going.

  The future.

  One when he’s greeted by friends.

  By family.

  He wants it.

  Needs it.

  He can’t help but wonder if all along he’d been mistaken. If perhaps there is something more. That maybe there is no weakness in wanting. In dreaming.

  Roach has already prepared a cart; previously toppled onto its side and half buried for camouflage. They lift together, hauling what’s left of the Knight onto the wagon.

  It feels strange to hold it now, and Rivin’s trembling fingers smooth over the dented, burned metal; it’s strikingly cold to the touch but it might as well singe him. Might as well bite him open.

  He can still recall the way it had collapsed in upon itself like some vanquished wave and while his brain is still buzzing and zapping beneath the enormous weight of exhaustion, he can also still hear its siren; screeching over a sputtered last breath he’ll never be able to expunge from his brain.

  ‘We will not forget.’

  Rivin lifts the visor to look the creature in the face one last time. There’s shrapnel still lodged into steel where the slate has been blackened, blood — likely his — scatters along the front in pinpricks, when he rubs them with his thumb they refuse to break away or fade.

  He glances at the gauntlet, the one flaking with congealed brown beneath the dust; with clots stolen from cut arteries and decaying threads of flesh still clinging to diamond embellishments.

  Can he really smell the blood? Or is he just imagining it?

  He feels his pulse quicken, his stomach lurch — the buzzing in his head grows louder. Rivin tries to remember what it means to form words.

  “It kinda just… turned to water when it died.” He sounds flat and faraway.

  Roach quickly (and perhaps mercifully) tucks the dirty gauntlet into fabric she’s wrestled free from her overflowing pack, rolling it up alongside its twin before setting them both into the cart.

  “It jus’ kept changing. Its arm. Its voice—” Rivin slips and the girl moves swift in the dark to hold him upright, straining at the knees as she supports one of his arms around her neck.

  The visor drops to the dirt - Clunk. It sounds just as heavy as it did back then. When it fell down the falls.

  Thud. Thud.

  He can hear the water again. The drip in his ears.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  “Hey— Survivor!” Roach snaps her fingers in front of his eyes. “Come back here.”

  His knees knock together. He’s sweating through the borrowed shirt and it feels wet like he did back then, when the water turned red and the thing gouged a gash down his front. Rivin grits his teeth.

  “Hey, hey! Can’t you smell that?”

  He clings to her voice.

  “Yeah, that’s right—” she rolls her hand towards his face, “big breath.”

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  He breathes in — smells the rot again. The algae and the moss and the chemicals and the sweat and the rust.

  “Home’s right there,” she sounds closer than she is. “Home’s right there, Rivin.”

  He can’t see it but he can feel it.

  Scratchy sheets. Laughter in the dark. Something stewing on the stove.

  “I can do it,” Rivin murmurs, standing tall once more and swallowing all the ache that hollows out his throat to resist.

  He wants to rest so badly but he needs to see them more. He needs to get back to them. He needs to wake up and find them messing up the walls; spraying something crass in orange or violet.

  “Good,” Roach lowers her arms before moving towards the cart again. She doesn’t ask Rivin to help her load the chest-plate but he watches her pick out a shard of clear orange glass still lodged into it, and pocket it in her jacket.

  Once it’s loaded, she ties the lid closed and rises, placing her hands on her hips. Her amber eyes are glinting softly with leftover pride.

  “Want me to pull you along?”

  “I can walk.” Rivin snorts, quickly moving ahead to lead her. He’s limping worse than before and there’s an ache splicing up his thigh that won’t go away. He pauses only to look back, she’s already standing at the ready, holding a taut rope over one shoulder. “Foll—”

  “To the Hole!” Roach cries like she’s leading an army and not dragging a cart of white steel through dust. She raises one arm towards the dingey horizon.

  Rivin feels a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. He nods. “Let’s go home.”

  Eventually, the unfamiliar trenches of the Lowrealm become known to him.

  Recognizable.

  The sound of a city refusing to die is like an old lullaby to his ears — sung by someone he’s forgotten. He’s so tired. If Roach is she doesn’t betray it, only pulls the cart with one hand and snaps a rhythm with her other, lips pursed but never quite producing a whistle.

  When they begin to see people again, she greets almost all of them by name — he’s not entirely certain if they’re owned or ordained.

  “Winnie, good to see you— keepin’ creepy I see,” it’s a compliment to a mound in the shadows— a hunched over person in the alley.

  They don’t lift their head. Rivin wonders if they’re still alive.

  They don’t stop to check.

  No one approaches them and Rivin might imagine the eyes settling upon him with new light — fear, perhaps. Uncertainty?

  He stands taller because it makes him feel vulnerable; less like shadow and more like a lit flame. He wonders if he still looks like a boy. If he ever looked like a boy.

  They walk until the city shifts again, giving way to darkness only rats and orphans know how to navigate. It takes longer because of the cart. Because of Rivin’s slow pace. Because of the burn he’s still pushing through. However, there’s no rush anymore. Only clarity.

  He knows he’s going to make it home.

  Roach is finally whistling when Rivin catches the light. Each step feels heavier than the last.

  “Almost there,” she says but she sounds concerned, breathy as she watches his eyelids droop. She drops the cart’s handle, catches him when he veers too far left and falls. “It’ll be fine,” she promises when he hesitates, pulling his arm around her shoulder and holding him up. Bearing the weight for both of them. “We’ll come back for it.”

  Rivin looks at her closely again. He can see the gold flecks in her wide eyes, can see her struggling with the weight of him. She’s still smiling.

  They move without another word. She holds him up, drags him. Rivin clutches his side, gasping in short breaths while exhaustion eats away at them both.

  He thinks that maybe she’s been carrying him for longer than he realizes.

  He’s starting to see the blackness eat away at the edges of his vision, starting to feel the swell of agony blur into something else.

  It starts in his chest and spreads to the tips of his fingers. He’s blinking away blips and fighting against the materialization of ghosts in his eyeline. Sunken in faces peering up from behind turned over beams and buildings, glowing eyes that ripple like water.

  They pass a hulking man wielding an enormous hammer — he swings it right over their heads but Roach doesn’t flinch. She’s too busy looking at him, too busy furrowing her brows and tucking him in closer to her side.

  “It’s right there,” she says again, beads of sweat toppling over the bridge of her nose.

  The man swings a second time and the hammer connects with the girls jaw before disappearing into a puff of smoke.

  When it clears, he can no longer see the ethereal hallucination of armor or weapon, he can only see the ends of blonde hair; cascading over a black silk hood.

  Mouse reaches towards him. There’s blood on her hands, dripping the path of her fingers. She’s pale, so pale — no, translucent. He can see the lights through her palm.

  She looks cold. He doesn’t want to be touched, he flinches away from nothing. Feels his fingers clutch deeper into bomber jacket.

  He doesn’t want to be cold, too.

  Inevitable.

  Death is inevitable.

  Not yet.

  “It’s okay. You’ve made it.” Roach brings him into the light and beneath the familiar arch of home.

  Rivin can’t hear anything. Only her. He’s holding onto her voice, the glimmer in her eyes, the encouragement in her words before they fizzle away between the fog and the blur.

  Lithe, transparent fingers follow them both.

  He can’t look. Won’t.

  He can feel her eyes — green, soft as moss.

  He slumps in the arms that gather him, unable to hold himself up any longer. He can feel her thin limbs trembling around him. Holding him tighter. Fingers digging in.

  Roach won’t let him fall. He knows it.

  She’s brought him all this way.

  “You’re home,” she coos, voice warbling as darkness begins to devour.

  The world is untethering around him. Unravelling again. Like it always does when the brain shuts down.

  He holds onto her.

  Her eyes — he forces himself to remember — are all golden and sun. He can hear her pockets chime as she pulls him forward.

  Their knees hit the tile. His tile.

  He must not forget.

  Her name is Roach. Her name is Roach and she brought him h—

  “Home.”

  Home.