Mouse is sitting at the table — except the dream calls her Irene, the name she’d buried at his doorstep years ago.

  She smiles a slow and wanting smile; a curve that cuts her face like soft butter. Rivin knows he’s dreaming. He always does when the ghosts return. Irene is older than the day she died and playing with the ends of her long blonde hair; it too is only slightly different, lighter like it’s caught the sun.

  She kicks out a chair for him with her foot, though it hadn’t been there a moment ago and he sits to hand her a book he’s clasping suddenly and tightly. When she accepts it his fingers dig deep into the cover. He can’t let go.

  On the front, a wicked grin and snapping braid, a boy without a face holding a sign that reads the title: DEFENCELESS DUO.

  Rivin’s nails tear through like the binding is flesh, warm and wet beneath the varnish, hot blood beading around his fingertips. He lets go and Irene smiles wider before taking the novel into her lap.

  “Thank you. I wanted to read this one.” It sounds as though she is speaking from behind glass and the moss green of her eyes begins to warble and crack, quickly spreading over the skin of her cheeks and jaw. When she quirks a brow the fine hairs start to weave into braids across her forehead. “Did you like the ending?”

  Rivin reaches for her hand but touches nothing as it begins to dissolve into the cover, knuckles trickling like puddles of paint. “I don’t know how it ends,” he hears himself say and Irene chuckles.

  He doesn’t deserve to hear her laugh like a woman. Not when it’s his fault she died as a girl.

  “Yes you do. They all end the same.”

  “Right.” Even in his dreams he can’t cry. “You still want to read it?”

  Most of her elbow is gone now and while his face is dry, her tears are a rainbow of fractured glass beading down split cheeks. “Silly,” the braids have become a tiara and the threaded tresses move like living vines through soil above her head. “Of course. I just don’t get to.”

  She’s turning into an essence before his very eyes; bleeding flesh and silk like melting colour. He can only stare for he has long since stopped his clawing for comfort within the nightmares. “I’m sorry.”

  She’s already gone.

  The book sits in her place, glowing atop the stool. A girl with blonde hair joins the cover, back to back with the snarling queen of trash and her faceless boy. Rivin can’t bear to touch it again and yet there is no need for filthy fingers snatch it from the chair and hold it up to the light.

  “Sacrilege!” Roach is standing barefoot atop slate white tile.

  The rest of the world is blank. The chair beneath him is no longer there and he’s standing again, watching her finger through the pages hastily, brows furrowed and scuffed with dirt. “Did you do this?” Her gaze is taut with accusations. Rivin glances down at his hands where fresh blood drips from the tips to muddy up the floor. “You’ve fixed it!” She spits with disgust, shaking the book in uproar while Rivin pulls back; slips up on the pool of ruby red now thick beneath his feet.

  “I didn’t—”

  “Defenseless?” She gasps, flinging it at him. Pain splinters up his side where it strike but doesn’t ever ebb away, only spreads as tiny stars begin to dot the edges of his eyes. The blood is so sticky he can’t pull himself free from it. He doesn’t even try.

  “I didn’t change anything. The ending is still the same,” he murmurs as she comes to stand over him.

  Her braid zips through the air like a devious serpent, brushing over his cheek and ear to whisper, “you don’t know the ending, remember?”

  Rivin closes his eyes; waits for the ichor embrace to take him fully. “The ending never changes.” His muscles are beginning to twist; an ache in his back flinches up his spine. He can smell something burning when the blood begins to ooze over his face; he lets it into his mouth.

  “That’s the part that needs changing!” Fingers grip around his collar and lurch his upward violently

  His eyes snap open — gasping and wide awake.

  Breath swells Rivin’s lungs as he comes to sit, clutching his bare chest where a restless heart hammers right back against his palm. His torso feels as though it has been cracked open and slapped back together again, but the pain has dulled into something livable.

  Stolen story; please report.

  His brain however is a mess of fog and memory. He remembers Mouse, green eyes wide with fear— real fear. The fear of a girl who never got to be anything else. He remembers Roach. Her messy braid spun with junk and a bone. Her isolated home. The world she introduced him to. His skull hurts. His head feels swollen. A migraine. Too much, too much.

  The teen glances around the room urgently and the fear fades with every familiarity. He fingers through old sheets. He can smell himself on the pillow. He made it. It doesn't feel quite real but tired grey eyes take in the nostalgia of it all. He does feel changed in a way. He can't not be after all that he's seen.

  There's crap everywhere — evidence of his absence, of their neglect of the meticulously labelled system he had prepared. He's well enough to be ticked off, but something also softens inside of him. It feels strange for him to find comfort in the mess but he's missed it. Missed them. Missed home— until he hears the bickering outside of the tram, beyond the door that doesn't quite close right anymore.

  He bites back a grunt as he inspects his side. There's fresh bandages over the wounds and the skin he can see is deeply bruised, a whiplash of colour strapping his torso. It’s a worthy penance for life, for familiar sheets and trinkets and tech stacked in corners. The door screeches open.

  “Told you he'd be awake!” Beams Ricket, and Rivin is grateful that he's still smiling. There's dust on the tip of his nose, grease on his cheek.

  “About time,” Slink teases, arms folded. Chip doesn't say anything, looks only at the floor while Rivin’s eyes flick among them. Roach isn't there. Neither is Mouse. There's a soft quiet between them all, a lingering and residual shock that hangs heavy. The Pale Knight glints like a flash of memory between them. “Thought you were for sure dead,” Slink follows up, handing him something stale and close enough to bread. Rivin takes it. He's starving and eats it quickly, dusting off crumbs with the back of his hand while Ricket gets comfortable at the end of his cot.

  “I knew you weren't.”

  “We only knew one of us was dead,” Chip spits. There's guilt in his eyes. Heavy grief and perhaps a sprinkle of shame too.

  Rivin sucks in a breath. “Where is she?”

  “We burned her,” Slink mutters, barely above a whisper, his eyes stay locked on his own clammy palms like they still hold the fire. “Sorry we couldn’t wait for you, Riv.”

  “You were gone for days,” Chip says. It’s not an accusation but rather soft with disbelief. “We thought you died.”

  “I'm back now.”

  “What happened?”

  “Let ‘im rest!” Ricket’s voice rises.

  “He’s slept two days! He’s rested enough!”

  “Don’t make me hit yo—”

  “Stop.” Rivin massages his temples. “Please.” All hush beneath the weight of his manners. Slink visibly recoils while Ricket scrunches up his nose. Chip’s eyes are the glassiest, the worst at hiding the pain. “It chased me pretty deep. That girl—” his gaze flickers over their heads but there’s nothing by emptiness and tin beyond them, somehow even now it’s difficult to say the words, “—saved me. The one that brought me back.”

  “Her majesty!” Ricket is bright like the sun Rivin is remembering again.

  “Roach,” Slink corrects, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, we know that part.” Rivin feels a surge of relief as someone else says her name out loud. She’s real. She’s definitely real. Thank God. But—

  “Where is she?”

  Slink scoffs, “where do you think?” Rivin isn’t sure.

  “She left a while ago, Riv,” Ricket hums, “she changed your bandages though!”

  “She definitely stole Daisy, Riv! Daisy!” Slink cries.

  “And.. like all of the cutlery,” Chip murmurs.

  Rivin almost smiles, shaking his head as he swings his legs off the side of the cot, cool tin greets the tips of his toes. “How long have I been out?”

  “Bout thirty six hours. In all that makes—” Slink is now wearing Rivin’s watch, tapping the clockface with a lean finger; he’s already missing several digits on that hand and the lasting appendage is freshly bound and bloody, “about ten days gone give or take.”

  Ten days. Rivin glances around the room. “Looks like longer. This place is disgusting.”

  “It's only a little messy,” Ricket defends but blushes.

  “No excuses or it all falls apart.”

  “Are you well enough to be this judgmental already?”

  “He’s right Riv. You should rest a while longer,” follows Ricket.

  “It’s fine.”

  “Can we vote on it?”

  “No.” Rivin rises to his feet. He’s sore but not terrible. Not dying. “Any word from Lav’s men?”

  Chip nods gravely. “Came sniffin’ soon as word got around that we’d made it back.”

  “What’d you tell him?”

  Chip shrugs. “The truth.”

  “Shoulda killed them.”

  “Bum deal, Riv. We’d already lost you both.” Chip’s voice quivers at the end and Rivin gently places his hand upon the blonde boy’s shoulder. The brown in his eyes looks almost black in the lowlight and Rivin can see the tears rising from the ducts and glossing up the colour.

  “I’m sorry, Chip.” He whispers.

  The boys bottom lip trembles. “I know. Me too.” Chip embraces him quickly, burying a grieving face into the crook of the older boys neck. His arms are strong and his fists press too tight against the burns on Rivin’s back and yet he does not make a sound, only grips his friend tighter and frowns over tufts of pale hair to glare regretfully at the floor. “I’m glad you came back.” Chip’s voice is muffled against bandage and skin.

  Ricket runs in to join, wrapping thin limbs around them both and stuffing his face between them. “Welcome home, Riv!”

  “Yeah, I guess we did miss your bossiness a little,” Slink chuckles.

  “You’ve never been a good liar.”

  “I’m still learning.”

  Rivin reaches into his wardrobe — merely a pole strung with several garments of patchwork clothing; most hand-stitched by Mouse. His fingers trace a shoddy yellow seam standing out against burgundy leather; her first ever attempt at fixing something up for him. When he glances at the door, he hates himself for expecting her to waltz on through it. “The crate?”

  “Safe. In the pit.”

  “Good,” Rivin nods, pulling a shirt over his head carefully and even though he’s slow, the bite of pain still stings cruelly wherever the skin is most taut and scabbing over. He dons the jacket with the yellow stitch. “First: we’re going to clean this place up.” He shoots a sharp glare at the trio and Ricket throws back his head to groan while Slink rolls his eyes. “Then—” Rivin’s smile is cold like the pits of his eyes, “—we’re gonna’ go skin a cat.”

  Chip beams, slapping the older boy’s shoulder. “It really is good to have ya back, Riv.”

  He wholeheartedly agrees.