cloak of carmine

legend

"Who are you?" Josh asks, interrupting the dizzying stream of questions.

She eyes him suspiciously. "A friend."

Josh turns his head to me for confirmation. I nod.

"Why-" My throat is dry as sand. "Why did you help me?"

"I've been looking for you all night, Tyler. I was studying the watchers with Clancy, and then Nico—" She seems to stop herself. "I just got worried. Sorry."

Alarm bells are going off. Nico what? What happened?

I want to ask, but she seems skittish, looking behind her to check no-one is coming, starting every time someone speaks. What's going on?

I shake my head. "Don't be. It was my fault."

Josh turns again, and this time he looks bewildered.

"Who's this?" Jenna asks. She points at Josh.

"Uh.." But Josh beats me to it.

"I'm Josh. Tyler's friend. Reisdro's district."

"Shit." she says. "Reisdro."

Josh nods. "Yeah, I know."

She laughs. "You guys have got your work cut out for you. They don't miss a trick, those guys."

And I know she's right. Nico and Reisdro aren't exactly...lenient. (They're terrifying. They're both terrifying.)

"Sorry, wait, am I missing something? Can anyone explain what's going on?"

Jenna ignores him. She gestures for me to come. Her hair is wild, golden strands twisting round her face.

Josh turns to me back facing Jenna completely, shielding me from view. His eyebrows arch up and meet in a harsh crease of anxiety on his forehead. "Can we trust her?"

I glance at Jenna again. She smiles at me, small but genuine. I can't help it.

I nod at Josh. He breathes a sigh of relief. "Just needed to check."

He turns back around. "Sorry, right. You need Tyler?"

I feel a slight jab of anger rise. I'm not just his thing he can pick up and lug around.

But I shove it down. Not the time, Tyler.

"I just...I just wanted to...to show him something."

"Can I come?"

"I guess," she says. Up close, I see the faint purplish rings under her eyes, the slightly glazed look that you get from a lack of sleep. She slips out of the door on hunters' feet, scanning for the Bishops.

She beckons us forward, and we both run, me slightly clumsily as I'm still light-headed from panic.

We trace the edge of the Limit. With my grey shirt and trousers, it's as if I blend right into the wall. Jenna sticks right out in her luminous yellow. I feel smaller and grubbier than ever beside her, like a slab of wet pavement.

She stops abruptly, checking again to see if there's anyone watching. But there's just the cruel glow of the neon.

Not for the first time today, I think about the skull I saw at Dead Man's View. Ben Foster's skull, eye sockets dead and black as smear. I suddenly feel overly exposed, like thousands of eyes are watching my every move. Thousands of skulls, white and grinning, ready to crawl out of their neon tombs and drag me down under the black, dead earth.

I scrunch my eyes closed, but all I can see are neon ghosts. I take a deep breath. Goawaygoawaygoawaygoawaygoawaygoawaygo-

"Tyler?" Josh says. "Jenna, is it far?"

"Why?"

"We need to get him away from the neon." He mutters, quiet now, like he doesn't want me to hear. But the Limit is silent as a graveyard.

And I feel indescribably guilty for being angry at Josh.

If it weren't for me, he could've left by now. He wouldn't have to constantly worry about me, poor suicidal Tyler who can't be left alone for more than a couple of minutes because he's so in his head. Poor Tyler, Nico's favourite, who's only alive because the Bishops can't decide whether to ordain him or to let Vialism run its course. Poor Tyler who doesn't even have the courage to decide whether he wants to live or die.

I stumble blindly, letting Josh lead me wherever Jenna is taking us. There's a painful lump in my throat that's been there for a while, and it seems hard to swallow, or even breathe. 

We walk for ten minutes in bleak silence, me trying my best to not cry again. I need to stop crying. It's getting stupid. Yeah Tyler. Crying is for weak people. You're weak. You'll never escape because you're weak and selfish and you don't deserve him. I know I don't.

We turn abruptly, and start heading back towards the districts. I hold my breath until the neon grows fainter behind my eyes and I start to hear the thrum of the city again. (I wouldn't call it life, exactly. There's no chatter or laughing or birds or whatever. Just the footsteps of those moving ever closer to the grave.)

I open my eyes to the brutalist concrete of the district blocks. There's barely anyone out, as expected. Everyone's probably still at breakfast, or performing their first chores of the day.

"I just assumed you'd be in your room. I don't know, you being Nico's district and all. And you weren't there so I just kind of...freaked."

(Nico's district is the only one who doesn't have any tasks. We kind of just sit around all day. Most of us barely leave our rooms.) "Yeah. I know."

"Where were you?" I don't answer. I don't even want to think about it.

"It doesn't matter," Josh says. "But how did you get the Bishops to leave like that? I seriously thought they were gonna kill us."

"Same," I say. "How did you do that? And— where are we going? You never said."

Jenna looks tired. She scrunches her eyes up and "Look." She sighs. "I...I'll explain everything when we're out, okay? I promise."

Josh looks at me questioningly. I mouth "Trench" at him. His eyes seem to light up at the word.

"Thank you." I say quietly.

She nods to me. "It's nothing. You're here now."

We walk up the stairs of a building identical to my own, except for the steel numbers on the door.

She turns the corner on the top, revealing a small staircase.

I seem to be coming across these more and more, I think.

It leads to the roof.

⊬

Here on the rooftop, looking out over the border of Dema to the infinite sky of Trench, turning from orange to white. The vultures perch around us on the roof edge, but their eyes seem more of a comfort than a threat. We're surrounded, but for once I feel safe.

I can see where my block is, much farther away. The vultures have always congregated on my roof.

Jenna and Josh have both dozed off a while back. (I think Josh was running on two hours of sleep at most, and I don't think Jenna had any, so I don't mind.)

They've laid their heads on my shoulders, and I don't dare move. I just want to enjoy this moment. A year ago I could've never imagined this, so close to Trench that I can taste the sweeter air, with the two people I love so much it hurts. The weight of their bodies next to mine feels like comfort.

The vultures circle us from above, cutting impressive shapes against the dead sky.

a/n: i love writing soft shit :') p.s all these nice comments make me so happy, thank you so much everyone <33 next chapter will be up on saturday.