Countdown: 2 days, 7 hours, 4 deaths
As Aurelia walks through the streets of Glascoast, she notes how empty the polis is. It should be busier than it is with Tournament coming up, even at this late hour. There should be merry-making, partying. There should be people wearing their team's colors running, raucously and drunkenly. There should be vendors open, selling merchandise to wear at the arena two days from now. But there is silence.
Graffiti has appeared, outside of Midcity, onto the streets of respectable neighborhoods. The PLP slogan is everywhere.
The tension in the polis is heavy, oppressive, even on the empty streets, even without another soul in sight.
Aurelia lifts a hand to rub at her neck, the muscles tight, bunched together in a tangle of knots like the line of an inexperienced fisherman. She closes her eyes, and feels the scrape of callouses along the flesh of her trapezius muscle, the warmth of breath at her ear.
She melts as the fingers at the junction of her neck and shoulder squeeze just so, feels the brush of silk against her shoulders as soft lips replace the fingers. The hairs on the nape of her neck raise at the contact, and she hums contentedly.
She knows that touch better than she knows her own name, better than she knows the lines on her palm or the freckles on her nose that she has tried to bleach out with products more times than she can count. In this moment, it is a pleasant touch, one that makes her toes curl the way they did at the start.
"Marcus," she breathes, reaching back to thread her fingers through his hair, soft as chinchilla fur, golden as the ripe wheat fields of Rivergate. Her fingers slip through the air, and when she opens her eyes, she is alone.
Despite the heat of the night, she is suddenly cold all that way down to her bones. She frantically looks around, searching for Marcus' familiar form, longing for and dreading the sight of his apparition at once.
Once she realizes that she is well and truly alone, she staggers, lurches forward, plants her hand against the white-washed wall of a residential apartment complex, and vomits all over the coral cobblestones. She coughs, wipes her mouth, gets her bearings.
The neon sign of the bar flashes in the distance.
When she arrives, it takes Aurelia several tries to turn the key into the lock of The Backstage Bar due to the trembling of her fingers. She feels lightheaded and nauseous; the world is blurry at the corners, and all she wants is the burn of liquid down her throat, the fog of drink, the peace of oblivion.
She misses him; by Ila-Ama, the Old God, and the splinters of the universe, she misses him as much as she hates him.
She hates herself for it.
When the lock finally clicks, she stumbles inside, eager for the night to finally be over.
The memory of the ghost-Marcus' fingers against her shoulders, the apparition's breath against her ear, and her reaction to it, disturbs her far more than her conversation with Lana does. She shouldn't miss him. The memory of his hands should make her shudder with fear, not tremble with need.
She pushes the thoughts away, shaking, and hurries through the back halls of the bar. Girls walk clad in cheap silk robes and lingerie, looking at the men on their arms with painted-on smiles. The noise of the patrons in the main bar filters through the thin walls, compounding Aurelia's nausea, and making her head pound so much her teeth begin to ache.
Before she can make it to her room, however, Mikael's hand is at her sleeve. She jumps at the unexpected contact, and curses herself for being so wrapped up in her own world that she missed the boy's presence.
"You scared me," she chastises him, her voice harsher than she had intended for it to come out.
"Sorry," the boy murmurs, quickly, and he pulls his hand away from her. "How did it go?" he asks, and Aurelia summons the self-possession to compose herself and give him what she hopes is a reassuring smile.
"We worked out a deal," she says, and the child appears to breathe out a sigh of relief. However, his brow suddenly furrows, and he shifts his weight.
"I'm really glad you're back... Joe needs help. It's Colin," the boy says, sounding suspiciously guilty.
"What happened to Colin?" Aurelia asks, her palms breaking out into a sweat. She realizes, in that moment of utter panic, that she has truly begun to think of the old addict as a friend.
"He came back... heard about who you were meeting with..." the boy withers under the weight of her stare, "I told him... and then he got really, really high. Way more than usual. And he's not letting Joe help him. He keeps trying to go out into the main bar and it's causing a scene."
Aurelia rubs at her temples. She imagines how nice it would be to ignore the situation, to crawl into bed with a bottle of rum and drown her thoughts away. She heaves out a sigh.
"If you and Joe can get him into the back room away from the customers, I'll help Joe handle it," she says, instead.
Mikael scampers away, and Aurelia follows, clenching her hands into fists to hide their trembling. Her mouth salivates at the thought of a cool, liquid burn slipping down her throat. Only a few minutes more, she silently promises herself.
When she makes it down the stairs and into the kitchen, she finds Joe standing over Colin, holding his shoulders to keep him seated in his chair.
Joe smiles when he sees her, but it doesn't reach his eyes. The expression he wears is tight, pinched- frustration, anger, and resignation in one.
"He doesn't usually do this here," Joe says with a deep sigh, eyeing Colin, whose scrawny limbs are splayed akimbo, his head leaned back against the seat of the chair.
"Mind helping me get him to bed?" Joe asks, resignation in his words.
Aurelia obliges, crouches beside Colin and wraps one of his arms around her shoulders. When Joe is in a similar position, she stands, dragging Colin up with her. He isn't light, despite his waifish appearance. There must be lean, corded muscle hidden beneath his baggy clothes.
Aurelia goes to walk towards the back door, but Joe shakes his head. "Let's take him to my room," he says, and Aurelia frowns. She hadn't realized that Joe had a room here.
Colin slurs something inarticulate, his head lolling to the side, his forehead pressing against Joe's ear. Aurelia winces in sympathy for the barkeep.
Joe walks them forward, to a door that Aurelia had always assumed opened into a pantry. Upon opening it, however, Aurelia sees that it conceals a winding staircase. It is awkward, navigating the spiral staircase while holding a fully grown man upright, and making room to accommodate Joe's girth. But somehow, they make it to the top.
Aurelia is out of breath once they reach the landing, and ready to hurl Colin down to the floor below if he tries to escape their hold of him again. For a moment, she is forced to shoulder the whole of Colin's weight as Joe unlocks the door, and she curses under her breath as he nuzzles his cheek against her shoulder.
"Bony," Colin complains- the only articulate thing he's said in the past thirty minutes. Aurelia resists the urge to let him crash to the floor.
"Here we go," Joe says, coming back to assist Aurelia, leading the three of them through the open door.
The room they enter is surprisingly tidy. Aurelia catches sight of a deck of cards sitting on the polished wood of a coffee table, a chess set and an old leather recipe book resting on a trunk in the corner.
Joe walks them through the tight but cozy living area, and pulls open the retractable screen that must separate the sleeping and living areas. Together, they lay Colin down on a bed that looks shockingly comfortable.
Aurelia gladly steps back, her bad ankle aching and shoulder pulsing where she'd held much of Colin's weight.
"Thank you. I don't think I would have been able to get him up here myself," Joe says, softly, as he removes Colin's shoes and tucks the old addict beneath the covers with motions that seem efficient, practiced.
The barkeep tenderly brushes strands of greasy hair out of Colin's face, and the thinner, drug-addled man leans his weathered cheek into Joe's touch.
Oh. Aurelia swallows, glances away, feeling guilty for observing such a moment.
Immediately after, she is selfishly, vainly, relieved- the fact that her charms hadn't worked on Colin isn't a reflection of her deteriorating looks after all.
"I didn't know you two were..." she murmurs, glancing at Joe.
"Not anymore," Joe says, his voice soft so as not to disturb Colin, who looks to have fallen asleep already. "Before Erik..." Joe trails off, shakes his head. "You know what you're getting into with an Assassin... most of the decent ones have one addiction or another, but they manage them. But after Erik, he just... stopped managing. He's convinced that he doesn't deserve to be happy."
Aurelia isn't sure she wants to know, but she asks anyway. "Who is Erik?"
"His old apprentice," Joe replies, fingering Colin's lank hair. Aurelia recalls Lana's description of the thirteen year old child's death and winces. She's not sure she disagrees with Colin's viewpoint. He probably doesn't deserve a man like Joe.
"He needs a shower," Joe says with a small curve of his lips, tenderness in his eyes. Aurelia wonders how she missed it before. Colin may have put their past behind them, but Joe wears his feelings like a second skin.
"I don't think he's had one since I met him," Aurelia observes. "He needs to take better care of himself."
Perhaps she and Colin are far more alike than she had ever realized. The realization makes her shudder.
"That's what I'm here for," Joe murmurs, fondly, tracing Colin's cheekbone with his fingertip. Then, he glances up at her with a smile. "Come on, I'll get you a drink on the house," he says, stepping out of the partitioned bedroom and closing the dividing screen behind them.
When they make it back down into the kitchen, Joe rewards her for her assistance not with a glass, but with a whole bottle. Aurelia gratefully accepts it, and quietly slips back into her room.
And then she drinks, forsaking a glass and sipping rum straight from the bottle. She drinks until she forgets the calluses of Marcus' fingertips sliding along her shoulder blades. Until she no longer remembers the sensation of his lips against the base of her neck.
When she sleeps that night, she dreams of a gutted child and a pain that for once, is not her own.