What Silco recalls of the first twenty-four hours is the taste of ash in his mouth, the strange sense of weightlessness that comes with falling from a great height. He remembers these things, and he remembers Jinx's voice ringing in his ears. Or perhaps he imagines it. He can't quite make out the words.
Day three: The shuttle, though damaged, is whole enough to at least partially mitigate the degree to which the temperature drops at night. He spends the sunlight hours dragging the bodies of their less fortunate compatriots into a row near where they've made camp. He's always been stronger than he looks, but even so, sweat forms patches on his clothes, and his breathing is quick when he finally comes back inside.
The odds and ends he's collected — weapons, ammunition, anything of use — clatter when he sets them down, and the sound seems to pull the corners of his mouth further down, as though in grim acknowledgment of how fragile they are in the face of such an alien world.
He mumbles in his sleep — the beginnings and ends of phrases as though they were still on board the ship, as though he might have changed their fate if he'd been just a little faster, a little smarter. They shouldn't be here, but he'd argue that should has never been the kind of thing those in Piltover have ever really considered. To them, a thief is a thief.
Day five: His whole face is a pallid grey. It's only when his knees buckle beneath him that he allows Jinx to inject him with a dose of Shimmer. (Five syringes left — five shattered upon impact.) He's not the type to apologize, not really, but his gaze communicates a similar sentiment nevertheless — each day has seen him less and less himself, less and less able to assist her as she's taken on the bulk of the work to ensure their safety (to discern the nature of the creatures that come and go around them).
When she's fallen asleep, he counts everything left to them. Water, oxygen canisters, rations. He calculates how long they'd last for two people, and how long they'd last for just one.
He wakes before she does, some time before the blinking light of the scanner goes off. (To think their ship might have survived is not a hope he dares cling to, and yet—) When her eyes open, she'll find him sitting at the edge of her bed, his hand hovering over the round of her shoulder.
Quietly, with a nod at the light: ] It'll be eight days' walk. Seven, if we're unimpeded.
[ His hand settles, warm and solid against her skin. ]
[ There is a tale, told among the itinerant camps that dot the countryside, of two boys. One, hale and strong and bright as the sun. The other, born into his shadow, slight and dark and cold. They grow into the spaces allotted to them. Years pass, seasons turn. And the younger brother, claiming to have heard a call, sets his father and brother both aflame. He is taken apart as punishment for such a crime. Not once does he cry out, not once does he beg for mercy. Evidence of evil, they say. Proof of the curse that had warped his frame from birth. His head, mounted on a spike. His foot, the one he'd always dragged behind him, buried in a nameless field. His bones, scattered and left to decay.
A fairy tale. A warning against betraying family, against what must be a curse, to mar a child so.
But that does not account for the call that wakes him, for the loneliness of a girl doomed to sadness. Her voice reaches through an ocean of time, through the veil of death, through the very dirt in which he is buried. Like the bud of a flower, straining up toward a heaven it will never reach, bringing with it the darkness beneath. His heart — empty, arid turf — aches for her. There's only her, he thinks, as he pulls himself together, only she who could possibly see him for anything other than a monster. Such profound loneliness can only bind two souls together.
His shadow is crooked, his shoulders at a slant as the black of night seems to drag like a train behind each uneven step. He'd forgotten, he thinks, how much it hurts to live. But for her, for her, oh—
The first time he comes to her, she is still a young girl. He leaves her with a flower — a red bloom, its petals laid out like the points of a star. Each time after, he brings her some new gift. Once, a bit of news. Once, a death. The head of a servant who'd dared to steal from the house. He doesn't seem to understand the gasp she lets out, then. Does it not please you? He only begins to take from her later on.
Tonight, he comes to her as he always does, a stray breeze passing through the curtains on her balcony.
In a rasp, the sound of fingernails dragging against the floorboards: ]
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JINX — VESTA.
What Silco recalls of the first twenty-four hours is the taste of ash in his mouth, the strange sense of weightlessness that comes with falling from a great height. He remembers these things, and he remembers Jinx's voice ringing in his ears. Or perhaps he imagines it. He can't quite make out the words.
Day three: The shuttle, though damaged, is whole enough to at least partially mitigate the degree to which the temperature drops at night. He spends the sunlight hours dragging the bodies of their less fortunate compatriots into a row near where they've made camp. He's always been stronger than he looks, but even so, sweat forms patches on his clothes, and his breathing is quick when he finally comes back inside.
The odds and ends he's collected — weapons, ammunition, anything of use — clatter when he sets them down, and the sound seems to pull the corners of his mouth further down, as though in grim acknowledgment of how fragile they are in the face of such an alien world.
He mumbles in his sleep — the beginnings and ends of phrases as though they were still on board the ship, as though he might have changed their fate if he'd been just a little faster, a little smarter. They shouldn't be here, but he'd argue that should has never been the kind of thing those in Piltover have ever really considered. To them, a thief is a thief.
Day five: His whole face is a pallid grey. It's only when his knees buckle beneath him that he allows Jinx to inject him with a dose of Shimmer. (Five syringes left — five shattered upon impact.) He's not the type to apologize, not really, but his gaze communicates a similar sentiment nevertheless — each day has seen him less and less himself, less and less able to assist her as she's taken on the bulk of the work to ensure their safety (to discern the nature of the creatures that come and go around them).
When she's fallen asleep, he counts everything left to them. Water, oxygen canisters, rations. He calculates how long they'd last for two people, and how long they'd last for just one.
He wakes before she does, some time before the blinking light of the scanner goes off. (To think their ship might have survived is not a hope he dares cling to, and yet—) When her eyes open, she'll find him sitting at the edge of her bed, his hand hovering over the round of her shoulder.
Quietly, with a nod at the light: ] It'll be eight days' walk. Seven, if we're unimpeded.
[ His hand settles, warm and solid against her skin. ]
Are you ready?
ALICENT — YOU ARE MY AFFLICTION.
A fairy tale. A warning against betraying family, against what must be a curse, to mar a child so.
But that does not account for the call that wakes him, for the loneliness of a girl doomed to sadness. Her voice reaches through an ocean of time, through the veil of death, through the very dirt in which he is buried. Like the bud of a flower, straining up toward a heaven it will never reach, bringing with it the darkness beneath. His heart — empty, arid turf — aches for her. There's only her, he thinks, as he pulls himself together, only she who could possibly see him for anything other than a monster. Such profound loneliness can only bind two souls together.
His shadow is crooked, his shoulders at a slant as the black of night seems to drag like a train behind each uneven step. He'd forgotten, he thinks, how much it hurts to live. But for her, for her, oh—
The first time he comes to her, she is still a young girl. He leaves her with a flower — a red bloom, its petals laid out like the points of a star. Each time after, he brings her some new gift. Once, a bit of news. Once, a death. The head of a servant who'd dared to steal from the house. He doesn't seem to understand the gasp she lets out, then. Does it not please you? He only begins to take from her later on.
Tonight, he comes to her as he always does, a stray breeze passing through the curtains on her balcony.
In a rasp, the sound of fingernails dragging against the floorboards: ]
Awake.