The Days of Our Lives [closed]

[Jesse Fforde]

ooc: backdated to 14 December 2015

<Jesse Fforde> The nights were slow, even though things were happening. Jesse felt like he was moving through mud, everything slowing down to an interminable, intolerably slow pace. The suffering was stretched out and his restlessness was a thing that could not be contained. He wanted – needed – distractions. He found himself often on the Crownet when Clover wasn’t around, answering Okoro’s questions. Except, the internet was not a safe place to be. It was not a safe place to communicate. But then, face to face probably wouldn’t have been any different.

Clover was prone to taking him out. He felt like a burdensome accessory, most of the time. A psychotic toddler that she had to keep an eye on lest he walk off to do something destructive. Except, what he’d said to Rhett earlier via text wasn’t wrong. He had accepted particular failures. Where before he had indulged in anger and hurt, now he indulged in acceptance. It was a numb kind of feeling. It felt like dread, but worse.

Okoro wasn’t ready. He didn’t want to meet Jesse. Kenlie was back, but she wasn’t ready, either. She just wanted to crawl back into her own hole. Rhett didn’t want to come around, because tonight wasn’t good. Aria was a coward who preferred to run away rather than to face Jesse – could he kill her, if it came down to it? Maybe that was his cure. Killing a childe. He wanted to test it. But she wouldn’t let him. Victor was happy to call Jesse out on perceived rudeness to his ‘wife’ when he had treated her so much worse…

And Clover wasn’t home. She couldn’t be expected to always be home, but Jesse felt the loneliness like a dead weight, drowning him. What he wouldn’t give for some mundane conversation. To be distracted by a constant barrage of questions. What he wouldn’t do to just be able to talk to someone, to be in their vicinity. Instead, he sat in the corner of limbo with back against the wall and his eyes blank, dead-looking. Expressionless. The phone had been kicked and was in the middle of the floor, several feet away from Jesse. He had no interest in looking at it anymore. He was sick of communicating via a screen.

So he sat in the dim silence, wondering how long he could sit like that. With this armlet, how long could he sit still like a statue, doing nothing?

<Clover> Kenlie hadn’t walked away, and that became the tipping point. Clo couldn’t describe how good it felt to have someone look at her and, despite all of her flaws, despite all that she’d done, reassure her that she was loved. Only Jersey knew about the exchange. Clover hadn’t told Jesse, though it wasn’t some sort of secret. It wasn’t something that Clo needed to hide from anyone. After the meltdown following her early morning meeting, Clo spent a lot of her time going over her Christmas list, one she’d compiled four weeks ago; she spent time thinking about how much her family members irritated her, and how much Jesse’s inability to discipline them irritated her. For once, her mind wasn’t riddled with white noise or black holes. She had clear, coherent thoughts.

Leaving Circle had been a spontaneous decision, but she’d followed up by dressing relatively nice. She’d showered. She’d combed her hair. She’d actually spent time making herself look more than acceptable. The time she’d spent on the forum had only fueled her to do more with herself, to do more than sit around and mope. Clover didn’t want to think about every horrible thing she’d said or done. Moving made the thoughts bearable. Every little triumph reminded her that she was more than a collection of mistakes. And wanting to help her childer and stand up for the people she cared about? Those desires forced the guilt deeper into gut, to the point where she would have needed time to rediscover the feeling.

When she’d left, she’d told Jesse about the raid, but the raid was only the beginning. Clover went to Gullsborough to pick up one of the gifts on her list. She’d reserved the item when she first made the list, but she’d never gone back. The box of graphite pencils, lined up from the lightest shade to the darkest shade, was the perfect gift for Jesse, but Clo had almost given them to Victor. She’d given Victor the idea to pass off as his own. Lucky for her, Vic hadn’t taken her advice and pissed away a perfect opportunity. As she left the shop, she left with a wrapped box, the contents hidden beneath a thick layer of royal-blue wrapping paper. And just as quickly as she’d vanished, she reappeared within the warmth of her home. But Jesse wasn’t where she’d left him.

Moving toward him, she almost stepped on his phone. Clo nudged the device aside with the side of her boot and then continued forward. “I’m back from the raid,” she smiled, the wrapped present laid atop her palms. There was a pause, as if she were waiting for him to explode with joy and anticipation, and then she sunk down onto the floor. She sat across from him and took the first step back under the umbrella formed from their dark clouds. “It’s, uh, I can’t tell you what it is,” she tried again, the smile still on her face. There was something about the silver snowflakes dotting wrapping paper and the silver ribbons meeting in the middle of the package to create a curly mess of a bow. “It’s just one thing. There’s more.”

<Jesse Fforde> The atmosphere shifted. Something moved. Jesse blinked his dry eyes to see Clover, like an apparition out of the fog. Had it only been a single night? The raid had been fun, while it had lasted. It had been a good distraction; he didn’t have to control himself in a raid. Which was probably why, when Aria attacked and missed, he didn’t hesitate on hunting her down and attempting to slaughter her in a mess of complete psychological and emotional breakdown. It was hardly graceful. It was hardly inspiring. Maybe he wouldn’t tell Clover anything about it, either – he didn’t want another failure to mar her opinion of him, which somehow remained intact after all this time.

There was something different about her. Something … he took a breath, and he could smell her. The soap. The clear, defined scent that only belonged to Clover. His fingers twitched, his consciousness coming back to reality. His eyes drifted from her head to toe and back again; he watched her closely as she sat down in front of him. There was almost a sense of glee radiating from her. It confused Jesse. It was a different taste. It left his mouth dry, that same dread as before. Intensified. She was setting him up for failure.

He sat there in the same clothes he’d been in after the raid; bits of zombified gore clung to it, dried and flaking. There were splatters of Aria’s blood, too, from where his bullets and exploded through her chest. The blood of his own progeny. Why did it have to come to that? He didn’t move to take the gift. He cleared his throat and stared at it. It was so clean and crisp and he was dirty and not. “… it’s not Christmas yet.”

<Clover> Her smile dimmed and she looked down at the package as if she'd only realized the same. It wasn't Christmas. The wrapping paper was too much. The bow was too much. Everything about it was awful. The gift was rectangular, and no one wanted a rectangular gift. No one wanted such a hideous present. And it wasn't Christmas. Clover didn't even know if she wanted to hold onto the present. She felt the familiar chill that ran along her spine, the reminder that she was losing every ounce of happiness that she'd fought to regain. "No, it isn't Christmas, but it doesn't have to be Christmas yet," she heard herself say. "This can be an early Christmas present. This can be a weekend present. I planned this gift a month ago... I picked the wrapping paper. I picked the bow. I did all of this planning. Please take the present."

She’d pulled the words from somewhere inside of herself and forced her dark thoughts aside. The gift hadn’t changed. Nothing had really changed. No, her outlook had changed. Her gift wasn’t awful. He just needed a reminder of the time and energy she spent on the gift, on the surprise. And she had so much more planned. If he didn’t take the gift, if he didn’t enjoy the gift, then she had no idea what to do with her other plans. No one else on her Christmas list really mattered. In fact, she didn’t have to get anyone anything. She could have spent every dollar on herself, or she could have continued hoarding her money. “I didn’t get a card. It’s just,” she paused and looked down at the bit of light reflecting off the silver ribbon, “the gift seems like enough, for right now. You don’t need a card.”

What if he didn’t really like it? What if he pretended to like it? What if he accepted the gift and never used it? What if he was annoyed with her for even attempting to get him a gift? He’d already expressed his distaste for the holiday season, and yet she’d gone out and brought home a Christmas present, and she’d presented him with said Christmas present almost two weeks ahead of time. Clo bit down on her lower lip, her sharpened fangs barely puncturing the skin. She was too caught up in thinking about all of the horrible outcomes. Because she’d decided to do something nice. She could return it. Was it possible to return it? She could sell it. Could she sell it?

<Jesse Fforde> Jesse shook his head, even as he reached out to take the gift. It felt hefty in his hand. It had weight to it, and a coldness that seeped through the paper. No, he did not need a card. Cards, unless they were letters filled with sentimental words, weren’t useful to anyone. A card was useful if the gift was sent in the mail, and some clue was needed as to who it was from. But the gift’s giver was sitting right in front of him. No, he didn’t need a card. And he took the gift, even if he didn’t feel like he needed that, either. He took it, because Clover was making him feel guilty. She wasn’t doing it on purpose, but it was working anyway. She shouldn’t have had to explain herself.

There was the sound of material swishing against the floor as Jesse shifted, crossing his legs rather than keeping his knees at crooked angles in front of him. There was an apology resting on the tip of his tongue, but it didn’t greet the air. Instead, his gaze dropped to the wrapping; the bow. The pretty things that Clover had picked out, for him. She had put a lot of thought into this present and Jesse felt guilty, because he wasn’t sure he could summon the enthusiasm to like it. It was as if he were bereft of any emotion, and he didn’t know what to do with himself.

Taking a deep breath which he soon let out, slowly, he started to unwrap. Meticulously. The bow was not crumpled, and the paper was not torn. After a minute or so, the package was finally revealed; Jesse’s eyes gleamed, a remnant of glee escaping through the blues. His tongue swiped at his lower lip before he pulled that lip into his mouth, opening the tin to gaze upon the glories inside. Dirty fingers trailed over the different pencils, the charcoals, the utensils that every artist needed. Things that any artist could never have enough of.

“Can I draw you? As you are now?” he asked, finally lifting his gaze to Clover. He liked them. Of course he did. He wanted to use them, straight away.

<Clover> Clo watched his fingers as he slowly pried the paper from around the rectangular box. If it were her, she might have ripped the paper right down the center, shredding it until she revealed the contents. The fact that he took such care made her even more unsure. There was an art in the way that he moved, in the way that he drew out his actions and kept her in suspense, but there was an absence of excitement. He should have torn the paper into the finest of pieces. When had she begun judging him based on something as simple as opening a gift? The thought made her feel guilty, as if she had no right to expect anything of him. She’d given him the gift to try and lift his spirits; the gift was a tool. The gift was something meant to entice him, to draw him toward her. She felt as if she were trying to lure him to her just to trap him, like prey.

Even when he’d finally removed the wrapping paper, he hadn’t expressed his approval, or disapproval, for that matter. Forearms resting atop her crossed legs, she tried to gauge his reaction from his facial expressions. Clover couldn’t tell whether he was thinking or whether he was judging. Had she gotten the wrong pencils? She opened her mouth to suggest the possibility of returning the gift and trying again, but she stopped herself. She’d researched. She’d put forth just the right amount of effort. The box, and all of its contents, were perfect for him. And his next question reassured her that she’d done well. His expression had been one of acceptance, if nothing else.

“Right now?” Clo looked down at herself and took in her outfit. She’d worn clean clothes, but they were so plain. Black leggings, a white t-shirt, and a black cardigan. Maybe he only meant to draw her face. Was she that presentable? Was she that insecure? “Okay,” she blurted out, challenging her thoughts. “Do I need to do anything special? I could take off my clothes.” It was spoken casually, indicating a lack of seriousness.

<Jesse Fforde> Something did stir within Jesse. The man couldn’t completely deny the things that made him who he was. Art was the foundation upon which he was built. Every time his mother had argued with his Uncle, every time his Uncle had hit her, every time he was left alone with a drunk for a mother, to avoid her he would find a quiet, secret space and he would draw. His emotions were vented through the pencil or the ink. At school, he didn’t do his schoolwork. He failed everything. Even art – because he didn’t do what he was told to do. He did what he wanted, which defied the curriculum. And when he could have become a drug addict, when he could have become one of those gangster he so liked to slaughter, it was art which gave him a new life. A hope. Something to strive for. Something to build.

<Jesse Fforde>At some point over the past few weeks, he’d lost his grip. Art had fallen into the background. It wasn’t something that he had thought about. His sketchbook had ceased to become a thing of comfort; even the journal he had started as a kind of suicide letter had been left by the wayside. He hadn’t done it on purpose – he’d just stopped thinking about it.

The gift acted as a reminder. The pencils beneath his fingers felt like home. They felt like a fix. Maybe if he picked them up and used each of them until there was nothing left, he would be okay. These were fleeting thoughts that didn’t stick; they were hardly formed. There was a twitch at the corners of his lips. A smile at Clover’s casual offer. “Maybe another time,” he said. It wasn’t out of the question. He was a fiend with his sketchbook. Everything he saw that he liked, he sketched, when he was in the right mind. And sometimes, he used the daytime to catch up on what he might have missed. He’d catch a naked Clover when she was sleeping.

“Just as you are,” he said. “Maybe… go do something. Read a book. Watch TV. Something… just you,” he said. And he would have to go find a sketch book. There had to be one laying around, somewhere. There was another blink as he eradicated the dryness from his eyes, as he shifted, holding the gift aloft as he moved to stand.

<Clover> He moved to stand, but she stayed seated on the floor. In fact, she mimicked his previous posture. She moved across the floor to rest her back against the wall and looked out at the room. The place looked less than welcoming, oddly enough. Light hit objects from numerous angles and cast harsh shadows along the walls. The long shadows laid out across the floor looked like dark columns, thick and vertical, crooked and horizontal. His position had been a pleasant one, she thought, her words laced with sarcasm.

His suggestion to read a book made her scoff. And she’d seen so many movies and television shows that she could have thrown up enough quotes to coat the entire floor. Leaning her head back, she felt the back of her skull connect with the wall. She stared up at the ceiling as if she were going to find some idea in that direction. Usually, she went out. That had been a hobby, if one could consider leaving a hobby. She had sought enjoyment in something as simple as moving, and yet that had changed. She searched for enjoyment in other places, in pillows and sheets.

“I’m fine here,” she spoke, still looking up at the ceiling. There was a certainty in her words, a certain kind of finality. She’d stated that she was fine. She’d declared her contentment. And it was odd, that she took comfort in sitting on the floor. “I could stay quiet? Or I could tell you about what happened with Kenlie. I could tell you about,” she paused, a thoughtful noise interrupting the sentence, “well, I’m not really sure. I think that’s it.” There was an obvious difference in the way that she spoke, one that she had yet to notice. Where she might have mumbled, her words spoken under her breath or buried beneath hesitation, she spoke clearly. She dared to say she was more than content. Her mood lingered somewhere beneath happiness.

Clover pulled her phone from within the side of her right boot and turned on the screen. The bright light lit up her face and cast a shadow behind her. There was an intent to create the shadow, an effort to maintain some semblance of normalcy. She still had text messages, some answered and some unanswered. She stretched her legs out in front of herself. Her posture had changed the moment she’d reached for her phone. “Jersey said hello…”

<Jesse Fforde> Clover was like a cat, scooting in to take the place of the nearest warm body when said warm body got up to go to the toilet, or get something to eat. As soon as Jesse’s spot was vacated, Clover had shifted into it. It almost made Jesse laugh, if he weren’t so disoriented. All the more so because he was disoriented. He wasn’t accustomed to feeling unsure. Unsure of where to put his feet, on what his direction was. He almost didn’t go anywhere. Kenlie? He’d texted Kenlie, too, but he hadn’t got anything else out of her except that she wasn’t ready to be around. But, Clover had been closer to Kenlie than Jesse had ever been. Kenlie wasn’t blooded progeny. There wasn’t the same amount of disappointment.

Jesse just nodded, and put the gift back down on the ground. For a few moments he paused, just watching Clover. The way she’d shifted, the way she’d rearranged herself to fiddle on her phone. It was so very Clover, always distracted by her phone. Jesse resisted the urge to slam his heel down against his own as he passed by it. As he circled the room, rifling through his regular spaces. Finally he found one of his sketchbooks. Over where it should be. Against one of the walls was a desk that he used as a space to sketch, when he wanted to. The pad was A3, and there were only a few soiled pages.

When he came back, he took a seat where Clover had previously been seated. They swapped positions. Although he had nothing to lean against, Jesse made himself comfortable anyway. Hunched over with the pad in his lap, his fingers again grazed over the tools at his disposal. He wanted to tell Clover about Aria, but he didn’t know where to start. He wanted to ask what had happened with Kenlie, but he couldn’t think of how. So he remained silent. He should have told her to tell Jersey that he said hi back, but he really didn’t. Instead, he plucked one of the lighter shades of lead from the case. The tip scratched against the thick paper, the first curve placed. This would not be abstract. This would not be quick, or hasty. It would be proper. It would be a portrait. It would be his focus – at least for the next hour or two.

<Clover> The silence still irked her, and yet she refused to dwell on his reply, or lack thereof. She’d grown accustomed to his lack of response. He didn’t tell her whether to mimic his silence or whether to treat him to her words, so waited. She waited until he returned to tuck her phone away, to pretend as if she hadn’t filled his temporary absence with mindless text messages and attempts at reaching out to people. She hadn’t heard from her childer in days, excluding the forum.

“I asked Kenny to meet me at the Handlebar,” Clo began, keeping her legs and feet still. She wanted to fidget, despite the fact that she had no reason to give in to any nerves. They had no reason to have such secrets, secrets contrived of casual conversations. “I told her about what happened. I didn’t want Victor telling her first. That may be why she’s hesitant meeting with other people.”

She added nothing else, no other details. How Kenny had looked. How things had gone. Clover chose to bait him into asking her questions, if he really wanted to know more. And if he didn’t rise to the occasion, then she had every intention of dragging him further into her story. He’d been a part of it, whether he knew it or not. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been included, but Clo wanted to tell Kenny. She wanted to be comfortable telling the people she cared about, the ones she actually gave a damn about. Kenny had been one of those people. The woman still was.

Clo tipped her head back again, leaning against the wall as if she needed the support. She’d stolen Jesse’s spot, so he had nothing to lean against. She noticed then, when she felt the movement of her spine, when she heard the soft crack and the realignment. Clo loved the way he looked, even hunched over his sketchpad. There were many adjectives she could have summoned to describe the way he looked. The moment was dedicated to him. As the graphite ground against the paper, Clover enjoyed the view of him as much as he must have enjoyed his burgeoning artwork. “I like the way you look right now.” It was added in, an welcomed interruption in their real conversation. At least, she found it welcoming. They were being serious; they were trying to get through the story of how Clover had explained her actions to Kenny. But Clo kept smiling. “You’re really concentrating on this. Are you sure you don’t want me to take my clothes off?” There was a quick wiggle of her brows and then she tried to remove the smile from her face. She tried. She had to get back to the story because it was actually quite important, but she wanted to tease him. She wanted to pry something more from him that didn’t center around making him disappointed in himself, using guilt to garner reactions.

<Jesse Fforde> Jesse was, of course, well aware that his silence irked other people. It irked them because they knew he was capable of noise. They knew he could speak. Phoenix had claimed she’d known it all along; had accused him of lies and scheming rather than asking him what his story was. The woman had never once sought to understand Jesse, but instead had projected upon him a version of him that she could be swayed from. Once, his silence had been an invitation. It had been something he couldn’t be held accountable for, so they had taken advantage of it. The stories he had heard! Now, though? Now, his silence wasn’t as acceptable.

Except Clover allowed him to indulge. She spoke into the silence, just as Jesse had wanted her to. He had realised that he missed it, the way people had talked to him so much. He missed the way they strove to fill the silence, because they could not stand it. Was that what Clover was doing? It didn’t matter why, in the end. Again, she had risen to the challenge that Jesse had presented, and she was flying over the hurdle that he had become. Another whisper of a smile touched his lips, but this time it stayed a little longer.

“My first portrait of you isn’t going to be Titanic themed,” he said. Yeah, he’d heard the phrase before. As soon as any drunk girl had found out that he was an artist, of sorts, there’d been that line: Oooh, will you draw me like one of your French girls? Sometimes, he had. Most of the time, not. Most of the time as soon as their clothes were off, there’d been no drawing at all. But he liked the way he’d said that; he dwelled on it, after the words had passed his lips. He didn’t want his first portrait of Clover to be crude. Implying that there would be more. There would be time for more. He cleared his throat.

“I was texting Kenlie. Earlier,” he said. Had it been at the same time that Clover was with her? Maybe. Clover hadn’t been here. And she had met Kenlie. Had she been with her the whole time? “She didn’t… share. How did she take it?” he asked. He didn’t think that Victor would have told Kenlie. To Jesse, it seemed as if Victor thought he had a right to Clover; that he wouldn’t have thought that he’d done anything wrong. So why would he bring it up? But he didn’t spill vitriolic bitterness. He was over that, now.

<Clover> “‘Titanic themed’?” Clover repeated the words, though they were laced with confusion. Her smile had been replaced by a thoughtful frown, one almost like a childish pout. Had Jesse been eating plants again? Had he made a reference to some previous conversation? The mention of the famed ship made her feel as if she’d uttered the secret word and he’d opened a door to a branched conversation. “I don’t understand,” she admitted, unhappy with herself. “I don’t want my portrait to have a nautical theme. Were you joking?” She couldn’t see the development of his drawing, so she couldn’t answer her own question by spying on him. The problem? Clover had never seen the James Cameron movie Titanic. She preferred grim movies: She watched psychological thrillers and slasher movies. Titanic was a tragic love story, and Clover didn’t really care for tragic love stories.

Kenlie. Yes, they had been about to touch the topic of the early-hour meeting at the Handlebar. “I think she took it too well, but I’m not Kenlie. If I were faced with that problem, I would have killed the woman. I would have killed my husband too. I guess,” she sighed, ending with a quick shrug of her shoulders. “She said she still loved me. She made it seem as if she’d been expecting it to happen. It should be a good thing that she still cares--and I’m happy that I still have her--but it feels wrong. She shouldn’t forgive me. She shouldn’t forgive him. He’s a piece of ****. He’s a selfish, self-entitled, piece of ****.”

Clover stared off at the rest of the room, letting her own words settle atop her chest. The heavy feeling reminded her that she had no reason to hang onto such views, but she let the negativity linger. She held onto the smallest of wrongs and enjoyed the way they festered. “She asked me if we loved each other, and I said the feelings were one-sided. I should have lied, but it was important to tell the truth. Because I didn’t trust him to. He would have made himself look like a victim. Kenny told me to tell her if I thought she should leave Vic.” The memory of the meeting made her feel as if she were back in the bar. She saw the way Kenny looked; she saw the way Kenny threw back a drink. “I made it sound like Vic was drunk and desperate. I know. Before you say anything, I know. Jersey has already expressed her disappointment. I shouldn’t have acted in his defense at all. You didn’t see how she looked.” He hadn’t been there. No one else had been there. Clo had made sure that it would be time between the two of them, time without Victor to influence the conversation, to sway one or both of them.

<Jesse Fforde> It was far too amusing to correct Clover, or to explain. The hint of a smile remained upon Jesse’s lips as he continued to sketch, ready to bark at Clover to stay still if she tried to get up and look. If he said anything, it might have been to tell her that it was his portrait; he was the one in charge, and she didn’t have a say in the matter. Maybe this was not something that he would give to Clover. Maybe it was something he wanted to keep, for the times Clover wasn’t home. Something he could look at.

Or maybe it would be a gift. He hadn’t thought about it, nor did he think about it now. He swapped the light pencil for some charcoal, using the stick to add the first hints of shading. He listened to Clover talk about Kenlie; about how she had already discussed the situation with Jersey. There was an odd twitch in Jesse’s chest, but he ignored it. Stealthily, he pushed past the negativity and focused on what he was doing with the charcoal. Focused on the way it smudged beneath the pad of his thumb.

“So Victor wasn’t drunk and desperate? Who instigated?” he asked, pausing momentarily. Why was he asking these questions? He told himself it was because he wanted the whole story. He needed to know what had happened, in its entirety, before he could weigh in on what Kenlie should do or how she should have reacted. “... so you think that was the reason why she told me she wasn’t ready, and that she wanted to crawl back into her hole?” he asked. The question was asked as a way to show he was still focused on Kenlie. But deep down he wondered whether his masochistic colours were showing. The clarification wasn’t just for the benefit of this conversation; it was for himself, too. They were questions he hadn’t been ready to ask, before. But they had lingered. He wanted to know.

<Clover> His line of questioning didn’t relate to Kenlie, and suddenly, Clover wanted to change the subject. She wanted her words to lead them back to the playfulness that had wrapped so tightly around her, the playfulness that set her heart aflame. His question picked at scabs, and she knew that she wasn’t the only one feeling unsure of the response. He didn’t really want to know, just as she didn’t really want to know about his previous sexual escapades. No matter what she said, she answered the question. He’d forced her hand. “I think it was a lot to take in and she might not have been ready.”

By skipping his first questions, Clover had given him an answer. She could have ignored them altogether, but something made her reconsider. If he thought he was capable, then she had no right to tell him otherwise. Clover closed her eyes and fiddled with the pockets on her cardigan. “Tell me about the women you’ve been with,” she countered. “That’s the exchange.” There should have been a pause, a moment where she allowed him to answer, to accept her terms, but she didn’t wait. In her mind, if he wanted to put himself through the ordeal, then she thought it fair that she go through the same discomfort. She lived in a constant state of jealousy, so what difference did it make? How many times had she wondered whether he touched other women the way that he touched her? How many times had she wondered whether he said the same words to some other woman? Clo had built a wall around those thoughts; she’d encased the poisonous words behind layers of confidence, the type of confidence she had yet to deconstruct.

“Tell me...have you told those other women the things you’ve told me?” Her question sparred with the remnants of their light-hearted conversation, but she refused to give in to the negativity, not when she’d experienced such unadulterated happiness. He’d smiled for her. “Have you held them the same way? Have you kissed them the same way?”

No, Victor wasn’t drunk and desperate. And while she still supported her harsh opinion on Victor, Clover couldn’t deny her own faults and weaknesses. Her response to his questions should have come first, but she’d bought herself time. She delayed telling him because she didn’t want to hurt him, which was always a possibility with such discussions. The past. That’s what it was. History. “He wasn’t drunk and desperate. I instigated it. It,” she stopped and let out a frustrated sigh, “it doesn’t really matter. Not to Kenny. Not to you. It shouldn’t. She loves him, and he loves her. And I don’t love him. She’ll be okay.”

<Jesse Fforde> This was the kind of conversation that Jesse should be wary of. Clover was female, and women did like to lead men into these kinds of traps, didn’t they? But Clover, Jesse had discovered, was so very unlike the rest of her kin. There were some similarities, yes, but a woman should never be judged by her sex. Just as a man shouldn’t. Jesse had touted this philosophy so much in the past. A woman shouldn’t be branded for how many men she slept with, when a man could get away with sleeping with twice the number. Thus, Jesse couldn’t and shouldn’t judge Clover for her actions. Could he really blame her?

Luckily, Jesse’s brain was functioning in a kind of sticky fog. Thoughts swirled in a dark, molasses-like pattern. Emotions were barred from the process - at least, they were held at bay so as not to affect the process, even if they lurked, raging, somewhere in the background.

It took him a while to reply, though it would be obvious by the way the pencil stopped its frenetic movement, the way his brows furrowed and he stared at the page, that he was thinking about how best to answer. Once upon a time he would have been blase. He would have joked with Clover. He would have been proud of his conquests. But they had progressed beyond such frivolity, and she deserved more. Besides which, Jesse was not feeling frivolous. Not in the slightest.

Finally, he lifted his eyes. The pencil was poised, but he’d stopped sketching - for the moment.

“I’ve only ever told one woman that I love her,” he said. He didn’t need to elaborate. Clover would know who it was, and how that love had been ruined. Maybe it would make her angry, to be reminded that Jesse’s opinion on love was tainted. But he had a point he wanted to make - a very important one. Love meant sweet **** all.

“But I have told you things that I never told her. I thought that she knew everything about me, but… she only knew what I told her. You… know things that I didn’t have to tell you. You figured them out on your own,” he said, canting his head to the side. But he had been more honest with Clover than he had been with Grey, recently. Grey only accepted his darkness out of kindness, he thought. Clover, though? She accepted it as a likeness.

“Before her, I never told women much at all. I didn’t have a voice to tell them anything. Whatever I communicated to them, it was only enough to get into their pants. Most women I didn’t get to know enough…” he said. Most women had been one night stands. But he had learned a lot about women in his short life. About what they liked and didn’t like. More importantly, that they all liked different things.

“I might have held them the same way. I might have kissed them the same way. They might have taught me how to hold them and kiss them to their specifications. Without them, I might not know how to hold you right. To kiss you right,” he said. His words were slow. He didn’t want to sound like he was defending himself, but he figured that’s how it would have come out. It was an elegant way of saying he’d fucked a lot of women. But they had a policy of honesty, and he wasn’t going to fall short now.

Though there were things he didn’t say. It did matter. But he couldn’t justify why. So he wouldn’t say anything.

<Clover> His first words ignited her fury, but she bit her tongue. Clover reminded herself that she had been the one to offer such an exchange, and yet she hadn’t meant for him to go there. She hadn’t wanted him to go into such hostile territory. Their conversation had no room for talks of loving someone, or for not loving someone. The agreement had been one built around previous sexual partners. She’d expected something devoid of emotion. She’d expected something as equally disconcerting. “I see,” she managed, the words tucked so neatly between his own. Her voice was so low that she barely heard it. She hadn’t wanted him to hear her unintelligent response, but she’d felt the need to say something, anything.

[Clover]

<Clover> How many times had he compared and contrasted the women? And was that what she really wanted to know? The more time he took to gather his words and produce a response, the more time she had to collect her thoughts and quell her temper. Jealousy twisted her insides, even though she had no reason for the emotion. But there were other thoughts, other doubts, that maintained the cycle. Those thoughts had nothing to do with Jesse. But they hurt him, all the same.

“Okay.” The word was more of a sigh, one meant to offer some type of reassurance while also revealing her own displeasure. Of course she wasn’t pleased. She hadn’t gone into the talk with false hopes of striking up a sudden, impenetrable bond. “Okay,” she repeated, “I guess we’re more aware now.”

As usual, she began tugging at the sleeves of her cardigan, toying with her clothing in an effort to shift the focus from the conversation to something entirely unrelated. She knew she had to say something else. She had to offer something more. He’d tried for delicacy, and he’d tried to draw her in by focusing on her rather than the other women. His attempts were noble. If she’d allowed for spontaneity, she might have lost her temper, yelled at him, and stomped out. She admitted the possibility to herself. Clo still felt the underlying urge to yell at him, even if only for using the word love, or having the nerve to apply the word.

“Who you are is shaped by what you’ve done. Sex counts. That’s the simple way of putting it. But don’t try to make me think I should be happy you’ve had such a lively past. Your level of sexual prowess isn’t as high on my scale as you may think. If it were, I would have put a lot more effort into trying to sleep with you,” she joked, mixing the seriousness into her response.

She’d answered him. He’d answered her. The conversation could have ended, and both of them could have moved onto something more enjoyable, something more fulfilling. Clover could have focused on being a proper model, or she could have enjoyed watching an artist at work. “I had one serious relationship. It was awful. Really, really awful. Somehow, I always ended up right back in it. It wasn’t even love. It was envy and jealousy. We wasted years together, going back and forth with fighting and cheating. He eventually left me. And I don’t take abandonment well, so I went after him.” Clo couldn’t have shifted enough to relieve the nervous tension, so she remained perfectly still and avoided looking at Jesse. “He’s alive, thanks to Jersey. The others were...none of them mattered at all. I just wanted to feel something, and they helped with that, for a short time. This,” she paused to motion between them, “is good.”

<Jesse Fforde> Jesse watched Clover carefully, gauging her response as best as he could. If there was one person who was able, at this point and time, to stir his emotions, it was Clover. But, even then, it was only to a certain extent. Did he want her to be angry with him? There was regret, nestled there in his chest. He should have been more crude. He should have laid out all the details without trying to be delicate. He should have made her angry. He wanted to feel the sting of her hand as she slapped him across the face; the aching pain of a blade as it lodged into his chest, or his thigh, or his gut.

Instead, he had been tactful. We are more aware now, she had said. Aware of what, exactly? Regardless of tact, there was still something in her tone that was not at all amused. But he was glad to have been honest, despite how he had delivered said honesty. Surely, she had to have known that about him? It was no state secret, that Jesse had done the rounds. It was a question that she had asked - and perhaps they had done enough of punishing each other - or themselves - for this conversation.

Rather than comment upon his own behaviour - and Clover’s disapproval of it - Jesse instead listened to the story of her own past. A serious relationship that was not love, but the only serious relationship she’d had. And now here they were, and she had told him that she loved him. What did that mean for him, if he fucked up in the future? Now, he could only stare. It wasn’t that the information shocked him, or scared him. It intrigued him. Curiosity got the better of him, and he asked the questions that, in hindsight, he probably shouldn’t have. Tact had gone right out the window - but he had to test if there were limits to their vow of honesty.

“This is good?” he asked, mimicking Clover’s motion of gesturing between the two of them. He cleared his throat, and made a couple of thoughtful though distracted strokes with the pencil upon the page.

“... so what you’re saying, then, is that you had one serious relationship, only one, and it was not love. But you love me. Will you slaughter me ten times over if I leave you?” he asked, wondering if love would only heighten the jealousy and the envy to a height at which bloodlust blinded all self control.

This was where he should have made promises. Any man in a relationship would make promises. Such as: I wouldn’t cheat on you. I wouldn’t leave you. I’ll do all that I can to make you happy. But Jesse could not be sure of such promises, and he would not lie to Clover. He would not lie to himself.

“How do I make you feel?”

<Clover> Clover straightened her legs out and let out another long sigh. She hadn’t intended for him to take her words and steer himself down such a long and winding road. And he’d chosen such a winding road. He’d made statements and asked questions that she didn’t enjoy, that she had no plans for answering. Her previous tale, however short, had been to reveal more of herself, and yet he had tugged at the remaining cover, trying to reveal more and more. Clo hadn’t anticipated such comments. Faced with a choice to reply, to deny, or to ignore, she chose to reply.

“Yes, I had one serious relationship,” she said, “and yes.” There was a lack of specification, but her second response, another affirmative, had been in response to his comment on love. Yes, she loved him. Hadn’t she told him that once before? Clo operated under the assumption that once was enough, at least until he decided to grace her with his own reply. “It’s never a matter of if, Jesse. I’m not stupid. It’s a matter of when. I’m aware. I learned that much. When you decide to leave me,” she began, stressing the importance of correcting his word choice, “then yes. I’ll try to kill you. I’ll try to kill her too. And if that fails, I’ll keep trying. I’ll keep trying until I feel better. And death won’t spare you.”

Honesty. That’s what they had decided on. But in that moment, she wondered if she’d gone too far. Hadn’t she told him the tale of Zach? Hadn’t he read the story of her infamous ex-boyfriend, the last connection to her humanity? Perhaps he’d missed those entries. Perhaps she’d hidden them. There were possibilities. “I spared Zach because of Jersey. And right now? Well, he’s alive now because he’s suffering. He’ll suffer until he eventually passes away. If I’m honest with you, and we’ve decided to be honest with one another, I also keep him alive because he’s all I have left from my time as a human. He represents my past.”

His last question required more thought. She felt as if he were poking at her. He’d chosen just the right question, just the right words, to make her feel as if she were beneath a microscope. The length of silence made it seem as if she weren’t going to answer the question, but she cleared her throat. She had to prepare herself. “I’m still here, aren’t I? I didn’t run away. I didn’t leave you. I feel like I found someone that understands me. More often than not, you do. You know what I need to hear. You know what I need you to do. You make me feel,” she paused, struggling to identify the emotion, “accepted. To an extent. But I’ll always worry that you can’t handle me, that you can’t handle what I say or what I do. I just told you I’d kill you if you left me...and I’m incredibly jealous. I don’t want you touching other women. You’re mine. And that level of possessiveness can be scary.”

<Jesse Fforde> Clover’s certainly only caused the tiniest twitch; Jesse was a patient man. If he were certain that he would never leave Clover, he wouldn’t sit there and argue the point. He wouldn’t sit there and defend himself and tell her that she was the only woman he ever wanted to be with. If he were certain, he’d wait. Time would show her what his arguments, in that moment, might fail to convince her.

Instead of arguing, Jesse was thrust into the darker corners of his imagination. He did not know whether he would leave her, but there was one thing he could be certain of. If he did leave her, it wouldn’t be for another woman. Right now, he could not imagine that any woman would want him. Carnal pleasures were not the pleasures that he wanted. Maybe death could be his woman - that one that he would leave Clover for. It almost made him smile, imagining that cliche grim reaper in its black robes, but with a curvy, womanly form; black-tipped nails curled around the sexy, sharp scythe. The one that could cut off his metaphorical head. Weren’t the two of them already dancing? Hadn’t he called to her, on several occasions, with the hope that she would hurry the **** up and give him what he wanted?

Death could spare him, he wanted to say, if death was the woman he was courting. If he left Clover for death, Clover couldn’t exactly track him down to slaughter him; she couldn’t exactly slaughter death, unless she were a Goddess in sheep’s clothing. It was not a scenario that he would offer to Clover, not even in jest; it would hurt her, the woman who had, in a round-a-bout way, just confessed for the second time that she loved him. No, he would not confess that he just might leave her for death.

Instead, he focused on this human of hers. Zach. He did remember reading something - the journal was still around, somewhere. Clover had taken it back, but that didn’t mean Jesse couldn’t find it, if he wanted to. He hadn’t read all the entries; had told her he would dip in and out. Could he remember much about Zach? A last name, perhaps?

It pleased him to know that he made Clover feel accepted. That she felt like he knew her better than anyone else. Hadn’t they already agreed that they were both equally as jealous? Even now, there was some part of him that hated Victor. Couldn’t stand to be around Victor. But Victor was his progeny, and he couldn’t be hated forever - he just needed to learn his place. Jesse slowly licked his lips, taking a deep breath in as he thought about this human, lying somewhere in a comatose state. Had she said that he was comatose? It pleased Jesse that he was suffering, though it didn’t please Jesse that Clover was still clinging to her humanity. Would she leave him, given the chance? Would she jump back into her human skin without a second thought, if it were offered to her?

“If I told you that I’d like to go and find Zach and end his suffering right now, would it make you feel better about your apparent scary possessiveness?” he asked. He was a man of little words. But it was a pertinent question.

<Clover> Clover told herself she hadn’t expected him to defend himself, to reassure her or encourage her, but it was a lie. She’d wanted him to tell her exactly what she wanted to hear, and he’d failed. Clo had set him up to fail. How easy it became to fall back into old habits. Her negative self-talk reemerged like an old friend, disguising itself as realism with a touch of pessimism. She’d waited for him to show the kind of strength he lacked, and she had the nerve to be disappointed. Clo knew he hadn’t recovered. Clo knew that Jesse lived depression, that he became an embodiment of depression.

He’d pried her open and bathed in her admissions, and he had nothing to offer in return. He was of the same belief: They were on a pre-planned course, a course built for two, and they had an end in sight. Clover stopped herself there. She stopped her nervous habit of playing with her sleeves and forced herself to lean back against the wall. She allowed the wall to lend her support and guide her far away from the pointless thoughts that plagued her. One day at a time. That had been her goal, in the beginning. She had to take everything one day at a time.

One brow raised, she tried reading Jesse’s face. Had he asked her a question? Or rather, had he said he wanted to kill Zach? Of course she’d heard him. Her sense of hearing hadn’t been impaired. She hadn’t been in the middle of her thoughts when he’d presented the scenario.

“Yes and no,” she sighed, the words flowing like the air from her mouth. “Yes, because I like knowing you feel that way too. But,” she paused, “I still don’t think you fully understand. It doesn’t matter.” She dismissed the topic with a shake of her head, as if she were able to just stop their conversation and redirect it. And yet, something about what he’d said struck a nerve. He’d said he wanted to take something from her that she was unwilling to give. “When you can give me something as equally as important to you, something that’s also meaningful to me, then I’ll let you kill him. Until then, he can be moved from hospital to hospital.”

Clo wondered if she’d taken a stand on the wrong topic. He wouldn’t have allowed her to hunt his ex-lover down and rip her to pieces. Not that she wanted to do such a thing. Where she might have lapsed into silence, she began to speak once more. “Why does it bother you? Is it just about showing dominance?” From where she sat, she watched him. She let her eyes ghost over his form, and then she focused in on his face. She looked for other indications. “Do you want to see my reaction? I would want to see your reaction, if I were killing someone you were once close to. I’d want you to watch me, but I’d prefer if you helped. And if it weren’t someone you were close to? If I got jealous, and you did what you’re doing right now, with this lack of reassurance and your scientific evaluation of me, I think I’d be more furious with you.”

She’d made herself upset over an imagined wrong, so she sat there for a few minutes and tried to keep the scowl from her lips. The imagined wrong had a root in memories, in past situations. She’d felt the jealousy and hostility before, but they couldn’t go back and right the so-called wrongs. “This is a stupid subject,” she huffed, cutting her glare to the side.

<Jesse Fforde> The waves shifted beneath the surface; ice had packed itself around Jesse’s exterior, and though the tides might be strong underneath, they failed to affect him like they should. They failed to crack the ice. The blue of his eyes was dark, unforgiving, unshifting. One would have to look close, and deep, to see the waters shifting. This topic should have had him moving. Once upon a time he’d have laughed; he’d have crawled toward Clover and kissed the frown from her face. He’d have distracted her with carnal pleasures. He’d have turned it into a game, a joke. Something to be teased and poked at. Something not to be taken seriously, regardless of how serious the subject.

Would that have only made it worse, though? Would she prefer dismissal over… what did she say? Lack of reassurance and scientific evaluation? A subject she proclaimed as dropped, and yet she continued, her words short and sharp, darts shooting from her tongue because they could not be contained. She said it didn’t matter. She said she didn’t like the topic. But Jesse wasn’t done. She had asked questions, and he would rude not to answer them.

“It’s not about dominance. It’s about selfishness, about wanting all of you, not parts. It’s about… guilt. If I were to destroy the last thing that connected you to your humanity, then all ties would be severed. You wouldn’t be looking back, or holding back. I’d have all of you,” he said. As if her humanity were the dock, and he’d lured her out onto his rough-and tumble raft. With one swift swipe at the rope, he could take her away from that dock; they could ride the waves together.

“See, that’s the point,” he said. The sketch was abandoned, for now, his arms crossed over it as he sat there, seemingly calm and unmoving. “I forced this on you. Not only you, but the rest of them. You want that last connection to your humanity because you don’t want to let it go. I took that from you. I should regret it. I don’t. I’m angry because you don’t like it as much as I do. I’m not saying it’s the right way to feel, but it’s how I feel.

“I thought we promised each other honesty, Clo. How can I reassure you when I can’t reassure myself? Do you want me to lie to you? If I don’t understand, then explain it to me,” he said with a slow shrug. As if it were that simple.

<Clover> Falling. His words had her feeling as if she were freefalling. The ground seemed so near, and she didn’t want to suffer such a rough landing, even if she knew she would survive. When he finished, she’d already shattered. She’d watched as her body shattered into thousands of little pieces, each one more jagged than the last. He’d called her out on her connection with her humanity; he’d captured her words and turned them on her, jabbing them at her as if he were wielding a knife. He’d already taken half her world, and yet he wanted everything. He wanted her freefalling. He wanted her to give him everything, without knowing if he could reciprocate. His words made her cling even tighter to her little haven. She wanted to shield what was left of her humanity and lock it deep inside of herself.

Jesse had forced vampirism onto her. He wasn’t lying. He’d ripped her life from her hands and shoved her into Fforde, where he expected her to pledge allegiance to a mismatched bunch he identified as family. The fact that he had no regrets wounded her in a way that she had yet to identify. Had she expected him to regret? Had she expected him to apologize? Had he apologized to her before? Her memory clouded over. Even though she remembered the most outlandish things, the most obscure facts, she couldn’t recall if he’d ever apologized for taking her life, for ruining her life.

“Jesse, we’re monsters,” she stated. “Sometimes, in the middle of things, I realize what I’m doing and what I am. I miss the simplicity I associate with humans. They don’t have to worry about the thirst. They don’t have to worry about the masquerade. They don’t have to worry about hunters. They can go outside whenever they please. They see sunrises and sunsets. They lead lives that are just as meaningful. They have generations. They have futures, real futures. And what do we have? What the **** do we have?” Her voice rose as she went along. When had she begun to get so emotional? They were words she’d been waiting to tell someone, to share with someone. Her self-loathing. Her opinion that they were monsters. Her view that they lacked a real purpose. “What I have left, you can’t take that from me. And right now, you can’t reassure me. I can’t reassure myself either. I can’t give it to you when you can’t give me all of yourself. I can’t let you take everything. I can’t just throw myself at your mercy.”

She’d never given all of herself to anyone. Severing the final tie to her human life meant doing such. Clover feared that losing the last piece of her humanity meant relinquishing control. She thought that where she might have shown restraint, she would give in entirely. She feared being caught in a feral state, and she feared succumbing to the numbness she’d only just experienced.

“I don’t want you to lie to me. I don’t want you to fake things for me. Can you honestly say you severed all ties to your own humanity? Can you look at me and say you don’t miss a single thing?” Her voice cracked and she hated it. Immediately, her expression hardened. She crossed her arms over her chest and pulled her legs toward herself. Sitting, cross-legged, she stared him right in the eyes. “I’m a killer. I enjoy killing. I enjoy hurting people. I enjoy teasing people. I enjoy manipulating people. I have plenty of qualities that I never had as a human. Sometimes, I don’t recognize myself. I’m an entirely different person. And every now and then, I miss her. I miss that Clover. I liked her. She’s still here, buried beneath this ********. I see her and I feel her when I’m at my best. And when I’m at my worst, she helps me recognize when I’m going too far.”

For a moment, it seemed as if she were done, as if she’d run the point home. She thought she’d said all she wanted to say. But she spoke again. Quietly. So softly only they would have heard. “I’m afraid, okay?”

<Jesse Fforde> Jesse watched as Clover’s passion lit her up from the inside out. It was as if her body quivered with it, doused with tiny flickering flames that only he could see. Maybe he was imagining them, suddenly not wanting to sketch this vibrant woman in black and white. She was not black and white. She was a veritable rainbow - and not as a cliche. There were no butterflies and sunshine to be had from Clover, but Jesse had never known the old one. The one that she admitted to missing. What was she like, back when she had all the things she missed? Did she laugh more?

Jesse knew that he would not trade. This Clover had depth; she had this passion that he found irrevocably alluring. It had always been there, but she’d only shown it to him in increments, until now. Now, he knew that he could push at her buttons and he could elicit this kind of reaction. Though this time, he had not done it on purpose. Not consciously, anyway. The words, the statements, the admissions and the confessions spilled from her in a deluge of wavering strength and clipped insecurities. He had taken a scalpel to her skin and had cut her open, head to toe, until she was completely bared to him. He shouldn’t take pleasure in it, but it was a selfish need to indulge, to wallow in her passions. Because, in this moment, he felt so few of his own.

A man who had accepted his imminent death is one who had released his hold on all earthly passions.

She was right, of course. The first part of Clover’s monologue was taken, like a gift. It was neatly tucked into a dark corner of Jesse’s mind. The things that she missed and the bitterness that she must harbour toward the man who’d taken them from her. In that moment, she looked like a timid creature fighting for survival; one who clung desperately to the last breath of life, hoping for a miracle. And, just like that, Jesse tossed the sketch pad aside. On the clean white page there now sat a half-formed sketch; a mostly-there ghost of Clover, looking as vulnerable as she did now.

Yes, he had been dissecting her. He had split her open for his own gains and now he realised what he had done. Shifting, he moved onto all fours so he could crawl toward her. So that he could eventually settle in front of her, on his knees, reaching for her face. Slowly, gently, because although she had every reason to lash out, he did not want her to.

“I’m not going to take anything else from you,” he said, quietly.

“People don’t get what they want, Clover. It’s a fact of life. What people want and what they get are two completely different things. Just because I want something, doesn’t mean I’m going to take it. Doesn’t mean I’m asking for it. People can want things they know they’ll never have,” he said, each word enunciated carefully, as if the thoughts were only just becoming coherent.

“There’d be no pleasure in taking that from you. If you give anything to me, you’ll give it to me of your own free will. Just like you said. You’d prefer it if I helped, if you ever slaughtered someone I cared about. It’s the exact same thing…” he said. It made sense in his mind. Did it make sense to her? His hands dropped. His body slumped there, facing Clover, his leg brushing against hers. Separate, but together. He wanted to ask what she was afraid of, but he already knew the answer. He thought he did, anyway.

But he couldn’t tell her that he wasn’t going to hurt her. He’d never intend to. Not on purpose. But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t happen anyway.

<Clover> As he moved toward her, she tensed. Whether she meant to lash out at him or not, she didn’t know. Her instincts told her to be ready. Her muscles, her very bones, told her to be ready to go. Fight or flight. Yes, that’s how she felt. She felt as if she were ready to stand up to him or ready to flee from him. If it weren’t for his voice, Clover might have realized the answer to the choice. His tone reassured her and calmed her, but his words calmed her body. He hadn’t calmed her mind. Her thoughts still raced, bouncing off the inside of her skull. Her nerves communicated in quick bursts of electricity, lighting her up from the inside, warming her up from the inside.

He started into a speech she’d heard at least a dozen times before. She felt as if she were a child and he were introducing her to the ways of the world. She didn’t always get what she wanted. But oh how she wanted so many things. Oh how she wanted to spoil herself, to pamper herself. Clover wanted everything. Greed. That was another of her sins, a filthy reminder that she’d lost far too much. Clo had let too many things slip through her fingers, and she never wanted to experience the feeling again. Her greed made her losses feel more like personal attacks.

“I know,” she wanted to say. “I know that we don’t get everything we want,” she wanted to interrupt. But she remained silent. He’d listened to her, and so she returned the favor. Clover wanted to give him the opportunity he’d given her. Her lips parted, but she paused. She waited for him to finish. Even though she understood, she waited for him to finish the explanation that she no longer required, that she no longer needed.

Gradually, she had relaxed. She felt her muscles loosen, and the underlying urge of fight-or-flight had been silenced. Where she had been alert, all of her senses heightened, he appeared exhausted, almost lethargic. Or so she thought. When she looked at him, she saw him in those two states. “I know,” she voiced. She didn’t need to utter the words, not after the time for them had passed, but she wanted to say something in response. For some reason, she wanted to let him know that she’d been paying attention to the beginning of his words, at the very least.

“Months ago, I let go. I’ve let go more than once, actually. I’ve said and done things that disgust me,” she spoke. “Right now, my humanity keeps me level. It’s my conscience. I’ll get to a point where I can let go without worrying about the consequences, but it’s not now.”

She didn’t need to say those things, but she’d bought herself time; she’d given herself enough time to organize her thoughts and muster her courage. And when she felt as if she could continue, she did. “I’ve hinted enough, haven’t I? I scare myself sometimes. That’s what I’m trying to say. I,” she had to stop and clear her throat, just to keep her voice level. “I’ve thought about hurting you. I’ve thought about hurting almost everyone. I don’t decipher, when I’m in a murderous mood. I think one of the worst was when I wanted to hurt…her.” Clover didn’t want to say the name. She didn’t want to say the name and associate the woman with the following words. “I wanted to do terrible things to her. Violent things. I remember feeling so powerful. At the time, I didn’t regret a thing. I was too furious. I wanted her for myself, so that she could appreciate what I wanted to do to her.”

Clo could have gone into specifics, but the words fell away, along with her voice. She didn’t want to admit that she’d planned everything--and she did plan everything. Letting go meant diving right into the unknown; letting go meant giving in to absolute uncertainty. Clo didn’t want to take the chance.

<Jesse Fforde> Jesse watched Clover carefully. There were things that confused him. There were things that she had said and done that disgusted her. What kind of things? There were things that he had done, things that she had encouraged him to do, then, that should disgust her. Did his complete lack of humanity disgust her? These were questions that he would not ask. Already, he had asked too many, and had pushed too much. The crawl across the floor was a move to close the distance he had forced between them. A distance engendered by her anger, but a proximity in the continued honesties that they shared. A harsh proximity, as if they were both covered in thorns. But Jesse enjoyed the pain. To a point.

When Clover didn’t lash out, Jesse edged closer. He joined her in the corner, almost back to his previous position. Beside her, leg stretched out with hers, shoulder against hers, his hand seeking hers. They had talked about her proclivities before. He remembered. It was in Larch Court. They were on the couch. They talked about her aversion to blood - not because it nauseated her but because of the violence she felt she wanted to commit. The blood that she wanted to see. Hadn’t she said that before, that she wanted to hurt the family?

“I don’t think that I have any humanity,” he said, frowning down at intertwined fingers before his head rested upon Clover’s shoulder.

“But I don’t think humanity is a good word for it,” he said with a frown. He needed to try to explain himself properly. “To rest all moral fibre on one’s humanity kind of… I don’t know. To act monstrously isn’t an insult to your humanity, is it? Not if it’s something that you believe is wrong. I try to act according to what the family needs. This family,” he said. He was still frowning, eyes now closed with the force of it.

“...just, don’t. With her. Please? You don’t have to kill her, she’s probably doing that to herself,” he said. He knew Grey well enough to know that she didn’t rally with strength. She wallowed in self-blame and hurt herself. Jesse had spent a lot of time trying to pull her out of the dark, trying to convince her of her worth, trying to care for her enough to change her mind. To make her believe… but it never did work. It wasn’t a habit he could flick off with a switch. He wasn’t going to go crawling after her this time. No, nor ever again, he told himself.

Imagining Clover tearing her to pieces, slowly, however, was far different than acknowledging a willing distance from the other woman. Jesse’s hold on Clover’s hand was tight. Maybe too tight.

<Clover> Had she said she meant to kill the woman? Clo didn’t recall saying such a thing, but she might have said the words. She had every intention of torturing, but killing? Killing meant the end of the fun. Just thinking about it sent a pleasant chill up the length of her spine. Clover felt a familiar ache in her gums, the sign that her teeth were changing to fangs, and she had to close her eyes to focus on maintaining control. Too long had passed since she’d had that much fun. Clo couldn’t recall the last time she’d carved out a night or two to really have fun, as much fun as she used to have, at least. She’d stumbled onto a dry spell, a period reserved for depression and angst. When her obsessive thoughts receded, she felt his hand on hers. His grip was too tight, so tight that she swore he meant to physically restrain her from beginning a mission he’d never known existed, one he’d elevated from the past to the present.

Clover wiggled her fingers, one at a time, and then popped the bones in her hand out of place, one by one, just to show that she appreciated his grip, but not when he held her too tightly, not when he tried to signify something. When she’d slipped her hand away from him, she clasped both hands in her lap and looked over at him with a frown. “I’m not going to chase after her, Jesse. I don’t think I have any bad blood with her. Not anymore.” She toyed with her hands until she realigned the bones, and then she took his hand in her own. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”

There were plenty of things she could have said, but Clover didn’t want to delve deeper into the most uncomfortable portion of their conversation. Clo would have rather gone back to their miniature debate on humanity, something she deemed her conscience. In the moments following her refusal to continue the conversation, she realized that her memories served as a major part of her humanity. Little things kept her together, like clumsy stitching trying to hold the stuffing in a pillow. Whenever she felt as if she were falling apart, she felt the fabric and the stitching stretching, threatening to fail and release her contents to the wind. And Jesse thought he lacked the stitching.

“It’s not unique to humans, but family acts as your humanity. We’re like your conscience. Whenever you’re faced with a decision, you think of us. You weigh the pros and cons based on the end result for the family. We keep you level. And if we weren’t here, if you had none of us, wouldn’t you let go?”

Though it wasn’t a rhetorical question, Clover never expected an answer. She slipped her hand from his, but she curled her arm around him. She held him as tight as she could, needing him, craving him. And while his words had wounded her, he’d left her with a deep need for further self-evaluation. Did she really long to be human again, or did she simply long for some of the perks? Did she long for a time when her heart pounded in her chest? The questions were endless, and each one left her more and more confused. She didn’t know if she wanted him to go back to sketching her, or if she wanted them to stay exactly as they were, huddled together in a corner of the room.

<Jesse Fforde> The question hadn’t sounded rhetorical, but it was one that Jesse wouldn’t answer. Wasn’t it already obvious? Reality was slipping from his grip. Reasons to stay were few and far between. Without his family, yes - he would let go. Without that balancing force, without that group of people for whom he survived, he had no reason. And wasn’t that what he was doing? One by one he was picking them apart. He was taking their actions - or their lack thereof - and attributing to them their own lack of loyalty. Their own lack of care. Their independence. Their ability to go elsewhere for the support they needed. In that moment, on that night, Jesse was at his lowest point, one that would continue until he was dead. They didn’t need him. So what reason was there for him to stay?

Eventually, he would reach for the sketch book. The sketch would be finished, but he would do so by memory; he’d remain there beside Clover in that corner - the best of both action and inaction. It was a quick sketch, but in its hasty lines there was more truth than there would be if it were perfect. No one was perfect. Everyone had imperfections. An imperfect sketch showed the flaws that inevitably existed beneath the surface - and to Jesse, that’s what was most beautiful. There was nothing beautiful in perfection , in simplicity and straight lines. Clover was far from perfect, but that’s what made her unique. That’s what made her Clover. And it was her imperfections that aligned so neatly with Jesse’s. It was why he was with her now, why he so often sought her company. It was why she remained one of the only ones he thought might need him. They were able to celebrate each other’s flaws. Dwell in them, without judgment.

This night would be one of the last they spent together, like this, before death. Jesse didn’t know it then, but the sketch was rife with his own misgivings; a sketch that he handed over to Clover without thought. A gift, intentional or not. A piece of himself; everything he felt for her inhabiting the shades of black and white on the page.

[Jesse Fforde]

D E A T H
____________________

ooc: backdated to 17 December 2015

<Jesse Fforde> When someone is sleeping, they don’t necessarily know they are sleeping. When they dream, they generally don’t know that they are dreaming. There is no time, no space. No niggling thought about how long they have been asleep, or that the length of time might be unusual. Jesse had been dead before, and he’d known it. He’d gone into it, knowing that he could die. He had sacrificed himself for a cause and for people he had cared about. He had done so thinking that they would praise him for it - that they would respect him. Maybe that had, but the respect had been fleeting. Respect and care are not things that remain solid. Loyalty is a single-worded oxymoron. A thing that is expected but is not given in return.

These are not the things that concern Jesse now, however. Somewhere, deep down, he is aware of his condition. It brings him relief. He prefers to think that he is still in a dream as a form of denial - not because he does not want to be dead, but because of guilt. Because loyalty should not be fleeting, and he should not have died. He should not want to be dead. He should not have wanted to leave, because leaving does not equal loyalty.

There is only one person that concerns him, in the grand scheme of things. One person who is afraid of letting down. The one person who’d kept him sane and alive for as long as he had. And he does not want to admit that this is real because it will mean that he has failed her.

As a spirit, disembodied, he doesn’t wander very far. A plot of grass - shadowed grass, like tendrils of ink swaying surreally in the silence, in a lack of breeze - enfolds his spirit. There is no pain. There is nothing physical, nothing mental. There is peace. There are no voices, this time, telling him what to do. They are not telling him all the ways he could die. They are silent, and he can finally sleep. A deep, silent, sleep takes him, swallows him, a darkness so overwhelming that no lights get through. No movement. No thought, no awareness. Just death… a dream within a dream.

<Clover> Clover lacked familiarity with death. She’d never experienced the pain, or the lack thereof, associated with dying. The sharpened edge of a blade, or the end of a bullet, had never claimed what was left of her life. But she understood what it meant to traverse the realm of shadows, to explore the twisted reflection of the real world. The first time she’d fallen into the realm, she’d felt as if she’d been swallowed by the darkness. Gone were the colors. Gone were the sounds. Clover had felt as if she’d ceased to exist. She’d begun to wonder if she’d ever lived before that moment in time; she’d begun to wonder if she’d ever existed beyond the bland, colorless cage. When she’d compared her descent into the realm to falling, she’d meant the feeling associated with falling, but it also felt as if she’d been dragged into the darkness, as if hands had gripped her and dragged her to perdition. Her first experience with fadewalking had been torture.

And yet, she’d loved the solitude offered by the post-apocalyptic wonderland. In the shadow realm, nothing else mattered. No one else mattered. In the shadow realm, she understood the meaning of freedom. So when she exhausted her other options, Clo finally accepted that Jesse might have sought such a feeling. Jesse might have longed for that same feeling. He might have fallen down the rabbit hole and surfaced on the other side. Her realization should have brought some comfort, but it brought more irritation than anything. She wanted him to be there, and yet she didn’t want him to be there. She still hoped to find him somewhere in the home. There were numerous possibilities hidden within her thoughts, each one more pleasant than the last, but that happened because she’d exhausted the bad. Clover had nothing else to imagine, not when faced with such finality.

Perhaps he’d died. Perhaps he’d killed himself. What sort of negative alternative came at the end of the road? She had nowhere to go but up. When she let the shadows consume her, she let go of her anxiety and relinquished her irritation. Nothing else mattered. She embraced the solidarity forced upon her, and yet so welcomed by her. There were so many dilapidated buildings, and the landscape was dotted with the burnt remains of trees. Well-known streets became like foreign territory. She wandered around for hours, traversing the same areas. And even with the aid of her wraith, she felt as if she were becoming yet another part of the darkness. Clover felt as if she’d never surface again. The thought actually scared her. She hadn’t told anyone about her plans to fadewalk. No one knew that she’d entered into the shadow realm. What if she couldn’t get out? What if she never found Jesse? What if he wasn’t there, and she’d entered into the realm only to trap herself in its deceptive claws?

Finding him had been an accident. Movements in the realm were tainted with uncertainty brought on by dulled senses. Clo stared at him as if she were looking at yet another part of the shadow realm. Perhaps he wasn’t real. The shadows were known for playing tricks on her. She moved closer to him, but she didn’t speak. She’d never spoken to anyone or anything, not in the realm. People--things--in the realm weren’t known for hospitality. There was an echo of her wraith’s clicks, the only sound that cut through the stillness of the environment and reminded her that yes, she’d existed beyond the gray-scale around herself.

<Jesse Fforde> Clover would remember the conversations that they had had. For one brief phase, Jesse had longed for sleep. It was a step away from death. It was a reprieve, a release. So often, when he asked the others where they had been, they told him that they had been sleeping. As if it were acceptable, to go to sleep for a month. For three. He had been dreaming of the Shadow Realm. He was still in bed beside Clover. She still had her arm around his body. He was just asleep. They were both asleep, just like Clover had promised. Later, she had said. And they would sleep.

Funny, how it works. When he was alive, he would dream of death. And now that he was dead, he imagined his body where it lay, back in his bed. Although his mind might have been frazzled, although the exhaustion had crawled so deep into his bones that he had finally succumbed, it was not Grey who he imagined by his side. So much of his time had been spent with Grey, soothing her and making sure that she was okay, constantly concerned that she would no adapt, could not adapt.

Grey did not enter his mind at all. His other progeny were fleeting, faces drifting in his mind’s eye. But none of them were with him, in this particular dream. None of them had their arms around him. He thought that he could feel the mattress beneath him and the soft sheets tangled in his legs. The pillow was beneath his head and he shifted to grasp at the arm around him.

The shadowed figure on the ground grasped at something that was not there, but in his mind he found Clover’s arm. His fingers grasped at her flesh and he rolled. He rolled toward the figure, there, in the Shadow Realm, even as he did so in his mind. A shadowed leg moved to hook around a non-existent knee. The clicking invaded his consciousness; he imagined that he frowned. Even if he could not feel his own tongue against the roof of his own mouth, he swallowed.

“... tell him to shutup, Clo,” he mumbled, his voice barely a whisper in the consuming darkness.

“...’m tryin’ to sleep…” he said.

He was confused. Reality blended with unreality. He was in the shadow realm, dead, but dreaming that he was still alive. Still alive, and close to waking up because of a wraith who would not shut up - and he did not want to be woken up. Because he was dreaming of the Shadow Realm. He was dreaming of a deep sleep. He was dreaming of gently swaying tendrils of ink. He was dreaming of drowning in ink. And he did not want to wake up.

<Clover> Clover had found Jesse. The whole journey, all of the hours spent searching for him, seemed so surreal. She’d located him in the dark plain known as the shadow realm, and he seemed quite content with his surroundings. His voice broke the spell and shattered her own preconceived idea that her vocal chords would somehow act as an anchor that solidified her ties to the shadows and secured her position in the realm. Jesse reminded her that her voice worked, that she had the ability to speak. So when she parted her lips, when she focused on producing intelligent sounds, she whispered his name.

“Jesse.”

His name on her lips contrasted with the mindless clicks of her wraith. The clicks had since disappeared, replaced by her silent efforts to replace the noise with words and sentences, quick phrases and reassurances. Whispers wouldn’t rouse him, just as whispers wouldn’t draw forth the strength she needed to continue. “You can’t sleep right now. It’s time to get up,” she spoke, her voice firm. When June began, once more, with the clicking noises, Clover raised her head and focused her attention in the direction of the noise, the noise that seemed to come from all directions. Even though she wasn’t on the ground, she felt just as disturbed. “Stop it.” For once, the wraith listened, and Clo returned her eyes to Jesse’s form.

She lowered herself onto the ground, crushing the stiff stems of a spattering of dead flowers. Her interactions with her surroundings always left her feeling like a ghost, no more a person than the silhouettes she’d discovered along the way. “I don’t know what to say to you, except I’m going to shoot you. I’m going to shoot you until I feel better about this. And I might stab you too.” At that point, Clover didn’t care if he heard her quiet conversation. The words belonged to her. The threats carried more emotion than anything else she had to say, and she meant every word. She intended to shoot him until she felt better, until she’d sated every emotion attached to his presence in the shadow realm. There were words left unsaid. She moved so close to him that she thought she might become a part of him.

What were you thinking?

Why didn’t you leave a message?

Do you know how worried I was?

The questions seemed endless, and she had no desire to pry them from him or mumble them under her breath. Her thoughts were enough. They weren’t going to escort him into her arms and erase the last hours she’d spent scouring the city.

<Jesse Fforde> The words didn’t immediately penetrate. They whispered to him like they do, when one drifts in and out of sleep. When exhaustion is so permanent that one can fall asleep in the middle of a crowd, in the middle of a class, on a train or on a bus, or with music blasting in one’s ears. The sounds are only registered somewhere on the surface. They are not understood, entirely.

Could one close one’s eyes in the Shadow Realm? Could one sleep? Jesse’s psyche was damaged - sleep had brought him here. Sleep consumed him. In his mind, he was still on that mattress. The air was cool and the sheets were crisp. Clover’s skin was smooth as porcelain, and he could feel it, naked, beneath his fingers. When had he wrapped his arms around her? When she spoke, the words were a vibration against his chest. They were a vibration through the ground. They were heard but they were not entirely understood.

But her presence was understood, right there beside him. Silence reigned until the words pervaded - they were in bed, and she was going to stab him. It sounded tempting. It sounded like a great idea. There was nothing more exciting than to introduce a knife into the middle of sex - he knew it well. But the very thought of moving had him shaking his head.

“Not right now, Clover. Later,” he said, his voice a mere sigh. It drifted away, almost as if it were carried on the wind. Here, in this place, it was not broken. His voice, it was solid, unmarred, unharried by a dry throat and a thirst that would not stop. Sleep was so profound, here, because he was not harassed by the veracity of his hunger. His lips did not even have to move for the words to form, but it was habit, and the forms they inhabited, here, he supposed were only so bad as they imagined themselves to be. Jesse imagined himself to be in bed. Although his form shimmered, it remained mostly solid. Or, it seemed that way.

“You said we could sleep…” he said, the words melting into each other. He didn’t want to talk about it anymore. His body felt so… light. So unencumbered. “Just relax and go to sleep,” he said. It pleased him, that they might be able to enjoy this sleep together.

<Clover> “I don’t want to sleep in the shadow realm, Jesse. I’ll be with you. I’ll relax with you. But you’ll wake up.” Normally, she would have felt the overwhelming heat of her rage. No, she might have felt a frustration that flowed like ice through her veins. Instead, she felt a calm that spread over her body and cradled her, cradled her in the way that the shadows cradled her. Her irritation was replaced by clipped words and attempted patience. Jesse hadn’t descended into a dream world. He’d fallen down the rabbit hole and landed right in limbo. If things were different, he might have lost his soul.

Her requests for his coherent conversation stemmed from selfish desires. He wasn’t allowed to take full advantage of his retreat. If he enjoyed the world too much, if he fell victim to his appeal and its all-around allure, she knew there was a possibility that he wouldn’t return. Her thoughts circled back to Mickey. Anyone could turn into another Mickey, another example of what it meant to truly die. “When you left, why didn’t you leave a message?” Her thoughts became a line to reel him back to her. If she asked enough questions, she thought she’d force his mind into gear. “I didn’t know where you were. I panicked, and I contacted Jersey. I told Vic. We searched the whole city, or almost all of the city. Jersey and I did, at least. Even her human helped. I thought you’d wandered off again. I thought you’d needed time to think. I thought you’d done so many things. And you were here, weren’t you? You were probably here the whole time.”

Again, Clover felt a difference in her reaction, one she blamed on the environment. Her accusations sounded more like pieces in casual conversation. She couldn’t muster the shouts or the screams. With the dark, twisted surroundings, she saw things from a new perspective, one that left her wanting. While he’d sought refuge in the shadow realm, she’d spent hours scouring the city. Would he have done the same? Would she have done the same?

<Jesse Fforde> Sometimes, when sleeping, a noise can be so soft and so non-invasive that it becomes part of a dream. It isn’t loud enough to wake the dreamer up. But when that noise becomes more persistent, when its presence in the dream becomes too complex and the dreamer wants to understand, it causes the dreamer to stir. Clover’s words - her statements and her questions - act like a hook into Jesse’s subconscious. They are a hook, delving into the depths of his mind, the question marks bait for him to follow, luring him to the surface.

When he sighed, there was barely a shift in the atmosphere. He still didn’t want to be awake, but he was awake - but like those who don’t want to be awake, his eyes remained closed. But he saw nothing behind them, now. He did not see himself in bed with Clover, and he succumbed to the numbness of his body - it didn’t get click that he couldn’t feel her physical body, even if he felt saturated by her presence. He was comfortable, and so he didn’t move to try to ascertain his place in reality.

“What are you talking about?” he asks, a hint of irritation to his tone. How many times had he told her he just wanted to sleep? But she just kept talking. She wasn’t going to let him sleep. So he may as well be awake.

Could a person blink in the shadow realm? Regardless, Jesse did whatever would be the equivalent of blinking. His consciousness stirred; awareness returned slowly. Where he expected to see Clover with messy hair, her head on the pillow in front of him, her skin bathed in the dimness of the light from the fireplace near the bed, he instead saw only a shadow. A shadow in the likeness of Clover; like she had stepped out of an old, black and white movie - except the colours were off, and her skin didn’t shine. And when Jesse jerked awake, it wasn’t to feel the sheets sliding from his body, or the mattress to judder beneath his body.

“...I didn’t go anywhere…” he said in wonderment. Almost in awe. He didn’t go anywhere… did he?

<Clover> The final realization flowed over her, as subtle as the nonexistent breeze. One minute, she thought he was in denial; the next minute, she thought he was insane. And then she knew the truth. He had no idea that he’d died. He had no idea that he’d left her, that he’d left all of them. She had a hard time believing that his disappearance, his death, had been an accident, so she remained silent. Nothing made sense. Had he separated his mind from his body? Had he experienced a psychotic break?

“You did go somewhere. I woke up and you were gone,” she spoke. There was a deep emphasis on the fact that she’d woken up to an empty bed. He’d been there, right beside her, and then he’d vanished. He hadn’t left a message. He hadn’t given her warning. He’d disappeared. So many people had wandered in and out of her life, and he’d had the nerve to join the ranks. She’d panicked. She’d been angry and scared and lost--she’d felt incredibly lost, as if part of her mind had been replaced by nothing but air. Except she wasn’t that lucky. If her mind had been replaced by air, she might have floated away; she might have escaped, unscathed, and started again, in some other city, with some other story.

“Now we’re here. You’re here.” They were in two very different predicaments. He’d died. She’d slipped into the realm using her fadewalker abilities. She knew she couldn’t stay there with him. At least, she couldn’t remain there with him for an infinite amount of time. Her abilities came with restrictions. She knew that when she couldn’t maintain the connection to the realm, she’d be forced to return to the other side. And when she returned, she knew about the exhaustion that followed. She’d need at least a day to rest and regain her strength. In that time, she had Jersey. She had an empty bed and an empty apartment. “You’re ******* dead,” she sighed, more for herself than for him. “We’re in the ******* shadow realm.”

As if in agreement, her wraith made a deep, throaty sound, a gurgle that left her slightly disgusted. She might have scolded the creature, but the noise faded. In the moments following her wraith’s noise, Clover wondered if they’d created a routine. They’d begun a cycle, where she gave everything she had for about twenty-four hours in a bleak wasteland, surrounded by the remnants of previously living humans and vampires. It was a representation of the snake eating its own tail. That thought worried her.

<Jesse Fforde> You’re ******* dead, she had said. Singular, rather than plural. But she had added we’re. They were in the Shadow Realm. Together. Jesse tried to focus, his mind trying to comprehend far too many things at the one time. How had he died? And how was Clover here with him? There should have been guilt, and shame, but they were only underlying emotions as a strange kind of relief spread through him. The Jesse-shaped shadow collapsed back into the ink-like grass. The sigh Clover heard had come from the man, but it could have been a strange breath breeze, a groaning whisper of the dead.

Again, there was silence. The necromancer had to comprehend his position. For so long he had longed for death but guilt and loyalty had kept him at bay. Loyalty toward the one person who had given up so much to help him; loyalty to a family that crumbled, that had to strain itself to help any of their own number in need.

What had happened?

He reached back into his memory. The pain was still there; the traps, the long hallway that he surged through rather than back. He had thought it was a dream, because he couldn’t remember how he had got there. Did it matter? He was dead, now. It was what he had wanted. But he couldn’t enjoy it. Not entirely. Not with Clover there next to him, her whole being seeming to radiate agitation and anger.

“... you didn’t kill yourself to be here, did you?” he asked. He had let her down. He wasn’t worth that kind of sacrifice. His voice did not quaver. There was no stress - there was a curiosity about Clover, of course, but he wouldn’t let her stay here. If she had killed herself, he’d make her go home again. She might not think that she was needed by anyone else, but Jesse thought otherwise.

He could explain himself. Clover deserved that much. But he couldn’t get the words out - the explanation was stuck, until she had answered his question. Concern for Clover’s position ranked higher than concern for his own. It was no secret that he had considered himself a lost cause; death, in the end, had been inevitable.

<Clover> “I thought about it,” she replied. Her response came without any hesitation, and without any indication of shame or embarrassment. She’d toyed with the thought of suicide. She’d taken a page from his book and considered numerous possibilities. But she wasn’t him. She wasn’t able to justify killing herself, so she didn’t kill herself. She approached suicide from a logical standpoint, and logic had brushed her troubles aside. “I couldn’t do it. I mean...I could have killed myself, but what would that have accomplished? I’m here with you now. I’m as close as I’ll be to you, until you come back. If you want to come back. If you don’t want to come back, then I’m killing myself. I don’t want to deal with the inevitable mess, and I won’t put my friends through it.”

The mess she referenced encompassed all the reactions brought on by Jesse’s disappearance. She imagined the onslaught: the questions, the accusations, the implications, and the guilt. The knowledge that she’d been unable to intervene. Just the thought of dealing with anyone else made her reconsider her previous decision to fadewalk; she wondered whether it would have been a better decision to commit suicide.

But what did that mean for her friends? Her friends were smart enough to know not to poke and prod, so they were exclusions from her imagined torture. Clover had mentioned her friends because she’d wanted to shed some light on her own reaction. It was all so simple. What if he didn’t want to leave the realm? She wanted him back. If he didn’t want to go back, and she went back, she would enter into a state of recovery--well, she didn’t even want to picture such a scenario.

“You just disappeared.” There was a long pause between her previous response and those three words, the words that she’d been thinking, in some shape or form, for the last several hours. Had it been a conscious decision? He seemed perfectly sane, but it could have been the realm. “You didn’t say anything. You didn’t leave a message. You just,” she trailed off, her words turning into a frustrated growl. In her eyes, he’d chosen to think of himself. And yet she’d caught herself doing the exact same thing. The growl had been aimed at him, but it had also applied to herself. “What if I had done that to you? What if I didn’t come back? What if you couldn’t find me? What if you checked all over the city and you couldn’t find me? What if you just stayed in one spot and hoped that by being there, I’d just appear? I’m so angry with you.” But she hadn’t shouted at him. She hadn’t cursed at him. Clo shook her head and looked around at the destruction surrounding them, using every excuse not to look in his direction.

<Jesse Fforde> Was she trying to guilt him? That was the answer Jesse got. If he stayed here, if he chose not to go home, then she would kill herself. Because if she didn’t kill herself, his absence would cause… what? A mess. Could he ask her to define that inevitable mess? What would the downfall look like? There was a glimmer of an imagined future, of what the world would look like without him there. Would Clover be the only one affected? The only one who really cared? Who wouldn’t get over it? Was it because she wouldn’t allow herself to get over it? And could he live with her here, knowing that he was the cause of it?

Was this even living? What would happen to them both, if they spent years down here? Decades? Would they last centuries? Or would they turn into the spirits that the vampires came down to consume? The great circle of life… or of death.

Clover’s voice brought Jesse out of his meandering questions. He caught the tail end of her last inquisition. What would he do, if he were in her shoes? If this whole situation were turned on its head and he was the one dealing with a suicidal lover - someone that he loved? He imagined doing everything that Clover told him she had done. And he knew that he’d be in the exact same place. Would he kill himself, to be with her if she refused to come home?

That was a question that he could not answer. Not immediately. There was a shake of his shadowed head.

“I wouldn’t kill myself to be with you, Clo,” he said, quietly. The words cut off, lingered. There was no breeze down here; the atmosphere was stifling, but the words weren’t carried away. They hung around - not like a bad smell, but like an enticing suggestion. The more he thought about it, the more Jesse was certain. He didn’t think of himself as he was now. He thought of himself as he was before. As he would be, if he didn’t have this ******* stigma.

“I’d raise hell to get you back.”

<Clover> “So here I am. I’ll do my best to scold you. I’ll make you want to come back. I’ll keep you company, for as long as possible. I’m here to,” she stopped and covered her face with her hands, staying that way until she’d gathered her thoughts, “well, I guess I’m here to just...I don’t know.” The words failed her, replaced by silence. Her thoughts had scattered, along with the support of her anger. His words irritated her and reassured her, and all at the same time. He would have done the same thing; he would have made the journey to the shadow realm to do whatever it was he thought he needed to do just to get her back. Perhaps she should have made a better plan, but she’d hoped she wouldn’t find him. She’d hoped he wouldn’t be in the shadow realm.

What kind of hell could she possibly raise to lure him back to the real world? It wasn’t as if she could punch him. It wasn’t as if she could shoot him in his arm or in his leg. Clover wanted to scream and pull her hair. She wanted to place her hands on his cheeks and force him to find the words in her eyes, because she couldn’t find the words herself.

“Here I am,” she repeated, though the words came out as a sigh, a sigh that seemed to scream resignation rather than irritation. “I don’t know what to do with you. Do I want to know what happened, Jesse? Do you even remember?” Death had the possibility of clearing the slate, or so Clover assumed. Perhaps his memories of his death had gone, swallowed by the black-and-white landscape around them. Perhaps the grey wasteland would feast on the rest of him until he became a husk of his former self. “Is this place...does it change you? Is it going to,” she couldn’t finish, even though she knew her incomplete sentences aggravated him. Was the shadow realm going to leave a scar on his mind, on his psyche? Was the shadow realm going to claim the best in him? Would he ever smile again? Those questions made her want to lash out at him again, but she maintained her composure.

If he would have done everything he could to get her back, did that mean he would do everything he could to get back? The question came on suddenly, like a surprise attack on her mind. She wanted to ask him. Her lips parted, but the words never came. The question didn’t matter as much as the others. Whether he meant to put forth such effort made no difference, not when she’d told him her intentions. She meant to make him want to come back. Her control issues and her determination combined into the perfect fuel, the perfect tool.


<Jesse Fforde> There was no stirring of emotion, though his thoughts rolled over as the questions were asked. Several of them, stacked one on top of the other. Jesse did not despise the questions. Remaining where he lay, he stared upward at the nothingness of the sky. There was no sky, just low-hanging cloud of heavy density, of a blackness so resolute that no colour on Earth could match it. Sometimes he wondered if the Shadow Realm looked different to everyone else. Did that sky ever change?

The answers slowly formed, the sentences marching together until they formed a straight and logical line. The Shadow Realm. Why should it be any different this week, compared to every other time that he has been here? It didn’t change him then. Why would it change him now? There were answers that he wasn’t sure that Clover wanted to hear, but she knew them anyway, didn’t she? They had discussed it before. He was almost one hundred percent sure.

“No. It doesn’t change me. Not that I’m aware. It hasn’t before,” he said. How many times had he died? Once? Twice? How many times had just been visits, from which he hadn’t wanted to return, but which he forced to? “This isn’t hell for me. This is…” he stopped. No, he wouldn’t keep going. The silence was like a blanket, thick and heavy and comfortable. The realm itself was a room, vast and tidy, chilled, though the blanket provided warmth. It was so easy to just curl up and… sleep. Finally, he could sleep.

[Clover]

<Jesse Fforde> He closed out this world as he closed his eyes. As he remembered as much as he could.

“I thought I was dreaming,” he said. “I’ve been sleeping a lot lately. This is what I dream about. I dream that I’ve died. That I’m here. I dream of ways to die. I dream that people… voices are telling me to die, and telling me how,” he said. He paused, allowing the words to reshuffle. It wasn’t entirely unfeasible. There were people who’d told him he should. People he’d once cared about. That kind of thing gets stuck, whether one wants it to or not. It’s hard to forget that someone has told you that you should die.

“I don’t remember how I got there. But I remember the hallway. And the traps. I… it was the pain that woke me up. But I didn’t turn back. I didn’t know what was happening. I just… I kept walking forward. Into the traps. The zombies… the fadebeasts. I just… and then the pain was gone, and it was quiet and dark. And I was here. And I’d dreamt of it so much I just … I thought I was still asleep,” he said. He thought about asking Clover whether she was really there. Or was this some dirty trick that his psyche was playing on him? But he didn’t. He knew. It all became clearer as he told the tale.

“I have a history of sleepwalking…” he said. As if that were the safest, the easiest, and the most reassuring response.

<Clover> His words settled over her like a blanket of snow. Her mind had slowed to a crawl. The question sat on the tip of her tongue, but she didn’t have the strength to speak. The snow had frozen more than her mind. Her disbelief intermingled with the individual flakes, making a home amongst the frozen water droplets. Did he honestly expect her to believe that he killed himself by sleepwalking? Clover wanted to ask him. She needed to ask him. And yet she knew--she knew if she regained the ability to speak and chose to begin her response with such a hostile, accusatory tone, she’d crush the both of them.

“Jesse,” she sighed. His name rolled right off her tongue. For a moment, she forgot that they were having the conversation amongst the darkness of the shadow realm, tucked so neatly between twisted buildings, hidden within warped neighborhoods. Even though it made little difference, Clover covered her face with her hands. The shadow realm claimed the solid feel of her body. She lost the comfort offered by the feel of her palms against her cheeks. “Help me understand this. I just…,” she trailed off, “I can’t believe it.”

His recount of the events left her wanting, and yet she saw him so clearly. She followed his path through the traps, through the traps that she’d spent so long constructing. Clover had spent so long creating each and every trap, hoping that her contributions would somehow earn his praise. In the amount of time it took for him to walk through the hallway, he’d destroyed all of her hard work and set her back by weeks, possibly months. All of the factories. All of the warehouses. The favors. The auction bids.

Even though he frustrated her, she didn’t walk away. The anger she felt toward him festered, rotting her insides in a way that only rage could, in a way that only she understood. When she’d grown tired of her own lack of response, she rubbed her hands over her face again. Again, she longed for the comfort of skin-on-skin contact. She craved him, and yet she had no idea where he’d gone. She didn’t get him. She didn’t know him.

“You’re coming back, as soon as possible, and no more killing yourself. I’ll fix everything. I’ll take care of everything.” Her determination bled through her words. She didn’t care if she sounded too bossy. She didn’t care if he liked or disliked her attitude. He’d killed himself, so he had no more rights. “I’ll remake the traps. I’ll fix the wiring. I can do that. You, you just...what the ****, Jesse?”

You selfish asshole!

How could you do that to me?

Why do I feel like I’m the only one trying?

“What the ****,” she repeated, bypassing the numerous thoughts clouding her mind.

<Jesse Fforde> The only explanation that Clover got was silence. She couldn’t believe it, and Jesse could not blame her. He wasn’t sure he believed it himself, even if he had once thrown himself from the Eyrie. Even though he had woken up shattered from head to toe, once, because he’d done a stupid thing while sleepwalking.

The truth, he told himself, was not entirely there. Yes, he had walked to the traps in his sleep. He had climbed those stairs in his sleep. He had opened the door, leading toward the traps and the summoned creatures without knowing. These were the things he did not remember doing. He remembered the voices, the suggestions, the despair. Did he remember giving in? It was vague, fuzzy, his memory of the why.

But he did remember the hallway. He remembered the searing pain that had woken up. Now, only now, did he remember that he was not confused about the way out. To go back would have meant survival. A few wounds, perhaps, and a bruised ego to lick, to try to hide, but he would have lived. Going forward, he knew that he would maim himself. He knew that the creatures would want only his blood, to tear him limb from limb. Knowing that the traps could kill him had only urged him onward. The promise of pain and of inevitable darkness was too hard to resist. That was the truth - the one that he didn’t want to voice. The one he didn’t want to say out loud. They had a promise of honesty between each other, complete and unbarred.

This, she already knew. Jesse was dead. His silence confirmed it. It wasn’t as simple as he had explained; it wasn’t as light or frivolous as he might have hoped. If he could have, he might have laughed to add credence to his story. Maybe if he’d been able to summon a laugh, she might have believed him. But there was no laughter. Only silence.

“The traps and the wiring can be fixed,” he said, slowly. Yes, they were wood and metal. They were bits and pieces of nuts and bolts, of computer parts and shotguns. They were easy to fix.

They had talked of what Jesse would do were their roles reversed. For a moment, there had been a flare of optimism, but it drifted away from Jesse as a sigh. Where he’d been laying on his back staring skyward, he now turned onto his side, away from Clover. He curled up and in on himself again, the swaying shadows of the grass leaning toward him as if they craved the healing power he once had. The power he could not wield down here. He could not bring that grass back to life, just as he felt he could not, this time, bring himself back to life.

Again, the silence descended. Again, the silence said what Jesse would not. The traps and wiring can be fixed, but I cannot.

<Clover> Even without meaning to, Clover had said the wrong thing. Her words had forced him away from her. The comfort she’d found, the distraction from her surroundings, had shattered. When he turned away from her, she, once again, recognized their eerie surroundings. Clo recognized the sense of rejection that nestled so closely next to her. She’d longed for skin-on-skin contact, but she’d received rejection. Nothing felt less comforting. Nothing felt less reassuring.

“What did I say?” There was a sickening note of desperation in her tone, as if the question itself would have lured Jesse back to her, closer to her. “Don’t just turn away from me. Talk to me. You don’t get to ignore me,” she declared, her voice lacking the conviction it once held.

Clo didn’t wait for him to turn. She’d already begun crawling around his body. While she would have had an easier time standing up, stepping over him, and reclaiming a seat on the ground, Clover chose to crawl on her hands and knees. Once again, she felt the distance between herself and her solid form, just as she’d felt the distance between herself and Jesse. “Don’t just give up. Please.” There, in the inflection, she made a simple request. And yet her simple request required so much effort that she wondered if he even had the strength to deliver.

She lay on the grass then, the grass that looked more like a collection of grey little blades, like tiny points blocking the both of them from the dirt below, the grey dirt that matched the grey rocks, the grey dirt that matched the grey roads. The world had transformed to grayscale. Even though she meant to remain silent, to fall into the trap of the realm around her, Clo couldn’t keep her mouth shut. The need to communicate ran in her veins and lived in her blood.

One hand tangled in the grass; one hand reached out to try and bridge the small gap between them. “I don’t know what else to do. I’m trying to do what I can do. I can fix the traps. I can visit you. I can try to help the family. I can do those things,” Clo explained. Her words fell short, and she felt as if she’d failed the both of them. He’d said what she could fix, and he’d made it seem as if it weren’t enough, as if she should have fixed the whole world. If she had the ability, she would have fixed the whole world. She would have fixed everyone and everything. “Do you not want me here? Is that why you’re pulling away?”

Had she overwhelmed him with statements and covered him in far too many questions? Clover had given him little time to answer, but she’d always had the nasty habit of blurting words out and weaving all of her questions into one giant lump, one big mess made of individual inquiries. “I’m sorry,” she sighed. The words came with no explanation, but she meant to apologize for more than one thing. She hadn’t been awake to help him. She hadn’t been nicer to him. She hadn’t given him time to answer. There were far too many reasons to apologize, so she’d bound them together and let them fall under her general apology. Sincere. Sufficient. Simple.

<Jesse Fforde> There was a struggle within Jesse that was only overcome when he realised he had to be honest. That’s all he had to be. What did it matter, anyway? The frustration coiled then expanded, and then burst like so much hot air. It evaporated, inconsequential. He had become a part of his surroundings. He was black and white. He was so many shades of grey, of twisted and murky shadow. Bereft of colour was to be bereft of emotion.

“It wasn’t anything you said,” he told her. How could he explain himself to her?

“Do you remember that night when I sketched you? You found me just staring into space, doing nothing. I didn’t feel much of anything, then. That was the beginning of the end. Now, it’s the end, and I don’t feel anything,” he said. The words were spoken, flat. They had the potential to hurt; they might have fallen blunt and useless to him, but for Clover they might be sharp, gleaming, and dangerous. But it was the only way he was able to answer her questions. It was the only way he could make her see that it wasn’t her.

“I’m not angry with you. I’m not upset. I don’t feel regret, or sadness. I … don’t want you to leave but I don’t want you to stay. Okay? I don’t feel like it makes a difference to me right now,” he said.

Those, he knew, were barbed words. He tried to order them in a way that would cause least harm, but he knew he had probably failed. His eyes were open, watching the figure beside him; something stirred, a glimmer of guilt. Guilt. Wasn’t that what he had asked of Clover, once? She had to make him feel guilty, because that was the only thing keeping him there.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to let you down. The guilt worked, when I knew I hadn’t fallen. But here I am. I’ve let you down,” he said. Could that explain it? He’d done the worst thing that he could do. He’d left Clover, in the worst way possible. She’d kept repeating it, when she’d arrived. She woke up and he’d gone. But, despite the flatness of his words, the lack of colour or any kind of emotion - even though he’d said that he didn’t care whether she stayed or went, he reached out. His own movements echoed hers; the gap between them was closed, as his shadowed fingers closed around hers.

Without skin, it wasn’t the same sensation. He couldn’t squeeze her hand until her bones popped. But they were there, together. And he could still feel her hand in his.

<Clover> Clo remembered the night she’d given him his first gift. She remembered the smell of the graphite and the sound of the pencils against the paper. Of course she remembered the night. Jesse had been sitting in the corner, as if he were taking refuge in the smallest section of the room. From the corner, one felt secure. Everything looked larger when they were seated in the corner, when they were close enough to being connected. But Jesse didn’t mean to reference that part of their evening. Clover knew he meant more than the initial moment when she found him. She wanted to interject and add in that she remembered, but she let him continue speaking. She assumed that he knew.

His words hurt. The sudden pang, and the lingering ache, that accompanied his words made her wonder if her actual heart managed her emotions. Her chest felt heavier. Her body felt as if the weight of the realm had begun to flatten her, to crush her into the ground. Yes, the words hurt, but his tone hurt. The way he delivered his words made her feel as if she were looking at, and listening to, a total stranger. Jesse had emotions. Jesse felt things. But the Jesse next to her was someone else entirely.

He didn’t want her, and yet he reached out for her; he didn’t think her presence mattered, but his hand closed around hers. Despite the fact that they held hands, Clover doubted herself. She doubted that she made any difference. After the things she’d said, after the questions she’d asked, and after everything she’d been through with him, and for him, he had the nerve to say such things. Honesty. They’d agreed on honesty, she reminded herself. But she wanted him to lie to her. She wanted him to say the things she wanted to hear, rather than the things she needed to hear.

“You have let me down,” Clo mumbled. There should have been more, but she hesitated. She wanted him to feel the weight of her words. She wanted her words to stab him in the way that his words had stabbed her. “That doesn’t mean you get to give up. That doesn’t mean you get to stay here and wallow in regrets and shortcomings.”

Their moment would have been easier if he hadn’t killed himself. Her mind focused on that single thought. The two of them would have had a better environment, and she could have led him to her apartment, to somewhere else, anywhere else, and showed him how much she cared. As it was, she had nothing but words, words and shadows.

“You’re more than this. I don’t recognize you like this, because...because you’ve got more charisma. You’ve got more confidence. You project these things. You’re supposed to lead your family. Lead us. Lead me.” Clo reveled in the foreign feel of her hand in his, in the way that their touch had changed. “If this were months ago, you would have laughed this off. You would have owned this sleepwalking ********. I don’t know what else to say. I just want you to be able to hold your head high again. Be proud of yourself, I guess. You have to be arrogant to balance out my insecurities,” she joked, trying her best to lighten the mood, whether it was appropriate or not.

<Jesse Fforde> The laughter that spilled from Jesse was not at all mirthful. It was low, and if they weren’t aware of where they were or what their circumstances were, if someone new to the Shadow Realm happened to be nearby, it was a laugh that might curdle their insides.

“I’m not wallowing,” he said, quietly. She made it sound as if he’d given up on the world, and this death was just a tantrum. A way to fish for compliments; a way to hear everything that Clover told him now, the things that might have formerly fed his ego. This was none of that, however. Hadn’t he already explained it to her? He wasn’t wallowing. He wasn’t doing anything. There was no mire within him that allowed for wallowing. He’d given it all up, let it all go. All the hurt, the anger, the resentment, the regret - they had been anchors that had finally been severed. That, or the ship had sunk completely, the anchors no longer required.

There was something, however. A small regret. A small spark of guilt. No - it was anxiety, not guilt. Or perhaps the two twined together, twisting inconsolably. His eyes were settled upon their joined hands as Clover’s words settled within him. He imagined that hand belonging to that body that he had slept beside the past few months; the body that had helped him in so many ways beforehand. The mind attached to it, that had tried so hard on so many occasions to lift him up out of the mud that he insisted on sinking within. It was the mention of her insecurities that had done it.

If there was one person who could get him out of this, it was going to be her. Why?

Because he owed her so much. Because she cared so much. Because, yes, he cared about her, too. He really cared. He had read her journal and Clover had more insecurities than he did, and yet she was not here. She was not dead. She had not killed herself. She had not given up, when she could have. A dozen times over. She talked about how Jesse was, the things that he could be, and he wanted to curl further into himself. Where there had been no feelings before, now they started to churn. If only a little.

“That’s all I wanted. I wanted to go back to being who I was. This… I can’t live like this anymore. Constantly doubting, constantly questioning…” he said. But even as he said it, he knew that he wasn’t doubting anymore. He wasn’t questioning. He had accepted, in a hard way. A door had slammed within him, never to be opened again. He shifted, just slightly, those colourless eyes shifting to Clover’s face - what he could see of it.

“I want to come back to my old self. I want to be able to help you…”

<Clover> Clover couldn’t fix people. As she listened to Jesse speak, she reminded herself of the fact. The four words were repeated over and over again, a silent cadence to overwhelm the rest of her thoughts and plans. He wanted to be his old self again, but she had no more advice. The options were limited, for the both of them. Her optimism had run dry, right when she felt as if he needed more--they both needed more. What was she supposed to tell him? Was she supposed to tell him that she had no idea what to tell him? She had no more advice. She added those words into the cadence. Perhaps if he listened, he might have heard the steady beat comprising her thoughts.

“Jesse,” she sighed. The air suddenly seemed so stale. Nothing about her sigh relieved her tension, and her lungs felt as if they’d begun to shrivel in her chest. His words were endearing. While she worried for him, he worried for her. Clo didn’t want him worrying for her, not when he’d killed himself hours before. Clo didn’t want him helping her, if it meant wasting energy he could have put toward helping himself.

“I want you to help yourself. You can’t live constantly doubting and questioning? I’m not here. I haven’t killed myself. What do you think I do? You’ve read some of my journal. Put as much effort into yourself. I don’t understand why it doesn’t work or why it’s not working.” Frustration wound itself around her and squeezed, temporarily replacing her pain with something different, with something toxic. He’d given up, and yet he held her. He’d given up, and yet he’d survived so long. Her anger did nothing for him. Her happiness did nothing for him. Clover promised she wouldn’t leave him, but she doubted herself. She doubted that she made any difference. Her mind told her that he could have been faking. For all the time he spent suffering, he could have been playing along until he eventually tired of the game and killed himself.

“I just...I don’t know what else to do, Jesse. I’ll stay here,” she reassured them both, “I’ll stay here for as long as I can. And I’ll come back. I’ll be here for you. I’ll do whatever I can. But I’m not you. I can’t fix you.” Clover said the words more for herself than for him. Her cadence had been overwhelmed by negative thoughts, so she had to voice the words. “If you can’t turn this around, if you aren’t able to bring yourself to feel much of anything,” she paused, trying to summon the words he’d used just to hold his attention, “then I won’t leave you. It’s simple. I’m standing my ground.”

She didn’t want to say that she’d kill herself, but the words were implied. If he was struggling and he needed her to stay, she’d return home and kill herself. And then she’d try again to coax something from him. She’d try harder. Because what did she have left? Who did she have left? The apology almost slipped past her lips, and she felt the urge to recant and start anew. Clover knew she’d gone far with her words; her statement meant to incite something, or at least to let him know that she’d bound her life to his. Then again, that had been the case since the first time she’d seen him.

<Jesse Fforde> “Clover…” Jesse sighed, too, adding to the staleness of the atmosphere. What could he do? She kept talking and it helped him, but frustrated him, too.

“No, you can’t fix me. I said that,” he said. Though he had not said it. He’d said she could go and fix the wires and the traps. She could fix the physical, material things that he had broken but there was so much that was outside of her power to fix. Jesse knew this, as much as he wished for someone else to be able to fix him. To point to a spot in his body, know that it was broken, and know how to put it back together again. How easy would it be if there was some power, some spell, some ritual, to fix everything, and make all the bad **** go away?

“Go, Clover. You can’t stay here forever. I’ll be here. I won’t move. Go home, fix the things that you can fix. It’ll help,” he said, slowly, trying to push some kind of enthusiasm into his tone. For her. He wanted to be able to help her, but to do so, he needed to try to help himself. That much he could do. And he believed that if she focused on fixing other things, it would help. It would be a mental band-aid.

How long had they been lying here, anyway? How long had Clover been looking for him? How much longer did she have, before she was forced out of this realm due to her living body yearning for her back home? Jesse was of two minds. Where before he hadn’t cared either way, now he was looking a the pros and cons. The selfish, weak part of him wanted Clover to stay. He wanted her to keep pushing at him, to scream at him, to be frustrated with him until he wanted to scream back. But he also wanted her to go. He needed time to himself; he had to think about what she had said. He had to focus on the things that he felt, or the things that he didn’t feel. Could he really stay here forever, without ever wanting to go home?

The answer didn’t come to him immediately. The lack of an answer required thought.

The guilt was there. That was for sure. The guilt was paramount. The way Clover had said it; he didn’t try hard enough. How could be so weak, so pathetic as to not even try? But he had done more than he had done in the past. He had been honest with her. There were times that he’d done stupid things, and he hadn’t sought help. But, more often lately, he had sought help. That was a start, wasn’t it?

“Please, Clover. I’ll be fine here. I can’t do any more harm than what’s already been done…” he said, voice barely a whisper.

<Clover> He sighed at her, and the action felt as if he’d thrown more hurtful words. He sounded as tired as he’d looked when they’d sat in the corner, staring out at Limbo; he sounded so disinterested, so very neutral about his position. Clover wanted him to care. Her inability to force him to care ignited something inside of her. His lack of response poked and prodded at her control issues. Everything he said and did were out of her range of control. At one point, she’d been one of the people reciting the Serenity Prayer, as if the words gave her some type of strength, but that had been years ago. Even then, she’d failed. She lacked the ability to relinquish control, even when she admitted that things were out of control, and they were so out of control.

If it were possible, she moved closer to him. There should have been no distance between them. Why had she allowed any distance between them? She wanted all of him. For once, the only thing on her mind was holding him. She had control over herself. She couldn’t fix him, but she could hold him. As if the answer were in the air, she looped her arm around him. For the remainder of their time together, she wanted to pretend as if they weren’t in the shadow realm; Clover wanted to rewind, to take them back to their bed. They were there, and they were comfortable. She’d turned over, and she found him there. He hadn’t left her. He hadn’t walked through traps. He hadn’t died. Her imagination worked, but not for long. The shadow realm never allowed her to entertain such delusions. Clo had to admit everything she already knew.

“You can do more harm, but I don’t want you to. I want you to take care of yourself. For me.” Already, she felt the tug she associated with her need to return home, and she fought against the feeling. Clo fought against her own exhaustion and held onto the connection between the two worlds. “I can’t stay here much longer,” she whispered, once again wanting to disappear into her imagination and draw on her previous delusions. Was she any better? Was she any better for wanting to disappear into daydreams and rely on her mind for a reprieve? No. And she’d scolded him and looked down on him.

How long had she been there, beside him? In the shadow realm, time meant nothing. Seconds could have been hours, and hours could have accumulated, one after another, until she’d lost an entire day. Clover wanted nothing more than to stay there with him. If her power allowed her to, she would have stayed for the duration of his time there. If he meant to stay for days or weeks or years, then she wanted to stay for the same amount. Why? Well, Clover had her reasons, reasons she deemed as worthy.

“You know I’ll be back, don’t you? I won’t just leave you here and forget about you.” The reassuring words sounded more like a plea for his understanding and a promise to herself. Even though she knew that she lacked the ability to visit as frequently as she wanted, Clover knew that she would try to break the rules and summon enough energy to fadewalk. She had a fear that he’d give up. She had a fear that he’d move. He’d disappeared once. Nothing prevented him from doing the same. Or perhaps she’d given in to paranoia, her unreasonable, unbelievable paranoia. “I’ll be back,” she reiterated.

<Jesse Fforde> Jesse knew that Clover would be back. He didn’t have to answer the question, though he knew that Clover was looking for one. Reassurance. It was something that he couldn’t give to her before, and this was the reason why. Even then, he’d known where he would end up. In the back of his mind, he had not assured Clover that he would not leave her.

At the time, had she been thinking he would leave her for another woman? He supposed that was the impression he’d given, with his lack of reassurance. But he’d known he would leave her for the Shadow Realm. This was where they would end up. But it wasn’t over, yet. He hadn’t broken her heart entirely, and she hadn’t walked away from him. That was what mattered, wasn’t it? She hadn’t walked away from him. Through everything, even now in death. She. Had not. Walked. Away.

Where he could not see the paleness of the skin on her cheek, he stroked it anyway. Where he could not see the depth of the brown of her eyes, he stared anyway. There, at the very last minute, she had said the exact right thing. He nodded.

“I know you’re coming back. I know you won’t forget about me,” he said. And he understood. He knew. He wasn’t saying it for the sake of saying it. Where did the guilt come from, if he did not know that Clover was telling the truth? If he could not imagine her breaking into a thousand tiny little pieces because he had given up on everything? All along, even now, Clover was the tether that kept him bound in place. Even before Halloween. Ever since the Carnival. That’s where it had begun. That’s where she’d tied a string around his soul, with a neat little bow. Tight - maybe sometimes too much so. But it had to be tight, that string. It had to be strong. And its length could span the universe.

It stretched the space between life and death.

The next time Clover found him, he would be sitting up. Staring.

The time after that, he would be standing.

The time after that, he would be pacing. A non-stop flurry of movement, buoyed by a new strength. A new philosophy - or an old one, revived.

When there are rocks in one’s pockets, weighing him down, he had to remove them. If he didn’t want to drown when the ship was sinking, he had to cut the ropes. If he wanted to break the surface and take a sweet, long breath of air after so long in the water, he had to let go.

Let the **** go.

[Jesse Fforde]

B U L L E T T O T H E K N E E
_______________________________

OOC: Backdated to December 22nd

<Jesse Fforde> Jesse was a sunken ship that had put itself back together again. From the bottom of the ocean floor, stuck in the mire and the mud, he had now risen. The tides had blasted the hull; the crustaceans were picked away, one by one, until this boat was as fresh as a newborn babe from the harbour.

There was a reason Jesse liked the Shadow Realm so much. The silence and the stillness helped him to concentrate on the things that needed his attention. If there was such a thing as a soul cleanse for a vampire, Jesse had just experienced one. With Clover’s help. Without Clover, he’d still be there. There’d have been no reason to return.

One of the things he’d realised was that he had repeated the mistakes of his own sire. Phoenix. Once, she’d died. Once, she’d gone to the Shadow Realm; her excuse, at the time, had left Jesse wanting. She’d needed the time to think, she had said. She had done it on purpose. She had left her family behind and she had not warned them. She had not explained it to them, before she had gone. She only tried to explain it when she had come back, and Jesse had not believed her. He had called her selfish. He had probably called her other things, too.

But he had done the exact same thing. If he had known then what he knew now, would his relationship with his sire be different? Or would it have fallen apart regardless? Did he feel better or worse, knowing that he was more like his sire than he had already admitted?

All thoughts of what could have been were banished as soon as he felt that tug. As soon as he felt the possibilities open up in front of him. The sails billowed, and he knew the way home. All he had to do was think it. All he had to do was spread his arms and allow the winds to carry him away. If only it were all so poetic as that.

Jesse did not wake up in the middle of some field somewhere, refreshed and fully clothed. He did not wake up in his bed, with Clover beside him. Instead, he was greeted with a bitter cold, his skin sticking to the metal beneath him and his eyes blinking hard and rapid to adjust to the new light. The atmosphere. He coughed, as if to cough ash from his lungs. He moved, knees thumping against the edges of the morgue drawer. He groaned, as a wave crashed over his body; first an ache, so profound and deep, and then a relief as his body burst like a fresh grape. The muscles flexed, the skin fleshed. A full bill of health. No wounds. No need for blood.

Again, he coughed. His head tilted backward, looking for the exit. He knocked on the metal.

“...Clover?” he called, voice back to its usual husk.


<Clover> The city morgue. The word morgue left an unpleasant taste in her mouth. The place reminded her of her victims, but it also reminded her of her past, of her human life. Clover had been to the morgue twice, once for her mother’s death and once for her father’s death. Each time, she’d been accompanied by her sister, and each time, her sister had managed to run off and find one of the fresher corpses. Clo hated thinking about her sister, so it came as no surprise that the dark-haired woman lingered outside of the morgue, hesitant to enter the building.

Clo sat down on the curb, her bag by her side, and lit up a cigarette. As she inhaled, she went over her mental checklist. Jesse needed clothing and footwear, which she’d grabbed. She went over each individual article, and then she went over some extra things. Money. A gun. (Guns were much easier to conceal than a sword.) All of the trouble she went through, and she planned on hurting him again. Hadn’t she told him? Hadn’t she told someone? Clover’s thoughts were jumbled, her focus shifting from her checklist to her cigarette. She moved the filter from her lips and deposited the ashes into the street. Smoking helped whenever she needed a distraction. Other than those times, she tried to refrain.

Her mental checklist gave way to a countdown, one she’d made for herself. The sunset had occurred not long ago, so she gave herself an extra fifteen or twenty minutes, just more time to get her thoughts together. She assumed Jesse would be able to take care of himself, as he was the sort to manage on his own, whenever necessary, but she wanted to help him. She wanted to be there when he returned. Clover wanted to do everything she could to make his life easier. And why? She didn’t know. The simplest explanation failed to explain much of anything.She came up empty.

In the dark, the cherry tip of her cigarette acted as a small light. The streetlight overhead flickered on and off. On and off. The few insects that fluttered around the dying light seemed more interested in circling one another rather than circling the light fixture. Clo had to wonder if they were waiting too, if they knew that they’d made their temporary hangout just outside of the morgue. When she had no more cigarette, Clo ground the burning end against the concrete and then stomped the heel of her boot over the smoking remains. When she stood, she bent down to grab the strap of her bag. The cigarette allowed her the time she needed to get herself together; smoking made everything simpler.

Once inside the morgue, Clover wandered around the interior until she heard the knocking of a body part against metal. The dull thud of someone hitting metal drew her away from her blind wanderings, attracting her in the way that the dying light had attracted the moths. When she located the correct cabinet, she lifted the handle and tugged the door open. She looked down at him, his face upside down, and then slid the drawer out for him to climb down.

“It’s nice to see you, gorgeous. I brought you some clothes.” Clover gave the bag a little shake and then dropped it off to the side, the zipper on it already undone.


<Jesse Fforde> It wasn’t long before he heard the footsteps; it wasn’t long before the latch was pulled and his body swayed with the momentum of the drawer opening. It wasn’t long before he could crack a grin. Clover. Finally. As if it had been a decade since he’d seen her last, even if it had only, really, been less than twelve hours. The scent of cigarette smoke clung to her, which only made her all the more enticing. All the more real, with her physical body. Her voice was resonant, a caress to Jesse’s ears.

As he lay there, he licked his lips. He looked up at Clover, trying to decipher the set of the lines of her face. The light in her eyes, the way her lips were pressed. More than that, he was trying to figure himself out. Focusing on his own body, his own heart - or what passed for a heart, anyway. He’d just come back from the dead. A death that he himself had sought, after months of depression and angst. He waited for it to return; he waited for the wave of anxiety and anger. He waited for the weight of it to settle on his shoulders, but it never came.

The grin that he gave Clover was genuine, and it only widened, even if his lips cracked under the pressure. His body felt heavy as he swung his legs from the table, as his feet hit the cold floor.

It didn’t occur to him that something might be wrong. Jesse was far too relieved. He was happy. He was ******* happy, for the first time in such a long time. He reached for Clover’s hand; he tugged at it, tugged at her to try to get her to come closer. He wanted to feel her body against his in a way he hadn’t been able to in the Shadow Realm. He wanted to tell her how sorry he was for taking so much for granted. First, he wanted to be able to kiss her. He wanted to kiss her in a way that she might be able to feel what he was feeling; the relief was so profound, he wondered whether she might actually be able to feel it.

Impossible, probably, but the thought didn’t last long. Even the clothes were forgotten, his sole intention to, in the very least, embrace Clover. He stood and pulled her into his arms, a hot and rushed thank you uttered into her ear.


<Clover> He looked at her in the way that she’d looked at him, and she felt a mixture of joy and anger. The more he studied her, the more she wanted to hurt him. Clover felt the need to punish him in the way that he’d punished her. For leaving. For giving up. For dying. No, she couldn’t punish him in the way that he’d punished her, but there were other ways; she had other means. Clo quickly dismissed the thought of using words to wound him. When he’d lifted himself from the metal table, she took a step back to allow him room. She let her eyes travel up and down the length of his body, ensuring that he’d returned with his limbs, his body intact.

To her, his hand felt awkward, awkward in the way that he held it, and awkward in the way that he tugged at it; however, she moved with the tug and aided him in closing the distance between them. She realized that she resented him, and the feeling hurt. The memories surfaced like scars on her mind, the memories of her seemingly endless search, the memories of the panic that she felt when she’d failed to find him, and the memories of the pain she felt when she finally found him. Dead. Even though she’d discovered him, she’d discovered bits and pieces of him, the remains of someone she used to know.

His embrace hurt just as much as it healed. His touch helped to quell her various worries, but not the anger, not the resentment. The words that he spoke meant more than the embrace. While she should have reassured him that her actions weren’t a big deal, she chose to soak in his thanks and bask in his recognition. The words she wanted to say sat like rocks in her stomach, weighing her down.

I still can’t believe you’d do something so stupid.

Don’t leave me again.

How could you be so selfish!

I missed you so much.

The endless thoughts felt more like a barrage. Numerous, varying words and sentences fought to gain control, and she shoved them aside in favor of holding him. She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed. The bag of clothing made no difference then. Naked, or clothed, he was the same. “I don’t know what to say,” she finally whispered. She’d spoken the truth. She didn’t know what to say. Her hold had loosened, but she squeezed him again, refusing to let go. When she finally pulled away, she felt as if her arms refused to work. Unless her arms were wrapped around him, they were useless. Ridiculous, her mind scolded. He deserved something dark, something violent. Clo decided then that he deserved pain; he deserved something close to the equivalent of her former suffering.


<Jesse Fforde> Jesse buried his face into Clover’s hair; against her neck, lips resting against her shoulder as his head bowed, as he folded his taller body into the embrace. Could thanks be transferred via a lingering touch? If he held her tight enough, would she know how much he owed her? Everything that he had put her through…

And yet here she was. After spending so long with him in death, she had come to bring him clothes. At the very last hurdle she was here, and Jesse felt as if he were teetering. Before death, he’d been teetering in a completely different way. He could have fallen into the darkness, or back into the light. Ultimately, the darkness had swallowed him whole. Now? He felt tense. He was alive again. Clover, an undeniable anchor, a lure who brought him home. He, who had died a ******** death. A suicide by sleepwalk - a story that he would stick to. She should have left him months ago, but she was still here. She was still. *******. Here.

But for how much longer? There would be so many questions. If the patterns fell back into place, if the urges returned, if he continued to spend his nights in bed or out slaughtering the masses, what then? What hope could there be?

And what if everything was fixed? What if, by some miracle, the Shadow Realm had worked like a full body detox? What if Clover acted as his mentor, and he’d just spent a week in intensive rehabilitation? Now clean, he could move on.

What now?

That was the question. What now? How could he possibly thank her? How could he possibly show her that without her, he didn’t know where he would be? How could he convey what he felt without … without what? The sentiment was what crippled him. An emotion that he could not yet put back into words. One that he had locked away in an iron box and sunk to the bottom of the metaphorical ocean of his soul.

For the time being, Jesse was happy to just be. He was happy to stay there - for as long as it took for him to figure out where he stood. Clover didn’t know what to say, and Jesse pressed a lingering kiss to her temple. He hoped that Clover had brought the tomes, because he really just wanted to go home. With her.

“Don’t say anything. Not yet,” he said. He had to let her go. He had to let her let go. He leaned down to pick up the bag, to feel for the rough material inside. Even if Clover had picked the softest silk, it would still feel rough. Compared to the shadows in the realm, everything felt rough. It felt ******* fantastic.


<Clover> Clover enjoyed the feel of his lips against her skin. Just as much as she enjoyed his touch, she enjoyed his voice. How she enjoyed the sound of his voice, so fresh, as if she hadn’t heard it in years. And she would have enjoyed the silence with the same amount of vigor. She would have enjoyed the way his lips curved; she would have enjoyed the way his eyes narrowed. Did he notice the change in his facial features? Did he notice any such things about himself? Perhaps, she told herself. Perhaps he knew that he communicated on so many different levels, from silence to spoken word, from motion to rest.

After he’d acknowledged her inability to form words, she regained some semblance of control. The ability to communicate ran strong through her blood. A Gemini by birth, she should have mastered every means of communication. Clo should have known exactly what to say, right from the beginning. But death had a way with her, and he required more thought. She took great care when selecting her words, for she knew that saying the right thing would set them both back. Honestly, she had no idea whether his remaining time in the shadow realm had truly cleared the slate and returned him to his former state. Impossible. That person no longer existed. Clover knew. Jesse probably knew.

She should have given him more time and more space, but she allowed for nothing. She refused to avert her gaze. As he dressed, she undressed him with her eyes. All of his movements became part of her being, from the way he’d grabbed the bag to the way he reached for its contents. And he didn’t know. Even if he’d caught her staring, he had no way of knowing. Then again, he’d spent more time in a state of induced silence. Where she had speech, he’d had nothing more than observation. He probably read her like an open book. Did he know she planned on punishing him for his behavior? Maybe.

Clover hadn’t forgotten his tome. Including the item had been a last-minute decision. She could have summoned him, but she knew what it felt like to lose access to her home. Without her tome, she felt naked. “I put your tome in there. It’s probably buried at the bottom of the bag. And a gun,” she spoke, her voice soft. Hadn’t they decided on silence, the precious lack of noise? She’d broken the unspoken agreement.

The urge for word vomit became like a nagging at the back of her mind. Her whole body betrayed her. She’d felt the urges before, like pinpricks on every part of her skin. There was a familiar rush that overtook her spine, like someone scratching at her or pawing at her. Her thoughts whispered in the way that she had whispered.

Speak.

Say anything.

He’s waiting.

“I’m glad that you’re back.” No. She hadn’t meant to say that at all. And without her permission, the words kept falling from her mouth. “I missed you.” What? No! Please stop speaking, Clover. Please stop and think about what you’re saying. “I’m still pissed.”

Well, that was the truth, at least. Her last words had satisfied her urge to speak, and the word vomit ceased. She no longer felt the need to fill the space between them, to ignite the air with the inhales and exhales associated with conversation.


<Jesse Fforde> Sometimes, Jesse was fully aware of Clover’s eyes on him. Sometimes, it affected the way that he moved. Sometimes, he put on a show; moved slower than he needed to. Sometimes, he couldn’t be fucked - which was more often than not. Engendered with an almost faultless ego (at least when he was healthy) and zero shame, Jesse was well equipped to handle a watchful gaze. Besides, Clover got her own fair share of attention.

He often wondered whether the ability to read minds would be a good thing. Would it take the mystery? He and Clover had a policy of complete honesty, but they still could not tell each other everything. There were things that people felt that could not be put into words. Especially for Jesse - he struggled to put anything into words, most of the time. And when he got around to it, he usually fucked it up. He quite often managed to say the wrong thing.

There was something heavy in the bag. Jesse felt it, before Clover even had to mention it. He’d pulled on his jeans and buckled them; he was reaching for the shirt when she told him what else was in the bag. With a flourish, the gun was revealed as his shirt was retrieved. Tugging the item over his head, he wondered at all the possible reasons Clover could have had for packing a gun. It wasn’t his gun. It was just a gun. A random gun. Was it her gun? He pushed the tome into his pocket but left the gun where it was.

When Jesse felt himself start to laugh, he couldn’t stop. First, he laughed because Clover was so ******* adorable, the way she told him she missed him, but the expression on her face portrayed only horror. When he continued to laugh, it was due to his own relief. He was laughing. He was ******* laughing. How long was it since he had laughed? Even if just a little? How long was it since that laughter was due to actual delighted ******* amusement? Any and all questions about the gun were forgotten. Instead, he had Clover in his hands again. He couldn’t stop touching her. He didn’t want to stop touching her.

“I’m glad to be back, too. I missed you. I missed this,” he said, the nails of his fingers scraping the back of Clover’s neck, his hip nudging hers. The physical reality of her, the realness. His head dipped, a deep breath taken just before he pressed a nipped kiss to the curve of her neck. “... I missed the scent of you. I missed touching you,” he clarified, before his forehead rested on her shoulder. “I know you’re angry. I know you didn’t like my explanation. I know it wasn’t enough. I’m sorry. I really am sorry. I’m going to make it up to you, okay? I’m going to… I’ll make it up to you,” he said. He had no idea how. He had no idea whether he could achieve such a magnificent feat. For all that Clover had done for him - how the **** could he make up for that?


<Clover> He laughed at her, and she didn’t know whether to laugh along with him or give him a good shove. In the end, she’d smiled at him. She’d chosen to smile because she enjoyed his laughter. As pathetic as it may have seemed, she’d wanted to make him smile, and laugh, for the duration of his dark days, for the length of his depressive episode. Clover let him enjoy himself at her expense, for neither of them had really had the time to enjoy such a reprieve.

Clo brushed her hands over his upper arms, her palms flat against his bare skin. Her fingertips traced little patterns that began and ended on his bird tattoos. Out of all of his tattoos, she enjoyed the birds the best. The brunette saw so many possibilities in such a simple piece of art. He promised to even the score; he promised to repay her for all that she’d done. But Clover didn’t think that he had the ability to make good on such a debt. Jesse couldn’t break even. As her hands trailed down his upper arms to his forearms, Clo wondered if she cared about such a repayment.

Her plans remained in place. Although nothing could balance the scales, she meant to try. Clo meant to take her pound of flesh, despite his sincere apology.He’d left her, in such a quick and meaningless way; he’d slipped right through her fingertips in the way that he’d slipped right into the shadow realm. And she held such hostility, such bitterness. Clo peppered a few kisses to his jawline, and then she reluctantly moved away. He had to dress, and she had to snag her own tome from one of the side pockets on the bag. That day, as with past days, she’d been unwilling to carry it on her person. The tome made no difference when she hadn’t really left the house. Gresse’s had been the only other stopping point, and she’d stayed there or at Jersey’s.

“I’ll meet you there? I have some things I want to get in order. I,” she stopped, hesitating on saying the following words, “have a bit of a surprise. It’s different. It’s just something to welcome you home.” The rest of the sentences had gone unspoken. Yes, she had a surprise. Yes, it was to welcome him home. Clover hadn’t lied, but she hadn’t mentioned that his surprise was also meant to punish him, to remind him that he shouldn’t have killed himself.

Clo unzipped one of the side pockets and retrieved her tome. If he asked why she didn’t carry it on her, she had no answer for him. Answering him meant revealing some of her surprise for him, and she had an actual surprise, one unrelated to injuring him. She’d worked hard to try and clean up the remnants of Jesse’s blaze, the one that ruined Gresse’s, and she’d also tried to keep everything together. The results were mixed, but there had been an attempt. When she tomed home, she stood in front of the ritual table and waited, silently going over her plans. Was she just going to shoot him? Was she just going to stab him? And what would she say? What would he do? Clo remained tense, but she remained determined. Her gun was at easy access.


<Jesse Fforde> Jesse was dressed. Although he hadn’t put any shoes on, they were going straight home. Really, he didn’t need for her to bring him clothes. He just needed the tome. What did he care if those lingering in Limbo saw him stark naked? It was nothing compared to how they’d seen him the last couple of months; throwing up into buckets, sick as a dog. Completely unlike himself. At least, he’d have preferred if they just saw him naked instead.

[Clover]

<Jesse Fforde> It didn’t cross Jesse’s mind to ask why Clover didn’t keep the tome on her; he was too intrigued by the fact that she was asking him to wait, to meet her there. Of course, his mind went to dirty places. She had a surprise - she had to get things prepared. He imagined her skipping off to the bedroom to change into some new lingerie. He imagined… what else? The images flashed too quickly for him to grasp at a single one. Whatever she had in store for him, his mouth watered for it. He was impatient to get home, and to indulge in all the physical pleasures allowed to those with physical bodies. To begin to make things up to Clover, even if in a small way. In bed. It had been a couple of weeks, at least - and that was before his death.

Clover disappeared and Jesse pulled out his own tome before zipping the bag up and slinging it over his shoulder. Now that Clover was gone, he focused on the morgue. It was cold. It was quiet. He could hear no other voices; no other bashing of fists against metal in hollow drawers. Through the doors, somewhere down the back, he remembered the hidden door. This place held so many memories. He really wished that it wasn’t most common for him to reappear within these walls.

For a few long seconds he stood. While staring out the door, he also stared into his own soul; he gauged his own reaction, his own emotional attachment. It twitched. It showed signs of anger and regret, but mostly of absolute certainty. Mostly of disgust. Mostly, a profound need to get back home, to where he was wanted and needed. Depression did not figure into the equation, which was more than he could hope for. This was another win. Just like his laughter, he used his dismissal of past memories to bolster his hope that he was somehow cured.

Opening the tome, he quietly read the words. The cold, dark exterior of the morgue was immediately replaced by the warm hues of Third Circle. Home. How good it felt to be home! His eyes swept the interior, turning, twisting as he searched for Clover, or a clue as to where she might have gone. He found her waiting in front of the ritual table; still in the same clothes. Although he smiled, his eyes were inquisitive. What now?


<Clover> Her eyes focused on the bag hanging from his shoulder, the bag that she’d packed. She shouldn’t have taken so long to pack the bag, not when she only had to toss clothes into the thing, but she’d taken almost an hour. She’d spent time picking the articles of clothing; she’d taken great care selecting a handgun from her own collection. Did he really need a gun? Probably not. Of course she’d thought of that after she’d packed the bag, right before she’d considered a pocket knife.

Clover didn’t know what she was doing. Anyone could have looked at her and known. The confusion was written in the way she frowned and in the way she fidgeted. She wrung her hands as if she were faced with absolute uncertainty. Had she shot him before? Her memories suddenly seemed so hazy. Navigating through her mind felt like navigating through molasses. Clo didn’t want him to enjoy the wound. She wanted him to feel the sting and the burn of a bullet puncturing his skin. His enjoyment destroyed the whole point of her plan. He needed a good dose of punishment, not pleasure.

She stood with her back to the ritual table, palms pressed against the edge. If she moved a hand toward her lower back, she had her gun. “I forgot the bag,” she spoke, telling the truth. The only thing on her mind had been getting home, getting back to Circle before he had a chance to get there first. If he’d gotten there first, he would have had the upper hand, at least in her mind. Briefly, she had another moment of doubt, another moment of indecision. Clover had always had trouble making decisions. Yes. No. Maybe. Her dark eyes focused on his face, looking for something hidden there. He’d laughed. He’d seemed perfectly fine. What was the point in shooting him?

He’d left her. He’d left her to stumble through the city alone. No one else in the family had mattered, not then. She’d developed tunnel vision. She’d focused on finding him and repairing him, taping him back together before anyone had the opportunity to notice that he’d gone. There, beneath his blue eyes, she rediscovered the reasons for her desire to hurt him. She rediscovered the resentment that burned with such an intensity that she felt utterly consumed by the metaphorical flames, white-hot and freezing cold.

“I don’t forgive you for leaving me. I can’t believe you were so ******* selfish.” Even though he’d apologized. Those words went unsaid, since they’d both recalled the words. They’d both recalled his promise to make it up to her. Was that even possible? Yes, she’d decided. She had the ability to force him to make it up to her. “I’m going to shoot you until I feel better about what happened.”

And without another word, she drew her gun and fired a shot at him. Out of all the places she had to aim, she chose to him at his leg. The thought had come to mind to aim at his head, even his dick, but she cared too much. The leg was perfect.


<Jesse Fforde> Something was wrong. Almost as soon as he saw her, he knew something was wrong. Something was not quite right. Here they were standing in the middle of Circle, within reach of the bedroom, but she was keeping her distance. There were so many ways that he’d imagined his homecoming to occur. Most involved the two of them unable to keep their hands from each other. Having learned his new appreciation for everything that was physical and tactile, all he wanted to do was touch her. To feel her.

To that end, he dropped the back that she said she’d forgot, as if the bag didn’t matter. It should have flopped like a dead fish to the ground, but instead there was the dull, metallic thud of the gun inside. It was about all that was left in the bag.

Time slowed down, then. The breath hitched in his throat and his own movements were frozen. Her words were both blunt and sharp as knives. They inspired within him a frustrated anger. There was only so much that he could say. There were only so many ways that he could apologize; to say that he couldn’t help it wasn’t acceptable. There were ways in which he could show Clover, physically express his apology, but she hadn’t yet given him the chance to try.

She didn’t forgive him. He had been selfish. That wasn’t a revelation. They were both experts at selfishness, sometimes. Hadn’t they already had that conversation?

The gun came out of nowhere; Jesse couldn’t react. He couldn’t grab it from her or stop her from shooting. He couldn’t stop the burning pain that shot through his thigh as the bullet went straight through, ripping the skin apart as blood poured from a nicked artery. Although he hissed before he shouted, he didn’t stumble back too far. He reached out to grab the gun, to try to push it down and away so that she couldn’t shoot him again. Where would she shoot him next? The heart? The barrell burned beneath his fingers, but it distracted from the pain in his leg. His foot started to go numb. Tattooed fingers were quickly slick with the thick red liquid as he tried to stem the bleeding. To no avail, of course, as there were two wounds.

He didn’t swear at her, though the thought crossed his mind. The curses came out as muttered mumbles, before he finally drew in a deep breath and put his foot flat back on the ground. He stood up straight. He ignored the wound and the tickle of the blood as it dripped down his leg and soaked his jeans. The gun was released, and a breath huffed from his nostrils.

“Go on then. Make me a pin cushion. Shoot me until you feel better,” he said between gritted teeth, his fingers curling into fists at his sides. “Get it over and done with, yeah? So we can move on…”


<Clover> The gun felt heavy in her hands, even heavier the moment he released his hold on the weapon. The blood that bloomed from the bullet wound looked absolutely wonderful. Everything about the injury looked beautiful. She’d heard his curse words, though she had to listen closely to decipher the words. And yet he hadn’t turned his anger onto her. She’d expected a shouting match, a conversation riddled with violence, but he reacted in a way she hadn’t anticipated. He’d opened himself up to more injuries. He’d offered her the opportunity to shoot him, to leave his body riddled with bullets.

Her trigger finger twitched, but she didn’t raise the gun; she didn’t aim the gun. Despite his words, he seemed unhappy with her. He seemed like he didn’t want her to follow through with the offer. Of course he didn’t. He didn’t want to be the object he’d described. Jesse didn’t want to be peppered with bullets layered in bitterness. Although Clover didn’t really know what he wanted then. He said one thing and his body language said another. Her brown eyes traced over his face, and then along his body. The blood hadn’t stopped. She’d hit an artery. For the first time that night, she truly felt bad. She lost the thoughts of shooting him in other places. Her mind filled with thoughts of bandages and muttered apologies, however reluctant she felt to utter the words. Clo still rejected his apologies.

“I’m good, for now,” she sighed. Clover turned the safety back on and moved to deposit the gun on the crafting table. She didn’t bother hiding the weapon, not from Jesse. After a pause, she did open one of the drawers and tuck it away in one of her favorite spots. “You apologized, but I’m still angry, and I think I will be for some time. That doesn’t mean we can’t move on. It doesn’t mean,” she stopped to sigh again, the quick exhale allowing her to shape her words, “it doesn’t mean I’ll never forgive you, or that I’ll drag it out forever. I’m just hurt. And I want you to feel some of what I feel. You can feel it physically, since you can’t feel exactly what I’m feeling emotionally.”

Clo didn’t know whether she’d explained everything. She’d tried. She wasn’t always the best at communicating her feelings, finding it easier to skip around and avoid different parts. Bitterness. Forgiveness. Regret. Some of the emotions swirled together, creating one large mess. Without thinking about her actions, she moved toward him, reaching out to gently touch his wound. The apology died on her lips. Was she really so sorry? Perhaps she was sorry for hitting him where she had, but nothing more. He deserved the bullet. He deserved a lot more.

“I can help take care of it.” Clover wanted to taste him, to have his blood on her lips, but she didn’t mention the fact. She offered him assistance. She showed her regret for hitting the artery. Her shot wasn’t perfect; she specialized in martial arts, not firearms.


<Jesse Fforde> He watched as Clover put the gun away. He didn’t know whether to be angry, disappointed, or just confused. This wasn’t how he had imagined them being reunited; he had imagined so much more. What did she plan to do? Shoot him, periodically, and then immediately help to clean him up? Was it really only physical pain she wished to conflict, or mental? This kind of behaviour could send a man off a cliff in all his confusion.

Burnt fingers applied pressure to the wound on his thigh; it didn’t do much. Where he could try stop the bleeding from one side of the wound, it still trickled copiously from the other side. Now, he was disappointed that the bullet had gone straight through. He wanted to be able to pull the bullet out, and to look Clover in the eye as he did it. He wanted to be able to grin at her, to prove a point.

Realising that applying pressure was going to do sweet **** all, Jesse straightened and flicked the blood from his fingers, wiping it on his clothes as he stood favouring one leg, the other knee crooked. Vampires weren’t that much different to humans in a lot of ways; he had a wound that was bleeding. The blood was trickling down his leg and pooling at his feet. Although he was always pale, he had somehow bypassed the Necromancer trait, and appeared more human, most of the time. Now? He was paler than usual. Greying around the edges. The wound was sucking all the blood from his face, but he didn’t seem to notice. He was still grinning, even though his teeth were clenched.

“It’s not going to work. What if I like physical pain? It’s more of a reward than a punishment…” he said. He should have been furious. Shooting someone you love when they come back from the Shadow Realm should not be kosher, but Jesse was in far too good a mood. Whatever anger he felt was fleeting, if only because he recognised that he was not hurt. Not emotionally. Instead, he was certain that he could win her over; that she wouldn’t have to turn him into a pincushion for bullets because she’d forgive him anyway. It was the voice of his ego, which he had not heard for a very, very long time. It helped him to shove aside any irritability.

He started with the shirt. Where he’d only donned the thing ten minutes ago, if that, he was already peeling it off again. The clothes, he realised, were pretense. They were a reason to get Clover to the morgue; to meet him there when he woke up, because really, he just wanted her to be the first person he saw. He wanted that reassurance that she wasn’t so angry, that she would let him find his own way home without her. He had that reassurance. She had come for him. The bullet through his leg failed to have the impact she seemed to be hoping for.

“I can clean myself up,” he said. It wasn’t said angrily. It wasn’t said petulantly. It was said almost as a challenge as he dropped the shirt beside them and turned away, heading for Clover’s apartment. Limbo was quiet, at this time of night - there was no one there to see when he slipped the pants from his hips. They were left behind, too - left in the middle of a trail of bloody footprints.


<Clover> He might have considered it a reward, but she felt refreshed, the feeling buried, but still very much alive and present. She had no pockets, or she would have shoved her hands deep inside of them, her fingers groping at the thin fabric, fingernails raking along the lint collected along the stitching. Instead, Clover stood there. She crossed and uncrossed her arms, trying to find the appropriate body language to conceal her conflicting emotions and her unspoken words. She thought too much. Her mind wouldn’t stop. Clo had already gone ten steps ahead. She’d already taken them down multiple routes, through multiple possibilities.

When he started sliding the shirt over his head, she just stared at him. None of the possibilities included him removing his shirt. Her eyes wandered along the revealed flesh, taking in his stomach and his chest. Where she thought she’d memorized every inch of him, she found something new. She found swirls and lines of ink spread out across pale skin; she found the outlines of muscle and bone. If it weren’t for his voice, Clover might have spent more time trying to construct sentences and phrases to describe what she saw. He must have thought himself a canvas, but she saw him as poetry.

“Yeah,” she sighed, “I know you’re capable of taking care of yourself. I thought you’d read between the lines.” Her tongue poked at the back of her teeth. She’d cut off her words. She didn’t even know what she meant to say to him. The bullet had been communication enough. Missing someone shouldn’t have involved blood loss, but Clover had never been one to follow the rules. His shirt fell to the ground, and she wondered if he meant to bait her along, to draw her toward him in some sort of attempt at trickery. “Jesse,” she began, her voice falling away. He’d turned away and she felt something heavy pressing on her chest, a feeling she’d connected to something negative, a vague interpretation of a greater idea.

She took steps after him, her sneakers squeaking with her first jerky movement. He wasn’t supposed to just walk away. He had other options. She had other options for him. He was supposed to have apologized again, or maybe she was supposed to have forgiven him. They were actors then, each of them taking on a starring role in an untitled story about two people in the midst of what could have been war or peace. Clover wondered if he would have been able to fall to such depths, if he would have thought the same things plaguing her. And then she saw his jeans slowly slipping from his hips.

As her eyes followed the movement of the fabric, Clo finally noticed the bloody footprints. She really took in the amount of blood lost. Yes, she’d hit an artery. Yes, he was bleeding. But he kept moving away. Clover slowly followed, her sneakers pressing down over every bloody footprint. He’d left a trail for her to follow, both with his clothing and his blood, and she meant to follow. Her sneakers made red smudges of his bloody footprints, and she carried the blood right onto the hardwood flooring of her apartment. Clover closed the door of her apartment behind her and she pressed her back against it. “Is there a reason why you’re getting naked? You really don’t need to be naked to give yourself medical attention.” Clo had considered coming up with her own reasons, but she chose to ask. For once, she chose to just ask instead of coming to numerous conclusions and relying on assumptions. “I just want to know if I should get naked too.”


<Jesse Fforde> The apartment was a breath of fresh air. A breath that Jesse took and released without hindrance. Nothing weighed it down. Only now when he could breathe freely did he realise how hard it had been before. How long had he been at odds with his own body? How long had just breathing felt like winged barbs? Metaphorically, of course. Breathing was tantamount to life. Habitually, to take a breath, to continue breathing, was to defy death. How long had he defied death when it was all that he wanted?

But he’d tasted death. He’d tasted it, and he’d had enough of it. Home. Home was what he wanted, and home was where he now was. Bullet to the leg or not, nothing could ruin how good it felt to be home, and to be free.

The muscles beneath inked skin rolled as Jesse stretched, amusement dancing across his features as he turned to Clover. She’d followed him. The door was closed and they were alone in their sanctuary; her apartment in a bigger structure that Jesse owned. It was theirs. Blood smeared his fingers, caked in the creases of his palm, his knuckles. It oozed back and front from the wound on his leg, staining the mismatched tattoos upon his thigh, his calf. His practice runs. He shrugged his shoulders.

“We take the physical body for granted sometimes. Every time I come back from that place all I ever really want is a scalding hot bath. Shakes all the leftover cold from the system,” he said, voice a husk. “Either that, or a long hard ****. Why am I getting naked? Because showering, by definition, is ‘cleaning up’. It is medical attention. I also think that a long hot bath and a long hot **** are medical attention. Getting naked assures one, and maybe the other. Just my opinion,” he said. He didn’t wait for a reply, or a reaction. Instead, he gave a wink and sauntered off to the bathroom. He slid the plug into place and wrenched on the taps, steam soon curling, wisping into the air. A shower might have been better, but he didn’t want to stay standing.

Easing himself down into the tub, Jesse settled with his head beside the tap. The scalding water splashed and sloshed over his skin and he stretched out, waiting for the tub to fill. Waiting for the water to swirl pink with his blood. Almost like a man who’d worked twelve hours straight in a hot and rigorous environment with no break, no food, no water. And now he was home, and his girl was his long drink of water, the tub his bed, and the water the soft, comforting blanket. It might have seared his skin, but it was worth it. The heat invigorated him - brought him back to life as much as the hole through his leg.

The back of his head hit the tiled wall, gaze sliding toward the door. Waiting.


<Clover> Did she take her body for granted? He said things that distracted her from her racing thoughts, from the path of multiple possibilities. Clover decided that she took her body for granted. Her evidence came in the form of past accidents and missing limbs, not to mention the pale scars coating her flesh. She assumed her body would always be there, but if she went to the shadow realm, if she went for an extended period of time, she would lose touch with herself. She might forget what it felt like to feel. He might have found comfort in little things. He might have enjoyed being shot. Perhaps the burn of his injury reminded him of his physical presence. By reminding him of his real form, she’d done him a favor; she hadn’t punished him at all.

“I should have shot him in the head,” she thought to herself, even though she had the ghost of a smile on her lips. If she would have shot him in the head, maybe she could have communicated something else. Clover could have given him a different kind of medical attention, the kind involving more gauze and clips, perhaps the kind with stitches. For a second, she considered telling him her thoughts, offering him the glimpse into her head. She decided to keep the words to herself. Her thoughts weren’t really appropriate, given the fact that he’d extended an olive branch; in fact, he’d extended quite a tempting olive branch.

His words communicated just as much as the wink. She couldn’t decide whether she wanted to focus on anger, bitterness, guilt, or forgiveness, so she focused on something else. Clover focused on the fact that she wanted him, and she wanted him so much that everything else fell away. Maybe it was the wink, or maybe it was the scent of his blood, but she followed him. She slid her layer shirt up and over her head and dropped it onto the ground. Her Batman shoes, one of her prized possessions, followed after the shirt--she kicked them in a random direction. When she took her leggings off, she slid her panties down with them, forcing them down quickly. She wanted that bath too. She wanted to feel the hot water on her body, just like she wanted to feel his hands on her body.

When she got to the door of the bathroom, she was already naked, and she wasted no time crossing from the threshold to the tub. Clo dipped her foot into the hot water and then joined him in the tub. She settled in opposite of him, whether she meant to clean him or not, and eyed him. “You take your clothes off, and it’s hard to stay mad at you,” she frowned. Her frown was more like a pout, just an expression to communicate her mixture of pleasure and irritation. He probably knew then that he could win almost any argument by simply taking off his clothes and leading her to the bedroom, or any other place where they could have sex, and the number of places seemed endless.

“Getting naked assures both, by the way, and we can do both for as long as you’d like.”