There's a swift round of bullets, cut off by Mary slicing a man's neck off with the same ease most people swat at flies. Another crack sounds from the corner, in the dark, as Gillian kills something. "Good girls," I whisper. The half-abandoned house we're in whines with the effort of Gillian's back.

Small town. Everyone will be on us in a while. They're not used to noise and attention.

I don't do it for them. I'd like to say that I don't even do it for us, but for the bloodied men now lying on the ground, cut out of life. Absent from their own bodies, their flesh using the last of its latent heat to warm their clothing. I wish I could feel worse about the loss of life, but even if they're not actually in white jackets, it's them. I'd like to believe it was them. The alternative is...

...unsettling.

"It's alright," I say to the darkness. Gillian's big, dark eyes, lacking pupils, stare at me through the grim lighting. "I've got this under control."

---

We snap back a few hours. As usual, my first reaction to going back is to check my neck. Dylan looks away for a few split seconds and I move the collars up. At this point, I have a whole bed of... it's all over my shoulders. I haven't really touched Dylan in a handful of days his time, twice that in mine. When he looks my way, he bites his lip a little.

You know you're going to push him out.

The post-restart buzz is heavier than the air, which is, itself, pressing down on my face and all the bare skin it can find to bite. The cold is almost unseasonable, when I thought we were pulling into a warm streak, though it might have something to do with the altitude. The trees howl with wind. The entire scene is familiar.

"It's going to snow later," I state. "We need to find somewhere to stay."

"How do you know that?" asks Angel.

"Yeah, Red, how do you know that?" asks Kali.

"Out of line," Elle pinches her arm. I can almost feel the shock of pain on my own skin.

"Oh," Kali says, more quietly.

"I don't mind," I say.

"You don't?" Elle's voice peaks. "Do you... like that?"

"No, I'm bothering him," Kali insists.

"Oh yeah," I suddenly agree. "H-hey. Do any of the middle kids have any updates on where we might be able to rest for the night?"

"There's a river coming up," says Alex. His phone is in his pocket, but he seems certain enough. "Mary says so."

"Mary?" I ask.

A falcon almost bowls me over, metamorphosing into an excited Mary just as quickly. For once, it's a friendly excitement instead of something fear-provoking, but I still flinch, hard, just seeing her happy. Shame begins to creep through my system as she yells, unaware, "There's somewhere on the banks. There used to be a bunch more buildings here! I mean, they're all gone now, but there's still... come on, you've just got to see it!" She rushes forwards, turning back into a bird, and I notice Damien in the trees up ahead, with Trace and Adaline as songbirds not too far ahead.

"Lot of birds," I note.

"They're coming back," Mimsy says.

The whole group, regardless of form, follows us to a sheer drop-off in the landscape. The banks roll down a hill, to where a river clogged with tree residue and stones lies in wait. The water drops at one point due to a large, concrete wall, with a room of sorts in its side... it looks terribly impractical, but the water leaks out such that said room is in no danger of receiving water.

I skid down the landscape. "And you're sure no one's there?"

Mary shakes her head. "I know, right? It's all to ourselves!"

"Kind of looks familiar," Dylan says. He approaches the bank and peers inside. "Also smells awful, if we're going to be frank."

I nod. "I can tolerate that. Does anyone know any species with a worse sense of smell than humans?"

"Low bar," Angel says.

Trace swoops down behind us, somehow metamorphosing while still holding Adaline's hand as the much smaller girl recomposes herself. "Ew, do we really have to stay here?" she asks.

"Yes," I say. "You're free to sleep on top of it, if you'd rather."

"Good enough for me." Dylan tenatively moves towards the entrance, which is conveniently across a kind of plateau, which is wet, but not overflowing with water. We look over the edge, to where the worst of the downpour is, and sit down in the dirt 'inside'. The room is claustrophobic, smelling of dirt and something more sinister than dirt, and the ground glints with class shards. The chances of anyone finding us out here are low, and although we would technically be cornered, if I can wedge myself in at back and settle Mary and Gillian close to the front, I would have time to restart us if anything happened.

Oh, I'm thinking like I used to, back in the day. This is the most bitter kind of nostalgia I can imagine.

I lie down in the back, head slumped against the wall so I can watch the others file in. Addie and Trace are almost instantly asleep, and Angel's on the other side of the room from them. She's a bear, curled around herself slightly and tense from the cold. Mimsy takes another corner, closer to us, Damien and Alex are reasonably but not excessively near to each other, and the girls are where I expected them to be, close to any potential action. Elle looks to Kali. "We will be in momentarily?"

Kali nods. "Whatever you say, sunshine."

I flash them a very reluctant go-ahead from the back and sigh, feeling my breath choke up in my throat. "Actually... Dylan. We should 'head out' too. You want to go take a walk?"

"Oh yeah. A 'walk'," Dylan says. He reaches for my hand, and I swear it draws in without any input from me. I feel my heart seize up slightly as I do it, but I get up as if it was intentional, nod to him, and he nods back, rising up.

On the way out, I gently tap Gillian, who is so sedentary as to be made of stone, with my foot."Gillian. If anything happens? You just tell us who leaves. No aggression. No nothing."

"Why? That's basically giving us permission to go out," Mary says.

"Because nothing she can do to you will be anything next to what I could do to you," I retaliate.

Gillian. Mary's half-open body, like a flower in bloom. Petals of flesh hanging from the mouth of a great dragon, its nostrils billowing as it begins to process, one flickering thought at a time, what it has done. Oh, there's so much worse that Gillian could do. It's just that I can prevent any of them from doing anything.

I try not to gag. Dylan reaches for my hand again, and this time, I let him take it. The only sound for what seems like miles is the slow tinkling of water on stone as it plummets below the lip, and the rest of the group watches us from the edge, all the moonlight off the water reflected in their glowing cats' eyes.

Dylan steps out onto the plateau, which I'm only now realizing we're at an angle from... the building itself is askew, with the dirt trying to compensate for lack of a solid surface. Dylan tugs me away from the tragedy we've made a temporary home out of, and leads me down to the river. Soon as we've stopped for a moment, my heart quickening in my chest, he jumps with me still attached.

"Red," Dylan complains as I pull against him, managing to steady myself on a rock on the banks. Our arms come loose from each other, which allows me to use both for balance, but when I'm done wheeling them around, all I can do is look back at Dylan with mild displeasure.

"You shouldn't have jumped!" I yell back.

Dylan shrugs and jumps a few more rocks. I manage to do the same by stepping between them, barely straddling the gap. The world is silent save for the rush of dark water. Dylan waits on the other side, a shadow, and when I catch up, he keeps moving. "C'mon. Further out of the way."

He leads me up the other bank, which curves dramatically, as if it is trying to reach upwards into the sky. Dylan is astoundingly untired as he takes long strides, leaving me, slightly shorter, to run-walk behind him. "You think we'll see Elle and Kali out here?" I ask him, puffing.

"Hope not."

"I kind of hate them," I admit.

"I hate them too," Dylan agrees. "Probably not for the same reason you do."

"What, do you want to go around the table and share grievances or something?" I ask him.

Dylan laughs under his breath. "I can think of a few."

"Huh," I say. My hand rises to my neck and Dylan slaps it.

"What the hell are you doing?" asks Dylan.

"I-- What?"

"What. The. Hell. Is. Wrong. With. You," Dylan spells out, teeth grit. "I know something's wrong. Kali definitely knows, but she's in some terrible trap with Elle she can't get out of, and just-- that's besides the point! You should have... you always fix these things, or maybe they always get fixed, but lately everything feels permanent, and awful, and I wish I could do something, but there's just... there's nothing I can do to help you! And I hate it!"

I tense up. I haven't triggered anything. Potentially a doomed encounter from the get-go. I can live with not coming out here tonight. It's cold and we haven't really gotten more intimate than holding hands. I don't even think I deserve to touch him.

"Red. Whatever you're about to do... don't," Dylan says.

"What do you mean, what am I about to do? I'm not about to do anything," I tell him.

"You so are. You do this thing where you tense your shoulders and just... lose your trail of thought. I can physically sense you hiccuping. Okay, not hiccuping, but it's like hiccuping. Just a quick-- hic!-- and whoever I'm talking to? He's gone. Worse, it's always right before you say something I might actually want to hear."

I start unbuttoning my trenchcoat. I usually keep it on me, even when I go to bed, because I'm not sure if it's a part of me or if it's some clothing I actually received... it seems, by the lack of wear on it (not to say that it's nice, it is filthy) that it must be partially magical. I cast it off and throw it out my side, exposing a shirt and my entire disgusting neck.

"Wow. I mean, I kind of expected us to go there, but I didn't expect you to start stripping in the woods just because I--" Dylan looks at my neck, which is absolutely flooded with plant material. The dark sprouts grow out of every crevice, tangled around each other, reaching, wanting, most of them flattened down around my shoulder line. I can feel heat radiating off of their crushed bodies. "Ooooooooh."

I turn as far away from him as possible.

"Can I touch them?" he asks.

I nod.

Dylan runs his fingers through them. I can't see how they react, but I can feel it, and they pulse with heat right now. The plants must be perspiring. I'd always believed they might be like the domed ones on forest floors... mushrooms, which best I can tell by their locations, don't need light. They just suck everything out of other organisms. Oh, that's painful. I push Dylan back. "Okay. That's enough," I say, putting my coat back on. "It can kind of feel you there. It's not an awful sensation, but I don't like... giving it what it wants."

"Huh. That's kind of," Dylan begins.

"You say hot," I pull my arms through my sleeves, "And I will end you."

"Woof."

It's starting to snow again. Right now, it's gentle, but it'll accelerate the longer we're out here. We've lived through this snowstorm once. I don't want to do it twice. I definitely don't want to do it three times.

So you're not going back? You know this all happens because you're lenient every single time you get hurt it's because you won't fix everything and now it's all pouring through the cracks you created and someday every house you built on it is going to collapse into the water and then they'll abandon you and life won't even be worth living and it'll just be you and Dylan and you'll be happy won't you you little bitch even though everyone else will probably die without you and they'll die hating you and you won't even know and it'll be all your fault--

I am almost at the riverbank. I look into the water. "How deep do you think it is?" I ask Dylan.

"Not deep enough to drown yourself, Red. You could, but you would look really stupid, and I would save you immediately."

"Bet I'm the only one of us who could actually die of hypothermia," I say, looking into the darkness. The pebbles shine at the bottom of the lakebed, all visible, like the teeth of the earth. It really is too shallow to drown in a dignified way. It might be easier if I threw myself off the top of the dam, because I'd definitely lose consciousness at the bottom, if my body didn't break open.

"And you'd want that?" asks Dylan.

I freeze up. "Well..."

"This happens a lot, huh," Dylan sighs.

"You know that," I say, half as confirmation, half as question. How many timelines have I talked to him about it in...? I don't even remember if it was this one. Usually when things go to shit I have some wiggle room to speak to him. Doomed Dylan is my favorite therapist.

"I have to guess everything," Dylan says, "You really don't trust me, do you?"

"It's not you," I promise.

"I know it's not. That's the worst part. I want to be an exception to a clear-cut, obvious rule, and I'm just... not," He smiles, but it's not a real smile. It's more of a grimace.

"No, you're an exception," I say. He doesn't need to know that the exception is that he's the only one who still makes me routinely, truly emotionally broken whenever he dies. I kind of convulse so that we end up holding each other tight, in this desperate, bone-breaking hug, and I can hear his breath moving in and out of his chest, slow and steady. I want to keep listening to his breath and his brave, thrumming heartbeat forever. He's so warm right now. I kiss him, just to ensure I don't leave this timeline, and that's warm, too, like the opposite of water flowing through me. Pure sunshine.

"Where would you be without me?" Dylan whispers into my ear.
"Dead, a few thousand times over," I tell him.

"Glad we had this talk," Dylan says, moving back first. "Thanks for 'walking' with me." His voice prickles with that same dry amusement, and his eyes are bright. His smile is back in full force.

"Is that what we're going to tell Kali and Elle?" I ask, taking the lead back across the river. The return path is easy. I'm relieved.

"Well, I'm sure they'd be jealous if they thought we were getting dirty in the woods," Dylan says. "You have to put it in their language. I guarantee that neither of them have ever considered each other's feelings once in their entire life."

---

We wake up to a landscape covered in late-season snow. It won't last more than a morning, I'm sure from the way the tree branches already seem intent on shaking it off, but it's going to kill all the plants who dared be brave enough to live in the present's trying conditions. All the early spring flowers are going to suffocate.

Wonderful.

I remove my head from the back of the wall and notice, against the dirt, that there are a few tickmarks and some incoherent scribbling. It's familiar in an ominous kind of way, and as I rub my hand against it, letting the grime tickle my palms, I get the sense that we must have, at some point, come here before.

Well, the only thing that really changes is whatever's in my periphery, isn't it? Only so many memories and then you start letting go of things.

It was all decades ago for me.

Mary yells from a distance. I bolt up, almost hitting my head against the ceiling, but she and Damien are playing in the snow, throwing poorly packed balls at each other from beneath heavy coats. Trace and Adaline counterattack from the side, and even Mimsy has joined in, somewhat, in the back making snowballs for both sides and whispering to them softly, even though they're mainly dirt... really, we got a dusting of snow at most. It'll be gone by midday.

"You want to join?" Dylan asks, gesturing towards the festivities.

I shake my head. Still have a few hours left to pull the plug on last night. Keep telling myself I might do it. "Hey. Want to go sit up on top of the house?"
He nods. It's not that hard to get onto the top from the top of the plateau. If you start upriver, you can jump down. I'm at least brave enough to try that, and the sweet reward for my bravery is an incredible vantage. Alex sneaks out, dragging out Angel, of all people, and soon there are three teams. I keep waiting for Kali and Elle, but well, I guess I wasn't expecting miracles.

"Gillian!" calls Damien. "Come on out!"

Alex's half-dirt, half-snowball hits him in the face. Mary bowls Alex over and they almost wrestle straight into the water, shifting forms the whole way down. Angel looks back, mouth slightly agape. Trace beans her to the side of her face.

"Does this make you happy?" Dylan asks.

"I think everyone else is doing pretty well right now," I tell him. "Angel's better. Gillian and Mary are... calm," I say, and the last part hurts like thorns in the mouth, but that'll wear off.

"Derailing," Dylan says.

"Do you think..."

"Yeah?"
"The vines. The plants. Do you..."

"Red."

"Do you think that's... my Veritas?" Hate the word hate the word hate it. Don't want to think about it. Don't want to talk about it. Can smell death in my body right now. Can sense the thing wanting out of me, crawling at the edges. It's been stronger ever since we got here. It's going to keep getting stronger forever. I'm just outlasting it.

"It could be. I wouldn't rule it out," Dylan says.

I bury my head in my hands. "Okay I think I really am going to be sick."

Dylan leans on me. "You know, it's just you, Red. You don't have to be afraid of yourself."

"You know that's not... I can't even get out of a basic shapeshift. What happens if I get trapped, or it doesn't want what I want, or... I suppose what I'm trying to say is, what if what I really am, deep down, is something completely unlovable?"

"It's a real shame that you look like you're intelligent, because every conversation we have convinces me further and further that you're dumb," Dylan says.

"Thanks," I say.

"I think the plants are a look."

"You are the only person who is even capable of thinking something like that."

Dylan shushes me, kind of leans onto my side, and then we're leaning on each other so hard that we'll probably collapse or fall off the top of the concrete brick we're on if either of us move a muscle.

Below, I watch everyone else punch each other with snowballs. Mary kicks a branch's worth of snow down, which turns out to be another to douse everyone lightly in a shower. They have to realize we barely have any snow to mess with, but it looks like they're happy, so I'll take it.