Agent Vivien. Twenty-eight. For her, home is a place you cannot escape like the smoke in your lungs from a housefire your father started. You still cough up dollhouse plastic and holy basil from time to time and it smells like your mother's grave. She picks up after her baby brother's messes who is twenty-five. Her mother dies, but it's the aftermath that sets the implosion. A shark at her job, she keeps moving, she's got to, or she'll drown. She craves the distance and the compartmentalization her job gives, the quick escape from knowing the aftermath of her jobs. Never stick around for the aftermath.
“I’ve been on the other side of dying for a very long time.”
“You mean the wrong side?” Derina’s voice teases and then leans in closer to murmurs, “This one’s much more fun.”
Her voice drawls on the last word, and Laila retorts, “Is that your plan? Die, resurrect, seduce an innocent man to depths of the ocean?”
“Hardly. You’re not a man, Ms. Kivris, or innocent for that matter.”
By the spirits, she’s an incorrigible flirt and probably responsible for a dozen stereotypes about sirens. Laila leans back to look at Derina better, the blood in her face running hot and keeps her mouth shut. She doesn’t trust her tongue enough right now.
The corner of Derina's lip curls up knowingly, her eyes wild and tipsy as they focus on her. Laila wets her lips and whispers, “What are you playing at?”
“Just a dance. We’ve got plenty of time until Marty kicks us out.” Derina tugs her hand but makes no motion to get up, brushing her thumb across Laila's knuckles.
She knew how the protocol dictated and it only gave her three minutes at most. If she didn't remove all traces of her hacking into the victim's computer, they would label her a suspect. She was a cyber vigilante, not a murderer, thank you very much. Criminals are very sensitive about the crimes they commit, and the least you could do is to accuse her accurately.
She began severing each connection, leaving behind no trace, but before she could finish, Detective Alvarez zeroed his eyes on the hidden camera and pulled out a notepad from his jacket. Then, he strode across the Persian rug, and bent low until he was right in front of the camera. He unfolded the paper and held it up. On it was one message.
How long have you been watching, Oblivion?
The screen blacked out. All connections severed from the camera.
The moon sings softly on the nights Esther climbs in through her brother’s window. These nights turn sparser as Amador stays in his new apartment across the country. During these nights, her heart beats in a lulled pace while she sits on his empty bed.
There’s a soft click as she unlatches the window and when she crawls in, she makes sure to land on her toes. She finds more than just her older brother. She doesn’t know what she’ll see or what she hopes to see. When she’d last seen him, he’d slammed the door, tears streaking down his face and voice hoarse from screaming. She still doesn’t have the full pieces from the fight that led to her father’s roaring voice startling their home into silence and the unusual pitch of Amador’s voice as he walked out the door.
She opens his bedroom door to see if he is in the living room or spending his time in a library. She hopes he’s found a library he likes here despite all that has transpired.
Amador’s head is lolled on the couch, his mouth parted and dead to the world. His body is slightly tilted with one arm around his childhood friend, Maya’s sleeping form who was hugging her brother’s waist. The ugly green blanket Esther had gifted him as a joke is bunch around their feet as if kicked. There’s Snakes n Ladders, playing cards, and Candyland strewn across the table.
Maya had always filled Amador’s head with ideas—little fantasies that didn’t include Esther most likely that he could escape into. Frowning, she steps forward, fully planning to yank the woman out but the floor creaks loudly under her feet. They both jolt open, Amador’s shaking his head and Maya drags her hands across her face to remove her hair from her mouth, scrunching her face.
When Amador turns around to face the source of the sound, he finds her face and gives a dopey smile. ‘Hey, you’re home. When d’you come here?’
This is the first time she heard him call this place home, and a little piece of Esther’s heart cracks as if he’s renouncing the family home. Something vicious crawls onto Esther’s tongue as she bites out, ‘Thought you’d know that you’ve not succeeded in getting rid of me yet.’
Milas flinches as hurt flashes across his face, and in an instant, Maya grips his arm. Esther can never guess how Maya knows that while still keeping her piercing gaze fixed on her.
‘I don’t want to get rid of you,’ Amador says in confusion before letting out a shaky laugh, ‘no matter how annoying you are, you little rugrat.’
Esther should ideally know that. She doesn’t have the full pieces of the fight he had with mom and dad, or the unfamiliar way he’s glancing at Esther, still wary but now distant. Even in the moonlight, she can see the color back on his face, the surety of his movements as he tidies up the table and the blanket to give Esther a place to sit.
When Maya flicks on the floor lamp in the corner, his eyes crinkle at Esther and he pats the seat next to him. His cheeks are no longer sallow, his face no longer as pale as Esther, and he no longer sways in a way that makes Esther worry that a faint breeze could have knocked the husk of a rock her brother used to be.
Her brother had been wasting away for months, and Esther had not noticed.
From the corner of her eyes, Maya walks in with two plates balanced in a tray and slides the biggest portion of what looks like heated leftover lasagna to her brother, glancing warily, as she reminds him, ‘You’d promised you’d eat tomorrow nine hours ago. It’s 12:03. Eat up.’
She offers another to Esther as she leisurely nibbles on peanuts to keep her brother company. Her brother makes a little face at the size, and Maya produces a bar of chocolate in her fingers seemingly out of thin air as a bribe and chews obnoxiously loud until he drops it. He slouches to rest his head on Maya’s shoulders in acquiesce like Esther had seen him do a thousand times since she could remember, and the woefully domestic scene sours her heart.
Her plate remains untouched and she nods her head in gratitude for the food and the company. She makes excuses poorly at best and outlandish at worst, and walks out the door.
One day, she would know the words of the fight and Amador’s dreams if he’d let her, but for now, she takes the earliest train home. As she looks through the window, she sees her mother’s eyes with dark circles underneath. They both have her eyes, but this new Amador’s eyes gleam bright enough to quiet the moon.
Reality kisses his sleepless nights, until he dreams of her again.
“Really wish you weren’t here anymore, love,” Milas tells Zimi, sitting by the window of his apartment. When he squints outside, the moonlight gleams too sharply off of the blades of grass.
He needs to tell her tonight. Right here in the dreamscape she made for them to meet across the mountains and rivers between.
She barks out a short laugh, but her shoulders hunch. She begins, “I don’t know who I can trust enough to practice this type of spell. I truly didn’t know I was bothering, hones—”
‘I miss sneaking mom’s pastries to you and spending all night awake because you got a new board game and you’re a horrible, horrible cheater and.’ Words. Words tangle in his mouth, so he blurts out, ‘And, I miss all the ands.’
Quick as a wildfire, she grasps his face with both her hands. He never feels them, but he can see her dark eyes looking into his sandy ones. In these moments, he thinks her a phantom. That the sentinels who swore their loyalty to her killed her before she could cross the city’s borders. With their history, the years stretching like scars on knobby knees and dolls, he could create something real enough to fool him.
Something creaks, like twigs snapping under a wheel. It takes Milas back to the evening before, his hand digging into Elijah’s wheelchair, light stubble not smooth skin, and soft hair brown not black under his hands. When he pulls away abruptly, she puts her hands up in surrender.
The view outside the window fades into fog, but so do the corners of his room. He needs to tell her.
‘I’m sorry, Kazimiera’ he chokes out. ‘I don’t deserve you.’ He slips onto his knees. Promises broken in a heartbeat, heartbeats jackrabbitting with Elijah’s laugh and the way he calls him endearments in something called French, and Milas was such a fool for the litany of mon chou, trésor, amour.
After a pause she says, ‘You kissed someone? ’
He shakes his head vehemently, ‘I didn’t, but I wanted to. I almost did.’
The world stills, or maybe it’s too loud in his head: exile, treason, Elijah. The fog obscures his vision until he can’t see anything past the table.
She grins up at him as if he’s the stupidest person on the planet, and asks, ‘And selfishly hoard your heart all to myself? I couldn’t fit it in the biggest rooms of the palace.’
All air rushes out of his lungs in a sharp exhale, dizzy with relief until he is gasping in short breaths—her forgiveness cooling the splinters under his skin.
When she leans forward to speak in his ear to tell her about him, he is back at the couch with a flickering lamp’s terrible wiring.
He is still talking about him when the fogs submerges him fully.
When he opens his eyes, Elijah’s laughter down the hallway is made of dreams.
And it will have to be enough
He’d recognized her. Of course, he had, the fool. When her shadows and reflections had changed, he had simply clasped her hands in his, more scarred than when they had parted. With shadows lingering in his eyes that pumped vengeance in her blood, he had gestured her over to the back, welcoming her home. Home, Home.
Her brother remained dutiful. Oh so dutiful, never keeping his attention off of Donna, locked in a strange orbit as she did the same. Esther didn’t miss the quick slide of Donna’s hands underneath the expensive tablecloth, chocolate and sweets passed to him as their fingers brushed, a rehearsed game. She knew the way Milas’s apartment smelled like irises and malvas and how his sweatshirt hung from Donna’s shoulders as she sat on the blue divan that had Donna’s flair written all over it.
Esther mused as the insomniac nyctophiles ambled underneath the moon, swooning by the promises of halcyon days framed by the stars and meteors and heartbreak. Days that stretched too long in its burning intensity and nights where rain draped lovers in midst of sweet kisses.
The warmth of Ivory's breath lingered down from ear to her collarbone, pressing a ghost of a kiss as she commented offhandedly about her day. Esther wondered if she hadn't spent days underneath the earth in its caves and stations, if she'd still have the sun-kissed skin of her mother when she looked in the mirror, missing her in the curve of her lip, the shape of her jaw, and the dip in her brows.
She missed her terribly, the lilt in her lullabies, the firm frown laced with mirth when Milas burnt his mouth for the fourth time in the same meal.
She remembered the familiar weight of her hand that had now been replaced in her chest, uncomfortably tight around her throat and ribs.
Her father would keep them safe, with his calloused hands that could lift her up and twirl her in a dance, with the rage and ferocity that rivaled her mother.
She would gather their numbers, keep them safe- find them again. She dared to hope again.
I hope every writer who sees this writes LOADS the next few months. Like freetime opens up, no writers block, the ability to focus, etc etc you're able to write loads & make lots of progress <3