Chapter Text
Vander is woken by Silco's screaming.
He jerks upright, startled, hands curling into fists automatically, scanning their small bedroom in search of their assailant. It takes a moment to realise there's no one, just Silco, naked on the floor, hands clawing at his chest, his fingernails leaving red gouges into his skin.
'What the— Silco! The fuck are you doing? Stop, stop it, you're hurting yourself—'
Silco slaps Vander's hand away. His eyes are bulging out of his head when they meet his, and he scrambles backward until he hits the wall.
Vander stares, confused. Silco stares back, terrified.
'What's happening, love?' Vander asks in a soft voice. 'Did you... did you take any drugs, while I was sleeping?'
Silco shivers and remains wordless, his screams turning to whimpers. Vander goes to the scavenged furniture they use as a bedside table, pulling all the drawers to check on the pills he knows are scattered in there around bundles of smoke and knickknacks. He finds nothing missing.
When he turns back to Silco, he's crying, head down in his arms, fingers bunched in his long hair, shoulders trembling.
Vander sways from one foot to another, at a complete loss. The clock says it's six in the morning. Outside, in the thick smog of the Gray, someone laughs—a girlish peal, like bells—and Silco lets out a strangled sob like the sound hurts him.
Vander stumbles forward then, compelled to reach out. He isn't prepared for Silco's reaction. He expected shudders and maybe more tears, not the kick that smarts his shins, or the nails that dig into his hand, or Silco jumping to his feet, screaming, 'Don't touch me!'
Vander gapes at him and looks down at his hands, just in case. They're fine. Normal. Calloused and rough and the instrument of countless deaths, but they're the same hands that caressed Silco's body and hugged him close as they fell asleep, hours ago.
'Silco?' he whispers, uneasy.
'This isn't real,' Silco croaks, voice splintering on the last word. 'It can't be real.'
Vander approaches him again, slowly, as slow as if he were a feral cat. 'Come on, love,' he says in the same soft voice he would use on such a cat. 'You're all right. You must have had a nightmare. You're here now.'
Silco laughs. It sounds like gravel, ground underfoot. 'No, no, this is the nightmare, Vander. This is a fucking nightmare.'
He shivers under Vander's touch but lets himself be taken to the bed and laid down on it. Although he's calmed down enough to stop sobbing, tears continue flowing freely from his eyes. Vander brushes them away silently, unsure there's anything he can say to make this pass. Whatever this is.
Silco's always been a little... mysterious. He makes mental leaps and connections that often have Vander scrambling to follow. Silco sees beauty in things that leave him cold and gets hope from the smallest of gestures. He has vivid dreams too, and some mornings as Vander listens to his love recount the colourful adventures he was having during the night, he finds himself feeling a pinch of jealousy. He, too, would like some of this, whatever it is, that makes Silco dream so brightly, see the world with such clarity.
Right now, Vander finds nothing to envy. Whatever Silco saw during the night must have been dreadful. He watches as his lover lifts a shaking hand and brushes the left side of his face, blinking his eyes, fingers pulling on his eyelids. Vander places a hand on his belly, ready to catch his wrists if he starts hurting himself again.
Silco screws his eyes shut, pinches his cheek, and finally laughs, his hand landing back at his side. 'This is ridiculous,' he mutters.
The tears are still rolling down his temples and into his hair.
'What is?' Vander asks, a chill coursing over his skin, like he dreads Silco's answer.
But Silco doesn't reply. He keeps his eyes shut and his tears unchecked. The clock ticks seven. Vander covers him with a blanket and kisses his forehead. Silco doesn't flinch at the contact this time. He doesn't even open his eyes.
'Get some rest,' Vander says as he gets up and grabs his clothes, his tone making it a tentative suggestion. 'Looks like you had a hard night.'
'Life.'
Vander stops, fingers frozen over the clips of his belt. 'What's that?'
'It was a hard life,' Silco says.
Vander shrugs and lets it be. He's honestly a little spooked and eager to go ask Benzo for some advice, and maybe Tushka. She might have coffee too, and there's no way that wouldn't help shake off the last dregs of Silco's nightmares.
Coffee doesn't help and Benzo has no idea what's going on. No one in their small friend group has any idea or solid suggestion, but everyone agrees to keep an eye on Silco. It doesn't take long for them to all see Vander's got good reasons to worry: Silco is completely out of it.
He's forgotten that today is Jubilee, that they're supposed to all gather at the Drop to go down to the Pilt together. He recoils from their touch too. His gaze grows distant and his mouth pinches into a cruel line as they try to joke and cheer him up. He's terribly silent, and no amount of coaxing helps.
Eventually they head off, paper lanterns in hand. There's already thousands of them floating down the river when they arrive on the quays and walk to the small artificial beach that is the centre of the day's event. Silco lags behind them the entire time and seems reluctant to enter the waters, staying on the shore until Talia turns around and calls for him to hurry up.
Vander gives Silco space, as much as possible, in the crowded shallows. He puts down his lantern, dutifully mumbling the names of the dead in his life, adding Ahika and Kory last. The lantern's light is a pale thing, joining thousands of others like it amid the clumps of toxic foam that flow down on the Pilt's currents. He glances towards Silco and notices he's crying again as he sets his own lantern down.
When he wades up to him to comfort him, Vander hears him speak a strange litany. Jubilee is the day you call on Janna to guide the soul of the dead on her soft winds, and pray that she will not have to carry yours after them—not yet. But Silco is naming Talia, who is very much alive, Tushka, who just made him coffee this morning, Vander, who's standing right behind him, confused. And then Mek, the boy he rescued just last week? Sevika, who is chatting with Talia right now, not even five metres away...
Vander is creeped out. It's not done, to call the living instead of the dead. It feels like a curse. He's about to grab Silco's elbow and ask him what he thinks he's doing, nightmares and moodiness be damned, when he speaks a name Vander's never heard before.
'Jinx...'
Vander drops his hand. He's lived with Silco for years. They've been together for years. This is nonsense. They don't know anyone called Jinx.
'Silco?'
He turns around and looks up at Vander. His beautiful teal eyes are green in the dim light. They're haunted, his mouth set in a pained rictus. He looks like a stranger, distorting the features of Vander's lover, wearing him like an ill-fitting suit.
'Silco, who's Jinx? What's going on with you? Why are you naming the—'
Silco darts forward, fast as a snake. Vander doesn't even have time to react before his dagger is gone. It gleams in Silco's hand. Somewhere behind them Sevika cries out a warning. Silco's eyes never leave Vander's as he plunges the blade into his own throat and blood comes gushing out. Vander can't hear himself yell over everyone's frantic screaming. He dives after Silco, misses his wrist as he falls backward... Vander goes after him, down to his knees, the toxic water lapping his chest.
It's red. Silco's dyeing it all red with his life.
His teal eyes aren't looking at him any more. They aren't looking at anything.
Vander is woken by Silco's screaming.
He stumbles out of the bed, startled, hands curling into fists automatically, scanning their small bedroom in search of their assailant.
But there's only Silco, sitting on the bed, hands bunched into the sheets, screaming and screaming.
Vander tries.
Every morning he rolls to his side and paws the bed in search of Silco. He brings him close, caresses him, tender touches to soothe this great ache that seems to be devouring him. He asks, he cajoles, he makes promises. Anything to try and wheedle something out of Silco. Anything to try and understand what's going on.
But Silco isn't forthcoming. Sometimes he cries, sometimes he pushes him away. Sometimes he lays there, eyes shut and breath shallow, unresponsive.
It all started on Jubilee, when he woke up screaming and then broke down into tears. He'd refused to come along to the celebrations and stayed behind at the Drop. Vander hadn't pushed, mostly because he'd never seen Silco in such a state before. Now he wishes he had. The yearly ritual would probably have helped.
Vander knows Kory's death is weighing on him, that it came too soon after Ahika's and that Silco blames himself for both. But it doesn't really make sense. Silco had been fine the day before, full of forced cheer in public, and quietly mournful in private. He'd told Vander he was looking forward to Jubilee, that he always feels morose this time of year.
That, Vander understands. The days of moping and crying and lying in bed unresponsive though... He tries to be helpful, but what can he do, really, if Silco won't even talk to him?
He kisses his bare shoulder, nuzzles into the hollow of his throat. Silco lets it happen, but his hands remain stubbornly crossed over his chest, his eyes closed.
'Why do you keep your eyes closed so much?' Vander asks, poking a finger into Silco's cheek. 'Am I so hard to look at, all of a sudden?'
'I enjoy the darkness,' Silco says evenly, keeping his eyes tightly shut. 'It's a luxury I haven't enjoyed in a long time.'
Vander chuckles, more confused than amused. 'What, since last night?'
Silco smiles, and Vander realises with some trepidation that it's the first time he's seen him smile since Jubilee. He hugs him tighter, kisses the top of his head and buries his face in his hair. He doesn't say anything, for fear of spoiling the moment.
More smiles come over time, but they're always sad things, half things. Never enough to summon a dimple, never reaching his eyes. Eventually Silco starts wandering out again, but he's not doing any work and ignoring everyone. When Talia comes looking for him to confront him about his attitude, Silco climbs out of the window before Vander can talk him out of it.
'What d'you do to him?' Benzo asks one day.
He's rolling a smoke, his large fingers always surprisingly deft. Nobody rolls like Benzo does, and Vander accepts the cigarette gratefully.
'I wish I knew,' he says, exhaling a cloud of smoke and frustration both. 'He's not talking to me at all any more.'
'So you two had a fight?'
'When? How? When I was sleeping? I'm telling you, we went to bed and everything was all right. I woke up to him being...'
Benzo coughs into his fist, uncomfortable. 'Did you maybe...'
Vander frowns and leans across the table. 'Did I what?'
'You know...'
'I don't.'
'I mean, Silco's this wee thing, you know? Were you maybe, erm... A bit rough? Maybe you think it was fine but—'
Vander is too stunned to be affronted by his friend's suggestion.
'Benzo. We've been together for five years, I know exactly how rough Silco likes it. But no. We didn't even do anything. I wish it were that simple. Honestly, I wish this were my fault. Something I could apologise for.'
Benzo looks relieved for two whole seconds before his brows furrow again. 'So what gives?'
Vander brushes his face with a calloused hand, rubbing the bridge of his nose like it could help ease the headache that's been building there for days.
'Who knows?'
Silco definitely does, but he won't say a thing. Eventually he starts leaving the Drop, going on walks, short ones first, not minding Vander tagging along. But then he gets up early one morning and creeps out of their room. Vander is too concerned not to follow.
He stays at a distance, his concern slowly turning to curiosity when Silco leads him down into the sump, past a defunct refinery and into a ventilation shaft.
From where he stands, Vander can spy Silco lying down on an old metal propeller blade, jammed in the rock of the fissure. He's singing a tune, arms wide open and eyes closed, always closed.
When Silco sits up and wordlessly throws himself off the edge, Vander is too far away to do anything about it but scream Silco's name.
'No, no, no, no, Janna, please! This can't be happening!'
Vander shifts, opening groggy eyes to see Silco hunched forward in bed, hyperventilating. It wakes him in a hurry. He's never seen Silco like that before. His ribs jut sharply under the tattooed skin of his back, his hurried breath making the green clouds ripple and the red snake twist.
Vander brushes shy fingers over his spine, along the outline of the Old Hungry tower and its stylised gears.
'Love?'
'Stop it,' Silco barks. 'Stop calling me love. Stop this sick joke! I can't take it!'
Vander recoils as if burnt. He sits up and grabs Silco's wrist, forcefully turning him to face him.
'Hey! What's with you? Are you all right?'
He can't be. Silco would never say anything like that. Vander has no idea what he's talking about.
But Vander isn't sure it's Silco, looking at him just then. It's the same teal eyes, the same thin lips, sharp and narrow nose, the same weak chin that somehow doesn't detract from his beauty. All of Silco is right there, and yet the man looking at him, curling his lip just so, like a snarl—Vander's never met that man.
'What if it's you?' the Silco look-alike demands in a cold voice, pulling his wrist free. 'What if it's all your fault?' His voice heats up and he turns around on all four over the bed covers. Vander recoils, back pressed against the headboard. 'Why am I always coming back here? Back to you! It's always you! Did you do something to me, Vander? Did you curse me, that day? Is this what this is?'
'Silco, what—'
Silco's hand is under the pillow, and then in one swift motion his fist is against Vander's chest.
It hurts. It hurts so much, Vander looks down, baffled. Then he sees the pommel of his dagger, carved with half Vs curling like half hearts—'half my heart', Silco had said, 'I can't spare more than that'—jutting out of Silco's fist, the business end of the dagger buried between Vander's ribs.
His breath hitches and catches, like the cold steel is pinning it to his lungs.
Silco growls, low and mean. His eyes are cold, so cold. Then again, the entire room is suddenly freezing, Vander's fingers tingling. A cough bursts out of him without warning, splattering blood on his chest and Silco's bare arm.
'W-wh—'
'Just fucking die already! How many times do I need to kill you for you to stay dead? And me!'
'How—how—' Vander rasps, forming words without air. Everything tastes like copper and the tingling is turning to shivers. 'How many... times—'
Vander wakes up choking on a pain sharp as glass. He coughs, thrashes, fingers clawing at his throat, chasing the invisible hands choking him.
Silco isn't in bed, but he is, kicking the sheets and banging his skull against the headboard.
It takes a second to realise what's going on. It's a wire. He's being choked by a wire. It's going up around the headboard's top bar, and across the room, to Silco's hands.
'Ssssiii—'
Vander lets go of his neck and claws at the air. The betrayal punches through his heart, but mostly he doesn't understand. It doesn't make any sense. His mind offers no good explanation for this—for Silco, standing naked by the window, a coil of wire bunched in his fists.
Vander's vision narrows. It goes dark, a tunnel to nowhere and no time.
Memories of his life flash before his eyes: his mother touring a cultivair with him, his father slamming him into a wall, his first kiss and his first kill, the sound of his father's skull, splitting open, the taste of blood and gunpowder, Silco's voice, calling him pet, and then screaming his name, for worry, for love, for pleasure.
And then, Vander dies.
Vander wakes up alone.
It isn't exactly unusual. 'Your dad was a street matou,' he'd once told Silco jokingly after he'd claimed his biological father had been a pirate.
Whatever the man was, his son has the energy and many of the habits of a feral cat, including disappearing in the morning through the window, climbing pipes and metal railings with unnatural grace, excellent balance, a love for having his hair petted and a tendency to scratch if you try to nab any of his smoke.
Vander gets dressed and leaves their bedroom. A pleasant aroma wafts down the stairs, leading him to the empty bar room. Maybe Silco isn't being so feral today...
He's behind the counter, washing the coffee pot, two steaming mugs waiting on the bar next to a roll of bread and some jam.
'Good, you're up,' Silco says curtly.
Vander frowns but perches himself on one of the bar stools. 'Are you all right? It's not like you to be up this early to make breakfast.'
'Are you complaining?' Silco asks, arms akimbo.
'Me?' Vander asks, feigning surprise. 'No way! This is my dream morning. No, actually, in my dream morning you're still in my arms when I wake up. But...'
'Yes, then I get up and become your sweet wife, of course.'
Vander laughs and takes a sip of coffee. It's scalding hot, dark and as good as you can make it with cheap beans and a stove top coffee maker.
'Thank you, wife,' he says solemnly.
Silco doesn't laugh. He doesn't even fire back with some quick repartee. He's just standing there, staring at his mug, his elbows still jutting out and his foot tapping a quick rhythm on the floorboards.
'What's wrong?'
Silco looks up at him then, and there's something odd about him. Vander can't quite decide what.
'Look,' Silco says, 'you need to finish your coffee. Then... Then we need to have a long talk.'