Raime’s tongue was busy exploring each of their teeth individually. Impossible for them to know for how long they’d been doing it as the effort had started from an unconscious impulse. Checking for cavities, feeling the points and blunt sides, digging for signs of something unusual. How many teeth did they have before? It’s not like Raime had ever counted, but the amount didn’t feel abnormal. They stood in front of their mirror, now baring their teeth to it as if some secret would be revealed. Raime had considered a shower, they hadn’t stepped a foot in their bathtub since that day and started wondering if it hadn’t started to show. The suit they had borrowed from April showed more wear than them, if anything Raime was unsettled as the absence of body odor they were emitting. They didn’t put their entire trust in that impression and ambushed April on her way to work. She only scoffed a little too loud for their liking and brushed them off with a “You’re fine” before heading out without looking them in the eyes. An inconclusive sense of otherworldly disorientation. Surely the reincarnation of a planetary hero wouldn’t need to bother with so little. It was Raime’s turn to scoff at their own reflection.
Their run-in with old Allen hardly would be conclusive enough for the Capitán to slide the skeleton key right in their pocket but their other option at present was to go investigate Black Lake themselves and the prospect didn’t feel appealing. Raime left their apartment, keeping the door wide open, only to come face to face with Alina. One wrong expectation that she had left before her daughter landed Raime in a situation they would have rather never experienced again. There must have been an option for the both of them to not even aknowledge each other and go on their way but Raime met her eyes and knew she wanted a confrontation too much for that option to be viable.
“Finally decided to do something?” Alina sighed with as much contempt as one sentence could carry, closing the door behind her.
What a vague and spiteful question. In the midst of everything that happened this past week, Raime still held within them some regret that they cowered in front of her this much before they rose to the Hull’s summit. Now that they had looked at the Major and the Capitán in the eyes, flaunting their hidden self in front of both hands of the Cors, Alina looked so much smaller. Raime rolled their eyes so that she could see it, inadvertently cracking a smile from the corner of their mouth. The eyes that squinted back at them were enough of a reward, even if it took tremendous effort not to add anything, Raime headed for the stairs, basking in the satisfaction of her reaction.
“That’s fine with you? Continuing to bum around, knowing what you are?”
Raime looked back at her, matching Alina’s spiteful gaze. So, so small, might as well fling her microscopic grudges at the Sun itself. Raime’s heart burned with something that urged them to respond.
“If you want me to do something in particular, make your request clear, hm?”
“I can’t be clearer than “Do something about it”, Raime. All you’re showing me is you not doing anything about it.”
“And what do you see, Alina?” Raime spat, digging their hands in their pocket and taking a few steps closer to Alina, making the difference in height even more evident, “What have you been seeing since you stopped wanting to be in the same room as me?”
“Look at Avril, and look at yourself, you’ve noticed the gap as well don’t bite your tongue trying to deny it.”
“She would hate to hear you use her like this.”
“That’s because I raised her this way.”
Bile filled Raime’s throat, their heart slowly sinking. Something behind their eyes cried to flow out. Raime hated, more than they could ever hate Alina, that their body was reacting this way. They had the power to take whatever they could ever need, the Marrow Knight’s mural flashing in their mind. Whatever they could reach would be theirs. Even then, even then.
“You’re too busy…” Raime whispered to keep their voice steady, “You’re too busy in your own head. You know I work for a Pillar now? I don’t need your approval to keep moving, you clearly can’t keep up with me anymore.”
The final words uttered, Raime turned heel and walked swiftly towards the elevator. Finding that it stopped on the 7th, they didn’t wait a second for it and barreled down the stairs. Like Avril when they were stuck in the bathtub, Raime had avoided meeting Alina’s eyes at the end. Missing words and the lack of a reaction from her kept their mind flared and anxious. “That’s because I raised her this way.” Why were they so absent in her words? Were they only raised by proxy? All of the words Alina had ever said to them prior to them inheriting Soot’s apartment were turning to ash in their mind. No matter how much she wanted to erase them out of her life with Avril, they couldn’t have been anywhere else, they never had any other choice. Why were they forced to feel like a stranger in their own memories? Blackened spots behind Raime’s eyes were the only thing they could recall from what they took from Prys and in the underbelly, they couldn’t look at themselves to try and understand the reason why Alina would despise them like this. Disgusting, revolting, unfathomable creature that she had let into her home. Because that’s the message she wanted to convey, this is what she didn’t want Raime to ignore now that they were aware. The world, Last Kunlun and everything around her could collapse in on her head but it wouldn’t matter unless she knew that Raime was aware they were the only one at fault. Why then? Why was her seemingly empty heart, still able to love Avril and not them? This whirlpool of emotional turmoil came to a screeching halt when they reached the street and caught a whiff of burned cloth. The couch that had blocked the neighboring complex and that was then carved into was now burning brightly in white flames in the breezy morning. The sight would have been alarming but the couch was surrounded by the entrance’s scarmetal frame which wasn’t flammable so every passerby only stopped to look in a mix of stern amusement and confusion. What were the odds that it could have caught fire on its own? Low, but if the arsonist hadn’t fled the scene, they wouldn’t be apprehended by anyone around. The Capitán had a point about getting some outside hands to shape up the district.
Now that the Sun was well on its way once more, even the lanterns that hadn’t stopped burning couldn’t offer their distinct red hue anymore and the aura of grief that had hung over the city had completely dissipated. From the Grande Gate to the pagoda of City Hall, you could still sense on the ground that a massive wave of people had come and gone, but they’d all mostly gone back home. To mourn in their own way or just go back to their usual lives, the people of Last Kunlun ended up agreeing that they wouldn’t all be following the Old Man to the Hearth just yet. Some must have, from Allen’s generation, but Raime struggled to find something to empathize with here. If Allen was to be believed, then noone had known the Old Man enough for him to be close to anyone. How old had he been in the end even? Two hundred years should be well enough for a human to die of old age. Maybe his life story was included in the eulogy that Raime had missed by not following the march. Oh well.
If they could make the trip without being distracted by anything, 131 Byzance was a straight shot from the Hull. The bench that Raime had sat on to ponder was currently hogged by a group of three loosely dressed humans exchanging a seemingly very important conversation that Raime had no interest in. They were cautious still, entering the front garden, but the rabid Willow was nowhere to be seen thus far. Raime tried pushing the door into the main hall but found it locked. This came to an initial surprise, they didn’t remember Willow using a set of keys last time. After a quick reflection, they decided to knock repeatedly until someone answered, no use in playing it safe now. About thirty or so knocks later, the doors opened in a violent swing to reveal the Major. His concealed lenses could only show as much annoyance as any other lightbulb but Raime figured the frame didn’t feel ambivalent to their repeated knocking.
“Is this necessary?” The Major asked slowly.
“I don’t have the keys, should I have tried to enter from the back?”
“Unwise.”
The Major stepped away from the doorframe and Raime happily skittered inside, looking around again to see if anything had changed since they last came. Despite everything that had happened last night, their apartment in the Hull and 131 Byzance still gathered dust in the same places. The chair that Willow had kicked aside was back on its feet however, Raime guessed the Major was also responsible for cleaning up behind her tantrums. She must be ten times as useful as Raime for the Capitán to willingly keep her in the same building as the rest of them.
“If you are here to talk to the Capitán you will have to wait.”
“If she’s somewhere out I could just intercept her on the way?”
“She is here. Sleeping.”
“Oh.”
That said, Raime fell on one of the derelict chairs and rolled backwards a little.
“She sleeps?”
Raime heard his frame whistle lightly and they sneered. Was he aware of this tic? Or was this something that happened to him naturally, something that he hadn’t been made aware of? They had contained it inside their mouth before in the museum, while they still feared his size and status. Somewhere along the way, that fear had let way for something else, and that let them now ask freely.
“The whistling, is this your way of laughing?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
Impossible to tell if he felt insulted, the similarities between navigating a conversation with him and the Capitán amused Raime even more. They leaned against one of the empty desks.
“I’m curious, that’s why the Capitán hired me you know? You probably know. You know last year I barely thought about you guys at all so when I met you in the museum I had to… scramble what I knew about the illustrious Cors.”
The Major didn’t look to be in some sort of a hurry, but he didn’t take a seat himself, barely facing Raime.
“And what insights did you have then?” The Major asked.
“I thought you and the Capitán had a telepathic link.”
The Major shifted slightly to his right but Raime snapped their fingers at him, accusatory.
“You tried to hide the whistling! It’s cool, big guy, my neighbor has a weird laugh too!”
After a short silence, the Major chose a chair and sat himself down. Raime expected the furniture to feel the burden of his size but either the frame was way lighter than he looked or he consciously restrained his weight to not crush the chair beneath him.
“You know,” Raime blurted out before thinking of what they would actually say, “I also thought that from the start you were only in the museum to ambush me…”
“Why would I?” The Major asked, turning to face them.
“I mean, after the Capitán got a hold of me outside… When I came her yesterday, you didn’t say anything to me, so I thought oh yeah that makes sense, his primary order was fulfilled… or something like that.”
“You are surprisingly presumptuous, has anyone ever told you that?”
“People tell me many things these days,” Raime replied pensively.
“Then for clarity, I went to the Museum of Mythos for the Cors purposes, which you cannot know about and no the Capitán and I do not share a telepathic link.”
“Would you want to?”
“It is not possible.”
“But if it were.”
The Major looked away, towards the stairs leading to the first floor.
“It would be useful right?” Raime insisted.
“It would be reassuring.”
“That’s really cute. She should really sleep at decent hours though, who knows when business comes knocking.”
“Do not bother undermining her, she had been awake for thirty six hours prior to her even making her stand in front of the city.”
“What, like reading the Old Man’s eulogy?”
The Major’s lenses fell back on them.
“You were not there?”
“Oh uh, no, bad idea, me in crowds I mean, so I did some of the assignment that she tasked me with, that’s why I’m here,” Raime stammered, gulping in the silence, “Should I have come?”
“No matter, I was not here as well. Neither was Armageddon.”
Raime followed the path of his lenses that were looking somewhere to the right of them and spotted Armageddon’s silhouette slumped between two desks right beside them. They hadn’t noticed them at all thanks to her barely showing any signs of life and the shadow colored veil they were draped in. Raime had jumped a little from their seat but calmed down almost instantly, if anything they were just thankful it wasn’t Willow that was hiding near their ankles. Upon being noticed, Armageddon waved lazily before going back to their occupation that clearly steered too close to the ground for Raime to recognize its nature.
“So… the Capitán is the new Old Man then?” Raime asked tentatively.
“I do not expect it to be that simple, for all purposes.”
“That’s good then.”
The Major looked at them, if there was something to be gleaned from his gaze it would land between accusatory and questioning.
“Means I’m not out of work just yet,” Raime clarified, cracking a smile.