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If he could have laughed, he would have, again, in the raw satisfaction of destruction. He hoped dimly that wherever Lawrence was he saw this, and the thought was swallowed up by one that was very nearly wry, and remarkably detached, and maybe it came from Fiona and not from himself, he didn't know: the universe wants me to die gasping for air. And then, just as cynically: karma for all that smoking.

The next thought was unmistakably Fionnghal's, peaceful and approving and strained through a veil of sadness: you did good work, sir, she said as he tried desperately to get some purchase with the blade on the tightening noose, and she made no protest. She was a ghost of the battlefield: war ran in her veins, and to die gasping and fighting in the enemy's clutches when a swift end on your own terms was at hand was unacceptable.

Deprived of oxygen, a normal human body--Taym knew this because he'd read it, this was how he knew most things; but he also knew it because he knew it--loses consciousness within three minutes. Brain death is typically total within seven. Perhaps a Hunter's body could tolerate more, but perhaps Taym's body was no longer truly a Hunter's, after months of masochistic asceticism and days upon days of mental torment at Lurks' hands and Waits' and Qarah's; after days of so little to eat and even less to drink. He had no way of knowing which was the case, because the passage of time was strange and warped and when the edges of his vision began to go blurry--he still fought with the knife, desperately sawing with his shaking, weak, useless hands--it seemed as though only seconds had passed, and as though he'd been hanging there for weeks.

There was, he realized dispassionately, blood on his fingers, and he wasn't sure if it was from the noose or from his efforts. Fear drained out of him, and it seemed strangely impossible to keep Fiona in his hands, her shape flickering from knife to ring and back again, and sometimes he was sawing and sometimes he was clawing with his bare trembling fingers, and he was aware of this only distantly, through a film of realizing that he no longer hurt. A strange deaf-blindness descended as it had days ago when he'd drowned, a muted, colorless acceptance, and the only sensory input he had at all was the taste of someone else's blood drying on his lip, and he still didn't know and he would never know, now, whose it was.

He wondered, dimly, if Leona Tavish would think this worthwhile.

She is the threat to your daughter. She is the one who hunts all our families, all our children.

A day ago, or perhaps this same day because time had lost meaning underground, he'd let Lurks feed him a slice of fruit by hand, drunk out of a bowl like a dog, and the horseman had looked delighted and Fiona had whispered to him sternly, disappointed: principles are important, and never more so than when they are difficult to keep.

Someone else's blood on his lip, but ******** Leona Tavish's opinion, because Fionnghal was right even if it all been some futile display of willpower and principle to no end. It was worthwhile to him.

It was a good weapon, someone said, and he'd never said thank you to her.

It was a good weapon, someone said, and the thought had not come from inside his own head, and the voice was eminently human and vaguely familiar in a way that reminded him of comfortable things and not of frightening ones, but the emotion that accompanied it from very far away and very quietly was the one that had accompanied Lurks' giggling approaching from the corridor: the desire to burrow down into the pile of corpses' coats and hide. It didn't last. Fiona did not have to urge him, this time.

He reached, and he wasn't sure if he held a knife or if slim white hands were clasped around his dirty wrists, because he saw both and neither. He sought blindly along the rough wall at his back where he'd been frantically scrabbling at the toehold that robbed him of an easy death, prying either his fingers or the blade into tiny spaces, until a stone loosed and clattered down, and then another. With the last vestige of his strength he wrenched (or cut; his hands were not his own, he did not know) a heavy gold-colored button off a twisted, frayed thread on his cuff and he threw it, a metallic ping-ping-ping magnified by echoes but still, through ears that felt stuffed with cotton, laughably quiet. He tried, again and again, to scream, and again and again there was nothing, nothing, just a drifting, distant burning in his lungs and the fading echoes of a falling stone.

There was cool metal in the palm of his hand: it was a hilt, he knew it to be a hilt and not a ring, but it was clearly the antler of a placid, hollow-eyed deer, and he held it in fingers rapidly losing their grip. He would black out before he died and it would clatter to the ground if the first were not enough, but he could not make himself let go, could not bring himself to relinquish her, could not force himself to separate them here at the last. The pit could have her over his dead body.

His answer was brief and succinct and necessarily wordless. After a pause (which felt like forever in the dilation of near-death time but was more like a second or two), Fiona flickered out, and he raised one hand to claw weakly, feebly at the noose, and the other to aim a middle finger vaguely upwards.

He didn't answer. He knew everything that Stephen was and he hated him for it and he hated him for the ungentle way he'd wrenched his shoulder back into place, what seemed like lifetimes ago; he hated the Stephen that he'd seen inside Leslie's head and he hated the Stephen that cracked a joke right now and called Konstantin sweetheart; he hated him for touching him and for feeling solid and comforting and he hated him most of all for this: that Taym, sucking in lungfuls of air that burned and choked and were wonderful, bleeding on Stephen's shoulder and stinking of many, many days of unwashed filth, clung to him unashamed with whatever was left, too weak to cry, too relieved to thank him, too broken to do anything but finally, finally breathe.

[ cave ]

He respawned in a cave, shrieking in agony still, his sense of self further distorted away from his core essence. In a pitiful pile, he curled, draped in fabric and covered by wings, shaking. He felt the blast on the inside of his lungs, burning him up again and again and again. Lurks rustled and a host of bugs fell free, crawling over him in comfort, a blanket, a balm.

He said nothing, and instead curled around himself tighter, feeling splintered, as if he might blow away like sand on the wind.

[ cave ]

If it were any other circumstance, Something That Waits might have found it fascinating. But it was happening to him. And he did not like it; at least when he had some actual conscious thought on the matter. At some point he just sort of didn't think. It had happened to many times, he had lost count. It hadn't been really too many, not really, but still. Splitting apart, unraveling, breaking only to reform and become whole and then repeat.

And then he found himself collapsed in a heap of fabric on the floor of some kind. His eyes unfocused, dull and half-lidded, just staring up at the dark cold interior of something. There was a ringing in his ear, his mind clouded and he was twitching and trying not to think of the pain that coursed through his body. Waits waited for it to happen all over again. But it didn't. Just the wind somewhere and the rustle of more heaps. He was vaguely aware of his brother not too far from where he lay.