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They fell like snowflakes, the stars. Aglitter in their dishwater dimness, pricks of pain and poignant platitudes all waiting to jut down to earth. They danced in that slow manner that only the eldest of elderly do, with every movement fragile as a wine glass overladen. But the cold sharpened everything. He couldn't see.

His world became globes of digitalis smears, fleeting associations burned into reality by a mind too feverish to slow. He liked it. He liked some of it. The way the door swayed in arcs of shadow when the shadows of men skittered from the coming snow.



The whimsical candlelights hovered over the street while tracing fleeting, shaken patterns in ribbons of red, orange, yellow, blue. A circus show. A lighthouse. A thousand beacons to run him aground with the streets so seedy in their shift underfoot. He felt like treading water. Like walking on water but his bones shook far too frivolously to manage any measure of grace.

I cannot be profoundly happy without at the same time knowing immense sadness.

It sounded like the flick of a lighter's cap.

Only ever in the edges, she would smile knowingly, the same way her teeth worried her lip when she advertised every mannerism of insecurity and she wanted the world to know that all her boundaries are downtrodden and her miseries free to share like stds like dirty little handkerchiefs. click, snap. gone. she would linger by the mouth of an alley, waving in her quiet little way with a secret trapped in her eyes like a firefly bound to lose its light. click, snap. gone. she passed by him at eternal's speed, brown hair jettisoned back and clawing for closure toward him but she didn't stop, not with the light blaring from her eyes and mouth. click, snap. gone.

someone was sawing logs. no, dragging a blade across a conveyor belt. the world shifted often. the sky formed a flag waved whimsically in surrender to a war he never knew the name of, the purpose of. it felt too surreal, too circus peanuts crushed across the ground and turned to dust from heel after heel. no. no, he understood it all.

I am delirious.

The buildings shifted and danced like seaweed, and Alois recognized it as such. He stumbled often. His boots caught loose gravel, manholes, sidewalks, abandoned hubcaps, styrofoam cups emptied in the street, barred entries to storm drains, and any scrap of thought left behind by those that fled when night falls. The pain no longer mattered, not with the pins and needles edging of numbness and acute sensitivity that befell his extremities. He couldn't still himself. He couldn't walk straight. He couldn't rationalize his way out of the underseas reality casting lantern fish across the sky, with only the comfort of endless dirt in darkness.

I am dying.

The creature sat on sidewalk, though he wasn't certain that the concrete ceased its movements beneath him. Exhaustion mixed with acute clarity, spread in the form of endless beads upon his skin. Each tasted of salt when they skirted his lips. He watched the world around him curl whimsically with only a quick fleck of life to roll across its surface when he grew bored of the continuity.

A blonde lingered in the alley across the street. Lingered? Floated? Ran? Probably ran. Ran toward him. He couldn't place the face, not between Quenton or Kairatos or Thraen or Ganymede or Benitoite. He couldn't. Didn't care to. Didn't matter.

He was counting minutes for pocket change now.

They fall like snowflakes. It's so cold.

Someone called him - the blonde. The blonde he couldn't recognize with a magnifying glass and more time than Prometheus had to endure peckings at his innards. The options narrowed while the blonde closed distance but something always remained to suggest another, then another, then another until he backtracked to the endless state of anonymity. He looked to the street. Looked back. Nothing changed.

Nothing ever changes here. Just ourselves. We're surrounded by ageless walls.

"Is it snowing? It's too cold." He craned his neck a minute to watch the stars, how they shifted and swayed before invariably encroaching. Did they rain like maggots, or fall like snowflakes? What did it matter in the end. "Somesing's wrong. I sink I'm dying and I can't tell who you are. Quenton or maybe Kairatos or Sraen, or none of ze abof'e... You could be a stranger, and..." The thought slipped away before he managed to grasp it. It didn't matter, really. All of it felt like inane prattling and nothing more.

Alois grasped the offered arm in an attempt to rise to standing, though the simple act demanded copious effort alongside a few errors in the scope of the activity. The unsteadiness beneath his feet offered little assistance and he nearly fell into the unknown samaritan more than once. The feverish, clawed hand tensed firmly around offered limb, enough to dimple skin white, though it never penetrated the surface. Idly he wondered if the anonymous helping hand was hypothermic, given how shockingly cold his arm felt in weather like this. Then again, he still wasn't certain if it was snowing or not. Even as he looked around, snow heaped in his peripheries yet skittered away upon more direct inspection.

Nothing helped. "Somesing's wrong. I don't know what it is but I'm too ******** tired and cold here. I can't tell if it's snowing. I don't know what to do. I'm so tired. So, so tired..."

"It's Kairatos." He offered. "Something's wrong alright... do you have any idea how long you've been sick?"

It was cold enough, sure, it was unpleasantly so in his light armor, but Alois didn't feel right at all. Part burning up part frozen.

"Look. Uh. Stay... stay right here. There's a little seven eleven, I'm going to get you some ice and uh... uh. It's Tylenol I think...."
One of them helped bring down fever, he was just too rattled to be sure which was which.

He tugged and fought with his cape for a moment until it came loose and draped it around Bishophite as carefully as he could, trying to avoid the injured wing.

"Just... hold onto this. Ok? I'll... I'll run. DON'T. GO. ANYWHERE."

"OK, sounds good." He promised, though he wasn't sure he wouldn't have promised almost anything to keep Bishophite someplace where he could keep track of him, before bolting off to get the things he thought he might need, powering down when he thought he had a moment, without even slowing down, just to make sure no anxious cashier would try and call the cops on him, practically dancing in place in the check out, only to come racing back, powering up again as quickly as he could without loosing the plastic bag of ice, water, asprin and a novelty sweatshirt he'd bought just in case, in so much of hurry he'd already mostly forgotten to confused, judgemental face of the man checking him out. Or had it been a stocky woman? He wasn't sure any more and it hadn't been a minute.

"Back! I'm here!" He called out, making his way back, riffling through the bag for the asprin and the water. "Here, take a couple of these with the water..." He started, picking at the safety seal until it gave way and cramming it back into the bag as trash.

Maybe he should use the sweatshirt to wrap the ice in? Where the hell were you supposed to apply such things? Have him hold it to his head? Around the back of his neck?

"What the hell happened to you?"

And why had it gotten this bad? He knew the Negaverse were careless with their toys, yet somehow he hadn't pictured them being this... this...

Maybe he just hadn't wanted to picture it. They took care enough of the people they wanted to, everyone else got to swing in the breeze.

"Why the ******** does everyone think I'm the ******** city executioner?" This was the second time he'd been asked to end someone, and it still felt like a kick in the stomach.

"She told me you two fought. I told her off. That we can't treat what she was trying to prevent as inevitable." He bristled angrily at the implied idea that the hope to purify was false hope. "Give up on it if you want, but I ******** refuse. I'm not your executioner either. Go ask Ida or Thraen if you want. Hell, ask Iris for all I care."

But he wouldn't give up, not even if Iris did, before they'd even tried to find a second royal to try the much more difficult two way attack. A desperate attempt to separate man and monster. Maybe it was stupid, maybe it actually was hopeless, but he wasn't going to stop trying until he'd exhausted every resource, and he wasn't convinced they had, though he had to admit even to himself that it might have been wishful thinking, Maybe even misplaced ambition disguised as kindness.