The walls seemed damp, the air strangely cool. Harvard did not reach out to the them as he went, despite his legs' continuing unsteadiness. He wasn't that old, for ******** sake. Shaking his head, he allowed his thoughts to wander as he descended. The stairs seemed to extend downwards forever - if this were the university, the accessibility fines would be astronomical. The university. Austin was here; maybe there were others as well. So, so many had disappeared. He remembered the month together, and then... it was over. The thought tugged at him, seemed sadder than it should be. Presumed dead wasn't the same as dead, was it? There was an unbridgeable gap in his mind. It was something he didn't feel, not in his mind nor in his heart, perhaps. But it was there, there was unequivocal evidence.

Harvard wondered if Caroline missed him, if she remembered where he was supposed to go. It was... uncomfortable how she had ended up under his skin so easily. His mind had immediately skipped to her when it found itself tired of ruminating over damp stone walls. She was a puzzle he could spend forever trying to untangle, re-tangling around him as he went. Caroline was the color red, she was a queen, a murderer, a child, he couldn't figure her out in so many ways, but he wanted her tied up for him. Like a gift. Harvard paused, lingering on the last few steps. He'd told her she could run, but he'd find her and the chase was a part of everything, like the moon chases the sun or something equally sappy and entirely untrue. Breaking into his thoughts, a lilting voice filtered through the stone cavern, strangely inhuman in it's harmonies.

Averte faciem tuam a peccatis meis, et omnes iniquitates meas dele

It was not multiple voices, but one that still seemed to hold all the tones on it's tongue, liquidly silver. It was a song to lose himself in, to soak up like the sun and pick apart the Latin conjugations and piece them back together again. He stood still as the sound filled the space around him, but did not echo back as his own voice might have. And, he noticed, in between the long, liquid notes, was the sound of dripping. Harvard could have stayed there until the end of the hymn, but he felt it notice him. Felt. It was like feeling someone's fingers ghost at the back of his neck, cold and soft.

Perhaps it was Myself sits down in this chair. There were two chairs, in fact.

Harvard paused although he was drawn to the voice, reluctance slowing his feet. Austin had said things would speak, but he had hoped they would at least make sense.He recognized the poem, oddly enough, and it was a poem the thing quoted - a cumming's poem, which never made sense even on the best of days. A noise very like a sigh rang out. The voice was more insistent, less harmonied, obviously impatient at his pause. "Who are you? Where are you? Are you mine?" His feet carried him closer to the walls. Dozens of stone tablets were inset there, looking for all the world like some mosaic with no discernible pattern.

Myself got up out of a chair(there are two)

The emphasis on the words was clear. Harvard's hands reached out, brushing over stone and stone and stone. They remained cold, unresponsive, although he did not know how a stone could respond. It was like a hall of sleeping statues, eerily silent, just waiting for the breathing of one word to awaken them all. His fingers suddenly sang, they burned as though he were back in high school chemistry and some idiot spilled sulfuric acid on the table again. He hissed and pulled back as something flashed around his finger.

i do signore
affirm that all gondola signore

Her, and it was a her, all sinuous curves in his mind, shifting, always shifting.... her voice rang out. Harvard knew this was her, this splash of silver on his finger, the burn of her. He smelled acid. Wonderingly, he tugged her off his finger, the movement accompanied by what he could only describe as the shriek of metal on metal. He slipped it back on.

"What is your name, then, since we are bound, you and I?" And it came to him then that she was in his mind, knew him better than any could and yet she made little sense. Harvard rubbed his temples.

miserere mei

"Of course." It was more than a song for her, it was what was left of her, somehow. Harvard didn't know how he knew this. With a thought, suddenly his hand was filled with a heavy weight. The burning stench of acid nearly choked him. Miserere gleamed wetly in the dim lights, a fine and silver rapier. He swung her a few times and, with a flick of his wrist, she was back on his finger.

"I do not understand, but I suppose that will have to do." Explanations would not come from her, Harvard knew. Surprisingly, he found he wasn't panicking as much as expected, but really, this was life now. What use was there in panic?

because only the truest things always are true because they can't be true