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If you had known that this was going to be your fate after leaving the underground, you wonder if you would have decided not to leave then. Would you have been like Mendelson, choosing to hide away in the darkness where no one would know you, if it meant living just a little longer?
You wonder if you would have chosen the loneliness over this.
Probably not, you realize for you know yourself best – you fear loneliness above all else.
You wonder if things would have turned out differently if you hadn’t been so desperate to see the outside world.
Would that have spared you from this fate?
“My dear Navigator,” Kleken murmurs into your ear, his body pressed against your side like he wants to meld into you. His skin is cold, the fine fabric of his suit even colder. It feels like the deep sea is trying to crawl underneath your skin, the water desperate to fill your lungs so it could become one with you.
You shiver, and Kleken notices.
“Cold?” he asks, a rhetorical question. Something that isn’t a human arm wraps itself around your waist. One of Kleken’s tentacles, you realize. It is just as cold as the rest of Kleken but it grips you with a tightness that borders on bruising.
“Better?” Kleken breathes against your temple, his hand holding one of your own; the touch is almost too gentle in comparison.
You feel him press a kiss against your skin, sweet and chaste and honest.
“Better,” you lie through your teeth and you wonder why Kleken – someone who breathes lies like he breathes air – doesn’t seem to notice at all and merely smiles at you with an ardor so fiercely genuine it’s almost painful to see.
Kleken holds you close for the rest of the night.
You sleep fitfully, your dreams consumed by the deep sea that presses against you on all sides. When you awake, it is to the terrifying thought that there is water in your lungs and that you are drowning, the deep sea of your dreams coming to claim you.
Kleken does not so much as comfort you, as he kisses you until you find yourself breathless for an entirely different reason then.
“Sleep well?” he asks. One of his hands is now on the back of your neck, his thumb rubbing half circles into your skin. He’s trying to comfort you, like none of it is his fault.
“No,” you say, for the first time since all of this has started.
A part of you isn’t surprised when Kleken merely kisses you again in response, his smile obvious against your lips.
“Well,” he goes. “You’ll get used to it.”
Kleken finally leaves your side after breakfast that morning. The Shadowlord is calling for him, so Kleken listens.
He departs with a breezy farewell, the barest squeeze of a tentacle around your waist and a whispered promise to see you soon.
(You hate how easy it’s become for you to tell when Kleken’s lying or not. He used to always be so full of light-hearted lies and empty promises but now almost everything he says to you is the truth.
What would you have preferred – for him to have never told you a single truth, or to know that he only speaks the truth to you now?)
You wander the halls of the Colossus, truly alone for the first time in two weeks.
You take to cataloging things in the Colossus, moving on autopilot as you jot down things that require upgrades and fixes in the Colossus. It is familiar, comforting work that you immerse yourself in.
For the first time in two weeks, you feel at peace.
Yet even your peace is not your own anymore. It exists until a wolf made of shadows and eyes golden like a burning sun finds you. It curls itself around your legs, snuffling at your clothes before it aggressively nudges at your hand.
You automatically reach out to pet it’s snout and it lets out a rumbling noise akin to storm clouds gathering.
The wolf curls itself ever closer to you, it’s body big enough to near immobilize you where you stand.
The shadow wolf is more shadow than a living creature but it’s fur still feels warmer than the press of Kleken’s tentacles. You immerse yourself in petting the wolf where you stand, knowing that even if you appease it’s appetite for touch it still wouldn’t let you go until it’s master appeared.
As always, Hydrad appears silently and without warning.
You only know of his arrival by the way the wolf uncurls itself from your side to join it’s brethren behind Hydrad.
“The octopus lied again,” Hydrad growls. “He told me he wouldn’t leave your side until I arrived, yet you’re here wandering the Colossus alone.”
You want to say something about how you have lived aboard the Colossus for seventeen years – there is no place safer and more at home than aboard the Colossus.
“I’m not in any danger here,” you end up saying.
Hydrad is not appeased. His wolves prowl around him, restless. The one that found you first comes back to your side, pressing itself insistently against you.
(Hydrad had once warned you against touching his shadow wolves but now he warns you of the opposite. Now, he warns you to never neglect them. Now, you live in fear not of being torn apart by their teeth but of being trapped on all sides by them, never to leave their hold.)
“Fine,” Hydrad eventually says, the fight leaving him for now. “But you know you’re not supposed to be going anywhere without at least one of us with you. You promised us, after all.”
“I did,” you agree, reluctant but too soft-hearted and too afraid of rejection from the people in this world who have come to accept you, to say anything else.
Hydrad nods, pleased. “Good. Let’s go then. You have things you need to do around the Colossus, don’t you?”
You spend the rest of the day with shadow wolves with golden eyes walking by your side and Hydrad only an arm’s length away, silently hovering and always watching.
You go to sleep that night with the press of not-fur against your side and underneath your hands, the wolves curled so closely together around you like they’re like one, single breathing thing. From the corner of your eyes, you see Hydrad take a seat on the edge of your bed. You can feel the dip of the mattress as he puts his weight down but he remains far enough to not touch you.
Once again, your sleep is fitful.
Tonight, you dream of a forest full of trees tall enough to blot out the night sky and the glowing eyes of a sentry of wolves watching you in the distance. You wake in cold sweat once more, an overwhelming fear that you’re burning alive, suffocating under the weight of too much fur and you desperately need to push the wolves away before you die.
From the darkness, Hydrad’s arm shoots out and grabs your wrist before you can even try. Your eyes flicker towards him, and the blue glow of his lantern illuminates his face just enough that you can see the sharp glare of his eyes, black and burning gold just like his wolves.
“Don’t,” he warns you, in a voice barely above a whisper.
You understand, so you stay still. Your eyes are drawn to the glow of his lantern and you stare at it until your eyes begin to burn. Your vision blurs and then you’re asleep between one blink and the next.
Hydrad doesn’t let go of your wrist.
The next morning, you have breakfast in one of the more remote corridors in the Colossus. Hydrad sits by you, far enough not to touch but his wolves lay all around you, pillowing you between them so no matter where you turn you can feel their warmth.
Despite how cool it is in the Colossus in the morning, you can’t help but feel like you’re overheating.
On your wrist, a bruise is beginning to form.
Hydrad says nothing as the two of you eat, yet you can feel the way he stares at your slowly darkening wrist.
(You think he’s almost smiling.)
You wonder if you would have chosen this fate if you had known that this would be what was waiting for you in the outside world. You wonder if you would have chosen the loneliness of knowing only Soroz in the world, over the slow suffocation you now experience.
On your waist there is the cold touch of a tentacle as someone holds your hand with faux gentleness. On your wrist is the bruising grip of another hand and against your legs is the brush of fur.
You are never alone now
You wonder if it was worth it.