Chapter Text
Silence.
All but the static and whirl of water that presses down upon her skull.
Stillness.
Save for the sink of her body through these waves.
She’d like to think she’s fighting –-- to return herself to the surface, to simply pull away from the approaching chasm -- but, realistically, her attempts to do so much as lift her head are a struggle she can’t quite win- is only weighing her farther down.
She tries to cut her arms through the dense pressure that reaps across her limbs -- tries to kick out her legs in a joint effort. It chokes more water into her lungs, winds a deeper strain in her already-sore muscles. All as her body remains shockingly still.
Shock.
She thinks she might be going into shock.
Glancing upwards -- the only movement allowed to her -- she makes out the tresses of her hair floating, registers the stream of sunlight over her skin growing more and more muddled; her vision begins to swim more than she can get her body to.
She thinks–
But no, she can’t think.
As the oxygen supply continues to stagger, panic is the only thing that forms -- no plan for escape, no bitter recount of what, exactly, had dragged her here.
Only the marrow-gnawing realization that–
The instinct to scream tears through her throat -- ragged and unheard.
Bubbles.
More bubbles.
A high frequency.
She thinks she hears muffled shouts–
But no.
She can’t think.
Her heart leaps -- pitiful, in these final moments of circulation -- and it’s such a shock of decipherability that combats the numb tresses of her limbs -- sinking and no longer quite there -- that so too does the lead in her bones and the salt on her tongue respark their sting.
The fall into darkness is a long one.
Endless and silent.
They consume her.
Don’t let them.
She lets herself fall.
Not ready to go yet.
Everything fades out.
In. Breathe in!
Silence.
Stillness.
Darkness.
Everything falls dark.
---
She awakes, though not outwardly so; her brain, still muddled in the haze and disorientation of the dream (memory), lingers faintly on the course of what else has roused her.
“........f…….”
Faint thrums -- mechanical in nature; pleasant, almost, in delivery -- are a constant of whichever space holds her. The sequence of beeps and hums breaks, occasionally, in a staccato of something she can’t quite place. She ignores the latter in favor of timing her shaky pulse to the vibrations channeled through the level, chilled ground beneath her.
“...f…k…”
The insistence of that interruption is even pushier, now -- like a tap, tap, tap at her shoulder that she can’t seem to shake. Something acrid on her tongue rises, the more urgent the tick becomes; as though, unconscious though she still is, venom is rising in defiance.
“.........wh……sk….”
No longer able to ignore it, she shifts away from the disturbance instead; her limbs burn, all the while -- an ache shifts, far and gnawing beneath her skin, with the attempt to press firmer against whatever it is that’s bearing her weight. That tick, pulsing and endless as the waves of maritime noon, corrals into the thunder strikes of a horizon’s brewing storm.
“Frisk!”
There is a shove to her chest, then, and it is within the instant following that she jolts into a bleary awareness, eyes narrowed at the onslaught of neon, blinking light this allots her -- and the sight of her hunched partner, hands now braced at her shoulders, and his resigned features.
“Frisk,” he says, seeming to take her blank staring as prompt enough to once more mutter her name like the transitional phrase he’s assumed it as -- tone entirely devoid of his previous, grating panic.
“Cant,” she returns just as evenly -- watching carefully as the other sighs.
When he doesn’t speak again, however -- and she does wait a lingering, few moments -- she glances over his shoulder. It is to meet the tell-tale scene of the Hitauk’s telecommunication level -- with its floor-to-ceiling computer nurseries and draping shadows.
She’s toeing along the amusement of how she had even fallen asleep here to begin with, when another nudge is aimed at her forearm.
“Frisk.”
Right.
She refocuses her gaze unto the Forsaken still leaning off of her.
Shaking off the tingles and weariness of her sleep, she forces her attention forthright as the other makes to speak. “What were you doing here?” he asks her quietly, and she’d be high-strung in that way of hers, whenever he uses that coaxing tone of his, if-
If it weren’t for the tension both strewn through the slim line of his shoulders, and the timber of his voice (the words had been so pitched and abrasive that, gathering a longer look at the other’s dishevelment, she considers that he might genuinely be on the edge of a psychotic breakdown).
She knows when to read into the signs.
(The twitch of his wrists, the subtle heaves of his breathing, the guarded quality of his speech.)
The motion of placing her hands atop his own, then, is one so fluid and second-nature, it might in some other world be funny. She thumbs at the prominent bones of his knuckles, repeating the gentle, continual quality of it until it seems to have worked out at least some of the stress from her partner.
(She knows when she’s in the wrong.)
“Any updates?” she asks, already full-enough aware that they all have a long night -- or, day (she couldn’t tell just yet) -- ahead of them.
Cant, true to form, requires no further clarification -- so too do his eyes reflect his knowing consideration of her. “Gaster has requested you join him,” he says, mindful, as he tracks any shift in her face or demeanor.
(She, for as much as she can repel his affinity with her, doesn’t give him the benefit.)
“Has the interrogation still not passed, then?” she asks, finally shifting to her feet; grimacing as her joints don’t quite pop, but rather only shift awkwardly, she side-glances the other’s sudden silence.
"Well-"
“Cant. Maka.”
She turns around sharply, nearly unbalancing both herself and her partner, at the new register of Flowey’s drawling voice -- and his figure suddenly filling the office's entryway.
“Oh, great,” she mock-whispers. “You’re here.”
“Here to deliver you, yes,” the other assents pleasantly. He glances to Cant. "Seeing as it's taken you so long. You know, Gaster doesn't take so kindly to-"
She, rather pointedly, rolls her eyes. “There goes that savior complex again.”
“Now listen here you little sh-”
“I believe we were on our way to the Holding Floor?” Cant cuts in, linking his arm with hers as he begins to lead their trio out into the hall; they let him, easily enough -- as even Flowey falls into step beside her without much more complaint.
That much is true at first, however.
“So Maka,” Flowey prompts, when they’re breached the first set of elevators. She only sighs, giving him enough of a leeway as any. “Word on the street is you got tangled up with the Kaj affairs.” Her heart stutters in her chest, fierce in its cease of blood flow. “You know, something about a dead target and unauthorized procedure?”
They shuffle into the elevator, Cant tapping his security card against the reader, before he inputs the required floor level. She can only stare ahead, ignoring the other two’s idling glances, and trying to garner a control on the sudden, upheaving wave of panic.
(She doesn’t plan to make that a familiar weight.)
Straightening out her shoulders, she rises a derisive scoff from deep within her chest. “I’d have thought you’d know better than to trust rumors,” she directs to Flowey, the elevator dinging as they breach closer to their destination. She steps out swiftly. “You know, given your history…”
She can hear more than see his drawn brows, clenched fists at this blow.
“I don’t know what’s got your sheath in a bind-” Flowey says lowly, following behind her -- Cant in strangely-silent tow (she marks a reminder to check in on him, soon). “But I’d appreciate if you at least pretended to be on my side while we’re in containment-”
Stopping short in the middle of the plain, empty (of either personal or furnishing) hallway, the scuff of Flowey’s heels as he tries not to trip into her is the only sound that fills the space, now. "Oh, don't worry about that." She can hear his silent confusion. Rounding on him, Flowey's face immediately pulls into one of contempt. "You won't be in there."
"Who are you to-"
"When have you ever been valued in interrogations?" she derides. "What do you even plan to do? Bore him into confessing all his secrets with Guild affairs? Flash those blinding teeth at him and hope for the best?"
He shifts his weight. "That isn't-"
"It is exactly," she sneers. "Run along to the Guild, yeah, and file those reports. Maybe find another partnership to split up."
Flowey, rolling his hazel eyes, scoffs. "Fine," he mutters. "But you bet your ass I'm coming for you with a field analysis later."
Nevermind that the man had most assuredly been with Gaster in the interrogation chamber thus far (and as such didn't have to leave), he turns, then, and promptly stalks off in the direction of the elevators they had just come from.
Relieved of the other's sight soon enough, she shifts to approach the clearance area.
She even manages several steps, actually, before there is a sharp pull at her arm.
"What's wrong?" he asks her, which- vague.
She tells him as much. "When have you not known?" she counters.
"I'm talking about last night," he urges (has it already been a day?), his voice composed and hollow with the infliction he assumes for the field.
Her brow arches. "If this is about Flowey-" his narrow eyes, then (like a stilted ebb of crystal) tell her that yes, it is "-we bicker. That's our thing. Nothing wrong with it." A pause. "Nothing out of our routine," she amends.
Cant, looking rather unimpressed -- and irked, in that way people get when someone's missed their point entirely (strange) -- shakes his head. And then proceeds to stare at her, beady little eyes boring through her reserves of bravado.
"Cant," she brings herself to laugh, "you read the field report."
"You mean the one filled out half-conscious?" her partner retorts, arms guarding over his chest; she hesitates, for a moment, at the ferocity of it. "The one Nep and Flowey had to recompose to make any sense at all?"
She doesn't cringe at the confirmation of what she could have otherwise suspected, but she does resolve to add yet more apologies and gratitude to that steadily growing list.
"Yes," she says simply.
Cant stretches out his shoulders, blue eyes steeling into a glare that shocks through her system; she only barely manages to contain her breathing. "Okay," he feigns to humor. "Enough about the report."
She is relieved long enough to sigh.
"Why is that scout in containment. On charges of infiltration."
She chokes on that air.
"Kaj was supposed to be in that cell," he continues -- gaze and stance blazing a challenge, "not him."
Unsure of what to say, exactly, she cards a hand through her loose, subtly tangled hair; Cant's eyes track the movement, and she considers asking him to braid it for her. Retorting, however, feels more suitable.
"He is an asset," she tells her partner. "Gaster will see as much."
"And you?" Cant seethes; she retracts. "What do you see?" She remains silent. "I'll enlighten you, then- that scout is an omen, Frisk. You can just as easily be his next target- gathering info, or gaining his favor- it's not going to matter. When He sics that order, you're not dodging the blade just because of some inclination towards its wielder."
"That may be true," she at last consoles, "but he is far more beneficial than he is dangerous."
"How can you believe that?" the other demands, before falling into a fit of humorless -- bitter -- laughter. "He is an assassin, Frisk, and you are Gaster's closest confident." Then, in a rather deranged display, he throws out his hands in a fell swoop. "Put it together. You are nothing more than a means to an end- you don't know him, or his motives, or his agenda- and when you do find out, you'll be a moment too late on the firing end of that pistol. The two of you together are a ticking bomb, Frisk."
The abrasive tone of this Forsaken boy -- so usually quiet and kind and considerate and mindful -- sobers her, in some out-of-body way; she registers, clearly and forcibly, the frustration and upset of the other; immediately she wants to absolve this run-off of that West District alley.
Perhaps this is why she blurts what she does.
"He's my gateway to Timin." She says it calmly -- like a simple, abstract truth, as though revealing the day's weather. "If I can get him free from Gaster's ire, then the two of us will confront Him- I may not know this Forsaken, but I trust in the equal footing sof hatred."
Cant might as well stop breathing. A long, few moments pass, before the capability of motor speech returns to him. "You said you didn't want to go to Timin," he says -- dumbfounded in his grasp for understanding. "We agreed you wouldn't go. That Gaster would never let you."
(She knows, of course, that he has already read beneath this layer -- that he is incited towards the other, crueler hope she is grasping onto.)
"That-" She straightens her spine. "That was before I had him."
And she knows she should appease to her partner, comfort him that she isn't going to get herself killed any time soon -- contrary to his apparent expectations. But she adheres, instead, towards the guarding net of apathy (his speech, then, rings out behind her ears, filling her skull with needless pains).
"I'm done, then."
Her head bolts up, from where she had allowed her gaze to fall. "What?"
Panic, then, unbidden and stark on her tongue, tightens something in her muscles.
Her partner (please) returns her stare blankly. "Frolic all you want with that Forsaken," he tells her. "Get yourselves shot down at His front door for all I care." He shoves past her (and when had he even moved?). "Because I'm done being the only one who cares."
She remains as she is, silent and still. The words and sentiment settle over her like a poisoned towel -- pressed tightly, and all she can feel before there is a numbness spreading through her limbs.
It starts with her fingertips: a dull, pulsing edge from the points she had meant to reach the other with; it spreads, slowly -- but sharply -- through her bloodstream and bone marrow until she is all but a girl, devoid of everything but this hallway, staring pats the reflective waters of a winter's day.
Words, shallow and meaningless as the breathe she draws, even before she's said them, are forcibly risen to her tongue. "I'm not- it's not-"
That's not true.
That's not true.
She wants to say it.
And she does try -- so desperately -- to deny him. But the syllables choke halfway from her chest, and for what air slips out, the static douses the remnants; it floods out her skull, and that gap within her lungs -- a heavy emptiness nestled throughout the chasm of her ribs -- makes everything seem meaningless elsewise.
She can still breathe, sure, but at what cost: the more air she takes in, the less of this dark hallway makes itself clear to her; the walls have muddled, the prominent features of the other have blurred into a landscape of ivory and azure.
Shock.
She’s in shock, she thinks.
But...but no, she can't think.
"Gaster is waiting for us," Cant tells her suddenly, approaching the inset, double door of the level's containment wing.
It is enough.
"Right," she murmurs -- voice hoarse and grating -- and she steps after the other.
Strangely, unbidden, as she trails closer towards the containment cells, it feels as though a choice has been made for her -- and a wholly wrong one at that.
[ --- ]
The weight that had plagued her -- the surmounting recognition of problems, entwining themselves into something bigger -- is, now, resolved.
She can breathe easier -- doesn't feel quite like she's choking on bubbles every chance she stakes -- and there is a satisfaction, almost, at having geared a solution towards Him and the other.
But there is an underlying guilt -- courtesy of those she has pushed aside, now, to channel herself through those more pressing -- that sticks to her skin like a miasma.
The wind can't sear it from her bones, the sun can't veil it from her brain.
Nothing can sweep away the desire to finally end it.
---
The containment level was, in essence, a series of interrogation chambers, holding cells, and otherwise offices for those who patrolled the breadth of it.
They were uniform by design, each counterpart paralleled to the others (an advantage in both upkeep and the pursued sense of "everything is nowhere"), as well as in the use of breaking through the wills and minds of those proclaimed guilty parties of Irae.
She knew what she was expecting to walk in on, then.
(And yet she couldn't cut the hesitance in her drawling step, or the lock jolted up her spine.)
Cant had flashed his ID card in its reader, merely passing the door to her as they both stepped through the cell's entryway.
She'd continued to hesitate, though, as her eyes trailed over the revealed interior.
The steel-lined floor and wall paneling, the high, over-arching ceiling. The dual chairs at its center -- one tucked to the wall (at her then-current left) -- a metal, rickety thing that seemed to grunt beneath the weight of Zan -- who, of course, sat there. (His eyes darted to her, as Cant assumed his place in the far-corner, and she had yet to enter. Her heart stuttered painfully beneath her ribs.)
Gaster in the other.
His large frame was pulled in, slightly, so as to actually wield the chair he occupied; the two were across from each other, not quite the center of the room -- but seizing it for themselves, needless.
She'd steeled herself to enter, only when Gaster had rolled out his shoulders, eye pointed on the slouched figure -- who, she then noticed, had his arm tossed over the back of his chair (the chains of whom, bound at his wrists, visibly pulled tighter for it).
Stepping through the entryway, the door had promptly slid shut behind her; the vibrations could be felt beneath her heels, but still she carried her stride even and untethered.
No one acknowledged her for a moment longer, as she took her own place at Gaster's side. And, had she not known Gaster to have been there for hours already, she'd have thought they'd only just begun; the silence that expanded was all but deafening.
"Frisk!" Gaster greeted, then (intent, she knew, on making her feel the absence of his goodwill). A single, untethered hand raised to his suit-ridden chest. "I almost feared you wouldn't join us."
He pitched it teasingly, not unlike his custom way of shrugging off minor offenses. She could have flinched, needless: because she knew, like the back of Cant's hand, the tone of his saint-like patience (ironic, yes) straining thin.
"I wouldn't miss it, Sir," she said instead -- the moniker heavy off her tongue. "My apologies."
---
"Given the death of crime leader, Kaj, we are undiscerning of the final exchanges between the Venn still in Irae, and those out-of-state."
The relay feels chopped -- staggered and listless -- even as she knew she had claimed it eloquently, expectedly.
(How long had she been speaking? Listening? Deflecting? It felt like hours, now, but she also knew better to trust her internal clock- no more than half a chime.)
"What do you believe of the connection between the recent cartels, and Timin?" Gaster inquired, gilded eye trained on Zan's rather unbothered form.
"Context points," she said, guarding her arms behind her back, "that the Venn -- in correspondence with Kaj's previous control over the West District -- have been perpetuating networks between themselves and those in Timin."
"Are they?" Gaster responded, noncommittal.
She didn't head the ploy.
"And," she prompted, instead, "it would seem their Timin numbers have been shipping their defects to be properly destroyed here. My guess, if I should say-"
"Is that they're too preoccupied," Cant cut in to finish (eyes drawn to Gaster), "with making them in Timin, now, that they've arranged to burrow them away here." His shoulders tightened, if only fractionally, and she rather thought she wasn't meant to notice. "It's suffice to say they're preparing to use them." (They both swallowed, remaining in sync despite the hurt still coursing between them.) "Get the counterfeits out of the way, and you're off to a successful display."
The budding truth, then, filtered out in the space of the chamber -- and Zan, with that posture and avoiding gaze, seemed no more unhinged for it.
(Like he knew. But no. She doesn't let herself develop the thought.)
"Tot," she said, assuming Ancient, in the distilled contemplation that had fallen over all of them. Gaster, given, was the only one to react; he turned to regard her, with that gaze -- heavyset with the burden of all the cosmos he seemed to carry with him, always -- and she was forgetting how to mold words beneath it. Regaining her long-since lost composure swiftly, however, she inclined her head towards the other. "Tot is the ringleader of the Venn, of the unknown Forsaken." She dared not address the one bound in steel. "Of him."
She hadn't meant to sound quite so convicted.
But it felt right, just as soon as she had said it -- and there was a weight lifting, almost, as the truth continued to unfurl within the chamber.
Gaster considered her for an unbroachable moment.
"What are you implying, Fesk?" he eventually asked her, voice no less grating and static than its usual rumble -- but gentler, somehow, in his own recognition.
"I must request," she replied carefully (even as Cant's own voice shrieks warnings in her head), "that I be granted passage to Timin."
"What do you plan to do, Fesk?" Gaster countered -- voice harsher than she'd felt the brunt of in a long while. "Your investment-"
"I have reflected," she eased. "I am invested, now, only for the sake of Him. I request that I join my comrades in this battle." She didn't think twice, then. "As my right decrees."
The other hesitated -- in the way only Gaster could -- at the Ancient scripture (and memories she knew he, too, was now drowning in). He, not long after, sighed -- a broken sound of sharp muffles. "I take it you wish to stake him with you?"
She did not need the prompt of clarification. "I wish to prove his conviction."
"And you believe that is with us?" Gaster returned, as outwardly disbelieving as she had ever seen him.
She burned the remnants of humor from her expression.
"I believe he is another victim," she said simply -- accepting the weight of his narrowed regard, "taught only how to live for death."
Something flashed, then, in his gaze; a remorse she had never otherwise witnessed to be buried there. She swallowed down the influx of sudden (reconjured) tension.
"There is no pledge that he will take your side," Gaster rumbled, after a long moment of quiet consideration passed between them. "If you are to take the pilgrimage- affairs will not merely be settled in Timin."
"I am aware, Gastra." Straightening her shoulders, she summoned the final vestiges of her surety. "I still wish for us to join the others -- to return the Venn here, to scatter His deputies there." She returned the other's gaze, then; keeping her own open and raw. "I will trek to that Holy Land. And I will kill Tot."
It felt as though, while the others drifted steadily further from the conversation, that it was only the presence of Gaster and herself that filled the chamber.
(Nothing could matter as much as the way his stilted frame seized her breathe and inhibitions.)
He remained silent for so long, she wondered if he was settling on the discretion to dismiss her.
Until.
"I will allow the trek," he told her, eye drifting to the downcast form of Zan; had she been any other person, she'd have jumped at the easily-enough given permission. "Under the notion you leave only when the Timin field agents request assistance."
She tampered the scoff (and disapointment). "And if that never comes?" she dared to request.
He leveled her with a heavy, scathing stare of amethyst -- if they'd been under any other guise, she'd rather like to track out the edges of it. "Then you will remain here."
Again, she'd needed to gather her composure. "I understand, Gastra," she bowed.
Before she could move any farther to collect Cant, however, their leader's clicking tongue ceased movement. "Another condition, Fesk." She acquiesced silence to be her acknowledgment. "The guilty will be put to Guild work in the vacant time. Nothing sensitive, but enough to keep him under strain. Organize with Flowey if you must."
She bowed once more, desperately biting back another smile. "As you say, Gastra."
Gaster -- shockingly enough (in that she doubted he knew how to even do so properly) -- smiled at her; it was a crude, thin upturn of ivory and shadow, yes -- but still a smile. She allowed it to soothe over the ridges of tension in her form. Then, in a rather dramatic upheaval of his good nature's return, he shifted to stare down at Zan. "You have her to thank for your life," he told the captive (a violent flare up her spine), resuming Common -- an admittedly odd sound, after all her ease with the man's native tongue. "Guard it well, for you will not be extended the same grace again."
Zan eyes shifted to hers, then -- away from Gaster's intensity to instead reflect her own hesitant expectation. She could only return the look, empty-hearted.
Gaster continued. "Your removal from the Underground is unnecessary," he rumbled. "You will be assigned together-" motioning towards her "-to settle Timin affairs. Expect your face in the Guild Hall, then, to be a common one."
(She noted the other made no mention of departing for the neutral party's territories, and schooled herself to keep that information tucked away in the meantime.)
Her leader paused, then, as though willing her forward; she did so, approaching towards the still-confined form of Zan, as the other's voice rang out into the chamber for a final time.
"Depart once you have seen me again, Fesk," Gaster told her -- gone from sight in the time it took to nod over her shoulder.
Cant, too, left in a lapse of focus and subtle gear of metal.
She turned down to the one still occupying her company.
"What did you tell him?" he immediately inquired, evidently forcing himself still as she begins to disarm the chains' shock properties.
"Everything," she dismissed airily. The bounds were tugged free from the slim wrists of the other; he, in turn, remained quiet for a long moment, rubbing at the skin now a faint azure (she idled, there, too).
"Everything?" he echoed at last.
Dropping the empty chains against the wall as means of response, she rose from her hunched position. "Yes, everything." (Even if the chamber wasn't doxed in hidden mics, she wouldn't be all too keen to admit omitting any truth from Gaster.) "And don't give me any looks for it-" he had remained staring blankly at her "-because thanks to it, you're set to walk free."
"I wouldn't be too worried otherwise," Zan laughed -- there was an emptiness, though, to the humor strewn there. "Adoring and outrageous fanclubs and all that."
"So sorry to steal their thunder, then, but you're stuck as a free man with reports to file, now."
"Oh, goody." He rolled his eyes. "I've been waiting all since I crossed those gates for some good, hearty work."
Shoving -- albeit without much of any force -- at his shoulders, she coaxed the other to rise, as well, from his seat; he did so, delayed. In the meantime, Zan -- as his line of sight steadily rose -- looked down at her; she irked her jaw, at the register of winter mist, to dissuade the suddenly-felt unnerving of his stare.
"Thank you," he told her.
(She startled.)
"For what?" she echoed, if entirely to be difficult.
Merely smiling -- and now properly on his if-slightly unsteady feet -- he tucked a strand of her her hair -- lost from her custom ponytails -- behind her ear (her heart stopped in her chest). "For everything. I know it isn't easy to oppose them."
I wasn't opposing Gaster, she wanted to refute. (To convince herself.)
She remained silent, however, for her tongue refused to move, and the consonants refused to come into fruition. Eventually, she settled for shaking her head -- a quick, sharp rebuttal.
"You won't be saying that for much longer," she teased, retaining, hopefully, some of their easy nature. "I'm having you write that doctoral thesis by next week."
The other properly grinned, then. "I look forward to it, love." (Her fingers flexed at her side.)
"Now get out of here," she laughed (forcing herself back to some sense of normalcy).
"Sending me away without patrol?" Zan gasped, even as he drifted steadily closer to the interrogation chamber's entryway; he couldn't be vying to stay any longer in this daft hold, she knew, so she settled for the swiftest reply.
"I trust you won't get yourself misplaced," she told him -- the other hesitating, slightly, at the warmth she'd meant to cut from her tone, but hadn't quite.
"As you decree, love," he saluted, easily enough.
She laughed, softly.
And, even as his gaze lingered on her (both waiting for the greenlight of the doors to be coded open), she matched his scrutiny. "I'll meet you later with some files you can read through." She held up her hands, then, in the form of a heart. "To explain the conditions."
"Feel free to take a night for yourself," the other groaned.
She didn't have to reply.
He was already gone.
(It was then, oddly, that she realized they'd taken his cloak. Even stranger, a part of her -- buried between her lungs -- yearns that he might not ever receive it again.)
The chamber door slid to an echoing close.
---
They never did have that talk.
The reminder of this -- of her glorified tantrum during the day prior's debriefing -- sat heavy with her.
She kept her eyes downcast, trailing over the buckles and sheen of her boots, in favor of returning the other's own.
"I'm sorry," she said, when not much of anything has prompted her to.
(They were in his office, again, and the Underground, heard, faintly, behind the space's balcony window, as well as the clamor of the building itself, fill in some of the silence. She let the familiarity soothe these sudden nerves, retain her usual surety.)
"For getting so close to him," she clarified. She matched the intensity of Gaster's gilded amethyst. "Before we had much reason."
"I knew."
She, returned to herself, did not startle, or suck in a breath, or react with much of anything; she kept her eyes on her leader, resolute. "You knew what, exactly?"
A bit brash, but enough so it merely earned the other's bemusement. "Your affiliation with His subordinate."
She, again, didn't flinch, but rather squared her shoulders. "And your thoughts on that?"
"Irrelevant, Fesk," he told her. And- she'd swear he's laughing at her. "The point stands now: you will keep that Forsaken close, and you will barter his life for it."
(She hesitates only long enough to scold herself this is exactly what she, herself, had propositioned.) "As you say, Gastra."