Archive of Our Own ^beta

The one constant in the universe is change.

A constellation in the southern hemisphere once portrayed a sacrificed animal at the altar, offered by a centaur.

Time progressed. Ages passed. Evolution forged a hunter from what was once prey, and they named it Lupus—The Wolf.

Stars are birthed; whole galaxies are swallowed. New life is formed, moving on from one tragedy to the next.

In adherence to the pattern, a man's boots slam into mud, accompanied by heaving gasps in rhythm. Shaky legs stumble over fallen branches and mossy undergrowth. The man weaves between thick tree trunks and over protruding roots, the stench of death following close behind.

The beast stalks languidly, content to play with its food before the slaughter.

A predator by design.

Through the darkness, a flash of its teeth shines as bright as the stars above, full of promise.

And the man runs.

A blazing midday sun hangs overhead by the time Imogen ducks beneath the line of police tape.

This district’s forensics team knows better than to stick around at this point, so she’s not surprised to find them already shifting to the outskirts. As she passes, their odd looks and whispers shouldn't bother her as much as they do.

However, deep in the forest amongst the density of lush ferns and wet moss creeping over fallen tree trunks and brambles, the only sounds that grace her ears are the soft chittering of insects and bird calls carried along the wind.

Imogen takes in the clean air with a deep inhale, closing her eyes and willing the headache throbbing at her temples to dissipate—a remnant of her time amongst the crowds that come with public transportation.

"You good to do this, Imogen?" Orym appears at her side, a gently stabilizing hand on her elbow. He’s in his typical SID gear reserved for their specialized team, although his shirt is untucked and without its tie. Being the division chief has its perks.

His concern is a pointless platitude, but she appreciates it all the same. They both know she hates leaving a job unfinished. "No time like the present."

“If you’re sure.”

She smiles. “Don’t worry so much.”

Her friend takes his leave, footsteps receding beyond the bushes they emerged from, and Imogen is finally alone. She releases the breath held in her lungs as a slow stream of air through chapped lips.

This part never gets any easier.

Stepping out from the tree line surrounding a small grassy clearing, she feels the impact of the violence before seeing it. It permeates the area, clogging her nostrils and hanging heavy in her throat like a thick molasses she can't quite cough out. Her body tries to expel the substance with an involuntary coughing fit that she remembers to smother in time.

Her previous headache rushes back with a vengeance.

Each footstep out into the clearing sinks a few inches into grassy mud—the messy aftermath of a heavy storm which battered the area the previous night. She follows the marked-off path laid out by the forensic team that travels adjacent to two pairs of tracks leading out into the open.

One set is inconsistent, full of swerves and stumbles, while the other is steady, methodical, and evenly-spaced.

"We're miles away from the closest road and dozens more from civilization," mutters Imogen. Her eyes trace each footprint, taking great pains not to skip to the end yet knowing exactly what they'll find. "They found your abandoned car on the side of the street, so what are you doing all the way out here?"

Imogen carefully slides off her leather gloves and pockets them, self-consciously running her thumb over the raised, pinkened scars that branch out over pale skin. With her hands now exposed to the elements, the pain in her head climbs to a painful degree, and the weight in the air nearly tips into unbearable territory.

But she breathes through it—in for three seconds, out for six, just as practiced—one shuddering breath at a time.

"Mr. Brian Summers. A year out of college and as fit as a horse from a lifetime of track and field. You could run those miles in your sleep." Imogen's eyes catch on a disturbed bit of mud where the victim likely fell and scrambled to his feet, and she does all she can to brace herself internally. “So how were you caught so far out into the forest?”

When she leans down, the soft pad of her index finger lightly brushing a groove in the dried mud, the vision that follows nearly knocks her to the ground.

Heart pumping, breaths heaving and not quite catching. Searing agony in her—no, his—side, where the remains of his lifeblood leaks and spills to the floor, quickly diluted and washed away with the rain. Each beat of his heart counts down, closer and closer to the end.

Hair plasters to skin from the downpour. Battered by the storm, he struggles against winds that threaten to toss him to the ground.

"Run all you want, little rabbit." A muffled voice, more of an animalistic growl than anything, rumbles close behind and just barely audible over the crackling of thunder. "The outcome remains the same."

"Please. Stop." The words aren't her own, yet they still force their way through her throat, each syllable strained with pain. The view shifts as her—his, their—form crumbles to the ground, gasping. Hands dig through muddied grass and leaves before their body manages to stumble back onto unstable feet.

Imogen rapidly blinks the scene away, breathing deeply to the rhythm of the pounding headache at her temples. 

It's not even the pain that bothers her anymore, not so much as the disorientation that follows.

"My name is Imogen Temult," she whispers through shuddering breaths. The sun is high in the sky, but the warm, muggy air is chilled on her tongue, and a torrent of non-existent rain ghosts along her skin. "I am twenty-eight years old. I consult for the Special Investigations Division in Jrusar."

The cold slice of metal through skin and sinew. Slowly limping through mud that might as well be quicksand.

"I am alive."

A voice in her head urges her to focus on what she can feel, sounding like a mixture of past therapists all blending into one. Wringing her hands together, she slides rough palms up her arms and back down again. She notes every bump and groove of her own marred skin to force herself back to the present.

Her side throbs. Little rabbit, the figure said.

"The victim wasn't just chased," Imogen realizes. "He was hunted like prey."

A lifetime ago, she found Flora in a clearing just like this, torn apart by a roaming pack of wolves. 

The wildlife on the outskirts of Gelvaan was quiet that day, too. After the storm which ravaged her hometown the night before, she remembers the air being unnervingly still. Foreboding. As if the universe was trying to prepare her for the moment that would change her forever.

Unfortunately, nothing could have prepared her for what she found. The horse had been her closest companion from birth. Where other children would play with their friends, siblings, or parents, Imogen only had Flora to stave off the debilitating loneliness of a father who would look at her and see only a ghost.

And with the death of that childhood friend came the death of her childhood entirely. She walked out on a grieving father and a house that was never a home, and she vowed never to look back.

Imogen is no stranger to the calm before the storm. All the foot traffic from earlier chased most of the animals away, but if she listens hard enough, there's a telltale rustling of game in the woods just past the tree line on the other end of the clearing.

She wonders if any of them saw it happen. Maybe, instead of horrified, they were vindicated in their safety, relieved to avoid the inevitability of death for another day.

Perhaps they observed with a cold detachment as a man was taken apart in front of them and felt nothing at all.

A little part of her is jealous at the simplicity. 

Life and death. Kill or be killed.

The tracks continue onward, the traces of muddy disturbances appearing closer together as the victim’s pace noticeably slows. She follows their steps closely, the churning in her gut growing stronger alongside the rotten stench hitting her nostrils—until, finally, she reaches a last pile of mud where one set of tracks ends.

It’s also where the dried blood trail begins.

“Mr. Summers’ last stand.” Imogen huffs out a sigh, crouching beside a clear handprint in the mud. She doesn’t need to touch it to know what happened. “Judging from the amount of blood still on the ground, you were alive even after the rain stopped. Quite tenacious, weren’t you? Though not enough to survive what happened after.”

Out of the corner of her eye, the giant elephant in the grassy clearing she’s been willfully ignoring begs her attention with all the subtlety of a screaming child. This close, with her headache racketing up to a thousand and an involuntary tremor coursing through her system, the stench clogs her nostrils and sickens her to the bone.

For a moment, she’s transported back to that grassy clearing in Gelvaan, stained with more blood than she’s ever seen in her life. Her father was never precious with the other animals, never above slaughtering for food. Despite his faults, he at least had the decency to keep the violence hidden from her prying eyes, but she was smart enough to realize a pig going missing just before a pot roast dinner.

Don’t give them names, Imogen, he’d insist. 

Flora had been the first and the last.

It’s in this moment that she expects to come face to face with the glassy-eyed stare of her childhood horse. Instead, she's confronted with the mutilated remains of Brian Summers.

Her first impression is: it’s a work of art. Less of a Monet's tendency to break boundaries and more of the deeply human subjectivity of a Van Gogh. Less frantic madness, however, and more of a scalpel's precision, amplified under microscope.

At a second glance, it's a message.

Mr. Summers is largely intact and upright. His head droops low, face frozen with bulging eyes that stare into nothingness and a gaping mouth, tongue lolling through stained teeth. His spine stands straight against the wooden post preserving his posture, toes barely brushing the bloody viscera at his feet.

What draws her attention is the mess of organs ripped out on display, propped on stakes plunging into the damp ground. Tatters of skin hang loosely to the sides in a gory frame, shredded by what looks to be teeth at a first glance—before she realizes the edges are too clean to be caused by anything other than the sharpened edge of a knife.

Her bare hand reaches out before she can think twice about it.

What she sees causes her to double over, her nose leaking a fountain of blood all over the collar and front of her flannel shirt.

"Fuck," Imogen gasps out, hands flying up to stifle the flow, shaky legs stumbling backward before her blood can taint the scene. "Goddamn it."

Ask any of Imogen’s coworkers about her, and they’ll say she's an enigma. They'll say she’s a clean freak who refuses to leave the house, who wears the same tacky gloves day after day. They'll call her a loner who hates people because of the numerous times she's refused drinks after work.

Overall, she doesn't mind the personal accusations as much as the professional ones.

The most uncharitable of them are convinced Imogen is actually responsible for the crimes she solves, that because she has a talent for unearthing groundbreaking evidence, she's the one planting them.

They're the ones who whisper behind closed doors, not expecting the echoes of their conversations to stick to the walls like they’re made of flypaper and not plaster.

Regardless, she refuses to make a habit of entertaining their curiosity. Not when everyone she’s ever met has been so painfully loud.

So when Imogen arrives at a rather unassuming abode mere blocks away from her own place of residence, the last thing she expects is complete and utter silence.

She’s been to a number of therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and various social workers over the years. None of them have been able to identify what’s wrong with her, but all of their offices stank of the day’s events. Her senses would be assaulted with the remnants of outbursts and breakdowns of all kinds, no matter the preparations she'd carefully taken.

But not here. This place, an office that’s less of an office and more of a living room, is unnervingly absent of all thought and feeling, almost as if every minutiae had been scrubbed meticulously down to the last fiber in the carpet.

Imogen idly tugs at the seams on her gloves. Leather and well-worn, they’re a gift from an absent mother only to be seen in photographs, whose name only comes in the form of a handwritten “Happy Birthday” label with no return address. The letter attached to the gloves hadn’t specified what they were for, but the fact that they arrived exactly when needed spoke volumes.

Imogen only removes them at home or at a crime scene, yet a part of her wants to inspect the room like she would a murder. The more concerning part of her aches to go straight to the source—the owner of such a lifeless residence.

“Imogen."

She stills.

A figure in the armchair across from her shifts to cross one leg over the other. Their voice is a smooth and deep velvet as it rolls off their tongue, but the way it disrupts the silence demands her attention, teetering on the edge of boredom. “Where did you go?”

“Nowhere.” The lie hitches her breath toward the end.

"Is that so?"

Imogen steels her features, refusing to give her companion the satisfaction of fidgeting under scrutiny. “I’m just not sure how much Orym has told you.”

“A fair amount," replies the doctor, tapping the tip of a pen against what Imogen assumes to be a full page of notes about how broken she is. "But I want to hear it from you.”

Dr. Thull, much like their professional space, isn’t the easiest person to read.

In stature, the doctor is smaller than Imogen, yet the force of their presence fills the entire room while dwarfing hers in comparison. Although this meeting is supposed to be a casual one, Dr. Thull is dressed professionally for the occasion—albeit with the informality of an unbuttoned collar, a discarded jacket slung over the back of a sofa, and a half-empty glass of wine on a side table in reaching distance.

Opposite the floor-to-ceiling windows taking up one side of the room, framed diplomas line the walls above a mahogany writing desk with papers neatly stacked atop. There are enough personal items around the place not to raise too many questions, but years of training has Imogen well-versed in seeing through the façade. She notices how each item is carefully curated to give the pretense of a well-lived space while remaining sterile of any actual personality.

Most notable is the showcase near the desk containing what seem to be artifacts—a variety of carefully crafted handheld knives and longer blades. While most weapons kept in glass boxes for display would be dulled enough not to cut, each of these look sharp enough to slice with little effort.

In the center of the ceiling is a skylight framed with an elegant octagonal design reaching up into the heavens. The natural light of late afternoon fills the space between Imogen and the doctor, providing enough illumination to make out their broader features but leaving more of the finer details in shadow.

Their meeting is supposed to be a relaxed affair, yet the doctor's attention to their own notes has Imogen feeling like the subject of an interrogation.

Nevertheless, Orym recommends this Dr. Thull personally, and his steadfast eagerness is difficult to refuse on a good day.

"This could be good for you, Imogen. You know you can always talk to me, but it might be helpful to get an outside perspective."

"That 'outside perspective' could get me thrown in the nearest asylum."

"Not this one." His eyes had sharpened. Searching, calculating. "Just have a conversation. It doesn't have to be anything at first. Who knows? Maybe the two of you will become friends."

"Imogen," Dr. Thull interrupts. Coal black eyes peer back, piercing, as if privy to Imogen's innermost thoughts. The timing of it sends her a little off balance. "We can start with the reason Orym recommended me in the first place."
  
"He's worried," Imogen concedes, and although it's lacking details, the description is apt. "Our most recent case threw me for a loop, and I wasn't equipped to handle it myself."

Dr. Thull is silent, urging with raised eyebrows for her to continue.

"I have a—a sensitivity to certain things," Imogen starts, guarded. She watches the doctor's face for any signs, any indication they'll mark her off as too delusional to deal with. "I feel things other people don't. Sometimes the experience is illuminating and other times it's overwhelming."

"In what way?"

"Illuminating in the epiphanies I’m given. Overwhelming in the assault of sensory inputs as a result."

"And these sensitivities affect your work with the SID?"

"Well," Imogen hesitates. "I see things. Sometimes. When I go to crime scenes."

Something flashes in Dr. Thull’s eyes—briefly and abruptly, like headlights catching the eyes of a wolf just beyond the tree line. "What do you see?"

"Snippets. Flashbacks. Tiny bits of emotion." 

Pain, sharp and debilitating, radiating through her bones. Blood spilling to the floor and gathering in puddles.

Imogen takes in a slow breath. "I feel what the victims feel in their last moments."

Dr. Thull carefully sits back in their chair, but their searching gaze is no less intense. "How fascinating."

"It's a curse and a blessing, I guess."

"I imagine a talent like that would be invaluable to the work you do."

"Orym believes I can do some real good with it."

“Speaking of Special Agent Woods," says Dr. Thull. "Many of your peers wouldn't dare address him so casually. I’m sensing history there.”

“You could say that. Orym and I go way back.” Ten years, in fact. They’ve known each other since Imogen was a simple trainee in the Special Investigations Division out of the headquarters in Rexxentrum. Back then, Orym only had a few years under his belt as a field agent and featured as a substitute lecturer in a Criminal Psychology seminar.

His sudden appearance in place of the usual speaker would have been an ordinary and completely unexceptional chapter to Imogen’s day if he hadn’t already featured in her dream the previous night.

And that particular debut was—in a word—chaotic.

Gone were his scholarly slacks and freshly buzzed haircut. Gone was the hard, empty stare of someone who had seen too much, and in its place was the wild-eyed bargaining of a man’s first brush with grief. Steady, unblemished hands were replaced with trembling bloodied ones as they clutched into the torn remains of a lapel.

He was screaming in the dream. Imogen couldn’t make out the words, but his emotions were her own, and his thoughts rattled through her own mind. And all she could process was—wake up this can’t be happening you can’t be dead please honey just wake up don’t leave me alone I never should have left you alone I’m sorry I’m so sorry

Over and over like one of those morbid childhood rhymes that come across as harmless until you find out they’re actually about plagues and death and suffering.

It kept repeating, round and round in her brain, even when she approached him after the lecture to blurt out details that no one else could have known—and was nearly arrested on the spot for it.

This was around the time her dreams first started, before she learned that said dreams and deafening echoes of the world around her weren’t normal. This was when she learned of the evils lurking in the shadows and how her talents were uniquely fit to combat them.

Needless to say, Orym refused to let Imogen out of his sight ever since.

“We have a unique relationship,” Imogen allows herself to admit, and the obvious unsaid words earn her a raised eyebrow.

“Unique enough to warrant such tailored concern from a superior."

"He's a friend. And he knows when to protect a valuable asset."

"So it seems." Dr. Thull flips through a few pages. "A ninety-eight percent solved-murder rate is quite impressive."

"Just doing my part." The missing two percent nags at her, even now. The beginning of a career stained by failure—of a young life taken too soon and never given justice. Imogen subconsciously runs a thumb over the covered skin on the back of her hand but stops when the motion catches the doctor's eyes. "You know the spiel; I'm helping to make the world a better place, bringing closure to the friends and family of the victims."

"Do I sense a hint of cynicism?"

“I’ve been doing this for a long time, Dr. Thull. It never gets any easier, and eventually you just get tired.”

”You could stop. Go back to the farm.”

Imogen's heart nearly leaps from her chest, and she has to stop herself from bolting right then and there. "I haven't even told Orym about that."

"An educated guess but an accurate one by the looks of it." Dr. Thull's expression is a mask, but a glimmer of amusement shines through before being tampered. "Your mannerisms and speech, down to the the way you hold yourself when you walk, all speak of a rural background. The accent alone places you in the Taloned Highlands or surrounding areas."

Although the words are cold and calculating, nothing more than a recited observation, there's an undercurrent of malice that sends a shiver up Imogen's spine.

"Unless I'm mistaken?" Dr. Thull finishes.

"Right on target." Imogen supposes it makes sense, but has she always been so transparent? "We had horses. Pigs. Chickens.”

“Crops?”

“Some.”

Dr. Thull taps their pen to the page. "Tell me more about home."

"It's never been home," Imogen cuts in. "And if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not."

They consider Imogen for a moment. "And yet, you've already told me more about it than anything else in the hour you've been here."

"What?"

"I'm curious," the doctor continues after a beat, "why you refuse to call that place your home. You won’t speak of it, yet you carry it with you everywhere you go. Like a badge—or a stain?”

Imogen’s jaw clenches. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"Enlighten me."

"My father was a cold man. I wasn't welcome in that house, and he made sure I knew it." Dinners were eaten alone. Imogen became more accustomed to Relvin's silence than his gruff voice. The pile of hay in Flora's stable was more of a bed to her than the one in her room. "My time there may have influenced who I've become, but it's not a home for me. Not anymore."

"Is that why you left?"

"Yes." A memory beckons. A stillness in the air after a storm. The raw stench of blood hanging over like a guillotine. “No."

“Home can be a place. It can also be a person. Or a feeling.” Dr. Thull gives her a searching look. "You've mentioned family—a distant father. I find it hard to believe you grew up without any connections.”

“Flora was—she was all the company I needed.” At the questioning look Imogen receives, she adds, “My horse.”

“But not anymore.”

Imogen bites her tongue hard until she tastes iron.

“Loss, in any form, can paralyze us in the past. I wonder if you’ve ever allowed yourself to grieve.”

Her head jolts up. “I never said she died.”

“Neither did I.” Dr. Thull's expression is unnervingly blank and unreadable. “Grief comes in all shapes and sizes, whether or not death is involved. It’s the result of a severed connection—in its most basic form. But something tells me yours is closer to the conventional meaning of the word.”

By the time Relvin found her that day, her throat had gone hoarse from screaming. He pulled her into a hug for the first time in over a decade.

“I grieved,” Imogen insists through gritted teeth. “A little too much, in my opinion.”

As quick as her father was to offer comfort, he was even quicker to disappear. Stifling, echoing halls in the house weren’t new by any means, but now they served as a reminder of an empty, dirty stable she could no longer escape to.

It took a year of suffocating for the realization to hit: Imogen would grow old and die there.

Alone and unseen.

Like Flora.

Something had to change.

“That was a long time ago.” A knot in Imogen’s chest shudders and threatens to come loose. Her eyes burn at the corners. “It’s over. I got out.”

“Running and grieving aren’t the same thing.”

A sharp retort attempts to escape before it dies in her throat at the look Dr. Thull sends her way.

The expression is not one of sympathy, like Imogen is expecting. Not even disappointment or frustration with Imogen’s unwillingness to face her past.

Rather, it’s a look of patient hunger—like a rare treat is dangling before their eyes on a string, and all they need to do is bide their time for the perfect opportunity to strike.

“Tell me about Flora.” Dr. Thull leans toward her, and the movement is so slight that Imogen wouldn’t have caught it if she wasn’t already watching so closely. “How did she die?”

On the outside, nothing changes. Late afternoon already made way for dusk, and the dim lighting from the desk lamp between them is calming and easy on the eyes, casting deep shadows along the sharp corners of the doctor’s features. However, Imogen can pinpoint the exact moment the tension in the air shifts to something more tangible.

There's a moment of recognition in the sudden twisting in her gut—the same one that urged her to check the stable before finding it empty and the gate swinging loosely in the wind.

Something led her through the trees that day. Dread, yes, but also a tinge of morbid curiosity.

If she had to go back and do it all over again—if she had to choose between seeking a resolution or burying her head in the sand—she would follow the thread in every version of that reality.

Imogen becomes hyperaware of every shift of her posture, every change in her breath. With her heart beating out a quick rhythm in her chest, her pupils must be the size of saucers. “Flora was killed by wolves. It wasn’t a pretty sight.”

“Death rarely is.” Dr. Thull’s head tilts ever so faintly. “You found her that day, didn’t you?”

Imogen swallows, throat bobbing.

“To lose something so precious in a gruesome act of violence. It certainly puts life into perspective.”

Her fingers itch again. To shed the gloves would be exposing a vulnerability, but the temptation to search—to follow the thread—surges at the back of her mind. Imogen fidgets with the seams once more, and her pulse jumps when the doctor’s eyes lock onto her hands.

“After an experience like that, you must see your work in a different light than most of your peers," says Dr. Thull.

"It drives me." No matter where her work takes her, each crime scene has an echo of that forest clearing, but it's nothing she can't handle. In fact, the reminder is a good thing. "Helps me fight for something bigger than myself. I never want a person to find their loved one the same way I did. Not if I can help it."

"The 'greater good,' as you said."

"Yes."

"Then let's talk about the recent case that brought you to me." Dr. Thull scribbles something on a page. Imogen narrows her eyes at the motion. "You said something threw you for a loop. Something you weren't able to handle by yourself."

“Don’t get me wrong,” Imogen urges, feeling the need to defend herself for a reason she can’t quite name. “I’ve seen my fair share of murders. They're inevitable in this line of work.”

“What makes this one so different?”

She rubs some feeling into her gloved knuckles, pressing a little bit too hard. The gloves are just another method of numbing the emotional echoes of her surroundings, but they run the risk of silencing her own if she’s not careful. 

"In each vision, the victim is afraid," says Imogen. "Every single one of them is more afraid than they’ve ever been, right before the end. This most recent victim was no different, except—”

Dr. Thull's gaze sharpens. “Except?”

Releasing a shuddering breath, Imogen says, “His fear. There was a rush of adrenaline at the start and throughout the chase, but it was just a precursor to the main event.

"Even upon waking and being forced to watch his own disembowelment, the resulting chill of acceptance was drawn out deliberately.” She bites her lip, breathing in deep before releasing it slowly through her nose. “That’s what it was—deliberate. I don’t know how else to describe it.”

“And how did it make you feel?”

Imogen’s laugh tastes hollow on her tongue. The question had lost its impact over the years—and though a proper answer still escapes her, the whole situation just seems so pedestrian all of a sudden. “If that is to be the extent of our interactions, Doctor, perhaps Orym’s impression of you is flawed.”

“Exaggerated, perhaps," Dr. Thull considers. "But I’ve worked on a number of cases alongside your department, albeit from the comfort of my own residence. He knows exactly who he’s dealing with.”

Now that she didn’t know.

Something in Imogen’s expression must give her away because the corner of Dr. Thull’s lips quirks in amusement. “I’m guessing he didn’t tell you.”

A buzzing starts somewhere behind Imogen’s eyes that she tries to blink away. “No, he didn't. Failed to mention that part.”

Orym was her first friend after Flora and mentor, her confidante when the job got too real to handle. He was her tether to a tumultuous and ever-changing world.

He wouldn’t hide things from her.

Except, he did.

“I ask again,” Dr. Thull interjects—and really, their timing is impeccable. “How did it feel? To experience it all firsthand.”

The buzzing builds to a throbbing pressure, slowly expanding outward. "It felt—"

Damp blades of grass between her fingers, in her hair, soft against her back. Limbs splayed out, presented as a feast.

A never-ending leer. A void, drawing her in.

A shadow with teeth. Looming. Descending.

"For the first time in my life," Imogen says, with a dawning realization, "I felt seen."

Is this what Flora felt in her last moments? Fear? Acceptance?

Freedom?

"I wasn't just a passenger along for the ride. This time, I was the focal point. It was—"

—horrible. Terrifying. Excruciating. Devastating, on a transformative level.

Exhilarating.

"—different.”

"Imogen," Dr. Thull insists, bringing Imogen fully back to the present. "Please." They gesture to a box of tissues on the table by Imogen's elbow.

Something wet runs over her lips, and when her mouth opens to reply, she tastes iron. Imogen gasps, rushing to stem the blood pouring from her nose. "Sorry about that."

"Are you alright?"

"It happens quite a bit." Her headache still pounds something fierce, but, free from outwardly stimuli in such an emotionally sterilized space, has already begun to abate. She's able to wipe up most of the mess without getting anything on the furniture. "I get caught up in the visions sometimes."

Dr. Thull watches carefully, as Imogen stuffs the stained tissues in her pocket and out of sight. "Does Orym know about these nosebleeds?"

Imogen bites the inside of her cheek. "He knows they occur."

"But they happen more often than he thinks."

She hesitates. "Maybe."

"For such a close relationship," Dr. Thull points out, "there seem to be a lot of secrets between you two."

Frustration rises up from a well of simmering emotion at her core, not helped by the pounding at her temples. "Of course I haven't told him everything," Imogen defends. Her hands clench, the leather of her gloves squeaking under the strain. "That doesn't mean we're not friends."

"He must suspect," Dr. Thull offers. "Otherwise he wouldn't have suggested this meeting."

"I'm fine." She really is. It's just pain, and pain can be worked through. Orym shouldn't worry so much. "I just need to figure out a better way of coping. That's all."

Dr. Thull continues their cold assessment of Imogen, studying her expression and the way she shifts nervously under their gaze.

Calculating. Prodding.

Seeing what makes her tick.

And Imogen realizes she's been nothing more than a plaything this entire time.

The pain behind her eyes surges, sending a shuddering wave of agony that nearly topples her out of her chair.

"Past all the secrets," Dr. Thull continues, seemingly unfazed, although their words sound muffled as if projected through layers of glass.

The room spins.

"Past all the lies and half truths," comes the voice. "How do you think Orym sees you?"

Imogen rapidly blinks, pinching the bridge of her nose and attempting to soothe away the sensation—unsuccessfully. “He thinks I’m unstable,” she replies, faint, and almost cries at the truthfulness.

“Are you?”

All around her, the air grows stale and stifling, and through the static, gravity takes hold of the words falling from her lips. “There are moments where I’m drowning in uncertainty, almost as if I’m balancing on the precipice of insanity."

She's tiptoeing on that line, even now. As if the slightest pressure could send her off the edge and tumbling into the abyss.

"My sense of identity is constantly intertwined with those who had been victimized by the worst of humanity,” Imogen continues. “And yet, I recognize the difference between the reality I can sense through others versus the reality of the person I know myself to be.”

The person she knows herself to be is a collection of masks—an imposter in human skin. 

For most of her life, she’d been a ghost in her own house, walking in the footsteps of a mother she’d never known. Today, she wears her mother’s gloves as protection from the afflictions they share.

Did Imogen ever truly exist in the first place?

"That contradiction is the anchor that keeps me grounded."

She’s a ship that has lost its mooring, drifting amongst the waves and battered by storm-force winds.

"So, while there are times that I lose myself, it's only in those times that I'm able to manufacture a sense of clarity.”

Her name is Imogen Temult. She is twenty-eight years old. She consults for the Special Investigations Division in Jrusar. She’s never been a real person, and her head is killing her.

“Tell me, Doctor. After all of that, would you say I'm unstable?” Imogen finishes, finally. She licks her lips that have gone dry and clenches her hands to diminish the tremble wracking its way through her system. 

“By definition, yes.” Dr. Thull shuts the notebook with one hand before placing it neatly onto the table in front.

Imogen drops her head into her hands, stomach tumbling over itself and threatening to spill.

“But from everything I’ve gathered so far, you aren’t one to be defined by such rigid limitations.”

It's at this point that Dr. Thull finally takes hold of their wine glass by the stem and relaxes back into their chair, as if their work had finished with all dots connected.

Dr. Thull doesn't sip yet, content to tilt and swirl the concoction within. The liquid is a rich red and as thick as blood, as if Imogen had opened her own veins for the doctor to enjoy.

"Last night," Dr. Thull begins, "the storm cut power to half the neighborhood for five hours. I had just finished dinner when the house was plunged into darkness."

Wine threatens to spill past the brim before the glass is righted and toyed with once again. A delicate balancing act.

"On the way to work this morning, I drove past the corpse of a deer near the side of the road. Its leg had been crushed beneath a fallen tree. You see, the injury by itself wouldn't be enough to kill the poor creature, but it was pinned at the bottom of a ditch in such a way that it drowned in the rapidly rising rainwater.

"Perhaps the deer might have been saved if someone found it in time. The aftermath was clear to see in the light of day, but on a road where street lights no longer functioned, the deer's last moments had gone unnoticed."

With a last flourishing swirl, the wine is tipped between waiting lips. The last of it beads on the corner of their mouth before it's licked away without a trace.

The empty glass is set down on the table, discarded and forgotten.

"You see, Imogen,” Dr. Thull drawls as if testing the name on their tongue, letting it sit in the way one might savor an aged Merlot. Imogen gets the sense she’s being measured in real time. “You’re not my patient, and I am not your psychiatrist. We're just two people getting to know each other, and you’re free to leave at any time and never return.”

Imogen opens her mouth to speak.

“However.” Their tone slices through any possible response like a scalpel through flesh, seeping a steady calm that drips with an undercurrent of expectation.

She goes rigid.

“Should you find yourself lost in the thick of the storm with no tether holding you down, you might be grateful for a guiding light instead.”

Dr. Thull leans forward to rest their forearms on their knees, threading their fingers together. Their eyes, dark as the vacuum of space, threaten to draw Imogen in.

“I could be that for you.”

The world is still when he wakes.

Silent. Cold.

His eyes drift open as if returning from sleep. Above, stars glitter in their formations, arranged in a delicate whimsy that nature so often is. Immaculate in their spontaneity.

Regardless of the universe's cycle of chaos and creation, there is beauty to be found. Timeless and unprecedented.

Perhaps, upon his death, like the bits of an exploding star reformed into a droplet of water, plunged within a vast ocean amongst millions of lifeforms, he would be repurposed for something greater than himself.

That singular thought buries into his mind.

A necessary anchor of comfort.

A necessity because, upon recognizing the sickening squelching noise below, he must convince himself of a justification for it.

There has to be a reason for life. For death. For the cruelty of nature.

To look down—to cement the moment in reality—would be a mistake. Meanwhile, the urge to close his eyes again, to sleep, to remain ignorant, screams at all the remaining sensibilities of a rapidly waking mind.

That is, until gloved fingers wrench his head down by the hair, ripping away his last remaining threads of autonomy.

A scream lodges halfway out his throat, smothered by the failure of muscle and tissues that no longer respond to his commands. Nothing reacts like they used to, and what control remains of his arms and legs are despondent to inner pleads.

His limbs are as still as the night air.

His bulging eyes, which were once offered toward the heavens, sink low into the mess and gore of his chest cavity, now splayed open for all the universe to see.

And it is the ravenous wanting of the wolf that challenges his horrified gaze. Dark, dilated pupils behind a pristine black mask that relish in his despair—a gross bastardization of the milky way above with none of the beauty and all of the violence.

The beast is simply waiting.

Watching.

Before it flashes its teeth in a terrible grin, and the world around him shutters to nothingness.