#the break up edition

[turtleations]

PINK CLOUDY SKY, Chapter 05 - Fleeting Dream (summarized)

Chapter 00 - 01

Chapter 02

Chapter 03

Chapter 04 Part 1, Part 2

SAVER TIGER broke up not once, but twice. The first time was in 1986. It was the result of various circumstances and was not a formal disbandment. The second one in March 1987, unfortunately, was.

The band had a lot of member changes through the years, because their leader hide was a perfectionist with a strong drive to constantly improve and reach an even higher level of musicality. In order to reach that level, switching out members was unavoidable. But it was something that always tormented his heart. His instincts as a musician and as an artist kept screaming, “I want to make even more perfect, more awesome, cooler music!” But at the same time, he was by nature kinder than most, and watching the lost members leave made his heart ache and left him to wonder if it was really okay to aim that high if this was the price they had to pay for it.

But hide was not the type to only think and not act, even if he was tormented by his decisions. He was the kind of guy who acted quickly once he decided something and was hardest against himself in order to make his dreams a reality.

“I hesitated a lot. But now that it’s decided, let’s do it!”, hide would say and just sprint off at once. But REM thinks that in his heart, he took a lot of damage and suffered deep wounds, even when the band broke up the first time.

The practice methods and the nature of their music at that time did not work well with the band members just then. Personally, there was no problem at all, they were all good guys and they got along well. But reaching the next level in their band’s musical development just wasn’t possible with that lineup.

But hide absolutely didn’t just want to kick them out. His solution to that dilemma was, “Let’s break up and separate from everyone, and then find new members and start over right away!” And so, under those circumstances, SAVER TIGER briefly disbanded in 1986.

Getting back together to form the new band, they kept the name SAVER TIGER, for no other reason than that they had grown attached to it.

Bassist Jimmy quit at that time for various reasons, but he stayed a close friend to them who kept in contact. In 1999, he is an important member of the new SAVER TIGER. Back then, he called himself “Japan’s No. 1 SAVER-Freak” and drove his beloved “Demon Z” to the studio just to see them practice.

Looking back on those says, Jimmy talked about how one day, after a live, hide, in the passenger seat of Jimmy’s car, suddenly put a tape into the car’s stereo and their song “19” started playing. Jimmy thought that song was really crazy.

“19” was an original song from that era, which REM and hide had created together.

Jimmy was a good adviser and an important friend to REM and hide even after leaving the band.

Of course, right after that first break-up, hide and REM started to vigorously look for new members. First, they selected drummer Kosuke and bassist Tokihiko, both of whom had found hide’s approval when they participated in “Break out the Rock” as members of other bands.

But they couldn’t find a fitting vocalist and continued rehearsing without one for the time being. Meanwhile, hide and REM kept looking for their ideal vocalist in various live houses. They also joined afterparties, basically just yelling “Isn’t there any good vocalist around?” into the room.

At some point, REM casually suggested that hide could take over as their vocalist, at least temporarily. since he had done pretty well on that tape he had made for REM when he joined the band. REM thought it would be better if hide did it than if they settled for a bad vocalist. But hide got embarrassed at the suggestion, just looking down and murmuring something about how he couldn’t do that because he was exclusively a guitarist.

To put it shortly, their new vocalist eventually became kyo, whom hide had zeroed in on. Kyo lived in Chiba at the time; he was invited to the studio to with them just once, and then got an answer right the day after.

One week later, hide took kyo along to “Rock City”, where Jimmy was still working behind the bar.

They drank while talking about different topics, like kyo’s beloved Mihael Munroe, and their favorite bands KISS and Hanoi Rocks. After a while, kyo somewhat timidly asked hide and REM, “How about it?” and they both said, “Let’s do it!”

They were all happy about this development and had a great night – REM, hide, kyo, as well as Jimmy behind the counter.

The following week, kyo started his time of doing Chiba – Yokohama round trips along the Kanto Bay coast. Whenever there was practice, he would come from his home in Chiba to Yokohama, where the studio was. As mentioned earlier, practice was two to three times a week from night till morning. Afterwards, he crashed at REM’s place until noon and then went home again. Repeat next time. Although he never said anything, it had to be tough, and REM admired him for keeping it up for so long. He wouldn’t have been able to do that if he hadn’t been such a passionate artist from the start.

The songs they made during kyo’s time with them were “19”, “Sadistic Emotion” and “Spady Madik”. They also practiced covers of songs like “Chinese Rock” by Johnny Thunders, “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper, or “Evil” by Merciful Fate.

At this point, REM talks about SAVER TIGER’s recorded discography a bit. The first songs the band ever recorded were “Double Cross” and “Gold Digger”, which were released by EXLOSION RECORDS on flexi. [Note: In July1985, before REM joined the band.]

[Note: REM actually writes that it was released by the EXTASY Label, which I can only assume is a misprint.]

Next was the song “Vampire”, which was included on the omnibus album “HEAVY METAL FORCE III”. On that album, a song of the indies band “X” was also included. [Note: Namely, “Break the Darkness”. The Album was also released by EXPLOSION RECORDS, in November 1985. Recording must have happened a few months earlier, however, as it still featured NICK on guitar instead of REM, who had joined the band in September of the same year.]

Finally, the songs “DEAD ANGLE” and “EMERGENCY EXPRESS” were included in the omnibus album “Devil Must Be Driven Out with Devil” by the Label “Hold Up”. [Note: February 1986] Then-indies band UNITED was also represented on this one. By this point, the band had made the name change from SABER TIGER to SAVER TIGER, but not only did the album mistakenly call them SABER TIGER on the jacket, they also somehow managed to misspell REM’s name so badly it turned into “NICK”, so a lot of people think that REM wasn’t involved in the recording even now.

He often gets asked for the reason why they listed NICK instead of him. The reason is that it was a misprint.

While on topic, REM then writes about the reason for the band’s name change: There was a band of the same name in Hokkaido. It had nothing to do with their Doppel Ganger legend, but it was still an unfortunate coincidence. To avoid confusion, magazines and leaflets often distinguished them as “Yokosuka SAVER TIGER” even after they had changed their name.

Meguro LIVE STATION held an “SAVER vs SABER” event on 26 November 1986. For that event, they gave an interview for a Hokkaido music magazine and also got to talk to SABER TIGER’s leader. [Note: Kinoshita Akihito, born 1961, guitar, still active with the same band, which was founded in 1981.]

SABER TIGER was also an amazing band that had already released a number of records, and the SAVER TIGER guys worked hard not lose against them.

With their strong team of new members, with kyo on vocals, Tokihiko on bass, and Kosuke on drums, they were off to a good start. But not along after this event, choices regarding their members once again troubled hide’s heart.

Bassist Tokohiko was impeccable. His musical talent, technic, rhythm, were all perfect. He loved to say that he respected guys with longer hair than him, and there was no better bassist to be found in their environment. With him around, hide’s long-standing dream of turning their band into a super band seemed within reachable distance.

Compared to someone like that, their new drummer Kosuke could only lose. After joining SAVER TIGER, Kosuke became better and better, but his rhythm was a bit lacking here and there, and REM and hide also got the impression that he was the least enthusiastic about practice.

Or maybe that was not quite the right expression. Their practice lasted five to six hours in the middle of the night, after all, with one ten to fifteen minutes of break in between. Since the drums required more stamina than the other parts, this practice left Kosuke severely exhausted, to the point of emergency, and REM and hide both soon felt that he might be better off not drumming. To continue to do so seemed somewhat unreasonable to them.

To Kosuke’s credit, he was a good drummer. Excellent, even. That’s why he is also the drummer of the current SAVER TIGER.

He went on and was a part of many different bands throughout his musician’s life. He’s got an ear for many different genres of music and has becomes an important support for the band. Above all, he is friendly and kind and just overall a good guy.

But that first time with SAVER TIGER was unsatisfactory from a perspective that was always looking for perfection.

At that time, hide had found an extraordinary drummer named TETSU. They met for drinks, and after he listened to the demo-tape TETSU gave him, hide was convinced that he was a talent that could stand next to Tokihiko. Both hide and REM decided, “With TETSU and Tokihiko, we can have the strongest rhythm in Kanto. No, even our dream of a super band can come true!”

Only, they did not share that train of thought with Kosuke.

Before long, they were to play at the campus festival of REM’s university, and TETSU came to visit their rehearsal. How they came to accept that gig is a bit of a funny story on the side: The rector of the university contacted hide and REM with the request to perform at the festival, and their response was somewhat chilly. They felt that Yokosuka’s No. 1 band and college fest didn’t mix well, and REM initially gave some half-hearted response about how hide certainly wouldn’t give his okay to this.

But the rector kept repeating his request them, eventually saying, “I don’t know the common market price, and I’m sorry if this is a rude offer, but I was thinking of a payment of around 100.000 Yen…”

[Note: I don’t know the conversion rate in 1986, nor can I account for inflation, but today (July 2023) that would be around 650 EUR or 710 USD.]

The moment he said that, hide’s eyes lit up. Their eyes met. REM nodded, then said to the rector with fake indifference, “Well, we cannot make that decision on our own. We need to talk to our manager about this…”

And once the rector had left, they danced for joy. For an amateur band like theirs, 100.000 Yen was an unheard of amount. Thus, they threw themselves into rehearsing for this event with great enthusiasm.

On the day of the rehearsal, hide still hadn’t talked to Kosuke. At some point, Kosuke took a long toilet break, and while he was gone, TESTU took his place at the drums and they continued to rehearse like this. Eventually, Kosuke returned, and just listened to TESTU drum in silence. After a while, TETSU returned the drum sticks to him and Kosuke resumed practice as if nothing had happened.

And hide looked away and didn’t say anything. But, of course, Kosuke sensed that something was up.

The performance at the campus festival was a roaring success, and afterwards, TETSU, who had come to listen to their performance, joined them for the afterparty at a place called “Banya” (Guardhouse). All the while, hide and REM were restless, exchanging glances, murmuring to themselves about how they really needed to talk to Kosuke. But somehow, once again, they didn’t.

And then Kosuke said out of nowhere, “I’m quitting SAVER.”

Startled, REM looked first at Kosuke, then at hide, who was pale and hung his head, pressing his lips into bloodless lines.

Kosuke said: “When I watched TETSU play that time, he was so good. Because SAVER is a band that has the potential to go major, I think TETSU is the better choice for it. Even though I am a limitation for this band, I love SAVER, so please do your best and become professionals for me as well…”

Hide ran from the room before he could finish. REM rushed out of the building after him at once, but even so failed to find him in the darkness outside. Eventually, after searching through the night for him, he discovered hide at the back end of the place’s parking lot, where he was cowering on the ground, crying audibly, sobbing, “I’m done! I can’t betray people like this anymore!”

This hide, REM forcefully dragged back inside. There, Kosuke was crying. Hide was crying. REM was crying. Everyone else who was there also cried.

It was a sad, hot night.

And so, SAVER TIGER arrived at the final constellation before their break up: TETSU on drums, Tokihiko on bass, kyo on vocals, forming hide’s ideal band, and both he and REM felt that like this, they could absolutely go major.

They rapidly picked up the speed of creating songs. They worked thoroughly and with attention to detail. Their rhythm section and vocals were quick to understand what was required, and everyone worked hard and eagerly. They perfected their practice and with that, of course, also improved their live performances.

At that time, the rehearsed in Roppongi, and often, after practice, REM and Tokihiko marched through the night in their jerseys to grab some Gyudon at “Yoshino-Ya”. It’s a taste he can’t forget.

Meanwhile, hide’s energy reached its maximum. He certainly felt that this was it! After all the pain every time there was a member change, shedding the blood of the lost members and his own, they had finally found the band that would make it.

Hide immediately went about making plans for recording, securing a studio. Let’s make a photo album! Let’s make all kinds of promotional material! We should quickly create new songs! Every day, he was talking like this, excited like a child.

But as the saying goes, after the light falls the shadow.

One night, hide called REM at home, dead drunk and on the verge of tears.

“We should disband SAVER,” was all he could mutter when REM asked him what was wrong.

REM was shocked, but only learned what had caused this when he met with hide in person: One of the band members was leaving them. And hide was heartbroken.

But what he had to say about it was: “This is where I have to pay the bill for what I have done. You betray people, you get betrayed in return.”

REM’s view on this was quite different. As far as he was concerned, hide had never betrayed anyone, he’d merely made unavoidable decisions that a band leader has to make. But hide strongly felt in his heart that he had done people wrong. And the fallout was terrible.

Even though they met to discuss this a week later, the mind of the member who wanted to leave was set. And so, SAVER TIGER disbanded.

After the meeting, the four remaining members walked to the “Buffalo” with heavy steps. Jimmy was working there now, waiting for them behind the counter. He had lived up to his reputation as “Japan’s No. 1 SAVER-Freak” and now stood witness to this turning point in their history.

To Jimmy behind the counter, hide, who was drunk, said that he was going to enter a normal profession, giving up his dreams of becoming a professional musician.

This was in March 1987.

And just like that, the history of SAVER TIGER, who had been fighting tooth and nail to lead the rock scene in Yokosuka for five years, came to an end.

The tiger had fallen into a deep sleep.

Outside, the wind was blowing violently through the cold night.

Chaper 06

[spacerockband]

Quetzalcoatlus! poised to spear her prey!

[mischievous-thunder]

When you share a small flat with two shameless roommates that's the end of peace and quiet in your life

[hinamie]

thank u canon plant nerd megumi for my life

bonus:

[stellarspecter]

@pscentral event 20: antagonists ↳ THE LORDS IN BLACK in NERDY PRUDES MUST DIE

[astrhae]

"I'm very good at forgiveness. It's one of my favorite things."

[blehhblep]

[kaizsche]

"tyler, how'd you come to do this work?" / "well, when you love something, you'll spend your whole life trying to understand it." TWISTERS (2024)

[lover-of-mine]

#*ariana grande starts playing* break up with your girlfriend cuz im bored

[nikolaj-costerwaldau]

VIGGO MORTENSEN

as Aragorn, in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

[homoquartz]

okaaay so i technically missed bi visibility day by like an hour but i made icons for three of my fave tv bisexuals!

nick nelson - charles rowland - luz noceda

🩷💜💙

you're welcome to take em if you want

(watch dead boy detectives ✌️)

[warmsol]

being a storyteller is like, i’m a writer. i’m a director. i’m an editor. i’m a producer. i’m a cinematographer. i’m makeup and hair. i’m costume design. i’m set design. i’m tired

[blitzwhore]

Had a vision

[nanihirunkits]

I don’t want to keep you waiting anymore.

THAMEPO | EP8

[kimseokjinn]

The fake maknae line

[emmg]

It is no hardship, Emmrich tells himself, to wear his face. It is his, after all. The one he was born with, the one that grew and shifted under his own patient gaze, seen in puddles, in mirrors, in the glass of a carriage window as he smoothed down his hair with the flat of his palm. A face he had stared at for far too long that first time he shaved, and again a few years later when he invited that very pretty boy out for a promenade and wanted, with all the force of a young man’s vanity, to be just as pretty himself—no hair astray, the kohl at his lower lids an almost imperceptible shadow, the perfume at his neck a whisper of carelessness, though in truth, nothing had ever been more deliberate.

For a decade now, they have called him distinguished. Before that, they called him handsome. He knows his face, likes his face. Its summoning should be no trouble at all; especially now, especially like this, stripped down to something more elemental, all ivory angles and nothing more. But Rook is uneasy. She does not say so—she is all sorry, shit, don’t mind me, fuck, fuck, I’ll get used to it, I’ll get used to it—but she is not made for the sight of bone in the dark when she wakes abruptly. He has had years to come to terms with the unmaking of his flesh. She has not.

So he does not miss his face, not really. But Rook does. And for Rook, he will pretend. 

No, he tells himself again, he does not mind. He does not. 

Lichdom, as he had once explained to her, sanded down most of his senses. Blunted them, rubbed them smooth. But in their place, others have surfaced. Senses without names, without proper edges, ones that slip through language like smoke through a cracked door. He cannot smell the perfume she wears, though he knows it is dreadful, some sticky, saccharine thing she bought in Treviso with Lucanis and spilled all over her shirt. But he can see her pleasure when she presses a little figurine into his palm, triumphant and insistent. This one, she affirms, is so much prettier than the first, and most importantly, not haunted. 

He watches her giddiness churn inside her, thick and writhing. It is purple, inexplicably. It loops and knots, wriggling sideways, swelling through her veins, a restless thing. It coils, slippery, around her heart before pouring from her mouth when she speaks. When she presses her lips to what passes for his cheek, he thinks he can taste it. Or something like tasting. As if she had chewed it to a pulp, crushed it between her molars, worked it down to something fibrous and wet and pressed it into him, like carrion slipped between teeth, offered as a gift. 

He swallows it, slow. 

Perhaps this is what purple has always tasted like. 

There are other things. Other feelings. They arrive misshapen, crawling over the edges of his thoughts, curious, pestering, impossible to ignore. They perplex him. They amuse him. And sometimes—sometimes—he wishes he felt nothing at all.

Like when she cuts herself, and he watches the blood spill, a slow, indifferent line along the curve of her arm. But it is not blood, not in the dull, medical sense. Not something as pedestrian as iron and salt. It is a ribbon, impossibly red, and he can see the rest of it coiled inside her, packed neatly away, waiting to be tugged. How much could he pull free before she wavers, before her lips lose their color, before the bright, stubborn thing inside her gutters out? 

He heals her arm. Does not look at her when he does it. Says nothing of consequence. 

But he wants to take that ribbon and wind it around her wrist, knot it, twist it, pull it so tight that it ceases to be a ribbon at all. Flesh yielding to pressure, pressure forcing permanence. A bracelet of skin. A smooth, bloodless seam. A correction. 

Rook thanks him. A glance, a nod—already half-gone as she turns toward Rivain. There are things to be done there for her, and he cannot stray from the Necropolis for long. What things, exactly, she does not say, but he knows their shape well enough: dragons, impulse, the peculiar magnetism of disaster. She has always been like this, drawn to the spectacularly unwise with the certainty of a moth misjudging distance. 

He can no longer follow. 

She will return. He knows this. And yet, if his hands still possessed the capacity for tremor, he suspects they would betray him now. 

"I love you, I love you, I love you," she sings, a careless, looping refrain, a child’s chant repurposed for a woman who has never quite learned to tread lightly. She chatters as she moves; this and that, something or other, a bad decision or three. She shows him rings, delicate and stolen, lifted from a dragon’s hoard, then tells him of a strange mug found in the same place and promptly lost to someone forgettable in a game of cards. 

"Look, look," she says, because excitement makes her redundant. "I kept these for you." 

The rings slide onto his fingers—bandaged, skeletal, indifferent to the distinction. He flexes them. Smiles, because each one carries an emerald, and green has always pleased him. 

"I was meaning to ask you," Rook says. She is still holding his hand, turning it gently in her own, left, right, right, left, as though testing whether it is truly there. "You are smiling now." 

"I am." 

"Don’t interrupt me." 

"My deepest apologies." 

"It was a joke," she says, but absently, without weight. Then, again, softer: "You are smiling now. But is it real? Or do I see a smile only because I expect to? Because I believe it should be there?" 

"It is quite real," he reassures her, lifting his free hand, brushing two fingers against her cheek. "The glamour does not fabricate emotions. It is a projection, not an invention. A polished pane of glass through which I am seen, rather than a mask obscuring what lies beneath. It filters nothing. It simply allows you to perceive what is still there, as it was." 

She exhales. He watches it unfurl from her mouth, a slip of breath that curls, dissipates, wrapped in green. Relief, perhaps. 

"Good," she murmurs. "That is good." 

There are things he misses more than others. Some he had not expected to mourn, believing that lichdom would cauterize the want before it could take shape. And perhaps it would have, if not for Rook. But she exists, unavoidably, and so the loss takes shape, outlines itself, defines itself against the hollow places she touches. 

The intimacy of the body: its mechanics, its heat, its crude and glorious simplicity. He misses the way skin clings, damp and sticky, the tack of sweat drying between them. The way lips grow chapped from too much kissing, saliva sapped away until the skin cracks, until the next kiss stings. He misses the raw and graceless rhythm of it, the press of her thighs around him, the slow loss of self in the churn of it all. He misses the way he could press his palm to her stomach, still sheathed within her, and feel himself there, caged by her. 

And afterward, in the languid sprawl of spent nerves and loose limbs, the way his mind would wander, taking him by the hand, showing him its little fantasies, its secreted-away indulgences—let us get married, Rook, I will buy you so much gold, let’s get married, yes, and then let’s have a child, but not immediately, not at once, let’s linger here a while, let’s lose ourselves in this, let’s glut ourselves on one another until we are utterly ruined by it, and then, yes, then, we will have that little thing.

Now, he feels her differently. Not through skin but through something more fundamental, a closeness that eclipses anything flesh ever allowed. It is fuller, sharper, deeper than anything he could have imagined. 

But it is not the same. 

And he does not yet know if he prefers it. 

Time, as always, will decide. 

Pleasure has not abandoned him. It has only changed its nature, its source, its means of arrival. Now, it exists solely through her. He sees, now, how men dissolve into drink, into smoke, into whatever tincture delivers them to sensation. The body remembers its peaks; the body conspires to reach them again. 

"Will you come for me, darling girl?" he murmurs against her ear, his fingers curling inside her as they have done so many times before—when his hands were warm, when they ceased to be. 

And she does what she always does: she writhes, she gasps, she laughs, she moves against him with the helpless, thoughtless grace of something yielding to gravity. Her hips chase the friction, her mouth parts, her breath hitches, her lashes lower, heavy with pleasure. And he—he is there inside her, feeling it as she feels it, tasting it in a way that has nothing to do with taste, swallowing it down, letting it course through him. It is vast. It is staggering. Pleasure enough for two, for more than two, enough to fill the space where he no longer exists. 

Afterward, she is breathless, boneless, staring up at the ceiling and laughing that strange, impossible laugh. He no longer tries to make sense of it. Some things cannot be translated. She has a laugh for anger, a laugh for excitement, a laugh for surprise. He thinks he knows this one well enough by now, the one that trickles out of her in the aftermath. 

A trick, an echo, the imitation of a thing once real. He kisses her where he would have kissed her once—her mouth, the sharp ridge of her collarbone, the small curve of her breast, except now there is no heat, no wet drag of a tongue, no parted lips. Only the careful architecture of a spell, a memory sculpted into sensation, something just close enough to pass for real. He trails lower, following the old pathways, the ones his hands remember even if they are no longer the same. 

She sighs. Again. Again. Another time. 

He lingers where she yields the most, where she is all pulse and warmth, where her thighs, slick and trembling, part for him before he even touches her. Where breath quickens and thought slips away. And through it, he drinks. Draws from her as he always does, as he must, in ways he does not fully understand, or perhaps does, but has decided against understanding. He takes until she is weightless, drifting, until her voice emerges in that low, drowsy enough, enough, until she exhales, unconscious of herself, shifting, turning into him, her cheek settling against his shoulder, her body already gone to sleep.

And he wonders—if he did not stop, could he empty her? 

What is it that they share, exactly? What does she give? What does he take? Is it taking at all? Perhaps she is feeding from him just as he feeds from her.

He could ask. He could go looking for the answer. It is what he has done his entire life. 

But he does not. Because the answer, whatever it may be, does not matter. Because, at his core, he knows this much to be true: 

He is an empty thing now. 

And all empty things must be filled. 

It is a dreadful experience, watching her get hurt. Dreadful in its predictability, in the casual inevitability of it. Rook, as he has come to understand, is the sort of person who leaps from a cliff first and wonders, mid-air, whether there was perhaps a gentler way down.  

He saw it in Hossberg—how she, in some fit of blind fury over a slight he can no longer remember, kicked a blight boil with all the grace of a petulant child, only for the thing to rupture, spraying its filth over her boots, her legs, her hands, her face. Later, when he spat out his anger—you could have infected yourself, and then what? Where would the Veilguard be without their leader?—she had, without hesitation, lifted her middle finger and held it aloft, like a banner, like a flag planted firmly into the dirt, a gesture so profoundly Rook that it settled the argument before it could begin.

She returns from Rivain with a sprained wrist and, predictably, does not acknowledge it until he gestures toward it, a quiet inquiry rather than an accusation. 

So he buys her things. Things with weight, with shimmer, with the ability to distract. A bottle of wine she favors, a dress the precise shade of blue that once made her pause in front of a shop window, jewelry that catches light and throws it back in a thousand fractured directions. Loud things, bright things, expensive things. The kind of things a magpie would die over. Because Rook—misnamed, mislabeled—is no rook at all, no solemn, shrewd thing perching in the rafters. She is a magpie, ever in pursuit of the next gleaming fragment, the brightest piece of a broken world. That is why she is away, isn’t it? Always away. Always chasing.

But Nevarra has more gold than the Rivaini coast. 

He wants to say—won’t you stay? Won’t you, at last, stay longer? But there is something perilous in the asking. The wrong phrasing, the wrong weight to his voice, and she will fold up like a map, unreadable, distant, already turning toward the door.

She lifts a necklace, lets it spill through her fingers, a thin chain pooling in her palm. "Ooooh," she hums. "What’s the occasion?" 

"I have missed you terribly," he says. "You were away too long." 

"I missed you too." 

"Then stay. My townhouse is yours, of course. It is in the heart of the city—" 

"But you won’t be there," she interrupts, without sharpness, without accusation. A simple statement of fact. "You’ll be in the Necropolis."

"Then stay with me in the Necropolis," he says, more softly. 

She looks at him. Long enough for him to grow aware of the silence. Long enough for him to think he ought to say something more, to fill the space with some innocuous remark, something to break the weight of it—a comment on the weather, the slow drip of rain against the windowpanes, the scent of damp stone, the candlelight shifting across her cheek, the peeling corner of the wallpaper he has been meaning to mend but never does. 

Then, at last, in a whisper, as if she is considering each word before releasing it: 

"I'm trying." 

A breath. 

"I'm really, really trying. I love you so much. This frightens me, but I love you, and I'll stay longer, I promise, and you needn’t hide your face, no, no, you can stop hiding it now, but it is so terribly cold here, and I can smell the bones, Emmrich, did you know one can smell bones?" 

Senseless, rambling little words, leaving her mouth with no regard for order, no real expectation of being understood. He listens anyway. He nods as if these words, specifically, are the ones he has been waiting to hear. He holds her hands, pressing his fingers lightly over hers, as though reacquainting himself with the shape of them, the bones beneath the skin. And this time—this time—she stays.

He does not move. Does not speak. Instead, he lets the moment settle around him, lets it press in from all sides, cautious and weightless, as if sudden motion might send it scattering. A trick of the mind, surely, nothing more than habit, the vestigial longing of a body that no longer exists. And yet—something, something faint and absurd and wholly impossible—something like warmth uncoils in the vacant spaces of him, and for the first time in too long, he allows himself to believe in the illusion. 

And he is happy, so terribly, foolishly happy, until she steps where a step should have been, onto stone that no longer exists, because the Necropolis, fickle and treacherous as ever, decides to shift beneath her. One moment she is there, cursing the cold, flicking dust from her sleeve, and the next she is gone, swallowed into the dark, falling before he can reach for her. Then—impact, the sound of something snapping, something that should not snap. 

"Oh, for fuck’s sake," she spits, voice sharp with pain, her frustration seething through clenched teeth. "I hate this fucking place. This miserable, shifting, plague-ridden, necrophiliac fucking mausoleum. This—" she swallows, gasps, rage momentarily overtaken by the white-hot shock of agony, then forces the words out, savage and breathless—"this godsdamned, dusty, corpse-stinking labyrinth of a tomb. Fuck this place. Fuck you for living in it. Fuck this floor for moving. Fuck my fucking leg." 

She hisses even as she cries, squeezing her eyes shut as if trying to will the hurt out of her body. He sees, at last, what has happened. A break, and not a clean one: bone slick and white against torn skin, jutting through muscle, her blood already thickening where it pools on the stone. 

And then—something strange. A pull, an unraveling, something unwinding before him, leading away. The ribbon again, unspooling, slipping from her, stretching outward, as though guiding him somewhere he does not wish to go. His vision narrows. He follows it. He follows it because he cannot help but follow it. 

"Emmrich?" Her voice has changed. The heat is gone, as is the anger. She sounds uncertain now. She sounds concerned. "Emmrich, are you—?" 

But he is looking at the ribbon. Watching where it leads. Watching where it ends. 

And he would weep if he could. 

He has spent his life in a state of want, always reaching, always grasping, always aching to be something necessary to someone. And now—now, at last—he has what he has longed for. Rook, quick and wild and untouchable. Rook, who was born lovely and careless and beautiful, who could have wrapped herself around anyone she pleased but chose, instead, him—old and grey, and then, simply, bone. Rook, with her hands always outstretched, her eyes always searching, who once told him, so offhandedly he almost believed she didn’t mean it, that she would have given him a child.

Now—now, she sits before him, cursing under her breath, her leg twisted, her blood sliding across the stone, and he understands, too suddenly, too clearly, that he cannot keep her. 

One day, that ribbon will slip from her entirely. 

And he will be wanting again, except this time, there will be no remedy, no second chance, no indulgence to dull the ache. 

Because she—she—the only thing that has ever fit the hollow inside him, will be gone.

A year. Ten. Twenty. Perhaps less. Perhaps more. 

She will be gone. 

Gone, gone, gone. 

"It will not break again," he tells her.

"Really?" she asks, pale from hurt.

"Truly."

He stands, glances over the chamber, and selects a sconce, its veilfire guttering weakly within its iron frame. He snuffs it out with a flick of his wrist, wrenches the metal free from the wall, and lets it sag into liquid in his palm. The Necropolis will not miss it. It devours offerings every day; what is one more? The molten iron shifts, pulses, rolls like living mercury as he shapes it between his fingers. She watches, suspicious, wary, but when he takes the pain from her, she sighs, slackens, her body a thing that yields, a thing that trusts. 

Bone is simple. A structure, a framework. Break it, mend it, break it again. He has done this before, he will do it again, and the body always obeys in the end. With a slow push, he sets her leg back into place. Crack, crack, crack—shattered edges realign, splinters withdraw, raw ends fuse like wax pressed to wax. He sees the place where the bone has chewed its way free, white and wet against the torn meat of her calf. 

He presses his fingers into the wound, past the sealing skin. The iron above them stirs at his will, stretching like a cat in the air before obeying, flowing down, clinging to the surface of the bone. Not inside it, no. That would be crude, inelegant. Instead, it forms a layer, thin but solid, a second skeleton over the first. It cools as it settles, solidifies, binds itself to her as if it had always belonged there. He guides it lower, shaping it over her tibia, letting it follow the curve of her ankle, turning his wrist slightly to direct it sideways, until the fibula is covered as well, safe beneath its new armor. There.

The final shreds of her wound pull themselves shut, sealing over his work, concealing what has been done. 

She shifts her foot, tilting her head, considering. "Oh," she says. "I suppose I'll be heavier now." 

He kisses her cheek and feels the faint shift of muscle beneath his lips, the small, secret curve of her smile. This time, for once, her happiness has no color. Not gold, not red, not that strange, shimmering violet he sometimes sees curling from her ribs. Just happiness, unembellished, undisturbed. And because she feels it, he believes it, and because he believes it, he takes it for himself, drawing her close.

"I am so, so happy that you are safe," he hears himself say, a confession with no real shape, a drunken speech without the mercy of intoxication. "I worry when you are gone, and I worry when you are here. It seems that no matter what I do, something always finds you first." 

She hums, arms looping around him, her fingers idly mapping the planes of his back, tracing aimless patterns into the fabric of his robes. "I don’t know what to say to that," she admits, her voice softened by exhaustion, by the slow retreat of pain. "But I am so, so happy with you too. And it’s all right, it’s all right. Every time I break, you can repair me." She pauses, then adds, utterly deadpan, "Guess that makes you my skele-tonic."

It is an objectively terrible pun. 

"Until you stop breaking altogether," he murmurs. 

Another hum, vague, thoughtless. 

He draws from her as he always does: pleasure, warmth, something deeper, something without a name, though it must have one, must have been cataloged somewhere, written down by some scholar who spent his life studying things that could not be grasped. He has never fully understood what it is he takes, only that it belongs to her, and that, by some quiet, unspoken permission, it is his as well. He wants to love her forever. But more than that, he wants to ensure that forever remains within reach, that it does not remain, as so many things have, just outside his grasp, dissolving the moment he closes his fist. 

He has spent too long watching what he yearned for unravel before he could fasten it down. This, he will not allow. It will take gold, it will take iron, it will take something far stronger, something absolute. Until she ceases to break. Until breaking is no longer a possibility, a concept, a word that has anything to do with her. 

He does not yet know how. But he has time—too much of it. More than she does. And he has always been a man of precision, of hypothesis and proof, of elegant solutions to insufferable problems. He will find a way. Through metal or magic, through that ribbon of red that keeps slipping from her, unspooling itself in slow increments, always trying to get away. He will take it, force it back into place, stitch it to the marrow, fix it with something incorruptible, something permanent, something that cannot be unwound without unmaking her in the process. 

He presses a kiss to her temple, then to her forehead, and speaks of flowers. The new blooms in the Memorial Gardens. Hideous, by all accounts. She will adore them. She appreciates beauty, certainly, but she loves foolishness even more. He kisses her cheek, the tip of her nose, her small, stubborn chin, and feels it again—that bright, quiet thing. Happiness. 

And, miraculously, when he takes a piece for himself, it does not feel stolen. 

"Enough, enough," she murmurs at last, the same word twice, as she always does when she needs a break from him, when she has given too much, when she feels him pulling, drinking, taking in excess without meaning to. Laughter ghosts beneath the words, thin but present, a reminder that she is still here, still whole. She taps his wrist with two fingers, light, quick, final—a gesture that, for all its carelessness, feels uncannily like closing a book.