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The last time had been shoddy work.
He had to have known that Rane was going to come by the house. He had already made the call. If he had done it right, there would be no possibility. Eddie would come, if he came, and he would be far too late.
He was going to get it right this time. He had walked a long way by himself to find a body of water big enough to take him. He was alone. No one was coming. For once in his damned life, he was going to do what he needed to do.
He closed his eyes, and went in.
He was instantly moving. The current was yanking him to the side, keeping him down. He couldn’t pull himself out if he wanted to.
And he didn’t want to. Not at all. But it was a nice precaution to have in case he got scared.
His passage through the water was not pleasant. He wasn’t expecting it to be. He had put his head under the water many, many times, and it had made his lungs burn even if his feet were on the floor. Now, feeling the scrapes of rock and loose silt and the ever-present rush of the current, it was even worse. Inside and out, he was being rubbed raw.
Good. This was what he deserved.
There was a snag at the back of his neck suddenly and he almost screamed, something preventing his movement and it was horrible and all he could think was no no please I have to I have to let me let me please please just let me—
The snag was removed and then there were hands, distinctly hands, reaching under his arms, trying to pull him out and he flailed, he was almost done, he just needed a little more, just a little more and then he’d-
But he was already weakened by the river and his attempts were useless and he was pulled, hurled onto the side of the river and he heaved, coughing up water and bile and other things, sobbing into the soil because it didn’t work it didn’t work I’m still I’m still—
“What the FUCK are you doing??”
And Faulkner stopped, finally stopped, and turned.
“…Carpenter?”
—
There had been many awkward car trips in the few months the two of them had spent on the road together. This one completely and utterly blew them out of the water.
In the passenger seat, Faulkner had set himself up in the fetal position, snaking his seatbelt between his stomach and his legs. Carpenter had taken a blanket from the backseat and tossed it to him, and he held it around him as he shivered and dripped.
Carpenter had also turned the radio off, leaving the two of them in silence.
I’m dreaming, Faulkner thought. I’m dreaming or I’m dead and hell is being in a car with her and she won’t look at me.
There was barely any light along the country road. The stars were out, but they weren’t helping. There were no lamps, only telephone poles and unidentifiable shapes on the sides of the road.
After nearly seven minutes of intolerable silence, a single car drove by. Faulkner looked to his side as the light passed and he saw his sister, all the wrinkles and early grays and battle scars caught up in the light, and the thought occurred to him that maybe, just maybe, this was real.
“So,” she said, speaking with that heavy sigh in her voice, “do you want to tell me why?”
It was a two-pronged question. Both prongs of the question had the same answer in that there were, quite honestly, too many fucking answers to respond with. If it was a year earlier, he felt he would have responded with something sounding like “you’re going to have to be a little more specific”, but he was not that person anymore. That would have been, somehow, even more intolerable than anything else.
He did not choose an answer, and five more silent seconds passed.
Carpenter sighed.
“Great.”
“I’m sorry,” Faulkner whispered back.
“Yeah, I bet you are.”
Her tone had hardly shifted, but her lip curled in the middle of the third word, making the sentence bite in a way that struck Faulkner in his core. He found himself making a little noise in the back of his throat, two small notes. He curled tighter into himself.
Quietly, Carpenter muttered to herself.
“Ghhh, Hayward’s not going to like this…”
A name, something to focus on. Something about it was familiar. Faulkner squinted, ignoring the faint pricking at the corner of his eyes.
“...Hayward?”
He could tell instantly that she hadn't meant to be overheard.
“You remember the cop from last year?”
From the toes up, Faulkner felt like he had been tossed back into the river. He stared at the road ahead. After a moment, he laughed, wet and bitter.
“Bait and flesh, I knew you’d replace me, but I never imagined it'd be with someone like him-”
“It’s not-”
“No, please, how the hell did that go, what did you even-”
“Faulkner.”
Her tone silenced him instantly and he turned to face her again.
A car went past. She was all angles, hunching slightly in the light. Her shoulders were raised and she was gripping the steering wheel to the point of pain. Slowly, as she spoke, her posture relaxed.
“You,” she said, “are so uniquely vexing to me that no one, literally no one, could EVER replace you. He,” and she made a vague gesture in the darkness, “he doesn’t even come close.”
Faulkner blinked.
“Really?” he asked softly.
Carpenter made a noise that could have been a sneer or a quiet laugh.
“You shouldn’t sound so happy to hear that.”
He had nothing to say to that, and so he let the conversation dip back into silence. His gaze wandered and found the window, before drifting down. It was one of those doors with a visible pin lock, a small piece of metal and plastic that chih-chunked down at a button’s press. He could pull it up if he wanted to unlock the door. It’d be so easy to undo the seatbelt, then, and open the car door, taking barely even three seconds, and then he’d be spilling out onto the shoulder or over a hill and-
“Stop.”
Faulkner jolted in his seat.
“Whatever you’re thinking, cut it out. It’s giving me a damn headache.”
No explanation was offered, and he didn’t even know what questions to ask to get one. Another car passed in the silence. They must have been getting closer to the city.
Still, no harm in trying. Nothing worse than he’d already done, at least.
“Why’d… how’d you know where I’d be?”, he asked, slowly turning to face his sister yet again.
She kept her eyes on the road but Faulkner sensed that, if she could have, she’d have faced him directly.
“I had…” Carpenter tapped a finger twice on the steering wheel. “I had a feeling.”
It was answer enough. Faulkner nodded.
Gods were weird.
—
The building they pulled up at was a small, unassuming thing. The lights inside the vehicle turned on once it was parked, and Faulkner winced against the light. Carpenter was already taking the keys out of the ignition and opening the driver side door as he groped for the handle on his side.
Faulkner opened the door, stepped out, and realized two things at once.
Firstly, it was fucking cold. He had certainly dried off a little in the car, but he was still soaked. The night wind went through him like a blade and he could feel his teeth start to chatter.
Secondly, he had lost his shoes. Through the haze of, quite frankly, everything, he couldn’t recall if he had them before he went into the river, but he certainly didn’t when his sister picked him up. He could feel the uneven asphalt beneath his socks, grounding him.
“Hey.”
Blearily, he turned to look up at her. The parking lot street-lights behind her gave her form a glow, almost like something holy. She still wasn’t looking at him.
“Entrance is over here, c’mon.”
He nodded and followed, squinting all the way. There was a woman at the front desk who said nothing, signs indicating a pool in the back of the building, and a small room for free breakfast. He regarded them all in chunks, slowly processing. His eyes were on his sister’s back for most of the walk.
They stepped into the elevator together. Faulkner’s eyes were drifting down now, exhaustion finally kicking in. He could see himself in the metal of the elevator door, blurry and faded. Next to his reflection, Carpenter’s posture shifted.
The elevator made a slightly worrying sound as it came to a stop, but the doors opened anyway. They walked on in silence, reaching the end of the hall. Carpenter pulled out a keycard and swiped it, the door beeping open.
“I’m back,” she said to the room, before turning to her brother. “Bathroom’s on the right. Go wash up.”
Faulkner nodded and walked inside, shuffling off to the side immediately. There was some noise of talk from within the room, a semi-foreign voice responding with greeting, then confusion, but Faulkner ignored it. The door clicked closed behind him, and he was in a small bathroom.
It reminded him of three things at once and his vision began to swim. His quickening breath merged with his exhaustion to produce the feeling of a waking nightmare. He was on the bathroom floor, he realized. His forehead was against the bottom of the toilet. He’d lost the blanket somewhere between the door and the wall and the lack made him feel naked.
Slowly, he began to count backwards. He imagined the words coming out of his mouth as he laid there, repeating them in his head. He was somewhere in the middle of his seventh set of five when he felt himself being turned over.
“You better not have caught a damn fever.”
There were knuckles at his forehead, familiarly scarred. Faulkner closed his eyes and smiled, just slightly. He didn’t feel feverish, just warm.
“No, m’fine, I just… it happens sometimes,” he mumbled, pushing himself off the floor. “I’m fine now.”
He went to look up at his sister, only to find that she was crouched next to him on the floor. She’d taken her jacket off, and he could see the rings of grime on her arms where she had pulled him out.
“Do you need me to wait in here with you?”
“Um, no, I should be-” and suddenly looking at her was very hard, so he examined the floor tiles instead, “-I, I wouldn’t- I won’t, I-- I’ll be fine.” He nodded to himself. “I’ll be fine.”
Carpenter sighed. “Alright. And I’m trusting you on this.”
“I know.”
“Good.” She stood. “I’ve got a set of clothes for you when you get out - they’re mine so they’re not going to fit you, but they’ll do for now.”
“Thank you.”
“Mm.” Awkwardly, she reached down and put a hand on his head. “Get washed up, and then we’ll sleep, alright?”
“Okay,” he said. That little smile was back.
Carpenter left, and Faulkner quietly undressed himself, stepping inside the shower. The water was warm and he relaxed, letting the cold run off of him.There were a few complimentary bottles lining the shower, and he used them as sparingly as he could. The white washcloth in his hands slowly became more and more brown as he rubbed the sediment from him.
He realized, idly, that there was a razor amongst the bottles. He could do all sorts of things with it if he wanted to - but his sister was trusting him not to do anything stupid. Besides, he’d already made her responsible for two deaths - he didn’t want to add his own onto the pile.
He willed himself to ignore it, and finished as quickly as he could.
—
The clothes were too big, as expected. Carpenter had a full head of height and then some on him, and her clothes matched. Still, there was a comfort to feeling the sleeves over his fingers, or the waist of the pants on his stomach.
What was not pleasant was the realization he was bleeding.
It wasn’t much, he had certainly bled more, and he would have been fine letting it slowly drip and scab in other circumstances. The terror of staining the clothes his sister had given him was his motivation. Making sure nothing was amiss, he stepped out of the bathroom, and walked into a conversation.
“-not budging on this. He’s coming with us.”
“I don’t know, isn’t he dangerous? Hasn’t he killed people?”
“Oh, like you haven’t, like fucking anyone hasn’t-”
“That’s- not what I meant, it just-”
“Um,” Faulkner interrupted.
Four eyes were on him in an instant and he shrunk just slightly behind the bathroom doorway.
“I’m bleeding a little, are there any bandages in here?”
Carpenter sighed. “You said you wouldn’t-”
Faulkner floundered on the spot. “I didn’t- there were rocks and- you know, when I-- it’s just a couple scrapes, I’m fine.”
She sighed again, this time more tired than upset. “No, it’s alright, let me get them out.” She walked past Faulkner, back into the bathroom.
He turned after her. “Th-they’re not that bad, I can do it myself-”
“No. Come here, sit down.”
Faulkner made a noise and went back into the bathroom, sitting down on the tub’s side. Carpenter pulled a box out from under the cabinet - shit, he should have looked for it himself, and then he wouldn’t have to deal with this - and made her way over to him.
“Alright, show me your arms.”
Faulkner cringed and looked away. When he looked back, his sister was giving him a look. He sighed, rolled up his sleeves, and looked away.
The silence was excruciating as Carpenter looked him over. He could tell exactly where she was looking and for what, but seeing it for himself would push him over the edge. He focused instead on a chip in the corner of the bathtub as he felt the adhesive on his arms.
“I’m not going to judge you for these,” Carpenter said. “I have plenty scars of my own.”
“Yeah, but yours are different. These aren’t… like those.”
“You’re very confident about that, aren’t you?”
His brow furrowed, and he said nothing. Carpenter continued her work.
“Do you have any cuts anywhere else?”
“There’s two on my leg. And I think one on my back.”
She nodded. “Roll up your pant leg, then.”
Faulkner moved quickly, letting the sleeves go over his arms again. He rolled up a pant leg, revealing the two cuts and a truly impressive display of bruises and scabs on his knee. Those, he was less ashamed of.
“I see you’ve still kept that up,” Carpenter said, pressing the bandages onto his leg.
“Yeah, well, prophet business. Have to pray daily and… you know.”
“Mhm.” She pulled away and indicated for Faulkner to turn around. He did, pulling the shirt over his front as he did so. This cut had been worse than the others, a particularly sharp rock, and he heard his sister get a bigger bandage behind him.
Suddenly, he was compelled to speak.
“I’m- I’m not a prophet, actually. I lied.”
The cardboard box crinkled.
“I know.”
Faulkner chuckled softly. “Heh, I figured you did, I just… I thought I should tell you myself.” He swallowed. “I just- I fucked everything up and it wasn’t even for anything. I haven’t helped anyone, I haven’t done anything good, I’ve just-” and he turned his head, trying his best to look back at her, “I’ve been really fucking stupid, Carpenter.”
“Haven’t we all.”
She unpeeled the last band-aid and stuck it on his back. He moved his gaze back down as he put his shirt back, turning to face his sister. She was giving him a look that told him the conversation was not yet done, but he did not know what was left to say.
Finally, she spoke.
“Do you remember what I told you the last time I saw you?”
Faulkner looked to the side.
“Um, ‘brother-’”
“Before that. Before you went into the office.”
He squinted at a spot between the tiles on the bathroom floor. He’d be a very bad brother if he had forgotten, wouldn’t he?
“…Yeah. I remember.”
His sister nodded.
“Then don’t pull this shit again, because if you die like this I am going to be so godsdamn mad.”
He nodded back and shifted his posture, leaning backwards over the tub.
“I’ve… realized something.”
“Oh, do tell.”
“If…no.” He ran his tongue under his lips, trying to phrase it in his mind. “I have decided that if I am going to die, only one person is allowed to kill me.”
“Not yourself, I hope.”
“No. It’s not me.”
Carpenter said nothing.
“You… if you decide, at any point, that I deserve it, then I think it’s only fair you get to. You’ve dealt with so much because of me. And I'm so, so sorry. And if you ever want to make that call, I’ll let you. You just have to bury me nicely. That’s all I ask.”
He had managed to not cry in front of his sister over the course of the last hour. He was going to try to keep that streak going.
“Faulkner.”
“Yeah?”
“It is… too late in the day for us to have this conversation. Neither of us are at our best right now, and honestly, I just want to fucking sleep.”
Faulkner laughed. “Yeah, me too.”
She reached up and patted him twice on the shoulder. “Go lie down. I’ll be there in a moment.”
Faulkner nodded and shuffled out of the bathroom with a smile.
He saw Hayward from across the room and it dropped. Right. The cop was here.
“Uh… hi,” Hayward said sheepishly.
“Hi,” Faulkner responded.
He went over to the free bed and crawled inside, pointedly looking away from the other person in the room. He had been fully content to forget he even existed, and did his best to ignore him as he settled into the sheets.
There was a minute of utter silence.
“So…” Hayward rubbed the back of his neck. “Turned anyone into shrimp lately?”
Faulkner, for all his tiredness, managed to give a look so incredulous and so enraged that Hayward visibly cringed and said nothing else. Carpenter, arms now clean, walked in and surveyed the scene.
“What did you say, Hayward?”
“I was just making small talk!”
“You wouldn’t know small talk if it divorced you.”
That got a laugh out of Faulkner, a mighty HA!, and Hayward shook his head.
“Yeah. Okay. This is gonna be a fun drive in the morning, isn’t it?”
“I bet it will,” Carpenter said, and she approached the bed.
It hadn’t occurred to Faulkner until that very moment that he would be sharing the bed with her. He scooted to the side to make room. She clicked a lamp off behind him, and the room went dark.
The mattress made a noise of displeasure as Carpenter rolled onto it, getting comfortable under the covers. Faulkner listened to her move behind him and felt the mattress shift like rough water, until she stopped moving. Casually, as if it was standard, she put her arm over him.
It wasn’t unpleasant - far from it, but it was strange. He had imagined it many times, true, but imagining something was very different from it happening next to him. He turned his head slightly, trying to get a better look.
“…I don’t want to wake up and see you with your head in the sink,” she explained.
“Better hold me extra tight, then.”
She snorted, but the arm remained. Cautiously, testing the waters, Faulkner brought his hand up to hers. He was sure she was looking at him as he held her hand, but no words were said.
Slowly, she held his hand back.
“Goodnight, brother.”
Faulkner smiled.
“G’night, sis.”
He let the exhaustion of the day embrace him, tugging him along into dreamless sleep.
—
He awoke, because of noise or shifting weight, but the lack of a hand in his. He felt hungover, mumbling into the harsh hotel light as he slowly pushed himself up.
“What’s… where…?”
“Hey, Carpenter, your brother’s awake.”
There had been something tugging at the back of his mind that this had all been a dream - a small hope to propel him forward for a few more days - but seeing her silhouette come out of the bathroom and walk up to him dispelled it all.
“We have to be out of here in twenty minutes. I got you a muffin and hot chocolate from downstairs, they’re on the table.” She moved across the room, gathering some things together. Faulkner was still squinting, so it could have been anything. “Your clothes are still wet, so you can wear what you slept in. You can sleep in the back of the car if you need to”
“Carpenter?”
“Yes?”
“...I’m really glad you’re here.”
She made an expression he couldn’t see, but her voice was soft when she spoke.
“Come on, get out of the covers.”
He did, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, facing the table. He grabbed the cup, took a sip, and grimaced.
It was very much free hotel hot chocolate.
—
It was still dark when they stepped out into the parking lot. Faulkner, still shoeless, walked onto cold asphalt for the second time in the past nine hours. Everything fit into the car easily, and the three of them found their respective seats inside.
The blanket was in the backseat. It had made its way here from the bathroom, somehow. It was cold, faintly damp from the night before, but soft to the touch. Faulkner buckled in, and wrapped it around him.
The car purred to life and began to move. Carpenter and Hayward were talking in the front, but Faulkner didn’t need to listen in. As they pulled out of the parking lot, the first purples and blues of dawn peeked out over the horizon. Quietly, barely above a hum, someone on the radio was falling into someone else.
The muffin abandoned, Faulkner was asleep before the next song began.
—
“So, Paige told me something before I left.”
Hayward was at the wheel, looking forward. Carpenter was in the passenger seat, looking at the side mirror. She could just see the side of her brother’s head in the reflection.
“Did she now?”
“Said you, uh, rescued someone from a fire.”
“I did.”
Hayward’s lips squirmed.
“Is this… related to that?”
Carpenter sighed. “How do you figure that, Hayward?”
“There’s- I’m not sure why you were that far out, especially not that late at night. I thought you were going to be gone for twenty minutes, but then you come back well over an hour later with him and it’s just- is this a thing?”
“Is this a thing.”
“I don’t- there’s something happening, right? Like a god thing, or-”
“Hayward.”
There had been something whispering in the backseat, hunching over Faulkner, but now it was gone. Carpenter turned to face Hayward.
“This… ‘thing’ isn't something you have to worry about.”
“...Are you sure?”
Faulkner made a small noise of sleep in the backseat, and Carpenter nodded.
“I’m certain of it.”