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With that, Maggie’s grip finally released, and Rafiloe pushed her way inside the room, closing the door tightly behind me. 

I took a deep breath. Hmm.

…What did I come in here for again? 

The room was full of rats. Outside, the sun had come up fully, so it was getting kind of bright in there. The only thing of much note was the absence, still on the bed. 

Could anyone else have seen it? Or was it another one of the perks of my new internship? Frankly, standing there, in the muddy half-morning, still in my pajamas, hatless and tired, the prospect of spending God-knows how many years in the employ of an entity that didn’t even understand himself was starting to lose its charm just a little. 

…Oh, wait, I was supposed to do something, wasn’t I? A moment ago, getting in there had seemed so important, but now that I was standing there… Well, gee, going to bed would sure be nice. Sleep. What a thing! 

Across the room, the absence seemed to hum at me, inconsolable and raw. 

…Right. I guess I oughta do something about that. 

As long as I didn’t think much about the how or why, taking a few steps wasn’t too much of a challenge. Just walk. Don’t step on the rats. Or maybe I should’ve been gathering the rats? Muttering to myself, I leaned down and plucked a few rats from the ground. Plump, juicy rats. Mayhaps they were tasty raw as well? Kitty always seemed to enjoy eating them raw. 

I paused, arms full of rats, halfway to picking up another rat.

Oh, yeah. Kitty. That’s what I was there for. 

I looked down at the rats in my hands. Last time, Kitty had needed his rats to reform. But would he still need that? I didn’t know. All I knew was that the emptiness on the bed was Kitty, and having a couple of rats there wouldn’t hurt. 

Oddly enough, the rats didn’t seem bothered by my holding them. Just the opposite, in fact. A few of them, clearly in deep contentment, were even stretching out, or curling up atop one another, obviously intent on making my arms into a bed of some sort. It was kind of cute. Though I’m sure they’d be even sweeter on a skewer… Mmm…

Oh, hey, there’s the bed. Hm.

I pause. What was I going to do here again…?

Was I always this forgetful? I can’t remember being very forgetful, but maybe that’s the usual. Who knows? For some reason, I can’t find it in myself to be very worried about it. I’m sure it’ll all turn out just fine. 

Hmm. Experimentally, I put the rats on top of the bed. They began wandering about lazily. A few of them almost looked as though they were heading towards the empty spot, but then once they got within an inch of it, they suddenly veered away, like they didn’t want to touch it. Odd.

Reaching out, I touched my hand against the absence. It didn’t feel like anything. Hm.

Since I wasn’t really doing much else, I took a seat on the bed, hoisted up my feet, and plunged my entire arm into the misty nothingness.

It coiled around my arm. Then, after a moment, it clutched onto me, the whole mass of the absence heaving itself atop me, smothering me in a damp coolness. I couldn’t tell whether it felt more like lying in an open grave or like mist rolling over my face. But it was tight, clinging, desperate as it moved across me, greedy to feel something—anything. 

I didn’t really mind. Finally lying down in bed felt too damn good to really care about the nebulous non-existence weighing me down. Actually, on second thought, it felt oddly good? The pressure pushing me down seemed to have a strange effect, aligning my joints, compressing my chest in an oddly satisfying way, and for once, I didn’t have to think so much anymore. 

If it hadn’t been for the rats, I would probably have fallen asleep right then and there. But, no. Instead I had to watch as the rats in the room slowly gathered, creeping up the sides of the bed, crawling into the empty space—an empty space that happened to be right atop me. While I thought about pretty much nothing at all, the rats moved into position atop me, one by one, each one perfectly certain of where it was supposed to be, like pieces of a puzzle putting themselves together. One by one, the rats all joined together, hand over hand, tail over tail, little wet noses and little brushy whiskers tickling my bare arms and neck. 

Until finally they had formed a big round mound atop me, and in a big burst of white flower petals, they all disappeared, leaving a shivering and shaking Kitty lying curled up in her lap, his face turned away from her. 

Her heart leapt into her throat and she felt like screaming and laughing and crying all at once but she couldn’t. She couldn’t do any of that, because she didn’t need it nearly as much as Kitty needed her. 

Restraining everything she felt, everything her mind was screaming at her, every impulse that told her that the past five minutes she hadn’t been herself, she’d been someone else, something else (and she didn’t know what, not at all), she drew in a deep, deep breath. Smiling, she ran a hand through Kitty’s soft hair. Like spun stars. “Hey there,” she said, softly. “Welcome back.”

“Fuck,” Kitty hissed. “That sucked. That sucked so bad. Shit, shit, shit, shit. I can’t do this. I’m so screwed. Gecko, that was the worst, ever. I don’t know how much you know about me but that was the worst ever. I know I might sound very neutral about it but that’s because I don’t know how else to put it.”

“You could always scream,” Rafiloe suggested helpfully. “Or cry. Or laugh. Lots of options.”

“No. No, I don’t want to worry them. Or you.”

“You already have.”

“I have?” Lifting his head, he turned to her. His face was off. Again. More than before. Shifting, shifting. And the stitches on his neck, too. They were rougher. “Shit,” he said, with a face she didn’t quite recognize. A stray strand of hair fell across his scrunched-up expression. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s okay,” Rafiloe said, brushing the hair from his eyes, tucking it behind one of his ears. “It’s a good thing, you know. Me worrying about you means that I care.”

“That’s nice, but I still don’t want to worry you,” he said, sitting up properly, removing the pleasant weight from atop her pelvis. 

She shifted a little, feeling her joints slip back into mild discomfort. Dang it. Since it’d be weird for him to sit while she laid there, she forced herself to sit up a little, brushing the white flower petals from atop her. “Well, as long as you’ve got people that care about you, you’re going to end up having people worry about you. It sucks, but it’s part of life.”

“I guess,” Kitty said, planting his head in his palm, eyes fixing themselves onto the closed door. “So, they’re worried, too?”

“Yep. Worried sick.”

“And I can’t even—” A prismatic flare of white and pink pierced Rafiloe’s skull and filled her brain with nothingness and everything and she saw in shades of white and muted red how Leion, flanked by his officers, only half-dressed, rushed inside the room, almost tripping over himself, shouting, screaming about his god, only to fall to his knees before the bed, desperate hands groping endlessly towards Kitty, towards someone who wasn’t really there, a name Rafiloe didn’t recognize dancing across his tongue. And that would be it. In a single moment Leion would go from alive and frantic and then he would fall down, writhing, transformed, changed, white, and the officers too, and the doors open would show the rest of them, everyone else, and they too would—

“Gecko? Gecko, are you okay?”

Rafiloe emerged from the crystalline reality with a throaty gasp, mind reeling, her whole body covered in a layer of sweat she decidedly hadn’t had before, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care, because faster than she could even recognize it, faster than she could digest what she’d seen, what she’d felt, she leapt off the bed, throwing herself across the room and sliding the metal bar into place across the door just in time to hear someone thud against the other side of it. Putting her back to it, she felt herself slide down until she was sitting on the floor, legs folded up against her chest.

Across the room, still on the bed, Kitty gave her an odd look. “What was that all about? What did you—” His eye twitched. “Oh. Oh. That’s… Hm. Well, good thing you fixed it! That could’ve been… Ugly, I think?”

She buried her head in her hands. “Yeah. Yeah, something like that.”

She could feel his eyes, watching her. Slowly, he slid off the bed. His bare feet padded over to her, and then he sat down, right next to her. Not thinking much about it, she leaned herself against his shoulder, slowly rubbing her eyes, trying to get rid of the cold feeling in them. 

“So, to summarize,” Kitty said, thoughtfully, “I don’t think I’ll be able to leave this room for a while. Not even my most devoted believers see me as… Well, me. Even my friends… Not that I mind it, of course. I totally get it. It only makes sense that Prop would hope to see his childhood friend that went missing, or that Maggie would want to see her boyfriend from earth, or that Lett and Garath… Yeah. I get it.” Of course he did. But sitting this close, shoulder against shoulder, there was no hiding how he felt. She knew. She could taste it. Not strong, not overpowering, but deep in there, in whatever he had in his chest, there was a bitterness. A small little voice that asked, why not me? don’t you like me? And even if he knew it was stupid, it was still there, and it still hurt. “But I think I know someone who might see me.”

“Yeah?”

“There’s this friend I have… We travelled for a while together, and… Well, honestly, I hope she’s moved on by now, but at one point she had a crush on me. So, I think, if anyone’s going to see me, then it should be her.” He paused for a moment. “On the other hand, she’s doing her own thing. All the way across the continent… It’d be really selfish to ask her to come all the way here.”

“Is she your friend?”

“Yeah. She is.”

“In that case,” Rafiloe said, peeking out from her hands, “I’m sure she’d want to be here for you.”