work and bleed and watch your fingers go numb, but do not fret. do not worry. this is for your future. this is for everything. this is for all you've ever wanted and it's finally yours, freya. it will finally be yours.

it's always hazier in the showers, steam swaddling exhausted, naked bodies. her eyes are lidded. they'd been rewarded this week, granted another glimpse in the looking glass, and its sticky poison clings to her like smoke. 

"silph," she says, looking up, glimpsing blue within his eyes, reminding herself that her future is not here yet. she remembers, instead, what it was like to be held in his arms, cradled in the baths. she remembers feeling like a kitten curled into its mother, whining for milk.

"don't forget yourself," she whispers into the water, though she's not entirely sure if she's talking to him or to herself.

FERNANDO SILPH

☉

her future - king and delta and all the happiness in the world. sootopolis gleaming, salt-bleached and golden in the early dawn. she wants it so badly, she can taste it, and despite the water and the rising steam around her, it's there with every inhale. 

"what do you want for?" she asks as she tilts her head back, allowing the spout of water to pour over her front. 

"what do you see in the mask?"

FERNANDO SILPH

☉

their victory. her own, she can picture, but what is the league's? what is his? are they different? does she believe they're different. 

yes, whispers her subconscious, but the part of her that wants to play complacent, the part of her dampened by the purple collar she wears around her neck murmurs something different. 

trust him, trust him, trust him. 

that is why she hands him the bar of soap, why she pulls her hair to the side and bares her back with half-lidded eyes. "your cellmate," she says, "it's fiorelli, isn't it? i saw her, in the dream realm."

FERNANDO SILPH

☉

his touch is bare. with the fog and the steam and the thick chain around her neck, pulsing with a heartbeat of its own, she can almost imagine it's king cleansing her. grime, sweat, dust, blood, all of it swirls down the drain.

she turns her head, worried for him. "it's poison. double helpings? why not make her - " she starts, but the rest of the words choke back down. eat, so you can thrive. eat, so you can obtain your future.

her lips struggle, synapses blocked, rewritten and filtered. 

"i told her i'd kill her if she tried anything on you," she says instead, smile sharp and pleasant.

FERNANDO SILPH

☉

"our jobs," she echoes and grasps at the bulbous chain around her neck. it pulses like it has a heartbeat and she leans forward, eyes lidded. the water parts a river down her back, tangled mess of hair splitting in twain, exposing the bumps and ridges of her spine. 

bare, exposed, only the slightest shiver when he does not press a warmth against her, but her hair is a curtain around her face and the steam is hot and curling and so very familiar. 

FERNANDO SILPH

☉

addled, rattled, steam in her nose and thickly coating her throat. heat over her cheeks and on the back of her neck, the future spinning ever-onward in front of her. her lips part. water slip-slides over her cheeks, dribbling down her nose.

he says her name and she half-turns, golds a sea of confusion and half-awareness. he comes nearer to her and she stills, feeling prickles where flesh meets flesh.

they have never wanted each other. her more carnal desires have always been to spill her blood for him or, in one rare instance, to tear the skin from his bones and burrow deep at the rot in his arm. to devour, to dismantle.

"fernando," she says, voice low in warning, "what are you doing?"

FERNANDO SILPH

☉

he does not sell the fantasy, but in what world would their union make sense? she lifts a hand, back to chest, fingers crawling up his jaw, chin tilting to turn her ear towards him. their threadbare lover's secret is stitched by the way she takes a step back, skin to skin.

she is not so terrible a liar.

"the rocket spy?" she says incredulously. it's hard to picture faces right now. most names escape her too, save for the one that accompanies a shock of blue hair and a crooked smile.

"what of it?"

FERNANDO SILPH

☉