"Lie heart to heart and merge my soul with yours."

Faust, J.W von Goethe

VI

And so a week later she walks through dense woods back towards the cottage, armed with conviction and cruel words and knives. In case he won't listen to her. In case she has to hurt him to set herself free.

She tries to ignore the fact that, by now, if she hurt him she would hurt herself more.

She shouldn't come at all; it's fucking stupid, but he's right, she does owe him something, and anyway...she's perfectly capable of recognising addiction. Just not, apparently, doing anything about it.

One more hit. One more rush through her bloodstream.

She's come the long way round, parked her stolen truck a couple of miles away at the end of a dirt track leading nowhere, approaching from the back because she wants to pass by the forest pool he showed her. And she walks slowly, tries to take it all in, inhale the woods, let it sink into her lungs and heart.

In just a week the colours of nature have changed significantly. They are forthright, imposing, copper and intense, and she can feel it through her skin, how everything is hurtling for one final, rapturous rush of adrenaline before limbo.

Soon these woods will be gone. It's impossible for her to forget his words, touched with wild prophecy and run through with madness, hard for her to believe. But he believes, that is beyond doubt, and her head hurts with the implications, with distrust and confusion.

She doesn't know what to think, can't tell truth from lies from delirium any longer. Doesn't dare trust his conviction, born as it is out of blood and screams.

The only thing she knows for certain is that she can no longer take risks, can no longer draw bullets and fire. Attract violence. And she's tired, so tired, of never staying more than an hour or two in a place before moving on, evading capture. She can only be at rest, stay in one place, when with him.

And he never stands still.

She's deep inside her own head, walking through the autumn dusk with her mind in flight, so it takes her some time to realise that the smell curling in her nose is smoke. She can see the pond emerging through the trees, a last sunbeam glittering on the water, but she disregards it. She quickly stows her backpack under some ferns, then heads for the cottage. Her step is agitated but sure, navigating these woods as though she was born in them. In a way she was. She is someone else now, fired and honed and shaped by Hope County.

She doesn't need to get close, doesn't need to step into the clearing to see that the embers of the cottage match the blood red of the setting sun. But she does anyway, walks so near to the ruin that she can feel the insistent heat against her face.

It's all been burned to the ground. Taken some of the old undergrowth with it too, wildflowers and lady ferns, the dog rose bush, has singed the old trees that hovered protectively over the old house.

The loss paralyses her, make her careless, and she leaves herself wide open for ambush where she stands staring at the smouldering foundations of her eye in the storm. There are hard voices and gunshots, and a bullet grazes her temple before she can roll to cover among trees and bracken.

She doesn't run. Not immediately. The fury is sudden, white hot and eager, and she embraces it like she would a lover. Can feel it sinking into her bones, flowing through her fingertips, making her hair almost static. Oh yes, this is comfortable and safe. She knows this.

And she's missed this feeling. John has tempered it some, purely by force of his own rage, but he's not here now.

She rolls back out in the open, and mechanically, assuredly, she notes her targets. Five of them. Bearded and dirty and heavily armed. Grunts.

She kills. Breaks necks, vertebrae, spines. Feels flesh parting for her knife, again and again. Rents and tears. It's wonderfully soothing, warm in its familiarity.

She realises at one point that she's giggling shrilly as she goes.

It doesn't take long before her body betrays her though. She's hardly in optimal condition, and adrenaline and wrath can only carry her so far. And they keep coming, these believers, mad-eyed and fervent in their conviction. She can hear cars roaring up the old track, can hear radio static and shouts in among the trees. Knows that soon she will be overrun.

She flees.

She's being cut off from the pond and her backpack, she can hear more people approaching from that way. She veers off to the side, hurtles through thick growth, branches and thorns whipping at her, her breath a staccato rhythm in her mouth.

The wound at her temple stings and bleeds, but the loss hurts more, clinging to her bones, sitting deep down in her throat, choking her.

She would wail, but hasn't the energy.

The radio sputters static at her hip.

"This had nothing to do with me. It was Joseph," comes his voice, and it's emotionless, blank, but even so she finds herself believing him. She might not understand vast parts of what lives inside of him, but he had cared for that cottage, too. "He thinks that if he takes everything away from you, leaves you with nothing, then you will come."

She takes cover beneath a rocky outcrop and realises she's crying, but she doesn't care. All her life everything that she dared love has been taken from her. She had still foolishly let herself love that place. As well as...

"And you?" she answers, holds the radio so close to her mouth she's practically chewing on the metal casing. "Would he take away you?"

The silence is long, and she's careful not to let him hear her sobs. Something drips onto the hand she holds in her lap and she thinks it's tears, but when she looks down she sees it's blood from the gunshot wound on her head. It's dripping into her palm, forming a Rorschach test she can't make sense of. She stares hard at it, convinced that the answers she seeks can be found in red and white blood cells, in plasma.

"Meet me back at the crypt." he says at last, doesn't answer her question. "I don't think he knows about that."

"It'll be a while," she answers. "I've been cut off from the car. I'm on foot."

A beat.

"As soon as you can make it, Margaret. Don't underestimate my brother."

Then he's gone and she stands up, starts walking even though she can't remember ever feeling this weary. She could lay herself down right here and sleep all night, no, longer than that. A week, a month, right through Joseph's fucking Collapse. Covered by moss and hemlock, part of the landscape.

Wryly she thinks of an old poem, of lovely deep woods and promises to keep. Certainly no sleep.

A shard of a moon has risen when her radio spews static again. Impatiently she grabs it from her hip.

"I'm on my way. I told you it would take some time."

"Deputy."

She stops. John doesn't call her that anymore. And the voice is calm, lacking the rage eternally bubbling underneath.

Joseph.

"What do you want?"

"I'm sorry I had to burn that place down. But it's for your own good. To help you see. Help you accept. You do not only have yourself to consider anymore. Cease this needless fighting, this needless risk taking, and come to us."

"How do you...did John…"

"The Voice told me, Deputy."

'The Voice' she thinks, or perhaps his acolytes following her and fishing the used pregnancy test from the trash bin outside Aubrey's. She supposes it's the same difference at the end of the day.

She wonders how much he knows, and for how long.

"John said nothing, even though I was...persuasive. Sadly I believe him incapable of love, but he feels something strong enough for you to attempt to protect you. Protect you both. Possession, I think."

A sigh.

"My brother...I love him. But he's not a good man."

"I've never even for a second entertained the notion that he is," she says into the mouthpiece, and she speaks the truth. "And you?"

A brief silence.

"No. Perhaps I am not. But I am trying to atone for this every day. I'm trying to save people; I am trying to walk them into a beautiful new world."

"Atone for murdering your little girl?" she snarls.

She can still remember the terror and revulsion she had felt in that cage when he told her; it had cut clean through starvation and thirst and conditioning. Absently she touches her belly. Traces along the 'liar' scar, tries to feel deeper than that. Reassure the life inside. Reassure herself.

"She would have stood in the way for all that I must do, all the lives I must save. One life for a thousand. One flickering, struggling flame for so many souls burning bright. She never suffered. She never knew."

A brief silence, filled by her vertigo, her cold sweat.

"The child you are carrying, Deputy, she's got a place here with us. I've seen it. A Faith of blood, by nature, not design. A beautiful thing. A righteous thing, returning what you took."

She feels violently sick then, nausea burning and roiling in her gut, shivers wrecking her. Her teeth shatter with it, and it's all she can do not to vomit on her boots.

She realises that she's stopped, that she's leaning forward by her waist, radio dangling loosely from one hand. She brings it to her mouth again, tries to shake the double vision out of her head.

"What was her name? Your daughter? What was her name?"

A long, unbroken silence tells her everything she needs to know.

"You never gave her a name, did you? Fuck you, Joseph. Fuck. You. You're insane if you think I'll join you, if you think I'll let you anywhere near my child."

She can hear his pained hum even through the static.

"Then...everything you love must burn."

Then he's gone, and she keeps moving towards the crypt. Back to where the end of her started.

She runs her hands along tombstones as if they are dear friends, long lost to her. She takes in the waning moonlight on mausoleums and statues, and thinks that she sees restless spirits and ghouls leaping from shadow to shadow.

They won't touch her though; she's a friend.

She descends, breathes in the funeral air, and this is her home, isn't it, this subterranean darkness, with its whispers and secrets and death. Ah, bleached bones and the long ago scent of decaying lilies! The cottage in the woods had been a beautiful mirage, a secret nook in time, but never meant for people like him and her. Yes, she loved it there, in the forest, and in a different life she would've run between the sun dapples and the first golds forever, would've climbed with the birdsong and belonged there, as he had said.

But now is now, and she's here. She can't be anywhere else.

She angrily swipes at her tears.

He stands from the pew as she steps inside, and she sees him through darkness, because he hasn't bothered with the candles. She does it instead, lights a couple while he slowly approaches. He holds himself gingerly, moves as though things are broken and bleeding inside.

"What did he do to you?" she whispers.

He laughs, even though she can tell that it hurts him to do so.

"It's what he thinks he did to you. Didn't you know, Margaret, that there is only one way to hurt someone who has lost everything? Give them something broken back." He throws his arms out, presents himself, oh and all the dark matter in his eyes, reflecting this hinterland of theirs.

He is terribly injured, but acts as though he could walk off death itself. Perhaps he could, but perhaps he's just a man. She's never been entirely sure. Maybe madness and darkness in just the right quantities and measures could make one immortal. Leave it to him to discover such alchemy.

"Besides, he was somewhat unimpressed with my, ah, unorthodox methods for attempting to bring you into the fold. He had many words on the subject of my disgrace and fall, Margaret. Many, many words."

He rolls his eyes, and teases a strangled laugh from her. Whatever else he is, he's still wholly himself; mordant and cynical, vicious and mad, and so broken he can never be put back together again.

She could no less stop herself going to him, putting her arms around him, than she could stop herself from killing to feel good. Killing and fucking, and no wonder she belongs in a crypt.

With him.

He hisses when her arms touch his ribs, running his mouth along her crown.

"You smell of blood."

"Only some of it is mine," she answers with her cheek against his chest, with his fingers playing with her head wound. Then his hands travel down, slips underneath her torn shirt to her belly to stroke the life underneath her skin.

"He says it's a girl. He says she will be a Faith."

That's fear in her voice, exposed and ugly. She looks up at him and doesn't miss the ripple of disgust that moves across his face. He has never liked what his adopted sisters stood for. He's a man of manipulation and malovelent force, not mind rape and lobotomy.

"I won't let that happen."

His teeth are bared and she would like to believe him. She really would.

But the risk is too great.

He runs his fingers along the lines of her face, seems to need the warmth of her skin to stay steady.

"Let's go outside. I need air."

He walks ahead of her up the stairs, back straight, used to disregarding pain. These days other's more than his own, but muscle memory appears to favour him. Outside he comes to a stop beside the broken angel where he had ambushed her a lifetime ago. Or the summer just gone.

The light is dim, but she sees him plainly. He doesn't need much moonlight, he's mostly darkness anyway. He pulls her close, almost inside of him, even though she can tell by the way he breathes that it pains him to do so.

"You slot into me, don't you? Some of your broken pieces, jagged as they are, match up with mine." He laughs, coughs. "What a terrible jigsaw we make."

He leans back against the angel, tilts his head to look up at the sky.

"Orion," he says, and his gaze slides unevenly along the invisible lines between the stars. "The first constellation I learned how to pick out. It used to make me feel safe when he was overhead."

He smiles.

"Then I learned to fly and I was up there with him. A very specific kind of freedom, flying. And always impermanent."

He looks down on her again, where she's holding on to him and her tears at the same time.

"I wonder if the Collapse will force the stars from their given places in the sky. If, when we emerge again, the heavens will look different." Then: "Come away with me."

His hold on her is far too hard but never hard enough. She feels as though she is already slipping through his fingers, like she is becoming mist in his grip.

"I know you won't, can't, join us, but you and I, we could leave here. I've got the plane, we could make it far enough away that…"

She kisses a stop to his words, and he seems to understand that she can't bear to hear anymore. He continues anyway, because when has he heeded her, yielded to her? Never. That's not who they are.

"I need to head back to the ranch, and to the bunker. Make some satellite calls, call in old favours - you're not the only one to owe me a soul. And I need to bring together provisions and equipment, if we're to stand a fighting chance." His voice lowers, becomes a dark growl. "And I fully intend for us to stand a chance."

"John…"

"Meet me down by the boathouse, same time tomorrow. Then we'll leave."

"I need to sleep. And I need my backpack. I had to dump it when I was attacked by your brother's men."

It's not an answer but it's an accusation and they both know it. He touches his forehead to hers, forces the issue, and she could hate him for it.

"Will I see you here tomorrow? Will you come?"

Her mind races, her mind slows. He knows her so well, but she knows him too. If she refuses, point blank, he will simply use force, take all her choice away, all her agency.

"Yes," she lies and his smile is ugly and his eyes turn hard and cold, but the fucking blue in them is just for her, she knows it is, she knows.

He doesn't say anything, doesn't challenge her, and what a gift he's giving her. She can't even thank him for it.

"Until tomorrow then," he says, and she nods, leaves without touching him again.

She breaks and shatters the entire way.

She reaches the wood pool by sunup, and falls asleep immediately, straight on the ground, only her old coat for cover. The grass is soft enough, but she doesn't sleep as well as last time, when she was here with him. It's broken and fretful and she's so cold.

She wakes again late afternoon, and takes a minute to just sit and look at this place, with its dark water and lily pads and moss-covered stones. She can't see the loon, it's gone now, but she can still hear the echoes of that desolate call as she crouches on the stones and looks down into the water. It's so black, so still, so beautiful. She wonders if she would float on the surface, like Faith had floated down the Henbane, or if she would sink to the bottom. She wonders if there is a bottom, or if she would simply sink forever.

A beautiful sort of stasis, she thinks, always looking up through the water at the pines and the mountains peaks she loves so much, how they cycle through all the different seasons while she remains the same, falling towards a bottom that doesn't exist.

She looks down into the water with vague curiosity. She's been avoiding mirrors since...him, but she studies herself now. Her ashen hair has been allowed to grow longer than ever before, and she keeps it in a braid when he's not…He seems to like her hair, likes to untie it and run his fingers through it, like to grab it and pull it when he fucks her, like to see it stream loose down her back when she moves naked around the cottage.

But the cottage is gone.

She shakes her head, looks at her face. It has grown angular, with hollows and shadows under her cheekbones, skin so pale it's near transparent despite all the time she spends outdoors. And her eyes...she traces a fingertip around her mirror image, turns her face into a maelstrom. She can't bear her own eyes.

She runs her hands along her contours instead. Prominent collarbone, severe lines. But there is new softness too, her swollen breasts, her stomach now with a slight but unmistakable swell, hard to hide even under her shirt.

She writes him a letter on the surface of the water, her fingertip shakily spelling out words, all the things she can't tell him, all the secrets she holds inside. The water will keep it for her, and perhaps one day he'll come back here and see.

Then she retrieves her backpack, and heads for the mountains.

She's come high enough up the Whitetails that she's had to abandon the quad and start climbing in earnest, hitting the steeper inclines, when she stops for a break. She doesn't want to, she wants to keep going until she falls down unconscious from exhaustion, but that would be selfish. So she sits on a crest high above Hope County, her back turned, and reaches into the bag for food.

Her hand grasps at a strange object near the bottom, hard, foreign. Not hers. She stiffens and gingerly pulls it out, holds it between her fingers, ready to hurl it off the cliff at a second's notice.

She looks at it, and she weeps.

It's a wooden plane, a child's toy, small enough to fit in the palm of her hand. Roughly, amateurishly carved, perhaps...perhaps by an older brother. Then worn smooth by years and years of fingers holding it, stroking it, maybe carrying it around in a pocket. It's been carved in oak, she believes, but time has darkened it into a deep, burnished amber.

The sounds she can hear from a distance are her own sobs and her soul fragmenting.

Nevermind. It's not like her soul even belongs to her any longer.

She can't do this. She can't.

She turns around.

Damned, she's damned, and she's a fool, but she turns around.

Maybe there's still time.

She sees a flash of blue between the trees as she approaches the boathouse, and she knows he's still there. He's still waiting for her, even though he knew that she lied, and her heart breaks in ways she didn't think possible.

He hurls around when he hears her approach, eyes wide, hands clenched into fists at his side.

"I didn't think you would come."

His voice is queer, distant, peculiar resonances. There is grief in his eyes, and triumphtoo. But she pushes onward, walks all the way up to him. Smiles.

"Me neither," she says. Runs her hands down his arms, his tattoos, touches her fingers to his. Laughs and cries when he grabs at them far too hard, leans forward and kisses her so violently she can taste his soul and his madness on her tongue. There's a dark susurrus in her head, that of a thousand fluttering wings trashing against walls.

"Lets go," she says.

"Yes," he says.

"And they are gone: aye, ages long ago

These lovers fled away into the storm."

The lines quoted at the very end are by John Keats, from The Eve of St Agnes.

The whole "give something broken back" is borrowed by Stephen Donaldson, one of my all time favourite authors. I've changed it a little, the actual lines are "This you have to understand. There's only one way to hurt a man who's lost everything. Give him back something broken." and it's from The Wounded Land, a book that broke my heart in all sorts of imaginative ways.