When she opens her eyes, she's in Hong Kong.

She smiles, slow and sleepy and sharp, half-drunken, and watches the darkness film over the eyes of the man in front of her, an iridescent swirl swallowing his pupils. Leans forward, and kisses him. Savours the familiar taste on her tongue, oil and sugar and something else, something essential and pervasive, something to make a mockery of every substitute she's ever tried to build. "Love you," she whispers. "Thank you."

Turning on her heel, she pushes out the door and vanishes into the crowd.

=+=+=+=+=+=

She's eight, the first time it comes. She goes to sleep bathed in colours, and wakes in a room she's never seen before. There's a taste of sweetened motor oil in her mouth, a woman watching her silent and aloof with dark-filmed eyes, a uniformed man babbling at her in a language she can make nothing of. Behind her eyes, the sudden flickering loneliness ties her thoughts in knots.

=+=+=+=+=+=

It always amazes her, how easy it is. A little flash, a little dash; all you needed was the right link and the chain would roll clear and free and bright, leading to any office in the world they needed to go. Any lab, any home, any jail. Any warehouse, archive, government, pub, bunker. Any nursery. Anywhere at all.

She wears a mask, a whole-body smile, and the boy never so much as notices. "You're the girl of my dreams," he tells her. "I love you," he says, "come be with me." And she flutters the masks, and whispers: he laughing pulls her to his bed, and he never sees the empty spaces beneath her skin.

=+=+=+=+=+=

The police pick her up in Monaco, twelve and pretty and vacant, so very recently vacated it aches, burns, tears inside, her skin fits so loose and empty. When the consulate flies her all the way back to St. Paul, and she arrives lost and tired and so very alone in her head, her parents hand her over to the doctors and refuse to take her into their home again. They tell themselves it's best that way, and tell her, too, for all she listens.

It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. Wherever she goes, she will be found again. She'll make sure of it.

=+=+=+=+=+=

"I have to go," she tells him.

He smiles, he argues. He pleads. He bargains. "I love you," he tells her. "Please stay," he begs. "I'll give you flowers, and sunlight, and rainbows," he offers. "Moonlight and roses and pearls," and she doesn't tell him how very unoriginal he's grown, how dreary and drab and separate he is. "You're the girl of my dreams," he says, as though it were a wisdom to surpass all other. "What will I do without you?"

So, "I'll be back," she tells him, and if she means it, it's only because knowledge truly is still there to be had, and he is useful, he is the key, the perfect key to open the nearing-last lock barring their way.

He kisses her, fervent and thankful and puppy-eager, and once more fails to notice the gap where she should be.

=+=+=+=+=+=

She's fourteen when she falls in love. It comes a river over her, swallowing her down into comfort and colour and darkness. The nurse falls under their blow, and his own hypodermic turns on him so very, very easily, with barely a touch of their finger. His keys open all the locked doors, even the hidden ones, one and two and three and four. Colours dance happily at the edge of her vision; she rejoices, and hopes never to be left alone again. All the hollows beneath her surface are finally, ecstatically, filled. She smiles, and the doctors fall like rain beneath their feet.

=+=+=+=+=+=

When at last she returns to him, she doesn't bring the mask. She doesn't need to. She simply kisses him, and waits for all the hollows inside her to empty, and waits to greet the slick shadows as they swallow his eyes.

He doesn't call her the girl of his dreams anymore. He never will again.

=+=+=+=+=+=

Flames flicker at the second story window, barely visible from where she waits in the shadow of the hedgerow. She watches them climb, unaware of the smile that lights her face, nor of the tongue that flickers to moisten her lips, nor of when her breathing starts to come a little faster, a little harder. She watches as the curtains flare into brightness, as his hand scrabbles at the window latch, bangs against the glass. A slow laugh tumbles from her lips as fingers wrap around his wrist and pull it sideways, directly into red-gold molten heat. Her own hand slides across her chest, fingers plucking at her breasts through the thin fabric of her shirt, teasing the nubs of her nipples before circling lower.

She can almost hear the crackle of flames, smell the blackening of flesh, the dark crinkling skin splitting in red slashes. Feel the heat, the sheer sensuous crawl of it, trailing across her stomach in the wake of her fingers.

The house burns, and, watching, she burns with it.

=+=+=+=+=+=

She picks through the ashes, stepping-hopping-stepping, avoiding the smoking beams where they lie. She only likes to burn in effigy.

She finds him, blackened and cracked and charred, curled pointlessly against the flames, hands curved in clawed fists. She laughs, automatically reaches out a hand to pull the eyelids back; but thanks to this her fire there are none, no shutters left to bar the doorway to this hell she gifted him. Sticky fluid coats his irises, smoky black and tasting, when she kisses them, of something very like her only love. She leans down, tastes his mouth long and deep and slow, and smiles as life crawls into all her empty pockets.

=+=+=+=+=+=

It always amazes her how easy it is. A little here, a little there... pull the link, and the chain will follow. And on the end, all the information they require to find what they need. A name, a picture, a secret revealed.

It's easy, when one half of your whole is pure nightmare.

=+=+=+=+=+=

They move through the airport, marking, marking, marking. One after another passes them by, until... Him? ask her whispering thoughts. Yes, him, her thoughts answer, whispering.

She follows him into the bathroom, and lifts him high.

When she opens her eyes, she's in Hong Kong.

Notes:

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