The Waterfront

📅 October 26, 2017 [Kohao]

「ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ɪɴᴛᴇɴsᴇ sᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴀʟ ɪᴅᴇᴀᴛɪᴏɴ, ɪᴍᴘʟɪᴇᴅ sᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇ, ᴀs ᴡᴇʟʟ ᴀs ʀᴇғᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴅʀᴜɢ ᴜsᴇ ᴀɴᴅ sᴇʟғ ʜᴀʀᴍ」

The apartment was pitch-black and silent when Kohao woke up, just past four am: His harrowed mind and nightmare-plagued sleep proved the alarm he’d set on his phone unnecessary. In a dutiful and half-detached haze, he switched it off to keep it from sounding; then got out of bed and silently got dressed in the dark, unwilling to risk turning on his bedroom light. The feeling of being on autopilot faded as he tightened the knots of his bootlaces, and he felt the true weight of this, his final morning, settle onto his shoulders. His feet dragged on the way to the lockers of his desk, but a sense of duty drove him—even if his hands shook as he pulled open the metal doors.
His first impulse was to pull down his TEC-9: He’d worked so hard to assemble it, spent month after month tracking down parts. It was a prize he’d earned, and now he had the opportunity to use it: He could go out just like Dylan, just like the ‘Sad God’ that he had offered martyrdom to with the ink in his skin. But the gun didn’t seem right, somehow, and Kohao frowned as he turned it over in his hands. It felt cold and heavy and alien: Felt like someone else’s weapon, like the end to someone else’s story. It was big, too; difficult to conceal and not something he’d want to be seen carrying. So eventually, after some hesitation, he stroked its barrel one last time and carefully put it back up on its shelf.

From there he felt eerily drawn to the right-hand locker, from which his old school backpack pulled him almost magnetically into a crouch. Even after years of disuse, it was intimately familiar and still undeniably him: Black and punk-patched like his jeans; faded like his childhood memories. His hands felt numb and young as he unzipped it to go through the miniature arsenal he’d assembled as a teenager. Though he’d sawed-off the shotgun to the point that it could just fit into his backpack, it was still far too big to carry around—and strangely devastating: It wouldn’t kill him so much as obliterate him and deep down, that felt disquieting. The Uzi, too, seemed unwieldy and awkward to attempt to conceal, so Kohao ruled it out as well. 
...Which left his Glock 19.

The pistol felt familiar to the touch; it fit easily in his hand when he picked it up, and Kohao ran his thumb over the worn, scratched-up grip with a bleak sense of acceptance. There was a way in which it all felt fated, somehow: It was the gun he’d nearly stolen a life with before; the gun that had he managed to pull the trigger of, would have killed Seth—and, by extension, both Anarchy and Aetos. Now, Kohao found himself thinking, it could finally have its blood: The same gun he nearly killed half of his friends with could be the one he used to save them. 
With his decision made, Kohao returned his backpack to the desk locker and tucked the pistol into his waistband, ensuring it was hidden when he pulled the hem of his shirt down over it. With that, he was ready to leave—but felt incomplete, and found himself lingering for a moment in front of his desk. He looked around the room and ran down a mental checklist. It seemed that everything was happening too quickly or had come together too easily, like there must still be something important that he had forgotten to do...But there didn’t seem to be. He had everything: His half-pack of Newports and his lighter; his Glock and his made-up mind. He would leave his phone where it was, on his bed, so that no-one could use it to find him or talk him down...and he couldn’t use it to make a desperate, selfish call for help. 
He had no reason to stay for any longer, so Kohao forced himself to shake off the niggling feeling of discomfort at the back of his skull. He grimaced a goodbye to his room and the life that he’d lived there, then pushed open his door for the last intended time and stepped out into the silent hallway. Directly in front of him, Anarchy’s own bedroom door stood half-open, and Kohao couldn’t keep himself from crossing to it. A lump rose in his throat as he paused there and leant against the door-jamb. 

The only light on offer was the city glow that crept dimly in from across the hall—but in it Kohao managed to make out Anarchy’s sleeping form. He bore nearly no resemblance now to the boy he’d been almost six years ago: He had abandoned both the chaos and frailty of his heroin addiction and that change was visible even when the room was dark. It was because of Anarchy that Kohao had to be up and leaving now, in the pre-dawn pitch-black: He would be awake in just over an hour to go to the gym. Strength and routine and drive had firmly replaced the sickly boy with mistrustful, sunken eyes that Kohao had met over half a decade ago...But fast-fading too was the aggressively judgmental, clenched-fisted kid that had followed. Anarchy had centered himself and taken off in pursuit of growth; started and then refused to settle; always reaching for better than ‘good enough’. By comparison, Kohao felt he’d fallen behind or just begun at a standstill: Like he’d missed the starting gun and been left holding it.
With an ache, he wondered how often it had been to the heads of his friends. The lump in his throat burned like a live coal and his thoughts felt too pain-tangled to really parse, but he was sure that there was some way in which his proximity was what held Anarchy back from his truth. That it was his bitter cynicism that kept Anarchy’s own eyes guarded; that it was something tainted about him that forced Anarchy to lock his sexuality away as a secret, as shame.
Kohao gritted his teeth guiltily and bit down on his own presence; on the role he played as a dark cloud or a stain or a blot on the landscape of his friend’s life. Maybe after all of this, after everything was over—Anarchy would finally be able to wash his sheets clean. Be able to let crumble the last of his walls, let fade the last traces of that lone-wolf façade. 
At the very least, Kohao thought to himself, Anarchy could finally have a bedroom with a window.
Screwing his eyes shut, Kohao bowed his head to let out a long, stuttered sigh. The clock was ticking, though, and he knew it, so he forced himself to swallow his heartache. When he looked up again, he managed a slow blink of farewell and a sturdier breath—one of acceptance, this time: One of letting go. He steeled himself with it and a roll of his shoulders, then mouthed a silent “...’Bye,” into the dark—and turned away.

He stepped gingerly as he made his way down the hall from Anarchy’s bedroom door: Athena had always been too perceptive of him, and in the wake of his abrupt break-up with Fawkes, had seemed unconvinced the previous night that nothing was amiss. He didn’t trust her to not be awake or sleeping lightly—in case he did exactly what he was doing now. To his relief, though, his careful cat-steps down the hall paid off as silence, and when he paused in her doorway he found Athena to still be fast asleep.
He watched her chest rise and fall a couple of times and thought about how she, too, had changed. Like Anarchy, she’d gotten stronger: Replaced the grasping plea for her parent’s affection she’d made through anorexia with independence and muscle and intensity. Something like aggressive positivity had replaced too the cynicism Kohao had bonded with her over in high school: She was a wildfire of an optimist, now, always looking for injustices and barriers to burn to the ground. It was no wonder the pair of them had drifted. 
Kohao let out a half-stuttered sigh and closed his eyes as he leaned heavily against her door frame. It seemed a lifetime ago that they had been so close; caught in each other’s orbits enough for him to kiss her the day before he planned to die. It was a fleeting acknowledgment of an “almost” that never could have been and was never supposed to be—but still it was there, in their shared past: An almost. And a kiss he had intended as a token of severance. Because that was what he did, wasn’t it? Took symbols of love or connection and used them to break the bonds they represented. Of course, though...he’d failed. He’d kissed Athena to cut ties and she and Sethfire had saved his life and re-knotted them. And now they tugged painfully outward from his chest, towards her. They were no longer playing at the teenage imitation of romance; clumsily testing what it meant to be ‘in love’ with each other—but he loved her. Like a sister, like a friend, like a savior. And she seemed to love him, too; handing him brotherhood undeserved, pouring her heart into him as unknowing self-betrayal. 
Kohao’s stomach lurched and he choked back the aggrieved sound that threatened to rise from his lungs. She didn’t know that she should hate him, didn’t know that every act of kindness toward him was affection for her brother’s would-be killer. Kohao wanted to wake her, to say it, to shatter the lie and have her tell him to leave with the gun in his hand. The thought was pain overwhelming and he backed away from her door on instinct, with a head-shake and a hoarse, agonized half-whimper. His shoulders trembling, Kohao cast “I’m sorry,” as a broken whisper towards Athena’s doorway—then turned tail and all but fled from the hall into the main room.

He shakily passed the kitchen, but he found his footsteps faltering as he neared the apartment door—and try as he might for a stride of strained purpose, he couldn’t help coming to a stop yet again. Paint and names called to him, so in the cold city glow coming through the glass door to the balcony, Kohao paused to read over the beat-up leather couch that Athena had insisted on ‘adopting’ from the alleyway across the street a couple years ago. It had already fallen victim to cans of spray paint when they’d found it, junkyard-bound and abandoned, and Athena had taken to the thing like a stray puppy. But even after the arduous process of hauling it across the street and into the elevator, then carrying it all the way down the hall, she hadn’t cleaned it up. Rather, she’d encouraged their friends and concert collaborators to vandalize it further: To sign it like a yearbook and tag the leather with names or messages whenever they dropped by.
Through glassy eyes, Kohao read over the names and tags. Though much of the sofa had become an illegible Jackson Pollock of cracking spray paint, through a lens of heartache, some of the scrawls stood out like neon signs. The pale blue of Nightshrike’s band name seemed luminous in the moonlight, and Gabe had painted his signature x-eyed bird below it, bold and bared-teeth-white. Astra had tagged the couch no less than three times and someone else had taken up an entire cushion with an unapologetic “4/20 BLAZE IT,” while Colin had signed in a red that nearly blended with the maroon leather—but Kohao still found it. There was a music-note pulseline and the words “Music=Life” in Astra’s cyan-blue. An infinity symbol done by Athena’s hand. Scattered Ⓐ’s. 
Name after name, word after word, symbol after symbol evidence of an aerosol can or paint marker held by Athena or Astra or anyone else. Everyone else. 
Here they are, Kohao thought to himself, These are all the people I’m saving.
The bleak determination he’d gotten dressed with settled back into his chest, then, beginning to displace the hesitancy that had slowed his departure. It was time for him to go. He knew his selfishness was taking up the seconds ticking past, so he squared his shoulders the last steps to the apartment door and allowed himself only a moment more to linger. As he paused with his hand on the doorknob, the corners of his mouth twitched downwards against his will accompanied by a lump in his throat. Fighting back a rising tide of emotion, Kohao whispered an inaudible apology to go with a grimaced nod over his shoulder: A final goodbye that his friends would never hear nor see. 
The door shut silent at his back.

He had no destination in mind as he left, but his feet headed northward from his apartment building and he followed them. There would be open space there, up ahead: The tangled cage of urbanity fell away eventually to make room for Highland Park and the cemeteries that surrounded it. As he walked beneath the J-line overpass, Kohao’s heavy heart tugged towards the chance of seeing the open sky beyond the train tracks and power-lines. Really, parkland cemeteries seemed like fitting places to walk and smoke and come to terms, anyway… So he picked up his northbound pace.
The sky above was funeral-black and fitting when he reached the edge of the cemetery belt. It was a strange thing; thirteen or so graveyards all clustered together around Ridgewood Reservoir, into acre after acre of headstones. Somehow Kohao had never given it too much thought before. He’d wandered the grounds over the years, sure; smoked and contemplated and everything—but this time felt different. As he started his labyrinthine wander amongst the graves, he felt profoundly aware of the fact that every tombstone belonged to a person; to one individual, who had lived out a life all their own...however short or long. Their names were carved in stone for permanence, alongside their accomplishments:
Loving father & devoted husband. 
Beloved son. 
True patriot.
But what else, Kohao thought quietly as he paused at a grave, What else were you? Who else were you? ...Did your mother tell you that you were a beloved son before you died?
The only response was the sound of traffic on the nearby parkway, but that felt like answer enough. Kohao dipped his chin and continued on, his head bowed in contemplation, to ask more unanswerable questions of the innumerable dead. 

Hours passed to sunrise, somehow, amongst the gravestones—and by the time Kohao finished his long, meandering loop of the cemetery belt, he found himself at the brink of dawn. Even as he walked south down Logan street, though, away from the cemeteries he was leaving at his back, it still felt like the distance between himself and those headstones was shrinking with each step.
Lost in thought, Kohao walked with the quickened, head-down, hands-in-pockets pace of distraction—and ended up reaching the intersection with Atlantic Avenue more quickly than he’d anticipated. He paused at the familiar corner in the pale, watery, yellow light of dawn, and took a moment to look westward down the street. Though early, the morning commuter traffic had already started to fill the road with people bustling toward their workdays, and Kohao thought about how he still had the chance to be selfish: He could choose not to cross the street. To just turn right onto Atlantic and go back home. He could hang up his jacket and put away his gun and pretend that he’d never whispered goodbye from the doorway. Guilt was a hound at his heels, though, and he couldn’t stand to linger.

There was a sense of finality that came with stepping off the curb and once he reached the opposite sidewalk, it seemed the street name couldn’t be more accurate; he felt an ocean away from his friends and the fullness of life he’d shared with them. That distance flooded into the emptiness in his chest, hollowing it further, and he reached on instinct for a cigarette so that he could replace that nothing with menthol smoke. But he’d burned through his half-pack during his cemetery walkabout, and even though that had left his stomach sick and his throat sore, he felt in desperate need of nicotine.
Conveniently, the Compass Gas minimart was immediately in front of him and he beelined for it; grasping at deathless senses of purpose wherever he could. His smoking and wandering had left his mouth dry, so he grabbed a bottle of water and kept his eyes downcast as he approached the counter. He didn’t want to see himself in the security screen overhead, and wanted even less to look the cashier in the face: Eye contact felt too vulnerable, even with a stranger. Kohao felt translucent already and as though looking anyone in the eyes would allow them to see straight through him, to his soul—or whatever skinned mess he’d made of it. 
“This and a box of Newports, please,” he said to the stand of Bic lighters on display, rather than to the man behind the counter. 
“Ya know, I’d ask for an ID but I’m gonna go ahead and assume there ain’t too many teenagers with that much ink,” the cashier said, his voice smoker-hoarse but friendly, “Ya might wanna buy an extra couple packs of these though, eh bud? You heard next year they’re jacking up the prices? Fuckin’ de Blasio. Government-backed robbery. Thirteen mother-trucking dollars!”
Kohao forced an almost-chuckle. 
“Yeah. I’m planning on quitting today though.”
“Ah, isn't everybody,” the cashier rasped with good-natured disbelief as he handed Kohao his change; “Have a good one.”

Kohao lit a cigarette as soon as he stepped back outside—but immediately felt lost again. Though comforting, nicotine provided no direction and he found himself still without an end destination in mind. There was a nostalgic compass in his heart, though, and it pointed him subconsciously southwest. For a while, he didn’t really know where his route was taking him—he just walked obediently forward. It wasn’t until he crossed beneath the L line at New Lots that the jolt of familiarity hit him. He found himself on Ditmas Avenue in no time at all, from there, but his pace slowed as he waded through memory. Just a couple blocks from where he stood was the hospital he and Seth and Athena had carried Anarchy to six years ago—and then there was that doorway, that same doorway that they’d found him in, even if the graffiti was new. Kohao stood in it and remembered the weakness of Anarchy’s heartbeat that night, and pressed his fingers to his own neck. His pulse beat rhythmically against his fingertips; hot and strong and consistent. His body didn’t yet know that he was dying.
He continued along Ditmas at the slow pace of a one-man funeral procession, retracing the steps he’d walked with Anarchy back when he’d accompanied his friend to that ramshackle husk of a building called “the squat.” Five years on, he almost passed its nameless lot: Time had come and gone, and it seemed that at some point the city had razed the eyesore of a construction-project’s carcass. It had never been built back up, though, and appeared to have become some sort of unofficial junkyard: The lot was full of trash and urban detritus; a stained mattress, rusting scrap, a couple ripped-up and rotting couches—one of which was occupied by some crumpled figure, hunching for warmth under a sleeping bag. Kohao cast his eyes downward and found that the presence of the less fortunate wasn’t the only consistency from half a decade ago: The gutter was cluttered, still, by orange caps and syringes. 
With a sinking heart, Kohao carried on walking, and put a stressed, mindless cigarette to his lips. The “squat” was all but unrecognizable, now—even if the ground still lay littered with needles—and Anarchy hadn’t been back there in years. But Kohao felt guiltily that he’d been keeping its echo alive to his friend, with his own personal self destruction; with his coke and ketamine and poorly-kept secrets. 
He wondered how many other places there were out in the city, filled with the ghosts of the past—or missing the ones that he’d taken with him, ever-haunting the dark behind his eyes. He felt them there, as static in his ears and a lump in his throat, but couldn’t stomach the idea of catching a northbound train to try and lay them to rest. Memories always caught him up like cobwebs or tripwire, and he feared the fallout of revisiting anywhere too familiar. Seeing the squat alone had left him feeling sick—so when he reached the highway, Kohao followed it pointedly south and put his history at his back.

Kings Hwy was wide and loud and busy, though: Walking along it was already wearing on Kohao by the time he got to the intersection where it merged with E 45th. The mess of crosswalks and car-horns there felt draining, as did the concept of continuing to trudge alongside the highway and all its cacophony—so he hunched his shoulders and turned right; away from the chaotic thoroughfare and down a smaller, quieter avenue. A few blocks along it, parting the endless duplexes across the street, a narrow park beckoned Kohao with fall foliage and a gazebo—which overlooked tidy paving-stone walkways and grass that still flushed green; not yet having succumbed to autumnal wan. He crossed to the park’s entrance on impulse, drawn easily toward the respite it seemed to offer. 
A small sign at the corner identified it as ‘Amersfort Park,’ which rang no bells in Kohao’s mind—leaving it feeling somehow clean, and welcoming in its unfamiliarity. He walked it slowly; took in the noon-sky sunlight and the birdsong that could, here, escape being drowned out by city noise. The many benches and picnic pavilions stood mostly empty; their potential occupants otherwise engaged on a fall weekday. The fountain at the far end of the park was dry and silent, having been turned off in preparation for winter temperatures, and had been plundered of the majority of its wish-laden loose change. Even mostly deserted, though, Amersfort failed to feel bleak. Rather, it seemed dormant: It was somewhere where people did gather; those benches and picnic tables did fill, the fountain would come to life again, and the park was merely sleeping until then. The peace of it was appealing, and Kohao brushed indecisive fingers over his shirt’s hem. In theory, it would be a suitable resting place: Quiet. Calm. He could sit on a bench, face the hibernating fountain, and leave the birds, alone, to sing.

And yet...There were a couple people up the path walking their dogs, and the park was flanked by the duplexes lining the streets it bridged: Front stoops with children’s bicycles lay, watchful, not much more than a curb and a sidewalk away. As Kohao pondered, a mother with a lavender-colored stroller turned the corner and crossed to the park entrance, lightly humming. This was no place for him to die.
Too urban, too exposed, too owned and not his to stain, Kohao left Amersfort behind and turned right onto the avenue the woman with the stroller had come from. He found it markedly disorienting to be out in the city without his phone; crossing Flatbush meant he had some idea of where he was, but didn’t know for sure and had no easy way to check—so as he walked he found himself reading the street signs more often, in search of familiarity. Most were just numbers that ended up feeling like a countdown to the end; E 27th, E 26th. 25th...24...23...22 more blocks…
The dropping digits—aside from feeling like the foreboding ticking of some cosmic clock—told him he was heading west; and as the names of non-numbered streets he crossed leaned increasingly coastal, he was guessing at being fairly far south, as well...but that was all he had to go on until he reached Bay Pkwy. The name made him pause despite the fact that he didn’t recognize the road; it just felt somehow familiar. He couldn’t place it in his memory, though he knew it seemed strange to be stumbling into it here. He lingered, indecisive for a few moments; but even if the familiarity felt distant and out-of-place, it was familiarity—so Kohao took a left hand turn to follow it.

It seemed halfway between cruel and fated that the road led him directly to another sprawling graveyard: With the Bay Pkwy station at its head, the grounds of Washington Cemetery spread out like butterfly wings on each side of McDonald Avenue and the train tracks above. In the sunlit brightness of day, meandering amongst headstones seemed to lose the introspective aura that had been there before dawn. Kohao still walked a circuit of the cemetery, but his steps were quicker and his thoughts more jumbled than that morning. There was some unnameable storm-like emotion brewing at the back of his mind, driving him to keep moving: I’m wasting time; I’m stealing time; I need to go...
Through that distracted haze, he somehow found himself at the Bay Pkwy station, staring dully at the F train map and searching for a sense of direction. The last, southmost stop down the line was the Avenue X station, in an area labeled ‘Gravesend’ in neat, light grey letters.
‘Gravesend…’ Kohao thought to himself, swallowing against a lump he hadn’t noticed rise in his throat, Well...the name fits. He sighed softly and blinked at the label for Avenue X. X marks the spot, huh. Absently he traced his thumb in front of his chest, above the X he’d carved into his skin there; marking himself as wrong every time he’d reopened the wound over the years to drive the scar deeper. It seemed that down at the edge of Gravesend Bay, it would finally find true, unfading permanence.
Despite feeling the threads of fate that connected him to the subway station—and despite the fact that the rattling tracks over his head would quicken the trip and quiet the guilty storm in his mind, telling him he had to hurry—Kohao clung decidedly to the sidewalk below the train line. However bitter the selfishness of it tasted, he wanted whatever additional time he could manage to find. He could see the end in full clarity, now. He decided it was close enough to be walking distance.

The aptly-named waters of Gravesend Bay drew him more forcefully than the end of the F-line did, so Kohao peeled off, westward and shore-bound, onto Gravesend Neck Rd as soon as he met it. Following the name, he cut through Gravesend cemetery but didn’t linger; just forged determinedly onward to Avenue V and beyond, intuition and memory his only guides. They didn’t lead him astray: The pedestrian bridge over Shore and Belt Pkwy placed him exactly at the entrance to the bayfront green of Calvert Vaux Park—even if mid-afternoon found most of the grounds too busy for Kohao’s tastes. Fortunately no game was on at the baseball diamond, but there were enough dog-walkers on the greenway and children playing on the fields to make him shy away from the main body of the park. Not that it mattered; the bay was what truly called to him anyway, so he retreated from the lively heart of Calvert Vaux to answer the water’s beckoning. Off-trail at the park’s edge, along the shoreline of a narrow, hidden cove, he stumbled upon a decaying boat—half submerged in the sandy shallows, it’s hull too rotten to bear a legible name. It was too far out in the water to reach, but Kohao was hit by a strange yet unmistakable sense of kinship: It, too, was hollowed-out; a husk of what it once had been. And it too had found its resting place here; forgotten and unclaimed by any, except the waters of Gravesend Bay.
He stood and studied it for a few more moments before continuing along the shore, able to hop across the small creek which separated the park from an adjacent peninsula. Though the boat called after him, he wanted to see the rest of what the stretch of bayshore had to offer; to keep walking along the water, for just a little longer...just to see whatever else there was to see while he still had the chance. Maybe there would be another cove that called him even louder. So despite the protests of his aching legs and his anxiety, he continued on. 
The rocky shallows sported a swatch of decaying pilings, the last remnants of some long-lost pier; and though half of the arm of land was overgrown and populated by shrubs and underdeveloped saplings, half was occupied by the shrinking remnants of a long-vacant lot. Perhaps at some point in time, it had been intended for development: Abandoned construction debris lay scattered along the grey stretches of gravel, though weeds had sprung up to begin pulling it back into the earth. The northmost shore harbored the rotting remains of an old marina; now useless with neither dock nor wharf, and occupied only by half-sunken, rusting watercraft.
Kohao lingered there, hyper-aware of the gunmetal pressed to his hip bone. The abandoned marina was appropriately melancholy and allowed a view of the water—but it faced its replacement: A functional, busy boatyard was only an inlet away; still humming with the activity of fishermen and cigarette boats. At Kohao’s back, the vacant lot backed up to what was either an automotive graveyard or a large, unpaved parking lot—and he couldn’t be certain it was not the latter. Feeling both penned-in and too exposed, he retraced his steps back around the peninsula’s edge, and returned to the wooded shore of the creek-fed cove, where the surrounding trees hid the park and muffled even the traffic noise of the twin parkways. 
The sky had gone yellow with pre-sunset light by then, and the westward-facing mouth of the cove allowed a breathtaking view of Gravesend Bay going gold. The shimmering wake from some departing motorboat lapped at the remains of the sunken watercraft in the shallows, and Kohao stood silent at the treeline; staring out at the place where the baywater met the autumn-saturated sky, just listening. Off in the distance, a loon called its mournful greeting to the approaching dusk, and Kohao drew his pistol from his waistband as he sank to the sandy ground. He pretended he couldn’t feel the tears staining his cheeks.
When the sun goes down, he thought hollowly to himself, Just as soon as the water’s dark again.

📅 October 26, 2017 [Anarchy]

「ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ɪᴍᴘʟɪᴇᴅ sᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇ + ʀᴇғᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴠɪᴏʟᴇɴᴄᴇ」

Everything was exactly how it always was: Anarchy’s 5:40am alarm went off like it did every morning, and he shook himself awake to the same snippet of Linkin Park’s Breaking The Habit that he’d woken up to for five straight years. It was so consistent that ‘familiar’ was too distant-sounding a word—but despite the routine of it all, despite the fact that he switched off the alarm at the exact same point in the song that he always did—something about the morning felt off. There was an uneasy, invisible sense of wrong that brought tension to Anarchy’s shoulders. He looked out to the hall with unforgotten hypervigilance, that unplaceable sense of foreboding breathing down his neck, and saw immediately that Kohao’s bedroom door was wide open. 
Anarchy felt somewhat weird about it, but he couldn’t keep himself from going over and leaning in, just to check...Something. Whatever. Just in case. When he did, though, he didn’t find his best friend asleep or insomniac-smoking on the fire escape: Kohao’s room was deserted and his bed empty—save for his phone, which lay innocently on the mattress and made Anarchy’s teeth grit with concern. Kohao didn’t go anywhere without his phone. 
He just hasn’t slept and he’s out on the balcony drinking coffee, Anarchy thought firmly to himself, It’s fine. 
It wasn’t fine, though. Anarchy found the kitchen dark, the coffeemaker untouched, and the balcony unoccupied; its sliding door still locked.

With mounting alarm, Anarchy paced back through the apartment; re-checked Kohao’s bedroom despite knowing he wasn’t there. In his second sweep of the room, Anarchy noticed something else missing: Though Kohao had left his phone behind, his wallet and keys weren’t anywhere to be seen. So he had to have gone out. Somewhere. Anarchy pressed his own phone to his ear and chased his hunch.
Four rings in, Anarchy worried that he’d been wrong: If Kohao was there, Fawkes would be awake, would pick up. Halfway through the fifth ring, though, the click of her answering brought him some sense of relief. He still didn’t wait for her to offer a greeting.
“Fawkes? Hey, listen, is Kohao there? At your place? Is he with you?” Anarchy asked, trying and failing to sound casual.
“Why the hell would he be here? You fucking helped him move out yesterday!” Fawkes snapped, her tone managing to be scathing despite obvious grogginess. 
“That’s not my fuckin’ fault, Fawkes, and I’m just trying to find him!” Anarchy fired back, too anxious to feel sorry for having woken her up, “I got up to hit the gym and he was just fuckin’ gone—he left his phone here too!” 
“He fucking does that, Anarchy, he just leaves and wanders around sulking! If you’re fucking scared because he forgot his phone this time, then call the cops or find him yourself, but let me sleep! It’s not like he’s never thrown a goddamn tantrum before!” 
The words “Call Ended” flashed up on Anarchy’s phone before he could respond; Fawkes had hung up on him. And even though she was technically correct—Kohao did just vanish onto the city streets to walk off his emotions—Anarchy couldn’t manage to shake the feeling of unease that prickled up his spine and itched at the back of his skull.

He felt restless and anxious and the impulse to wake up Athena was growing stronger by the minute—but it wasn’t even 6am yet, and Anarchy couldn’t manage to justify it. So he took his nervous energy and paced through the apartment again, coming up—expectedly—empty. 
He checked his phone. 5:52am.
Impatient and uneasy, he ducked out of the apartment but found the hallway dark and vacant too, with no sign of his best friend. There was no reason Kohao would have gone all the way downstairs to the parking lot for a smoke—not when he so readily stubbed his cigs out on his carpet—but Anarchy still made a quick sojourn to the ground floor, just to check. No sign.
By the time Anarchy got back up to the apartment it still wasn’t quite 6, but he couldn’t wait any longer, and guiltily shook Athena awake.
“Gnnh. Anarchy? What time is it?” she groaned sleepily, bleary-eyed and disoriented.
“Almost 6. Athena—”
“Almost 6? Is the apartment on fire?”
“No, but I got up to go to the gym and K-O was gone and he left his phone here and I called Fawkes and he’s not there either and I’m losing my shit,” Anarchy replied in a single rush of breath. His obvious tension seemed to rouse Athena: She blinked rapidly and sat up, looking troubled.
“Okay...not great; don’t love it,” she said, less sleepily, “But just...go to the gym. I’ll be here for when he comes back; if he left his phone it can’t be long.” She could clearly read Anarchy’s hesitation in the drop of his shoulders; the indecisive bow of his head. She gave his chest a gentle, affectionate shove that managed to read as reassurance.
“Just go, ‘Key. It’ll be alright.”

Anarchy ceded to her advice and carried on with his routine as best he could: Still went to the gym as normal, but rounded up his workout early; preoccupied and unable to banish his growing stormfront of anxiety by increasing his bench weight or doing chin-ups. Kohao still hadn’t returned home by the time Anarchy made it back; to Athena looking more awake, post-coffee, and chewing on her cheek at the breakfast bar.
“...He’s not with Seth, I asked,” she sighed with a shrug almost as soon as Anarchy came through the door, “And his phone’s gotten a couple messages from Gabe. So...he’s not over there. He must be taking time to himself.”
“Yeah, must be. Break-ups are rough,” Anarchy said, and firmly told himself that he had been reassured by her words.

The time Kohao ‘was taking to himself’ stretched on, though, and stretched Anarchy thin. By the time half-past eight rolled around and he and Athena needed to leave for work, Kohao still had not yet returned and Anarchy dawdled through their departure despite being ready to go.
“Fawkes is right, you know,” Athena said, hefting her gym bag higher on her shoulder, “He does do this. Go out and walk it all off. Chances are good that he’ll be here when you get back from your shift. You’re off at 6 today, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. But his phone, Athena…” Anarchy replied, trailing off into a nervous grind of his jaw.
“I know it’s weird. But we don’t have any reason to panic. Could be he just really wanted to disconnect for a bit. If he isn’t back this evening—”
“—We panic then?” he asked, making Athena snort.
 “...We figure out where to go from there.”
The two of them left the apartment together to catch the Q56—like they did every Thursday—though their goodbye hug at the approach of Athena’s stop lasted just slightly longer than usual.
“It’ll be fine,” Athena said into Anarchy’s chest, “Don’t worry. He just needs to be dramatic first.”
“Yeah, I know, that’s K-O,” Anarchy said with an almost-chuckle, “But I’ll still be glad when he’s home.”
Athena sighed, and there was an obvious air of reluctance to how slowly she released him from the hug. 
“...Me too.”

Once Anarchy got to work, the day passed in a jilting, uneasy series of glimpses at the clock—each leaving him feeling like more time had gone by than expected, but less than he’d wanted. His breaktime call to Kohao’s phone had gone unanswered, and by the time he left The Aspen at the end of his shift, he knew the chill he felt wasn’t due solely to the evening air. Athena would have texted him reassurance or gotten Kohao to do so, but he had messages from neither; he knew Kohao must still be MiA even before he got back home to Athena alone and an apartment still one-third empty. Time kept jerking forward through his restless anxiety over Kohao’s continued absence, and though Athena tried to offer conversation and reassurance, Anarchy couldn’t quite seem to meet her in it.

“You know he’s done shit like this before, Anarchy, c’mon,” Athena said in her umpteenth attempt at mollifying him and his incessant pacing; “You remember: Even back when we were living with Seth! He’d get upset and go out without telling anyone and turn his phone off so no one could reach him and we’d all worry until he turned up late as all fuck or the next morning. He does this.”
“But he left his phone here this time, ‘Thena, it’s—”
“Yeah, he needed a new way to make us worry, ‘Key, we got used to the old pattern.” Athena sounded tired and towards the edge of exasperated, but Anarchy picked up on the faintest flicker of guilt in her expression when he met her eyes.
“...Sorry. I know that doesn’t sound fair,” she said, glancing away.
“No, I mean...it’s fair enough. But I’m still worried.”
Athena checked her phone even though it hadn’t chimed. She sighed. 
“Don’t get me wrong...I am too. But I’ve also known him since he was fourteen, ‘Key. He used to sneak out at night just to see if his parents would notice that he was gone. Not to ‘be a teenager’ and party, or drink, or get laid. Just to wait around, be missing, and see if people would worry.” She sounded exhausted; emotionally overworked and bordering on bitter. Anarchy couldn’t blame her for it.

Despite her disposition and her knowledge of Kohao’s history, though, even Athena seemed to be edging closer to uneasiness as the hours after nightfall ticked past. They’d called around to ask their friends in Nightshrike if Kohao was with them; to have him call up or come home if he showed up at anyone’s door. So when Athena’s phone rang at half-past ten, she scrambled for it and Anarchy’s heart lept hopefully to his throat. The voice that came through wasn’t Kohao’s, though: It was Aetos, asking if there had been any word. It didn’t seem that long after Athena’s answer in the negative that both he and Sethfire were at the door. Anarchy felt some sense of reassurance from their presence: If anyone got a call, or text, or anything...well, they were all right there. No calls came, though, and conversation dwindled as midnight approached: Sentences sometimes dissolved before ending; responses ended up distractedly halved. Finally Aetos glanced up from his phone to look out the balcony window and murmured to no one in particular, “I just hope he’s inside somewhere. It’s cold out tonight,” and something seemed to break: Sethfire clapped his hands to his knees and stood up.
“I think we ought to phone the police and report him missing. His leaving his phone here is enough cause for that.” Sethfire raised his eyebrows and looked around the room as though opening the floor to objections. Anarchy just shook his head deferentially.
“No, yeah. Good idea,” he said, closely followed by Athena’s own; “Sure, go for it.”

Sethfire didn’t need to turn on speakerphone for the call; both sides of the conversation ended up audible without it—even if the exchange of basic information didn’t require the tense, pin-drop silence that befell the rest of the room. Hearing Kohao referred to as ‘David Julian Winters’ felt surreal at best to Anarchy, and he found himself looking uncomfortably to Athena, as though he might find some solidarity there. She was busy mouthing “dirty blond” to correct Sethfire’s “brunet,” though, as the woman at the other end of the line ran through her checklist of basic information and physical features.
“...And your friend has been missing for how long, again, sir?” she eventually asked.
“Just under 24 hours.”
“And it’s out of the ordinary for him to leave without telling anyone?”
Sethfire hesitated. “Not necessarily, no,” he said, honest to a fault, “But he’s not usually gone for this long. He left his phone here, too, which is atypical, and he and his girlfriend broke up yesterday, so his mental state—”
“But he tends to vanish? When upset, maybe?” the woman asked briskly, cutting Sethfire off.
“Not for this long—”
“But he does?”
“Yes,” Sethfire almost snapped, a frustrated edge becoming apparent in his tone, “but—”
“I can appreciate that you’re concerned, but as your friend is a twenty-two year old adult with a history of this behavior, we simply can’t dispatch resources immediately,” the woman infuriatingly interrupted again, “I’m sure you understand: The NYPD has gang violence and drug dealers and rapists to deal with, not to mention missing children. They can’t go chasing after every grown man who’s more likely than not just throwing a post-breakup fit.”
“Really? You’re just going to dismiss this?” Sethfire asked, looking affronted.
“Call again if he isn’t back after 48 hours, we’ll look into it,” the woman replied, her tone cool and business-like, “Until then, we simply can’t spare the resources. Can I help you with anything else?”
“I suppose not,” Sethfire said icily, his eyes cold enough to match his voice as he ended the call. When he looked up at the rest of them, though, he shook his head rather blankly; seeming not only ruffled—but at an uncharacteristic loss. Thankfully, Athena didn’t appear to be.

“Well, we have to do something ourselves then, don’t we?” she said with distaste, “Fuckin’ ‘can’t spare the resources’...Yea, too busy partying down on some fuckin’ Dunkin’, more like. Whatever, though—I mean, aside from talking to the press, what can they do that we can’t, anyway?” Athena’s self-assured arm-cross and tone of confident defiance bolstered Anarchy, but Sethfire still pursed his lips in ambivalence.
“Maybe not a great deal,” he half-sighed, “but they would be able to have eyes on the bridges, one would think...I just can’t understand why she failed to ask more about his mental health. Perhaps I should call them back and emphasize that he can be a danger to himself, but I...don’t...know…” Sethfire trailed off and looked suddenly troubled. Anarchy heard Aetos’s intake of breath and saw that his expression, too, had gone dark with disquiet.
“We’re all idiots. Could Kohao have a gun on him? Has anyone checked?” he asked, and Anarchy felt his stomach knot uneasily.
“I will,” he said, immediately turning on his heel to head back to Kohao’s room.
“Me too,” Athena added, unfolding her arms and following after him; “We’ll know if one’s missing. Sit tight, it’ll be fine,” she said over her shoulder to the others. 

As he walked into Kohao’s bedroom with Athena, Anarchy couldn’t quite shake the feeling of trespass that came with crossing the threshold. It had never dissipated even during the months that Kohao had lived with Fawkes; the room hadn’t ever stopped feeling explicitly his. Maybe part of it was that he’d never quite seemed to move completely out: He’d deemed his dresser too heavy to bother moving, his bed frame had been unnecessary, and his desk had stayed behind, untouched, for half a year. Even though some of his pictures and posters were rolled up in the moving boxes on the floor, plenty had never left the room: Kohao’s unnerving Columbine collages had been left behind when he went to live with Fawkes, and now Anarchy carefully avoided making eye contact with the shooters’ photographs as he approached Kohao’s desk lockers.
“Thank God he doesn’t lock these,” Anarchy said to Athena, pulling open both doors, “Can you imagine having to get a locksmith in here?”
“I’d sooner buy a bolt cutter.” Her voice was tense and he heard her take a backwards step. “God, ‘Key. I really don’t know if I wanna touch them.” 
Anarchy glanced over his shoulder to see her hanging back, staring almost squeamishly at the locker-bound arsenal.
“Okay. That’s fine.” He wasn’t thrilled, either, and could feel hesitance in his fingertips, but he dutifully turned back around. There were two long guns in the left-hand locker, and Anarchy pulled the less intimidating-looking one out by its muzzle, then propped it up on his shoulder and squinted as though looking down an imaginary scope—though careful to avoid putting his fingers anywhere near the trigger. 

“I think I remember when he got this,” Anarchy said slowly, “A ‘carbine’, right? Isn’t it his only legal gun?” he asked, lowering the firearm and turning around to hold it out toward Athena. She took it despite her reluctance.
“No.” She sat down on the edge of Kohao’s mattress and laid the carbine on the bed behind her. “Same year that he turned eighteen, but too early to be legal, remember? It was a sketch-ass private sale like all the rest. I still can’t believe he managed...fucking...that one.” She pointed sharply at the second gun in the locker with a look of consternation. 
“We published WANOS, and to celebrate he went out and bought that for himself...from some idiot who was willing to believe that he was moving out of state. He was so proud of what a good liar he managed to be, God… I remember being hyped for the goddamn SAFE Act—I thought it might finally force him to get rid of his fucking guns, not make him buy more! It freaked me the fuck out when he brought that thing home. I don’t even know why he got it.”

Anarchy hefted the rifle out of the locker and felt some of Athena’s revulsion as leadened unease in his own hands: The weapon looked aggressive—even angry—and seemed to suck safety out of the air with its presence. The magazine well was emblazoned with the name ‘Bushmaster’ overtop a logo of a rattlesnake, coiled and poised to strike. As Anarchy almost warily lay the gun on the bed beside the other, he felt that for its deadly capabilities, he might as well be handling the snake.
“It’s a collector’s item, I think,” Anarchy said with distaste, “Just like his fuckin’...Where is it?” He turned back to the locker and spotted the gun he was looking for on the upper shelf: He pulled the Tec-9 down and frowned at it, the twin of the tattoo on Kohao’s chest.
“...Remember when he finished assembling this?” Anarchy asked, turning to show it to Athena. She grimaced. 
“It was disturbing, he was glowing. It was like we’d just put out an album.”
“Yeah, it was his baby. He complained so much about how hard the parts were to find. What percentage of this gun is illegal, do you think?”
“...All of it?” Athena said, rather dispiritedly. Anarchy agreed, and he lay the Tec-9 on the mattress with a head-shake of aversion.

He turned back and gave the first locker a final once-over, but with the exception of several boxes of ammo and a small army of composition notebooks, it was empty—so he moved along to the second and pulled out an old, familiar black backpack. The fact that it was already unzipped made the hair on the back of Anarchy’s neck stand on end, but he tried to shake off the uneasy feeling in his gut and avoid jumping to conclusions.
“Here’s these,” he said, plopping the bag at Athena’s feet. She leaned over and, despite her almost repulsed facial expression, pulled Kohao’s Uzi out of the old backpack to spend a lengthy second gingerly turning it over in her hands.
“God, he was so proud of these guns,” she said softly, and spent another silent moment just staring at the submachine gun, before slowly setting it down and picking up the sawed-off—though she held it, too, as though it might bite her; 
“He used to beg Seth to just let him look at them or hold them, unloaded, back when he first moved in with us. He’d take them apart and show me how they worked…Did that for you, too, didn’t he? After you moved in?” She put the shotgun down beside the Uzi and peered into the backpack, then frowned. 
“...Where’s that pistol of his?” 

Anarchy bent down to look into the backpack himself, but Athena wasn’t mistaken: The main compartment was empty, save for a couple boxes of bullets and a single loose shotgun shell. Anarchy made a disquieted noise in the back of his throat and checked the smaller front compartment, but there was no gun there, either, so he turned back to the locker with a chestful of mounting anxiety. 
He couldn’t prevent the relieved sigh that emptied his lungs when he finally spotted a handgun on the upper shelf; its gunmetal-gray color having blended with the locker shadows and made it easy to miss. 
“Here, found it,” Anarchy said as he handed it down to Athena, feeling his shoulders loosening as the tension left them. He took a split-second backwards glance at the now-empty lockers, then turned back to Athena as his face softened with tired relief. “That’s all of them, right? Thank fucking Christ.”

Athena’s expression didn’t relax, though; she looked puzzled, then concerned, as she turned the pistol over in her hands.
“No...This...This isn’t right. This isn’t the one. Doesn’t it look different?” She looked up expectantly with her question, biting the edge of her bottom lip.
Anarchy looked down at the gun in her hands; sleek and dark and nondescript. 
“Looks like a Glock to me.”
She shook her head at his response, though, looking increasingly unnerved, and turned the gun over again. 
“No,” she replied, an edge of distress making itself apparent in her tone, “He got his pistol used. At a gun show. It was kinda beat up; the...handle part—the grip—it was all worn, remember? And he carved that, like...the cross symbol he has tattoos of, the ‘everlasting contrast’ or whatever? He carved that into the plastic. This isn’t...this is a different gun. He must have gotten a new one. The old one is in there, right?”

Anarchy spun back to the locker, already knowing the truth in his heart but determined to disbelieve it. When he failed to find the Glock, he fervently tore the rest of the room apart: Upended the moving boxes, dug through Kohao’s closet, pulled out every one of the dresser drawers.
“I’ll call Fawkes again,” he found himself saying as he tossed one of Kohao’s innumerable black t-shirts back into the hamper, “I’ll ask her to check her place, maybe he left it there by accident, maybe—”
“Anarchy. You know he’s gotta have it with him,” Athena interrupted, “Like, go ahead and call Fawkes, I want him to have just left it there too! But you know he didn’t. It doesn’t matter how much we want it to not be true.” Her voice shook slightly and Anarchy hated it, even if he felt the same fear she did, cloying and cold in his own chest. He swallowed hard and nodded, knowing she was right.

Sethfire’s brow knotted with clear concern as soon as Anarchy and Athena returned from the bedroom; their expressions must have given their discovery away.
“So...It looks like he has a pistol,” Athena said heavily, making Aetos wince. 
“But I’m gonna call Fawkes,” Anarchy quickly added, “Just...just in case it turns out he left it at her place.” None of the faces around him lit with hope, but he determinedly dialed Fawkes’s number anyway, for the second time that day—now at nearly midnight. She picked up halfway through the second ring.
“So I’m just not allowed to fucking sleep at all, huh, Anarchy?!” she snapped venomously, foregoing a greeting. Anarchy skipped straight to the punch, too:
“Did K-O leave one of his guns there? A pistol?” There was an uneasy pause on the other end of the line in the wake of his abrupt tone. 
“...No. He didn’t bring any of his guns here. And the 21 he bought a couple months back is gone,” Fawkes eventually responded, sounding serious and much less aggressive. “...He hasn’t turned up since this morning, has he?”
“...No.”
“...Is one of his guns missing?”
Anarchy sighed and swallowed hard. He knew she already knew the answer. He gave it to her anyway.
“...Yes.” 

He expected her to curse, or gasp, or something—so her initial dead silence felt sprung and suffocating.
“...Are you going to call the police?” she eventually asked, her voice tight and ambivalent. That ambivalence jolted Anarchy into sudden acknowledgement of the fact that she knew Kohao too—something Anarchy had somehow dismissed or forgotten—but she did know him; knew him well, and she felt Anarchy’s same prickle of anxiety around the idea of her armed ex-boyfriend being confronted by a cop.
“We...We already called them, but...before the gun,” Anarchy said uneasily. “They didn’t take it too seriously. I don’t know what we're gonna do now.”
There was a very loaded pause.
“Keep me updated,” Fawkes eventually said. She sounded terse. Anarchy knew it was fear.
“Yeah. Will do.”

After hanging up the call with Fawkes and returning to the others, the focus fell on the question of calling the police again. Each pro seemed to have endless cons, and it was easy for them to keep talking themselves in circles.
“He bought that gun illegally, too, didn’t he?” Anarchy found himself asking. “Is the trade-off here going to be that we can only save his fucking life by risking sending him to jail?”
“It’s not even that, him going to jail is if we’re lucky!” Athena snapped, throwing her hands out in frustration, “Cops don’t ask questions if they think someone has a gun! If we tell them he does, sure, they’ll take it seriously—but they’ll take it fucking seriously.”
“I mean...at least he’s white,” Anarchy muttered awkwardly, “So, I mean, maybe—”
“That only matters if we trust him not to try to get himself shot. Do you? Because I don’t. I know him and I think if he was in a state and cornered by a cop he’d take that chance with both fucking hands.” 

Athena’s voice was defiant but Anarchy could see the desperation behind her eyes, and he bowed his head in acknowledgement.
“...Yeah, no, I get it. I just dunno what other options we have. But you’re right, ‘Thena, and everything about it’s so fucked up. Even if we did call them, what does them looking for him really...involve? Like...would they wanna go through his shit?”
“If he were just gone, probably not,” Sethfire said with a sigh, taking a moment to polish his glasses on his shirt. “...But with a gun and his mental health history he’d qualify as ‘endangered,’ so...under those circumstances...Maybe. If they thought they might turn up useful information.” 
“‘Information’ like his fuckin’ freak-ass columbiner collages or the fact that all his guns are illegal?” Anarchy asked bitterly, shaking his head. “Again, I don’t want him ending up in jail!” 
“...When it comes to his...arsenal, he actually is not the only one whose jail time we’d need to consider,” Sethfire said slowly, grimacing and touching the tips of his long fingers together. “We’re all technically complicit in his ownership. And with the situation in Vegas so recent...I doubt we could expect much leniency from the courts. If it came up, we would have to refuse a search. Or hide his weapons.”

There was a brief silence in the wake of his words, a lull where Anarchy cursed at Kohao inside his head; not just for being gone, but for the ways in which he’d trapped them all. For forcing Sethfire to have to consider hiding illegal weapons, for carelessly putting everyone at risk if they wanted to find him.
“The gun K-O’s got is still a thing. Even if we threw all his shit into Ridgewood Reservoir, he’d still have that,” Athena said finally, crossing her arms and pressing her lips thin. “We’re stuck here for now. I say we try searching on our own first—we know him better than the fucking police do anyway. If we have to, we’ll come back to this.”
Anarchy nodded his agreement, and both Sethfire and Aetos followed suit: What other options did the four of them have?
God, the four of them.
Anarchy glanced over their diminutive search party and chanced a grimace in Athena’s direction.

“Should we, like...Tweet something?” he asked. She sighed.
“...I want to say yes, but…”
“...but he has a gun on him and we don’t want a stranger finding him.”
“Yeah. We do need more people than just us, though.” She unfolded her arms and seemed to shake herself loose; rolling her shoulders and finding purpose in movement.  “I’m gonna send a mass text to Nightshrike. Let ‘em know what’s going on. Might call Astra. And Gabe.”
“That’s a good move,” Anarchy said, taking heart from her lead and thinking over what he, himself, should do. “Fawkes already knows what’s up, and she asked to be kept updated so...I should call her back. First though, I...I need to call Coahoma.” Anarchy couldn’t keep his voice from getting tighter, and Athena seemed to pick up on it.
“I’ll take care of stuff with Fawkes,” she said. “Don’t worry about it. Call Coah.”
Anarchy nodded stiffly, swallowing hard, and tried to keep the gut-punch of reality from doubling him over.
“Thanks, ‘Thena.”

📅 October 27, 2017

「ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ɪᴍᴘʟɪᴇᴅ sᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇ + ʀᴇғᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴅʀᴜɢs ᴀɴᴅ ᴠɪᴏʟᴇɴᴄᴇ」

Coahoma hadn’t been the easiest person out of Nightshrike to get to know, not by a long shot, but maybe that was part of their now-close kinship. She had seemed to class herself as having been a stray kid as much as he did, and her way of talking around most of her history mirrored his own; it was the fact that both of them most easily opened up about their past by way of talking train-hopping that had first connected them. In getting to know her more deeply, he found that she saw substance abuse as an epidemic and not as personal failure, and she had a way of classing accepting encouragement as a strength rather than indicative of historical weakness. And god, if Anarchy felt in need of anything right then, it was her headstrong ability to turn doubt into fortitude.
“‘Key? What’s going on?” Coahoma groggily mumbled down the line, “It’s fuck-off-o’-clock in the morning. Unless somebody’s dead or dying—”
“Somebody might be,” Anarchy said, unable to keep his voice from cracking. “Kohao’s been gone for 24 hours, Coah. We have no fuckin’ clue where he is and he left his phone...but we’re pretty sure he has a gun. One of his pistols is missing.”
There was a "fuck," and then silence on the other end of the line for a couple beats, then muffled rustling and some furniture’s protest against a shift of weight. Anarchy thought he heard another mumbled voice.
“I’m here, too,” Bayer offered from the background. “What’s the plan?”
Anarchy sighed and cupped his hand to his forehead, sinking into the minute sense of comfort that came from having more support closer at hand. “Well, the police aren’t a real option for us, because—”
“—He has a gun.” Coah completed the sentence for him.
“Yeah. An illegal gun, too. And more in his room. So...we’re gonna search for him ourselves. I don’t know how exactly it’s gonna work, but...can one or both of you be over here in the morning? We need…We’re gonna need help.”
“Coah won’t be off work ‘til mid afternoon, but I can be there by 9,” Bayer said.
“And I’ll be there 4:30 at the latest,” Coahoma said.
Anarchy swallowed hard. “Thank you both.” As he hung up, he couldn’t be bothered to feel too curious about why the two of them were together, or when that had started or who else knew, if anyone. He was just grateful that they were.

Athena was on the phone for slightly longer than Anarchy, and when she regrouped with the rest of them she shared she’d been able to talk to both Fawkes and Astra, and that Astra would likely be coming by some time post-sunrise as well.
With their friends alerted to the situation and offers of help trickling in from those who could make them, the task within the apartment turned to planning. Sleep would have been impossible anyway, so Anarchy and the rest simply forewent even trying: They filled the coffeemaker to capacity and carried on into a plan of action; working through and writing down suggestions for streets to drive, people to call, locations to ask at.
“What, you think we should go into every single convenience store and gas station we see to ask if anyone bought Newports yesterday?” Anarchy asked doubtfully, some time after the sky had begun to pale. Athena bristled at the incredulity in his tone.
“To ask if a 6 foot tall emo with Kohao’s fucking tattoos bought Newports, yes!” she snapped, glaring; “When he’s upset, he chain-smokes! There’s no way he hasn’t bought a pack somewhere.”

Astra showed up no later than 7:15 to pick up Athena, and they set off to start searching: Heading west-bound, towards EoI’s first recording studio. With Anarchy restless and unable to stomach waiting around doing nothing until Bayer arrived, Sethfire agreed to wait at the apartment in case Kohao returned and let Anarchy borrow his car; to take it and head the opposite direction of Athena, to ask around at work and give Raze the promised in-person explanation of why he was taking an emergency day off. Raze was fortunately understanding, and Xenith asked to be texted a picture of Kohao in case it would be good to ask people who came in if they’d seen him. Anarchy voiced how indebted he was to them, but both waved him off.
“Anarchy, I’m pretty sure this is the first favor I’ve ever done you,” Xenith said seriously. “You literally never ask for anything, man, I never have to pick up slack from you. This has to be some serious shit.”
Anarchy nodded and swallowed rather thickly. “Honestly, I’m hoping it’s way less serious than it feels.”

It was on his way back from The Aspen that Anarchy remembered Athena’s instructions from the early morning, and—stressed enough to smoke, himself, but without Kohao to bum a cig from—turned into the Compass Gas just a few blocks from home. He felt awkward doing it, but it was worth a shot, and before tucking the receipt for his Marlboros into his pocket, he ventured the question if someone about his height, with middle-parted dirty blond hair and questionable tattoos, had bought a pack of Newports yesterday.
“...and an inverted cross at the outer corner of his left eye, wearing a black leather jacket, probably, and he has massive gauges,” Anarchy finished his description, expecting nothing. Instead, the cashier nodded.
“Oh, actually, yeah, I remember him! Get a few punks in here a day but I coulda thrown a tennis ball through his lobes, so he stuck out...Ha! Said he was quitting, didn’t he. You’re not holding him accountable, are ya?” the man asked, waggling his eyebrows almost conspiratorially, as if sharing an in-joke. Anarchy felt his throat close.
“No, uh, actually I’m trying to convince him out of that decision. When did you see him? And which—which way did he go? After leaving?”
The man frowned at the panicked edge that had crept into Anarchy’s voice, but shrugged and jabbed a thumb over his shoulder after glancing towards the door.
“Just after sunrise? And he headed south on Logan, pretty sure. All good?”
“Yeah, no, thanks, thank you,” Anarchy said, already striding towards the exit, raising his phone to his ear.

“You were right,” he said as soon as he heard the click of Athena picking up, before she even had the chance to speak; “The cashier at the Compass Gas a few blocks east of us saw him yesterday, in the early morning. He went south on Logan street. I’m gonna meet Bayer back at the apartment, then we’re heading down—”
“Us too—Astra, take a left here—” The hopeful determination in Athena’s tone seized Anarchy by the chest and he all but collapsed into the driver’s seat of Seth’s sedan, pressing the phone hard against the helix of his ear and bowing his forehead to the steering wheel.
“We have to find him,” Anarchy said, already postured for prayer and his voice following that; quiet but fervent: “We have to find him; he told the cashier he was planning on ‘quitting.’” He heard Athena’s breath catch, but she turned it into a purposeful inhale, one of the same kind to use when lifting weights.
“We’ll find him,” she said assuredly. “I’ll get word out that we have a trail. We’re going to find him.”

Anarchy had only just barely gotten back to the apartment and was glancing at a map while handing the car keys back to Sethfire when Bayer phoned.
“I’m pulling in, should I come up or keep the engine going here in the parking lot?” he asked.
Anarchy immediately turned to the door, motioning for Sethfire to follow: The faster they all got moving, the better.
“We’re on our way down; I talked to someone who saw K-O,” Anarchy said; “He was—”
“Headed south on Logan; I got the text,” Bayer finished the sentence for him. “Astra said she and Athena were headed that way too. I’ll let you direct me when you’re down and shoot the others a message in the meantime.”
“Okay, yeah.” The line clicked and Sethfire pulled the map back up on his own phone as the pair of them made for the elevator.

“So, Logan terminates at the Aquaduck flea market,” Sethfire explained as the elevator descended; “I figure we pass it on Fountain Avenue and turn left. The others are coming back this way; we can all reconnect here, at the end of Flatlands.” He hovered one of his long fingers over the satellite view of the dead-end’s pull-off, a flat of pale grey that came to a sudden halt in a sprawl of green and blue.
“What’s there?” Anarchy asked, peering closer at the phone.
“Betts Creek, the water treatment plant...A string of parks along the inlet.” Sethfire zoomed out. “And the Gateway Center.”
Anarchy shook his head at the same moment the elevator doors dinged open. The creek and the parks made something stir in his chest and felt promising, but the idea of Kohao having gone on a one-way trip to a J.C. Penney made him want to scoff. 
“He wouldn’t be at a mall,” he said firmly as they stepped out of the elevator. Sethfire nodded shallowly, his mouth downturned, but didn’t respond; Anarchy gave his upper arm a clapped squeeze.
“The parks,” he emphasized, summoning as much of Athena’s tone of certitude as he could, “Those sound right.” With a half-forced smile that might have come out more like a grimace, he strode towards the exit; knowing Sethfire and his long legs could keep pace. 

Anarchy was still the first out of the lobby doors, and Bayer, idling curbside, unlocked the doors of his worn out red toyota and rolled a window down.
“Hey, ‘Key. Hop in.”
Anarchy nodded and quickly waved Sethfire on towards his own vehicle as he ducked into the passenger seat.
“We’ll meet you down at Betts Creek!” Anarchy called out over the slam of his car door. Sethfire waved a loose thumbs-up of confirmation without turning around.
“I’ll pick up Aetos,” he called back as he headed for his parking space; “And tell Athena the rendezvous point. See you there.”

“Direct me,” Bayer said as his old car rumbled forward with a lurch. “But put your seatbelt on first.”
They were pulling out of the parking lot at street speed when a familiar black car pulled in equally fast; forcing Bayer to brake hard to avoid T-boning it. Anarchy knocked his forehead against his phone screen with the sudden halt. The other car, too, swerved to a stop; hopping one wheel up onto the curb beside them. Gracian rolled down the passenger side window and Gabe leaned across him to yell from the driver’s seat.
“Where are we headed?” he called out.
“South on Logan, to Betts Creek,” Anarchy answered, gesturing left. 
Gabe nodded and gave him some fraction of a salute: “We’ll follow you!”

With the twins in tow, Anarchy and Bayer drove on, down past the minimart towards East New York. Kohao was nowhere along Logan as they drove it, but Anarchy hadn’t really expected him to be: It had been over 24 hours since he’d allegedly headed south from the Compass Gas.
They and their companions’ cars pulled up to meet at the dead end road, with only a few minutes between the arrivals of Athena and Astra—who’d had to drive almost twice the distance—and Sethfire and Aetos, who had done a brief circuit of the lattice of crowded streets intersecting near Logan’s terminus, just in case. Kohao had been nowhere to be seen, though, and it was the strip of parks at the end of Fountain & Flatlands that the search really wound up focusing on. Clambering out of or off their respective vehicles, they pulled parkland maps up on eight separate phones; looking, Anarchy observed without much humor, rather like a flock of Pokemon GO!ers at risk of starting a mosh-pit. 
After only brief deliberation, they split up for the different parks, with agreements to touch base as they went through. Anarchy volunteered himself and Bayer for half of Spring Creek Park, the one that felt most promising—and if they turned up nothing there, to even try searching the nameless land parcel north of it...And anywhere else they could get to, really: Whatever needed to be done. They’d find him. They’d find him. 
He and Bayer pulled away, heading off behind Astra and Athena, the latter of which Anarchy was already on the phone with by their first turn; she’d immediately called him to clarify where the dividing line for the Spring Creek searches would be. As he struggled to both check his map and keep Bayer informed about what lane to be in, out of the blue, Athena interrupted one of his anxious mumbles with “Fuhgeddaboudit, ‘Key, we’ll find him. Yeah?” He saw her arm out the window in the car ahead of him, gesturing to the road sign they were passing: “Leaving Brooklyn: Fuhgeddaboudit.”
He forced an optimistic huff. “Thanks.”
“It’s a sign,” she said.
“It sure is.”

It was a perfect day, really: A Friday, windless and clear, in the low 60s. It was no surprise to find people at the parks, and no surprise either that the more conventionally-dressed ones looked rather alarmed to be approached. Bayer’s dark eyebrows and serious expression left him looking chronically stern; his heavy tattooing and black leather jacket did him no favors in terms of tempering his intimidation factor. Anarchy had visible facial scarring, and with both of them standing at or over 6’ tall, they tended to have at least a couple inches on the people they talked to. Anarchy worried that people might be shaking their heads ‘no’ when asked if they’d seen someone by Kohao’s description because they worried for the safety of the person these two imposing strangers were searching for; Bayer slowly blinked and, tiredly, offered the opinion that sometimes scared people were more honest.
It didn’t matter either way, in the end. No one said they had seen Kohao, and he wasn’t there. Hope kept distorting Anarchy’s vision and driving him nuts: He and Bayer caught glimpses of people roaming the parks who, from a distance or in his peripheral vision, could have been him: Black leather jacket, blond-brown hair—and then, closer up or in focus, they turned out not to be. Anarchy found himself irrationally hating total strangers; glaring daggers at some oblivious guy dressed all in black, who happened to be just about 6’, sporting a shock of blond-ish hair and even gauges, though they were too small. Anarchy couldn’t help it: He despised him for not being Kohao, and almost wished himself crazy enough to confront him; because how dare he be here, in this park, right now? Dressed like that, looking so much like him? 
Anarchy tried to reign himself in and squash down the misleading hopefulness; to retreat towards Kohao’s tried-and-true mindset of self-protective pessimism. It didn’t work, couldn’t work: They moved from park to park and Anarchy was himself and he wanted to hope, every time, even if it hurt. At one point he felt his heart leap to his throat at the sight of a black-clad figure sitting, slouched, on a lonely bench; the one farthest from the main body of the park—and he was positive: Kohao, as always, dressed in monochrome and nursing terrible posture. It turned out, on closer inspection, to be a large, abandoned, black garbage bag. Anarchy wanted to kick himself. He kicked it instead.

The area beside Betts Creek turned out to be intermittently boggy and almost too overgrown to work through; Anarchy and Bayer tried bushwhacking off the end of 155th, but fighting the undergrowth felt fruitless and disheartening. If Kohao had come through, surely he would have left some sign of a broken trail in his wake. They gave up and headed west, but finished their shot up Fresh Creek without finding any leads other than the trash bag, the disappointment of which Anarchy was still recovering from when Athena’s name rang up on his cell.

He picked up, hoping against hope for good news; a ‘we found him,’ an audible smile. He found himself immediately crushed by Athena’s apologetic tone and her “So...no dice with us.” 
“Me and Astra are heading back to the apartment to reconvene with the rest of the guys,” she continued. “Are you and Bayer done where you are, or finishing up...?” 
Anarchy’s heart sank. “Yeah, we’re basically done...Nothing. Everyone else is heading back too?” he asked. He knew he sounded defeated and Athena’s voice also grew heavy.
“...Yeah. Gabe texted, and Sethy and I just got off the phone...No one’s had any luck. Sorry, ‘Key. We’ll regroup and figure it out, ok?”
“Right. Well…see you in a bit.” He hung up and wordlessly followed Bayer back to the car, hanging his head. They’d searched so long, so hard, and turned up nothing. For some reason Anarchy had felt certain Kohao would be down there, at a park, just sitting on a bench or on the creek shore; skipping stones and scaring the shit out of all of them. Anarchy knew his best friend’s mind was almost always a mess, and from how much lyrical work he churned out—too much to ever polish and publish all of—it had to be loud in there, too. Even for how much heavy music Kohao blasted, there was a disdain with which he talked about people and urbanity and noise, and Anarchy had just been sure that he’d be sitting somewhere in the pockets of quiet the city still had on offer. Sitting and thinking. Still thinking, still contemplating. Surely. Please, still thinking.
...The parks and the people in them had offered up nothing, though. Apparently all any of them had found was ever-faltering false hope and leaves turning gold. Kohao had consistently complained about a million things aside from city noise, and one of them had been fall. Fuck Halloween candy and pretty foliage, he hated the season and Anarchy found himself in sudden agreement that afternoon, on the way back to the apartment with Bayer: The sun was lower in the sky at 5pm than it should be, than he needed it to be; because he needed to find his friend and he needed daylight, needed more time, and he was being robbed of both. The cool air and longer shadows cast by graffiti-branded buildings over the litter-strewn back-lots of East New York sparked something aside from anger in him, though, and on a whim he had Bayer drop him off along New Lots—with a promise to swing back around in 20’ after refilling his gas tank. With his jaw set, Anarchy headed west towards familiar ground.

Being back at the squat lifted the hairs on the back of Anarchy’s neck, even if the flakeboard walls of the unfinished building had now been knocked down and replaced by muddled junk. The street was the same, the smell was the same, and the gutter was still filled with syringes and cigarette butts. Fortunately, that meant that despite years having passed, the occupants of the lot would still likely be cut from a cloth Anarchy was familiar with. Going on a hunch, he approached with a cigarette between his teeth and the pack in hand. Sure enough, a man lingering at the lot approached instantly to ask to bum a cig.
“Sure, here,” Anarchy said, handing one over, “And actually, man, you got a second? I’m looking for someone.”
The stranger shrugged his assent as he lit up.
“Thanks. The guy I’m looking for—white guy, about this tall,” Anarchy said, gesturing to just above his own temple; “dirty blond hair, parted down the middle. Black leather jacket and combat boots, probably. Gauged ears. Tattoo of a gun on his left hand, knuckles say ‘DEAD EYES.’ Have you seen someone like that? Today or yesterday?”
“Might have, why? He owe you money? He owe you dope?”
“I’m just looking for him,” Anarchy said flatly, the evasive answer but direct questions having set his teeth on edge.
“Mm. Well. I can’t be sure if I’ve seen him.”
Anarchy knew the stranger’s tone and rolled his eyes but dug out his wallet, hating the whole song-and-dance but knowing it was his only option.
“$5 tell you if you’ve seen him?” Anarchy asked sourly, handing over the bill. The stranger pocketed it with a buoyant grin.
“Seen lots of people in leather jackets walk by. New York City’s a big one, man,” he quipped. Anarchy’s jaw clenched and he shoved his balled fists into his pockets, fighting the overwhelming urge to take a few teeth out of the man’s shit-eating smile. 
“Yeah, thanks. Fuck you anyway.” Anarchy started to walk away, but a few steps in he couldn’t help himself and turned around. His posture softened against his will.
“...How about—not just the past couple days—any time—but someone about that same height, but with...with black hair. Probably long? And a really scarred up neck. And...green eyes. But—light green. Seafoam green.” Anarchy knew he wasn’t going to get any kind of worthwhile answer but waited anyway. The guy raised his eyebrows. Anarchy hated him. 
“Got another $5?”
“Is New York City a big fuckin’ city again?”
“New York City’s a big fuckin’ city, man.” The stranger waved and turned to leave, trailing cigarette smoke. “Good luck looking.”

Sunset came too early for Anarchy’s taste, forcing friends to head for home and searching to be put on hold. He and Athena sat together at the breakfast bar while Sethfire looked on, and hushedly discussed the search of the parks near Howard Beach: Clicking over the map and trying to decide if they were too big to have been properly checked out, maybe, or if Kohao could have crossed the bay. Meanwhile, Aetos sent off a few emails to his college classmates, asking for a summary of the lecture he missed and the class he’d likely be absent from the following day. The relative quiet was broken by the sudden ring of Sethfire’s phone, and he startled at the caller ID in a way that drew attention: He went rigid and answered too quickly, jumping to his feet and all but bolting for the balcony with the phone to his ear.
“No, no, I’m sorry—we haven’t found him yet…”
He shut the glass door behind him with a snap, plunging the room into silence. Anarchy and Athena found one another’s eyes and shared mutual looks of confusion; evidently she had no more idea than he did whose call would cause that kind of stiffness in Sethfire’s shoulders. Aetos hadn’t looked up from his phone, apparently not noticing the secretive behavior. With no clarity to be gleaned from him, either, Anarchy sat up straighter and watched Sethfire’s tense silhouette beyond the balcony door. When Sethfire eventually came back in, his face seemed more deeply lined than before; his eyes darker, more worried. Anarchy and Athena exchanged another glance.
“So...who was that?” Athena asked. Sethfire sighed, looking rather ‘caught.’
“...Mrs. Winters,” he answered after a lurched pause. “Kohao’s mother. Asking for an update. I called her earlier today to…alert his parents to the situation.”

Kohao’s mother? Anarchy stared at Sethfire, dumbfounded, feeling like someone had pulled the plug on his brain and all his coherent thoughts had drained from it. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears for a moment, threatening to deafen him with the fact that this was real, this was real life and Sethfire was worried enough to involve Kohao’s parents.
“...Was it to ask them if they’d seen him?” Athena asked quietly. “Or to…” She hesitated, something guilty creeping into her expression. She swallowed. “...to warn them?” 
“...Warn them?” Sethfire asked. His voice was soft, and it was only barely a question: His eyes were tired and too close to grief for Anarchy’s liking. Athena shifted in her seat and started wringing her hands; she suddenly seemed childlike and intensely uncomfortable.
“I, uh...I don’t know, I mean...I don’t think he would, you know—but I guess I didn’t then, either—but I think so even less, now, with this, but he...” She faltered through every word and then started talking directly to the floor, in halting, disjointed rushes: 
“He’s just—kind of unpredictable, you know, he always has been, and he’s in a bad state and he’s always said that thing—‘If I’m gonna die, I’m gonna take a few with me’?—and I know it’s probably just bravado or whatever but—but Audri brought it up today because she was worried about Fawkes and I know he wouldn’t with her but I just—since he’s had issues with his parents—I got nervous about if you thought...because he has a gun—?”

Anarchy’s jaw dropped and he turned to stare. The possibility that Athena was floating hadn’t crossed his mind; couldn’t cross his mind: He rejected it on instinct and wanted to resent her for even thinking of it.
“What are you even talking about?!” he exclaimed, aghast; “He wouldn’t do—that. I don’t give a shit about anything else, what dumb stuff he says—I know him. He wouldn’t.”
“I’m not saying I really think he would,” Athena quickly clarified, waving her hands; “I was just—”
“People in pain can make mistakes, true, I see the worry,” Sethfire gently ceded to Athena, setting Anarchy on edge with his diplomatic tone; “But I do not believe the worst of Kohao.”
“What’s the fucking worst of him if ‘he’s a whackjob who even might ‘mistakenly’ kill his parents because he’s sad’ isnt it?” Anarchy barked, unable to keep the pain out of his voice. He felt awful; lost. He couldn’t look at Athena. He hadn’t snapped at Sethfire since he was seventeen.
“I do not think that,” Sethfire said firmly. “I recognize, like Athena does, that desperate people and firearms are not a good combination—but you can trust that on the list of outcomes I worry most about in terms of likelihood, that is not one of them.” Sethfire looked agitated; Anarchy was startled by the abrupt, almost choked-up quality of his voice. “Again. I do not believe the worst of Kohao.”
“Neither do I, Anarchy,” Athena said, almost pleadingly. “I really don’t.”

“...Good,” Anarchy said. He took a deep breath and looked down, feeling drained and uncomfortably exposed as the tension left his shoulders. He glanced back up and swallowed hard against the raw, vulnerable ache in his throat. 
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know we can't let this be breaking us apart and shit...It’s just that he’s not like that. He isn’t.”
“We know, ‘Key, we know. I know,” Athena reassured. 
“...and it’s not breaking us apart.” Aetos joined the rest of them beside the breakfast bar, his quiet voice firm and his eyes serious. “We’re all in this together, and we’re all on Kohao’s side. Every single one of us just wants him home and safe.”
“Yeah.” Athena agreed. “We’ve just...gotta find his sorry ass and get him back here instead of freaking ourselves out.” She shook her head and grabbed onto Anarchy’s upper arm, giving it a squeeze. She offered him a smile. “I’m sorry. It’s gonna be okay. I swear I’m right there with you; it’s just easy to get stuck in my own head a bit right now...but it’ll be alright. Right?”
Anarchy managed to give her a nod and felt himself relax a bit further with it. “Right. Yeah.”
Sethfire nodded as well, then cast a glance back across the room, towards the balcony door. The sky outside was dark and lacked any clouds to catch the city lights below.
“It has gotten late,” he said rather heavily. “We all need to rest; it will likely be another early start tomorrow. Aetos, shall we…?”
Aetos glanced at his watch, frowned, and nodded. “Yeah, probably.” He gave Anarchy’s upper arm a swift squeeze, then offered Athena a hug that she returned fiercely enough to draw an ‘oof’ out of him.
“Until sun-up, then, huh?” he said when they parted; “...Hang in there.”

After a brief exchange of goodbyes, Anarchy got the door for the departing pair; he apologetically caught Sethfire's eye as he passed. Even without words, Sethfire must have been able to read his expression, because he stopped in the doorway to incline his head and offer Anarchy a small smile.
“I’ve lost no faith in Kohao’s character. Nor has Athena. Allow us to be too cautious,” he said. He sounded exhausted, and Anarchy became suddenly, extremely aware of the fact that all of them had been awake for over twenty-four hours straight.
“No, I...I’m sorry. We’re all just tired and stressed to shit. I know you don’t think he’d really...y’know. Kill anyone.”
A shadow flitted across Sethfire’s face; he looked out toward the hall with a heavy sigh. 
Anarchy shifted his weight and frowned. “...Like, aside from himself.”
Sethfire looked back to Anarchy. His small smile had gone grim and didn’t quite reach his eyes. 
“...May he prove all of us wrong,” he said. “...Get some rest. Maybe we’ll find him tomorrow.”
Sethfire patted Anarchy on the arm and took his leave, letting Anarchy stand at the doorway and stare down the hall in his wake, clinging to the last sentence and the concept that—despite everything—Sethfire might still, however hollowly, hope.

📅 October 28, 2017

Having run the previous day on no sleep whatsoever, Anarchy knew he needed to rest—but sleep felt like slack and slack felt criminal, given the circumstances, and between his stress and guilt, Anarchy was lucky to fall asleep at all. It failed to rejuvenate him, though, and was repeatedly shattered by nightmares where he opened Hunter’s casket and was greeted by blood-matted blond hair instead of his brother’s face, or where he was sixteen again and pleading with the Boss that his friend was missing and needed to be found, but when asked what his friend’s name was, reached for two names at once and couldn’t manage to say either. “Check the morgue, maybe,” a squat kid said, his voice rippled by the dream. Anarchy kneeled on the ground, sick and aching, not yet seventeen. “Go fuck yourself,” he snarled back, “He’ll be back any day now!” 
Anarchy woke up a full hour before his alarm, his skin slick with sweat, and couldn’t bear to attempt to return to sleep. He downed one of Kohao’s energy drinks and clung stubbornly to the idea of Kohao being pissed at him for it when he got back home. Any day now. Any day now.

Going back to the squat the previous day, with everything going on, had dredged up memories Anarchy had carefully buried: His nightmares had breathed them back to life, and as he chain-smoked out on the balcony, echoing his absent friend, he could feel the grit and gravel digging into his knees again. He’d been underfed and overworked, sore and worn weak…

“Jesus, dude.” The drawling voice of another squat kid cut through the air, but Anarchy couldn’t find the strength to respond or even look—he felt sick and his hands flew to clutch his stomach as he vomited a mouthful of milky bile onto the dusty ground. He heard the other boy scoff.
“Christ. You’re killing yourself, man. He’s dead. You gotta move on.”
Anarchy wrenched his head around, furiously swiping his hand across his mouth.
“You don’t know anything!” he snarled, “He’ll be back any day now. Go fuck yourself.”
The other boy looked back impassively, almost bored. 
“Uh-huh, whatever you say.”

Anarchy had wanted to throw himself into a fight, then; had wanted to physically claw the dismissiveness from the other kid’s tone. But kneeling, aching, on the ground, he’d realized how weak he’d become. The kid he’d been glaring at was maybe fourteen, two years his junior. Almost three. Probably shorter by a good half foot or more. But that boy hadn’t been using heavily, maybe not at all—still spending his money on food and not tar.The words “You’re killing yourself, man” had rung in Anarchy’s ears as he’d noticed how his clothes hung off of him, how his ribs dug into his arms where he hugged them against his sunken stomach. He’d realized he couldn’t take that kid in a fight, and his defiance had died with his strength.

He frowned to himself out on the balcony, the early-morning air cool and clear except for his cigarette smoke. His arms were well-muscled, now; his stomach firm and not hollow. He felt all that old, restless defiance burning dully in his bloodstream again but he had no-one to fight and it was the lack of anyone to challenge that seemed to be draining his hope this time around: He could defy only himself, and physical strength won nothing, there. He put his forehead to the balcony railing and heard the sliding door open behind him.
“You okay?” Athena asked softly, walking up beside him. He felt her hand on his back, and she rubbed a gentle, looped shape between his shoulder blades with her thumb. He slowly straightened up but couldn’t look at her, for fear he’d cry.
“This is a fucking nightmare, ‘Thena,” he said. “It doesn’t feel like nightmares woke me up, I just lay down and had a few other ones before coming back to this one. When will it let up?” 
She was quiet for a little too long.
“We’ll find him,” she said finally. “The others will be here in a couple hours. No one’s giving up; we’ll find him.”
“Yeah,” Anarchy replied, trying to draw on her faith. (Whatever you say.)

The search picked up again once morning proper rolled around, with those who were able, or able to take a consecutive day off work. Coah had taken a personal day, maybe more than one, and probably ensured she wouldn’t be getting days off for a while afterwards in order to show: Anarchy couldn’t manage to voice his appreciation, stumbling over choked up words caught halfway between gratitude and greeting.
“He’s my friend, too, ‘Key, even if we don’t hang out a lot: You don’t need to thank me. Let’s find him, yeah?” Coahoma said emphatically, the drive in her tone heartening, even if her eyes stayed too worried for true relief.

Any ease Coahoma’s presence was able to offer ended up succumbing to the heaviness of the task at hand. The squat had been an apparent dead end, but Sethfire and Aetos still headed further west; back to the George Washington Bridge, to see if a different piece of the past had called to Kohao. Any piece of history with an address attached was getting someone sent that way. Anarchy eventually found himself alone with Bayer and the twins, waiting on information, poring over a map and deciding where to go, themselves. 
“We’ve done a fair amount of searching west of Logan, already, since that’s the most familiar territory. But maybe he went east,” Gabe said, running a finger along the road they’d driven so many times the previous day. “Maybe he wouldn’t want somewhere familiar.”
Bayer grimaced but nodded. His skin looked sallower, to Anarchy; his golden eyes had tarnished. He indicated a route with his pinkie finger.
“True...He could have gone past The Hole and is somewhere along Conduit...it’s noisy there.” 

Anarchy hated the reference to sound; the thin veneer applied to “and that gunshot could have gone unheard.” The nightmares, the conversation at the squat, and the growing number of allusions to the potential of his best friend’s death made Anarchy feel sick somewhere deeper than his stomach, like he’d rattled the cages of ghosts buried bone-deep, soul-deep. He went along on the search of Conduit Blvd and barely spoke to anyone, caught up in his own head. Aches with no point of origin plagued him and time slipped by, excruciating. They turned up nothing, of course. And regrouping back at the apartment with a couple of the others, also empty-handed, provided no relief.
He took a moment by himself with his anguish while waiting to be thrown another street name to accompany someone along, letting the others brainstorm and letting his brain storm. His internal deluge lacked an ark and as he blankly observed how low the sun had gotten in the sky, he struggled against the pull of his ever-sinking heart.
“Hey, ‘Key. I see you pulling on your brother’s tags a lot.” Coahoma appeared at his side and gave his arm a sympathetic squeeze. “I'm here for you, alright? So’s Bay. We all know how stuff comes back up.”
Anarchy nodded, sighed, tried to speak, and failed. He nodded again.
“Thanks,” he croaked. There was more he wanted to say, but couldn’t manage to. He hadn’t even realized the tags were in his hand, yet he’d worn redness into the tip of his thumb with how many times he’d rubbed it over the engraved names.
“No KIA on him yet, right? Don’t give up,” Coah murmured, giving Anarchy’s arm a final pat.

Whatever spark Coahoma’s words offered couldn’t change the fact that the last searches turned up nothing. Their friends were forced to leave; the sun eventually slipped below the horizon. As the last of it's amber light faded from the sky, the night claimed another fruitless day. Athena sat with her head in her hands at the breakfast bar, either not knowing that Bayer was still there, zipping up his jacket, or no longer caring to wear her mask around him. Her resignation was suffocating to Anarchy, and the air in the apartment felt thicker than water, heavier than lead; less capable of carrying sound than acoustic foam. The ring of Athena’s phone seemed tinny and out-of-place, almost as much so as the cheery tone she answered it with.
“Hey, Colin! No, it’s okay, thanks for checking! Maybe tomorrow...” 
The lightness of her voice was at direct odds with her dull eyes, and her steps dragged on her walk over to stare blankly through the balcony’s glass door, her phone still pressed to her ear.

Watching her, Anarchy felt a lump rise to his throat. The hopelessness he heard behind Athena’s “maybe tomorrow” rang too familiar, and he felt thrown again into the past; into a memory reel of his own increasingly faithless “he’ll be back soon”s from the days and weeks and months after Chey had vanished. His head swimming and heart aching, Anarchy wondered if this was the start of being stuck there all over again: Losing hope in a series of infinite and empty “tomorrow”s.
He was pulled from his bleak contemplation by Bayer’s hand on his shoulder.
“‘Key. You hearing me?” Bayer asked, the tilt of his brow letting Anarchy know that he must have had to repeat himself a couple times.
“Guess not. Sorry.”
Bayer’s mouth twitched unreadably and he tilted his head over his shoulder.
“C’mon,” he said, gesturing for Anarchy to step out into the hall with him.
As soon as the door shut behind them, Bayer turned around to face Anarchy, his eyes searching.
“Okay. Talk to me,” he said, “I know that this sucks. I know. It’s hell. But you…you look dead. People have to say things three times before you hear them. Where’s your head at? ‘Cause it’s not here.”
His tone was softer-spoken than his words alone would’ve indicated, and the concern that drove his voice was visible in his eyes; tangible in the grip of his hand on Anarchy’s shoulder, and Anarchy hesitated. At first he didn’t know if he would find it within himself to respond, and then he didn’t know if he could: He opened his mouth and then wordlessly closed it again, habitual reluctance rendering him silent until Bayer’s expectant air finally compelled him to speak—however haltingly.
“It’s just...it’s happened before,” Anarchy eventually said, twisting his wrist uneasily; “Or...sort of. I don’t know. But I...back when I was on the streets, right, I had...there was...someone. Ch—...yeah. And...and we were close, okay, like me and K-O, and he just fuckin’ disappeared one night too. It fuckin’ kills me, it’s never stopped killing me, and now it’s happening all over again. It’s just these...these damn echoes. I can’t deal with not knowing.”
Bayer just stared for a beat after Anarchy stopped speaking, and for that moment Anarchy started to worry that Bayer would break character and press. Bayer was Bayer, though, and he gave a short nod of understanding before stiffly patting Anarchy’s shoulder.
“...I think we might know with this one, ‘Key,” he murmured heavily. “Keep your head on straight.”

After Bayer left, Anarchy tried to pretend to himself that he didn’t think his friend was right; tried to convince himself back towards towards Coahoma’s words or Athena’s early faith. But when he came back in from the hall, Athena was at the breakfast bar again, her head back in her hands, and didn’t even look up when the door clicked shut behind him. He walked over and put a hand on her shoulder; she turned around in the stool and leaned wordlessly against his chest. He wanted to try and comfort her. He couldn’t bring himself to lie.

Athena turned in just past twilight, and Anarchy was considering following suit, hopelessness weighing his whole body down like water. Before he made the decision to, though, his phone lit up with Anjali's name and pure irrationality overtook him for the split second where he thought that she might have Kohao with her, somehow, anyhow. It was only when she greeted the click of him picking up with, “‘Key? Are you alright? I haven’t seen you at the reservoir in three days; you never miss a Saturday,” that he realized he’d never managed to tell her what was going on. He was certain he’d intended to, but she lived in Ridgewood and worked in Manhattan and she just hadn’t managed to be in the crosshairs of any potential search efforts, and those had been the whole of his focus.
“...Sorry, Anji,” Anarchy said. His voice cracked. “I should have called. But Kohao’s been missing for three days, he’s still gone, I’m…”
“What do you mean? I could have sworn I just saw him a couple days ago—Thursday morning? He was leaving the cemeteries when I was rounding the reservoir—he was headed home, it looked like...” Her voice faltered; Anarchy’s heart seized.
“You saw him? He was still here that morning?” Anarchy wanted to cry; wanted to break down in a way he hadn’t in years. Kohao had still been just blocks away when Anarchy had first started to panic. Just a few blocks; a distance enough to run. He’d been southbound but still close and catchable and Anarchy hadn’t known and now he was gone.
“Can I do anything, ‘Key? What do you need, like…?” Anjali seemed able to sense Anarchy’s devastation and leapt to fix it; “...Anything. Are you all still looking for him?”
“Yeah, of course we are,” Anarchy replied, his throat aching at the implication of her “still.”
“Can I help?”
Anarchy nearly choked. He remembered the late nights when he and Anjali were dating, where he’d be mostly quiet and she and Kohao would effuse endlessly about niche history he had no knowledge about. Sure, Anjali and Kohao never hung out alone to his knowledge, but he could almost hear the shimmer in her eyes with her offer of help, and it nearly brought him to his knees to know that Anjali wanted Kohao home just as much as any of his friends did.
“Yeah, actually, Anji…could you come over tomorrow? Sometime in the morning?”
“Of course, ‘Key. I’ll be there.”

That night he struggled again to sleep, even though his eyes ached with tiredness, the dark circles forming beneath them as sore as bar-brawl shiners. It felt impossible to shut off his thoughts and the more Anarchy mulled it over—the longer he sat with nothing else to occupy his racing mind—the more sense it made that Kohao had taken the specific gun he had. Anarchy found himself standing in Kohao’s bedroom, staring at the weapons he and Athena had pulled out and gone through. He bent over the faded high school backpack. Looking into it like a fortune teller into a crystal ball, Anarchy thought back to the knowledge he had that Athena didn’t: The secret that Kohao had spilled to him two years ago, shaking and sick and only barely pulling himself out of psychosis. Kohao hadn’t given up easily, the last time he’d walked into school with this backpack on. When he’d been confronted by Sethfire, he’d fought—and Anarchy remembered...that haunted voice, in the retelling: “I had my hand on my pistol...I could have killed him!”

It had been the pistol, that pistol. The gun now missing was the one Anarchy knew made his friend feel sick with himself, fall shaking to the ground; was the gun he’d hallucinate in his hand and feel himself pull the trigger of. Anarchy clenched and unclenched his fists, terrified the gun would finally break free of fantasy and fulfill its role as a murder weapon in the real world. 
Red-eyed but restless, alone in the dark room, listening to the city outside grow quieter as night deepened, Anarchy spent an hour systematically unloading the rest of Kohao’s weapons without truly understanding why. He just felt driven to; a compulsion, an anxious itch in his hands—like somehow if he emptied all the rest, the one his best friend held would find itself sympathetically—magically—rendered harmless too.

📅 October 29, 2017

「ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ɪᴍᴘʟɪᴇᴅ + ᴀᴛᴛᴇᴍᴘᴛᴇᴅ sᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇ, ᴀs ᴡᴇʟʟ ᴀs ᴍɪɴᴏʀ ᴠɪᴏʟᴇɴᴄᴇ」

The fourth day of Kohao’s absence dawned bleak and grey, the sky itself defying hope with its low clouds and light rain. Anarchy only knew he’d slept due to the fact that he’d woken up; otherwise he felt unrested enough to have spent the night sleepless. He looked the part, too: Raising his gaze to the bathroom mirror in the watery morning light found his reflection peering dully back, dark circles beneath his eyes making them look sunken and bruised. He hadn’t shaved in a couple days, either, he realized, and finally understood why so many of his friends had begun to treat him as though he were made of glass: He looked like he was falling apart.
He turned away from his reflection. He didn’t care.

Sethfire came downstairs only to leave again: To drive around the neighborhood, just in case; and Aetos, too, stopped by only briefly before heading out to church. He’d almost certainly leave early, he said, shifting his weight from foot-to-foot as he lingered on the doormat, and he’d ask the people in his congregation if they’d seen Kohao, too—just in case. Anarchy stared blankly back at him, and even Athena’s “Okay, thanks,” failed to sound enthused. Anarchy figured she, like him, felt the chances of a church being a lead on their missing friend were next to nil. Judging by the hunch of Aetos’s posture as he left, though…? He was of the same opinion.

It wasn’t that much later that a knock roused Anarchy and Athena from their bleak mutual silence, and Anarchy jumped at the chance to do something, anything.
“I’ll get it,” he said quickly. He was expecting Sethfire, but when he opened the door, it was Fawkes who he found standing out in the hallway, having arrived over an hour early. She skipped the verbal greeting and pulled him into a hug, then—still wordlessly—strode straight into Athena’s arms…and if Anarchy had felt hopeless before, the feeling somehow tripled. 

Anarchy and Fawkes had started out close; they’d had a kinship from their first interaction that had never faded. But distance had started to creep in, minutely, over time. It’d been awkward and unspoken, with Anarchy knowing he was jealous of her and her entirely unaware of it. And though he cared deeply for them both, once they started dating, Fawkes had just never rung through as being particularly good for Kohao, either, to Anarchy—but he couldn’t comfortably tell either of them that without it feeling like betrayal or selfishness. The end result was that he’d become somewhat distant from Fawkes once she became his best friend’s girlfriend. That distance didn’t mean that he didn’t notice how her typically haughty, confident eyes looked hollow now. They did; and all her fire and bared teeth and I-Don’t-Give-A-Fuck-ery had fallen away to be replaced by how she and Athena leaned into one another: Neither of them cried, but they clutched at each other like mourners at a funeral, and the resignation in both their postures felt purely excruciating to Anarchy.
“I told my landlord what’s going on, generally,” Fawkes said dully to Athena as they released the embrace, “She told me she asked everyone on staff downstairs to keep an eye out.”
“Maybe she’ll call up with a lead, then,” Athena replied, but the optimism in her tone rang hollow and deafeningly fake.

Sethfire returned from a brief, superfluous circuit of the neighborhood, looking as deeply exhausted as Anarchy had ever seen him; he barely spoke and his wave of greeting ended up halved—as though even lifting his arm was too great an effort. He’d only just come back in with his tired eyes and lack of news before he stepped out again, onto the balcony, to take a long phone call. In an uncharacteristic display of restlessness, he alternated between pacing—the balcony rendered only two strides in length for him and his long legs—and tapping the railing he intermittently leaned on. Anarchy couldn’t parse the nature of the conversation beyond the glass door; he could only wait in silence with the others. When Sethfire finally hung up and came back inside, there was a different weight to how he carried himself, a heaviness that made itself present in his voice as well when he informed them all that he unfortunately had no new leads.
Anjali arrived only shortly after Bayer did, not bothering to brush away the shimmering rain-droplets that clung to her long, dark hair before pulling Anarchy into a hug. She didn’t speak a word at first, and initially no one even greeted her; they just looked on, their expressions clouded by grief, until Bayer broke the silence and thanked her for coming. Voices were stilted and clipped to a hush as everyone attempted to organize themselves, even though there wasn’t any reason to be keeping quiet. The air itself felt too vulnerable, too sad, too fragile, and Anarchy fled from the why of it all into smoking out on the balcony until the others started on the day’s search-party work, and Athena retrieved him to lean over a map again and voice his input.

It seemed that the group had wordlessly begun to divide into two teams; two roles. The girls were the ones who were at least acting as though their missing friend was alive but simply lost, in need of finding or tracking down, like an escaped pet. But they’d all already asked after Kohao anywhere they felt held any likelihood of him passing through or visiting, and Anarchy felt almost certain that they were just going to be wandering, now, directionless. ...Then again, maybe he would be as well: The list of places they could think of that Kohao might decide to die was growing shorter, too. Having searched anywhere that might have been impulse or convenience, they were spiraling into speculation: Kohao had no connection to Gravesend, as far as Anarchy knew; had likely never even been. But Athena’s eyes looked decisive, if dull and young, when she pointed it out on the map.
“He’d have thought it was funny. For the name. Back when he was fifteen, at least… Check there,” she said, her voice defeated, before putting her mask back on and trying, for the others, to look optimistic.

“Alright!” Athena said brightly to Fawkes and Anjali, clapping her hands together and projecting purpose, “I finally remembered the name of the studio K-O got a few of his tattoos at and I wanna ask there—and I was thinking we could just stop back in at a couple places we already asked after him at, just in case. We’ll touch base with G² by phone around noon, then catch Aetos and these boys back here in a couple hours. Astra said she interrogates everyone who walks into Eocene if they’ve seen him, and she said she’d drop in, too, this afternoon—maybe with Bryluen. So even if we don’t turn anything up, one of all of them will surely have heard something!” Her artificial optimism grated on Anarchy’s heart, but he held his tongue and let her have it; and when the three women headed out, they took all traces of hope—however false—with them.

For Anarchy, Sethfire, and Bayer, preparing to leave took on a bleaker tone: Gravesend was big, and they were forced to discuss where they should focus their efforts. Sethfire ended up tiredly pulling away to pace the kitchen and take a phone call from Aetos; only snippets of which filtered through to Anarchy, but that seemed to be about potentially filing with the police—and what, if anything, to do about the guns should they decide to. Anarchy frowned and tried to concentrate, but focusing his full attention on discussing the map on the laptop in front of him with Bayer ended up feeling no less harrowing than eavesdropping had.
“So. What do you think? Near the rail yard?” Bayer asked solemnly, the weight of the search managing to make his light eyes look dark and storm-tossed, “Would cover the sound.”
Anarchy no longer had the energy to flinch away from the matter-of-fact way they were forced to talk now, even if he hated addressing the search for his best friend’s body as fact.
“Maybe,” Anarchy replied, but then found himself shaking his head. “I mean...We can check. But…I don’t think he’d have done it there, not if it wasn’t on impulse. We should try that park instead. He’d have...He’d have wanted to be able to see the water.” Anarchy knew that the ache in his throat had become audible by the end of his sentence, and he tried to swallow it.
Bayer raised his eyebrows. “How do you know?” he asked, though there was no challenge to his tone, only some sort of sad curiosity.
“I don’t,” Anarchy sighed, with a glum half-shrug, “But he had this thing about open space. That’s why he was always up on the roof or the balcony or the fire escape...he used to complain that the city was made of walls.”
  “...He built a lot of them,” Bayer sighed. The words could have seemed harsh, but the only emotion present in Bayer’s tone as he closed out the map and beckoned to Seth was grief. “I wish he hadn't.”
“...Yeah. I don’t think he realized he had a choice.”

The three of them left for Gravesend with a fitting and devastating funereal silence between them; Anarchy relayed where he thought they should search and Sethfire had just dully agreed, no discussion necessary. He gave no indication that he and Aetos had resolved anything on their long phone call, and Anarchy didn’t ask him about it, either, sitting in the sedan’s passenger seat and passing the drive by letting his eyes glaze over or looking for the reflection of Bayer’s car in the side-mirror. The blanket of silence felt heavy and woolen, broken only by the rhythmic sweep of the windshield wipers and the occasional instruction of Sethfire’s GPS. They reached the park without even exchanging mutually dishonest words of faith or encouragement.
Climbing out of Sethfire’s passenger seat into the rain felt further crushing to Anarchy: The breeze off of Gravesend Bay blew cold and unwelcoming, misting Sethfire’s glasses and making him grimace. Bayer pulled up beside them, his eyes already dark and lips thin by the time he shut his car door behind him. The parking lot was empty except for the three of them, and the dreary, deserted park failed to inspire any sense of hope. At first they stood in continued suffocating silence, listening to the choppy waves of the bay compete with the parkway traffic’s drone.
“Where to from here, then, ‘Key?” Bayer finally asked, sounding bleak and utilitarian, his eyes screwed up against the weather. Anarchy swallowed hard.
“The water. We should spread out and walk along the shoreline,” he said, pointing, “Sethfire, uh...maybe you could take the far left, check the trees next to those baseball diamonds and boomerang back? Bay, you...you could start here and head up to search the trees near whatever all that sunken shit is. I’ll walk around the tip of the park and head right, towards...whatever’s over there, I think a creek. If neither of you find anything, you can cut across that...runway, I guess, and meet me there. That fine?”

Though Bayer hummed his assent and peeled off towards his designated search area without complaint, Anarchy felt somewhat uncomfortable being in charge—and especially giving instructions to Sethfire, of all people—but Sethfire raised no concerns either; just dipped his head and walked off to comb the shore that Anarchy had indicated. And despite the fact that he’d directed the split-up, Anarchy felt the back-breaking weight of walking alone to the tip of the park. Working slowly to the right, sweeping his eyes from the water to the foliage wall at the tideline, peering into the bushes, turning up nothing...Anarchy felt his heart sink straight to the ground to be dragged.
There were fast-fading boot-prints in the muddy patches of shore, but they could have been anyone’s. There were countless cigarette butts, too, sure; but from Marlboros and Parliaments and Newports all. The light rain wasn’t heavy enough to be cinematic and the cool air gave it the power to drain: Anarchy felt spat on by the world itself by the time he’d rounded the point and almost made it to the creek’s outlet. Glancing across the park, he saw Sethfire and Bayer exchange a couple words and a nod at the other side of the runway, then start moving in his direction: They, too, had come up empty. 

Anarchy gritted his teeth and turned back to his shoreline, determinedly forging ahead; even with his eyes threatening tears, even with the lump in his throat burning like a swallowed coal. He shoved aside a woody branch that had grown out towards the water, and in pushing past it, found himself having stumbled upon a tiny cove at the creek’s mouth, harbouring the lonely corpse of a boat: Decaying and abandoned; the grey, rain-roiled water slapping against its defeated hull. Finding it felt like unnecessary cruelty, and as Anarchy circled the cove, the sound of waves breaking against the rotting watercraft grated on his ears and heart alike.
“What the fuck are we even doing?” Anarchy snapped at no-one, grief tearing its way out of his throat disguised as frustration; “We know we’re never going to find him like this! I don’t want us to have to find him, I don’t want to see his fucking body, I—”
“Who’re you lookin’ for, ‘Key?” A voice asked with weak humor from somewhere out of view, and Anarchy stopped dead in his tracks.

Though frail and half-rasped, the interruption was made deafening by the voice’s familiarity. Searching for its source, Anarchy whipped his head around to see a pair of black combat boots just barely poking out from the underbrush a few feet to his right, and he felt his throat knot up. He barely managed to choke out the words “Oh my God,” and couldn’t be bothered to care that they sounded halfway to a sob: He just threw himself towards the bushes and shoved bramble branches out of his way; immune to their thorns. Laying there in the undergrowth was Kohao: On his back, in the dirt, his head obliquely propped-up by a rotting stump and the incline of the ground. 
“Kohao, holy fuck...” Anarchy breathed out, falling to a knee beside his friend before suddenly remembering the others and twisting his head over his shoulder to yell, “GUYS! HE’S HERE, I FOUND HIM! HE’S ALIVE.” His voice cracked on the last word. 
When he turned back to Kohao, Anarchy found him looking strangely befuddled: Kohao’s eyes were bleary and he couldn’t quite seem to focus them. His brow knotted with obvious confusion when Anarchy put a hand beneath his shoulder to try and help him sit up. As Anarchy half-lifted him towards upright, his lips moved silently and at first he couldn’t seem to speak, but after what seemed like a great deal of effort, he finally managed a reedy, baffled; 
“Wait...’Key? You’re really here?”
“Yeah, K. Yeah,” Anarchy said, “We’ve been so fucking scared, man. C’mon, get up, let’s go home.”
For once Kohao seemed willing to follow instructions—but unable to even sit up on his own, he couldn’t manage to get his legs under him, either. He mumbled something inaudible that could have been an apology and weakly let his head fall against Anarchy’s bicep. 

Anarchy, trying not to betray his growing anxiety, looped one of Kohao’s arms across his shoulders and lifted his friend to his feet. Almost immediately upon getting upright, however, Kohao pitched towards passing out and sagged heavily against him.
“C’mon, K-O, stay with me,” Anarchy urged, relieved when Kohao managed to straighten his legs and raise his head slightly. With Anarchy supporting most of Kohao’s weight, they staggered out of the bushes together and nearly collided with Bayer and Sethfire.
“Gun,” Sethfire said with emphatic immediacy, and Anarchy couldn’t believe he’d forgotten the whole reason they’d all been so terrified.
“‘S on the ground,” Kohao mumbled from Anarchy’s shoulder, and nearly fell over when he tried to turn his head to watch Sethfire retrieve the pistol from the bushes. Fortunately, Bayer caught his shoulder and pushed him upright again.
“Whoa there, stay standing. What did you do to yourself?” Bayer asked, keeping a stabilizing hand on Kohao’s upper arm even as alarm crept into his tone
Kohao failed to respond, instead allowing his head to fall limply back to Anarchy’s shoulder. Bayer raised his eyebrows at Anarchy, who returned the confused look. Sethfire reappeared in that heartbeat, though, Kohao’s pistol tucked into his belt.
“Sethfire,” Anarchy started, “He’s—”
“Dehydrated, I know,” Sethfire said, his tone less brusque than before, even in interruption. Anarchy nodded as if he’d known, too.
“I have water back in the car. Here—” Sethfire removed his jacket and draped it around Kohao’s shoulders, but his concerned frown deepened when Kohao failed to respond beyond an incomprehensible mumble. Sethfire pressed his lips thin and brushed Kohao’s wet hair from his forehead on some tender instinct. 
“...Get him over to one of the pavilions and out of the rain. I’ll get the water.”

Bayer and Anarchy awkwardly supported Kohao to the cover of the nearest picnic shelter, where Anarchy sat on the bench and let Kohao lean against him; trying to lend his friend both body heat and strength alike. Sethfire returned with water, which Kohao took without much coaxing; though his movements were slow and clumsy at first, as he drank he seemed to slowly revive: His eyes grew a little clearer, and he blinked confusedly at Bayer when he apparently finally managed to focus on him.
“Bayer?” he asked. He sounded baffled. “You’re here, too?”
“Of course I am,” Bayer said, almost solemnly. “...Everyone’s been looking for you for days.” 
Kohao lowered his water bottle from his lips. “I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be. Just drink your water.” 
Kohao looked nonplussed but drank obediently, and something unreadable flickered covertly alongside relief in Bayer’s gilded eyes.. 
“...There were a couple kids in prison with me who hanged themselves,” he said, abruptly. “Couldn't deal with the guilt, I guess. Or didn’t want their mommas seeing them in jumpsuits. Dunno. Doesn’t matter what they’d done, though. All that pain they were in to make them end it? Just spread out into everyone close to them. It doesn't just go away.” Bayer shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and turned around to study the baywater. “I still remember their faces.”
By the end of his sentence, his soft-spoken words were only barely louder than the waves lapping at the sand. Anarchy dragged his eyes off Bayer and watched Kohao, too, stare uncomprehendingly at their friend’s back for a moment, before lowering his eyes again; blinking, bleary, but moved.

With Bayer stepping away to recompose, Sethfire took a seat directly next to Kohao; facing him, and for a minute or two just seemed to take him in. If Kohao hadn’t been leaning on him, Anarchy would have gotten up and stood beside Bayer; Sethfire’s concerned expression was a shadow too paternal, his arm twitched at one point as if the instinct to reach out was tugging at him again. Anarchy felt halfway to intruding, and he awkwardly averted his eyes to watch fine droplets of mist blow in and fill the uneven grain at the edge of the picnic table.
“Kohao,” Sethfire eventually asked, breaking the quiet, “We searched for you in dozens of places. Why did you choose to come here? Why this location?” He spoke slowly and with an undertone of confusion that sounded alien in his voice; it was nearly always one of surety. For once, though, Sethfire seemed uncertain—and Anarchy wondered how uncomfortable he felt with not being able to understand something; if maybe the question was more because of his own need for concrete answers than anything else.
Kohao set down his bottle of water and blinked a couple times, looking rather disoriented.
“I mean...The...The name,” he said haltingly, confirming the reasoning that Athena had theorized; “‘Gravesend.’ Seemed like it would fit. And...Gravesend Bay. The sky is open here. Over the water…” He trailed off and turned to look out at the overcast sky; the rain-grayed waterfront. Distance crept back into his eyes. 
“...I couldn’t do it,” he eventually murmured, his voice choked and hollow, “Pull the trigger. Dunno...Too much of a coward, I guess...I’m sorry. Just gave up: Started waiting on Mother Nature to do it for me…” He stared glassily down at the water bottle in front of him and his words became a weary mumble; “I thought...The cold or something...But...global warming, ya know…?” 

Kohao seemed to struggle to hold onto awareness and trailed off repeatedly, losing the thread or apparently entering a daze and forgetting he was the one speaking. He needed to be reminded to drink—and would—but continued to drift into extended periods of silence where he’d end up looking distant or confused. Concern lining his brow, Sethfire briskly set off towards the drinking fountains for more water, only briefly pausing to turn around and ask; “Do either of you have anything more substantial to give him? A granola bar or something?” He was moving again before having the chance to receive a reply. 
Anarchy turned out his pockets even though he knew they were empty, and Kohao shook his head at the mere mention of food, indeed looking too ill to eat—but suddenly changed his tune over half a mini-bottle of Bacardi that Bayer found in his jacket, which Anarchy thought would only worsen things but that somehow seemed to bring Kohao closer to clarity...Along with the abundance of additional water Sethfire ferried to him. 
Eventually he seemed far more lucid; his tongue got slightly sharper; a degree of familiar abrasive wit returned to his voice, however weak it still was. He adamantly refused Sethfire’s proposal of going to a hospital, brandishing his water bottle as proof it was unnecessary; when Sethfire started to ask a question about his mental state, Kohao responded with an almost dry, but mostly weary; “Do I have to be interrogated out here in the rain about all this, or can we go home for that?” His voice seemed to catch on the words ‘go home.’
“...Let’s go home,” Sethfire responded softly. He waved Anarchy and Bayer back towards the parking lot. 

They all got up to leave, and though Kohao moved slowly and swayed initially, he was able to stand on his own. Sethfire reached out and grasped his shoulder as if to steady him, then after a heartbeat of hesitation, pulled him into a close, tight hug. They spent a long moment like that while Anarchy and Bayer started towards the cars in silent acknowledgement of the gesture’s necessary privacy. When he glanced back over his shoulder, Anarchy watched them finally step apart: Kohao’s adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed hard, and he offered Sethfire a stiff sort of nod; mumbled something Anarchy couldn’t hear. Sethfire reached out again and affectionately cupped his shoulder, and they rejoined Anarchy and Bayer up on the trek to the parking lot.
As Kohao ducked into the backseat back at the car, finally seeming something closer to stable, Anarchy noticed the tremor in his own hands that had failed to leave; the way panic crept back in if Kohao got too far out of reach. 
“Sethfire, do you mind driving home?” he asked quietly.
“Of course not. Will you sit in back with him?”
Anarchy nodded, acutely aware of how much he needed to stay close to Kohao and grateful that Sethfire had been willing to frame it as a request. He climbed in beside Kohao and put his hands to his face with a hushed sigh, needing a moment to process. As the drive back began, though, it all seemed to finally hit him; Anarchy sank forward, suddenly bent over with his head in his hands, his shoulders unstoppably shaking.
“......Are you okay...?” Kohao eventually asked after a couple silent minutes had passed like that. He sounded awkward, hesitant, and when Anarchy managed to sit up and blink his eyes clear, he could read the guilt in Kohao’s half-hunched posture.
“I thought you were dead,” Anarchy replied. His voice cracked; Kohao averted his eyes and seemed to crumple inward further.
“So did I,” he said half-brokenly, “I was pretty sure it was all ending and your voice was just a...a hallucination, you know. I didn’t think you were really...there.”
“...Is that why you answered?” Anarchy asked, his words catching in his throat again.
“I dunno. Just couldn’t help myself, I guess.” Kohao’s voice was duller than his eyes, worn and tired with apology as an undertone. Anarchy wanted to pull his friend to his chest, press him to his heartbeat and chase the demons from his head. He couldn’t, so he settled for reaching out and resting his hand on Kohao’s shoulder. Silently Kohao leaned into the touch, not away, and Anarchy left his hand there; only dropping it when they at last arrived back at the apartment complex and Bayer pulled up to park beside them.
As soon as they all piled into the elevator inside and Sethfire hit their floor’s button, Anarchy suddenly realized that he hadn’t texted Athena the all-clear—too preoccupied by his own relief and the desire to just get back home. He doubted the others had found the wherewithal, either.
“Shit. We haven’t even texted anyone that things are okay, have we?” he asked the elevator at large. He must have sounded somewhat anxious; Bayer gave him a reassuring glance.
“Guess not, but we’re already here. What would the point be now? It’ll be a surprise…who doesn’t love those?” Bayer gently joked, though his serious tone fell short on its way to humor and wound up landing as slightly strained. He gave Kohao a fraternal sort of shoulder-clap. “Hope you’re ready to be the center of attention.”

Sure enough, all heads turned in their direction when the four entered the apartment, and at first they were met by everyone freezing in place, by stunned faces and a breathless, disbelieving silence. The lull was tense and fragile, though, and the quiet click of the door shutting behind them was enough to break the spell: Time unfroze and the silence shattered.
“YOU FUCK!” Fawkes yelled, launching herself from her seat at the breakfast bar into a sprint towards Kohao. “Where the HELL have you been?!” she screamed into his face when she reached him, standing toe-to-toe with her ex-boyfriend, anguished tears finally spilling down her cheeks; “How the FUCK could you do that to us? To me?! WE THOUGHT YOU WERE FUCKING DEAD!”
He didn’t respond and wouldn’t meet her eyes, and as he turned his head slightly to look away from her there was a split second where she couldn’t seem to decide what to do: Where she just stared up at him with shaking hands and tears streaming down her face, with too many tangled emotions contorting her expression for her to be a snapshot of anything except raw pain. It proved too much to bear, and under the weight of Kohao’s silence and his averted gaze, something broke. 
Or maybe two things: Her restraint, his nose.
The punch was all furious desperation and no form, but Fawkes was strong and Kohao was caught off-guard, and the sickening crunch her fist made meeting his face was enough to flip Anarchy’s stomach.
In the millisecond it took him to shake off his shock, Athena had somehow already sprung into action: She grabbed Fawkes’s elbows and pulled her backwards, away from Kohao—who said nothing and made no move of retaliation, even as blood streamed down his face. His expression, if pained, stayed resigned: Like he felt he deserved it, like he was willing to stand and take it.

Astra darted to Athena’s side to grab one of Fawkes’s arms, and Bryluen tossed a glance at them as they struggled in their attempts to both soothe and restrain Fawkes, who spat her hair out of her mouth and cursed as she tried to free herself from their grip. 
“Pff. Let her go, she’s in the right,” Bryluen laughed cooly.
Kohao’s head snapped up at her words, his previous air of resignation seeming to vanish in the face of her icy tone. 
“Fuck off, Bry,” he muttered, his response barely audible, and raised a hand to try and wipe away the blood still flowing from his broken nose. 
Her eyes flashed toward him; winter-cold and hard as steel.
“Grow up,” she snapped, “haven't you caused enough mess for all of us? Punishment would do you good; you’ve been such an inconvenience!”
There was a moment of nothing, where the only movement was the lift of Kohao’s eyebrows, a darkening of his expression. When he replied, the hostile frigidity of his tone could have threatened frostbite:
“Fine.” 
His hand jerked to his hip, on apparent instinct, initially—only to close on air. Then his brow furrowed and time slowed to a crawl as he turned and yanked his pistol from where it had been tucked into Sethfire’s belt. 
Raised it. 
And put it to his own head.

Time snapped back to itself and Sethfire reacted with cat-like reflexes: Grabbed Kohao’s wrist and twisted his arm downward, forcing him to drop the gun. He managed to wrestle Kohao’s arms behind his back and had just started to quietly whisper “Okay, so, I’m thinking maybe now we should go to the hospital” by the time Anarchy managed to tear himself from the immobilization of shock.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU, BRYLUEN?!” he yelled, lunging forward. He had no plan of action and was driven purely by anger and adrenaline, with his fists instinctively clenched—but he found himself suddenly impeded by the arm that Bayer threw across his chest.
“Keep your head on,” Bayer warned, while Anjali, her eyes fixed on Bryluen, followed up with a nearly-hysterical “Yeah, she’s caused enough mess!”

Bryluen seemed to be trying to recover any loss of composure, and gave some attempt at a sneer in an apparent effort to appear unruffled. Anarchy curled his own lip in return, and for a moment the rest of the room seemed wordlessly on edge: Either staring, frozen, at the scene—or with their eyes apprehensively darting from Anarchy, to Bryluen, to Kohao, to the gun. The tension didn't have time to hang in the air for more than a heartbeat before Kohao suddenly seemed to deflate: A broken, defeated noise escaped his gritted teeth, and he sagged for a split second in Sethfire’s hold. It didn’t last and he picked himself up again, but Anarchy was rattled to see that there were tears in his eyes when he raised his head to look woundedly at Bryluen. His recriminating glare was accompanied by an almost imperceptible head-shake; then his gaze unfocused and his face seemed to set. Silently, those disquieting tears started to fall.
Maybe the collective gasp around the room should have rung through as cliché or even comical, but Anarchy knew that this was the first time half of them had ever seen Kohao cry—and even Anarchy himself couldn’t keep from drawing a sharp, shocked breath of his own. As though set off by the sound and unable to bear the vulnerability, Kohao tore himself out of the hold he was in so violently that Sethfire must have been forced to loosen his grip just to avoid Kohao dislocating anything.
“I’m not going to a damn psych ward, Seth, so fucking let go of me!” Kohao snarled venomously as he wrenched himself out of reach, “Go the fuck home everyone, the show’s fucking over!”

His voice didn’t crack but the tightness in it was obvious, and though he stalked furiously down the hall to slam his bedroom door, it still felt more like he’d fled than stormed off. There was a dam about to burst in him and it was clear, but Bayer’s arm was still in Anarchy’s way: Before he could make to go after Kohao, Aetos had already crossed the room to do so. Watching the younger boy vanish down the hallway, Anarchy felt dubious that he would really be able to handle things—and made to push forward to follow, himself. Before he could even take a full step, though, Sethfire discreetly pressed his knuckles against Anarchy’s forearm; a gesture that could have been mistaken for an accident if not for the pressure and the subtle but pointed twitch of his brow that said “Stay.”

Anarchy stilled obediently and Sethfire stooped down to pick up the gun, his expression going unsettlingly cold: When he straightened up to address the room, he didn’t just look grave; he looked leery—and his voice seemed uncharacteristically taut when he spoke.
“...He was down in Gravesend,” Sethfire said, nodding down the hall after Kohao, “Thank all of you for the efforts you put into bringing him home...safe. I know that it has been a harrowing past few days, and we could all use some rest.” He punctuated his words with a curt step to the apartment door, and he paused with his hand on the doorknob to rest his wary, searching gaze on Bryluen. 
“...Bryluen,” he began, and Anarchy was almost startled that his usually neutral tone could sound so icy; “You know that I respect you. But you would benefit from learning that there are times to hold your tongue. Now, I think it is time for you…and everybody else...to go.” Sethfire pointedly held open the door, and at first...nothing happened. Bryluen stood rigid and cold, glaring back at Sethfire, her lip curled defiantly. She wasn’t one to take orders—or to leave without having had the last word—and Anarchy figured that this was why he’d not been meant to follow Aetos. Sure enough, Sethfire gave him a tired, sidelong glance, and Anarchy pointedly shoved Bayer’s arm out of his way. It was all that was necessary: Astra abandoned assisting Athena and hurried to Bryluen’s side.
“No, yeah, Bry—I think we should get going,” Astra said, tugging on Bryluen’s elbow and eyeing Anarchy furtively, “We don’t have anything to do here.”

Under Anarchy’s eyes and her friend’s pressure, Bryluen stalked out; albeit with a haughty head-toss, a lifted chin, and a contemptuous “As if I’d want to stay in a room with so many violent people!”
Bayer muttered a swift “I should go,” to Anarchy and ducked out behind her and Astra as well, leaving Sethfire to shut his eyes for a moment and pinch the bridge of his nose in the wake of their exit, his lips pressed thin.
“Athena, let go of Fawkes so that she can leave,” he eventually sighed, “Fawkes, please...Give us some time.” The frigidity in his tone had been replaced by exhaustion, and everyone seemed able to sense the lack of malice. Anjali moved to Athena’s side in order to persuade Fawkes that it wasn’t a good idea for her to go back and talk to her ex-boyfriend right now, despite her protests—and eventually she caved to the guidance of Anjali’s hand on her shoulder and Athena’s, “We’ll handle it for now, okay?”
Anarchy frowned apologetically at Anjali. “I’m sorry, Anj. I never wanted you having to deal with all that—and I’m not trying to throw you out, I know it was—” 
Anjali cut him off with a swift head-shake. “I’m alright, ‘Key. We’ll talk about it later. I’m just glad K-O’s okay.” Anjali patted Fawkes’s shoulder. “Fawkes and I will get out of your guys’s way for now.” 
Fawkes jerked her jacket collar up and made uncertain sort of eye-contact with Anarchy. “I still think he deserved the punch,” she muttered, “but I wanted to hold him and tell him I was glad he was alive, too. So…make sure he hears that.” She swiped a hand across her eyes and quickly stepped around Anarchy toward the door.

With her soft-spoken “See you”s and their tangle of fazed goodbyes, Anjali followed Fawkes out, leaving a sense of emptiness behind. As soon as the door shut at their backs, Sethfire appeared to crumple—and it was disconcerting how frail he looked in that moment. His eyes were shut and tired again, his hands cupped over his nose and mouth, and suddenly the stress-lines and crow’s feet he was too young to have seemed more visible. Anarchy wanted to say something, but before he could scrape together any clumsy words of comfort, Sethfire drew himself back into composure and wordlessly started towards the hall—presumably to join Aetos in tending to Kohao. 
Athena, too, took a moment to shake the hurt from her eyes and the disheartened hunch from her posture. She swallowed hard and tore herself from staring at the door to make silent, almost daunted eye contact with Anarchy. It was a mere heartbeat, though, before she blinked it away and jerked her head in the direction of her brother: An unspoken, “Us too, yeah?” 
Anarchy nodded, and followed her down the hall, but he noticed the way her shoulders—like his own—failed to quite straighten. Something had been shattered that afternoon, in the washed-out, overcast fire-tone of the early-setting sun. 

Anarchy wondered if it hadn’t been the illusion of stability.