bare metal

It had been five hundred years since Krelian had spent time - real time, and connection - in community with other people. Zenith...that wasn't real. Nothing after Sophia had been real.

He had wanted to leave. Finally, after five hundred years, they could be done.

But now he was here, with Sorin. Every day felt like a potential tipping point, where voices and tempers could rise just a little too far and his one remaining tether to this world would be gone.

They had made the private admission months ago, by this point, that that event would be far more crushing than they had ever wanted to believe. And Sorin? Sorin admitted nothing, woke every morning in apparent denial of the prior night.

The eventual confession might also be crushing. So Krelian existed in a constant limbo, feeling the wear of the world against him and pushing all self-reflection out of their mind so that they would have no long-term goals at all.

No expectations. A nebulous way to live.

No one ever interrupted Krelian's trains of thought but Sorin. Before, there had been endless wires crossing and tripping. So Krelian should have been used to it by now. But he wasn't.

"Is something bothering you?"

This wasn't a genuine question, but instead an opportunity for self-flagellation. Sorin usually brushed it off, and they ended up discussing science or history until darkness fell.

Not tonight, however.

"You, I guess."

Completely understandable, wasn't it?

"I'm sorry to hear that. What about me?"

"I don't...spend a lot of time around people. I just fix their Gears, and that's it. I like being alone. Didn't you realize that?"

Krelian, completely out of their depth, thought that perhaps this question would be better directed at Sorin himself. Two aimless people together was not necessarily better than those same two people navigating the world alone, adapting to single-winged flight instead of floundering about in miscommunication.

And yet, there really was no disentangling himself from Sorin now. So if Sorin was coming around to it...well, that was that, wasn't it?