The Long Way Home

[Jay Carpenter]

It turned out Natalie had no painkillers. No aspirin. Not even a forgotten bottle of expired cough syrup. Just bare shelves. Not surprising. Her apartment was bare-boned. A woman who lived light, unburdened, as if permanence might catch her off guard. He offered to stop at a vendor on the way back, toss a few dollars at something stronger, but she told him not to worry. The order had already been placed, and the delivery would beat him home.

That was when his mind began drifting. Dinner. Takeout, probably. Neither of them cooked. Grilling was always an option, but it wasn’t like he could haul a charcoal drum onto a fifth-floor balcony in central Moscow without setting off alarms. literal or metaphorical. He considered the usual spots. Ramen, maybe. Or the Turkish place with the flatbread that always came just a little burnt. And then.

Then it hit him.
He was planning dinner. Not for himself, but for them.

This is what people in relationships do.
'Hey, should I grab milk on the way home?'

The thought tightened around his chest like a rope, soft but inescapable. For a moment, he just stood there on the wet concrete, lips parted as if the cold had caught him mid-thought, and he forgot to breathe.

Was this what he wanted? This domestic drift? The soft gravity of someone waiting for him behind a door, with arms and silence and warmth?


Because when he was with Natalie — really with her — the rest of the world fell away. Her body against his, her glare, even the way she challenged him in the quiet… it felt like all the good things he thought had been scorched out of him in the years between then and now.

But when he stepped outside of her, it was like catching his reflection in some fogged mirror. He barely recognized the man he was anyway. This was like another life. It scared the hell out of him.

So he sent another message: Going to swing by the RLD. Grabbing something better for my hand. The good stuff. The kind you didn’t get in the upscale dispensaries. What he didn’t say. What he didn’t have the guts to say was that he needed a little more time. Just a few more streets between himself and that quiet warmth he couldn’t stop wanting.

He pulled up the collar of his coat as he turned off the main road. Government-issue, heavy, and warm. Buttoned up enough to hide the uniform beneath, the one marked with the sigils of the Dominions. The CCD crests were sewn into the shoulder and chest beneath, but here, he wanted to blend in. The RLD didn’t care for symbols of power, only money. Only customers.

The Red Light District was humming under frost and shadow, alive with false heat. Neon poured from every overhang, advertisements flickering through condensation and low static interference. The air carried a chemical sweetness. Engineered pheromones, vaped synthetics, electric cinnamon. All designed to dull, entice, pacify. Snow was piled in the gutters like forgotten ash.

Around him, bodies moved through the streets like ghosts. Augmented limbs. Glowing eyes. Faces too perfect to be anything but curated. Jay passed by a VR parlor pumping out soft moans and colorwashed light, then a bio-lounge that promised transcendence in five microdoses or less.

He’d been here before. Of course he had. But never looking for relief. Never like this.

Tonight, he wasn’t chasing pleasure. He was chasing silence. A chemical kind. Something to numb the ache in his knuckles, which were still sore and purpled from striking both Matías and the wall behind him. But it wasn’t just his hand that hurt. It was the hollowness in his chest. The kind that nothing could fix.

It took a few tries. Most dispensaries catered to the weekend crowd. Dream-syrups, synth-mirage injectables, neural-slow patches. But eventually, tucked between a gene-tweak parlor and an automated pleasure bar, he found a vendor that carried the military-branded stuff. Combat residue relief. Nerve quieters. Burn-skin regenerants. Things marketed to a specific group.

The attendant barely looked up. Just slid a digital display across the counter and gestured at the scanner. The place was warm, artificially so. Overhead, a reactor coil hummed softly, and red light spilled from the strip-lighting above like diluted blood.

Jay keyed in a code, jaw tight, shoulders hunched beneath the heavy weight of the coat. He could feel the eyes of the district behind him. Not specific, but aware, the way this part of the city always was. Like the whole block was a creature watching from the cracks.

As the machine processed his payment, he wondered again if he was stalling because of her or because he didn’t know what kind of man he was once he let himself be happy.

Either way, the drugs would help. Not just the hand. Not just the bruises.

He stepped out into the street once more to find a place to use the very product he just purchased.

[Nox]

Nox was still getting used to the song in his ear. The voice was soft and friendly and yet it conveyed so much more with a flick of his eyes. He could feel the emotions of love and joy followed by anger or hatred if he wanted to. He could send the whole house into a tizzy if he flicked his eyes to one simple song at the end of the list.

Ashton didn't like singing the song. He didn't want to but he couldn't resist the payment Nox had offered. It was a downward spiral that would have Hayden and anyone close by at his side in whatever time it took for them to track him. It was a promise to his family that he'd let them know if he felt like it was done and over. That it wasn't worth living anymore.

Or that it wasn't worth fighting.

Nox had tasked Sage with anaylzying the data he'd collected. He was looking at all the scans talking to his contacts around the world about what it all could mean. Nox didn't care how it happened. But they both knew it was Sage's nanobots fault that he was empty and devoid of emotions.

Nox walked the Red Light District like he did before. Except now he was bundled up in a puffy black coat that was wrapped around him tightly. Lily was home with Liam and Marta. He was alone walking his rounds, checking his perimeter sensors and talking to those he'd offered protection. Not that he could do anything about it now. He had to rely on Bruno and the other guys at the club if he needed to do more than be intimidating. Thankfully being emotionless helped with that, not that there was much of an issue in his little area.

Nox blended in. This was his home. Walking in the cold was numbing in a different way, the cold almost painful and it was a feeling. Not an emotion, but a feeling at least. He walked more than he used to, and he walked a lot before but that was for different reasons. Now it was the only thing he could do when he felt like he was letting everyone down.

Nox stopped at the edge of the Red Light District near the river. It was quiet. Many people used the area for quiet for not so legal activities. The Carnival was a soft din in the background. Nox leaned on the railing over looking the water. The song was off at the moment. It was nothing. Numb. The world was gray and dying. And the snow and grim of the red light district didn't make it any brighter.

[Jay Carpenter]

A scan to the left and the right found only lonely people. Solitary figures drifting through synthetic haze and cheap neon, their shadows stretching long across puddled concrete. A single snowflake, backlit by crimson signage, tumbled down like a fleck of red cotton. Jay watched it land on the road and dissolve into the city’s filth. Beauty gone before it could mean anything.

He turned the foil packet over in his gloved hands. Branded with a crescent moon and soft lettering that promised soothing, fast-acting relief, it looked more like something you’d slide across a nightstand than a pharmaceutical solution. It reminded him of a condom, honestly. Same shape, same discreet hope for something empty. But inside was a thin, dissolvable strip, mint-scented and synthetic.

A rip of the foil, and Jay laid the paper on his tongue and immediately grimaced. The taste was sharp, chemical, laced with artificial sweetness that left a burn in the back of his throat. He started walking.

Half a block later a surge of neon light exploded to his left, catching the periphery of his vision. He turned, instinctively, and found himself face to face with a full-body hologram. Looping a slow, seductive sway. A digital woman shimmered in pasties and a g-string, rendered in that translucent blue-white glow that somehow made her more real than any of the people passing by. Her eyes, perfect and impossible, werelocked with his, and Jay paused, caught like a deer in high beams. The movement of her hand, curl of her tongue, and bend of the waist were beckoning, smooth and slow, like honey caught in a jar.

He blinked hard, shook his head, and turned away with a muttered breath. Fuck me. Here he was, doing street meds and making eye contact with walking adspace like a proper creep. The flush that rose in his face had nothing to do with her.

There was a far hotter woman waiting for him, and that warmth scared him more than any holographic seductress ever could.

As the drugged paper began to dissolve, he became acutely aware of the minty vapor curling down his throat, spreading coolness through his chest. His hand ached less. That dull, angry throb began to slip beneath the surface. But what he hadn’t expected was the emptiness that followed, not sedation, not really, but a slight lightening in his thoughts. A numbing of friction.

Still, he didn’t walk straight home.

He took a side street. Then another. Skirting alleys and footpaths he didn’t need to take, winding like a man circling a fire, not ready to step into the heat. Natalie was close. He could feel the pull of her, the tug of her arms, her apartment, the half-dimmed lights and too-soft bedding. She was everything he wanted. So what the hell was he doing?

The further he walked, the quieter things became. Not fully quiet. This was the middle of Moscow, after all, but even the noise of the nearby Carnival faded into a low hum behind him, replaced by the soft crunch of his boots on old snow and the occasional electric flicker from signage overhead. The Red Light District thinned here. Not of danger, but of spectacle. Less neon, more shadow. Less invitation, more forgetting.

There were plenty of people around, but it was cold and an unpleasant night. Hoods were up and paces were quick. Seeing someone standing still gave him a pause only for the oddity of it. 

A man at the edge of the riverwalk, bundled in black, posture hunched against the cold. At first, just a silhouette. Another lifer out in the cold night, waiting for nothing.

Jay almost passed him without a second glance. But something snagged in the corner of his mind. Despite every instinct not to, he stopped.

[Nox]

Nox's hand was getting numb from the cold, though the mechanical one was fine, even with the ability to feel the cold and heat and the pressure now, it was barely registering. Partially because Nox told it not to bother him and his brain listened, though his real hand didn't quite do the same thing.

A man stopped behind him.

Before Nox could react the man's hand was on his ass and his foul smelling breath was curling down his neck. "Want a..." he started but Nox had the man on the ground, twisted arm with his mechanical hand to the point of almost breaking. A little tug and he could pull the joint out of the socket. His real hand clutched the gun that had been hidden at his back under the coat and pointed it at the man lying on the ground in the puddle.

"I am not in the mood. So get walking or I can put some lead in that lecherous smile of yours." His voice was empty of all emotion. There was no anger, no hatred. And at another time it might have been a welcome diversion but not tonight.

Nox let the man's arm go and watched him scramble up and head into the night looking for another to prey upon. If he was lucky he'd find some new place to hunt.

Nox turned back to the river the gun back under his puffy coat and his elbows resting on the rail staring out into the water. Time passed, the cold seeped in. He should head back but he didn't he stayed longer.

Another man stopped but he didn't approach. Nox spoke in the soft unemotional voice that had resulted from the severing of his power. "If you are looking for trouble or a piece of ass I'd suggestion walk...ing on." Nox turned as he spoke his hand reaching for the gun behind him until he was staring face to face with a man he knew. His words trailed off as he recognized the dominion, his friend, or former friend depending on how you looked at it. The last time he'd seen Jay they had fought in the arena at the Almaz. Not by choice.

As the realization dawned on Nox he took his hands from behind his back and held his arms our just a slight ways from his body with his palms facing Jay. He reached for the power but it was sadly still not there. There was a blip of fear, followed by a moment of relief before it all faded back into the numbness. A stray thought wiggled through his head. Maybe this is how it will end. It would be fitting that the person who was part of the reason his life blew up was the one to end it entirely.

"I can explain what happened that lead up to the events that went down the last time we saw each other. Or you can just beat the shit out of me again." Nox flicked the song playing to 'sacastic asshole' (Ashton had fun naming his work and telling Nox all about his personality in doing so) and said. "I'm open to either."

[Jay Carpenter]

There was something strangely poetic about finding Nox here. Alone, half-shrouded in neon haze and city dust, the red light district clinging to them both like bad cigarette smoke. Fitting, maybe. Like the universe had decided to vomit up one of Jay’s ghosts and set it shivering at the edge of the river.

The surprise on Nox’s face said enough. Recognition, hesitation. Regret, maybe.

Jay didn’t move. Didn’t speak. The cold curled into the seams of his coat, but he hardly noticed. He just stared.
A pulse beat hard behind his eyes. Anger, yes. And something worse. Something older. Something broken.

He thought he’d buried this particular betrayal deep enough that it wouldn’t rise again. Time had been merciful, if indifferent. Nox had become just another name in the back of his skull. Muted, shelved, nearly faceless. But here, now, a single look was all it took to rip the seal off. The pain. The fury. The ache. The loss.

Jay’s jaw locked tight as a bolt, and for a moment, he didn’t know what his body would do. Shove Nox over the railing and watch him vanish beneath the freezing surface? Grab him by the collar and drive a fist into his gut until they were both too exhausted to speak? Or, god help him. Just pull him close. Taste that old bitterness again. Let it burn through all this cold.

He stayed still. Like a statue carved for war, hands in his pockets to keep them from doing something stupid. Then Nox’s voice came. Soft. Dry. Too familiar.

"I can explain what happened that lead up to the events that went down the last time we saw each other. Or you can just beat the shit out of me again."

Jay didn’t answer. Not right away. And then, something changed. The sound that came out of him wasn’t quite laughter, but it was close. A sharp exhale, breath fogging in the air. For a moment, the tension in his chest loosened, but it didn’t leave.

He stepped forward, slow, like a man approaching a cliff’s edge. Not a threat. Not forgiveness, either. Just movement. Side by side now, he leaned on the railing, eyes fixed on the water below. Dirty. Sloshy.

“Nah,” Jay said, voice low, like it had been scraped across gravel. “Already hit my quota for the day. Hand’s fucked anyway.”

Silence hung between them like a noose on a windless night, waiting for someone to pull it tight. Jay didn’t look at him. He didn’t need to. His mind was already rewriting the past few minutes, trying to make sense of what he was doing. What he wanted. The synthetic cool of the drug still curled at the back of his throat, numbing everything but this. The truth was simple and ugly.

He didn’t want to hurt Natalie. But the peace he found with her felt like wearing someone else’s life. Too soft. Too real. Too good. And Jay had never been any good with good things.

Nox, on the other hand…

Nox was a wound that hadn’t closed. A ghost that hadn’t moved on. This might be the out he’d been looking for. And yet he said nothing more.

Just leaned there, shoulder to shoulder with a man that could help ruin him. Or save him. He didn’t know.

[Nox]

Surprise was an interesting feeling in the numbness of his new life. It hit sharp and vivid until it too flit through the emptiness of life. The feeling gone just as it had come quickly and with no remorse.

They stood there staring at the river like it held secrets. And the silence wasn't awkward at least not for Nox, but it was silence that he should fill with an apology at the very least. "I'm sorry for the way things went down." There was no sorrow in his voice, but there was empathy in it. The song in his ear helped ease the transition. He wanted to be real for Jay, but his reality was uncaring and numb and this wasn't quite the time to let the truth of his reality sit between them.

His old self would talk and talk and talk. He didn't like the silence, he felt it in his heart, but right then he didn't feel much. The song he flicked off with a flick of his eye, Nox let the soft cadence of the numbness take his voice. It was his new normal. His new life. Though he didn't expect anyone from the old one to be here with him in it.


"I should have been straight and honest before we even left on that trip into the bowels of the earth. I knew we'd connect on that level. Maybe I was blowing up my life on purpose. Afraid of what I wanted and sabotaging everything. I should have told you I was in trying to be faithful and monogamous before it happened. And I shouldn't have cut you out like that. I was trying to fix my fuck up by removing temptation. I was an asshole. And I know I don't deserve any second chances. But I want you to know I'm sorry. And you'll always be like a brother." He didn't mean like a sibling, Jay was never that kind of loved one. A brother in arms, a friend to the end. Whatever it was.

Nox let the chill of the wind bite his skin. It was the only feeling he felt. The songs silence biting back. Too long and the family might worry. He might have to send them a text to keep them at bay. He wondered what Hayden would say about the encounter. About the timing. It felt something, though Nox didn't know how to define it. Didn't know how to wrap his mind around the thoughts that skirted his mind. He didn't want to poke at things. He wanted to right what he'd wronged even if it meant never seeing Jay again. He wanted to do it right this time. But there was no right or wrong. Jay was his friend. And Raffe was no longer in his life. It had been over three months since they'd seen each other, and even longer since Nox had walked out of Raffe's room. There might be nothing to salvage there. He wasn't sure there was anything here. Jay had wanted to kill him before. Had come close to it. At least now he claimed he hurt his hand. There was no fight, but it might still not end in away that left their friendship intact.

Too many painful thoughts and Nox pushed them into the emptiness, the place wehre the power should flicker, but didn't. It was easy to come into this place now, it was like second nature, but it was emptier than the world. It echoed with loss and pain and Nox clung to it.

[Jay Carpenter]

Jay’s hands stayed in his coat pockets, fingers tightening around the bruised bones of his hand. The pain hadn’t left. It was still there, not sharp, not screaming, but settled deep beneath the skin like something half-buried in the river. Dull. Persistent.

He said nothing for a while, eyes fixed on the slow churn of black water below. His breath fogged the air in steady, cold ribbons, and the apology hung between them like the echo of a scream thrown across an empty canyon. It didn’t land. It just circled back, unanswered.

“You talk too much,” he muttered eventually, voice low and worn. He didn’t look at Nox.

Then. Just a shift. A turn of the head. His eyes found the man beside him.

Same face. But the eyes… They were wrong now. Hollower. Detached. Like something had been carved out and never filled back in. Maybe that was what had always drawn Jay to him in the first place. Not the man, but the void inside him. A flicker of pain dressed up as calm. A familiar kind of ruin.

The silence stretched. The river rolled like a broken mirror. Dark, distorted, reflecting nothing but the rot of the city bleeding in from the banks.

“All that talking,” Jay said, quieter now. But not calmer. “And you still never said the one thing that fucking mattered.”

His voice cracked like a bottle under pressure, loud enough to punch through the cold. “The one fucking thing, Nox!”

He hadn’t meant to raise his voice. But it was out now, and there was no pulling it back.

He shifted his weight, jaw tight, breath misting sharp in the space between them. It would’ve been easier. So much easier. If Nox had come out swinging. If he’d snapped back with something sharp or cruel, given Jay something solid to grip. Something to hit. Something to blame.

Instead, there was just... this.
This silence. This numbness. This ghost. This damn knife in his gut.

Without realizing, his hands slipped from his coat pockets. He gripped the railing hard enough that pain lanced up his arm, bright and familiar, even with the drug still in his bloodstream.

Dammit, he thought, jaw twitching as he flexed his aching fingers. Now I want another one.

His eyes flicked back down the street. The path he’d wandered to get here.

[Nox]

Nox admitted to himself that he wasn't good with feelings. At least other peoples. Or his own, but he knew he talked alot too. And he never said the right things. It was all knowledge he knew but it didn't change the fact that he didn't know what Jay wanted him to say. He'd apologized. Said he was like a brother. He said he was an asshole. What more was there?

But Jay clearly wanted to hear something specific. He raised his voice, gripped the railing too tight likely hurting his hand further in his attempt to not strike him or maybe it was something else. Nox continued to lean on the railing staring out into the dark water, it was probably covered in a thin layer of ice that would keep anyone from falling in under the water.

"I will admit I'm terrible at apologies, but I don't know what you want to hear. I could blame the lack of emotions and empathy from the severing but I wasn't very good before losing the power. I love you like a brother. I remember that feeling. You can take whatever rage out on me that you like. It's nothing more than I deserve. And I wish I could say what you want to hear without prompting. I'm sorry I ended things with an impersonal text and cut you out of my life. I'm sorry I hurt you and betrayed you."

The emptiness was all he had. Nox just stared into the water. He hung his head "I'm sorry for everything."

[Jay Carpenter]

Jay heard the words.

He heard them. Every last sorry. Every last scrape of regret.

But they didn’t land. They didn’t sink. They spun around him like smoke in a locked room. Impossible to breathe. Impossible to grab. He stood there while Nox bled apology after apology into the air like it could somehow soak the wound dry. But it only made something in Jay burn hotter.

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

His breath fogged sharp through his nose, and before he could stop himself. Before he even knew he was going to do it, he spun. The movement was sudden. Aggressive. Like a knife in the dark. He closed the space between them in a single step. And when he stopped, he was close. Too close. The kind of distance where decisions stopped being made with words.

Nox would smell it in that instant. The chemical aroma of the drug curling behind Jay’s teeth, mixing with the taste of anger. His breath was hot between them. His jaw set so tight the muscles ticked at the corner.

“You’re sorry?” Jay spat the word like it had betrayed him. “Yeah. I fuckin’ hear you. Over and over. But what are you gonna do about it?” His voice had dropped to a growl.

A part of him. Small, cracked, trembling - wanted Nox to hit him. Just once. Just enough to give him something real to react to. Something he could hold on to. Something he knew how to handle. But another part.. deeper, messier.. wanted something else entirely.

His chest rose and fell like he’d been running. His hands twitched at his sides, not fists yet, but not safe either. He had no idea what he really wanted in that moment.

He wanted to hurt, or be hurt.
To punish, or be forgiven.
To smash something apart, or pull someone close enough to drown in them.

And looking at Nox. His quiet, hollow-eyed calm, the way he didn’t flinch. It only made it worse. Jay leaned in half an inch. His voice was sharp as metal. His tone tremoring just beneath the surface.

“You left me with a fuckin’ crater, Nox. I’m still crawling out of it.”

[Nox]

They were close. So close. It would be easy just to lean in and kiss him. Nox stared into Jay's eyes. And he wondered if Jay really understood what he'd done, what he'd come between what he'd started that night in the tunnels with a kiss.

Nox held no compulsions against sleeping with Jay again. There was a thought rattling around his brain that said if he did it might mean he was truly done waiting, wanting, done with hope. He'd slept with countless people since breaking up with Raffe. Though that was different -- this was different.

Nox reached across the distance between then and leaned in. "You started the digging by ignoring my protest." Nox didn't blame Jay, not for any of it. But he had kissed him, he had touched him. Nox had been weak, he knew it was still all his fault that their lives were in hell. "I'm sorry I ruined your life with mine." He pulled Jay's coat closer and kissed him. It wasn't romantic, or tender, but it held the passion he felt for Jay, He knew exactly how he had felt for the man. The intense emotions. He wasn't the one. He was never going to be that but he was something. He'd always been something.