Marius

The skies above shook with a sliver of mute lightning. It was the one thing he'd noticed was consistent in this layer - the spark of anger indicating the malevolent, always scheming intelligence behind those skies, laughing at them all.

"Weird," Marius mused to two people who couldn't care less. "You know, I almost prefer those tiny tunnels in Madame Raava's cave."

Yelena was preoccupied with polishing her blade, and the Red-Woman merely stared forward, eyes linked inexorably to the horizon, while big Edna, well, she just did the job she was programmed to do.

He sat up, feeling his ass begin to groan with every hump and dune the great beetle scurried over.

"I gotta say, it's good to be free - don't get me wrong. But I ain't even feeling my skin tan out here, know what I mean?"

This time the Red-Woman turned to him, regarding him with narrowed eyes behind her veil.

"You are witnessing a miracle of Lightbringer. You are seeing her fists of flame destroy your foe, and yet you are wishing your skin would burn?"

"Wish is pretty strong," Marius murmured. "But I'm not one for sitting around and waiting for shit to happen. I like to take an active approach, yeah?"

The woman turned back to the antennae of the beetle, steering it into another deep pool of quicksand, miraculously, did not trap the creature.

"We are arriving in one day," she replied. "Then, you shall have all fire you desire."

"Woo-hoo," Marius sighed, closing his eyes and feeling the thick dust on the desert air assail his grizzled face.

He spared a glance at Yelena, engaged in her polishing, her nails clawing at the specks of dried blood still clinging to her blade.

Okay, Marius, he thought. This is the time for bonding. You've saved her life, essentially. She owes you one. Let's see what we can do here.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

She looked up at him with weary eyes, drooping bags sagging under the folds of her lids.

"Don't speak to me."

Great. We're off to an awesome start.

"I don't do 'quiet', Yelena," he said with a smile. "You must know that by now."

She looked away. "Talk all you want. Talk to the sky. Talk to your blade. Just leave me alone."

He let out another sigh of resignation and turned over on his side, propping himself up on a the edge of the beetle's hollowed out carapace as she got back to her cleaning.

"It's pointless, you know."

He didn't look back to see her stop and stare at him with fury. He closed his eyes and let what little specks of sleep he could get take over him, telling her just one more thing:

"There's some stains you can't ever wash out."

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"You're a teacher and a leader, Marius. Remember that."

He did, but it didn't make the gulp in his throat shrink away.

He could see the little girl's face in the swirling liquid of his drink, and that was the moment where he knew he needed to gulp the spirit down. When the faces appeared, he drank. It was that simple.

"Cheers," he croaked.

He heard the other man pull up a chair and join him at the bar.

"Two more," he said, his grizzled voice grating against Marius' ears. "For me - scotch on the rocks. For my friend here, whiskey sour - just like his personality. Ha!"

Marius said nothing as the drinks arrived and he gulped down the pungent juice that he hoped - hoped to all that was good - would kill him one day soon.

"You been here long?"

"Since noon."

The other man whistled like a chirpy little canary. "I'm impressed. I dare say you're the sole reason the bars here in Lucent stay open till the wee hours of the morn."

He knew the other man was smiling. But he didn't look. Instead, he eyed the slowly swirling images that were appearing in his dirty glass. Were they real? Who cared.

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"I don't..." he began, swallowing that thing in his throat like a frog about to croak. "I don't think-"

"Yes siree," the other man said, cutting through him massively with a wave of his hand to summon the barkeep for two more top-ups. "A man needs his rest. Especially a man with such responsibility on his shoulders, eh? That's what makes a real man, but you already know that, don't you, Marius? A real man looks after his family. Provides for them. Cares for them."

He felt his skin crawl as the other man placed his tattooed hand on his, and he beheld the image emblazoned on his veiny palm - the same one that had been burned into his chest ages ago.

"You've always been such a great provider to us all - because that's what we are, isn't it? We're family, Marius. And no man runs from family. Why, it'd be like running from himself! Ha!"

He slurped at his drink like a toddler sucking up its own tears. At this point, he didn't even feel the other man stand up, down his drink, and caress the soft flesh behind his neck.

"And no man can outrun his own shadow," the other man whispered. Then, brighter: "So, you stay here as long as you need to tonight, ok? Tomorrow morning, you'll be back bright eyed and bushy tailed, because that's who you are, Marius. You're one of us. You're part of something momentous."

He said nothing. He just felt the same gulp form in his throat that had been there since this afternoon. No amount of liquor was chasing it away, this time.

"We love you, Brother Marius. Remember that."

As he felt the man's hand leave his neck and his departing footsteps echo like gongs in his brain, he turned, red-eyed and sallow, and tried to form the words he needed:

"Darius, I...I don't know if I can do this, anymore."

His listener simply blinked once, pointed to his thin smile, and gave a hearty chuckle before he left the bar.

"Just smile, Marius," he said. "You know you're never fully dressed without one! Ha!"

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He woke when he felt soft hands drape something across his body. He started, and only just managed to catch Yelena's golden threads retreat from his form. He looked at her quizzically as she tried to avoid his gaze, and then felt the blanket she must have just draped over him.

He stared through her and the darkness of the slowly fading desert night that surrounded them both. And then, incredibly, she was the one that spoke first:

"You do not sleep well."

He smirked, leaning on the edge of the carapace and looking - not really at her, and not at the meditating Red-Woman at the helm - just looking at the sky, the sands, and the dust.

"I knew this guy once that could just decide to sleep whenever he wanted," he said nonchalantly. "Just thought about sleep and POOF, out he went like a light. Could do it even in the most stressful situations. Bad day at work? POOF - sleep. Anxiety attack? POOF - sleep. Bored? Just want the day to end? POOF - he'd sleep like a baby."

He searched her stone-like features for a reaction, and then, miraculously, he saw the creeping lines of a smile.

"It sounds like an incredible power."

"Yes it was," he replied.

He silenced himself then, seeing that she was in the grip of some meditation of her own. She'd stopped cleaning her blade and had left it at her back, no longer even wanting to touch the thing.

"I don't hate you, you know."

He perked up. "That's one of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me."

She sighed. "I have known people like you. We had many Argents that came to serve Amarata after disregarding their life of crime. They grew to believe in something greater than themselves. They grew to believe in Lord Jael."

Marius said nothing. He was glad the Red-Woman was in the midst of her own strange slumber, for he'd told the girl nothing of her Lord's true colors - what the girl had said, what the defaced paintings in the palace had shown him.

"You saved me because of your own self-interest," she continued. "I understand that, but do you understand why I clung to my beliefs as I did? Do you understand how important they are to me?"

"Yeah," he said gravely. "I can understand."

She eyed him once, then looked away.

"My people sent me down here because of what slumbers beneath my heart," she said, gripping her chest with such hatred that he grimaced. "But as we escaped, it did not come out. The pain and hate you saw came from me, Marius, and me alone. I wanted to do unspeakable things to that man...Knox..."

"Yelena, anyone would. He tortured you! I mean, come on - he skinned you alive. I dunno about you Argents, but for us norms up there on Averix, that kinda behavior warrants just a teeny, tiny bit of resentment."

"You don't understand," she groaned. "I'm letting it win."

He cocked an eyebrow.

"It's getting stronger," she explained. "It's waiting for the day when the line between me and it ceases to exist, and then I will be its puppet. Forever."

She closed her eyes and raised her face to the illusory moon that hovered above, ghostly pale, with a small perimeter of writhing darkness surrounding it.

"I'm fighting both The Everloft's monsters and myself. I might be fighting them all till the day I breathe my last breath. If my breath is even mine at that point."

He leaned forward and snapped his fingers at her, drawing a gasp of frustrated anxiety. But she didn't reach for her blade. That was something.

"We had a deal, yeah?" he said with an impish grin. "That's something I understand real well. You be the brave warrior, I'll be the knife in the shadows. Look at what we just did - we took down a whole fucking guard entourage and the sadistic right hand of a maniacal bird-man. I told you: I ain't no pretty princess looking for an escort. You ever feel like this shadow-thing inside's taking over? Rely on me. Lean on me. We're a team now."

She scoffed at him, but there was no malice behind the expression this time.

"I've heard that before," she said. "From people who told me they'd stand by my side till the very end of time up there in the frozen world of our monastery. They lied."

The shadow of doubt fell across her face again.

"Betrayal leaves a bitter taste," she said as the moon above slowly dissolved into illusory sunlight. "We were more than brothers and sisters up there. We were family - and still they all hated me. Why should I believe you'll be any different?"

"Because," he said with a sad smile. "I've been through it all before, too."

Just then the Red-Woman jerked up with a start, her mouth opening in a scream of alarm that pierced the ears of the other passengers.

"They come!" she cried. "They come!"

Through her cries - like those of a pained toddler wishing to block out some horrible sound ringing in her ears - they heard the distinctive roar of something inhuman behind them.

Marius followed the sound and at first saw only the shimmering sands flying by them. Then, honing his appraisal, he caught sight of the air moving - like something was slicing through the bright skies of a new Everloft day.

He saw its face appear first - materializing into wailing, raging life just above the quicksand.

A being of living shadow, twitching its limbs in anticipation, slowly forming their malleable forms into a set of two razor-sharp pincers.

"What," Marius choked, feeling his old gulp rise in his throat. "What is that?"