“What about your brother?”

Saila’s question pierced the veil Noble had lost himself in.

“What about him?”

“What did he think about all this? How did he become… what he became. Because it feels uh… different, from what you are.”

Noble sighed, and sipped his tea. He had hoped she wouldn’t recognize the gap in his tale, where a tale of brothers became a sad descent into solitude.

“That… the fighting changed us all. You just heard how it made me. Others, not so much- some reveled in it, wild and free. They often died indulging it. Others sunk even lower- a few simply stopped, becoming true machinery, like those-” he cringed, the memory of it stinging like acid in the vein. “Like those floral imitations.”

Saila shivered at the words, and edged closer to the fire.

“Oh… oh shit. Those were- Nobl- Knave- your brother, he taught her how to do that, she told me that! Was he trying to… make more of you two?”

“I don’t doubt it, though hell if I know why,” Noble answered simply.

They sat on that a moment, the night’s air gentle and still.

“So… how did your brother change, then?”

Noble finished his tea, and set the cup aside.

“I don’t… rightly know. Some days I say it twisted him, taking a young man pushed to desperation and pulling till there was nothing left to rend. Some days I think him dead- that he died and this is some specter of want wearing him. Some days, I say nothing at all- it did not change him, it only revealed the core of who he was. Whatever the case… that first mission put something chaotic in his soul.”

Saila was silent, sipping at her tea, waiting for more.

“He’d always… wanted, things. We both did- it’s a natural thing, to want. But his became a hunger. You could see it in his eyes, growing day by day- fangs, etched into his eyes in a grim, wide smile. His seemed to… grow, with them, till staring him face to face left you feeling outnumbered. And it spread.”

Even across a crackling fire, Noble could hear Saila gulp, and see her paw at her face- wiping away a tear, or something else? He did not know.

“Those he dealt with, those he spoke to, slowly but surely fangs would grow. Some just a tooth or two, others a full ring around the iris. It infested them, drove their desires into overdrive- simple wants grew razor-tipped. It was as slow a process as their destruction of our human will, but no less devastating- one night, he… one night, he…”

Noble’s voice hitched. He coughed, hard, body shaking; Kenji’s medicine was strong but the pain still snuck back in when least expected.

“It’s okay, Noble, you don’t-”

“I do, I do, I-”

He coughed again, and that cut them both off.

It was not because of pain, not truly, that he coughed, though it did give him a startle all the same.

No, it was something else.

Scars, raw and bleeding- so fresh he could still feel them. So fresh he was still there, in that moment, reliving it every day, at every reminder. It did not stop, simply subsided, waiting for the moment to strike with such a violent blow he can barely stand!

Memories tumble, like stones down a mountain.

###

“Come one, wake up. Wake up Knave” his brother says, in that smooth voice of his- even with the masks on, Knave can tell it’s him by inflection.

“Noble it’s… ugh, three in the morning. What the hell are you doi-”

“We’re leaving. I’m bored of this place.”

That wakes him up. Knave flings himself from his covers into a sitting position.

“What do you mean leave? We can’t just leave.”

“Hehe, hahaha… yes we can, foolish little Knave. Come on, suit up, pack your things.”

Without a word otherwise, he leaves. It takes a second after for Knave to realize he is fully kitted out- military dress, his mask, even one of their cloaks.

But this one was black- as was the hat on his head. Where did he…?

Things shift.

---

“Brother come on wait up. What’s going on?”

He’s outside of his room, suited up save his mask, supplies on his back.

“As I’ve said, oh brother of mine- we’re leaving. I am BORED of this place.”

“And as I said, brother, we can’t just-”

There is a loud noise in the distance- not gunfire, but certainly violence.

“Wh… what’s going on?”

A cackle emanates from his brother’s form, short but sharp. “I think Unit 2 got into the whisky again. Quite the ruckus if we can hear it from here.”

This makes sense. Unit 2- name long since scratched off like the serial number on stolen goods- did like to drink. But so early and so rowdy? It feels off.

“I don’t know brother, I… should we not go help him out?”

“Do you want to?”

An odd question, that leaves an odder feeling on the back of Knave’s neck. He ignores it, believing it simply the grogginess of sleep once more.

Did he really want to do this?

“No,” he realizes, and answers. “I suspect you’re right. You often are.”

“Good, good- oh, that reminds me. Oh Knaveish brother, a gift.”

A hand- one of Noble’s shadows- slices out from his black cloak and gently places a light brown hat upon his head, nice and snug.

“Wh- well, thank you brother, but what’s the occasion?”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Our birthday. It is soon, is it not? One of the guards gave it to me, the one with the handlebar moustache.”

It wasn’t, and he knew this- neither remembers the day they were born. But the hat is one that always caught his interest, and he feels the smile spread across his face.

“Suppose so, brother. What’d they get you?”

“You’ll see,” Noble says, smiling through his words.

Things shift

---

“Unit Twenty-seven, Unit Twenty-eight, what are you doing up at this hour?”

One of the guards, in Exovan dress he can’t quite pull off and with a Felisian rifle too comfortable in his hands. Knave has stopped thinking about the discrepancy but knows what it means.

“Why, my good gentleman,” Noble says with a bow. “We are simply on our way out to see the star-shower. Is that not right, dear brother Twenty-eight?”

“Oh, I’d forgo- I mean, yes, of course it is. We want to see the stars.”

The guard before them scowls as one would at an unruly engine that refuses to start.

His opposite, however, says otherwise.

“Oh come on. Let them through- we treat them hard enough as is, yeah?”

An unexpected statement- Knave recognizes the soldier in question as one who’d rather spit on them than so much as look at them.

Noble also recognizes the marks in his eyes.

“Look, orders are orders, I-”

“Come on,” the second says, louder, fiercer- Nobler.

The first catches on, even if Knave doesn’t.

Two things happen then, swiftly.

The first man aims his rifle.

A flash of something leaps from Noble’s cloak.

Noble has a gun pointed at his head, but the man has a blade, black-silver, pointed at his throat.

“Let us through, you Felisian bastard.”

“Return to your cell, Unit Twenty-seven.”

“No.”

Gunfire.

The second soldier perforates the other with a singular pull of the trigger, and the body falls to the ground with a wet thud.

Knave is more shocked at his brother having a sword than the death in front of him.

“Brother, is that your gift?”

“Ah, yes, it is. Had it custom made- just like a samurai, don’t you think? It’s perfect.”

“Come on you two, lets… get out of…” the remaining soldier says. Something is happening to him- little wisps of shadow lift off his shoulders. He jolts, like he’s been struck.

Then he is, as Noble drives the sword into his back.

“Tch. Worthless- he better have prepped the truck.”

Knave watches the man fall- still alive, but fading.

“He’s right though,” Noble continues. “The gunfire’ll draw attention. Come on, get moving.”

Noble walks off, and after a moment Knave does as well.

Things shift.

------

“Well, my brother- here we are. Freedom.”

They are standing atop a ridge of the Walking Mountains, far from the base they’d called home for who knows how long. Outside, where the air smells the greatest, so crisp and cold even through a heavy filtration mask. Outside, where the ground is rough and hewn and rocky and sloped at times, even as machine-reflexes adjust your legs.

Outside, under the brilliant swirling chaos of the starry sky.

Knave doesn’t respond at first. He’s looking at it, marveling.

Blazing lines of light slice across the distant air, shooting stars rising up from wherever they are born and landing firmly in the sky. All that Knave can think to say is beautiful, but his lips are frozen in a grin.

“They’re stars, Knave. We see them ever night.”

“But not star-showers. Not like this. Look at them! I read that stars are born from fragments of the molten core, like miniature volcanos. It shoots them into the sky where they hang, till they fizzle out!”

Noble rolls his eyes, as he always does when Knave gets like this. With the fangs it looks like his pupils are being pushed around by an unseen tongue.

Then he starts to walk off.

“H- hey, come on. Wait a bit. Please?”

Noble sighs, and returns to his brother’s side.

“I don’t have all night- but I did say this was our birthday. Consider it a gift.”

“Thank you,” Knave smiles. “Thank you, Noble. God, what I wouldn’t give to witness a shooting star up close.”

“You’d die.”

“Not with this body, right?”

“No, you’d still die. Of the ground collapsing if not the heat.”

Knave shrugs, and just keeps looking at the continuing light show. It’s slowing now, but still a wonderous sight. Each a mass, according to his reading, of molten metal launched into the sky with such ferocity they get stuck up there like beads in fabric. He wishes he could visit them, see the birth of a star, see it rise, see it hang there, a want that flickers in the embers of his heart.

But he knows he can’t- nothing can fly that high, and Noble is right that he would die.

So that want, too, fails to catch.

He feels the hand on his back.

“Beautiful… isn’t it, brother?”

Noble, said to Knave, with a gentle kindness in his voice.

“It really is bro…ther?”

Knave turns to look at him. He’s not talking about the stars.

Behind them, down the mountain, there is a sea of flames.

The woods around their home, the base itself, dancing to an unheard tune.

“Wh… what happened?”

“I said this was freedom, right? I simply asked some folk- Unit Thirteen mostly, the little pyromaniac. Thus, all that commotion.”

Knave blinks, steps away from his brother.

An uncommon instinct flares at the back of his neck- a desire to draw.

“… what? Did you not expect this?”

“I… I suppose I didn’t.”

Noble laughs, but it hitches in his throat.

“Knave, brother, I told you we were leaving. Did you expect to… what, go BACK to that pit of nightmares and tedium?”

Knave hadn’t thought about it.

Knave hadn’t, he realizes, thought much of anything.

He’d never needed to, beyond the ways he helped his brother.

“I… suppose not.”

“Hehe, hahaha… exactly, little brother of mine,” Noble reaches out a hand and pats him on the head, light enough not to disrupt the placement of his hat but enough to make it clear this is not a sign of respect. “You understand, right? We wanted to be free of that place. We wanted to see them end- they did to, after all, half the dead is by their own hands. You saw a glimpse of it. And now that we’re free, think about what we can do- we can go where we want, see who we want to see, do what we want to DO! As we’ve always wanted.”

“I… want to read books again.”

“Yes, and films too, right! So many films!”

“And… I want to plant a garden. I want to buy a telescope, and see the stars.”

The desire starts to catch, hooks in the soul.

“Tickets to the theatre! A woman on every arm!!”

“A… a carefree life, without worry.”

“Exactly! Exactly brother, and we’re here, now, in the ashen birth of that life! We’re HERE and nothing- NO ONE, can stand in our way!!! So let it go… let it go, and look me in the eyes.”

Knave does.

It’s like shoving his hand into a can of rusted metal scrap.

The hold, like always, slips.

He recoils, and reflex pulls the gun from his side and aims it square and true- but does not fire.

“Knave,” Noble says simple, in admonishment.

“Sorry, I- I don’t…”

He wills his body to move, to put it back, to stop what’s going to happen- but those are thoughts of a different Knave, in a different place, who has never left this moment.

“Don’t what?”

“… don’t want to kill people, if I can help it.”

A weak, piddly answer from a weak, piddly, failure of a brother who never amounted to anything more than his elder’s useful tool.

Noble rolls his eyes.

“Suppose you would say that, wouldn’t you. You were always a soft, kind-hearted boy, my poor brother. The good one, the kind one.”

Noble starts to approach.

“Noble, I swear to god, I’ll-”

He doesn’t know what he was going to say. Didn’t know then, doesn’t know now.

“The White to my Black. The King to my Pauper… the Noble, to my Knave.”

His brother grabs the long-nose by its barrel and lifts it to his face. In the light of the flames, he sees a row of fangs etched into his mask.

They open, a gaping maw of shadows churning within.

“Fire, brother. End this now, or never.”

The Knave that will be Noble doesn’t. Can’t.

He feels a boot in his chest.

“Brother, wh- what are you-”

Airborne. Weightless.

He tumbles, like stones down a mountain.

###

He told her, in fits and starts, what it’s like to fall.

Nothing could properly frame it, but Noble was skilled enough at words that when he wished it, the point got across well enough.

Saila, head swimming with far too much to process in a single night, fished out the most important point and focused on it and it alone.

As his words slowed, she braced herself against him for a hug.

There was a cool warmth there- chilly night made his iron casing like ice, even through his clothes and bandages, but the beating of his heart and the pulsing of his veins put a heat beneath it. Saila’s own flame-touched soul added to it, and between them both and the fading campfire, the frost-bit night was kept at bay.

She had no questions for him- not now, at least. Maybe later, once she’d mulled it over in her head. Whether Noble answered was his own choice, and she wouldn’t push it either way.

Everything Saila wanted- what she needed; she had heard already.

As consciousness drifted, two lives in the depths of night, a star sliced across the heavens and caught in the weave.

She made her wish, and Noble his, then both slipped and fell to sleep.

######