blue lips, blue veins. } atlas/percy blitz

Fear is not a welcome guest in the mind of Percy Delacroix. She is wired, built, to be fearless-

but there is a flaw in her code.

She is not afraid when she walks out the door to the balcony, stares out into the endless fathoms of darkness, the starless sky, the all-consuming, ever-

But then she shuts her eyes, and oblivion runs its claws down her spine, resting for just a split second longer in each space between her vertebra. It begins at points of ice along her skin, pooling outward, falling inward. And then she can feel it not just on the surface, but deep within her bones.

She does not shiver because of the harsh rush of wind clawing through her hair and rolling over her body in sharp waves.

From where she stands, she can see the back of his head by the rails of the balcony. Fear has skimmed the surface, and now it cuts deep into flesh and bone- they are one in the same, both damned with the same sentence.

"Atlas?" she calls. Her voice is small against the roar of the wind.

"It's so cold."

There is no Calypso and her sun, here.

❧

he stumbled into faith and thought
"god this is all there is"
the pictures in his mind arose
and began to b r e a t h e