sweet lucy was a dancer (tw, day 1)

The hat goes first. Tossed somewhere between the cross of pillars and the rotting mildew of the market stalls. It spins and sails and lands in the dust.

Good riddance.

The whole place feels bombed. Like it's eerily familiar. There, in the debris strewn across the cobblestones. And here, the foundations of a building that are so warped it can hardly be called a building at all. There's a crossbeam tilted at a killing angle.

The Seam is three steps away from this. The houses with the rebar skeletons, those hulking cement things that they slapped up over the mines, trying so hard to block out the sun. There's a bridge like a mouth. The basement is always so damp.

It takes the stone to shift for Tick to realize that he's leaning against a grave.

Small stumble.

The dirt is slick, and the soil is dark, but the mound is overgrown. No flowers. Just grass, and the moss, and the peeking roots of the tree standing at the far end of the cemetery.

So very quite all of a sudden. Still. The sounds of the fighting behind him are gone. The sound of his breathing, gone.

There is a statue. Standing above the grave. Fair Lady, weeping. Winged. Her hands are covered in lichen and her shoulder is chipped off, the high jut of her cheek is jagged and gaping, like someone dug their fingers in and tried to pull her out.

And the second statue. One-handed. Breathing.

"Oh." The dirt is slick. The grass around their ankles. The quiet. His voice is flat as he sidesteps the headstone, gripping the flat top of it. "You."