Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The silence in Artful's apartment was so heavy he could hear the beat of his own blood in his ears. It wasn't the silence of peace, but that of guilt hanging over him like a thick, suffocating blanket. It had been one of those days. The memories of her—his number one fan, the young woman with the bright smile who never missed his shows—had hounded him mercilessly. He saw her in the reflections of the windows, in the patterns on the walls, always holding that damn teddy bear he had given her, which was now his most treasured possession and his greatest torment.

“Je ne peux plus...” (I can't take it anymore...), he murmured to himself, burying his makeup-free face in his hands. The bathroom mirror reflected the image of a pale, hollow-eyed man, a ghost of who was once the great Artful. He needed to get out of there, away from those four walls that seemed to be closing in on him.

Without putting on his tuxedo, wearing only a pair of loose pants and a hoodie that hid his face, he went out to wander the deserted hallways of the government complex. His feet carried him aimlessly, away from the common areas, towards the abandoned sectors, the ones neither civilians nor the other assassins frequented. It was a maze of cold concrete and rusty pipes, the perfect place to get lost and, hopefully, for his demons not to find him.

It was then that he heard it.

It wasn't a sound from the complex. It wasn't the hum of electricity or the distant drip of a pipe. It was a melody. Simple, sad, repetitive. A song of just five notes weaving into a short, stubborn lament. It sounded of nostalgia and loss, of something that was once cheerful and now was just an echo of itself.

Artful stopped dead in his tracks, his magician training making him move with a stealthy naturalness. He leaned against a concrete wall and listened. The sound came from a maintenance chamber whose door was half open, letting out a rectangle of dim, dusty light.

With his heart pounding hard against his ribs, he cautiously peered inside.

There, in the center of the room, among moldy boxes and rusty tools, was Pursuer.

But he wasn't the stalking predator, the nightmare of quick and lethal movements. He was sitting on the floor, his legs drawn up against his black, grainy torso. In his enormous hands, which so easily shattered flesh and bone, he held a small metallic object with an impossible delicacy. A harmonica.

His turquoise eyes, usually fixed on a target with terrifying intensity, were now downcast, concentrated on the instrument. His barely defined lips rested on the reeds. From them came that melancholic and simple melody. It wasn't virtuosic, it was clumsy, as if he were learning, repeating a pattern he had found and that, for some reason, resonated with him. “Funny noises”, he had once thought, according to Government reports. But now, it didn't sound funny at all. It sounded... lonely.

Artful held his breath. Every instinct screamed at him to run. This was the being who, without his mask, would see him as “fresh meat”. The same one who, just a few nights before, had possessed him with a primal intensity on the floor of his living room. But the scene was so profoundly incongruous with Pursuer's nature that curiosity won out over fear.

He didn't enter. Instead, he slid down beside the door and sat on the cold floor, his back against the hallway wall, out of the cannibal's direct line of sight. He closed his eyes and simply listened.

The melody continued, unaltered. Note after note, the same sad pattern. Artful could feel his own guilt and pain reflected in that simple tune. It was the sound of everything he had lost, of everything he had ruined. And, he suspected, perhaps it was also the sound of what Pursuer was: a being out of place, an instrument of death who only found a glimmer of peace by reproducing the echo of a life he had extinguished.

He didn't know how much time had passed. It could have been minutes or an hour. But eventually, the music stopped.

Artful opened his eyes and stayed still, waiting. Had he sensed him? Was he coming for him now?

From inside the room came a sound: a low growl, not of threat, but of... frustration? Then, a harsh, non-human sigh. And the music started again, the same sequence, but this time with a slightly off-key note, as if one of his thick fingertips had pressed where it shouldn't have.

A surprised, small sigh of empathy escaped Artful's lips. It was barely a sound, but in the silence of the hallway, it might as well have been thunder.

The music cut off immediately.

Artful stiffened. He had made a mistake. He heard the sound of Pursuer getting to his feet, the slight creak of his joints. His shadow was cast through the rectangle of light into the hallway, lengthening to where he was sitting.

He didn't run. He knew it was useless. Instead, he leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, expecting the worst.

Pursuer appeared in the doorframe. His silhouette filled the space. He smelled of earth, iron, and something vaguely static. Artful could feel his gaze on him. Slowly, Artful opened his eyes and met those turquoise eyes fixed on his face. There was no hunger in them. Only that same intense, animal curiosity he sometimes showed.

“White and Black,” Pursuer grunted in vague words, his voice a rough rumble. It wasn't a question. It was an acknowledgment.

Artful, his throat dry, nodded slowly. “Oui. C'est moi” (Yes. It's me).

Pursuer looked at him for another moment. Then, his gaze lowered to the harmonica he still held in his hand. He raised it slightly.

“Sound... funny”, he said, articulating the words with difficulty.

Artful couldn't help a small, shaky sigh that was almost a laugh. “Oui (Yes). A funny sound. But... sad too.”

Pursuer tilted his head. “Sad? “He seemed to be testing the word, as if the concept was both familiar and strange to him.

“Oui. Triste. Comme moi. Comme toi, peut-être?” (Yes. Sad. Like me. Like you, perhaps?)

Pursuer didn't answer. Instead, he took a step back, into the room. It wasn't an invitation, but it wasn't a rejection either. It was... space.

With a courage he didn't know he had, Artful slowly got to his feet, feeling his legs tremble. He peered into the room. Pursuer had returned to his spot on the floor, but this time he wasn't completely turned away. He was slightly sideways, as if aware of his presence.

For a long minute, nobody moved. The air was charged with a strange tension, not violent, but expectant.

Finally, Artful made a decision. He entered the room and sat on the floor, against the wall opposite Pursuer, maintaining a respectable distance. He didn't look directly at the cannibal, but fixed his gaze on a damp stain on the wall.

Pursuer watched him, motionless. Then, with deliberate slowness, he brought the harmonica back to his lips.

And he began to play.

The same melody, but this time it was different. He wasn't alone. Artful was there, listening. And Pursuer, in his own beastly way, knew it. The notes didn't change, but the intention behind them did. It was no longer just an echo of a stolen memory. It was an offering. A shared sound in the dim light.

Artful closed his eyes again. This time, the tears he had been holding back all day finally rolled down his cheeks, carving tracks through the dust on his face. He wasn't crying for his fan, nor only for his guilt. He was crying for the absurd and terrible beauty of the moment. For the monster playing a sad melody and for the coward listening to it. Two broken beings, unable to communicate with words, finding a fragile and momentary solace in five simple notes floating in the dusty air of a forgotten room.

They remained like that until the dim light began to fade, marking the artificial cycle of the complex. Pursuer stopped playing. Artful wiped his tears with the sleeve of his hoodie. He stood up, his bones protesting from the cold and the position.

Pursuer looked at him, putting the harmonica away with that same unusual care.

“Merci” (Thank you), Artful whispered, and his voice was hoarse from disuse and emotion.

Pursuer only nodded, a slow and grave movement.

Without saying another word, Artful left the room and walked away down the hallway, the sad, persistent melody now etched in his mind, a reminder much gentler than the screams of his past. Behind him, in the growing darkness of the chamber, Pursuer remained seated, stroking the harmonica with his rough fingers, perhaps wondering why the presence of the “White and Black” made the “funny noises” feel a little less lonely.

Chapter Text

A sharp, knife-like nostalgia had been stuck in Artful's chest all day. It wasn't just the memory of his fan this time; it was something more basic, more primal: a longing for a taste, a smell, a piece of home. France. Or, at least, the sugar-coated version his memory had preserved: the scent of garlic frying in olive oil, the intoxicating perfume of fresh tomatoes reducing for hours, and, above all, cheese. Parmigiano-Reggiano grated over a steaming plate of pasta. Fromage. His surname was a joke from fate, a constant mockery of what he craved most.

"Ça suffit! (That's enough!)," he told himself, throwing aside the civilian magazine he'd been flipping through without seeing. He was going to cook. He didn't care about his total lack of culinary talent; he didn't care about the universal warning that seemed to follow him: "Don't eat Artful's cooking." He needed the comfort of the ritual, even if the result was a catastrophe.

He put on a ridiculously clean apron over his loose clothes and, with reckless determination, faced the ingredients he'd managed to gather from the complex market: canned tomatoes (the closest thing to fresh), a packet of oddly shaped pasta, garlic, and a block of cheese that promised to be "Parmesan-type" but smelled of sweaty feet and defeat. It was perfect for his mood.

For the next hour, his small apartment transformed into a war zone. Oil splattered and burned on the stovetop, the garlic burned in seconds, filling the air with a bitter, smoky smell. The tomatoes, hitting the overheated pan, hissed threateningly. Artful, sweating and cursing in a mix of broken French and English, stirred the increasingly dubious concoction with the desperation of an alchemist watching his great work fail.

"Merde! Ce n'est pas censé être comme ça! (Shit! It's not supposed to be like this!)," he exclaimed, adding more grated cheese in a desperate attempt to mask the charcoal flavor. The cheese, instead of melting elegantly, formed rubbery clumps and stuck to the bottom of the pan, emitting a sharp, penetrating sour smell that mixed with the burnt garlic and the foundation he had unconsciously smeared on his face with the back of his hand.

The final result was a shapeless, greyish-brown mound on a plate. It smelled of defeat, of desperation, and, very prominently, of rotten cheese and chemicals. But it was his defeat. He took off the apron, sat at the table, and hesitated with his fork. The aroma was so overwhelmingly repulsive that even he, in his state of denial, felt nauseous.

It was at that precise moment, with the fork halfway to his mouth, that the door to his apartment, which he hadn't locked in his haste, slowly opened.

Artful froze. The fork clattered onto the plate with a metallic "clang."

In the doorframe, completely filling it with his black, grainy silhouette, was Pursuer. It wasn't a sporadic, terrifying apparition like before—perhaps not anymore. In recent weeks, the cannibal had become an almost... domestic presence. A frequent and unpredictable visitor who appeared at the most inconvenient times, like a sinister cat that had decided this was its second territory.

Once, Artful was deep-cleaning the pantry, pulling out expired jars and battling dust. A dull thud and a pained whine made him spin around. There, in the middle of the living room, lay Pursuer face down, as if he had tried to sneak in through the narrow living room window and had failed miserably in the landing. He got up, rubbing his head with a pained grunt, looking at Artful not with anger, but with an expression of offended confusion, as if the window had personally betrayed him. Artful, after the initial scare, couldn't help but let out a laugh at the pathetic scene. Pursuer just let out an annoyed snort and limped away slightly, leaving a smear of dirt on the carpet.

Another time, Artful was in the middle of a panic attack, hyperventilating on the bathroom floor, when the doorknob turned and the door opened. Pursuer peered in, not to attack, but with the same curiosity a dog shows when checking on its sick owner. He simply observed him with his head tilted until the attack passed, and then withdrew as silently as he had arrived.

Now, here he was again. His white head tilted, his turquoise eyes scanning the room with a familiarity that was deeply disturbing before fixing on him. No, not on him. On the plate. Then on the air around him.

The cannibal sniffed the air deeply, an action that normally preceded the hunt. His expression, always fixed on his face, seemed... to change. It wasn't anger, nor hunger. It was a deep and genuine confusion, mixed with a hint of "This again?" His nostrils (or where they should be) flared slightly. He sniffed again, and this time, a low, guttural growl, laden with something that sounded like pure disgust and exasperated tiredness, emerged from his chest. It was the sound of someone who had come home expecting... he didn't know what, but definitely not this.

Artful didn't dare breathe. He was sitting there, without his mask, without his full makeup, his face smeared and smelling of sweat and desperation. He was a civilian. Fresh meat. This was the situation he had always feared, but now wrapped in the absurdity of routine.

Pursuer took a step into the apartment, with the confidence of someone treading familiar ground. His gaze moved from the plate to Artful, then back to the plate, as if his non-human brain was processing: "Object recognized: White and Black. Object not recognized: That... brown thing that smells of chemical death." He took another step, and the smell must have hit him like a physical wall, because he stopped dead. His head tilted at an angle so sharp it seemed unnatural, even for him, a clear sign of maximum perplexity.

"White and Black...?" he grunted, but the phrase sounded like a question full of disbelief. "Smells... bad."

Artful, his voice trapped in his throat, could only nod weakly.

Pursuer "frowned." It was a subtle movement, a slight arching of the skin around his borrowed eyes, but it was unmistakable. It was the expression of someone who had found something so offensive to their senses they couldn't process it. He took a step back towards the door, his gaze still fixed on the steaming plate with a mixture of horror and fascination.

"Not... meat," he declared finally, as if reaching a scientific conclusion. "Smells... rotten." He paused and then added, with a tone of absolute reproach, "Worse than old blood."

And then, to Artful's infinite astonishment, Pursuer turned around and left. He simply walked out the door, leaving it ajar, his threatening presence replaced by the persistent, nauseating smell of burnt cheese.

Artful sat there, stunned, staring at the empty doorway. Then, he looked at his plate of "food." A laugh bubbled in his chest, a disbelieving, slightly hysterical laugh. He had been saved. Not by his magic, not by his mask, not by his cunning. He had been saved by the sheer awfulness of his cooking. The aroma of his culinary failure had been a shield more effective than any of his spells.

He stood up and, with renewed disgust, scraped the contents of the plate into the trash. The laughter faded, replaced by a wave of weariness and a strange sense of shame. He had been protected by his own ineptitude. It was pathetic.

Hours later, well into the night, a sound at the door made him look up from where he lay on the sofa. It wasn't a knock, but a dull dragging sound. He approached cautiously and opened the door.

There was no one in the entrance. But on the threshold, on the clean floor, lay the body of a civilian. Not just any civilian, but one of the ones who sometimes turned aggressive during the rounds. It was dead, its neck torn apart with the brutal efficiency characteristic of Pursuer. And, as was his habit, it was only missing a couple of bites. The "fresh meat" was no longer so fresh for the cannibal's palate.

Artful looked at the corpse, then looked down the empty hallway. There was no sign of Pursuer, but the message was as clear as if he had shouted it.

Your food smells terrible. Here's something better. Eat this.

It was disgusting. It was macabre. It was, in Pursuer's twisted mind, an act of care.

Artful closed the door, leaving the "gift" in the entrance. He couldn't deal with that now. He lay back on the sofa, feeling the smell of burnt cheese still permeating the air of his apartment, an invisible, stinky barrier that, at least for tonight, kept him safe. And, in the back of his mind, a question began to form: if Pursuer was capable of this kind of twisted "courtesy," what else might he be capable of?

Chapter Text

The air in the temple map smelled of dust, limestone, and the static electricity that always preceded the activation of the fire pillars. Artful, crouched behind a rock formation, watched two civilians trying to cross one of the central bridges. Thirty seconds of safety, plus a random amount of time. Always the same pattern, always the same choreography of death.

Pursuer was on the other bank, a dark, grainy silhouette against the orange flames of the pillars. His turquoise eyes shone with that mix of hunger and sadistic amusement that Artful had learned to recognize. They looked at each other across the chasm, an instant understanding passing between them: coordinated hunt.

Artful made a subtle hand signal. Me left, you right. Pursuer responded with a slight nod of his head, an almost inaudible grunt lost in the crackle of the flames.

The thirty seconds passed. Then, the extra time. Artful lost track, focused on the nearest civilian, a guy with a revolver who seemed to know what he was doing. He slipped through the shadows, his wand ready to create a wall and trap him. Pursuer, on the other side, began his advance, a patient predator cornering his prey.

It was then that a deafening roar cut through the air.

"YOU MUST DIE!"

The distorted voice of the Drakoboulder echoed through the cave. Artful, mid-movement, instinctively turned his head towards the sound. It was a mistake. A rookie mistake. The second civilian, the one he hadn't paid enough attention to, took advantage of the moment of distraction.

"Come on, coward!" the civilian shouted, and his fist, loaded with the brute force of desperation, connected with Artful's jaw with a dry, bony sound.

The blow wasn't just painful; it was disorienting. The magic from the punch stunned him, making the world spin around him. Artful staggered backward, his feet tangled on a loose rock, and before he could even curse, he lost his balance. The bridge's railing, weakened by the previous rolling of the giant red ball, gave way with a crunch of rotten wood.

"Putain! (Dammit!)" was all he managed to shout before falling into the void.

The fall was eternal and sudden at the same time. The impact with the icy water at the bottom of the stream knocked all the air from his lungs. Submerged in the murky darkness, disoriented and stunned, he struggled instinctively. But Artful couldn't swim. His arms and legs moved erratically, without coordination, only managing to keep him precariously afloat as he coughed and spat water. The floaties, he thought in panic, are in my inventory, I didn't put them on. Idiot.

Up above, near the remains of the bridge, Pursuer had seen the fall. A roar of pure rage, so powerful it eclipsed the sound of the water for a second, escaped his maw. The civilian who had punched Artful froze, the triumphant smile dying on his lips as he saw the cannibal charge towards him. There was no fight. Just a quick, brutal swipe that left the civilian badly wounded and bleeding on the ground, moaning in pain. The healer was too far away to help him.

Pursuer approached the edge of the precipice, his claws gripping the broken wood. His turquoise eyes scanned the watery darkness, searching for Artful's familiar form. He saw him struggling, slowly drowning. The rage in his chest was replaced by something more urgent, more visceral.

It was then that the second civilian, the one Pursuer had ignored in his anger, decided it was a good time for heroics.

"Yeah, come get some, you freaking wuss!" he shouted, taunting the cannibal.

The voice, unexpected and shrill, sounded right behind Pursuer. The cannibal, focused on Artful, startled slightly. But his body, tense and in an unstable position, lost its balance. His claws closed on air and, with a grunt of surprise and fury, he fell headfirst into the enemy waters.

The impact was even more spectacular than Artful's. Pursuer disappeared beneath the surface like a rock, emerging seconds later spitting water and emitting a series of grunts and snorts that were pure animal panic. His movements were anything but swimming; it was an aggressive, uncoordinated flailing, kicking and hitting the water as if it were a tangible enemy that could be defeated by brute force. Water splashed everywhere, blinding him further.

"No! No!" he managed to articulate between coughs and grunts, his eyes wide showing a primitive terror Artful had never seen in him.

Artful, still coughing and struggling to stay afloat, watched him. For a moment, the absurdity of the situation overcame the fear. The fearsome Pursuer, the supreme predator, was drowning like a kitten in a bathtub.

"You... you can't swim?" Artful managed to gasp, as a tiny wave washed water into his mouth.

Pursuer, in response, turned his wide eyes towards him and let out a grunt that was half fury, half plea. He thrashed with more force, sinking a few inches before emerging again, spitting a stream of water.

"Calm down!" Artful shouted, swimming clumsily towards him. "Stop moving like that, you're going to sink!"

It was like telling a hurricane to calm down. Pursuer wasn't listening. Panic had completely taken hold of him. One of his uncontrolled kicks hit Artful in the side, making him lose what little air he had left.

"Ow! Idiot!" Artful coughed, moving away a bit. "If you hit me, we'll both drown!"

Something in Artful's tone, perhaps the genuine exasperation, seemed to pierce the fog of Pursuer's panic. The cannibal stopped thrashing for a second, floating precariously, panting. His eyes, filled with animal terror, fixed on Artful.

"Good," Artful panted, catching his breath. "Now... stay still. Float."

Pursuer emitted a whining sound. "Floating" was not in his instinctive vocabulary. He tried to imitate Artful's more or less horizontal position, but his rigid body and terrestrial nature prevented it. He kept sinking, emerging each time with more panic.

"No, not like that," Artful said, swimming clumsily towards him again. "Relax. Let the water hold you."

He cautiously extended a hand towards Pursuer's shoulder. The cannibal flinched instinctively, a warning grunt in his throat.

"If you bite me, I'll leave you here," Artful warned, seriously. "Understood?"

Pursuer looked at him, the conflict between his terror of the water and his innate distrust was palpable. Finally, he nodded with a brusque movement of his head.

Artful placed his hand on the cold, grainy shoulder. "Good. Now... copy what I do."

For what seemed like an eternity, in the cold bottom of the cave, the most surreal lesson in history took place. Artful, a failed magician who could only swim with floaties, was teaching Pursuer, a supernatural killing machine, the basic principles of flotation.

"Don't kick," Artful instructed, as Pursuer thrashed his legs like a crazed mer-man. "Small movements. Gentle."

"Grraaah..." Pursuer grunted, frustrated, sinking again.

"Gentle, I said!"

It was a slow process, full of grunts, splashes, and the occasional accidental swipe. But, incredibly, Pursuer began to learn, unbelievably, a little. His body, though always tense, found a way to stay afloat with less energetic movements. He was no longer actively drowning; now he was just staying on the surface with the elegance of a brick, but he was staying.

The panic in his eyes gave way to an intense concentration, then to a kind of weary resignation. Finally, both of them were floating, panting, back-to-back, forming a strange raft of survivors in the middle of the icy water.

"Good," Artful whispered, exhausted. "We're not drowning anymore. Now... how the hell do we get out of here?"

They looked up. The walls around them weren't that high, but they looked almost vertical and slippery. The broken bridge was in the depths of the stream, leaving them with no options. Above, they could hear the distant shouts of the remaining civilians and the crackle of the fire pillars that had reignited. They were trapped.

"Brillant (Great)," Artful wheezed, letting the slight current carry him. "This is... this is stupid."

Pursuer emitted a grunt of agreement, a low, hoarse sound that vibrated through the water and against Artful's back. For the first time, it didn't sound like hunger or anger. It sounded like... complicity.

They spent a moment in silence, broken only by their breathing and the gentle lapping of the water. The cold was beginning to seep into their bones.

"Hey," Artful said suddenly. "That civilian... the one who punched me. Did you...?"

Pursuer turned his head slightly and emitted a dry, final grunt. A "yes" that left no room for doubt. He should be dead by now.

Artful nodded, feeling a strange pang. It wasn't pity for the civilian, but... something else. Pursuer had seen Artful fall and had reacted with instant violence. Not to hunt, but out of... revenge? Protection? The idea was as absurd as the situation they were in.

"Merci (Thank you)," he murmured, almost unwillingly.

Pursuer went still. Then, a heavy, wet arm settled over Artful's shoulder, not with malice, but with a firmness that was almost a clumsy hug. A grunt, softer this time, was his response.

They floated in the remnants of torchlight, two assassins who had found each other at the bottom of a well, literally and metaphorically. The game of hunt and survival was still up there, but in that moment, in the cold silence of the water, only this absurd and necessary truce existed.

The peace, however, was brief.

"Look! Down there!" a civilian's voice, sharp and triumphant, cut the silence from the top of the cliff.

Artful and Pursuer looked up in unison. Three faces peered over the broken edge of the bridge, pointing at them with evident malevolent glee.

"The two monsters are trapped!" shouted another.

Pursuer responded with a guttural growl that made the waters vibrate around him. His arm, resting on Artful's shoulder, tensed, his claws instinctively extending towards the impossible prey.

"Easy," Artful murmured, though his own voice sounded tense. "They can't get down."

"But we can do this!" shouted the third civilian, and promptly, he aimed his revolver and fired down at them.

The bullet fell with a sinister whistle and sank into the water mere inches from Artful, splashing his face.

"Oh, magnificent," Artful grumbled, spitting out dirty water. "Now we're ducks in a shooting gallery."

Pursuer let out a roar of impotent fury as another shot, closer, impacted near his shoulder. His panic of the water was momentarily replaced by pure, blind rage. He tried to push himself towards the wall, but his clumsy movements only made him sink slightly, swallowing a mouthful of water that left him coughing and furious.

"Arrête! (Stop!)" Artful snapped, grabbing his arm. "You're going to drown for real! Don't you see? That's what they want, for us to drown."

Pursuer looked at him with eyes blazing with rage, but stopped struggling. He panted, water running down his white head, and his eyes didn't leave the civilians, promising a slow and painful revenge.

"We have two options," Artful said, thinking aloud as a rain of banana peels and minor debris fell around them, the revolvers waiting to be reloaded. "Wait for the round to end and let the system teleport us... or try to climb."

He looked at the wall in front of them. It wasn't completely vertical, that was true. There were ledges, cracks, and outcrops, but they were slippery with slight moss and constant moisture. Plus, they were soaked and, in Pursuer's case, terrified.

"If we wait, we'll be perfect targets for... who knows how long?" Artful reasoned. "And if we climb..."

He followed the line of the wall with his gaze. There was a prominent crack that rose diagonally, snaking up to within a few meters of the edge. It seemed their best bet, though challenging.

"There," he pointed. "We can try there."

Pursuer emitted a grunt of clear refusal. His eyes fixed on the wall and then on the water, and a barely perceptible tremor ran through his body.

"I know," Artful whispered, understanding. "But it's that or be target practice for those idiots until they pull us out half-drowned. Do you prefer that?"

Another stone, sharper, grazed Artful's arm, leaving a thin cut that began to bleed. That decided the matter. Pursuer's grunt transformed into one of fierce resignation. He nodded his head, a brusque movement.

"Good. Me first," Artful announced. "You behind me. And for God's sake, don't push me."

Swimming to the wall was a struggle against the slight current and their own fatigue. When Artful finally managed to grab onto a low crack, his fingers were numb with cold. The stone was cold and slippery.

"Merde (Shit)," he muttered, searching for a better grip.

He began to climb. He wasn't an expert climber, but desperation sharpened his senses. He moved slowly, methodically, testing each hold before trusting his weight to it. Behind him, the sound was very different.

Pursuer climbed like he fought: with pure brute force. His claws dug into the stone with dry crunches, tearing off chunks of rock. He climbed with a clumsy, powerful determination, but every time he looked down and saw the water, a grunt of panic escaped his throat and he stopped, paralyzed.

"Don't look down!" Artful shouted at him from a few inches higher. "Look at me! Just focus on following me!"

Seeing them struggle to escape only incited the civilians further. The rain of stones grew thicker, tinged now with cruel gloating. They thought that, with victory so close, they deserved the pleasure of humiliating their hunters before delivering the final blow.

"Come on, ugly face! Your boyfriend is waiting for you!" they shouted at Pursuer, throwing another banana peel that hit him in the back.

Pursuer roared, an explosion of sound that echoed throughout the cave. For a moment, Artful thought he would launch himself against the wall in a fit of rage. But, to his surprise, the cannibal just gripped the rock tighter, sank his claws deeper, and continued ascending, his eyes fixed on Artful's back with an almost devout intensity.

The ascent was a slow agony. Artful's muscles burned, his fingers bled. Pursuer, though strong, was heavy and his technique was non-existent. At a particularly difficult point, a slippery outcrop made Artful's foot slip.

"Ah!" he cried out, feeling his balance waver.

A huge hand, of grainy, cold skin, closed like a vise around his ankle, stopping his fall. Pursuer, anchored firmly to the wall with his other hand, held him without hesitation. His turquoise eyes met Artful's, and in them there was no triumph, only a silent urgency.

"...Thanks," Artful panted, regaining his grip.

Pursuer emitted a grunt of acknowledgment and released his foot.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Artful reached the edge. With one last desperate effort, he hauled himself onto the damp, clayey ground, gasping, feeling the solid, wonderful earth beneath his body. He was exhausted, soaked, and shaking from cold and fatigue. For a second, he closed his eyes, spent.

A second later, the dark, dripping mass of Pursuer emerged beside him, falling face-first with a dull thud and a grunt of absolute relief. He too was at his limit, breathing with the heaviness of one who has fought a battle against his own panic.

They had no time to catch their breath.

"Now!" a rough voice shouted right above them.

Artful opened his eyes and saw, not the backs of fleeing civilians, but their determined, hate-filled faces. The three men hadn't run. They had waited. They had calculated the perfect moment, and now they were there, ready to push them back into the void they had just escaped.

"For the hot dogs!" roared the civilian who had thrown the first banana peel, and he lunged at Artful, who lay helpless on the ground.

Everything happened in slow motion. Artful, his muscles turned to jelly, tried to roll aside, but his body didn't respond. He saw the civilian's boots approaching, the murderous determination in his eyes. After all this, he thought, with an absurd flash of lucidity, to die like this, pushed by an anonymous civilian.

But death didn't come.

A grunt that was pure instinct resonated beside him. Pursuer, who moments before seemed finished, reacted with supernatural speed. Without even getting completely to his feet, he launched himself like a feline from the ground. His arm, a mass of muscle and grainy skin, shot out and his hand closed around the ankle of the civilian who was about to kick Artful.

"Oh shit!" the man screamed, his expression of triumph transforming into pure terror.

Pursuer didn't let go. With a movement of pure brute force, he lifted him from the ground like a sack of straw and, spinning on the spot, threw him with all his might. Not into the water, but against the other two civilians who were preparing to attack.

The three bodies collided with a bony impact and collapsed in a heap of tangled limbs and moans of pain.

The silence that followed was more eloquent than any roar. Pursuer then drew himself up to his full height, drops of dark water falling from his body like a mythological beast emerging from the depths. His breathing was still ragged, but in his turquoise eyes there was no longer any trace of panic or fatigue. Only a glacial, lethal fury remained. The fury of someone who has been pushed to the edge of their deepest fear and has returned thirsty for revenge.

Artful, still lying on the ground, looked at him. This wasn't the terrifying Pursuer he knew, nor the clumsy playmate from their "lesson." This was something else. Something more primitive and, in a way, more terrifying.

Pursuer looked at the civilians, who were beginning to crawl away, and then his gaze descended to Artful. For an instant that stretched into an eternity, their eyes met. No grunts, no words. Just the mutual recognition of what had just happened. He had protected him. Not out of strategy, not for the game, but by instinct.

Then, Pursuer slowly turned his head towards the fleeing civilians, who had no intention of shooting out of fear. A single grunt, low and promising, vibrated in the air.

Artful got up with difficulty, leaning on his wand. A cold, tired smile touched his lips. The fear had passed. Now only the logical conclusion of the hunt remained.

"D'accord, monstre (Alright, monster)," Artful whispered, and his voice sounded strangely serene. "Now let's finish this."

The hunt had resumed. But they were no longer two separate entities. They were a single shadow, wet, enraged, and lethally efficient, advancing on their prey. And the civilians, who a minute before thought they had victory secured, understood too late the mistake they had made by not fleeing when they had the chance.

Chapter Text

Boredom was a dangerous luxury, and Artful felt it enveloping the house like a thick fog. Pursuer, curled at his feet like a grotesque guard dog, seemed perfectly content with the monotony. But Artful, in a fit of what could only be described as nostalgia for a life he'd never had, decided he needed a change.

"Je vais sortir (I'm going out)," he announced, getting up from the armchair.

Pursuer immediately lifted his head, his turquoise eyes fixed on him with interrogative intensity, like two fragments of glowing ice in the dim light.

Without waiting for a reply—which he knew wouldn't come in words—Artful headed towards the bedroom. If I'm going to do this, I'll at least do it with some dignity, he thought, mentally discarding the loose clothes he wore for lounging around the house.

Pursuer detached himself from the floor with his characteristic fluidity and followed closely, his presence a palpable shadow at his back. Opening the wardrobe, Artful contemplated a few options. A glimpse of his former self, the one who enjoyed theater and attention, surfaced in a sigh.

"Alors, monstre. Une opinion? (So, monster. Any opinion?)" he asked with a slight smile, first holding up a dark jacket and then a more vibrant blue shirt.

Pursuer emitted a low grunt, clearly displeased with the whole situation. His gaze settled on the darker, simpler garment, as if he instinctively understood it would attract fewer eyes. With a finger that seemed more threatening than pointing, he touched the fabric of the black jacket.

"Le noir? Très bien. Pratique pour passer inaperçu... ou pour un enterrement (The black? Very good. Practical for going unnoticed... or for a funeral)," Artful murmured, setting the blue shirt aside.

As he changed, Pursuer's resistance intensified. He sat on the bed and began emitting a series of low, whining sounds, so akin to the laments of an abandoned canine that, for a moment, they made Artful's hand pause while buttoning his shirt. It was a heart-wrenching sound, laden with a primitive confusion that seeped directly into the heart.

"Arrête... (Stop)," Artful murmured, his voice losing a sliver of its firmness.

But Pursuer, being Pursuer, had an innate talent for ruining any hint of tenderness. Seeing that the whining had some effect, he redoubled his efforts and, in his frustration, sank his teeth into the bed pillow with a dull, destructive sound. A cloud of white feathers exploded into the air, floating softly over the room like an absurd snowfall.

Artful looked at the scene: the feathers slowly descending, the cannibal with the shredded pillow in his mouth, and that whine now muffled by down. He closed his eyes and counted to three in French.

"Imbécile (Idiot)," he whispered, more to himself than anyone.

"Alone," Artful clarified, pointing at himself with renewed firmness, ignoring the chaos of feathers. "You stay here. Understood?"

A low grunt of clear discontent was the reply. Pursuer stood up, his silhouette filling the space between Artful and the bedroom door, feathers still caught on his shoulders and head.

"Non (No)," Artful said, trying to sidestep him with determination. "It'll just be an hour. To have a drink."

The word "drink" meant nothing to Pursuer, but the determination in Artful's voice did. After a tense exchange of glances, the cannibal, with visible disgust, yielded and moved aside. Artful quickly left the bedroom and then the house, closing the door with a sharp thud. He took a deep breath of the night air, feeling a fleeting sense of liberation, the image of the whining and the feather explosion still fresh in his mind.

The bar "The Shambles" was a modest place on the edges of the civilian district, far enough away to not be frequented by old acquaintances, but bright enough to feel, for a moment, normal. He sat on a stool at the back, ordered a cheap whiskey, and let the murmur of other people's conversations envelop him.

The tranquility lasted exactly ten minutes.

It was first a sensation. A chill on the back of his neck, the instinctive certainty of being watched. Then, a brief flicker in his peripheral vision, near the darkest corner of the place. For just a second, between two shadows, he made out Pursuer's familiar silhouette before it faded again. Artful held back a sigh. Stubborn imbecile.

Pursuer had followed him, using his ability in short bursts to move unseen.

Panic was his first reaction. A cannibal, stalking among shadows in a bar full of civilians. It was a nightmare come true. But as the minutes passed and he heard no screams or saw no limbs flying, the panic gave way to deep exasperation and an absurd, dark humor.

Their date, if you could call it that, had begun.

If anyone had asked Artful what defined a date, he probably would have mentioned things like conversation, pleasant company, and maybe a touch of romance. Instead, what he had was this: an invisible cannibal who appeared and disappeared like a bad internet connection, and whose main mode of communication was grunts and shoves.

The first "conversation" of their date went like this: Artful felt the adjacent stool dip slightly for exactly ten seconds, followed by a dull grunt that sounded suspiciously like "Why are we here?". Then, the space emptied. Artful took a sip of his whiskey.

"Pour l'atmósphère (For the atmosphere)," he responded in a whisper towards the empty seat, as if maintaining the thread of a normal dialogue.

The reply came eight minutes later, when a glass of water on the bar slid fifteen centimeters to the left for no apparent reason. Artful interpreted this as: "The atmosphere is overrated. I'd rather be at home."

"Moi aussi, mon ami (Me too, my friend)," he sighed. "Moi aussi. (Me too.)"

The "flirting" consisted of this: every time Pursuer briefly materialized—always in a different corner, as if testing angles—his turquoise eyes fixed on Artful with an intensity that could be felt even through the bar's smoke. It wasn't exactly the warm, flirtatious gaze one might expect on a date, but it was... attention. Of a possessive, potentially lethal kind, but attention nonetheless.

When Artful ordered a second round, Pursuer chose to manifest right behind the bartender, making the poor man shudder and look around confused. He should stop covering so many shifts for his coworker, maybe he was starting to hallucinate from lack of sleep.

"Ce n'est pas drôle (That's not funny)," Artful murmured, but a corner of his mouth twitched involuntarily.

The "getting to know each other's tastes" part was particularly illustrative. Artful discovered that Pursuer deeply disliked drunk men (he had strategically knocked over a glass), that he tolerated the waitress as long as she didn't get too close, and that he tacitly approved of Artful's choice of whiskey, since he hadn't tried to throw it across the room.

In a moment of total absurdity, Artful even attempted the equivalent of "offering him a drink." When Pursuer materialized beside him for a precious few seconds, Artful slid his glass towards him.

"Want a taste?" he asked, knowing the answer.

Pursuer looked at the amber liquid, then at Artful, and emitted a sound that was clearly one of disgust before vanishing. The message was clear: he'd rather lick the floor.

It was, without a doubt, the strangest, most dangerous, and most one-sided date in history. But between the intermittent grunts, the preventative shoves, and the intense, fleeting glances, there was a constant negotiation, a clumsy and peculiar mutual learning. Pursuer was learning the boundaries of the human world in short bursts, and Artful was learning to read his monster's moods through spilled glasses and fleeting shadows.

Perhaps, Artful thought with increasingly resigned humor, this was the closest to a normal social life either of them would ever get.

Pursuer, true to his nature, understood nothing of personal space or etiquette. Artful noticed his presence in fits and starts: a cold, rough brush against his pant leg lasting exactly as long as a prolonged blink, the sound of breathing too close that ceased abruptly. The cannibal moved like a glitching ghost, reappearing for seconds in different spots before camouflaging again.

"Calm down," Artful murmured into the void, bringing the glass to his lips.

The response was a slight snort that sounded right beside him and cut off immediately, as if a window had been slammed shut.

The night became a surreal balancing act. When the waitress approached to ask if he wanted another round, Artful saw out of the corner of his eye how Pursuer fully materialized for an instant on the adjacent stool, his eyes fixed on the woman with predatory intensity, before vanishing again. Artful smiled forcefully, paid quickly, and shook his head. As soon as the woman left, a grunt of clear irritation resonated for a second in his ear.

"Elle n'est pas un casse-croûte (She is not a snack)," Artful whispered through gritted teeth, rubbing his temple.

To his horror, Pursuer seemed to take that as a suggestion. A few minutes later, a slightly drunk man staggered up to the bar near them. Suddenly, the man stumbled backward, as if something had pushed him. When Artful looked, Pursuer was completely visible for a moment, his arm still extended, before melting back into the shadows. The man cursed, confused, searching for what had hit him.

"Arrête ça (Stop that)," Artful scolded him in a furious whisper. "Or we leave immediately."

A silence laden with disdain was the response, but there were no more "accidents."

Artful tried to focus on his last drink, but it was impossible. His intermittent "date" gave no quarter. Pursuer's presence manifested in bursts: a shadow appearing and disappearing in the mirror behind the bar, fingers closing around his wrist for exactly three seconds before letting go, the sound of nails scraping the wooden stool that cut off abruptly. It was exhausting, ridiculous, and, to his own surprise, strangely... intimate. Each brief appearance was a reminder that Pursuer was there, watching, learning.

Pursuer was discovering, in his clumsy, possessive way, how to navigate the human world in intervals of seconds. Not out of interest in it, but to remain close to Artful. And Artful, caught between the fear of a massacre and the absurdity of the situation, began to feel less like a magician in a bar and more like the caretaker of a particularly stubborn paranormal phenomenon.

Finally, he couldn't take it anymore. He drank the last sip of his whiskey, left some coins on the bar as a tip, and stood up.

"On y va (Let's go)," he whispered, heading for the exit.

He felt the invisible presence stuck to his back in erratic intervals—a soft shove here, a brush there—like a protective and dangerous shadow escorting him through the crowd in the second-long bursts his invisibility allowed. Once outside on the deserted street, Pursuer fully materialized at his side, taking advantage of no longer needing to conserve his ability. His turquoise eyes shone with a mixture of satisfaction and annoyance.

"Tu es le pire rendez-vous de tous les temps (You are the worst date of all time)," Artful told him, unable to prevent a trembling smile from touching his lips.

Pursuer let out a snort, a sound Artful now recognized as mocking disdain. Then, in a gesture that had become habitual in the safety of their home, he leaned in and ran his rough tongue over Artful's cheek, a quick contact that tasted of night air and possession.

Artful shuddered, but didn't pull away. "Et tu as une haleine à charognard (And you have the breath of a scavenger bird)," he murmured, without any conviction.

They walked back home in silence, the magician and his monster. It hadn't been the normal, distracting night out Artful had imagined. It had been a logistical nightmare, an exercise in patience, and a test of the strange boundaries of their coexistence. But, in some twisted way, it had worked. Pursuer had learned that humans in a bar weren't food (for that night), and Artful had discovered that even in his "normal life," the cannibal's shadow was an inseparable, exasperating, and yes, undeniably unique part of his existence. The first involuntary date had been an absolute disaster. And, to his own astonishment, Artful found he couldn't wait to see what would happen on the second one.

Chapter Text

Coexistence had established a strange but predictable routine. Artful knew that Pursuer grunted twice if he was hungry, once if he was just bored. He knew that the sound of his harmonica—always the same sad, out-of-tune note—meant the cannibal was restless. Or so he thought.

The first sign that something had changed appeared one morning on the coffee table. Resting on a stain of something Artful decided not to identify, was a human eye, of a crystalline blue, carefully placed on a crumpled handkerchief. Pursuer was crouched nearby, watching Artful with an intensity that bordered on expectation.

"Mon Dieu, (My God)" whispered Artful, suppressing a gag. "What is that?"

Pursuer tilted his head, emitting a new sound: a short, guttural trill that sounded almost... hopeful.

"Non. Non, merci. (No. No, thank you)," Artful said, picking up the "gift" with disgust and going to dispose of it. "C'est dégoûtant. (It's disgusting)"

When he returned, the disappointment in Pursuer's shoulders was as palpable as the smell of blood that sometimes followed him. Artful almost felt bad.

The "gifts" continued, evolving from the organic to the inorganic, as if Pursuer were ruling out options. One day it was someone's wallet, with the cards scattered on the floor. Another day, a handful of shiny coins, warm to the touch. Pursuer always presented them with that same expectant trill, and every time Artful rejected the offering with a categorical "non," the cannibal would make a sharp click with his tongue, a sound Artful began to catalog as "frustration."

The magician, with his engineer's logical mind, began his own investigation. He opened a mental notebook. Hypothesis: Are they tributes? Attempts at provisioning? Or is it something more?

The turning point came with a pocket watch. It wasn't valuable, the glass was cracked, but the face was a deep blue and the numbers were gold. Pursuer dropped it onto the book Artful was reading. Clack. Then he sat down to wait, motionless.

Artful was about to reject it out of inertia when something stopped him. Pursuer wasn't looking at the watch, but at his face, searching for a reaction. His fingers, normally tense like claws, relaxed slightly. It was... a gesture. Clumsy, stolen, and macabre, but a gesture nonetheless.

"Pour moi? (For me?)" Artful asked, his voice softer than usual.

Pursuer emitted the trill, softer this time.

Artful picked up the watch. It was cold. He turned it over in his fingers. Then, making a conscious effort, he offered a small smile. "It's... nice. The blue."

The transformation in Pursuer was instantaneous. His rigid posture softened. A low purr, a sound Artful had never heard from him, vibrated in his chest. It was a rough tone, like a faulty engine, but unmistakably positive. He moved closer and rubbed his head against Artful's shoulder, a movement as brusque as it was affectionate.

The connection was electric. Wait a minute! The eye was blue! The coins were gold! These aren't random gifts!

"Attends... (Wait...)" Artful said, his mind clicking into place. "Are you trying to give me... pretty things?"

Pursuer didn't understand the words, but he understood the tone of discovery. He emitted another purr and, in an act of absolute and grotesque tenderness, produced a flower from nowhere. It was wilted, its stem broken, and it had a suspicious brown stain on one petal, but its color was a vibrant pink.

Artful stared at the flower, then at Pursuer, whose turquoise eyes shone with a glint of something that wasn't hunger or violence, but the deep satisfaction of having been, finally, understood.

A laugh bubbled in Artful's chest, a laugh laden with disbelief and an affection he would never have believed possible to feel for this creature. He took the flower.

"C'est la plus belle fleur que j'ai jamais vue, (It's the most beautiful flower I've ever seen)," he said, and for the first time, it wasn't a white lie.

That night, Pursuer curled up at the foot of the bed, his constant purr a background hum that filled the room with a strange calm. Artful, for his part, placed the cracked pocket watch and the wilted flower on the mantelpiece. They weren't the gifts of a monster. They were the clumsy, fumbling attempt at a new language—the first try of a being who only knew death to communicate something that felt an awful lot like affection.

Artful got into bed, expecting the familiar weight of the cannibal on his feet. But the purring continued, low and steady, from the floor. He looked down. Pursuer was curled up on himself like a guardian beast, his turquoise eyes half-closed, oblivious to any expectation of more.

Something broke inside Artful. A tenderness so abrupt and fierce it stole his breath.

"Non, (No)," he whispered into the dim light. "Not there."

Pursuer lifted his head, confused, as Artful sat up in bed.

"Viens ici, (Come here)," Artful said, patting the mattress gently beside him. His heart was pounding. It was madness. An invitation to danger. But he no longer felt afraid.

Pursuer stared at him, processing. With deliberate slowness, as if walking on thin ice, he got up and approached the bed. He hesitated a moment before climbing on, his weight significantly depressing the mattress. He lay on his side, facing Artful, his body rigid, waiting for an instruction or a reprisal.

Artful held his breath and, moving with the caution he would use to defuse a bomb, closed the distance. He wrapped an arm around Pursuer's unusually warm torso, burying his fingers in that rough skin that was so different from anything human, different from his own. It was a clumsy, awkward hug, laden with the tension of muscles accustomed to hunting, not being held.

Pursuer went completely still. Paralyzed. Artful could feel the cannibal's heartbeat, fast and powerful like a war drum against his own chest. For one horrible second, he thought he had made a terrible mistake.

Then, it happened.

A vibration started in Pursuer's core, so deep it was more a bone resonance than a sound. The purr intensified, becoming louder, more visceral than ever. Pursuer didn't return the hug—his arms remained rigid at his sides—but his entire frame seemed to yield. His head tilted forward until his forehead rested against Artful's shoulder with a weight that was both a surrender and an acceptance. He let out a deep, shuddering sigh, a sound of an exhaustion as ancient as his most basic instincts.

Artful tightened his embrace, his own eyes burning with an emotion he didn't dare name. There were no words in French, Spanish, or any other language for this moment. Only the creak of Pursuer's bones as he settled, the buzz of his purr against Artful's body, and the smell of earth, iron, and something unmistakably him.

Pursuer, the hunter, the cannibal, the walking nightmare, had allowed himself to be caught in an embrace. And Artful, the magician, the fugitive, the man who had lost everything, had found something he didn't know he was looking for: a home in the most improbable form imaginable.

They fell asleep like that, intertwined in the darkness, two solitudes that had finally found how to fit together, one gesture at a time.