Maggie
Catch! Sort of.

Fennel caught Matti's phone with their whole body. Still, they managed to keep it safe, fumbling with their arms until it rested in their elbow. Carefully, they grabbed it with another hand and waited for Matti to reach the rooftop.

The roof was quiet. Few people knew how to get up there, and fewer cared to. That, and the beautiful view of open stars and city lights, made it the perfect place to go for a late night existential conversation.

"What was it you said?" Fennel asked as Matti clambered up. "All that is gained is given?"
Dolores
Matti less "Climbed" The last few feet up as much as they executed a physiologically dubious vertical roll, balling their knees like a pillbug to heave themself over the side and collapse belly-up on the concrete. For a moment they considered going through the considerable effort of standing. It was "Polite" To stand with good posture and look someone in the eyes while speaking, but Gabe had also said that it "Didn't really matter". The conflicting information fought in their mind for a few moments, before they decided to dismiss the issue entirely. Still lying on the floor, they let their eyes slide towards Fennel.

"You. Whose name I don't know. Caught the phone. Excellent." Voice flat, but not in annoyance or anger. If one ignored all the usual markers of conversation, they came off as genuine enough.

They nodded in agreement at Fennel's remark, though the efficiency of the movement was somewhat reduced from their spot on the ground. With the echo of a reluctant sigh, tripping from their tongue like a bad aftertaste, they forced themself up in a more respectable seated position.

"Yes. Or, rather. Rather, that has been my experience. What is gained is given. What is taken is taught."

The latter sentences sounded rhythmic, recited, as if passages from a well-loved novel. Matti did not look at the stranger, only out and up towards the rapidly darkening sky.
Maggie
Fennel silently handed Matti's phone back and nodded.

"Not the type to make then, I take it?" They responded. The remark was intended to be a bit pithy, but no less expressive for it. "Even if you give me a tire and a rope, it's not a swing until I put it together, right? Sometimes, we *Make.*" They spoke more naturally, in a way more akin to conversation than oration, but there was still a certain flowy quality to their articulation.

They took a moment to look out at the stars. Not for guidance — just because they were very pretty.

"Have you always had your powers?"
Dolores
Matti paused, the words hitting as if spoken quickly and in a half-learned language. They took a moment to gather their response, fidgeting with their returned phone as they did.

"'Making' requires 'having'. What is 'had' was once 'given'. What is not given, is not had, is not made." It wasn't quite what they'd meant to say, but it came out smoothly, without stutter, and that was enough. Tucking their phone into a pocket, they resettled their hat (dislodged in their climb) firmly on their head.

"Always, no. However, for a. A long time. I was not truly... Without. They came gradually." 

Matti's gaze shifted from Fennel, to the stars, and back again, as if trying to *See* The sky and not *Watch* It. Unsuccessful, their eyes darted between the sharp and shadowed corners cast along the ledge and electrical boxes on the roof.
Maggie
Fennel shook their head. "The universe gives us lots of things. But you can't expect it to do all the work. Everything is more than the sum of its parts." They paused for a brief moment. "Something you've made is a brand new thing — even if you got the flour from somewhere else, it's not flour anymore, and you can't unbake the bread. But you can eat it, and it's good."

Fennel didn't remember the last time they had this kind of conversation with someone. Literally, they didn't remember. But it felt refreshing. Like it had been missing from their life somehow.

"Some things are just inherent, too. You can't give a house a fundament — the fundament has to be there for the house to exist in the first place. The fundament is given a house, but every house has a fundament anyway."

They look over at Matti and smile a little. "I kind of think of people like that too. We're not given the world — the world has to exist for us to exist. The world is given us. But it's still our Mother Earth."

They finished their rambling quietly, and sighed. "My powers were a gift. Literally. But not from a creator with a purpose for me. Just a friend. I think I like it better that way."
Dolores
Matti paused, sorting through the analogy the best they could. The words came bearing good intentions- that, at least, did much to soothe their instinctual anxiety. But the frustration, the *Skin-under-skin-words-wells-drying-up*, curled in the hollow of their throat, seemingly there to stay.

"I- when there is no flour, there is no bread. For days, there is no bread. For months. Years. And *Then*. You are given flour. You bake, you are spared starvation. Is the meaning of that gift not greater?"

Matti sighed, rocking backwards and propping themself up with their arms. They cast their gaze out to the vast expanse of stars, silence silver met with the desperate gleam of not-gold. Matter, meaning, all of it. Tangled like constricting veins, following the sluggish beating of their heart.

"I understand what is. Thought of me. What I believe. But understand, how many times can you ask a question and hope for a different answer? How clear must it be made? When suffering is a teacher, one finds. Learning is not particularly loved."

They scrambled for something clearer, *Better*, and found only recycled words offered for mimicking. 

"How long did it take Tantalus to realize his punishment? Some things are seen, not spoken."
Maggie
"Mmm," Fennel hummed, "I guess."

Matti sounded hurt. Very deeply hurt. He spoke like someone who had gone a very long time without, if not food, at the very least some kind of essential comfort. He spoke like he was traumatized, to put it bluntly.

"But... Even in your hour of need, when you're starving, and the universe gives you flour, it still expects you to bake bread yourself. The universe doesn't give us things fully formed — not gifts, not lessons. It gives us flour, but it's up to us to make something of it, and flour's good for more than just bread."

They recalled what they did before waking up. What they *Made.* They recalled taking what they had been given, and finding out what to do with it themselves.

"The universe sends us signs all the time, but it's up to us to interpret them. And... Truth be told, your interpretation worries me a little. You make the world sound harsh and temperamental. Is it the universe taking from you to teach? Or your abusers?"
Dolores
**Cw:// Matti has some weird views on being a victim, and dissociates from personhood somewhat to cope with that. Nothing extremely graphic.**

Matti attempted to follow the analogy but instead felt wrong-footed, spun around and left in the woods with no way out. Like the two children, in the fairytale they couldn't quite remember the ending of. Running after breadcrumbs, and then nothing at all. Logic lost. ||Without their Sight, they would be dead. A truth that travelled through their veins, ached behind their teeth. Their eyes were a gift. Their *Life*, a gift. Given, given, blessing and curse and unpayable debt.|| They could see, perhaps, the point their strange companion was trying to make, but not grasp it. A small hand, no matter how far it stretched, could not cross such a canyon. 



They bit their tongue. The blood tasted like proof. 



"Is- I-" Their tongue rebelled against them, tripping like a child might. Frustration rolled in their gut.

"Is that not the way of the world? There is no interpretation. There is truth. There is action. I saw it. *See* It." 

They let out a long breath, and the cool night air filled their lungs with a strange weightiness. They knew that others could not See as they did. The filth that clogged the gutter of the world. But to live and not see *Harsh*, *Temperamental*. It would almost be worth it, to lose their Sight.

.

"I am neither beaten nor blind," Matti whispered, hushed like the words were the kind of blasphemy that might prompt divine lightning. "I do not *Want* The darkness. But only I can see it. And. It's always the eyes."

Cupboards, broken glass, empty. Hands on backs, stairs below feet, noise muffled through walls. Glazed eyes, cold eyes, wrathful, cruel, sightless, gold. 

Always the eyes. *Always*.
Maggie
Fennel saw it in his eyes — Matti's heart sinking, the cracks showing. In spite of his words, Fennel was confident they'd read Matti correctly: Deeply wounded, but unaware of the extent of it, blaming it on the universe. They felt absolutely no gratification from being right.

They tried their best to listen to Matti, though. Even though it hurt. He barely thought himself human — he had convinced himself that he was the conduit for a purpose bestowed by some unknown force, and that anything outside that purpose, including his own well-being, was entirely secondary. He had convinced himself that the universe, rather than conversing with him, was commanding him, and falling into a deep pit of despair as he did.

...

Falling.

Matti was falling.

...

Catch!

With almost the same awkward motion that Fennel caught Matti's phone with, they caught Matti himself, silently (and awkwardly) embracing him on the edge of the roof from which he was about to fall.

"That one's a gift from me," Fennel murmured, cautiously dragging Matti back onto a safely flat part of the roof. "Please don't ever let the darkness drown out the stars."

Their eyes, if Matti could see them, were concerned.
Dolores
*Always the eyes*- perhaps more accurately: always the *Actions*. Sight, after all, cannot hear flowered words or pretty songs or the rustle of wind through leaves. It is tied to motion, action, object. Mattias knew this, knew it as thoroughly and truthfully as they knew they *Were* Sight, in the ways that mattered. And so words never had a chance, not really. Not in reaching the mind of Mattias Gates.

Fennel (though Matti does not know the word, not yet) catches them, and under their hands falls the last rock that becomes the landslide. An avalanche, a mountain slumping its shoulders to let burden and snow slide to the ground. 

"I *Can't,*" They rasped, voice wavering, pushed over the cliff into something distraught. "It- it- it *Cannot be for nothing*. It *Hurt*. It shouldn't- unless-"

Words rushing like rivers, a dam finally broken down. And a question- one that could mean a hundred things. *Why?* The word thrummed through their throat, their chest, their bones, rattling down to the concrete with such force they were surprised the ground didn't split. That they weren't swallowed up by it, that thing too tangled and complex to name.

*Why?*

In the end, it boiled down to something simpler, perhaps crueler, carved from helplessness:

"If it was a *Gift*, if it was *Free*, then *Why did it happen?* I am meant to Watch. Built for it. If I was allowed to have- *Happiness*, then *Why do I still feel like this?*"

And there, the truth, carried by words that cracked like breaking ice. It was a deadly plunge, both cold and cleansing. Matti's eyes, golden or otherwise, fixed on a single star. Drained of any capacity for cruelty. Just shivering, and quiet, and tired.
Maggie
"*Hey.*"

Fennel's voice was the barest whisper, sharp and minimalistic. They vocalized as much as they needed to, and no more.

"*Hey.* You're safe now. You're okay. It's gonna be okay."

They still hadn't let go of Matti. They suspected that they shouldn't, not unless they were asked to.

"No one is hurting you right now. I'm here to help. It's okay."

They realized Matti was crying.

"Do you like chai? We can sit down in the kitchen and I can make some chai, if you'd like."

They realized they were crying too. For him.

"Does that sound good?"
Dolores
**Cw:// vaguely dissociative? Matti and their emotions. Vague allusion to neglect.**

Matti reached a hand to their face, strangely unmoved despite their own tears. A statue captured in the stillness of the moment, a body more conveying life than a vessel for it. Confusion, rather than hurt. If there was pain, it was buried too far down for even golden eyes to see it. Truth came in many forms, but it could not be argued Mattias Gates was anything but genuine. Their gaze blurred. 

"Who is to blame if light blinds the eyes? You can't try the brightness, as much as you cannot arrest the sun."

The poetry of the words was sharp and satisfying as much as it was real. Eyes or actions- it had always been absence. Words left unsaid. Hands unextended. Houses empty. Little people, hollowed out.



"I don't know what 'chai' is," They confessed. Just out of place- *Beyond*- enough it calmed the *Hands-over-eyes-over-ears* Part of themself that typically shied from the thought of newness. "But I would. Like to try it."
Maggie
"Okay," Fennel nodded, "Let's go, then."

They carefully clambered down to the scaffolding leading back to the window, then offered Matti their hand. "Here. I'll help you back down. If that's okay." Fennel didn't know, but it was fine either way. They'd get to the kitchen regardless.

. . .

The kitchen smelled like warm spices, sweet and pungent. Fennel had been checking in with Matti once in a while, just to make sure — Matti had seemed distraught enough that asking them how they were feeling seemed worthwhile.

The chai was ready. Fennel poured it into two mugs, one for Matti and one for them, then quietly placed Matti's mug in front of them and sat down opposite them.

They sipped their tea. It tasted like the one nice Christmas they remembered.
Dolores
Wordlessly, Matti shook the last of the starlight from their eyes. Looked at the drop back down to the scaffolding warily, but too tired to be properly frightened at the prospect of a missed jump or a long, long drop. Taking Fennel's hand, they scrambled downwards with the grace of a penguin (or another small flightless bird) trying to glide. 

As their feet hit solid ground once again, it seemed like some cosmic record skipped. In the span of a blink, they moved. Eyes open, wavering by the rooftop. Eyes closed. Eyes open, tile floors and cramped appliances. Somehow, they'd made it to the kitchen. Time passed in similar ways for the next- minutes? Hours? The weight of fatigue coaxed eyes shut, and when they saw the world again it had changed. Something obscurer (smaller?) was changing, too, a knot unravelling deep within them. There weren't words for it, for the steady line of the horizon or their conversation on the roof. They would have to subsist on silence, for now.

And tea.

From within its confines, the chai spun in a hypnotizing spiral, like a whirlpool leading down to deep, dark, heavily spiced depths. Matti couldn't decide if they liked it or not. *I might*, they thought with equal parts dread and anticipation, *Have to try it again to be sure*. 

"Thank you." They spoke with neither inflection nor whisper- though more into their mug than to Fennel. The words had that same spiraling surface- a gratitude deeper than a cup of tea shared across a common table. But their meaning remained unknown, or at least unspoken. Verbalization could wait until another day.

Time continued to pass in wandering paths. The twilight hours lasted either too little or too long, though which one they couldn't quite tell. It wasn't a bad feeling, only new. Strange. By the time the kitchen emptied, the tea was gone- the dregs of sun creeping up towards a dawning sky.