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This is what Bormethius' hell looks like:

It is a cabin in the middle of the woods, isolated from civilisation every which way. There is nothing for miles and miles, just the forest and his own racing thoughts. The cabin itself is bare. It is not sparsely furnished - no, there is enough here to last twenty lifetimes, and then some - but rather, it has no personality to it. 

It is a place for living, not for feeling alive. 

The only constant is the pressing silence and the pristine interior of the cabin. The tucked sheets. The spotless windows. The neat stacks of canned food in the pantry.

And, on the third day, the knock on the door.

Now, he knows what's coming. He has been through these three days, this week, more times than he has fingers to count them. The motions come on instinct.

His fingers twitch towards the pistol he knows is in the cabinet to his right. Something makes him hesitate, though -

blood on his shoes, a shrill scream piercing the air, a bullet piercing through flesh, a body at his feet

- and he does not reach for it. Instead, he grasps the doorknob tight, feels the cold of the metal seep into his palm.

Bormethius knows what he'd normally think. He can practically hear the thoughts now, echoing in the back of his head.

Salvation! Maybe my time has ended. Maybe my god has come to let me repent. But he knows: this is not his god. He has been here two days, and for what? Sitting around, doing absolutely nothing? He has not redeemed himself (though, he supposes, there’s not much to redeem himself for - not yet, at least) and this is not his time.

He wrenches open the door.

A shaft of sunlight spills into the room. It falls on the person standing in the doorway - the sparkle in her eyes, the flush in her cheeks - and wraps around her frame like a halo. Like she's an angel. And yet, this is about as far from his god, from divinity, as he can get.

Ivory.

(The first time she shows up, he kills her and doesn't bury the body. He wakes up the next morning and the loop’s resetted but his hands are still coated with blood. He washes and washes and it does not come off.)

She stares at him with wide eyes. She’s trembling, he realises, though whether from the wind or something else, Bormethius doesn’t know.

“What do you want?” he snaps, far more harsh than he’d intended. He’s slipping, losing his grip over the carefully crafted persona he puts on in front of her. 

Focus, Bormethius. It will not do to lose her this early. Not this time.

She merely flinches, but doesn’t reply, so he says, “Well? You’re letting the cold in.” 

"Um," Ivory says, and her eyes dart into the cabin. Her gaze lingers on the slightly-open drawer beside him, where the barest silver of the gun can be seen. Bormethius slams it shut and relishes in the way Ivory startles, eyes going wide. 

Now, Bormethius is a good man. He likes to think that he is a good man. But these are lawless lands, these woods, and so he admits that he does not quite have that same grasp on reality as he had back in the city. He loses his mind, the first two days - there's nothing for him to do, no one for him to help, and he's all but useless. 

Which is why he goes off script: "Are you coming in or not?"

Ivory does not answer for a long time. Bormethius reaches towards the drawer again.

"What? What- no, yes, alright. I'll come in," Ivory says, stumbling over her words.

He can't keep the smug smile off his face. Steps aside to let her in, turning away to hide his glee.

It is an ungracious thing, the way he invites her in: sharp, abrupt, almost daring her to trip over the threshold. She doesn’t. Instead, she slips past him with small, careful steps. A fox in the presence of a wolf. 

The door shuts behind her with a click that echoes in the cabin’s emptiness. Almost like a gunshot, sealing their fates in the musty old building.

Bormethius watches her with sharp eyes. His shoulders are tense, his fingers flexing around a weapon he knows is tucked away in the back of a drawer. He notes Ivory’s every move - the way her gaze flicks around the cabin in quick sweeps, the way she clasps her hands in front of her tightly, the way her breath fogs in the air (oh, he’s forgotten to light the fire, hasn’t he? Yet another thing so small in the grand scheme of things that he has failed to do.)

This is the first time he’s let her in, and already he’s starting to regret it.

“Your house is… nice,” she offers, after a moment.

Bormethius makes a show of looking around, at the bare walls, the empty table, the shelves stocked with more than anyone could ever need. Turns his gaze back to her, and relishes the way she squirms under the scrutiny.

He scoffs. “It’s a cabin.” He bites back a scathing remark, a have you spent so much time at the Hemlockes’ beck and call that you've forgotten what a simple cabin looks like? 

“Oh,” she says, hesitant. “Well, it's clean! It's clean.”

That, at least, is true. It is always clean. No matter how many times he drags snow inside, no matter how many loops he’d left her body to rot on the porch, the cabin resets itself every loop. He’d stopped trying to deface it some time ago. It takes up too much of his energy that he’d rather point towards the person currently in front of him. Still. 

“Sit down,” he tells her, moving towards the kettle. He should make tea. That’s the polite thing to do. If he’s inviting her in, he might as well commit to hospitality before killing her.

In other loops, she never got this far. He would shoot her at the door, or let her in only long enough to confirm she was real before pulling the trigger. He has screamed at her, laughed at her, accused her of being a trick, a test, a lie. This is the first time she’s ever meant something more than the death of a killer.

He puts the kettle on to boil and turns around. Ivory’s slung her coat over the back of the chair, but makes no move to actually take a seat. She stares at the chair like it’s going to physically bite her if she sits down. 

Bormethius blinks, then turns back to the kettle. Oh, well. If she insists on being like that, he’s not going to complain. He moves his hands closer to the steam pouring out of the spout and is reminded of the unlit fire. 

He’s not going to light it up, though. He’s used to the cold. Ivory can deal with it.

Bormethius readies the tea. He’s done this enough times, and yet the tea is slightly burnt. Eh. If it’s edible. Drinkable. Whatever. He’s sure Ivory would appreciate the warmth, if not the taste. He certainly does.

He places the mugs down on the table with a clatter. 

Ivory jumps. She scares so easily. It needles at him in a way he doesn’t like, something hot and mean curling in his chest. He shoves the emotion away into the crevices of his heart, with the memories of his faliures and the dead bodies of the person in front of him. 

Ivory eyes the tea. Her face is blank, as it always is, which irks him slightly. It reminds him all too well of his life outside, the interrogation room and the investigations.

“It’s not poisoned, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Bormethius says, and sits down. “If I was going to kill you, I would have done so already.”

Isn’t that the truth. Bormethius thinks back to the gun in the drawer, the blood he swears he keeps seeing on the porch, the stickiness between his fingers. He should have killed her by now. He should. The drawer is three steps away. He can make it there and pull the trigger in less than five seconds-

Ivory sits down. The chair makes a horrible scraping noise, and both of them ignore it. 

“Do you- um. Do you live here alone?” Ivory asks, grasping her mug tight.

Bormethius waits until she takes a sip - frowns slightly when her expression relaxes - before he responds. 

She’d asked him this, a few loops ago. Stood by the doorway in the freezing cold, stood her ground until he'd answered. He’d been honest, then. 

Yes. My god has seen fit to exile me. 

She’d looked at him with something like awe, something reverent, and for one brief, intoxicating moment he had felt important again.

(It’d ended the same way it always did. Blood on the floor. His god’s light burning his eyes. Waking up alone.)

“Yes,” he says now, curt. “Alone.”

“Oh,” Ivory says, and takes another sip of tea. Her eyes are fixed on the coffee table. 

Bormethius makes no move to continue the conversation. What would he even talk about, anyway? The case? He can't do anything about it here, stuck in the cabin. 

Ivory, seemingly, has no such qualms. “I didn't think anybody lived out here.” Laughs nervously. 

“Most people don't,” he says, and makes a show of drinking his tea, hoping she'd get the hint.

She does not. Typical.

“It's kind of scary, don't you think?” Ivory says, looking out at the forest.

“It's just trees,” he says.

Ivory smiles weakly. “I guess.”

And there it is again: the pitiful attempt at communication. She's never stopped trying, in every loop. He has seen it before. He has crushed it every time.

Bormethius finishes his tea and stands up. The chair scrapes against the floor. Neither of them acknowledge it. He goes to the sink, starts to wash the mug, for lack of a better thing to do. Just to busy himself so he doesn't have to look back at the person at the coffee table. 

(Sometimes he looks at her and he sees nothing but a walking corpse - bullet holes through her flesh, scratches on her body, blood running everywhere. Sometimes all he can do is close his eyes and pray to the god that had put him here in the first place.)

Behind him, Ivory shifts in her seat. “Thank you for letting me in,” she says, quiet as a fox. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

He doesn’t answer. Gratitude does nothing for him. Gratitude does not get him out of this place.

Why is she so talkative now? Why couldn't she have been this- this free, this open, back in Emberton? What is the difference?

“You should leave,” he says, without turning. “I'm sure you have people who are looking for you.” 

“Um,” Ivory says. 

The wind howls outside. Both of them turn, simultaneously, to the window. There is a thick layer of snow surrounding the cabin. Ivory does not look surprised.

Why would she, after all? She's not real. None of this is real. It's just one hell after another, snowballing into each other until the crux, the breaking point, the climax of it all: him pulling the trigger.

“Oh, come on!” Bormethius is tempted to throw something at the wall. He grips his mug so tight his knuckles turn snow-white. 

“Are you alright, sir?” Ivory's voice cuts through the static in his ears. He turns, and whatever expression he must be making is harsh enough to make her sink back into her seat and duck her head. 

With great effort, he steels his expression into one of neutral hospitality. “Well,” he gets out. “I suppose you’ll have to stay.”

(What is his god playing at?)

Ivory hesitates. Moves towards the door. “No, no, it’s fine- I don’t mean to be a bother, I can head back now-”

“In this storm?” Bormethius scoffs. “I don’t think so. Sit down.”

Ivory sits.

Something twists in his chest. He doesn’t like that, either.

They fall into an uneasy silence after that. Really, he’s not sure why he’s doing this, when he can just let her wander in the snow by herself until she freezes to death and he can reset the loop. He tells himself it’s for research. It’s just so he knows more about her, so he won’t be caught off-guard in the future. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.

Eventually, after a lot of needling and prodding, Ivory starts to talk. It’s hesitant, stilting. It’s so perfectly normal. Disgusting.

Ivory talks about the Hemlockes, the tasks she has to do, the people she talks with. It grates, both her voice and the topic.

“They’d be worried,” she says, suddenly. Her voice cracks. “If they knew I was lost out here.”

“Then don’t tell them,” Bormethius snaps.

She looks at him, startled. “I- I meant if I didn’t come back.”

An image flashes through his mind, then: Ivory’s body crumpled on the porch, blood seeping into the wood he knows will be pristine the next day. Somewhere far from here, letters unanswered. People frowning. Shrugging. Moving on.

It should comfort him, the thought.

He turns away, gripping the edge of his chair until his knuckles ache. “You’ll be fine,” he mutters. “You always are.”

She doesn’t question the odd phrasing. Instead, she asks, softly, “How long have you lived here?”

He laughs then, a harsh bark that makes her flinch. “Long enough.”

That night, she does not ask about sleeping arrangements. She simply sits on the floor near the wall. Stares out the window, almost wistfully.

He stares at her.

“You can’t sleep there,” he says finally.

She looks up, startled. “I- I don’t want to impose.”

“You’ll freeze,” he snaps. It’s not entirely true; the cabin is warm enough. But the idea of her curled on the bare floor needles at him.

He rummages through the storage room, emerging with spare blankets and dropping them beside her. She thanks him quietly, eyes shining with something like relief.

He lies awake long after she falls asleep.

The next morning, he starts building the bed. He doesn’t announce it. He doesn’t explain. He simply gathers wood and tools and works. His hands remember the motions easily, muscle memory from a hundred other half-finished projects that never mattered.

Ivory watches from the doorway, uncertain. “You don’t have to-”

“I know,” he cuts in. He builds it anyway.

When it’s finished, she touches the frame reverently, like it might vanish if she presses too hard. “This is… really kind of you,” she says.

Kind.

The word settles uncomfortably in his chest. He buries it away in his heart, with the rest of the ugly things he’s hiding from her.

“If you say so,” he tells her, and doesn’t miss the way her expression slips, just for a second.

The days blur together.

Ivory stays. She helps with the mundane tasks, unasked. She chops vegetables for stew, her movements practiced. She insists on sweeping the floor. She hums as she works, tuneless and quiet, and the sound worms its way into him, settling somewhere beneath his ribs. He wants to stow that away in his heart, too.

“Do you ever miss it?” she asks, one day, as they sit on the porch watching the light fade through the trees. The snow has melted by then, but neither of them are willing to point it out.

“Miss what?” he replies.

“The city,” she says. “People.”

He stiffens. “No.”

She studies him for a long moment. “You don’t have to lie,” she says gently.

The urge hits him then, sudden and violent. His hand twitches. He imagines the gun in his hand, its weight digging into his fingers. How easy it would be to pull the trigger. 

He clenches his fists instead. “You don’t know anything about me,” he says, venom creeping into his tone. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

Ivory doesn’t look away. “Then tell me.”

Something in him fractures. He almost does. Almost bares his heart out for her to see, to scrutinise everything he’s ever kept inside it.

Instead, he stands abruptly, stalking back inside before she can see the way his hands shake.

That night, Bormethius dreams of his god.

He wakes with a purpose. He knows, now, what he must do. 

But Ivory, as she tends to do, makes his plans shatter. They fight. Verbally, because somehow, this time, Bormethius cannot bring himself to raise his fist. 

It’s a small thing. A stupid thing, really, to fight about. Ivory’s suggested he could come back with her. That he doesn’t have to be alone.

The pressure builds anyway. It coils tight around his ribs, squeezes until breathing hurts, until the world narrows down to the unbearable fact of her standing there, looking at him like he could be something more than this. Like he could leave. Like he could matter in a way that isn’t soaked in blood.

He laughs in her face. “You don’t get it,” he snarls. “I am meant to be here.”

She recoils, hurt flashing across her features. “I was just trying to help.”

“I don’t need your help,” he says. The words feel rehearsed. 

Something inside him roars, demands release. Anger, frustration, the crushing weight of insignificance. He sees it all laid out before him: another reset, another chance, another identical beginning.

The gun in the drawer.

It’s in his hand before he realises he’s moved-

Bang.

Ivory falls.

He stares at her, unblinking, until he realises what he’s done. His hand is shaking terribly. He drops the gun. 

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to- I didn't mean to do that," he mumbles, dropping down beside the bleeding body by his feet. He shakes it, gently at first, then harder and harder when the person does not stir.

"No, no no no- come on, you can't just- you can't just die on me, you fucking bitch," he growls, trying to staunch the wound. His hands come back bloody and sticky, and he wants to puke. He's seen this before. He knows how this ends.

Why does it hurt now? Fuck, he's pathetic. Spends enough time with a murderer and mourns her death.

“I tried,” he says, shakily. “I tried, isn’t that enough? Isn’t it?”

He pours his heart out to a body with an unbeating heart, but it’s too late. It’s far too late. His god descends, and there’s too much tears clouding his vision and choking up his throat for him to even attempt to beg this time. There’s a bright flash of light, and-

Bormethius wakes up in the cabin’s only bed. Alone. He lies there, staring at the ceiling. His hand is pressed to his chest, feeling his heart hammer uselessly against his ribs. One more body to add to it, then.

After a long moment, he sits up.

It’s a new loop. It’s another chance. Maybe, this time, he’ll keep Ivory around longer. For her sake.