2.1 | renegade effect (on hold until 2024)

02 | hiraeth

h i r a e t h : a homesickness and nostalgia in which there is no home to return to

***

IT STARTS WITH A CALL.

He senses it before his phone vibrates in his pocket, pressed against his hip bone as Cohen breathes raggedly. Everything feels raw, empty and violently carved out, filled with venom and black sludge from the storm. Feels desperate—wrong, really—and he can't differentiate the rain and sweat sliding down in rivets before they meet at the base of his chin. Bits of panic nip underneath his jaw.

He shivers.

What are you doing, how are you here, why does it taste like agony?

In a moment, Cohen will enter his penthouse and wash the stains away in his shower, steam clouding the haze of bloodlust that encircles his head like a wretched halo. He'll stand there until his skin feels like an open sore: swollen, ugly, bruised purple and navy. But for now, he sits in front of the glass doors that look into his bedroom, back sliding against solid foundations of marble, lungs rotting, an expired experiment. Time slows as Cohen's gaze unsteadily glances at his palms and sees his legs quivering—

Bloody. It's bloody and drying and cracking over his knuckles, almost dark-blue amidst the backdrop of starlight, too fast, too soon. His chest constricts painfully, and it hurts. God, he's hurting.

I killed him, I killed him, I killed him—

Cohen Song feels the world drop out from underneath his feet; his eyes flutter shut, stomach churning at the liquid heat soaking through his gear and nails. His clothes feel too thin, too tight. Sounds of bone snapping from their rigid form and dissolving onto his fingertips melt as if they're snow, dry ice slipping underneath, and Cohen remembers the rush he'd felt. The cultured high.

Suzuki's face had been distorted—mangled—by the sharp blade of his knife, pathetic chest rising and falling in time with the assassin's fury. His thoughts moved before his wrists did: I hope you die, I hope you rot, I hope you scream. Flashes of drugged women brutally stamped with Walt's crest flicker over his tongue, and Cohen clenches both fists as he drags them over his cheeks. The silent scream traps itself in his throat, and he falls at nothing. Falls at everything.

(Too fast. A tempo above light. Or is it darkness?)

I killed him, I killed him, I killed him—

Here, Cohen isn't Ace anymore. He's not really anything. Just worthless and someone who's an empty shell of who he used to be, an assassin with a rusting blade and an old-fashioned shotgun that's ironically out of bullets. Black. Blue. Grey. Red. He feels it all, sees it all, and it's an oil painting that's burning from residual smoke.

He's shaking.

And Cohen feels so sick—he feels so fucking sick to the deep marrow of his bones when he realizes that she saw it, too. That she saw his expression as the bond snapped into place and the string around his pinkie illuminated with gold dust: pretty and delicate and full of lilac, so soft and gentle that Cohen had completely paused. Listened. Learned.

Warm. He felt warm.

His breathing comes in short gasps and echoing bursts, rainwater falling into his throat as his skin heats up exponentially, uneven spots lining the edge of his vision. Cohen feels dirty: submerged underneath a covering of carbon dioxide, choking on the glimpses of hot blood and ribboned skin. Everything stings of poison and regret, and panic pierces through any film of steadiness he'd been able to maintain.