WE BECOME THOUGHTLESS

twenty-nine | featuring: tobias being a fuckwit again

Alistair's lips were still tingling by the time Cole finally left. He sat alone on his bedspread, staring into the empty space on which Cole had sat, where the blankets were still warm and crumpled.

They'd talked late into the night, completely ignoring the impromptu make-up session that had lead them there. It was better that way, Alistair thought. What if Cole was silently regretting it? What if he planned to never return to Alistair's hut and wait until the mindrenderer was far, far away?

"Wait," Alistair had said, moments before Cole left. He was only just shrugging on his shirt. "You'll come see me tomorrow, yes?"

Cole had nodded, lips cracked with a nervous smile. For the first time in a while, his eyes drifted downwards, to Alistair's folded hands – and Alistair's skin crawled. He had tucked them behind his back.

"Of course," Cole had assured. "Like always."

But it wasn't going to be like always. Everything was different now, Alistair thought, or everything was on its way to becoming different. His face burned at the thought of Cole's lips on his and his fingers in his hair, the mingling of their breaths, and then to the way he had squirmed and panicked underneath him. It had felt like a punch to the gut, leaving him entirely breathless and sick with guilt, but he knew it hadn't been his fault. This was one of Cole's internal issues, just like his own.

Issues, that Alistair could've discovered for himself by now. His hands had been right there, framed against Cole's face – he had sensed the beating of his brain, the rushing of his thoughts, and the instinct to dive right in had been almost unbearable.

But he hadn't. Of course he hadn't. Alistair promised silently to himself that he would never do that to Cole without his explicit permission, and even then, if he ever wanted to allow Alistair something so intimate, he wouldn't. Cole's mind was his own. Not even a mindrenderer had the right to violate the innate privateness that was the human brain.

The adrenaline lingered with him as Alistair sat alone in the smoky room. His heart throbbed in his chest. None of it would matter in three days – or two, as the early hours of the next day crept in – in which Alistair would be forced to leave it all behind.

Returning to the army, he would be forced to forfeit all memories of the last three weeks to the deepest crevices of his mind, where they wouldn't impact his performance. He wouldn't be able to think straight with Cole constantly being the subject of his thoughts.

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Something was wrong.

Alistair knew it the moment he smelt the smoke, singed copper and meat. It smelt like death.

The blanket fell away as he lifted himself up. A single beam of moonlight streaked the floor, the only source of light in the otherwise complete darkness. Ten-year-old Alistair rubbed his eyes and kicked his feet off the edge of his bed. Distantly, through the haze of post-sleep, he was aware of the sound of a crackling flame, the sound of someone crying, and the roar of wind against fire.

Something was very, very wrong.

The floor was hot beneath the pads of his feet as Alistair stood and crossed the room, opening the door and peering into the next room. His heart rattled in his chest, his breath leaving in almost inaudible whistles, the way it did when his chest got tight in the early morning.

The next room over was the main-room, where his mother, Bronte, had her patients' sickbeds pressed against the walls to make room for a workbench in the middle. Her shiny tools, ointments and syrups were in shambles from where they were kept there – a stark contrast to her usual order, tools lined up, medicine in labelled bottles.