✄ .・。.・゜✭・. if you're lost out where the lights are blinding, caught and all the stars are hiding ━━━
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██ 005. / SILENT BUT DEADLY
█ ✄ ... / THE QUIET PATTER of Paisley's heart felt like a hammer, reverberating through her body with every violent beat. No other sound filled up their journey, and the quiet came with a certain dizziness to it, her fingertips tingling as the blood rushed to her skull. The pulsations pounded in her ears like clockwork.
Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum.
Outside, the July sun still burned hazily, yet the way her skin shivered suggested it was barely spring. Something about the atmosphere in the cramped car felt almost... glacial.
If it had been anybody else sat beside her, Paisley's instinct would be to strike up conversation. About anything, really — even something as frivolous as weaving patterns — so long as it would drown out the rhapsody of her own thoughts. It was something of a district-wide habit; the easiest way to fill those dark hours when the doors were locked, and the entire district fell still. Noise wrapped itself around them like a warm blanket. It was how they made each other feel safe.
But she didn't really have that option here.
Sitting beside Dowlas Steed — the only person in Eight who had never followed that rule, she felt completely stumped. It was like following the map to something that didn't actually exist — every attempt she made to read him brought back nothing but blank pages. She wasn't sure what she was supposed to say to him...
What could she possibly say to the one person who never said anything at all?
Their entire world was spinning off its axis, and yet, in all of the commotion that had followed, Dowlas really hadn't said a word. Not when they had left the Justice Building, or when Aurelia had lectured them clumsily as they climbed into the car. Even now, as their preliminary hearse carted them towards the station, not even a whisper left his lips. He just said nothing — so lifeless and lame that he almost disappeared.
Paisley took in a sharp breath, her restless fingers following the pattern of the seat. This was not the half-quiet that she yearned for when the voices wouldn't sit still. It was more like the agonising, shrill kind that made her ears bleed, the kind that always came with some kind of danger or bad news. She turned, shuffling her body in an attempt to get a subtle look at him. She hadn't meant anything by it — only that the fascination was becoming harder to control. But then she noticed something curious, and her eyes honed in on the fabric of his shirt.
