Barrick slipped away just as fast as he had come.

Mark gasps, numbness pulsing through him. The back of his head aches, and his chest feels like it’s going to cave in and crush his lungs. The world spins for a moment and it isn’t till cool, long hands touch his cheeks does it all seem to halt.

Jinyoung looks at him in the eyes, and Mark looks back only to find someone else. Barrick’s memories hadn’t fully returned, but some he didn’t have before were there, she was there. “Henrikka,” Mark whispers and Jinyoung’s mouth turns upwards into a small smile that could only belong to her.

“Barrick?” She calls out and that instantly brings Mark out of his daze. He leans back, slipping away from Jinyoung’s hands.

“He’s not here…” Mark replies, the inside of his mouth dry.

Jinyoung shifts then, stiffly, and leans back onto the bed. “Mark?”

“Henrikka, right?”

Jinyoung’s eyebrows stitch together, giving Mark a calculated look. “Do...you know me?”

“Yes...I remember you,” Mark says, his heart drumming so viciously he felt like he had to concentrate to catch the words that came out of Jinyoung’s lips. “And I remember Barrick.”

“What?” Henrikka says, the expression on Jinyoung’s face reflects her shock and confusion. “How is it possible?”

Mark blinks furiously, “What do you mean?”

“You-” Henrikka brings Jinyoung’s hands up back to Mark’s cheeks. “You aren’t meant to remember- how, how many lives do you remember?”

“Just Barrick…” Mark murmurs, his eyes fluttering down as Henrikka brought their faces close together.

“What happened Barrick?” She whispers mostly to herself. “You’re supposed to forget.”

“I didn’t forget…”

“But you do not remember them all, do you?”

Mark in a breath, “There’s more?”

Henrikka looks down and takes a comforting hand to Mark’s hair, the strands with a delicate touch. “There’s many of us, we have all lived and died in turn. You have always forgotten, and we have always remembered. But...something has changed in this life, why?”

“What- what has changed?” Mark sputters out, the desperation clear in his voice. Henrikka moves Jinyoung’s hands away and then gets up to her feet, Mark rises too and watches her as she heads towards the window.

“We have always remembered, I, those before me, and those between me and Jinyoung, we have always remembered each other. But Jinyoung...he was born different...he did not remember.” Henrikka makes a concentrated face, her eyes searching for something from within. “Why? Why didn’t he remember? When did it begin?”

“He told me he started remembering a couple of months ago only, but that he could always speak Arabic,” Mark said, now that he was on his feet, he felt composure wash over him, and he wills his heart to calm down.

“Yes, his memories are still...fragmented, I’m having trouble grabbing them - this is...wrong,” Henrikka murmurs.

“It’s wrong he doesn’t remember? How is that possible?”

Henrikka looks up at Mark with a look of pity, “We are cursed, my dear. For five hundreds year we have remembered, we haunt and comfort each other - ultimately it was the price we had to pay for what we had done in the beginning.”

“In the beginning?”

Henrikka looks away, as if to shut herself away from the topic. “It’s strange. You have never remembered before...so why is Barrick here? Why have I come? His memories of me had not been whole until recently, what changed?” She hisses then, Jinyoung’s hands into balls. “They’re here, aren’t they?”

“They? Who?”

Henrikka begins to pace, she holds Jinyoung’s body straight and his chin high as her eyes dance. “A man, a woman, a child, an elder. They are always different, just as we are always different. Just as we may be lovers, family, friends in one life, so are they. We could tell usually, see who people used to be but something is wrong with Jinyoung, something had blocked us from him and now we’ve been forced open. Usually, he would have grown with us steadily, learned to gradually separate us, but they’re all forcing their way in, in a short amount of time and his...body, his mind cannot take it.”

“Who? Who is forcing him? How is that possible? What curse?” Mark felt his own hands shaking, the image of Jinyoung’s vacant eyes, Jinyoung over the bridge, Jinyoung on the street filling his mind.

“Mark,” Jinyoung’s voice is so clear in Mark’s head, like a knife through the fog. “There are few things you must be clear of before I leave. I cannot stay long, and I must- I must do what I can while I am here. I do not know when Jinyoung will block me out again and I fear if I force myself to stay too long it’ll risk Jinyoung losing himself.”

Mark takes a deep breath and looks up towards him, towards her, and nods. A nod filled with courage, vindication, and something bittersweet. She stares at him fondly, a look of both love and sadness, a kind of look nostalgia had.

“There is another person that remembers. I don’t know who it is in this life, but you must be careful. They are like us and they are not. They have been with us since the beginning.” She looks sad as she says it, a look Mark did not understand while fear swept over him.

“I thought you said we were cursed?”

“They have cursed us, cursed me and those before and after me, cursed us for eternity.” She says solemnly. “And unless they have changed something, I suspect something has fractured. But I cannot make out what- his memories aren’t complete, but they’re there however...strange…” She looks down, focusing.

“What? What’s strange?”

“There’s a blank- as far as I was concerned whenever we died in one life, we’d be born into the next within a few years but there’s a blank. The last hundreds years worth of life are missing.” Henrikka sighs heavily and goes to rub at Jinyoung’s temple. She then looks up and gives Mark that sharp look of hers. “The last life I can find was in France, during a horrible war, he died due to an explosion. My god...and I had thought this world could only strive to become better but it does not seem to have changed since my time.”

“Henrikka…”

“Mark, I did not predict your death. Jinyoung and his friend seemed to have thought I was talking about you but I was not, I was thinking of Barrick. I constantly feared for his life you see. That is to say...you must be careful too. Just as Barrick was in danger, you are too. For it is who we were, not who we are, that has put us in this...catastrophe that seems to never end.” She takes a step towards him and goes to hold his hand, and Mark feel’s Jinyoung’s skin against his like a thorn to a rose. “Barrick...I know you can hear me. Do not hide from me. Something has changed, and we must protect these boys for all those of us that could not be protected.”

Mark could feel Barrick hum deep inside him, a roar of feelings swirling around in his chest; love, sadness, longing, and...immense regret. Henrikka stares for long enough to know Barrick is not going to reappear, and the disappointed in Jinyoung’s eyes is almost heart breaking.

“Mark, one more thing,” Henrikka says clasping Mark’s hand tightly. “Jinyoung knows who you are. He has sensed it for a while now, but he is now aware you remember Barrick, and he is not happy, my dear.” She says this with a small smile and a secret. “I hope you decide to stay, because I assure you running away will not solve anything. Believe me, I have tried before.” She says finally, giving Mark’s hair one last before it goes limp, and Jinyoung falls into Mark’s arms.

Turku, 1827

Barrick ended up returning to Henrikka’s asylum nearly every night after. He’d been in by her dusted words, and her velvet voice. Her stories of places and times so far away they were like folktales upon her tongue, though she had claimed them to be true. Barrick did not refute her, rather he deluded himself in believing, and willed himself to fall into a world of candle light filled nights like stories around a campfire.

He found that Henrikka had a rather peculiar personality, quite like a lion locked up in a cage. She had told him she hated wearing dresses, and that the pins in her hair were incredibly uncomfortable. He’d never met a lady like her; energetic, and eccentric. Her voice would hit heights when she became excited, and her eyes shone like she was a fire waiting to burn.

She’d sometimes slip, her Finnish fading quickly into other languages, Barrick could hardly recognize half of them, and there were so many he could barely count them on his fingers. It frightened him sometimes, maybe because she was so otherworldly, maybe because of the look she had in her eyes, like she truly was as wise as if she had lived for hundreds of years.

It wasn’t the idea of believing that bothered Barrick so much, but that he was meant to be intertwined with her, that he was actually part of all the stories she had spun. He’d been told the names, names that he had never heard but that had belonged to him, and felt nothing. He wanted to remember, wanted to see the lands he’d lived upon, the people he had loved, the worlds he’d lived in.

“Every wish comes with a price,” Henrikka had said one night from where she was upon the floor, circled by a wall of books. “I speak of only the good because I only wish to remember the good, Barrick.”

“But if you were to pretend the bad does not exist, how do you differentiate between what is good, and what is bad?” Barrick responded casually, he was laid upon the sofa, a book snuggled on his chest.

“Do not play with your words like that, you fully understand what I mean,” Henrikka huffed, and Barrick smiled to himself, because although he could not see her, he could clearly see the sort of pout she must have had on her face.

She is strange, Barrick found himself constantly thinking. Strange as she was unique, as she was herself, and as she was several different other people. Rarely, there were those moments, when she’d become someone else almost. Like a possession, a ghost taking over her body, and her eyes looked upon the space around her and Barrick knew she did not see her prison filled with books but she saw a place already crumbled to the ground.

One night, when she had fallen asleep reading, Barrick watched her silently. He did it often, sketched the image of her dark inked hair trickling down her face into his mind, watched the breath she took with the small rise of her chest, and the way her eyes fluttered, like she were dreaming. There was a constant feeling, like something was going to swallow her up and take her away. She was a candle-lit flame, and Barrick worried when the wind would take her.

It was during these meetings of theirs as well, did Barrick feel like drawing the most. When he’d use to spend his nights staring out from his balcony hoping the inspiration would come with the rise of the sun, he instead spent them on Henrikka’s floor, large pieces of paper sprawled across her coffee table, his mind furious with images. He drew grand cathedrals, ridiculous ideas, spiral stairs that grew outwards, wooden doors engraved with portraits, towers so high their tips cut into the clouds. He reimagined the world in this prison, where desert meets the sea, and the sky meets the ground, where rain burns, and snow falls with the sun. He saw it all, through her stories, through her books, through her voice, and her eyes.

He saw it all with her, and he continued to see it, even after she took her last dying breath.

Seoul, 2016

Jinyoung’s been awake for a good two minutes and hasn’t said a thing. He’s lying on Mark’s hospital bed, Mark sitting beside him on the sofa chair. He’s been considering just bolting out the window and ending this suffocating silence but Jinyoung’s stillness makes Mark feel just as rigid. He’s frozen to his seat.

Mark didn’t know what to say first, he feels apologetic, but somehow he thinks saying sorry will do more worse than good. So he just continues to stare at Jinyoung’s forehead, hoping with enough concentration he can make a hole and pluck out his thoughts.

“Ok…” Jinyoung says, still staring dead at the ceiling. He stays still for a second more and then suddenly sits up. “I’m not that mad anymore.”

“What?” Mark squeaks, his voice coming out too high.

Jinyoung looks at him, like he see’s a completely different person, but a person he knew well. Mark couldn’t tell whether he liked that look or not, but he felt he’d shared the same expression when he first saw Jinyoung walk through the door.

“It must have been hard, right?” Jinyoung says low, his eyelashes fluttering downwards.

Mark tries to read his expression, to find something past the daunting, flat look on his face but quickly realises Jinyoung’s just trying to compose himself. Mark sighs then and settles back into his chair, “Don’t give me that look. As if I’ve even suffered half the amount you have.”

“How long have you remembered?” Jinyoung asks, picking at his fingernails. Mark could sense the impatience buzzing inside him, like he just wanted to burst out of his skin.

“All my life,” Mark says, finding his jaw stiff. His body was rejecting it, the idea Mark was actually going to confide in someone about what he remembered, about Barrick. He’d been so used to pretending he lived a life of ignorance and bliss, of wonder and adventure, all the whilst burying a grave that never seemed to want to stay beneath the soil.

“How many lives? Or just the one?” Jinyoung presses, his eyes now on Mark.

Mark feels like he’s on the edge of the world now, watching the sea waterfall into the universe. Men used to sail close to the coast in fear of the edge and yet he found himself sailing out further and further, waiting for the dip and the fall.

“Just Barrick,” Mark his lips, the name odd on his tongue. “I don’t remember the others.”

Jinyoung lets out a shaky breath and dips into his hands, “Jesus christ, what is this?”

“Fate? Coincidence?” Mark says the words lifelessly.

“Do you really think it’s fate?” Jinyoung murmurs. “Somehow I don’t like the word.”

“Neither do I. I don’t believe in it. Things happen, we make decisions, whether it makes sense or not. To what extent is it fate, and what is our own decision? Are our decision already known? And if so by who? Why does it matter if some higher being knows what we’re going to decide? Or is fate just the result of our decisions? ” Mark realises he is rattling on too late and his mildly bewildered to find a smile on Jinyoung’s face.

“Even at a time like this you’re such a philosopher,” Jinyoung laughs softly and the noise threads it’s way into Mark and leaves warm burns on his insides.

“I seem to be only good at asking questions,” Mark says, trying to respond with a smile of his own. “I’ve lived twice the life time questioning the world, and the world has only ever replied with silence.”

“The world…” Jinyoung echos, a whisper to himself. “You know, of all the things I remember, I remember pain the most, not just physical, but the kind of emotional pain where you can’t breathe and feel like your chest is being chewed from the inside out. I’ve killed people, I’ve been killed, I’ve seen war, and I’ve seen genocide, I’ve tasted blood and I’ve had it to on my hands. But it was the loneliness that always hurt the most though, the type of loneliness that’d make you disregard the world because what’s the point of it if you’re alone.”

Mark understood. He’d felt it his whole life, he’d felt it through Barrick. He’d always wonder what being alone really meant, because what was it like to not be alone? Is it to share your thoughts with another, is it to touch their skin and kiss them to sleep, is it to be with another physically, or is it to understand each other emotionally? Where did loneliness start, and where did it end?

“I’m not leaving Jinyoung,” Mark says, it was a sudden decision, but a decision that settles lightly on his shoulder. It didn’t hold fear, or anxiety, or the crippling feeling that he was falling down into darkness. It was a decision to change, to change him, the future, the past.

“You should,” Jinyoung suddenly retorts. “Don’t you remember what Henrikka said? You’re in danger, you’re always in danger, and if whoever...she was talking about is really around, then it’s best you leave before they find you.”

“I think they’ve already found me.”

“What?”

“I’ve received...emails from someone, an unknown ID,” Mark explains. “They kept asking if I had forgotten...they also called me Barrick.”

“What? Why didn’t you say anything-” Jinyoung bites his lip and leans back into the bed, a look of defeat encompassing him.

“I’d expected you to be more...angry,” Mark says quickly, his eyes lowering down to his hands where they sat still on his lap. “For keeping it from you?”

Jinyoung looks at the top of his head for a moment before replying, “I guess I kind of knew, or sensed it. Like yeah, Henrikka said I used to be able to tell who you were in every life just by looking at you, but I kind of like the fact I reached out to you without knowing.” Mark looks up at him at that, he was sure there was something he meant between those words but he couldn’t really pick them out. Jinyoung stares back and in a breath, he opens his mouth to speak but the swing of the door takes the breath out of him.

Youngjae walks into the room with a look of displeasure. Mihyun trudging in from behind him with a sheepish, guilty look. “Do you know what kind of trouble you caused in the hospital?” Youngjae starts, staring Jinyoung dead in the eye.

“Youngjae,” Mark calls out as if to tell him to calm down. “You should have just told them where I was if they were going to worry this much.” Mark says, looking over his shoulder.

Youngjae gives the two of them a look and then raises an eyebrow, “Why is Jinyoung in the bed and you’re not?”

“Ah, ah!” Jinyoung suddenly jumps off the bed, his legs getting tangled in the sheets. There’s a brief second where everything freezes, Jinyoung midair, the white sheets flapping weightlessly, then he slams into the floor. “Mother er-”

Mark leans over the bed, peering at the tangled mess on the floor and sighs into his hand. “He had a...fit then passed out again,” Mark tells Youngjae, watching Mihyun help thread him out of the covers with amusement.

“You got possessed?” Mihyun blurts out.

“Possessed?” Youngjae repeats, eyeing Mark questioningly.

“Ah, ah!” Mihyun jumps, laughing awkwardly. “That’s kind of the horrible term I’ve given him whenever he gets into one of his fits.”

“I see…” Youngjae murmurs. “It seems we’ve got a long overdue meeting Mark.”

“If you want to talk about me-ugh,” Jinyoung starts as he finally gets up to his feet, huffing. “You can just do it in front of me, I’m not a child.”

“No, you’re a time bomb,” Youngjae snaps, surprising the three of them.

“Youngjae…” Mark calls out with a warning.

Youngjae takes a deep breath and tugs on his ear, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get angry like that. However, do you know the complaints I’ve received because of you two? I just got bombarded by several nurses saying two students from my university came in here throwing fits and threatening people trying to find a professor. What were you thinking?”

“That I needed to find Professor Tuan and if it meant shouting out what university we were from just to get in the right direction, then I did it. Besides you weren’t helping a single bit,” Jinyoung bites back.

“So? You found him...what did you need so desperately?” Youngjae sighs, sliding his arms across his chest. He looks tired, Mark notes, his glasses weren’t enough to hide how sunken and dark his eyes seem and his cheek bones seem hollowed out like he wasn’t eating.

Jinyoung bites his lip and looks down, “We’ve sorted it out already.”

“Youngjae, are you okay?” Mark asks, and Youngjae turns sharply but the moment their eyes meet, the tension in him seems to fade away instantly.

“I’m fine, Mark, thank you,” Youngjae replies, tugging at his earlobe.

“Why don’t you two leave for now? You’ve made sure I’m okay, and I’m going to get discharged soon, so don’t worry,” Mark says to Mihyun and Jinyoung, he doesn’t like the impatient look on Jinyoung’s face but he decides to ignore it for now. He understood they had a lot of things to talk about, but honestly, he was already at his limit for one day.

“I’ll visit you tomorrow,” Jinyoung announces.

“You don’t have to-”

“I’ll visit you tomorrow.” He states flatly, and tugs on a strand of Mihyun’s hair as an indication to get moving.

“Feel better, Professor,” She says, bows, and leaves with Jinyoung.

“You look like you need a lie on the bed,” Mark half-heartedly jokes as he gets up from the seat and offers it to Youngjae. Youngjae doesn’t protest as Mark crawls back onto the mattress and he flops into the seat with a heaviness that didn’t match his slim frame. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing, I just haven’t been sleeping well,” Youngjae grunts, lifting his glasses with his fingers to pinch at his bridge.

“Too much work?” Mark says. “I talked to Professor Jung the other day, she mentioned you’ve taken over my classes all by yourself. You didn’t have to, there are other teachers that could have shared it with you.”

“No, I wanted to do it,” Youngjae says. “It makes me feel a little better knowing I’m doing something.”

“You sound guilty,” Mark chuckles and gives Youngjae’s forehead a light flick. “It’s not like you killed me Youngjae, what you doing moping around like that for?”

Youngjae laughs back lightly, “Right? I wonder why. I guess seeing you...so lifeless scared the out of me. You can never get used to it you know? Death.”

“Who could?” Mark says thoughtfully, placing a palm to his own chest. “I mean I still feel weird about it - even falling asleep scares me a little bit now.”

“How are you feeling?” Youngjae asks, genuine worry pinching at the space between his eyebrows.

“I’m fine, Youngjae, really,” Mark says, hoping a smile would ease the stiffness that was evident in Youngjae’s shoulders. “I actually need you to get me discharged, I can’t stay in here any longer.”

“But they haven’t figured out what’s wrong with you, are you sure?”

“I’m sure, they won’t figure it out anyway.” Mark shrugs.

“Is there something you’re not telling me? Between you and Jinyoung? I’m not asking as a professor, but as a friend - although things have gotten quieter, I can’t help but feel like something is different,” Youngjae looks at Mark in the eye, and Mark can see exhaustion and anxiety. He wonders if Youngjae was always so easy to read, or that maybe he never bothered to read him before.

“What are you asking?” Mark smirks, pulling up a suggestive face. “What could be between me and a student?”

Youngjae rolls his eyes and gives Mark a playful nudge, “Shut up, I didn’t mean that, and you know it. We haven’t had a lot of meetings on Jinyoung but whenever we do, you don’t say much, yet there’s definitely something different.” Youngjae says, giving the door behind him a look. “I get it if you don’t want to tell me, but everything’s okay, right?”

“Everything’s okay…” Mark echos because he really doesn’t know how to answer the question.

Was everything okay? Now that Jinyoung knew about him, he wasn’t sure what was going to happen, or what has already happened. Mark thought his memories of Barrick were just whispers of the dead, things that happened and that can never change, things that should have nothing to do with him. And yet, Henrikka said it, that whatever this curse is, it would play out for eternity, would surpass death, would live in the brains of people like weeds for thousands of years to come.

Was a curse the same thing as fate? Was Jinyoung and Mark going to meet and suffer again and again until the world simply crumbles into it’s core? Mark was so close, so close to waterfalling down into the universe and slipping away into the darkness. What he learned today sat heavier on him more than anything Barrick’s memories could have, but there was a light, a fracture, an opening.

Something has changed, and if that was true then Mark was going to grab it by its horns and dive towards the end of the earth.

Turku, 1827

The inside of Carl’s house was ridiculously intimidating. Barrick doesn’t visit his friend often purely because of the outrageous display of money; marble floors and stairs, stairs that belong to ballrooms and royalty. A ceiling hand painted, luxurious, beautiful, colourful, fit for a cathedral, yet lifeless, lifeless like a gold bar in the hand of a man who eats diamonds for breakfast.

Barrick has a deep frown etched onto his face as he stands in the entrance, having the family's butler strip him of his hat and his cloak as if his hands have suddenly become immobile. “My friend, I do have hands,” Barrick said towards the old man who simply returned his words with a polite bow and a turn.

Barrick huffed and tugged at the collars of his sleeves, trying not to seem completely out of place. He’d become too used to the seclusion of Henrikka’s room, to the darkness and the quiet, that he felt the need to squint now as the sun crashed through the wide windows and reflected off the floors, the walls, the pillars and furniture. Golden frames, extravagant vases, stone statues, engraved plaques, and the rich aroma of perfume was suffocating. If there was a graveyard for superficiality, Barrick believed this to be it.

“You look as if you are going to turn to stone,” Carl boomed from the top of the stairs. Barrick flickered his eyes towards his friend who held himself with the same conniving smile and shimmering eyes as he always did.

“Yes, I was just thinking of marrying myself with my good friend Zeus here,” Barrick mused, tapping the statue beside him lovingly. It was just a carving of a head, an old man with curls for hair and a beard, and a crown upon his head.

“That is not Zeus, that is Hades,” Carl snorted as he started to make his way down the steps. His black leather shoes click finely against the marble of the ground and Barrick realised then that he was covered in black, everything from his socks to his dress shirt.

“Quite a morbid statue to have at the entrance of your home,” Barrick murmured as he took a sly step away from the stone head, now too conscious of how void its eyes were.

“We received it as a gift a week ago,” Carl said, now just a step before Barrick. “Which was rather morbid then because just a couple of hours before we received news of my uncle's death.”

“Your uncle?”

“You do not know him, he moved to England over twenty years ago - shall we?” He beckoned towards a door to the left, one Barrick knew lead to the conservatory. “My family spent a couple of days ordering things for his funeral in London, they won’t be back till the end of the month, so I’ve been doing my father’s job whilst he was gone.”

“My condolences,” Barrick said politely as Carl opened the doors where a large living room revealed itself. It was a space Barrick knew well from his adolescence, where he’d sneak into Carl’s house when he was meant to be studying and they’d play between themselves amongst the expensive art pieces and upon imported rugs. It was a room mostly for decoration then it was for ‘living’, therefore it was rarely entered.

At the very end, the room opened up to the garden. The conservatory, a glass building attached to the mansion stood wonderfully where bright green grass and flourishing flower beds served as its backdrop. The sun high in the sky, shone down upon a small stained glass table and its slim, elegant chairs made of the same steel.

“It is far too hot today to have tea in the conservatory, it’s practically a furnace in there,” Carl said as he made his way towards the centre of the room, where two large white sofas with golden framed backs faced each other.

“Are these new?” Barrick noted as he followed his friend and sat beside him, finding the cushions far too stiff below him. “They are not very comfortable.”

“Expensive pieces from France, not really meant for comfort as it is for showing off how much money we have,” Carl prodded at the golden stitches below him with a disinterested look.

“But who would create a sofa that weren’t comfortable in the first place? What is the point?” Barrick frowned as he slid forward and opted for leaning more on his calves than he did on the piece of furniture.

“A designer that must have lost his way,” Carl sang with a dramatic flick of his fingers. He settled back into the corner of the sofa, and managed to look incredibly comfortable while doing it. “I do beg of you though, when you become some famous architecture, building mansions and churches here and there, that you do continue to at least make ones that stand.”

“You do not trust my sincerity will last if I were to succeed?” Barrick insinuated with a of his eyebrow.

“Do not be offended, my friend, I simply do not trust people,” Carl half-smiled, it was softer compared to his usual smirk. “People start out with love, until ambition stomps it out, and then success stumps out ambition, and eventually men become nothing but what they thought they wanted. Until suddenly emotions like love, ambition, inspiration, everything that should make a human, human, becomes secondary. Humans have only ever put trust in what they can hold, not what they feel.”

Barrick stared at his friend with look of astonishment, he had never heard Carl speak so softly, never heard him speak words so eloquent and insightful. “Is everything alright, Carl?”

Carl met Barrick’s eyes and burst out laughing, “I do apologize, it would seem the workload is having more of an effect on me than I expected.”

“If you need help Carl, I am here, although I may not be an accountant or the sort…” Barrick trailed off. He’d realised then just how much Carl had done for him as he grew up, rather than just being a friend, a companion to keep away the loneliness. Carl had also been there for him when he found himself at ends with his tutor, when he had days he could not pick up a pencil, and even days when he never wanted to pick it up again. Even though he spoke with a sort of arrogance that deserved a smack to the cheek, he always had a fragility underneath the vicious smiles and bitter words. And yet Barrick found himself at a point in their lives where Carl had evidently needed help, and he simply did not know what to offer.

“I did not ask for your presence just for you to show me that sort of face, Barrick,” Carl said with a comforting slap to his shoulder. “I simply thought of you last night while I was arguing with one of our accountants.”

“What part of arguing with your accountant reminded you of me?”

“How much I prefer arguing with you instead.” The two men give each other a look before bursting into a fit of chuckles, accompanied by nudges and the occasional giggle. They get interrupted by a knock, and a maid enters with a silver cart, upon it is a tower of cakes, biscuits, cheeses and crackers. At the bottom, a jug of water and a pot of tea.

The two of them both straighten up and clear their throats as the maid pours out the hot tea for them, “How would you like your tea, sir?” The maid asked, addressing Barrick without really looking at him.

“I can do it myself, thank you very much,” Barrick said with a smile she did not see. She simply nodded and then turned to leave, Mark watching the white ruffles of her dress disappear between the crack in the door. “Does your family treat their workers badly?”

Carl has already stabbed his fork into his second piece of cake when Barrick turned to talk to him. “We teach them manners, but if I’m honest I don’t really pay attention,” Carl paused then, his teeth for a moment as if in thought. “Although I think the incident with my father impregnating one of the maids didn’t settle well with my mother.”

“What?”

Carl waved his fork in the air, “It was sometime last year, maid disappeared shortly after the dramatics. Not entirely sure if I have a half brother or not.”

“I never heard this…”

“It was something the household wanted to keep as quiet as possible, and to be honest, I did not care for it.” Carl shrugged, picking up the sugar spoon, shovelling four spoonfuls before seeming satisfied. “Luckily it was sorted out without rumours coming about, otherwise that would have been a nuisance to deal with.”

Barrick sat on his spot feeling a little baffled. He’d always known there was a sort of detachment to Carl that meant he did not care much for others, or their feelings, but somehow after all these years, he’d still manage to say things that surprised Barrick. Maybe because Carl had always grown in the coldness that only metals knew, to live life rigid and calculatively, to look upon others as assets rather than as people.

“On the topic of rumours…”

“Oh, I do not like where this is going already,” Barrick groaned and settled back into the stone cushions.

“There is talks...my dear friend,” Carl said, his hand rubbing at his jaw as he did when something intrigued him. “That Lady Henrikka is having a visiter often.”

Barrick looked to the side to give his friend a hard stare, “Those are not rumours then, you have gone out and investigated either me or her, have you not?”

Carl huffed and settled back into the sofa, disappointed with being caught so quickly. “I had bumped into Hanna at the market the other day, as I was on the way to the back and she had told me you have been leaving nearly every night on a curricle, and not returning till morning.”

“And?” Barrick responded casually, reaching out for his own cup of tea. He tended to put two spoons of sugar but he didn’t think of it now as he brought it to his lips and sipped quietly.

“And...I already knew Henrikka was staying at the hospital, and of course, I knew she would be the only one you’d decide to visit all of a sudden,” Carl said, his own voice monotone. Which was odd, because he was asking, and he did not seem the least bit interested, in fact he seemed a little distracted.

Barrick looked up towards him, and settled down his cup. “How did you know she was already there?”

“Did you think I called her a lunatic at the ball for fun, Barrick?”

“Honestly, yes?”

Carl snorted, a grin wide on his face as he slid up straight and close to Barrick. “Although I do take interest and mild enjoyment in seeing others fumble around themselves, this time I’m simply here to tell you to stop meeting her.”

Barrick blinked, staring down into Carl’s placid face, searching for some hidden motive, a joke or a tease, but there was nothing. “I do not understand, why would you care?”

“She is dangerous, Barrick,” Carl announced as if it were a fact as true as the sky is blue. “She...is not good for you.”

“If this is about her…’mental instability’ then do not worry-"

“That is not what I worry about,” Carl interjected. “She is the daughter of the Governor-general, one wrong move and you may find yourself with a bullet in your head. Just because she is exiled does not mean she no longer matters.” Carl put his teacup down and turned to face Barrick. “Stop meeting her, Barrick. You’ve just started the works on Turku’s bridges, your career is just taking its first step, do not ruin this.”

Barrick took in a deep breath. He understood what Carl was saying, he was being logical. Seeing a lady every night as it is was already a cause for trouble, but for it to be the Governer-general’s daughter was a completely different matter. It was dangerous.

“You left your family, and you have not seen them in nearly seven years now because you were so determined for your dreams, your goals. That was what I always loved about you, my friend,” Carl spoke softly, placing a palm to Barrick’s cheek. “So completely different to me, who was born with their life already set on a course. I do not have ambitions like you, my end has already been set. So, I pray to whatever god there may be, that you do not let this one woman ruin everything. Do you understand, Barrick?”

Barrick leaned into his friend's hand for a moment before answering, “I understand Carl, but she….is not any woman.”

The look on Carl’s face hardened and too quickly his edges put up the wired fence Barrick was accustomed too. “A week with a woman and suddenly she isn’t just…’any woman’? Were you always so weak Barrick?” Carl mocked, sitting back into the sofa with an air of displeasure.

“Who has taught you to believe emotions are a sign of weakness?”

Carl flickered his eyes towards Barrick, and inside them was a blankness, a void of darkness Barrick had never seen before. Carl was many things; mischievous, secretive, brilliant, conniving but he was not lifeless. Yet that was what Barrick saw when he looked into the eyes of the only true friend he had all his life.

“Emotions are exactly what makes the world go round, my Barrick,” Carl whispered the words. “They are why wars start, they are why people kill, why people build and create. Emotions have made up the human empire, and they are precisely what will destroy it too.” 

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a/n: hey!!!! just thought id mention here as well i now have a twitter if ud like to chat or be my friend *sparkly eyes* @silkscrews