I rubbed at my throat, scratching the stubble barely formed there, and let the nylon strap fall from my shoulder. The bag hit the floor, and the floor came at me with a vengeance for that. It was Oleander who caught me again – Oleander was her name, yeah. The only name she knew, she told me once. I asked her if she knew that meant poison, and she just laughed and asked if I thought she’d kill me.

She tried to ease my descent, at least, pulling me into her long, lilac arms and cooing her sorries and regrets to me as if they were the magic words, the healing words. Too little, too late, I wanted to remark; with a scoff, with a sigh, something natural, something comedic. Something she’d like more than I did.

Maybe one day, I’d replied. Four years ago. I don’t remember where we’d been, exactly, but I think it was that one neon joint on the 13th level, the one we called the church – that’s within the range where the Undercity really kicks in proper, but long, *long* before you’re in no-man’s-land, where even the bulbs can’t cut the darkness and electricity and civilisation in general are things of the past, of floors long past. When you hit the 21st is when you’re really in the *shit*. The 18th has conflict, sure, but the 21st is an active warzone. You can’t go down there without iron the size of your head and your head would have to be fucking massive to think you can even take a dip into the aforementioned shit at the center of the planet without drowning in it.

Oleander had a huge head. Not literally, mind. I thought she was self-conscious about it at first, with that carbon veil she always wore, and the shawl printed in the selfsame black that encased her like a cocoon, like she thought she still had room to grow and emerge anew; changed, ready to take flight, up and up and finally out of here. Out of the shit she’d been buried in. It turns out there were a lot of people after her pretty pink carapace. The cloak broke up her silhouette, she said, wiggling inscrutably beneath the fabric’s folds for emphasis. Fucking caterpillar, I’d called her.

She liked nicknames, not any singular one, but the concept, and I gave her quite a few like that, in some vain effort to find one that’d stick. None of them ever did for long, but they all sacrificed themselves to paint a better picture of her. Of Oleander. Pretty, profuse, fragrant. Why Oleander, I asked her, as if she could speak for her parents in their absence. But whenever they were the subject, or family trees in general, she turned pale – for her, that meant blue – and I knew I'd never get closure there, not unless I was dying in her arms.

Oh.

In truth, I hadn’t believed that breaking up one’s silhouette was a valid concern for her until that night at the neon joint, where those iconic daybright tubes started popping, and our cathedral's stained-glass windows, stained with murals of the filth we worshipped, started cracking around her. Those pareidolia daydreams formed from the grime had suddenly become martyrs as they’d shattered. Martyrs for us, for the cause of living, as we ducked beneath the table and found the iron we’d holstered. Not that they're made of iron anymore. I might be, though, judging by the taste on my tongue.

Four years later, I heard the metal – not iron – zipper of my duffel come undone, and felt cold plastic against my skin in short order. Oleander was still apologising. By then, I’d given up with talking entirely, and simply grasped back at her with a set of numb fingers. Those sausages got intercepted on the way up and crushed together in one of her palms. Her skin was boiling. My neck had gone numb, too, as some solution I couldn’t pronounce, even if I’d still had a larynx to my name, dispersed itself across the cavity site. Fat lot of good that’d do, I said silently. I suppose she heard me somehow, because she started crying.

Oleander's red eyes trembled in their sockets, scanning me up and down like swollen security cameras – then, alarmed by motion, they snapped up, towards a frame where a door had recently resided, towards the long barrel swaggering into our room. It seemed the floor had it out for her, as well, the way she collapsed into it, pulling me into her lap, gravity’s hands pulling us both down, pushing us together. Remembering its cue, my prosthetic sprung to life. What must have been the lone spark still flying inside my wires brought life to the copper fingers, animating them, sending them down towards my empty holster and grasping at the air in vain.

Shit, I’d dropped it. That’s right. You forget the obvious when you get shot – basic shit like where your gun is, or why you’d ever agreed to this lousy partnership in the first place. Well, maybe it was something like this: Brennen and Her sunkissed streets might have been beyond you, but you could still worship Oleander. Maybe you couldn’t save her, but at least you could die for her. That’s not obvious at all, though, and in retrospect it’s all starting to seem like a really bad idea.

Then, the last apology died in her throat, and something new emerged.

“I was born from a branch,” she said, between sobs. “Spawned from a cutting.”

“I was meant to be poison, I told you, but you said you didn't believe me. You didn't care. You said I was beautiful, and made me think I could still grow. That I could be more than iron, more than toxin, more than Oleander,”

“that you would protect me, water me, bring me warmth, and we could rise, high, higher, and seek the sunlight – from the real Sun – and find a garden far above.”

“I didn't have to be Oleander. You told me that,” she rasped out in staccato breaths.

Well, you ended up being Oleander, after all. I could never find another name for you, let alone a higher purpose than getting me killed. You were a lilac leaf rotting in shit, and I was the last wind of spring. And now it's summer, and now I'm falling, falling, falling.

falling, falling.

falling.

Winter.