Chapter Text
“ You saw Guizo last—“ He cried, holding Dara’s shoulders firm. She can feel each twitch of his shattered, shaking body, “Where is he? Where’s Guizo?”
“He went in the door.” Dara explained, flat and content. Because it’d been fine; Guizo had wanted to go. He stepped through, easy as could be. “He took the passage.”
Lirío moans in pure despair, tucking his face into his hands with a twisted expression, “No, no, no, no—“
He fell out of his pod, knees crashing hard onto the strange grated flooring. There’s so much foliage around them, crawling down the sides of the ceiling and walls. Everything’s so green. Dara regards it with a distaste she can’t shake.
“He’s—“ Fine? No. “He told me he wanted to.”
Chico’s hands slip from her shoulders, still trembling, “It was his choice?”
“It was.” Dara says, “I promise.” His resolve had been wavering but firm. Guizo had been almost cheerful.
“Okay.” Chico chokes out, running a hand through his hair, “Okay— Okay— You’re okay.”
Dara blanches. “Of course I am.”
Chico gives her an odd look and twists away.
Dara wakes up and hears the call.
It’s loud, invasive, crawling live static that plugs up her ears and makes the space behind her eyes tingle. Her heart leaps, a wave of cold sweat washing over her.
It’s the most she’s felt of anything in a long time.
The scratched knobs of her knees kick out and slam against the van’s plastic compartments and leather padding. She’s curled up in the passenger seat, the thick-knit blanket wrapped over her now laying in a spool in the foot-well.
Sharp whines and whistles of radio static and interference pitch her into motion.
Dara pushes open the van door, stumbling toe over heel into the weaves of dewy grass. It's out there. The signal, it’s blare burning out her ear drums. It leaves nothing in it’s wake, only the pounding of her heart and the pulse of blood rushing in her veins.
It’s calling her. Tenebris, the Estrangeiro, it’s out there. It’s calling for it’s chosen, it’s vessel for passage. Her fingertips feel numb.
Dara trails behind a cheap corner store slipper. She wobbles, half-asleep, from the smouldering remains of a dream. The sky is dark. She sees no bell, no ship, no one, yet blind faith tugs a taut string from her chest through low-cut barley and wheat grass.
She must answer.
Dara goes crashing into the ground, teeth rattling as she goes cheek-first into the soil. Strong arms squeeze her tight, pinching her arms to her sides— “ Let me go! Let go of me!” The blackened dirt tastes bitter in her mouth.
“No! No, no— Stop, Dara! Snap out of it! ” Lírio, a hundred times her weight, pins her.
The first name that rises to her tongue is Xande. She can remember vividly how her throat had ached when she screamed for him back at the gas station, in the computer lab with that thing. How fast he came around that corner, eyes alight with cold fury.
But calling for Xande will do nothing. And the next name she thinks to call is Guizo. So, Dara lets her voice die out instead.
Her fingers reach to claw at her back and Lírio’s knee twists to bend painfully into her spine. “Dara, please—!”
“ Calma, calma!” Chico must’ve just woken up, Dara can hear the exhaustion still edging his tone, “What’s going on? Lírio ! Get off her! What are you doing ?”
Dara and Lírio speak at the same time.
It happened a lot before, when they were Os Cinco, though then it was usually over Trivia Night banter or during movies.
Dara learned to stop trying to speak when he was. Lírio is always louder. But back then, her annoyance was born from him stealing the easy questions or spilling a plot point too early. When things were easier. When Dara was hapless and unaware.
“ Chico! She was walking all weird and— and she was mumbling strange things about a signal—“
“ Get off of me!”
“Stop, stop!” Chico pleads, and Dara sees his sneakers round to her side, “Dara— Dara, speak . What’s— Where are you going?”
“I heard it.” She hisses, spitting the grit from her teeth, “I heard it, the signal— It’s calling and I need to follow!” She can’t hear it anymore, though. Whatever jarring sound had scratched against the inside of her skull has faded into background noise.
“Where? Did— Was it in the radio?”
“I’m not letting her go.” Lírio rasps, “I can’t. I’m not letting anyone else go, I can’t lose anyone else, Chico—“
“Stop– everyone– just…” Chico shuffles in place, and Dara hears the tell-tale sound of him running hands down his face.
Dara’s shoulders fall slightly. “I-I don’t know. I was sleeping and… I heard something and…”
Feedback whines from the front of the van, the radio clipping chipped and jagged audio between the drone of white noise. Dara’s skin crawls.
“Wait.” Chico says, stumbling back to the van. He pulls open the door with a click, and Dara hears him clambering over the seats and checking the middle console.
The white noise cuts out.
“I—I left the radio on last night, I’m sorry.” Chico calls softly, “I was trying to fix the amplifier yesterday and forgot to close it all back up. It must’ve shorted out or something. Ah… look— Lírio?”
There’s a pause, an unspoken command that Lírio rolls over in his head. Then, slowly, he eases back and releases his arms from her middle.
Dara has half a mind to just sprint. But Chico and Lírio have a car, and Dara is not a fast runner. Besides, if Chico is right, then she has nothing to attend to.
She turns, trying to tamper the anger broiling in her gut.
Chico looks half-dead, dressed in boxers and a stained band-tee that dips below his waistline. He brightens, if only a little, when Dara twists to him. Apparently she wasn’t the only one thinking she’d bolt.
”Look—“ Chico pulls back open the console, slipping his fingers through wires and panels till it rests on a black, jagged, machine that Dara doesn’t recognize. He flips back on the radio, and the static spills back through the air.
Chico taps the machinery and the sharp wail of feedback, the same that Dara had heard, clips through the whitenoise.
She jolts, still. Chico turns the radio back off. “You must’ve bumped it in your sleep.” Dara sleeps in the front seat, as opposed to Lírio and Chico, who’ve both stayed very comfortable being laid over one another in the back. And, to his credit, Dara’s been known to toss and turn.
It doesn’t make sense. Dara had been so sure. She’d felt it, in the race of her pulse, that the call had come back to collect her. Equal parts apprehension and relief war in her chest.
“Again.” Dara calls, voice tight.
Chico opens his mouth. Shuts it. He flicks back on the radio and taps the amplifier. The noises pitch and climb with each bump.
Dara feels no calling. She presses a hand to her sternum, like she could maybe feel the pull in her chest through the ridges of her collarbone.
Nothing.
Her hand drops back to her side. “Oh.”
Chico flicks back off the radio.
“Yeah, oh!” Lírio despairs, his hands visibly shaking in the corner of Dara’s vision, “You could’ve gotten hurt! What would’ve happened if I didn’t hear you? You could’ve—!”
“I was fine.” Dara seethes.
”We’re Os Três!” Lírio continues, “We work together– Don’t walk off without us!”
“I’m not a child!” Her blood boils, “And Os Três ? Os Três? We are Os Três in name alone. You are Chico and Lírio . I have no part of this— If it were up to me, I wouldn’t be here!”
Chico’s face falls with an exhaustion that feels near patronizing, “Don’t say that. You don’t mean that Dara— We’re not arguing about this again—“
“It’s true.” She shoots back, the tips of her fingers going numb, “And I know you would choose the same.”
Chico pales several shades.
Now it’s Lírio’s turn to snarl, jabbing a finger at her, “Take that back . Dara, I ran out here because we can’t lose you!”
“For you! For your sake, not mine!“ Dara twists to him, fists tight at her hip, “If you could, you’d trade me for Guizo, no? Or Xande?”
Lírio balks, stunned into silence.
”No more lying.” Dara snaps, “No more. If you could go back and trade me for Guizo, would you?” Her head whips from Lírio, to Chico, to back and forth again. Their silence is thick, choking. “If you four could’ve stayed Os Quatro, and forgotten me forever— If it meant you’d keep Xande and Guizo, would you?”
“No, no— No . That’s not fair.” Chico croaks, “If I could—“ His voice cracks further, and he clears his throat, eyes pinching shut, “If I could have all of you back, I would. You know that.”
“ Enough.” Lírio is slumped, and he looks thoroughly cowed when Dara snaps her glare to him, “Just… Enough , guys. We’re letting that thing break us apart again!”
Dara cards her hands through her hair, on the verge of squeezing the strands tight between her fingers. They’re so frustrating. They don’t get it. They’re so distant that Dara can’t even see them through the foggy glass separating her from the world she lives in.
When did they get so far away?
Lírio pushes to his feet, waving them both off as he stumbles back to the van. Chico eyes her, “Are you…”
Guizo had the most simple of requests from her moments before he took the weight of her passage off her shoulders— Because it had been a weight—
Find my camera. Delete the newest footage. Keep my tapes. Until next time, with Os Três!
Guizo wanted them to stay together. He was the first one to call them Os Três.
Sometimes it feels like they swapped places. Guizo takes her role in Tenebris and Dara plays second-fiddle to the emotional bandwagon that Chico’s Electronicos has become.
Did Guizo feel this strangeness too? The glassy something that sits between Dara and everyone else? No, not with Xande around, that’s for sure.
Maybe that’s why he left. Ultimately, the joke’s on her— Because Guizo felt like he couldn’t go on without Xande, she’s sure, but Dara feels like she can’t go on without him.
“Dara?”
She wipes at her brow. Sweat is still cooling on her skin, and the take-down has her joints aching like a bruise.
Guizo asked such simple things of her. It’s only fair. It’s really only fair.
“Coming.” Dara mumbles, pushing off her grass-stained knees, “I’m coming. Just…” She sighs, swallowing the bitter taste in her throat, “Go to sleep, Chico.”
She rounds the van, sliding back into the front seat and pulling the door shut behind her. Dara snags the blanket she’d tossed off, pulling it over her folded knees and freezing toes. There’s dirt still smeared over her toes and she knows she’ll need to add a stop on their way to Carpazinha.
Chico shuts the van behind him and settles back into a pile of Lírio and throw pillows. Their metered patterned breathing follows not long after. The sun is barely showing below the horizon, and Dara watches the sky spill shades of pink across the distant treetops for a while, counting her own misted breaths.
Before she knows it, the slip of sunlight turns to the broad warmth of day, heating up the insulated space. Eventually Chico’s breaths turn from snores to sleepy murmurs and she can hear the clack of keys and computer mouse clicking. She hears Dante’s name thrown around, but it doesn’t truly matter what he’s said to them this time.
She doesn’t pretend to not hear them, instead resting the temple of her skull against the chilled glass. It works as enough of a deterrent that neither of them jump to update her. Maybe it’s obvious she hasn’t slept all night.
Dara coils up a bit tighter. She doesn’t know what she’d say if they asked why. It's easy to say it was because of the fight, leaving her too restless.
The more honest answer is that she was hoping the call would return. For real, this time. Or not. Maybe not. She cants the thought back and forth in her head at a steady pace. Dreamlike.
She closes her eyes and thinks of Tenebris. But she dreams of Guizo.