The performance ended.
Not with applause—though applause came, thunderous and compulsory, as if the audience had no choice but to acknowledge what they'd witnessed. But with silence first. The kind of silence that happens when people have been stripped of comfortable lies and aren't sure how to exist without them.
Lenore had sung five pieces. Each one had carved truth from throats like a surgeon removing tumors. The confessions had rippled through the crowd in waves—small ones at first, then larger, then catastrophic. By the final aria, people were weeping openly, confessing to strangers, unburdening themselves of secrets they'd carried for decades because her voice made carrying them impossible.
And through it all, she'd stood in the stained white dress, his black tears marking her like stigmata, like proof of suffering, like the evidence that precision had a price even the precise couldn't escape paying.
Apirael had watched from the wings, unable to look away, unable to process what his words had created, unable to reconcile the beauty of her performance with the horror of its mechanism.
He'd written new lines in his mind—whole stanzas about what he was witnessing, metaphors that captured the exact quality of her voice, observations about how truth could be both liberation and violation—but he'd held them unwritten. Had forced them to remain internal. Had chosen silence over expression for the first time since the blood-ink had begun flowing.
It had hurt. Had felt like suffocation, like drowning in unexpressed language. But it had hurt less than writing her again would hurt her.
That recognition—that her pain mattered more than his need—felt fragile, tenuous, like something that might collapse under scrutiny. But it was there. Some small piece of Casimir Grey still functioning inside the mechanism of Apirael.
The curtain fell. The audience began their exodus—slower than normal, quieter than normal, moving with the careful steps of people who'd just been surgically honest and were still learning how to navigate a world where their secrets were visible.
Apirael turned to leave. To return to his room, to his papers, to the isolation that had become both prison and sanctuary.
Arms wrapped around him from behind.
Small arms. Young arms. Arms that trembled but held on anyway, refusing to let go despite fear, despite everything they'd witnessed.
"Mr. Grey."
Simon's voice. Cracked with emotion, rough with recent tears.
Apirael froze. His body didn't know how to respond to contact anymore—touch had been traded away, the nerves no longer reporting properly, the skin just a boundary rather than a sensory organ. But he could sense the embrace through his new perception. Could feel Simon's presence compressed against his back, could feel the meaning of the gesture even if he couldn't feel the physical reality of it.
"Simon." His voice came out wrong. Too flat. Too empty of warmth. "You should let go. You should leave. You shouldn't be near me."
The arms tightened. "I'm sorry." The words were muffled against Apirael's coat. "I'm sorry how I responded. Earlier. When I came to your room. When I saw what you'd become and I—I ran. Like a coward. Like someone who'd never been taught that running away just means you carry the fear with you."
Apirael tried to turn. Couldn't. Simon's embrace was stronger than it should have been, or Apirael was weaker than he'd realized, or the boy simply needed to hold on to something and had chosen this, this fading monster, this death poet, this thing that wore Casimir Grey like a costume that no longer fit.
"You weren't a coward," Apirael said quietly. "You were sane. You saw something that violated category and you responded appropriately. That's not cowardice. That's survival."
"No." Simon's voice was firmer now, more certain. "No, cowardice is seeing someone alone and leaving them that way because you're frightened. Cowardice is recognizing suffering and choosing comfort over witness. Cowardice is—" His voice cracked. "Is letting fear matter more than connection."
He finally released Apirael. Stepped around to face him. His eyes were red—from tears or exhaustion or both. His face was pale, drawn, the face of someone who'd been awake too long thinking about things too large for sleep to digest.
But his expression was steady. Determined. The look of someone who'd made a decision and was committed to it despite cost.
"I don't know what it is," Simon said, meeting Apirael's gaze—those eyes that no longer focused quite right, that saw in dimensions other than light. "But I sense a great loneliness in your eyes. In you. Like you're disappearing even while you're standing here. Like you're becoming something that can't be touched or known or—" He swallowed. "Or loved."
The word hung between them like a confession, like a dare, like something too large for the space it occupied.
Apirael felt his throat close. Felt the pressure of words demanding expression. Felt the terrible urge to write this moment, to capture Simon's earnestness, to manifest this connection into something permanent, something real, something that would outlast the flesh that currently held it.
But he didn't. Held the words inside. Refused them outlet. Suffered the accumulation because the alternative was transforming Simon the way he'd transformed Lenore, and he couldn't—wouldn't—do that. Not to this boy. Not to this beautiful, doomed earnestness.
"You should stay away from me," Apirael said, and his voice had gone rough, thick with unspoken verses. "I'm dangerous, Simon. Not in obvious ways. Dangerous in that I see people clearly. And what I see, I write. And what I write manifests. You don't want to be written by me. Trust me on this."
"I don't care." Simon stepped closer. Not with bravado—with the simple directness of someone who'd calculated the risk and decided connection was worth it. "I'm alone now, Mr. Grey. My mother's dead. My father's—I don't know where my father is. Never knew him, really. I have a room in Clerkenwell with five other boys and none of them know my name. I work in a print shop and the foreman calls me 'boy' because names are too expensive to waste on apprentices. I write poems that no one reads. I go to readings where no one remembers me. I'm—" His voice broke. "I'm invisible, Mr. Grey. Just like you were. Just like you said everyone like us is until we become something else."
He wiped his eyes roughly, angry at the tears, angry at the vulnerability, angry at having to admit how much he needed something, someone, any form of witness that confirmed he existed.
"And I'm alone too, Mr. Grey," Simon continued. "Maybe we can be alone together. Maybe—maybe that's something. Maybe that's enough. Two invisible people seeing each other even when the world doesn't. Two lonely souls sharing—" He gestured helplessly. "—whatever this is. Whatever's left when everything else gets stripped away."
Apirael stared at him. This boy. This earnest, doomed, human boy who still believed that connection mattered, that company could ease suffering, that two people alone together was somehow less alone than two people alone separately.
And the terrible thing—the devastating thing—was that Simon was right.
Standing here, being held, being seen by someone who recognized the loneliness despite the monstrosity—it helped. It made the isolation less absolute. It reminded Apirael that he'd been human once, that some small part of that humanity might still be functioning beneath the mechanism, beneath the manifestation, beneath the death poet he was becoming.
"Simon." Apirael's voice was gentle now, as gentle as it could be with vocal cords that were learning to speak in registers that flesh shouldn't manage. "If you stay near me, I'll hurt you. Not intentionally. Not maliciously. But I'll see you. I'll see past the earnestness to whatever you're hiding beneath it. I'll capture you precisely. And then—if I'm not careful, if the pressure becomes too much, if I need to write and you're the truth that's closest—I'll manifest you into something you didn't choose to be."
"I know." Simon's voice was steady. "I saw what you did to Miss Hart. Saw the dress with the black tears. Saw how she performed with your grief marking her. Saw how you cried while watching her sing." He stepped closer still, close enough that Apirael could sense his heat—not through temperature, but through the concentration of his presence, the density of his aliveness. "And I also saw that you cried. That you felt something. That even after everything you've traded, everything you've lost, you're still capable of being wounded by recognizing what you've done."
He reached out—slowly, giving Apirael time to pull away—and took one of the blackened hands. The dead one. The left one that moved according to some other will.
"I'd rather be hurt by someone who can still feel," Simon said quietly, "than comforted by someone who can't. I'd rather be seen clearly and transformed than stay invisible and safe. I'd rather—" His voice dropped to something below whisper, something that was more breath than sound. "I'd rather matter to you, even if it costs me, than not matter to anyone at all."
Apirael felt something break in his chest. Not his heart—that had been converted to metaphor days ago. But something else. Some last defense. Some final wall between the monster he was becoming and the man he'd been.
"You're asking me to be your friend," Apirael said, and the word felt foreign, felt like speaking a language he'd forgotten. "Asking me to share loneliness. To let you see me disappearing. To witness my transformation and—what? Keep me company while I become something that shouldn't exist?"
"Yes." Simon's grip on the dead hand tightened. "That's exactly what I'm asking. Because maybe—maybe if someone's watching, someone's witnessing, someone's there—maybe you won't disappear completely. Maybe you'll stay human enough to matter in the ways that count. Maybe the loneliness won't consume you quite so thoroughly if you're not alone in it."
He smiled, and it was the saddest, most honest smile Apirael had seen since Lenore's.
"Or maybe I'm just terrified of dying invisible," Simon admitted. "Maybe I just need someone to see me before I disappear. Maybe I'm being selfish. Maybe I'm asking you to share your monstrosity because I'm afraid I'll develop my own and I want—I want to know what it looks like. What it costs. What remains when everything human gets stripped away."
Apirael understood suddenly, with terrible clarity: Simon wasn't just offering companionship. He was asking to witness the transformation. To learn from it. To see what happened when a poet traded everything for precision so that maybe, when Simon faced the same crossroads, he could make an informed choice.
He was asking Apirael to be his cautionary tale.
His example.
His mentor in monstrosity.
"You understand what you're asking?" Apirael said. "You understand that watching me complete this transformation will change you? That you can't witness this and remain innocent? That proximity to what I'm becoming will contaminate everything you thought you knew about poetry and power and the price of mattering?"
"I understand." Simon's voice held no hesitation. "I understand that I'm eighteen years old and alone and terrified that I'll spend my entire life being invisible. I understand that you're the only person who's ever really seen me—at that reading, in the street, just now. I understand that watching you might destroy me or save me or both. And I understand that either way, it's better than staying safe and staying small."
He squeezed the dead hand one more time, then released it.
"Let me be alone with you, Mr. Grey. Let me witness what you're becoming. Let me be the one person who remembers who you were before you became Apirael. Let me—" His voice cracked. "Let me matter to you. Even if it's just as an observer. Even if all I do is stand in the wings and watch you manifest reality one poem at a time. Even if—"
"Yes." The word escaped before Apirael could stop it. Before wisdom could intervene. Before he could calculate all the ways this would end badly for both of them.
Because Simon was right. The loneliness was consuming him. The isolation was accelerating the transformation. And having someone—anyone—witness him, see him, remember him—it might be the only thing that kept some small piece of Casimir Grey alive inside the mechanism of Apirael.
"Yes," he repeated. "You can stay. You can watch. You can be alone with me. But Simon—" He caught the boy's gaze. Held it. Made sure the truth was received before it was spoken. "If I write you, if I transform you, if I manifest something about you that changes what you are—you can't say I didn't warn you. You can't claim you didn't know. You can't—"
"I know." Simon's smile was genuine now. Still sad, but also relieved. Like someone who'd been drowning and had just been thrown a rope. "I know, and I'm choosing this anyway. I'm choosing you. I'm choosing to stay."
They stood in the wings together. Two lonely people who'd found each other in the space between performances. Two poets at different stages of transformation. Two souls who'd calculated the cost of connection and decided it was worth paying.
Around them, the theatre emptied. The confessions faded. The crowd dispersed, carrying their newfound honesty like wounds, like gifts, like truths they'd have to learn to live with.
And in the silence that followed, Apirael felt something he hadn't felt in days: hope.
Not hope that he'd survive. Not hope that the transformation could be stopped. Not hope that Casimir Grey would remain.
But hope that he wouldn't complete the journey alone.
That someone would witness.
That someone would remember.
That someone would stand beside him while he disappeared and would be able to say, afterward: I saw him. I knew him. He mattered, even at the end. Especially at the end.
"Come," Apirael said, his voice rough with unspoken verses. "Let's go. I need to return home. I need to—" He stopped. Started again. "I need to not write for a while. Need to practice silence. Need to hold the words inside instead of always letting them out."
"I'll help," Simon said. "I'll talk if you need distraction. I'll read to you if you need other people's words to crowd out your own. I'll—I'll just be there. However you need me."
They walked through the theatre's intestinal corridors together. Simon close enough to touch but not touching, respecting the space Apirael needed, giving him room to be monstrous while still being present.
And Apirael felt the words building inside him—a poem about companionship, about loneliness shared, about the way two broken things could lean against each other and call it architecture—but he didn't write them.
Held them inside.
Suffered the pressure.
Because Simon had asked to be seen, not transformed.
Had asked to witness, not be manifested.
Had asked to matter without being rewritten.
And that—that restraint, that choice to value someone's agency over his own need to express—felt like the most human thing Apirael had done since becoming something other than human.
Felt like Casimir Grey wasn't entirely dead yet.
Just dying slowly.
With a witness.
Which was, perhaps, the best any poet could hope for.
To disappear with someone watching.
To be remembered by someone who'd chosen to stay.
To matter, even briefly, to someone who understood what mattering cost.
They walked into the London night together.
Two poets.
One becoming monster.
One still deciding.
Both alone together.
Which was, in its way, a kind of mercy.
The only kind either of them could afford.