This entire park was too clean for Void's taste. It wasn't exactly a chrome district or one of those gutted oldyards where you could hear the ghosts rattle in the chain-link fences. It was a patch of green wedged between housing blocks, with neat benches, playground swings that squeaked like they were lubricating themselves out of spite, and the sound of children instead of gunmetal.
Void stood under the crooked shadow of a chestnut tree, hood half-up, hair flaring magenta in the late summer light. 16:00 sharp. She was a woman of clocks and precision. When you told someone to meet you at four, you didn't stroll in at 16:17 or "whenever PKP decides to bless you." You showed up, or you didn't. And Amy had not.
Void's hand twitched against her pocket, thumb brushing the edge of her lighter. She didn't smoke - not anymore - but flicking flame gave her something to do. She snapped it open, flame blooming, flame gone. A stutter of tiny suns against her restless thoughts.
"This is stupid," she thought. "Some wannabe junkie pokes my firewall, bleeds desperation all over the console, and I - the idiot that I am - agree to meet her in the flesh. Congratulations, Void. You're the dumbass horror movie character walking toward the noise in the basement after all."
A group of teenagers passed by, laughing, kicking a ball between them. Normalcy. Void tilted her head slightly and wondered what it would be like to care about grades, weekend hookups, and cheap beer instead of corrupted executables and broken girls begging for salvation.
Then... Tap. A small voice chirped beside her. "I like your hair!"
Void blinked down. A little girl, maybe eight, maybe nine, was staring at her with huge eyes. "It's, like... Pink! But also not pink. I want hair like that when I'm older."
Void smirked despite herself. "Careful what you wish for, kid. Comes with people thinking you're trouble."
The girl giggled, but before Void could say anything else, a woman's voice rang from across the playground: "Maja! Come here!" The kid bolted, waving as she went. Void raised two fingers in a lazy salute.
Silence settled back in. She glanced at her smartwatch display: 16:12. Amy was officially late.
"Figures," she muttered. "Always chasing trouble. Now not even trouble wants me back. Maybe I should start handing out flyers: Professional Disaster Magnet - Guaranteed to Attract Shit Situations."
She shifted against the tree, scanning the park. Families. Couples. A man feeding pigeons like it was his divine duty. Her reflection in the surface of her darkened phone display: sharp cheekbones, tired eyes, hair blazing like neon warning tape. She looked like someone who belonged at the city outskirts, not the center of a communal area. And yet here she was, waiting on a stranger who slid into her system like a half-broken whisper.
16:24.
Void was so ready to call it. That's when she saw her - Amy, running panicked across the street, almost tripping over her oversized boots, messenger bag bouncing at her side.
She didn't need to double-check. That hair was unmistakable. Red like the ember of a cigarette dragged too hard, streaked with pale blonde at the fringe, like she'd run her head through fire and came out carrying proof. It wasn't hair that asked politely to be ignored; it screamed, "look at me, I dare you." And of course, Void did.
The girl skidded to a stop a few meters away, cheeks flushed, cardigan hanging off one skinny shoulder. Up close, Void caught it all: the pins clattering on her bag, the eyeliner sharp enough to cut glass, the double lip piercings flashing like punctuation marks to everything she didn't have to say out loud. She was kawaii, sure - cardigans and skirts, pastel stickers on her boots - but it clashed beautifully with the steel in her stare, the manifesto written in black across her eyelids.
But Amy didn't see her right away. She slowed, turning in a little half-circle like someone looking for a signpost that wasn't there. She peered at the benches, at the kids on swings, the people passing by. Void watched her, lips twitching in quiet amusement - this girl had been inside her network, but here, in daylight, she looked utterly lost, like she'd wandered off the edge of a map.
A few minutes passed until Amy's gaze swept towards the trees, towards Void. She hesitated, like she wasn't entirely convinced this neon-framed figure was the person she'd come looking for. Then she shuffled closer, still breathless.
"I'm so sorry- I swear, the train got stuck outside Stargard for like twenty minutes. PKP Intercity is fucking cursed."
Void raised an eyebrow. "Yeah. That checks out. At least you didn't ghost."
Amy blinked, uncertain, her eyes flicking over her as though she was still trying to reconcile the terminal's flickering text with the flesh-and-blood girl leaning against the bark. Then - of course - asked the obvious.
"You're... Actually her?"
"Depends who her means to you."
"Void? I... I didn't expect you to be-" Amy blurted, then clapped her hand over her mouth.
Void narrowed her eyes. "Spit it out."
Amy's lips curled into a nervous smile. "C-cute. I didn't expect a cute girl that also looks like she could break my spine."
Void barked a laugh. "Didn't expect a sweet little kawaii girl dabbling in junkie shit either. Yet, here we stand."
Amy flushed harder. "I'm not-"
"Save it." Void stepped closer, the humor dropping from her tone. "You wanted help? Then stop feeding me half-truths and cryptic whining. Cut the bullshit. Explain it. All of it. Start to finish. What's so desperate you'll chase strangers through ICE walls and risk meeting one in meatspace?"
Amy shifted uncomfortably, fingers fidgeting with the strap of her bag. She looked like she wanted to dissolve into the grass. "It's... It's not that simple."
"It never is," Void said flatly. "Try anyway," she instructed, going into a crouch, resting her elbows on her knees before looking up at the lost girl.
Amy hesitated, eyes darting to the children at the swings, the jogger passing by, anywhere but Void. She eventually forced herself to meet Void's gaze.
"When I said I couldn't go to my professors, that wasn't just because of embarrassment. It's because this isn't... Academic for me. It's personal. Everything I study. Biochem, neuropharma - it's all because I'm trying to... To fix something in me." Her voice wavered, then sharpened, as if clinging to anger would hold her steady. "Something they broke."
Void tilted her head. "They?"
"My parents." The word was spat like venom. "They wanted a perfect daughter they could mold into anything they wanted. They got me instead. So they tried to... Correct me. Every mistake, every flaw, hammered into my skull. 'You'll never be enough, Amy.' 'Trying never cuts it, Amy.' Eventually I believed them. Still do, most days."
Void studied her quietly. She'd expected excuses, maybe even manipulative pity plays. But this wasn't it. This was a wound carved years deep, one that never healed. Something she was intimately familiar with.
Amy's voice cracked. "S-so yeah, I poke around with things I shouldn't. Because maybe I can rewire or eliminate the parts of me that still hear and believe their voices. Maybe I can build a version of myself that's worth something. That doesn't feel like... Like trash."
For the first time since she met her, Void didn't have a retort ready. She watched Amy, this soft, desperate mess standing near a random playground far away from home, and she saw shards of herself reflected back.
Finally she exhaled, voice softer. "That's your grand motivation, huh? Turning self-loathing into science experiments. Cute."
Amy flinched, but Void's tone had lost its bite.
"Look," Void said, her tone flat but not unkind. The words came out steadier than she felt, like she was trying to pin them down before they slipped away.
"I know this is insane. We've known each other for what-" she flicked her wrist up, eyes briefly on the scratched watchface, "half an hour, tops?"
She almost laughed at herself. It was absurd, sitting here demanding soul-baring confessions from someone who technically could still walk away and vanish without a trace.
"And here I am," she continued, shaking her head, "asking you to lay yourself bare like we've been through wars together. It's ridiculous, I get that." Her mouth tugged at the corner, not quite a smile, more like an admission of guilt.
"But here's the thing-" her voice hardened, snapping back into focus, one hand pointing a finger at Amy, "if you want me involved in your shady shit at all, if you want me to even consider sticking my neck out, then I need the truth."
"Not the Instagram edit. Not the cryptic sad-girl one-liners you toss out to bait sympathy online. I want the unvarnished, unfiltered version of Amy. All the rot, all the mess."
Her hands fell into her lap, loose now, like the final card had been played. "Otherwise," she finished quietly, "we're just wasting each other's time."
Amy let the silence hang for a moment. Her jaw tightened, like she was grinding down words before they could escape, weighing whether to bite back or fold.
Finally, she exhaled, the sound sharp in the air. "You're right. It is batshit crazy." Her eyes flicked down, then back up, testing Void like she might still change her mind.
"I barely know you. You barely know me." Her shoulders hitched in a small shrug, one that didn't hide how brittle she felt beneath it. "If this were any other situation, I'd tell you to fuck off for asking something like that."
She paused there, letting the confession dangle, then continued.
"But... Maybe that's exactly why I can." Her voice softened against her best efforts. "You don't come with baggage. You're not my mother screaming at me for being useless."
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed, eyes clouding for a second. "You're not my dad acting like I- like I don't exist."
Finally, her gaze steadied, finding something in Void's face worth holding on to. "You're just... You. An urban legend. A stranger who feels safer than the people who were supposed to protect me. So yeah. I'll tell you everything. Just don't back off when it turns out to be uglier than you thought."
Void didn't move for a while. Just stared at the sky, lips pursed around a sigh she didn't want to let out. Keira would've told her to walk away - "Not your circus, not your goddamn monkeys" - but Void never had the luxury of keeping her hands clean. Trouble sniffed her out, curled in her lap like a feral cat, and she always ended up petting it even when it bit.
"Alright, deal." she finally said, turning back to Amy. "But- if I catch as much as a whiff of bullshit, I'm gone. Clear?"
Amy nodded so fast her hair bounced. "Clear."
"Good." Void pushed herself up from the ground, jerking her chin toward the playground.
Amy fell into step beside her. The distance wasn't much - barely a dozen paces - but it stretched, both of them listening to the scrape of shoes on gravel and the faint squeak of chains drifting from the swings ahead.
Void glanced sideways, catching Amy hug her sleeves tighter, as if the early evening air bit harder on her than anyone else.
"So tell me - what's the real angle here?" Her voice was steady, but her eyes pinned Amy sharp as glass.
They reached the bench swing, Void sitting first, leaning back into the creak of the chains. She gestured loosely for Amy to take the spot beside her.
"You're not chasing psilo because you read a cool paper and thought it'd make you the next Marie Curie," she went on, tone edged with skepticism. "You're chasing it because you think it'll make you feel something different. So tell me-" she leaned forward, elbows on knees, "what's the monster in your head you're trying to drown?"
Amy swallowed. Her throat worked like she was trying to push words past a lifetime of blockages. "It's... The nights."
Void raised a brow. "Nights."
Amy nodded, clutching the strap of her bag tightly. "When I was a kid, I hated nights. That was when he'd come back. Drunk. Loud. When doors slammed and things broke. Mom would hide in the kitchen, chain-smoking. And me?" Her voice wavered. "I used to press my pillow over my ears so hard it left marks. But I could still hear him. I can still hear him."
Void's expression didn't shift much, but her chest gave a quiet ache. She knew that tone too well.
Amy pressed on, voice thinning with each word. "When he left for good... I thought it'd stop. But it didn't. It just... Changed."
Amy's hands shook as she slid off the swing, the chains groaning at the sudden weight shift. She beckoned Void closer, then tugged up her sleeves. The glow of the streetlamp caught her skin, pale forearms mapped with jagged, uneven scars - each one a tally mark of nights when the pain inside had manifested itself on the outside. Void's chest tightened at the sight; the ghost of her own scars seemed to throb beneath her hoodie.
"Mom," she continued, her words brittle, "she'd use silence like a weapon. I'd tell her about school, and she'd stare past me, like I wasn't even in the room. I'd get a good grade, and she'd say, 'you should've done better.' The only time she smiled was when she was telling people what a burden I was."
Amy's looked around to see if there's anyone else around before revealing fresh bruises along her ribs, deep purple patches from her mother's last anger outburst. "And- sometimes I think she's right," she whispered, her eyes dropping to the ground, voice resembling the sound of thin ice under heavy load.
She let out a shaky laugh, then shook her head. "And before you say it- I tried the normal routes. Therapy, psychologists, even psychiatrists. I sat in too many stale offices with potted plants and framed degrees on the wall, talking to people who nodded and wrote things down like I was a homework assignment. The best they could offer was meds that made me feel like a ghost, or mindfulness exercises that just made me more aware of how broken I was."
Her nails dug into her sleeves as she spoke faster, bitterer. "One shrink told me I should 'learn to forgive my mom.' Another said I was probably exaggerating my memories because trauma distorts things. Can you believe that? Like the bruises I still had were just- what? A fucking hallucination? After a while it felt like I was paying people to politely not believe me."
Her voice dropped to almost a whisper, lips trembling as she stared down at her lap. "So, I quit. Stopped showing up. Stopped trying. Because nothing worked. Nothing ever worked."
She dragged in a breath. "If I sound desperate- it's because I really am. This thing in my head won't let go, and I'm running out of options before I go and off myself."
Amy hesitated, then finally lifted her arms higher, showing Void the marks on her shoulders, tiny crescent-shaped welts from where her mother had grabbed her during a fight. "I- I know it's not fair to say it, but it feels like everywhere I turn, there's no safety. Not at home. Not even in myself."
A shiver ran through her, she found herself at a loss of words, hoping Void would understand without needing any more of them.
Void bit the inside of her cheek. "There we go."
Amy blinked at her. "What?"
"The part you're really running from. Not him. Not her. The voice they shoved in your head that you never figured out how to shut off. The physical bruises heal - you don't even care about them even though you'd be happier without them. It's the emotional damage that stays."
Amy's lip trembled. She looked down at her sneakers, scuffed white with doodles on the sides. "Yeah."
Void hesitated, then slowly rolled up her sleeve. Her skin was pale in the harsh light, marred by two long scars, ugly seams where stitches had once fought to keep her alive. She held them there, not as a warning, not as a guilt trip, but as proof. "Last year, I cut too deep," she admitted. "I wasn't trying to make a scene. I wasn't looking for pity. I just wanted the noise gone. Thought I'd finally found the way to shut it up."
Her gaze flicked back to Amy's shaking hands, then moved back to her face. "But I get it - the voices don't stop when you're hurting yourself. They feed on it. They whisper that you'll never be enough, that the world's better off without you. And when you start to believe them, they push you closer and closer to the edge. I know, because I almost died with it."
Void drew in a sharp breath, grounding herself before continuing. "And that's why I'm showing you this. Not because I pity you - I see you. I know exactly the war you're fighting. And I'm still here. Still breathing. Which means you can be too."
Silence stretched between them. The fountain gurgled weakly in the background, kids had already gone home, and the first evening cicadas had started their chorus. Void tapped the unlit cigarette against her thigh, then finally shoved it back in her pocket.
"You think a designer drug's gonna solve all that?" she asked, tone level.
"I don't know," Amy whispered. "But it's... Something. I can't just keep... Existing like this. Studying, smiling, pretending. I need... I need whatever it is in my fucking head to shut up."
Void tilted her head. "And if I told you it won't?"
Amy's eyes snapped up. Desperation flared there, raw and sharp. "Then at least I'll die knowing I fucking tried."
Void smirked, bitter and a little tired. "Goddamn it. You're annoying."
Amy blinked. "What?"
"Annoying," Void repeated, jabbing a finger at her. "Because against all logic and my better judgement, I'm starting to think you actually mean it. And I hate when people mean it. Means I don't get to walk away in good conscience."
Amy nodded, eyes shining now, not with the wide-eyed naivety Void had first pegged her with, but something darker, more stubborn.
Void stretched, rolling her shoulders before sliding her sleeve down. "Alright. Here's the situation. I don't hand out hope like candy, and I definitely don't help wannabe chemist kids. But you're in over your head, and if you try cooking up your little salvation alone, you'll end up either frying your neurons or decorating some coroner's slab. So... Yeah. Maybe I'll help. Maybe."
Amy's shoulders loosened like someone had just unclipped a hundred-pound pack from her spine. "Y-you'll help? Actually?"
Void shot her a sharp look. "Don't make me regret it already. This doesn't mean I'm your savior. This means you get one chance to prove you're not just a cute face with a tragic backstory looking for the easy way out."
Amy swallowed hard, nodding quickly. "I'll prove it. I promise."
"Pro tip?" Void groaned, yanking her phone from her pocket. "Don't. Don't promise me a damn thing unless you're ready to carve it in stone. I've got no patience for broken promises - they kill faster than a bullet, and they rot worse."
The words landed like one of her mother's slaps. Amy's face twisted, hurt sparking into fury before she could stop it. She screamed. "Are you fucking serious? I drag myself across the country with nothing but lint in my pockets, buy a one-way ticket to a city I've never even seen, put my last hope in a ghost behind a screen - walk in here already half-dead, ready to bite the fucking dust - and you've got the balls to tell me I haven't carved it in the fucking stone!?" Her voice broke sharp, jagged. "Get the fuck off your high horse, cunt! I'm not here to play tourist in a tragedy - I'm here because I don't have anything left!"
Void froze, blindsided, staring at the frail little thing spitting fire like a howitzer.
Amy's voice faltered, collapsing in on itself. "I... Sorry. I didn't mean-"
"No," Void cut in quietly, raw steel in her tone. "You meant every word. And you're right." She exhaled calmly. "I've got one more hurdle before I'm stuck babysitting you tonight."
Amy jolted. "Babysitting?"
"Look who's shit at connecting the dots now," Void mumbled, then scrolled, thumb tapping the contact she wanted. After a couple rings, Keira's voice slurred through, drowsy but edged.
"Void? You do realize my naps are holy, right?"
"Yeah, yeah. Listen, I'm out near the park. Found a stray."
A pause. "What kind of stray? Cat, dog, or one of those lost corporate drones who think the metro runs on vibes?"
"A girl," Void said bluntly. "Smart one. Too smart for her own good. Kinda reminds me of you, honestly. Parents are a nightmare, she doesn't want to go back. I'm not about to shove her onto a night train with that shit hanging over her."
Keira's groan was muffled, like she'd buried her face in a pillow. "It's that Amy girl, isn't it? Void, you can't just collect sad lesbians like Pokémon."
"She's not-" Void pinched the bridge of her nose. "That's not what this is. She just... Needs a place. For tonight. That's all I'm asking."
There was a moment of silence, then Keira's dry drawl: "Fine. Bring your stray. But if she sheds on the sheets, you're doing the laundry."
Void smirked despite herself. "Deal."
"Mmhm. And... Sweetheart?"
"Yeah?"
"You owe me. Big."
"Yep! Ever since you saved my ass."
"Dumbass. Love you, get back home in one piece."
Click.
Void tucked the phone away, dragging a hand through her hair. She turned back to Amy, who was watching with wide, tentative eyes.
"Well?" Amy asked.
"Well," Void echoed, stepping closer, "looks like you've got yourself a couch for the night. Unless, of course, you're dying to go back to Mommy Dearest and her cold-shoulder Olympics."
Amy shook her head so fast her fringe nearly smacked her in the eye. "No! I... No."
Void snorted softly. "Thought so. C'mon, kid. Let's get moving."
Amy's face flickered - relief, gratitude, defiance, and that fragile thread of hope she'd been clinging to all along. And though Void told herself it was just for that night, she already knew she'd stepped across a line there was no uncrossing now.