Archive of Our Own

The detective from the 41st comes downstairs staring at Orfeo, Kim’s daemon, who is currently perched on Kim’s shoulder. Probably because Orfeo is a male hawk, and it is rare - though not impossible - for people to have daemons of the same sex as them. It’s a tell. Everything abnormal about me, Kim thinks, not for the first time, is visible from the surface. His eyes. His skin. His male daemon. “He doesn’t know,” Orfeo says to Kim, shifting on his shoulder to speak low in his ear. “He can’t tell. He’s just drunk.”

Of course he is. Kim’s been waiting for him for days, and why should Kim be surprised that this bigshot detective is wasting Kim’s time? He doesn’t address it. Instead, he says, “I’m Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi of the 57th Precinct.” He holds his hand out, but the man doesn’t take it. Instead, he weaves in place, staring at Orfeo. “This is Orfeo,” Kim finally says, allowing a hint of impatience to bleed into his voice. He knows they make a mean-looking pair - Orfeo perched on the thick leather patch Kim has sewn into the left shoulder of his jacket, glaring wickedly. Sharp curved beak, shining talons. With his added height, Orfeo is effectively staring directly into the detective’s eyes.

“Holy fuck,” gravels the detective finally. His voice is hoarse, his eyes bloodshot and red, and he smells like piss and body odor. And *lots* of alcohol. Kim has to hold his breath so he does not get drunk himself. “You have a bird on your shoulder. That’s fucking *disco.*”

Kim blinks in surprise. “Ah - yes. Orfeo often took this shape when I was a child, and…” he shrugs. Why is he telling the detective this? It’s not even remotely relevant to the case. The case which Kim has been trying to solve, alone, for the last three days.

“There’s something wrong,” Orfeo says. He’s agitated, shifting on Kim’s shoulder. He beats his wings once, fluttering the detective’s hair, bringing an unpleasant odor into the room.“Where’s his daemon? I don’t sense it anywhere.”

The detective gapes. “Your bird fucking *talks*? No. No.” He turns to an old woman in a wheelchair siting nearby. Her small ermine demon sits in her lap. “Ma’am, are you hearing this? Am I - I’m not-”

“Detective,” says Kim slowly, “where’s your daemon?”

The detective frowns, finally averting his gaze from Orfeo to Kim. His eyes, when fixed on Kim, are a direct and blazing green, made greener by the redness of the whites. Kim does not react at all, but it is a very close thing. “My what?”

And that’s how Kim discovers the detective from the 41st has lost his daemon.

The man from the 41st has lost *everything* - his badge, his *gun,* his daemon, his name, his entire memory. He’s even lost his left shoe. Orfeo rather tactlessly points this last one out, and when Kim says his name, severely, Orfeo says, “What? The man’s foot’s going to fall off if we go outside like that. It’s *freezing*.”

The detective manages to recover the missing shoe from the balcony outside his room, where, apparently, he had thrown it at some point in the last few days. Kim tries to probe more, gently - at what point did the man lose his daemon? What form does it take, so they can start looking for it? But with this line of questioning, the detective gets agitated, turning around to half-block himself from Kim’s view. He holds up his horrific tie in his hands and speaks to it very softly. “Bratan, you are not whole!” he trills out to himself, and Kim realizes with a shudder that the man is making the tie *speak*. He wonders, idly, if the detective is still drunk, or if he has gone entirely mad. Kim’s heard of men going mad upon losing their daemons; he’s even seen it happen. It is not pretty.

Orfeo butts his feathery head against Kim’s. Kim catches the detective watching him, head-cocked. “Can he read your emotions?” Harry says.

“I *am* his emotions,” says Orfeo irritably.

“You’re your own emotions,” Kim says. “We disagree on a few things.”

“Trevors is *not* the superior tip-top driver,” Orfeo says.

“You’re wrong.”

“You’re half-blind. You can’t see all the mistakes he makes!”

“You’re a *bird.* You’ve never driven a motor carriage.”

“Only because you won’t let me!”

“I think my daemon always pestered me to drive, too,” the detective says abruptly.

“Are you remembering something?” Kim asks.

“Yes. No. I don’t know. Is that a daemon thing, wanting to drive?”

“Is that a human thing, wanting to drive?” Orfeo mocks. Kim can feel him opening his beak to ask about the Coupris 40 crashed into the ice, and puts a hand on Orfeo’s talons in warning. Orfeo bends as if to nip at his fingers, but lets it go.

They don’t find the detective’s daemon anywhere the first day. The detective does not seem concerned about it, instead chugging directly from from a bottle of Commodore Red when Kim asks him about it again that afternoon. “Fuck him,” the detective says around the neck of the bottle, “he wants to abandon me, let him!” he yells hoarsely out into the street. Then he wheels to stare out at the far part of the island, squinting his eyes and sticking his head forward, as if looking for something.

“Did you hear something?”

“Don’t know,” he says.

“Well, your daemon is probably a she-”

“Fucking women, am I right?” the detective says.

“I don’t think that you are,” Kim says mildly.

“Always leaving.” He stops and squints at Orfeo. “S’your, your bird a woman? I don’t see a dick.”

Orfeo says, “I’ve seen you with your pants off, and I *still* haven’t seen a dick.”

“I’m sure it’s there,” Kim says hastily, to forestall the detective from - too late. The detective frowns, pulling his pants and underpants away from himself, looking down. Then he frowns again, reaching a hand in -

“It’s okay, Kim, it’s just cold out.”

“Of course,” Kim says. He’s biting back a giggle. I’m going to lose my mind, he thinks.“No,” he says, sighing. “My daemon is male.”

“Oh, disco. I bet he never betrays you.”

“I don’t think it’s possible for a daemon to betray its human.”

The detective gestures widely. All that is in his grasp is clear - the bottle, the empty wet street, the cobblestones shining with damp. It is four in the afternoon, dusk, and the streetlights are coming on. A light snow falling.

Kim sighs. “I’m sure your daemon is in Martinaise *somewhere.*”

That night Kim invites the detective to join him on the balcony for a cigarette. The conversation is going well - they exchange some light banter about the man’s heels, which are really quite impressive, at his age - and are discussing, briefly, the case, when the detective commits the unthinkable. He leans on the railing, turning sideways, and reaches out for Orfeo, almost brushing his wing with the backs of his fingers -

“What are you doing!?” Kim asks. Orfeo lets out a screech and raises up in the air and out of the detective’s grasp, beating his wings hard, stirring the air around them. Kim’s heart is pounding in his chest.

“I just wanted to, he looks so soft. I’m sorry, should I have asked his permission, first?” The detective looks honestly perplexed, his reddened face darkened in the dim light on the balcony. “Orfeo - may I please touch you?”

“Absolutely not,” Orfeo snaps. The wind from his wing-beats stirs the detective’s greasy hair. “What is *wrong* with you?” The man looks, briefly, like he might cry, and then confusion and anger war over his face.

“It is *extremely* taboo to touch another’s daemon,” Kim grits out.

“What about, like, during sex?”

“What, do you think you’re having sex with a daemon?” Orfeo says. “Kim, what is *with* this guy?”

“Orfeo,” Kim says mildly, and takes another drag of his cigarette. His heartbeat is settling down now. “Did you think, perhaps, we were having sex right now?”

“I-” the man’s face flushes an extremely ruddy shade of red. “Of course not. I remember what sex is, Kim.” He rubs the back of his neck.

Do you? Kim wonders, and says, “Detective, reaching out for another’s daemon could get you killed. Even daemon-to-daemon contact is rare, saved for moments of extreme physical duress…or passion.”

“And I don’t have a daemon. Kim, do you think I have a daemon at all? What if I don’t? I mean, I’m still not entirely convinced you’re all not just fucking with me…”

“You think I trained a bird to talk just to fuck with a man I hadn’t met yet?”

The detective grimaces. “Could be the DTs. I think that’s more, you know,” and gestures around his ear. “For me. Anyway.” He grips the railing with both hands, staring down into the courtyard of the Whirling as if he’s thinking about jumping. “What if I don’t have a daemon?”

“If you didn’t have a daemon, you would be dead.”

“Okay, then, what if I’m dead?” He turns a gaunt face to Kim. Heavy rough skin under his eyes, alcohol bloat around his cheeks and jaw. “I think I’m supposed to be dead. When I woke up, back there-” he points through the broken window. The light is on in his room and Kim can see the mess. It looks like an animal’s been at it. “ - I got the sense that I wasn’t meant to be waking up at all.”

“But you did. And I am glad you did.”

“You are?” He brightens. A grin that is almost charming creeps across his face. Kim can feel his ears heating up.

“Of course. It will make this case easier.”

“Oh.” His grin falls. He scuffs a snakeskin shoe on the balcony.

“Detective - I am sure your daemon is around here somewhere. Perhaps it is in hiding, or on the other side of the waterlock?” Although that is extremely unlikely, Kim thinks. “You would know if your daemon were dead. You couldn’t survive it.”

“Okay,” the man says, still looking down. “Maybe - if we solve this case, you can help me find it?”

“Dick Mullen and the Case of the Missing Daemon? Okay, sure. Why not?” Kim puts out his cigarette. “Try to get some sleep, okay, detective?”

“Okay,” he says.

Kim goes into his room and settles down to sleep, arranging his jacket over the headboard so Orfeo can perch while Kim sleeps. He wonders what kind of daemon the detective has - a dog, perhaps? Those are common for RCM officers. Or maybe it’s a bird, like Kim’s. Perhaps it is something really strange, he thinks to himself drowsily as he falls asleep to the shuffling of Orfeo’s feathers as he preens himself. Some sort of cryptid. Kim laughs to himself, then sobers up. It is not remotely funny. He can’t *imagine* what it is like to be separated from one’s daemon. He can hear the detective tossing and turning next door through the broken bathroom door, as if unable to sleep.

On the second day - in between investigating THE HANGED MAN, who is still absolutely in the tree, and attempting to scrounge up enough money for the detective’s stay that night in the hostel - Kim does his own *stereo investigation* about the man’s daemon. The detective, to Kim’s great relief, *had* arrived with a daemon, a great large gator that could, apparently, drink as much as he did. Kim refuses to believe this. Those he asked about it said that the daemon watched over everything with cold and slitted eyes. It had participated, at times actively, in the investigation. It had fought with the detective over his handgun, one time biting his arm to get him to drop the weapon while it was pointed at himself. Kim believes *this*, because when the detective, for some incomprehensible reason, changes clothes in the middle of the frigid street to throw a pétanque ball, Kim sees dark angry bite marks on his arm. A sizable creature, he thinks.

Lena - the woman with the ermine daemon - tells them about a monster that’s been sighted in the reeds across the island, a Calliou Gutter-Shark, maybe, or a True-Blood Hart. The detective is convinced it’s a cryptid - as is Lena - but Orfeo and Kim confer quietly while the detective is busy physically assaulting a mailbox, and agree that it is likely the man’s daemon. But that sort of range is *incredible.* Most humans and daemons can only maintain a few meters distance; this must be upwards of five kilometers. Kim and Orfeo are themselves exceptional, being able to bear a separation of over fifteen meters when Orfeo is in flight. Maybe it’s injured, Kim thinks, glancing at the detective, but surely he would be more heavily affected? He seems to have recovered well from whatever he’d woken up from yesterday; his cardio is better than Kim’s, which isn’t fair, although there is a moment where he struggles with his tie, nearly blacking out, after he finds his police ledger. Some kind of panic attack, Kim thinks. He’d calmed down after drinking a third of a bottle of Commodore Red, the kind of sweet syrupy juice suited only for drunkards and old women.

The detective is incredible - the way he works information out of people, the way he seems to know things he shouldn’t. The man is also a wreck. He’s got either no memory of social politeness - like he says - or simply chooses to ignore it, which Kim thinks is more likely. He asks Kim about *homosexuality,* calling it the *homosexual underground.* He tells the smoker on the balcony - the one Harry says *smells* good - and his daemon, a male lynx, that Kim’s daemon is male too. “I wish mine was male!” Harry says cheerfully.

“Khm," says Kim. His eyes meet those of the smoker on the balcony. They share a brief smirk, then look away.

That evening, Kim stands out on the balcony with Orfeo, smoking a cigarette. Orfeo goes for a flight, keeping below the thick cloud cover, hanging low in the sky. The streetlamp are hazy in the dark. Kim watches Orfeo soar overhead in loops, feeling his delight - the bright open joy, the lightness in the bird’s lungs, as if in his own. But he feels, too, as he always does, that bone-deep bitterness, the heaviness to his own limbs. It’s not uncommon for humans to be jealous of their demons in situations like this.

“It’s ridiculous,” Orfeo says shortly, landing on the railing near Kim. “I’m not jealous of your thumbs.”

“Not even when it comes to driving?”

Silence. Kim raises his cigarette to his mouth, inhales, lowers it. Exhales.

“You know, you should be nicer to him,” Orfeo says.

Kim doesn’t have to ask *who.* There is only one him, isn’t there? And that could be a problem. “I’m being nice. How am I not being nice?”


 "I don’t think he’s faking the amnesia thing.”

“No,” Kim admits. “I don’t think he is either. I don’t think he could fake being so *calm* about his daemon being missing. I don’t think he understands how bad it is. I think he only knows something’s missing.”

Orfeo turns to look into the detective’s room, and Kim turns with him. The detective is sitting on the lumpy mess that is his sofa bed, legs sprawled out. He’s looking out the window. Can he see Kim, looking in at him? Kim doesn’t know. Seeing the man without a daemon looks - well, it sets something fluttering in Kim’s chest. A sort of agitation about his lungs.

I hope we find it soon, Kim thinks, and not just to settle his own curiosity.

They find the detective’s daemon on the third day of the investigation, out past the waterlock.

First thing in the morning, Kim and Orfeo meet the detective outside the door of his hotel room. He’s wet his hair down and smoothed it back, at least, although he doesn’t smell much better. I need to get him to take a bath, Kim thinks, and soon. Orfeo’s started to make snide remarks, largely centered around the detective smelling like three-day old roadkill.

They make their way down through the Whirling, skirting Garte’s skua daemon, who flushes at them, screeching angrily. Garte doesn’t look up from the bar, just keeps wiping it down, shaking his head. There are two new guests at the Whirling, sitting at the tables in the lobby. Kim immediately takes to be members of the RCM. Likely from the 41st, he figures. The detective seems to have no recollection of them. One of the officers is a tall and broad man with a heron daemon. Both of them hunch over with identical scowls on their face, and - from what Kim can tell - identical blonde wigs. The man wears a pair of sunglasses, however, while the heron does not. “His daemon,” the heron says, looking at the detective and angling her head from side to side in agitation, “where’s his *daemon*-”

“Detective,” says Kim, deeply uneasy, “maybe we should get going, yes?”

The other officer - an even taller and broader woman - has an enormous horse daemon, a Clydesdale, who stamps his hoof at them. The detective looks over his shoulder at them as they go. “Kim, do you think they know me?”

“It seems likely,” Kim says. “Maybe they will be there when we get back.”

They discover the detective’s car, and his badge, and his name and rank - Harrier Du Bois is a Lieutenant Double-Yefreitor, *extremely* impressive - and are wading through the hip-high reeds out back of the old Dolorian church when they find the detective’s daemon.

Harry hears it first. A low movement in the reeds, something heavy and close to the ground. “Kim,” he hisses, grabbing Kim’s arm. “A cryptid!”

Orfeo takes flight immediately, scouring the ground below him. “No cryptid,” he cries out, looping back to them.

“Detective-” says Kim. “I think this might be-”

There’s quick scuttling movement through the reeds - faster than Kim would have expected - and an alligator erupts from the grasses, teeth bared, jaw snapping. She’s got snow on her back and head, and she blinks her eyes clear. She’s *massive,* a full two meters, and heavy, with short, powerful legs and a thick jaw.

“…not a cryptid?” says Harry, frowning.

A low rumble from the gator. “I could be, if I wanted to. So. You finally show your sorry mug.”

The detective squints at the gator, then turns to Kim. “Kim, it’s a talking alligator.”

“With a badge,” Kim points out, because the alligator has not lost *her* badge, which is hanging around her neck, although it is caught on the reeds. She takes another step or two towards them, then gets hung up on it. Orfeo flutters down, keeping a wary eye on her, and picks it loose.

“Thank you,” she says politely.

“I’m Orfeo,” he says.

“Diana,” she says, and half-closes her great cold eyes.

“Kim, is this another one of those daemon things?” Harry looks around. “That must mean there’s someone out here. Shit, Kim, do you think cryptids have daemons?”

“If they were real - which they are not - no, I don’t think crytpids would have daemons.”

The gator says, “Come on, Harry. Cut the bullshit. This little ‘I don’t know you’ act isn’t cute.”

“Kim, that gator knows my name.”

“Detective,” Kim sighs. “That gator is your daemon.”

As Kim watches, the alligator slaps her head against the water, snaps her jaw, then bellows. She moves quickly - quickly enough that something in Kim freezes in animal fear - and comes over to them. She rears up on her back legs, very briefly, to look Harry over with cold eyes.

“Touch him. Or her. One of you. I don’t care which,” Orfeo says snappishly, and Diana rolls her eyes up to Orfeo, then bumps her snout against Harry’s leg. She grunts. A series of expressions flash across his face: pain, sorrow, something that might be hope. He falls to his knees in the reeds, splashing water and mud everywhere.

The alligator noses at him. “You’re in a bad way, brother-man,” she says.

“I’m sure that’s got nothing do do with being abandoned by his daemon,” Orfeo says.

“You try living with him for forty-four years,” she says.

“Forty-four-” says Kim, and cuts himself off. The detective mumbles something like, “told you.”

“Looks like shit, doesn’t he,” the alligator says gleefully. “He’s impossible. He doesn’t want to be helped. He’s probably happier than he’s ever been.”

“I’m not,” the detective croaks. “I’m not happy.”

Kim can’t take much more of this. “Detective - please get up,” Kim says, and with a hand under his arm, helps him up. He sways next to Kim, staring down at the gator. Kim wants to put an arm over his shoulders, to keep him in place, but he doesn’t.

“You’ve only got yourself to blame,” she says.

Kim’s never met someone who didn’t get along with their demon before. Not *this* badly anyway. “Excuse me-” he says.

“Honorary-Lieutenant Yefreitor Diana.”

It’s really not relevant, but -

“Only one yefreitor, Honorary-Lieutenant?”

“I wasn’t there in the church. I should have been,” she says, and stares at Harry. “I could have prevented a lot of this.”

“Honorary-Lieutenant, please forgive the impropriety, but may I ask you a few questions?”

“Shoot.” Her badge winks in the sun.

“Have you retained your memory? The detective - Harry - didn’t remember his own name. Or that he was a detective. Or what daemons were.”

“He forgot me?” she says, and sounds - troubled. Or hurt.

“He claimed to.”

“I did, Kim! You don’t believe me?”

“It’s an extraordinary thing to forget, detective. It’d be like forgetting how to walk, or breathe. You remembered how to drink, didn’t you?”

“You see his priorities,” Diana says. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

“Lieutenant-Yefreitor Kim Kitsuragi.”

“A pleasure,” she says. “You’re the pinball guy, right?”

“Yes,” Kim says, a touch sourly. Orfeo twitches.

“I hate pinball,” she says. “Stupid fucking game.”

“It’s only because she can’t work the controls.” Harry frowns. “How do I know that?”

“So. He doesn’t remember me.” She shifts. “I remember a little more than him, I think. But it’s all foggy…like the Pale. I remember we were detectives. I remember we were unhappy. I remember she left…”

“She?” Kim says sharply.

“My ex wife,” Harry says.

“No one gets married in Revachol, Harry,” the gator croaks out. “I remember the cases. I remember they never ended. I remember the Video Revachol, and I remember long nights listening to disco, you listening to that same stupid song again and again. I remember getting drunk. I remember getting high - do you have any pyrholidon?” she asks quickly. Harry shakes his head. “Lieutenant-Yefreitor?” she asks Kim politely.

“Absolutely not,” Orfeo snaps.

“Pity,” she says, and continues. “I remember we walked the streets at night, me in the river and you in the street, and the city would talk to us. I remember it was the only thing that kept us alive some nights. I remember coming here. I remember getting drunk. I remember the water, so cold and dark. I remember dragging you out by your collar.”

The detective reaches back to touch his collar, which Kim has noticed - and has been physically restraining his itching fingers from offering to repair - is torn, as if by teethmarks.

“They say you’re my soul.”

Kim’s never heard a gator laugh before. “You don’t have a soul,” she says. “You pissed that thing down the drain ages ago. It’s why she left us. I don’t have a soul either, do I, Harry? That’s what you always used to say to me.” She bares her teeth at him. In someone - or something - else, it might have been a smile.

“Detectives,” Kim says. “This isn’t helping anyone.” He rubs his gloved hands on his exposed forearms. It really is *very* cold out here. How is the gator not freezing? She blinks at him, then turns to Harry. “Your partner’s cold,” she says.

“Oh - fuck - here, Kim,” the detective says, and starts to wrestle out of his green disco jacket.

“You can keep that, detective,” says Kim, because he will not put that thing on for *money.* He can smell the detective from a meter away. “Can we have this discussion somewhere else?”

So they have the discussion somewhere else. They go to the old boardwalk, where they discover Billie Mejean’s husband’s body, and outside the old FELD factory, and then in in Billie Mejean’s apartment, when Harry breaks the news, his rasping voice wavering slightly. Diana shifts uncomfortably, her bulk taking up the entire kitchen, and Orfeo flaps his wings once, twice, although Kim gives him a sharp look.

When they come back through the lobby of the Whirling, the RCM officers are still there. The officer’s heron now has a little black piece of plastic secured around her head as a sunshade, although when she moves her head too quickly to stare at them, it slides off. She straightens up, her long neck unkinking - the accompanying officer sits up too, straightens his shoulders - and then freezes.

“Diana?” the heron says. Diana freezes, one leg lifted, staring at them.

“Who-” she says, and then, “Sorry, do I know you?”

“Know me - I’m fucking *Adelaide,*” the heron says.

“Adelaide,” the man says sharply, and Harry begins a fruitless discussion with the officers while Kim hangs back with Orfeo and Diana.

“Anything?” Orfeo says to her.

“No,” she says, and she sounds disturbed. As disturbed as a gator can sound, anyway. The heron makes a noise of disgust and takes flight, going to perch on top of the bar, where she glares down at them. Garte says something that sounds a lot like “Fucking RCM” as they approach. “Not her again!” he says, pointing to Diana. “You can stay if you have the money, but your daemon sleeps outside!”

“I don’t need to stay in this shithole!” Harry says. Kim winces. “I’ve got a place of my own.”

“Good!”

“Good!”

“What did the gator do?” Orfeo asks Garte’s skua, who moodily preens a chest feather. “Destroyed the effigy of me hanging on the wall,” the skua says. “Like an animal.”

“In my defense,” says Diana, “I think I was drunk, and you look tasty.” She snaps her jaws at the skua, who takes off with a loud squawk, settling down near the RCM officers. We are making friends everywhere we go, Kim thinks, and sighs.

They get a little farther with their main suspects that afternoon, Diana seeming to prove valuable in discussions with the Hardie Boys - and their daemons - and Klaasje. Afterwards, they retire upstairs, where Kim first encourages, then commands, the detective to take a bath. He’s in there a long time, Diana sulking obstinately outside the door on Kim’s carpet; when he gets out, Diana gets in the tub while Harry sits on Kim’s bed, his hair wet and curling. The door is half-open, showing Diana’s tail draped over one edge of the tub and her snout over the other. She looks satisfied, her eyes mostly closed, her skin gleaming and wet.

“Kim this is wild,” Harry hisses to Kim. “I have a piece of my soul? Outside my body? And it’s an *alligator?*”

“Sure. Why not. It’s an alligator.”

“*Why* is it an alligator? Why couldn’t it be something, you know, cooler?”

“I heard that!” she says.

Kim says, “Well, what else would it be?”

Harry thinks, head tilted up, as if he’s listening to something. The lamp is on in the room because it’s darkening rapidly outside, and it illuminates his tired face, his large hands. There’s a web of white scars on the back of his right one. He’s punched something, Kim thinks. He wonders what, when? He wonders if the detective punches things often. He wonders if the idea bothers him. Behind him, Orfeo shuffles on the headboard. Itching for flight, Kim thinks. He can feel it under his skin, a low thrum like the Kineema engine around him when he’s soaring up over the 8/81.

“A cockatoo,” Harry says triumphantly. “I think it would be a cockatoo.”

“A cockatoo?” says Diana. "I’ve never *once* been a cockatoo.”

Harry turns to face the bathroom, his broad shoulders and back to Kim. “Maybe you should start.”

“Detective-” he says, and the detective turns back to him, his green eyes startling Harry. “Daemons can’t change once you’ve hit puberty. They sort of - solidify. Determine what kind of person you are.”

Harry looks at Orfeo for a long time, long enough that Orfeo flutters around the room, lands on the headboard again. “I get it. You like to fly.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Kim tries a smile.

“Oh,” says the detective, and some horrible understanding comes over his face. Kim takes his glasses off and begins to polish them. Mercifully - and out of character for him, Kim is already learning - Harry leaves it alone. Instead, he says, “Kim, what do you think having a gator says about me?”

A sloshing sound in the bath, as if someone is eavesdropping.

“Well, maybe that you’re determined. Focused on getting what you want. Adaptive.”

A sloshing sound in the bath. “Determined to be a fucking-”

“And she matches your shoes.”

“He matches me!” Diana calls out.

“Well," Kim says, “you have your daemon back. Do you feel better now, detective?”

“I don’t know," he says, miserably. “I feel - I don’t know what I feel. This is all very confusing.”

“Yes,” Kim says, “I suppose it could be, if you have lost your memory.”

Harry looks down at his hands, which are shaking. “I need a drink,” he says.

“That’s the first good idea you’ve had all day," Diana says from the bathroom. A sloshing sound, and then the sound of Diana getting out of the bath and getting water all over the floor. She appears in the doorway, dripping on the carpet. “Come on. Let’s go get to know each other.”

Orfeo shifts, uncomfortable. The two of them are both soaked and about to head out into a freezing night. They’ll catch their death of cold. But it’s not Kim’s responsibility, is it? The detective is a grown man - even older than Kim. Not by much, but still. Never mind that he seems hell-bent on killing himself. Kim’s known the man three days and his daemon twelve hours. They are not his to worry about. He nods instead and lets them go, heading out onto the balcony to smoke a cigarette. He watches as they trudge back through the dark night, the man and the gator, Harry’s head bent, the long slow wag of Diana tracking through the snow. Heading for the sea.

“Mother hen,” says Orfeo to him, and then takes off, heading for the sky, and leaving Kim alone on the balcony.

The investigation continues, progressing more rapidly now that the detective has his daemon. Kim doesn’t know what they talk about in the fishing shack at night - if anything - or if they just drink heavily and run around Martinaise. The long tracks in the snow Kim finds in the morning seem to indicate the latter.

They keep interviewing suspects, collecting more evidence. The detective is brilliant and infuriating in turn. For such a large gator, Diana ingratiates herself fairly quickly into the investigation. “You still didn’t get him down?” she says, looking at the hanged man, and that’s how Kim learns that alligators can climb trees, and also that their jaws are strong enough to bite through heavy cargo straps. “That’s not all I can bite through,” she says, displaying the same uncanny ability as the detective to - Kim would *almost* say, if he didn’t know better - read Kim’s mind. To prove it, she bites into the mailbox that had drawn Harry’s earlier ire, and then a lorry.

“Very impressive, Honorary-Lieutenant,” he says, and he swears she winks at him.

Cuno is in awe of her, giving the two of them some uncharacteristic respect after she traps the little monster’s daemon - which is by turns a hare, a pig, a mad dog, and a locust - in her jaws. “Pig’s daemon’s pretty strong!” Cuno says. Harry pats her head, and she sidles away from him, glowering.

Harry and Diana continue to get into arguments. They argue about nearly *everything* - suspects and the existence of cryptids and whether or not Harry has ever been loved in his entire life - and it’s at *least* every other day that she goes skulking off into the reeds, slipping into the frigid water to disappear for hours while they tromp around the coast.

“Isn’t she cold?” Kim says. “I thought alligators hibernated in the winter. Surely-”

Diana surfaces suddenly nearby. Apparently she’s been stalking them. “I’m fine, Pilot-Man,” Diana rasps at him, although when he radios into the station that afternoon, he lets both of them into the Kineema - the detective and the alligator both crammed into the backseat, Harry breathing hot and heavy down the back of his neck.

“Pilot-Man?” Diana says, popping her head up into the front seat and attempting to stretch one leg forward, “how do those levers-”

“Touch those levers, and I will make a pair of shoes out of you,” Kim says mildly.

“You’d let him do that to me?” she asks Harry.

“I like Kim more than I like you.”

“Well, I like Kim more than I like *you.*”

“What am I?” says Orfeo. “Chopped cod?”

“Hush,” Kim says. “I like you fine.”

“You’re stuck with me, anyway,” says Orfeo, and that’s true, isn’t it?

In the mornings Diana is on the porch of the fishing shack, or occasionally allowing Lillienne’s small children to stack pebbles of increasing size on her snout, before she deems the pile high enough and snaps them all into her mouth, to the children’s great delight. “She said I almost had a kid,” says Harry as they watch her. “A little girl.” Kim glances at the detective, but he’s staring at the gator, and so Kim looks away again, further up, into the sky.

Orfeo seems to like Diana, the two of them splitting off while Kim and Harry check the phasmid traps. “Where’s Diana?” Harry says one day straightening up, and Kim points to where Orfeo flies two meters above the ground. The reeds part below him as if an invisible force. The two daemons tracking each other. “See?” Harry says. “We’re meant to be partners. Even our weird soul-animals get along together.”

“That’s hardly a surprise,” Kim says, but he still feels his ears flush, and he clears his throat and looks away.

“Do you enjoy my company, Kim?”

“I find you a startlingly capable detective.” Given what you were when I first met you a week ago, he thinks.

“Not what I asked, Kim.”

“He enjoys your company,” says Orfeo, coming in rapidly and settling on Kim’s shoulder. “He doesn’t shut up about you.”

“Orfeo,” Kim snaps.

“What?” says Orfeo. “You know, you should really-”

“Let’s get going, detective,” Kim says quickly, and turns around so fast Orfeo slides sideways on his shoulder. Orfeo launches off ahead of them, screeching his displeasure.

I should really. Kim should reach out, should try harder, should let people in. Should make friends. But this isn’t friendship, he thinks, what he feels down in his lungs, something hot and roiling, and it is *not* something he is investigating right now. What he *is* investigating right now is the case.

“Pilot-Man,” says a voice a half-meter from his foot, and he nearly jumps. “Why the rush?”

“I think we should check back in with Klaasje, is all,” he says.

“He’s lying,” he hears Diana say to Harry.

“Diana, do you think Kim likes me?”

“Of course he does,” she says brusquely. “I don’t know why. Terrible taste in men, that man has.”

Kim closes his eyes briefly and speeds up.

Another piece of the puzzle that is Harrier Du Bois is unlocked when they enter the Dolorian Church. It’s early morning, the sun out for once. Kim does not believe in *curses*, but if he did, he would say this place is cursed to be as cold and miserable as possible. Not for the first time he looks enviously at Orfeo’s thick feathers puffed up around him. The detective falls to his knees hard before the broken stained glass-window of Dolores Dei, and the look of pain on his face is so hard to look at that Kim swallows and looks away. His gaze falls on Diana, who is hunkered down, belly pressed flat to the floor in submission, staring up at the stained glass as well. Orfeo flutters around and settles on Kim’s shoulder. “What’re they doing?” he asks Kim.

“Hush,” says Kim, their voices echoing slightly in the church. Harry reaches out blindly and puts a hand on Diana, who lets out a low grunt but doesn’t move away.

After this, something seems to change between the detective and Diana, some long-standing grudge easing slightly. That, or she’s easily won over by the entire bottle of Commodore Red Harry feeds her one evening. Kim comes across the two of them after-hours outside the Whirling in the alleyway, each of them with a bottle. Apparently, they both have a taste for it. Kim shrugs and sits down next to Harry - he’s warmer, anyway, his shoulder pressed to Kim’s - and takes his bottle. Harry takes Diana’s bottle.

“I can tear your arm off,” she says conversationally.

“Yeah, but it’ll feel like tearing your own arm off.”

Kim drinks, swallows a very real gag, and wiping his mouth and the edge of the bottle, reaches around Harry to hand the bottle to Diana.

“Pilot-Man, you are a true gentleman,” she says gravely. Kim thunks his head back. He can see Orfeo flying slow circles under the cloud cover.

“He’s always up there,” says Harry, conversationally.

“Yes. It can be quite an inconvenience sometimes.”

“I wonder what it’s like to fly.”

“It’s like - you can see anything. Go anywhere. I can feel what Orfeo does,” Kim says, when Harry looks at him. “A little bit, anyway. It feels like it’s what he’s meant to do.”

“And is that enough?” Their faces are extremely close together, Harry’s voice low.

Kim considers saying a few things - of course, humans aren’t meant to fly, not even a little - and settles on, “It is as close as I am ever going to get.”

Silence. Harry looks down at his mouth, very briefly, then again. Kim presses his lips together and the detective actually sways forward. Not looking away from Harry’s eyes - which are green and dark and very close - Kim says, half to Diana, “what’s it like to swim?”

“Quiet,” she says. “Peaceful. I’m alone, but I’m not lonely.”

“Terrifying,” Harry says. “Dark. Lonely. I swim in blackness every night.”

“Yes?” says Kim, and he’s leaning closer as if drawn - they’re murmuring nearly into each others’ mouths -

“I have these dreams, Kim,” he says, “or, well, they’re not dreams, they’re before the dreams, but I have these dreams, too-”

Kim feels the flutter in his lungs as Orfeo executes a turn, or perhaps as the detective leans closer. “Kim,” he says.

Kim cannot close his eyes. “Officer,” he says, and he has to watch the confusion in Harry’s face, the way his eyebrows furrow, his eyes widen, and he pulls away. “It’s late. You should get back.”

“I could come up for a cigarette-”

“I’m all out,” Kim says, and prays Harry gets the hint.

He does. Whatever else the detective is - clever, insane, completely inappropriate, *extremely* Kim’s type - he is not stupid. “Oh,” he says, “Yeah, uh, yeah, right, I’ll just, ah, see you in the morning, yeah?”

“I will be there,” Kim says, and rises to his feet. Harry follows, with a lot of grunting and groaning.

“Way to go, asshole,” Kim hears Diana say to Harry as they walk away. Kim calls Orfeo down brusquely, a quick, sharp whistle, and refuses to discuss it with him.

The investigation continues. They pass the Coupris 40 for a fifth time, a sixth, a seventh. Finally, Diana says, “Sorry about that.”

“You - what, that was *you?* Kim, I told you I didn’t do it!”


 “You let an alligator daemon drive?? Officer, yours may not have been the - er - legs that held the levers-” Diana looks down at her stubby little legs - “But you let her drive!"

“Don’t be too mad at him, Pilot-Man,” she says. "It was better than the alternate. We almost made the other side. We would’ve, too, but I got confused on the clutch and the gas."

They return to the church, where Harry is working on a *stereo* investigation with the four little drug dealers on the ice. He’s practicing what he says is a new dance routine to the anodic dance music pumping through the empty space, and Kim and Diana watch him. Orfeo flutters up to the silence in the top of the church, then down to Kim. “There’s something *wrong* up there,” he says. “It makes me nervous. It makes everything foggy. Like when you’re flying high up on a foggy day, trying to see down through it.”

“Like driving in thick fog,” Kim says.

“Like swimming in L’Esperance, out by Coal City, where the water is black and thick and tastes of blood. Do you know how many people drowned in the Jamrock Mine cave-in in ‘22? Sixty-two,” Diana grates out in her strange low rasp.

“How do you know that?” Kim asks.

“I can taste them all.”

He’s going to regret asking this, but - “How do they taste?”

“Sad. It makes him sad. Everything makes him sad,” she says. “I can feel it. He feels too much.”

Orfeo swoops by again. “I could tell you stories about this one.”

“I feel a perfectly appropriate amount,” Kim says.

They watch Harry execute a particularly high kick - if he splits his pants, Kim really *will* have to mend them for him, lest he risk a public indecency charge - then bend over, wheezing. “Do you also like disco?” Kim asks Diana.

“I prefer jazz,” she says, tip of her tail twitching. “The smoother the better. It’s what was playing in the Coupris 40 when we went over…”

That night, Diana goes up on stage with Harry and they sing The Smallest Church in St Saens together, Diana gravelly and low, Harry wavering and high. It’s the saddest thing Kim has ever heard and when they dedicate it to him - “and Orfeo,” Diana says, almost shyly - he thinks his lungs are going to burst out of his chest. He learns that Diana *also* claims to be a superstar, and that the two of them claim to be an act called, either, Superstar and the Gruesome Gator, or, conversely, Diana and the Pig, depending on which of them he’s speaking to.

The following day, they retire to the fishing shack to wait out a torrential rainstorm. Harry wheedles Kim into playing a game of Suzerainty. Kim beats him - badly - and Diana waits until the game is officially over to sweep her tail across the board and scatter the pieces. Harry is left crawling around on his hands and knees on the wooden floor after them. Orfeo flutters around the room, occasionally picking up a piece or two and dropping them into Harry’s outstretched palm, almost as if he can’t help himself. They start playing a game then, as Kim watches the rain wash the windows, Orfeo making harder and harder drops -

Harry lunges to catch one and runs into Kim. “Oof,” he says, his face in Kim’s lap. Kim can feel his hot breath.

“Nice one,” Diana says, and Orfeo settles to preen a wing briefly. Kim can feel his ears flush.

Diana is just as cautious about touch as Harry is, Kim notices. It’s almost as if they’re afraid of it. “She’s afraid she’s going to hurt someone,” says Orfeo to him. “And for good reason, too.”

“Orfeo,” says Kim.

“Look at her! She’s massive!”

“Has she hurt you?”

“Of course not.”

“Do you think she’s going to?”

A pause. “I don’t think she would on purpose.”

Ah. And there’s the crux of it, isn’t it? The lieutenant’s much the same, Kim thinks, but Kim does not enjoy opening himself up to being *hurt.*

Kim’s logging evidence one afternoon when he hears Harry saying to Orfeo, “I’m sorry for trying to touch you that one time. You’re just really beautiful.”

Orfeo preens, then says, “Maybe you should try to touch Kim instead.”

“I don’t think Kim wants me to touch him.”

“No? You don’t?”

“I ruin everything.”

“Khm. Maybe not.”

“Even my daemon doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

"She’s just headstrong. She’ll come around. You must have really scared her. What’d you do, anyway?”

“I think I tried to kill myself. A couple of times.”

Silence. “You realize you’d be killing her, too? It’s hard not to take that personally.” “Yeah,” Harry says.

“You should try apologizing,” Orfeo says, and Kim doesn’t know if Harry apologizes, but he *does* spend a few hours in the Whirling that evening tossing pieces of salami into the air for Diana to catch, and that seems close enough, at least in her opinion.

They’re out late one night, the four of them. Harry’s convinced they’re going to find something on the coast, that the shot came from further out. We’ve been over every inch of the coast, Kim thinks, but still Harry thinks they’re missing something. He wades through the reeds, shaggy head down, splashing water with his snakeskin shoes. Diana trudges alongside him, Orfeo soars above them, and Kim follows behind him. They make quite the troupe. Kim’s tired, only careful concentration keeping his feet from dragging, his toes frozen in his boots. Kim can hear Diana grumbling at Harry. They make one loop past the church, out where the lights don’t reach, where it’s just the detective’s - *Kim’s* - flashlight and the moon above, big and white. At least there are no clouds. They stop to check the phasmid traps, and Kim has to stop and tamp down an entirely inappropriate fantasy which involves cramming the detective into one such trap and leaving him there. He’s frantic, his movements jerky and unsettling. Speed, Kim thinks. He’d seen him take it from Klaasje’s room. Diana’s affected, too. They’re both agitated. So is Kim, so is Orfeo. Kim can feel it in his constant flight. You get this feeling when you’re closing in on the end of a case. You get used to it as an officer; you know it’s coming. The end of the road. You get itchy, unsettled -

“Officer,” Kim says finally, after midnight, “It’s late.”

“Okay,” he says, “Okay, Kim, sorry,” but his eyes are dark, pupils huge, and he takes a zig-zagging path back, checking an abandoned half-fallen down shack, muttering under his breath as he checks the walls, palms pressed to the collapsing block. Kim stands back, hands behind his back, and watches him. He holds back a sigh as the detective stops at the payphone on the edge of the boardwalk, plugs a centime in. Kim can hear the dial-tone - again - again - and then -

Diana whips her head around and moves to Harry quickly. The detective is speaking to someone on the line. Someone he knows, Kim thinks, someone who means something to him. He very carefully does *not* feel anything. It is good for the detective to know someone other than Kim. And yet -

The detective is clearly upset. Kim stays a courteous distance away, but he can still hear bits and pieces. The faint and faraway sound of a woman’s voice. Harry’s own broken rasp cracking. “Wait,” he says, “please don’t go.” Then the dial tone, cutting through the still silent night. Kim takes his glasses off and begins to polish them. He can hear Harry curse, hears him plug more money in, dial again. The woman does not pick up. He tries again, then again. When Kim puts his glasses back on - there’s really nothing left to clean - Harry is hanging on the phone booth, broad shoulders slumped. As Kim watches, Diana rears up on her back legs, leans against the phone booth and nudges Harry with her head. She says something Kim can’t hear. Harry hangs up, slowly, then slides to sit down, back to the phone booth, knees spread. Diana steps between them and he holds her, face buried in her scales.

Kim turns away. Orfeo swoops circles above, again and again, as far away from Kim as he can get, the tug just pulling at them both, a strange ache in Kim’s chest that he’s become used to. Orfeo is always straining to get away, to be free, and the feeling of that tug is the one Kim’s come to associate with his daemon. He and Orfeo have more range than almost anyone Kim knows - except Harry, of course, Kim thinks. He shoves his hands in his pockets, glances back to Harry and Diana, who are still wrapped up in each other. He and Orfeo have never really been close like that. A perch on Kim’s shoulder. A nip to his ear when he’s irritated. Maybe it’s nice, Kim thinks, to have some kind of comfort like that.

Diana turns and gives him a half-look. The detective will be here all night, Kim thinks. He looks up at Orfeo, still high above. He doesn’t know what to do with himself. He goes over to the detective, crouches down before him, puts a hand on his shoulder. “Harry,” he says, “we should get back. It’s cold.”

“Alright,” Harry says, and his face is shining, “okay,” and he lets Kim help him to his feet, his freezing large hand in Kim’s gloved one.

Kim walks him back to the shack and comes in when Harry asks, lingers late, well past one in the morning. Harry offers twice for him to stay, fidgets on the bed, and Kim declines, softly, twice. Finally, he leaves, his hands in his pockets, Orfeo flying high above him. Closer to the moon, Kim thinks, than to me.

And then it comes, the next twist in the case. They find Ruby. Ruby dies, her badger daemon dissolving like smoke. Orfeo cries out, shrieking, flying as high as he can in the low space. Diana turns her head away. Harry watches it all with his mouth open. “What is-” he says, “what’s happening?”

“She’s dead, officer,” says Kim, turning away. “And so her daemon dies, too.”

“Is it like this every time?”

“For the most part,” Kim says. He remembers the first man he saw die, the first daemon disappear. He’d been a child; the man had been run down in the street. He’s seen many over his years in the RCM; some he’d even caused. He remembers seeing Eyes die, his great barred owl taking the bullet meant for of Kim. Kim shakes his head, and tries not to think about it.

“Kim,” Harry says coming to a stop as they cross the waterlock, heading back towards the Whirling-in-Rags. “I’m not sure I’m ready for what comes ahead.”

Kim frowns. His heart is pounding in his chest, the feeling of wings. “Then you’d better get ready.” He can make out some sort of commotion outside the Whirling-in-Rags, but above all, there’s that familiar feeling in his body, running from his spine to his fingertips. There’s something coming. Something bad. Diana comes up alongside them, and Orfeo alights onto the ground next to her, unusual for him. A brush of Orfeo’s wing against Diana’s side, and Kim and Harry both shiver.

Kim turns and puts his hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Whatever happens,” he adds, “I’ll have your back.”

It does them little good. Diana kills one of the mercenary’s daemons - a ragged-looked dog - and Harry throws an improvised Revachol cocktail. Orfeo dive-bombs the mercenaries, confusing their aims, shrieking his rage. When Harry is shot - twice - Kim loses sight of anything else, dropping to his knees beside Harry and pressing on his wound, hot and red. Diana thrashes beside them, bellowing in pain. Everything’s a blur - the detective’s warning, the blow to Kim’s head, Orfeo falling out of the sky screaming to land on the ground. The dead. The dying.

“Get him,” Kim grits out to Titus, “take him upstairs-” and when Titus picks Harry’s limp and bleeding body up, Kim turns to Diana. It’s an enormous violation, the biggest taboo there is. There’s no other way. Kim grunts, “I’m sorry, Diana. I’m sorry, Harry.”

He picks her up. He gasps, stumbling back down to one knee. He can feel pain, dizzying and sick, the throbbing of blackness all around him, sucking him in, trying to pull him under. The blackness Harry swims in every night. He’s so thirsty. There is someone whispering just out of his hearing, at the back of his neck, the back of his spine. He thinks suddenly, unaccountably, of the courtyard on the way to his childhood school, the one with the thick dark green trees, the one he used to slip into on the days he would skip school, and he remembers thinking, at least I will always have the city, they will not take it from me; he’d thought it then and he thinks it now -

THEY WILL NOT TAKE YOU AWAY FROM ME he hears, and staggers, Diana’s tail dragging on the ground.

“La Revacholiere?” Diana says.

“Shh,” says Kim. “I’m sorry, Diana.” He follows Titus Hardie’s back, follows Harry’s drooping limbs. He goes up the stairs slowly, the entire world narrowing down to his sick headache, the nausea, the black spots in his vision, the blackness he can feel leeching from Diana’s skin, threatening to swallow him whole. One step. One step. One step. One step. He can feel the detective, can feel the great raw pain coming from him, feels as if he’s under the cold dark sea, all alone. Kim wants to speak to him but he can’t. He just keeps going. “The bed,” he says to Titus when they reach the room, and Titus puts Harry on the bed. Kim stands in the doorway holding Diana, swaying.

“Officer,” says Titus.

“I have to get the bullet out. Get Garte, please. I’ll need supplies.”

Diana is barely breathing. Maybe that’s normal. Kim doesn’t know. When Titus leaves, Kim takes her to the bathroom and puts her in the bathtub. He runs water over her, stripping his gloves off and testing the temperature with the back of his hand. She cracks an eye open when the water is covering her, the tub nearly three-quarters full.

“Don’t let him die,” she says.

Kim clutches the edge of the slick bathtub, staring down at her. "I’m trying,” he says.

She closes her eyes, and Kim is alone.

Orfeo waddles into the room and tugs on Kim’s jacket sleeve, which is drenched in blood. “Not alone,” Orfeo says.

Kim turns the water off, pushes himself to his feet. He goes out and leans over the detective, putting a hand on the detective’s shoulder, then on the side of his face. This time he feels nothing but the detective’s cool skin under his palm, the rush of tenderness in his own chest. This pain he feels is purely his own. “Detective,” he says, and then, “Harry, this is going to hurt, but I am going to do everything I can to help you, okay?”

No response, just the rise and fall of Harry’s blood-stained chest. Orfeo beats his wings, then settles on the bed, gripping the sheets in his talons, very, very close to the detective.

And then Kim takes a deep breath, and gets to work.