Qia — Roleplayer Guild

Her would-be saviour—self-proclaimed therapist, reluctant escort, and whatever else he fancied himself to be—drifted a half-step ahead of her. He wasn’t guiding so much as hovering, caught in his own idiosyncratic orbit, close enough to be followed but never imposing. There was an absence of urgency in his stride, like someone wandering through an exhibit rather than escorting the temporarily sightless. Harper had the distinct impression that he would not lunge to catch her if she were to stumble. No, he would watch—head cocked, brow lifted in idle curiosity as if cataloging a rare phenomenon for some kind of obscure research paper.

The blind girl and the boy with opaque motives. That was the tale her mind wove in the absence of sight, filling the darkness with imagined subtext. Cynicism, perhaps, or just good sense? Harper hadn’t yet decided.

“You gonna hold up your end of the deal, or was that just an empty promise?” she asked, her voice unruffled.

A breath-half a scoff, half a chuckle. “Oh right. Describe everything. Forgot. Though…I don’t really remember making any promises, to be fair.”

It did not escape her notice that he hadn’t asked why she wanted him to describe things. No trite reassurances, no patronizing sympathy, no limp attempt at comfort. Just a beat of silence, stretching thin before he exhaled and spoke again.

“Alright sooo,” he began, “We’re in a long hallway.” 

Nothing more. A pause. The kind that suggested he believed this alone should suffice. 

Harper released a slow breath through her nose. “Incredible. Truly. Your observational prowess knows no bounds,” she deadpanned, doing her best to ignore the near-imperceptible sway as they moved. The temporary bridges between the pods gave the barest amount underfoot, flexing with their steps in a way that sent a small sense of disquiet curling through her ribs. It was an unsettling thing—to walk and feel the ground shift beneath her, pliant where it ought to be rigid. It felt… untrustworthy as if the floor might betray her at any moment, splintering apart to deliver her into the waiting maw of the sea below.

She hated it.

Her human GPS, perceptive as ever in the ways that mattered least, must have noticed the minuscule tell—the subtle twitch of her fingers, the fractional hesitation in her gait. His voice dipped, laced with an unmistakable smirk.

“Oh, not a fan of the floating walkways, are we?”

He said it lightly, like a joke, but there was something knowing in the way he let the words settle between them— a silent dare to acknowledge her discomfort aloud.

Harper refused to indulge him. Instead, she lifted her chin, squared her shoulders, and replied, cool as stone, “They’re fine.”

But the way her fingers curled at her sides betrayed her.

They passed into another section of the structure, and the shift in sound was noticeable even to her. A more open space. The walls weren’t quite so narrow here—sound travelled, stretching farther before it landed.

“Now we’re heading into the main pod. Bigger space, more movement. Feels like a shift, right?”

Harper nodded once.

“You’d probably see a lot of people ahead if you could—clustered, waiting. It’s… kind of like a bottleneck effect.” 

“Which means… we’re almost back, right?” Harper asked, suddenly coming to a stop. 

Her annoyingly observant guide slowed too, though not immediately. 

“Almost,” he confirmed. “Just past this crowd.”

Harper exhaled through her nose, a breath that was neither relief nor irritation, just a controlled relinquishing of tension. Like an archer letting the bowstring slacken, but never lowering the arrow. Attention and scrutiny had a gravity of their own. They slithered, coiled, and insinuated themselves into spaces where words hadn’t been spoken, where questions had not yet been asked. They were not unlike living things, forces that found their way into every corner, every silence.

They were a different kind of sight. A darker kind. A knowing that bypassed the eyes entirely.

“They’re watching, aren’t they?”

He let out a hum, neither confirming nor denying. But that, in itself, was an answer. 

Harper stepped back. Then again. Just enough to shift herself out of the invisible crosshairs. It wasn’t a retreat. Not really. Just…. a recalibration. 

And of course, the insufferable bastard noticed. Because of course, he did.

“Didn’t take you for the type to flinch.”

Harper’s jaw clenched. “I don’t.”

“Oh sure,” Annoyance Incarnate murmured. “You just strategically repositioned.”

Her arms folded across her chest, a sharp retort primed and ready, but she swallowed it down. She didn’t owe him an explanation. Didn’t owe him a damn thing.

“I just…I just don’t like the attention, okay?” The words came clipped, but the truth beneath them ran deeper. She never had. 

Her unwelcome escort tilted his head—probably, she couldn't see, but she could feel the weight of his regard shift. 

“Coulda fooled me with that dress you wore at the dance.”

Harper stiffened.

“You looked beautiful… if that even has to be said.”

Her heart skipped—once, betraying her—before she crushed the reaction under sheer will. Fucking hell. That wasn’t what she’d expected him to say  at all . 

“Yeah? Shame I didn’t get to enjoy it for long,” she managed, her voice level despite the residual static buzzing in her chest. 

Her therapist-clearly-against-his-will cleared his throat. “Not exactly an occasion for any of us to remember, that’s for sure. A lot of people didn’t make it out….” He let the silence stretch, a deliberate pause that left space for her to step into if she wanted to. When she didn’t, he continued, “I’m guessing your eyes being this way has something to do with that?” 

It wasn’t the cautious, sidestepping curiosity of someone afraid to offend. Wasn’t laced with empty sympathy or the honeyed reassurances people liked to spoon-feed the wounded. No, his voice carried something different. A blunt, unvarnished truth: he had already put the pieces together.

“It’s not that hard to figure out. You walked into that dance fine. No blindfold, no hand on anyone’s arm. Now you can’t even tell me what colour the damn walls are.”

Her jaw flexed.

“Most people didn’t ask,” The words came almost absentminded as if she were stating a simple fact. Because that’s what it was. 

Most people had either assumed, avoided, or—her personal favourite—tried to comfort her with empty reassurances about overcoming it. As if this was some passing affliction, a temporary inconvenience rather than a consequence she had earned. As if she hadn’t deserved it.

“Well, I’m not most people, and most people suck anyway.”

She should have scoffed. Should have rolled her useless eyes and told him to shut up, to stop pretending like he could read her, like he could take one look and map out the tangled wreckage inside her head.

But she didn’t. 

Because, if she was honest-

She wanted to talk about it.

Just a little. Just enough to release the pressure.

So, instead of telling him to back off, she said, “I saw too much.”

“Ironic,” he murmured. 

Harper huffed. “Tell me about it.”

She lifted her chin slightly, fingers curling at her sides as if the motion alone could make the words less real, less true. But they weren’t.

“I think—I don’t know. Something about that night, the way it all went down. My sight started...glitching before it even happened. Before the attack. And then, when it got bad, when Haven—”

She stopped. Swallowed. Shook her head.

“Doesn’t matter.”

But that was a lie, and she knew it. 

The truth clung to her, thick as smoke in her lungs, poisoning every breath. She could still hear it. Could still see it—despite the darkness, despite the blindness, despite everything. The splintering crack of bones crushed under weight. The wet, gurgling choke of a life ending too soon. The way her world hadn’t just broken that night—it had ruptured, split open at the seams, and left her stranded in the wreckage.

Calliope should have been saved, just like Haven had been. 

Haven should have never lost her wings. 

And Emily—Emily hadn't deserved to go that way. None of them had.

But she had seen it all.

And now, she saw nothing.

...

Silence. 

Not the kind that festered with discomfort, nor the brittle, stilted quiet of a conversation left dangling, but the sort that simply was—a silence that did not demand, did not pry, did not insist upon itself. It sat between them like a held breath, like a space carved into existence for the sake of being, waiting only to be acknowledged.

Harper exhaled, pressing her thumb into the palm of her opposite hand. She hated that she’d said as much as she had. Hated even more that some part of her had wanted to. Just like she had with Calliope and, to a degree, Banjo.  

And yet, her self-appointed guide—for once—did not rush to fill the space with some careless quip, some half-amused, half-infuriating remark meant to worm its way past her defences. He didn’t pick at the wound she had unknowingly bared. He simply stood there, waiting, as though he understood that this moment did not belong to him.

“I had a friend once,” he confessed after some time had passed. “The one I told you about before—the one you remind me of. Anabel.” 

He hesitated—not in uncertainty, but in consideration, as though the words had been waiting for their turn to be spoken, sitting too long on his tongue. “Different situation, but… she was struggling. Stuck in something she couldn’t shake. I helped her.” A beat. “Or, I like to think I did.”

Harper’s brow furrowed. A prickle of curiosity stirred in the back of her mind, though she wasn’t sure she wanted to examine it.

“And did she agree?”

A faint chuckle. “Depends on the day, I guess. It was hard for us to really talk about it back then before…before she left to come here.”

The way he said it, not so much what he said, made something coil in Harper’s stomach. There was meaning buried there, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to dig for it. Instead, she shifted, rolling the weight off her heels. “So, what? You offering to help me now?” she asked. Her voice was neutral, uninflected, as though the question meant nothing. As though his answer wouldn’t matter.

“Would you take it if I was?”

The question hit harder than it should have.

Harper hesitated.

She didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to entertain the possibility of trusting someone she barely knew—someone whose name she didn’t even know. And yet, there was something about the way he asked. No expectation, no demand. Just an offer left on the table, waiting.

And then, almost grudgingly, she admitted, “I don’t know.”

Another pause. Another moment of calculation she couldn’t see, but could sense.

Then, a step closer. A movement that was both confident and careful. 

“Then trust me, anyway,” he said as if it were the simplest thing in the world. As if trust was something easily given. Especially by her. 

Besides, by all logic, she should have honestly said no.

The second he reached for her—the second she felt the heat of his proximity—she should have stepped back, should have stiffened, should have done something.

But she didn't.

Instead, Harper stood, breath drawn tight in her chest, as his fingers brushed against the fabric of her blindfold.

A silent question. A boundary tested, but not yet crossed. 

And then, with aching slowness, he lifted it.

The absence of the cloth was immediate, an almost tangible shift in sensation. Cold air kissed the skin beneath her eyes, the lingering warmth of his touch trailing in its wake like an unspoken claim. She felt exposed, bared in a way she hadn't anticipated as if he'd stripped away more than fabric—stripped away the veil she had willingly tied around herself, the one that let her pretend for even a moment that she wasn’t this broken thing in need of fixing. 

Her breath caught as his hands didn’t move away.

He didn’t step back. Didn’t drop the blindfold or leave her to the open air of uncertainty. No—he was still there, hands hovering inches from her face before he let them shift, let them settle against her, palms feather-light as they cupped her eyes.

“Trust me,” he murmured again, the words slipping past his lips, close enough to stir the air against her skin, close enough to be felt rather than merely heard.

And somehow, against all reason—against the instinct that should have screamed at her to pull away—she didn’t.

She let him hold her like this.

She let him take something from her that she hadn't even realized she was still clinging to.

Control.

His thumbs brushed along the edges of her cheekbones, a ghost of a touch, like he was memorizing this moment and tracing over something he wanted to commit to memory. Not possessive. Not intrusive. Just... reverent.

And then, softer now, an offering—

“It's Alexander, by the way. My name.” he said.

Harper barely breathed.

Her fingers twitched at her sides, a moment of hesitation that wasn’t quite a reluctance or surrender.

“Harper,” she eventually whispered. Her own name felt foreign on her tongue, like something she hadn’t owned in a long time.

“Harper Baxter.”

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Location: The Foundation Institute -  Atlantic OceanHuman #5.085: In the Dark, I Name You
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Interaction(s): Alexander (NPC)Previously: What's in a Name

The return to the dining hall felt different.

Not because of the space itself—its vaulted ceiling stretching high above, its white floors gleaming under artificial light, or the soft percussion of silverware tapping against porcelain—but because she felt different. Something had shifted, subtle but undeniable, like the rearrangement of furniture in a familiar room. The layout remained the same, yet everything was slightly off. There was no neat way to articulate it, no precise way to pin the change down. And maybe that was for the best. Because right now, her only goal was to get through the next few minutes without inviting scrutiny.

Alexander walked beside her, though he hadn’t said much since their exchange outside. Then again, what more could he possibly say? There was an understanding between them now, however reluctant it was. She could feel it in the way he matched her pace without effort, never straying too far, never staying too close. He didn’t reach for her arm, didn’t treat her like something delicate. And that was… something.

Still, Harper kept the blindfold on.

The fabric was light against her skin, familiar in a way that felt like armour. She could have taken it off, but something held her back. Maybe it was habit. Maybe it was something else. Either way, she wasn’t ready to answer questions she didn’t have the answers for and, if she were being honest, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. 

All that mattered was that she could see again. And that was the strangest part of all.

They crossed the threshold into the dining hall, stepping into the living, breathing hum of conversation. It ebbed and swelled like a tide, words spilling over one another in a ceaseless current of casual chatter. Harper could feel the glances cast in their direction—some fleeting, others lingering just a fraction too long. She ignored them, keeping her posture fluid and and controlled. She blended in, unremarkable among the sea of black uniforms—just another body moving through the routine of her current existence.

But something was suddenly wrong. 

A prickle ran up the back of her neck—an instinct, elusive but insistent, like the feeling of being watched. It wasn’t paranoia. No, this was something else. Something that felt like the methodical persistence of fingers trailing over the surface of her mind. 

Then it struck.

Not like a blow. Not like a force she could push back against. It was subtler than that. More insidious.

A sharp, unnatural static lanced through her mind—something reaching, prodding, scraping at the edges of her thoughts. It didn’t slip in gently; it clawed, hungry and impatient, searching for something to grasp. But instead of pulling anything coherent, it skidded against nothingness, like fingernails dragging across a locked door.

The pressure intensified, burrowing deeper, needling through her subconscious.

But there was simply nothing to find.

Just a blank space where memories should have been. A hollow void where recollections should have surfaced like silt stirred from the depths of a riverbed.

Harper’s breath hitched, her pulse stuttering in her throat. For the briefest of moments—no more than a blink of thought—an image flickered at the fringes of her consciousness. It was fractured and disjointed, like a reflection scattered across the shards of a shattered mirror. A door, barely discernible in the recesses of her mind. Shut. Locked. And something standing before it—featureless, formless, watching.

The pressure wavered, probing once more, insistent.

Then—

“No.”

The single syllable vibrated with a force that cracked through her mind like a faultline splitting stone. It was neither loud nor pleading, but it carried within it a finality that hummed with devastation.

The moment it was spoken, the pressure buckled. The force that had slithered through Harper’s thoughts, seeking, pulling, was pushed back—not with rage or violence, but with a refusal that rippled outward like an event horizon swallowing light.

And just like that, the presence was gone.

Harper swayed. Not much, just a fraction of movement, but enough that her balance wavered before she caught herself, straightening, forcing her breath into a steady rhythm. In. Out. Move. Keep walking, keep breathing, keep existing like nothing had just tried to reach into her head and pry something loose.

Next to her, Alexander’s presence remained moored, but she could feel his attention shift, his awareness attuned in a way that suggested he had noticed. Of course, he had. 

“What was that?” she murmured under her breath, rubbing at her head. 

She didn’t really expect an answer. But Alexander, to his credit, didn’t pretend not to understand what she meant.

“Not sure,” he admitted, voice just as low. “But you felt it too, huh?”

Harper swallowed. “Yeah.”

He hummed, thoughtful. “You alright?”

A simple question. But one she couldn’t bring herself to answer because she herself wasn’t so sure. 

Still, before she could decide how to respond, the murmurs around them shifted. Harper followed the direction of the unease, risking a look under her blindfold. Her attention narrowed in on a group of Foundation officials clustered at the center of the room, their stances rigid with practiced authority. And in the middle of them—

Banjo. 

Montgomery stepped forward, his hands clasped behind his back, his expression unreadable save for the glint of something Harper would have missed before in his gaze, given her sightlessness. 

Coldness. Ruthlessness. 

But now, looking at him properly, she hesitated.

It wasn’t that he suddenly appeared less cruel—if anything, the scrutiny of her newly restored vision made his presence all the more unbearable. His posture, the carefully neutral mask he wore as he addressed the room—it was the same. The same as she’d imagined before.

And yet, seeing him now, really seeing him, Harper found herself more unsettled than she had anticipated.

She had studied him before coming here—not out of curiosity, but because it had been necessary. PRCU’s faculty spoke of him with reluctant acknowledgment, as though uttering his name too often might summon him into existence. They dissected his philosophies like an academic plague, something that could be discussed and debated but never entirely dismissed. Eccentric, some had called him, his rejection of Lehrer’s classification system veering into the realm of the theoretical. Obsessive, others had warned—not about power itself, but about its architecture, the invisible scaffolding that determined who deserved to hold it. A radical who had abandoned conventional Hyperhuman education in favour of a doctrine entirely of his own making—one that didn’t simply categorize ability, but dictated worth. That was the man standing before her. 

Harper was used to powerful men. She knew what leadership looked like, what arrogance looked like, what control—true, earned control—felt like when it filled a room. But Montgomery was different. He didn’t wear his authority the way other men did. It didn’t settle over him like something claimed through experience or sheer force of will. It clung to him like something manufactured. Not the result of strength, but of careful design.

She realized there was an art to it. His gaze swept the room, landing exactly where it needed to—long enough to impose but never long enough to invite challenge. His hands remained clasped behind his back, shoulders square, a picture of composed indifference. Even his voice, when he finally spoke, had just the exact right tone to leave an impression without revealing anything of substance.

This wasn’t just a man who wielded power. This was a man who had decided exactly how he wanted to be seen.

And that was what disturbed her the most.

“Poor guy…wonder what they’re gonna do with him,” Alexander muttered beside her. 

Harper barely registered the words at first, still caught up in her analysis of what Montgomery was, still unravelling the intricacies of a man who had built himself into an already powerful institution. But then the words settled, took shape, and anchored her back into the present.

Banjo. 

A teammate.

That was all he was, wasn’t he?

Her fingers curled slightly at her sides as she exhaled, forcing her attention back to the unfolding scene. The officials had closed in around him now, a wall of dark uniforms severing him from the rest of the room. He was no longer part of the dining hall, no longer part of them—just a speck swallowed whole by something larger. She couldn’t see his face anymore. Couldn’t hear whatever clipped words were being exchanged. Whatever was happening, it was no longer meant for them to witness.

It wasn’t her concern either way. 

They weren’t friends.

She told herself that. Reminded herself of that.

They had never been close. Hell, they had barely spoken outside of team matters. She could count on one hand the number of times he’d even used her first name—if he ever had. He always called her Baxter. Always with that same insufferable, flippant ease, like her name wasn’t worth the extra syllables. Like she was just another body in the room, just another moving part in the machine of their team to contend with. Probably, to him, one of the more annoying ones. 

And yet—

A furrow formed between her brows.

Something about that thought felt incomplete. Not wrong, exactly, but… hollow. Like a space where something else should have been. Like looking at a picture that should have been clear, only to find it slightly blurred with small details stripped away.

“…Yeah,” she murmured finally, though she wasn’t entirely sure what she was agreeing to.

Alexander made a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat. They kept moving, the momentum of their group pulling them forward.

But even with the blindfold back in place, even as their group was steadily ushered toward their rooms, Harper didn’t look away from Banjo.

She just didn’t know why.
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