Augustine sits before him, slides slim fingers up to fan out beside one oil-black eye. John looks at him in breathless stillness. It's at the twist of the knife that he flinches hard, eyes shut and shoulders hitching, a whole-body buck of distress. But he doesn't pull away; he turns his cheek further into the gentle curve of Augustine's palm, makes a soft noise of misery like a man pressing a bruise.

"My slate's not clean," he agrees, but doggedly, like he can salvage this. "I'm not asking for forgiveness."

He can't. He knows that like he knows the shape of his own soul. This fucking town, this nonsense afterlife of blood and gods and children, all it seems to want is for him to want it. He won't take it. It feels every inch like a trap.

But he still—

"I couldn't go on like this," he says, low and cracked, against the tip of Augustine's thumb. "I couldn't build anything like this, if I'm only ever this. It's all ashes and more ashes. Let me dream something else."

He's always been good at running from his mistakes. It's what he's done since the start.