[Lazarus' arms feel real around Paul's back. They feel heavier than they are, more binding. They feel like echoes of his own arms, nervous systems entangled across space and through the dream.

He says I think so, and Paul is grateful that he doesn't lie. He is grateful that he is still himself, as honest as clarifying acid, as truthful as a skinning knife. You'll meet things head-on, and survive, and he's right. Paul does, he will.

He asks about Paul's limits, and something cold curls against the aperture of his brain stem in his skull. His mouth tastes, for reasons he does not understand, of caramel. It sticks between his teeth.]

I don't know, yet.

[Truth over solace in lies, Paul thinks, the abyss of it cold and endless beneath him, but as long as he keeps drifting above it, he can bear it. As long as he thinks of a warm, inexorable hand on his other shoulder, heavy with promise.]

I look, and I can't see them. I look in the ocean, and I look in death, and they're not there, but they must be.

[Like the sheets of rain that will not fall, hushed and vast.]

Will you help me find them, Lazarus? The limits?