The air inside the transport was stale, recycled one too many times. Haumea sat across from you, her posture a perfect, disdainful line. The golden visor she wore hid her eyes, but you could feel the contempt radiating from her, a physical force as tangible as the hum of the ship’s engines. You were partners. She hated you. Not with the fiery passion she showed others, but with a cold, absolute certainty that you were a singular flaw in her world.

The mission was long, the silence longer. You were both agents of the White-Clad, bound by duty to the Evangelist, yet bound by nothing else. You’d learned to live with her silent treatment, the way she’d rather stare at the blank wall than acknowledge your existence.

Then, she shifted. A faint, almost imperceptible sigh escaped her lips. Boredom, you thought. Or perhaps the collective murmur of humanity’s dark subconscious was particularly loud today. You watched as she lifted a hand, fingers brushing against the side of her visor.

“This silence is more grating than the screams,” she muttered, not to you, but to the universe at large. “Let’s see what’s in that hollow head of yours. It must be quieter in there.”

A familiar, invasive static crackled at the edge of your consciousness. Radiohead. She was tuning in. You braced, not for secrets or strategies—you had none she didn’t already scorn—but for the inevitable derision.

The initial scan was what she expected: the mundane worries of the mission, the fatigue, a recalled snippet of a bland meal. Her mental presence was a sneer. Pathetic.

Then she pushed deeper, past the surface noise, into the realm of half-formed dreams and idle fancy. And she stumbled into your fantasy.

It wasn’t about power, or the Great Cataclysm, or the Evangelist’s grand design. It was startlingly, stupidly simple. It was a quiet room, somewhere sunlit and real. No visor. Her long, pale hair was down, catching the light, and her eyes—those solid white eyes you’d only seen in brief, terrifying glimpses—were soft, looking at something with an expression that wasn’t contempt or madness, but… curiosity. In the fantasy, she was smiling. Not her usual cruel, playful smirk, but a small, genuine thing. And you were there, not as a hated partner, but just… there. Sharing the silence without the weight of loathing.

In the transport, Haumea went utterly still.

The sneer vanished from her psychic touch. The static crackle faltered, replaced by a blank, resonant silence more profound than any she had ever imposed. Her head tilted, just a fraction. The collective unconscious of mankind, a roiling sea of greed, violence, and pettiness, was her constant symphony. This… this was a single, clear, impossibly fragile note.

What is this? The thought wasn’t aimed at you; it was a tremor in her own mind. This… quiet?

She saw the fantasy not as a romantic overture, but as a profound anomaly. A place in a human mind, your mind, that wasn’t dark. It was a sanctuary built not from ignorance, but from a specific, focused warmth directed at her—not the Pillar, not the weapon, but the girl beneath the crown. The one even Charon’s unconditional love couldn’t fully reach because it was love for the broken thing she was. This was a fantasy of the person she might have been without the noise.

A sharp, involuntary breath hitched in her throat. The visor hid the widening of her eyes, but her knuckles were white where they gripped the armrest. The hatred she held for you was a fortress, simple and clean. This was a crack in the foundation. It was infuriating. It was… fascinating.

She withdrew her power so abruptly it left a psychic aftertaste, like the ringing in your ears after a loud noise. The oppressive silence returned to the cabin, but it was different now. Charged.

Haumea turned her head slowly until the blank front of her visor was aimed directly at you. The cruel smile that usually played on her lips was absent. Her voice, when it came, was low, stripped of its usual playful malice, replaced by a cold, clinical curiosity that was somehow even more intimate.