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* * *
She is sneezing again.
Darlene laughs and counts: "Seventeenth one today!"
She grunts. "It's not funny."
Darlene puts her arm around her shoulders. "If you say so, darling."
Now Kay smiles, until she sneezes again. "In the future, I bet they can heal any illness in a matter of minutes," she decides.
* * *
She is bent over a bowl of soup, slowly spooning up the hot dish. The warm liquid filling her belly is relaxing and almost makes her forget how awful she truly feels.
Darlene looks at her expectantly. "Feeling any better?"
She nods, then coughs. A hand gently rubs her back, easing her breath.
* * *
"Kay?" A voice drifts towards her, like from far away, and she struggles to hear it clearly. She wants to call for her, but her lips are too sluggish to form words, her brain is floating in honey, too viscous to let any thoughts pass. All that escapes is a groan. When she manages to open her eyes, they stare right into the blue ones of her love, round with concern. A hand presses to her forehead. It is freezing cold.
"What did you think you were doing?" Darlene's voice sounds more worried than actually angry. "You're burning up, come on, let's get you into bed and I'll find some cool sheets-"
"Was cold," she tries to explain, but the words that normally fly so easily out of her mind into her typewriter won't even properly make it to her mouth today. "Thought the oven was… nice and warm…"
A hand is shoved under her arms, and she is lifted up. The world starts spinning, very quickly. She feels her legs topple underneath her, giving in to her weight.
As the room stops turning and tumbling, it is her bedroom instead of the kitchen. Her legs have stopped trembling from standing on them, now they tremble because of the cold. She tries to pull the covers tight over her feet.
"Shh," someone sooths her. "I wrapped your legs in wet towels, you don't want your sheets to get soaked, right?"
Wet towels? When it is already this cold?
She has not voiced her question, but Darlene picks it up anyways. "You have a fever, my dear. It's not cold here, especially not under that warm blanket. Your body is fooling you."
A groan escapes her. It sounds raspy and so unlike her voice that it takes her a moment to realize she produced that sound herself. Everything is wrong. Her throat is burning, her body is freezing, her head is throbbing, her limbs are shaking. She clings onto the nearest hold she finds. A hand, its long, cold fingers gently folding around hers.
"Stay with me," she croaks.
The answer comes impromptu.
"Always."
* * *
Her heart thunders in her ribcage like a bird in custody, yearning for freedom, yearning for air. Every inhale is merely a short gulp, then her jaws close tight and her body convulses as it fights to keep what little air it catches inside. Her ears are filled with screams, screams of the dying and screams of those barely surviving. Smoke lingers in her vision, the putrid stench only further torturing her lungs. Her stomach churns from the smell of decay and rotten bodies, though it is too empty to be able to produce actual nausea. Images snap in front of her eyes for seconds before being replaced by others. Each image has its own sensory memories attached, and each is worse than the last.
Hiding. Fleeing. Running. Fighting. Praying. Killing. Burning. Dying.
Darkness laps at the edges, but she cannot give in, cannot risk falling prey to such weakness or she will not only endanger herself, but all those with her, all those she loves. How many are left? She does not know. She knows they all die. She knows that each of them will be slaughtered in a more brutal manner. That hostilities turn into bestialities. She is past the point of grieving. She is bursting with rage, a frozen fire, paralyzed by a world which ranks her so low that it does not even permit her this almost animalistic instinct. Degraded to less than human, treated like less than beast.
Her soul cries out for mercy, and yet the only mercy could be found in death, and dying would be giving in, would be permitting them to win.
The flame of hope has long been quenched, and she anchors all her being in the pain she feels, the only proof that she is still alive.
* * *
Something touches her shoulder, and she jerks up, flinging one arm at the attacker instantly. But whoever it is is faster, and soon her wrist is trapped in a firm grip. She fidgets, trying to tie herself loose, but the grip only tightens. So does her chest, and before long she is bent over, trying to figure out whether suffocation may be the more humane alternative.
She gets dragged away from where she was, where she must have fallen asleep or she would not have let down her guard like this. Was she responsible for watching out for the Gestapo? Had she just sounded the death knell for all of them? Would they all end up as ashes crushed like insects under the soles of those that thought them lower than beetles?
Her lips form a silent "Nein…," but no sound gets out.
* * *
Only slowly does she manage to open her eyes, and the blur takes time to clear. Curtains. Where do the curtains come from? Are they supposed to be here? She cannot recall those curtains from any of the houses they hid in. If there were any, they were dark, ragged, more rugs than curtains, meant to block out surveilling eyes, not to decorate. These curtains are light red and only semi-opaque. They won't block out anything, except for the brightness of the sunlight.
An arm is wrapped around her shoulders. She is curled up in an almost foetal position in Darlene's lap, under the window which is wide open. The cold sends shivers down her spine, but at least the air is fresh and clear and smells like winter and pine trees and street lights, not smoke and decay and fear. She inhales deeply, immediately regretting her action as a coughing fit wracks her and, once again, she is fighting for air.
"Take it slow," Darlene whispers. "Inhale - exhale. Not too fast. Inhale - exhale."
Listening to the rhythm, Kay finds her own, and for a while they just sit in silence, Darlene protectively embracing her.
* * *
After some time has passed, she lifts her head and tries to look into Darlene's eyes. She could just as well speak without looking at her, but the deep blue seems to ground her, an anchor in the swirls of memories that overwhelmed her earlier.
"What happened?" Her voice still refuses to work properly, and the words come out shallow and high-pitched.
"You nearly suffocated yourself, that's what happened!" Her love's eyes are wide open, and the panic still resonates. "You were gasping and wheezing and burying your face in a pillow, and when I tried to wake you, you fought back, and then you started screaming and I dragged you over here for some fresh air." She pauses, exasperated, then looks Kay directly in the eyes.
"What happened for you?"
"Memories," she chokes out. "Memories of the past." The resurfacing images make her tremble again, and Darlene pulls her close so she can bury her face in her shoulder.
"You don't have to talk about it," she murmurs. "Whatever you prefer." Then she draws her into a hug and starts rocking gently, as if comforting a child.
"Just stay with me."
* * *