Chapter Text
Krissy knew that the battle was over when the sky turned colorless and cold.
During the fighting, it had flashed with lightning, glowed red, erupted in blazes of angelic blue and roiled with black smoke. Now it was a flat grey, still and chilly. The air was no longer alive with battle sounds, unbearable stillness settled over the Detroit street instead.
Beside her, leaning against the side of the truck, Aiden gasped for each wet, rattling breath as Krissy tried to patch up the gash running from sternum to hipbone, smooth skin rent by a demonic claw.
“It’s okay, Aiden, I’ve got you.” She whispered, fingers slipping from fingers slick with blood, not meeting his eyes because she was terrified of the emptiness she might see there.
“Krissy...”
“Shut up. Don’t strain yourself. Stay with me.”
“Krissy” He said, with more urgency this time. “My eyes…” He laughed, a short, hacking thing. “My eyes are up here, asshole.”
She choked out a laugh, finally meeting Aidan’s eyes. He was grinning at her, and it was such an ordinary thing, such an Aidan thing, and Krissy hadn’t cried when a demon had thrown her against a brick wall, over and over before it was struck down in a blaze of white light and she hadn’t cried when she’d found Josephine’s broken body and dragged it, firefighter-style to the truck, but now it’s Aiden’s deep brown eyes, pain-filled and drifting in and out of focus, that were breaking her, and the tears left hot trails down her cheeks and splashed onto the lapels of Aiden’s brown jacket.
None of them had expected to ever have time for last words, and it almost seemed fair that neither of them had been witness to Josephine’s, and now Aiden barely had time for another cough and a quiet smile before his eyes clouded and Krissy was left alone.
Krissy would have given anything to stay where she was, to pay Aiden and Josephine the respect they deserved, but although the battle was over, she was not the only one left on the field. Through the smoke and rubble, other forms were stirring. So she slipped one arm under each of Aiden’s and laid him in the back of the car beside Josephine.
She blinked away the tears and turned the key in the ignition.
There was another girl on the battlefield. Another girl caked in the grime of battle, hunched on the ground. At her feet were two bodies, side by side like soldiers, and though there were tear tracks on her face, this girl looked more like a knight guarding a tomb than a mourner. This girl barely registered Krissy’s presence when she slowed the truck to a stop and approached her. This girl did not flinch when Krissy brushed holy water across her shell-shocked palms, but she helped Krissy lift the bodies and lay them— two boys in their early twenties, one wholly unscathed but for a burn wound like from an angel’s blade but uglier, the other covered in far too much blood for such a sweet face— in the now-crowded bed of the truck.
This girl did not speak until the ash-filled streets of Detroit were a memory in the rearview.
“Name’s Krissy.”
“I’m Claire.” The girl said, staring at her hands.
Are you okay? Krissy wanted to ask, but the answer was painfully obvious.
Neither spoke again until they were standing beside a four-man-wide fire. Krissy offered a flask from the glove compartment and Claire accepted it wordlessly.
“Their names were Aiden and Josephine.” She offers.
“Ben. Jesse.” She fell silent again. “My family.”
It took less time than it should have, Krissy thought. The lack of ceremony didn’t matter to her; she’d never expected an elaborate funeral for herself or anyone she knew. Still, it hadn’t been much more than an hour before the fire burnt itself out, embers glowing under the darkening sky.
“Do you want to keep going? We could stay here, if you like. Sleep in the truck.”
Claire glanced around the barren field with a faraway look like she was seeing something else entirely.
“No. I don’t want to stay here.”
So they drove.
Motels still existed, which struck Krissy as really fucking bizarre. Perhaps news of the end of the goddamn world hadn’t gotten everywhere, but it still seemed odd to find the Benson Motel of Benson, Michigan with a blue “vacancy” sign lit like a beacon when she and Claire were still grimy from the apocalypse.
Hello-my-name-is-Pete eyed the two of them quizzically as he handed them a set of room keys, but didn’t comment. Krissy realized why when she caught a glimpse of their reflections in the motel bathroom’s mirror— the blood and dirt was so much more obvious in the fluorescent glare.
“Do you have a change of clothes?”
Claire shook her head.
“Okay. Why don’t you take first shower, you can have something of mine when you get out.”
“Thanks.” Claire didn’t smile, but at least she met Krissy’s eyes.
The night wasn’t especially cold, but for whatever reason, Krissy couldn’t stop shivering once she had gotten into bed. Nights like these, before, she and Aiden and Josephine would pile into the same bed, limbs entangled, sharing warmth and closeness. Recently, that kind of night had gotten more and more frequent, until. Well. Until.
So Krissy curled into herself, hands tucked into her armpits, and tried to sleep.
Sleeping alone was worse than trying to sleep alone, it turned out. Krissy was hurled from dream to dream, blood dripping from a speechless Aiden’s mouth, Josephine sobbing and trying to pull an angel’s blade from her own chest, dirty and alone. She woke, weeping, the echo of a wordless shout ringing in the air. Still curled inward, Krissy gave herself over to the tears she had been holding in, shaking silently in the bed.
After only a minute or two, she felt a pressure on the other side of the bed, and a gentle hand on her shoulder. Muttering something that sounded comforting, if not particularly human, Claire slipped into bed beside Krissy.
“You were seeing them too.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah.”
Claire didn’t say anything after that. Krissy almost wanted to ask about the boys they’d burned that afternoon, but she didn’t feel like she’d get anything more out of Claire that night. Or that week. Or that lifetime.
Still, the heat from Claire’s body stole the chill from Krissy’s bones, and her weight on the bed relieved the feeling of being tangibly alone.