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The first time Madras woke that night it was to a low, growling rumble of thunder that promised more storm to com. there had been dark, angry grey clouds on the horizon when she had closed up shop earlier that evening, and though storms weren’t an uncommon occurrence in the hills and fields of this area, this one seemed destined for record material. When the wind rose to a bowling shriek, whipping ominously around the corners of the roof, Madras merely sighed, turned over in bed, and went back to sleep.
The second time she woke, it was to the hammering of fat raindrops of the roof. Oh, hm, first rainstorm of the year, she thought vaguely, and tried to switch off again. She only slept about once every three days lately, less often than that in her actual bed, and a little rain was not going to get in the way of one of her rare opportunities for rest. After all, she wasn’t asking for the memories worming their way into her half-dreaming thoughts on the edge of sleep. She didn’t want, not now, to remember the days when she had been younger and less tired, when she would run outside to meet the rain no matter the hour of night or day. Water soaking her hair and her clothes and running into her face, she’d gelt more alive than she’d ever been when she was actually alive, and—
And she really shouldn’t be thinking about that when she was supposed to be trying to sleep, damn it. She didn’t have time for that sort of thing, not anymore.
She turned over again and tried to make the world and her thoughts go away. It took her a minute or two of slow, distracted, half-conscious thought to figure out that the other loud and repetitive hammering noise coming from outside was not in fact rain, but someone knocking on her door. Loudly, urgently, and not stopping.
“Oh, good grief,” she muttered, throwing her figurative hands up and giving up on getting back to sleep. She climbed out of bed, threw on a sweater over her nightdress, and padded irritably down the dark stairs as the sound of the heavy knocker boomed through the house, growling “Coming, coming!” She crossed to the door and snapped through the keyhole, “Business hours are over! This is not an inn! Please leave!”
The knocking stopped, and a panicked voice from outside hissed, “Oh, thank goodness. Madras, it’s me. Come on, let me in. Please, Madras, let me in, please—“
Oh. Oh. Madras lifted the peephole cover and stared through it. The darkness outside was as solid and absolute as if someone had covered the other side of the peephole with black cloth. “RGB?” she hissed back. “Is that you?”
“Yes, yes, it’s me, come on, Madras, open the door, please!”
Madras allowed herself a moment of mourning for her lost sleep, and then shot the heavy bolts back and dragged the door open to let in the darkness and rain along with the television-headed idiot who had somehow managed to let himself get stuck outside in the worst storm in recent history. RGB, red and gold and always a little thinner and emptier than she remembered from the last time, practically collapsed inside past her. He had been huddled in the doorway, using his jacket as a shield from the rain, and the fabric was almost soaked through.
“I owe you, Madras,” he said with feeling, dropping his damp jacket in heel on the floor well away from his feet, where it squidged. “Never let it be said that I don’t owe you.”
Madras considered a jibe, because that was some pretty prime blackmail material right there. She opted for narrowing her eye at him instead, because okay, that had been pretty close. And that was odd right there, because RGB didn’t do stupid self-endangering things like almost getting caught in rainstorms. “I’ll say,” she murmured. “What were you doing out on a night like this anyw— RGB?”
His screen had wavered for a flicker of a moment, and then so did the rest of him, like the bits of him telling his body to stay upright had all gone for a second. “I… don’t…”
And as Madras watched, he simply crumpled, knees buckling, and hit the floor like a cancelled program. She stared down at his limp form inches from her feet and swore in a very unladylike fashion.
She prodded him with a toe. He felt, as always, simultaneously solid and oddly light. She felt that strange twinge in her chest for a second, the one she got a lot around RGB, and tried to tell herself it was too late at night for this. He was just… worn out, probably. Yes. If he was really in trouble, he wouldn’t just be lying there like any other unconscious being. He’d be—
Well. Anyway. He was fine. He’d be fine. As fine as any of them could ever be under the circumstances, anyway.
Madras dragged RGB over to the armchair and propped him up in it, then went off to get the wood and lit the fire on the principle that drying out wet electronics worked sometimes and fires were nice in general. Then she made herself a cup of tea in her one remaining good mug and tucked her knees up in her sweater by the fire to sip it and wait.
The fire crackled, throwing flickering light over the otherwise-dark room, and the rain hissed down outside. RGB, sprawled across the sleeping chair, steamed gently. Madras watched him through a half-lidded eye and tried not to feel cold and tired and too lonely in the way you could only ever be when not quite alone.
She hadn’t quite reached the bottom of her mug when RGB’s fingers twitched and he stirred, groaning. His screen flickered to life with a little full-body spasmodic jump that made Madras’ chest hurt more, and he looked around, took in his surroundings, and said, “Oh. Er. Ah.”
“You’re welcome,” she told him, gently pointed in a way that she didn’t really mean. She wouldn’t call in a debt for something like this, not these days and not with him. Friendship might mean something a little different here, but it still meant something. He owed her, sure, but she wasn’t really keeping track of the balance of favors anymore.
RGB focused on her in a more focused way than a television should be able to accomplish. He rubbed his screen absently with a tense hand and said, “Thank you.” His color strip shifted like a music visualizer at rest. Madras smiled tiredly.
“I wouldn’t shut you out,” she said.
The silent grew and stretched out between them in a not exactly uncomfortable way, punctuated by the rain and the crackle of the fire. Madras had figured out a long time ago that relationships, and emotions, and whatever it was that she had wanted to ask from him once, were not RGB’s strong suit. Now she just knew enough to trust that he received the things she tried to tell him even if he never really responded.
“Look,” she said after a long time, when the ceramic warmth of her mug had faded between her hands to disappointing semi-coolness, “I don’t have to know, but… what were you doing out there tonight?”
RGB was silent for a moment longer, staring into the fire, and then he levered himself out of the chair by the arms and stood abruptly. “Let me make you some more tea,” he said.
Madras surrendered her mug wordlessly. “Left cupboard over the sink, yellow tin,” she called after him as he disappeared into the room. She might not have needed to. He knew her kitchen pretty well. But then, it had been kind of a while.
She took the opportunity to steal her chair back, moving it incrementally closer to the fire. It wasn’t warm or anything, just very slightly damp. Body heat was something that happened to other people were RGB was concerned. But it did smell very slightly like him, like clean linen and ozone, and she curled up into it. Denial was another thing she wasn’t about to grudge anyone. She’d sort of figured it would go like this. RGB wasn’t the best at sharing things about himself.
It didn’t make her feel much less lonely or any less worried, though.
RGB came back after a while, a little stiff, cautious in making himself at home in a house that wasn’t his, and handed her the newly full and warm mug. It smelled… different, as only food made by someone who hadn’t been able to eat, drink, taste, or smell in a very long time could. She sipped it experimentally and nodded at him in thanks. It wasn’t awful.
He leaned against the wall to one side of the fireplace and rolled up his sleeves, presumably less because of the heat that didn’t affect him and more for something to do with his hands. The swath of emptiness from his elbow to wrist was still and always disconcerting, and the way he carefully avoided Madras’ gaze was casual enough that she could almost forget he was doing it. Except.
Except that his hands were shaking, just very slightly, and his exhaustion barely hid itself in his shoulder. When he wrapped his arms around himself, tired and small, it was more a letting down than putting up of defenses.
“She sent the storm after me,” he admitted. “I was so close, Madras. But she… Well. You heard what she did to the others. I suppose I got off easily. But I… I was running for so long.”
Madras stared at him.
She hadn’t known, was her first thought. Her second thought was that she should have suspected. Of course she should have.
Of course RGB had been getting mixed up with Her. Of course he was one of the people who still thought there was some way out. Like they were living in some kind of fairytale. Like they weren’t all already dead.
“RGB,” she said carefully, “what were you doing?”
He rubbed his screen again absently. She didn’t think he realized how many of his mannerisms had to be holdovers from the human past he didn’t remember. Watching the unconscious ghosts of actions designed for a different body was eerie. “I thought there had to be some way to defeat her, Madras,” he said. “Some kind of weakness. But I don’t think there is. Not that any of us can find, anyway.”
“End of the world, RGB,” Madras reminded him. “That’s kind of what it means.”
RGB nodded, and Madras wondered if maybe he was finally going to stop struggling. A strange thing, a coward who was so afraid of his own end that he would turn and fight rather than go quietly and accept his fate. But as Madras saw it, every day you didn’t go out and get yourself killed was one more day you got to live. And if there was one thing she didn’t want, it was for RGB to die before he had to. Maybe now, as drained and shaken as he looked, he would finally stop running around trying to fix things that couldn’t be fixed and drawing Her attention and all its awful, painful, immediate consequences, and at least the time they had left could be—
“I think I have to find a human hero,” RGB said, taking a deep breath with his probably-nonexistent lungs, and Madras almost dropped the one good mug she had left.
“Hang on,” she said once she had made a graceful recovery and put the mug down carefully next to the chair leg. She stared up at RGB. “You think you what?”
“I need,” RGB repeated,” to find a human hero. A child. Monsters can’t fight Her. But imagination can.”
“You have imagination,” Madras pointed out. “We all do.”
“No. That’s creativity. Children — beastly little things that they are — their imagination shapes this world. You know that, Madras. I have to find one. It’s our last chance.”
Madras closed her eye and pinched the bridge of her nose. “No, RGB. We don’t have a last chance. This is all there is. Do you not understand? You bring a human child here, the only thing you’ll have is a dead human. Kids are afraid of everything. You won’t even get it past the Doubts, and you’ll end up killing yourself trying to save it.”
RGB shrugged. “I won’t get attached,” he said.
“Sure you won’t,” Madras said, grinning at him. “I mean it, RGB. That is a stupid idea.”
“But it could work,” RGB insisted.”
“It could,” Madras said. “But it won’t.” She sighed and pushed herself upright. “Hold still.”
She didn’t think RGB actually minded hugs. He certainly didn’t move when she wrapped her arms around his midriff and pulled herself close until her face was buried in the fabric of his shirt. She breathed in deeply and he smelled like fabric and nothing at all.
“Damn it, RGB, don’t die on me,” she whispered into his chest. “Not now. Not yet.”
“Madras?” RGB murmured.
“Mmm?”
“I think,” he said, and he was tense and distant under her arms and there was nothing she could do about any of this anymore, “I think… my jacket might be dry by now.”