Work Text:
The city around him is a shell.
There are buildings still stretching high into the air, of course. White and grey stone and timber washed pale by the sun, as stable as they always have been and always would be. In the distance, the city wall. Far above him, birds. He can’t hear them. He can’t hear anything beyond the hum in his ears.
It’s not the city that has been broken. It’s the people who aren’t there, the bodies that lie dead on cots and in chairs and sprawled across the floor, the ashy blisters swelling on those still clinging to life and rupturing to leak black fluid across their skins. It’s the wailing he can’t hear but feels all around him, the screaming of those who have lost everything, of those who are burning their clothing and tearing at their hair and standing with eyes downcast before the church doors they are not allowed to enter lest the contagion spread. It’s the church bells which are no longer being rung, because they would never cease. And he who hath the disease on him is to go about with signs of grief, crying, Unclean, unclean.
The streets are quiet. They should not have been quiet. They should have been full of shouting and laughing, bartering, selling and buying. There should have been playing children and crying infants, there should have been anything or anyone outside their houses to see and to touch.
But there is no one, except Josua.
He is not precisely aware of how he ended up lying here. Pieces of burned wood and black rock protrude up from the ground around him, a charred skeleton of some building that was once a home. Something in him reminds him that there were infected people within, and so it was decided by the city they must be cleansed. He’d begged them to change their minds, of course, but the city would not be swayed. Especially not by a man falsely calling himself a doctor, for a man so foolish and weak so as to have let the disease begin to claim him as well could never have been a doctor. He could feel its beginnings under his flesh. Unclean, unclean.
He should stand. He should move. He does not. There is no place to go.
Soft through the hum, eventually he comes to hear the soft clip of a horse’s shod feet on the stones of the road. Eventually, he even troubles himself enough to raise his head. He looked, and behold.
The horse is white. It doesn’t make sense, why the horse is white. White is the colour of purity, the colour of bleached bone. There is nothing to be corrupted in white. Either because it is clean, or because it has already been infected until there is nothing left.
This horse is none of those things. She is writhing where she stands, her hide full of worms and flies and pox. Her eyes are weeping holes, ringed with pus and slime. Black blood runs from the bit in her teeth. She should have died a long time ago. Her name is Symptom.
Upon her sits a person in clean white robes that expose mottled flesh. A bronze quiver hangs on its back, arrows bristling from it like needles. Long hair hangs in tangled, greasy strands down in front of its face to half-hide sunken, ice grey eyes.
“You’re still alive,” it says, in a voice like the wailing he can’t hear but feels all around him, the screaming of those who have lost everything.
Josua recognizes the rider. He’s never seen this horse and rider before, but he knows its long hand, its actions, its voice. He knows Pestilence.
“Yes,” Josua says, voice paper-thin and barely a whisper. He’d been crying for a long time. “There are still people I need to help.”
It laughs at this. It’s the church bells which are no longer being rung, because they would never cease. “You are dying already, Josua. In trying to help, you would kill.”
“I will not let them die.” His voice is still fainter now. Although his words are a statement, it sounds like begging. “I c-” He coughs, and there is blood on his lips. “I cannot let them die.”
It nearly looks pitying as it digs its boot spurs into the molding flesh of its horse and begins to walk on. “Yes, you will.”
“No.”
Somewhere, Josua finds the strength to drag himself upright. He cannot stand, but he can kneel, and he does. “No,” he repeats, blood pooling under his tongue. He spits it out. It runs in a thin trickle down one side of his chin and drips on his collar. Every word is a wheeze for breath. “Let… let me keep helping people. Everyone. I d- don’t care what it takes.”
It pauses.
“Dangerous words,” it says softly. It turns its head just enough for one grey eye to appear around the side of its face, inordinately bright in the dark recess of its skull. “If you truly care nothing for the consequences, I have an offer.”
An offer.
Josua is not a foolish man. He knows what happens when people make deals with other things, like Death or the Devil or who knew what else. Pestilence itself, the plague on this land, the reason everything is wrong, could not possibly be willing to let this deal end well.
But Josua is desperate, and the city around him is a shell.
“What offer?” he asks.
Pestilence smiles, cracked lips pulling wide in an imitation of human feeling. It raises two discoloured, bubbling fingers. “Two clauses. I let you heal people of their ailments. In exchange, you take their ailments upon yourself. You will be able to tolerate much illness, but you will undergo much suffering. Choose wisely.”
Unclean, unclean.
Pestilence extends its hand to Josua, and Josua takes its hand and shakes.
He bolted awake, shivering, alone in bed.
The room around him was dark, the little red digital clock on his desk telling him it was a couple minutes short of four in the morning. He sat up.
He attempted for a deep breath, but fumbled halfway through, wincing as a spike of pain in his side reminded him of the tenebrae wound he’d attempted to fix earlier that day. The fact that he hadn’t been able to take its entirety upon himself was concerning, but not unheard of. Clancy would be fine, most likely.
Trying again, the breath came more smoothly. Content with this, Joshua lay back down on his uninjured side, thinking.
He went on doing this for a long while.