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“No one’s going to remember this, are they?” Her whisper echoed in the empty elevator. “No one’s going to remember us.”
He swallowed in response, looking anywhere but her eyes. His hands - his strong, calloused hands, the same ones that held her heart steady and clutched hers on the rare occasion she allowed herself to cry - shook. The sword in his hand bobbed up and down. She could almost taste his fear.
“If joy could taste like something, I think it’d be this.”
“I never thought I’d be this kind of girl,” she sighed, drinking in the summer air. Her fingertips brushed the petals of the sunflower nearest to her, brilliant yellow healing her with a single touch. Without thinking, she looked up at him, her smile shining.
He snapped a photo with his disposable camera, grinning. It struck her how much he belonged here, surrounded by golden flowers. As much as he belonged to the sea, he was more than the sea in the same way she was more than her intelligence. She found it strange how much he’d taught her about living, but she never wanted to let it go.
“You don’t have to be a specific type of girl to enjoy flowers, do you?”
She laughed, joy bubbling up in her chest. “No, no, I don’t.” And because she couldn’t help herself any longer, she pulled him close to her and pressed her lips to his.
His fingers brushed her hair, full of an emotion she couldn’t quite pinpoint. “Look,” he guided her fingers to a nearby sunflower, “Can you feel it? What it’s like to be alive?”
“If I could taste it, it would be joy on my tongue.”
“We’re not going to get out of this alive, are we?” His voice cracked, rough from disuse and sulfurous air. “This… this is it.”
The feeling that had been following her ever since they entered the Doors of Death seven minutes prior came crashing down on her, and her knees almost buckled under the weight. He reached out to catch her with his whole body, and she was struck with how much had changed.
They would never be sixteen again, wading in fields of flowers and breathing in life.
“Mac and cheese? Really?” She stood in the doorway, hands on her hips.
“C’mon, Beth, it’s a classic!” He grinned, spinning around. He tapped the wooden spoon on the side of the pot three times, shaking the excess water off, before laying it across the top.
She squinted at his actions. “Across the top?”
He raised an eyebrow at her, smirking. “Don’t you know? It stops the water from boiling over.” At her blank look, he let out a small laugh, “I know something you don’t!”
“Dork.”
“You love me for it.”
She made a noncommittal noise, turning away from him to check the cheese packet and hide her own grin. He wrapped his arms around her. Ducking her head, she tried not to blush. He retaliated by snaking his fingers up her side, and she burst out laughing.
“Stop! Stop! It tickles!”
“Admit it then,” he goaded, “Admit that you love me, wise girl.” She heard the smirk in his voice, and knew she wouldn’t give in. By the time the timer went off, she had wrestled him to the ground and her fingers had found his own ticklish spot.
Out of breath from laughing, he used the countertop to haul himself up and remove the macaroni from the burner. She took gulping breaths of air, trying to catch her breath. The warm scent of pasta washed over her. He added the cheese sauce, and she understood how something so simple could make someone so happy.
“I wish…”
“You wish?” He reached out a hand, brushing a tear from her face. She swallowed, trying to halt the emotions seeping from her skin. His eyes spoke of concern. “Talk to me, Beth…”
“I-” she gulped. “I want to breathe. I want to breathe joy, want to breathe something more. Something more than this air, this sulfur. I want it to go away. I want to breathe, Perce.”
His arms, as frail as they were, wrapped around her. He was never one for words, not in the way she was. It didn’t matter. She didn’t need more words. Words didn’t matter in these kinds of moments. Words never took away the pain, only made a place for it.
His arms wrapped around her, and she could almost smell mac and cheese.
He opened his mouth, and she wondered if he was going to say something about the sulfurous air. “They were wrong,” he said instead, and she knows instantly what he’s talking about.
“Yes,” she said, as if that one word didn’t confirm what both of them had been fearing for the past forty-seven seconds. Forty-seven seconds that took longer than anything else in her seventeen years of life.
They had four minutes and thirteen seconds left to live.
She had no clue how she knew the exact count of time, because it both felt like forever and the blink of an eye. She’d never been good with time, even in places where time ran normally. Now, though, her internal clock was so mixed up she wasn’t sure it would be possible to correct in an entire lifetime.
A lifetime she didn’t have.
“Are you seriously getting yellow M&Ms?”
“What do you have to say about it, seaweed brain?” She challenged, the candies plinking against each other as they fell into her bag.
He scowled at her playfully, hiding the laugh she could see simmering under the surface. “Oh, nothing. It’s just that the blue ones objectively taste the best.”
“Objectively? They all taste the same. You,” she pushed a finger into his chest, “Just want to walk around with a blue tongue.”
“Objectively, you’re wrong.”
“That’s not… ugh!” She groaned, but her smile gave her away. “I suppose we’ll have to test your theory. And prove it wrong, because it is.”
His blue M&Ms plinked against each other as he filled up his bag. He smiled at her again, the same lopsided grin that she had fallen in love with, and she knew that his theory would not be correct. As much as he insisted his favorite color was blue, she saw how he looked at yellow; like it was his entire world, like it was everything he would ever need to be happy. She knew that he described yellow as he only described joy.
And gods be damned if she didn’t start to see the beauty of yellow after that, a golden brilliance that could infiltrate even the darkest of days.
“Remember when we said yellow meant joy?” She asked, grey eyes dreaming of sunflower fields and M&Ms.
“Yeah,” his fingers brushed hers. “I’ll always love blue, but yellow…”
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed, and they remembered together. It took all she had to push away the knowledge that she had just three minutes and forty-two seconds left to live.
She wasn’t sure how she knew the exact amount of time she had left.
It would have taken twelve minutes to reach the surface, but they weren’t going to make it. Bob… she refused to believe he had betrayed them…
“I wish we’d seen the sun,” he said, his words choked.
She smiled sadly, more tears welled up in her eyes, “Bob says hello.”
“Bob says hello.” He looked up to where they knew the surface lay - the surface they would never see again. She tried to remember the feeling of the sun on her skin, tried to think of the constellations she could name in the sky.
“The Huntress.” She traced her finger through the air, touching the edges of the constellation they both held close to their hearts. He took his finger and followed her guide. “She’s beautiful.”
They fell silent for a while, the only thing accenting the passing of time the tears that dripped down their faces. She’d never considered herself a crier, and knew he felt the same about himself, but there was something so weirdly intimate yet distant from their normal selves that it didn’t matter. She’d go to Charon soon, or simply fade from existence. Her tears had never mattered less than they did now. He did not make a move to wipe them away, nor did she acknowledge his.
“Three minutes,” he said, low enough that she almost didn’t catch it. Her eyes met his, speaking louder than their words ever would. Whatever this strange knowledge about their inevitable demise was, they were in this together.
“There’s nothing we can do.”
He nodded, slow, solemn. “Nothing,” he repeated.
“Nothing.”
“We need five oranges.”
She ran her fingers over the lemons, indistinguishable in texture from the oranges that lay in the bin on the other side. “Hm.” The shape felt kinder in her hand, completed on both ends. She rubbed the pinched part of the lemon between her fingers. Below the tough skin, the similar texture, the lemon would be too sour to eat whole. It would never swap cleanly for an orange.
“Wise girl?”
“Yeah?” She looked up, his eyes swirling and his brow furrowed. “Just… thinking.”
His hand found its way to her, to the lemon she lingered on. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” she said easily, as though she’d said it a thousand times.
The moment passed. He smiled at her in such a way that made her feel like she was worth the world, but just as quickly turned to count the oranges and lift them into the shopping cart. She picked up the lemon.
The lemon was something that intrigued her. Between the things that happened in her life, she often had people refer to her as having been given lemons. She loved lemons. Loved the way they smelled, loved the way lemon added a tang to her food, loved the way that the peel rubbed over her fingers and left a lingering mark. It wasn’t something permanent, but it was close enough.
He loved her lemon shampoo, breathed it in like she was his lifeline - in some ways, she supposed she was - but it did nothing but drive her love for lemons. They were yellow like the sunflowers he compared to joy, yellow like the smiles he saved just for her, yellow like everything that had given her something to be proud of.
“Marry me?”
“What?” Her eyes snapped away from the memories and to where he kneeled on the bottom of the elevator, a single yellow peanut M&M in his hand.
“We’re going to die. Marry me?”
“We have two minutes and six seconds left and you want to get married.”
“Well, I don’t think we’re going to… you know, actually get married. But we could be engaged, if you wanted.”
“I… gods, I don’t know.”
“It’s okay if you don’t want to.” He stood up, looking at the peanut M&M in his hand. “I didn’t have anything prepared to do a proper proposal anyways, though I do know I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
“So, one minute and fifty-nine seconds.”
He gaped at her. “Well, longer, but…”
“I know what you mean, seaweed brain.” She looked at the M&M. “I’ve always wanted to build something…”
“Permanent.” He supplied.
“Yeah, permanent. This… This isn’t permanent like it’s supposed to be, marriage, y’know. And marriages aren’t permanent, but it’s close enough, it’s something more than I would have had, but…” She closed her mouth abruptly. “Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, I want to marry you, idiot.” He wrapped her in his arms, and she squeezed back. One minute and thirty-four seconds to go, but they’d do it together. Together.
The last thing she saw before she closed her eyes for the final time was the yellow peanut M&M that served as her engagement ring.
Yellow.
Yellow like the sun they’d never know.