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Raleight is dying.
He’s been dying for some time now – approximately eight months, and yes, she’s keeping count. He’s stopped treatment about five months in, “there’s no point, Mako. I’m not getting out of this alive, this time”.
She knew, she knows, that he was right, so she didn’t and doesn’t argue.
Instead, she works as hard as she can, and as fast, during the day, so that in the evening she can always go back to the housing they share and never leave him to sleep alone.
He used to have nightmares, in the first few months, but those weren’t new; they were the same old bad dreams he’d always had, where someone always died (Yancy, Chuck, even Stacker, sometimes) – though never himself. He wasn’t afraid of dying, he’d never been – Mako knows that what had always scared him the most was being the one who stayed behind.
When he stopped taking his meds, the nightmares stopped as well. Mako thinks she knows why, even though they’ve never talked about it – but do they need to? They know each other inside out, down to the very last atom: he’s finally going to get closure, and he’s never going to see her die like he did with everyone else. For once, he’ll get to go first.
She can imagine how guilty he must be feeling in thinking that, how selfish, but she can’t judge him for wanting to be at peace. It’s not his fault he got sick, he’s never asked for it, and she’s not going to condemn those silver lightings he sees in his situation.
She’s never been one for words, so she tries to let him know by other means that she loves him and will be ready to forgive him should he ever need it. She holds his hand at dinner, she supports his weight when he wants to take a walk, she lets him rest his head on her shoulder when they’re watching movies on the sofa, and she sleeps an arm away from him. Sometimes, when they wake up in the morning, they’re forehead against forehead, like that day on the escape pod, floating in their own special world, and he always smiles brightly at her when that happens – even though he gets dark circles around his eyes and his skin becomes paper-thin, the smile stays the same.
She doesn’t know what she will do when he dies. He’s one of the last two people she has left in this fucked up world, and the only one who knows her, really knows her, who she can trust with her whole being – who doesn’t make her feel alone.
She’s going to be completely, utterly alone.
But it’s not something she dwells on, if she can help it. It hasn’t happened yet, so there’s no point in letting it consume the time they have left. For now, here and now is enough. For now, his warm voice in enough. For now, his smile is enough.