Work Text:
….and we could be anything. oh, come on, man. we could be anything.
-----
I don’t remember when it changed. My time with him, I mean.
The world had folded on itself a long time ago. What’s left was rotten, hollow bean cans and cold nights and warmth only while in touch with the dead - they always ran freakishly hot, especially on the time of their real death.
It’s ironic, truly. How what you desire can kill you.
Still, it’s been months - years, even - and after all the years in which I fought, raggedly like a dying thing, for some emaciated, half-full happiness dwelling in the horizon, it’s all ended. And so disgustingly, too. As I lie, panting and writhing in the sudden heat of my body, something I hadn’t felt in years, I can only recall the last words I said. And as the aborted growling of whatever-animal-that-is-i-hope reaches my ears, I can only helplessly lie in the true reality of my mortality. A life full of death, and yet somehow, I’d gotten cocky; forgotten that there really is no year you are given, no moment, or second, or hour, no minutes to depend on when the light can reach your eyes no longer.
Still.
I remember. I remember watching my mother be eaten alive, the sickening crunch of her body, the snap of her neck - something I could never really forget. The pound of my feet on the concrete of my sweet, calm, supposedly safe suburban home’s driveway, the screech of tires as I stole the last of my mother’s possessions and sped away from the remains of my loved ones (sometimes I still think about my brother’s neck, hanging suspended by one tendon, a string ready to snap. My father’s face, his eyes locking with mine for the last time. Only his eyes).
And then I was alone. A road and a desire to live and a mourning that I had already begun to shove down - a sinking sun. The act of running to a gas station, fighting hand and tooth for a bag of chips and an already cracked open soda - the only one. One that I checked and checked and checked and checked and oh god what if it’s infected what do I do what do I do what do I- then the road again and a whisper in my ear of this only being the beginning.
Weeks later, small body shivering, with a gun and something, anything to prove, I ran into him. It would only be the beginning.
He took me under his wing. Taught me how to really shoot, and run, and be silent. (Later, I’d look back on this, remembering the bright yellow sun and its matching hue on a room full of children’s shoes, the smile on my face, and my loud, unabashed laughter. It would make me sick.) Still, I carried on with life the same way I’d always done, except...
I was no longer alone.
Though tired and ragged, and running out of air, I still had a bed to rest upon. Sustenance. That’s all you could really ask for - a cold forest pallet, some meat - though so, so small - and a wetting of your tongue. Enough to go on with, enough to fight for.
He taught me of the world he knew, before we came to this one. Told me he was a bad man; hurting women, tearing apart families, all the like, with no remorse on his face; no sadness held in his raining eyes - one who’d eventually came to his senses. Realized that really, these monsters were always here, lurking, hurting, and killing. The only difference, he said, was that they were cognizant. (And here he’d go, smiling that wry smile, so proud he used a real word, a word that had a place in the dictionary...something he’d never had access to.)
We’d have plenty of nights like that. Time spent in front of the fire, looking at the dying stars, and wondering can you hear us? Because if they could, why didn’t they save us? Stop this, even? Why do we live in a hell in which we must die after fighting, and fighting, and fighting while you, you damned gods, you get to die peacefully, quiet, safe.
It was unfair.
It’s even more unfair now, his unmoving body lying beside me, torn to pieces and staring into my eyes. The last thing he saw, me. Me, and my inability to save him; to save myself. His hand curled in mine; his breath stolen. Tears fall, and yet…
How disgustingly unfair.
-
It took four years. Four years on the road and in abandoned buildings, four years of waking up in the middle of the night, once nearly devoured, yet still stitched together and laced with bits of corpse saliva.
Immune.
Immune I was, and immune I had been. Immune when he died. Immune in all the close situations in which he risked his life.
Immune.
My ignorance is what cost him his death. Now all I live for is the motions. The promise I made, long ago. His wish for my continuous life.
It’s pitiful, you know. Sometimes I wake up sure he’s still beside me. On nights of desperation, when all I have left is a hope for death and a burn under my skin, my cries still sound in the shape of his name. One day, if I cry loud enough, this may all be over: I was his after all, both in life and death, marked with his ghostly, eternal touch.
I wanted him back.
But then again, life had always been a bitch. One I’d thought I conquered, yes, but a bitch nonetheless. She was funny, you know? A writhing dog at your feet that you could kick at. Something, someone to direct all your anger and your fuck you, you unfair bitch’s at. Someone to be cruel to. Someone who’d revel in it, and one day, she’d get you back.
Even funnier thing is, you were never prepared when she did.
So. Yeah.
It’s been four fucking years and yet all I can see is him. Everywhere, anywhere, him. The cigarettes he'd smoke, the building’s we’d raid and tag, constellations, and old leather items stained in blood, but nicely. A smile, and a tear. One last breath and those hands on my face. His strength fading, yet voice remaining strong. Mine.
Gone.
So now my day consisted of passing that old store we used to raid, finding the goods, and leaving before anyone could ever notice. Ignoring the constellations and flashes of his favorite color in the corner of my eyes. Making sure that I work myself, day after day, to improve myself. Not only for him, but for the sake of survival.
Don’t forget, darlin’. Yeah? Say it with me. When you lose half of yourself, it’s either you bleed out or you do somethin’ bout it. What d’ya do, honey. Do you bleed out, or do you fucking do somethin’ about it?
And bleeding out? Well, that was only for pussies.