Chapter Text
The first month of his recovered humanity was spent wishing Billie had stuck to Daud's last request, and put him to death.
The trek down from the Shindaerey Peak to the outskirts of Karnaca had coincided with the annual season of showers. Billie’s meagre belongings barely stretched to accommodate two stomachs, let alone travel gear to hike through the downpour and the muddy terrain. Spackled with dirt and soaked through the leathers and down to the bone, they managed to just set foot into the city proper before their bodies finally gave out. Billie had been lucky enough to get away with a cough and a chill. Her charge had not been granted the same kindness.
He did not remember how they ended up inside the third floor apartment of the condemned tenement just off Roseburrow Boulevard. He could barely piece together the day before. The passage of time has smeared, the watercolour of a novice student, as if reality ended at the edges of his bed. The centerpoint of his existence spun uncontrollably around the physicality of his flesh. Or rather, it’s failings.
The pale expanse of his skin was pulled taut against the frame of my bones, stretching the parchment white colour to almost translucent. The muscles underneath had turned to molten rocks, roiling against the waves of nausea which threatened to undo him. He could feel every single drop of sweat streaking down his body, trailing streaks of fire into the hard mattress below.
His head felt enormous. Something pushed against the insides of his cranium, as if some great beast was swelling from its own putrefaction. He’d not dared to open his eyes - the overhead light made the head-ache resonate through his jaw down to the roots of his teeth.
In some cynical part of him, undefeated by the ravages of sickness, he had almost been glad to be granted this chance. To die, soaked to the bone in his own sweat and filth, flitting in and out of consciousness. Like a million men before him.
Bleeding out on an obsidian slab seemed almost clinical, by comparison.
Lucidity came and went, when his mind was dragged from the failings of his physique to the outer world. Ice-cold hands would pull his mouth open to shove something down his throat - scraps of moistened bread and bitter liquids. Oftentimes followed by the smoke-roughed tones of Billie’s voice, though he struggled to parse her words. Admonishments, most likely.
A second voice would follow Billie’s - softer, as if she was trying to soothe his malaise with words alone. He’d be inclined to call it motherly, but the sharp sting of something just below the inside of his elbow chased the notion away. Thankfully, whatever torture was being inflicted upon him was followed by fitfull sleep.
He came back to the waking world slowly, pulled towards the sound of a kettle whistling near-by. The room was submerged in half-light, with a pair of heavy curtains drawn across the singular window. A rickety table stood by his bed, a bowl with mushy grains and half-eaten bread abandoned by the way-side.
He managed to force his body in a reclining position before he noticed the state of his sheets. Glossy, red-brown stains, no bigger than his palm, were spread across the moth-eaten blanket. His shirt had not fared any better, where flecks of blood co-mingled with yellow-green remnants of sweat.
“You know, if I’d known you’d cause me so much grief, I would’ve left you in the Void-forgotten mountains,” Billie said, shoulder leaning against the door-frame. Her countenance did not fit the mould of an almost God-killer. Despite the easy smile and the gentle bite of her words, her eyes betrayed a bone-deep tiredness. “I was worried you were going to kick the bucket.”
He wanted to answer her wit with a riposte of his own, but his response got lost in the violent cough that broke out of him. Every push of breath felt like somebody was dragging sandpaper inside his chest. Every hack felt like somebody was dragging a knife down his throat. Billie’s relaxed posture all but disappeared, as she rushed towards the cot.
“Shit.” She pulled an elixir from the foot of the bed, and all but shoved it into his hand. “Drink this.”
Unsteadily, he unscrewed the cap and tried to down the murky red liquid between fits. The viscous, bitter concoction stung as it trickled down his inflamed throat. Every gulp coated his tongue in a horrid mixture of dirt and stale beer, but it lessened the compulsion to cough. The sleeve of his shirt - the one he’d used to cover his mouth - was stained red.
“How are you feeling?” Billie’s gaze flitted between his face, and the blood-soaked sleeve.
Hoarse from disuse, he managed a wispy response. “I have been better.” He tried to pay no mind to the taste of copper chasing his words. “How long have I been here?”
“Stuck inside the bed? Slightly less than a fortnight,” she said. “Thought you were a goner for a second, when you started hacking up blood.”
“That would certainly nullify all of your hard work.”
She hummed under her breath, acknowledging his poor attempt at humour with a nod. “I called in a favour with Doctor Hypatia. You may have been too out of it to remember her passing through.”
How strange. To have gaps in the continuity of memory.
Billie did not seem to mind his sudden lapse of silence. Instead, she pointed towards a small wooden crate at the foot of the cot, filled with glass vials of a red-orange liquid. “It’s not the S&J and it tastes like ass, but it should have you back on your feet in a couple days. Doctor’s orders.”
The chuckle which broke out of him hurt, but it dispelled whatever spiral of solipsism he had almost embarked. “I’m grateful for your presence, Billie Lurk,” he said. “By the time we part, I’m going to be deeply indebted to you.”
“Nah,” she answered. She pulled a slim cigar from the back pocket of her trousers, twirling it between her fingers. “When Daud took me in, he knew he was signing up for a hard time. Yet, he didn’t ask for anything in return.” She paused, the serious furrow of her eyebrows was softened by a tilted corner of her mouth. “I’m not about to ask you either.”
“I appreciate it, regardless.”
Billie waved him off. “It’s one of those few lessons the Old Man taught me which doesn’t involve sticking the business end of a knife into another being. If I am to keep his memory alive, might as well be through this.”