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When you lay down in your cot you're black-out drunk. You stare up at the ceiling, dead eyed. No one's coming. Your shoulder aches and you drop the bottle in your hand. You hear it land on the floor with a dull thunk and roll away to meet the other bottles gathered under the table. You don't remember when your bandages were last changed. You've been too busy wallowing in your misery, drinking away the few reál you have left. They're not coming back.
They all turned their backs without a second thought.
Jean, Trant, Judit.
Kim.
You hate them. They all leave you in the end. Abandoned you here to die. Chewed you up and spat you out on the sidewalk.
No, you don't hate Kim. You couldn't save him. He must hate you. Of course he won't come back. You're horrible, a disease that spreads and kills everything in its wake. Best if they stay away.
Bile starts rising in your throat. You let out a hollow scream as you try to move your body so you choke on your own sickness. Your thigh burns, hot and agonizing. You won't be moving from this position, not alone you won't. Everything is blurry and way too bright, some of your puke has landed on the browning dressings on your shoulder. Your vision swims. No one's going to save you.
When your pain wakes you up again it's almost pitch black, a stream of moonlight pours out of a frosted over window. In your stupor you notice it's snowing outside, but your blood is warm and trudges through your veins at a pace that is too quick and too slow at the same time. The sheets and soaking wet, it hurts just to breathe. You did this to yourself, everybody knew this would happen eventually, of course no one's coming.
Inferno pours out from your shoulder and thigh and pulsates throughout your broken body. Your throat is raw and dry, your eyes are wet. You mumble incoherently, pleading and begging for what? For someone to help you? To put you out of your misery? That isn't happening.
Your body is digesting itself.
The cold night melts away from your grasp.
There's mumbling outside, it's foggy, distant, but there. Boots trudge along a wooden pier, the chatter stops and water splashes. Then there's nothing.
You're all alone again, not a single soul is present to witness you wither away. Apart from the maggots that have been nibbling at your extremities, eager to find a source of warmth in this cold village.
There's a knock, and then some more mumbling. An anxious shuffling of heavy rain boots sound out from behind the shack. You hear a feminine, motherly voice. There's concern there, concern she ached to have but could not in good conscience do away with, lest she set a bad example of herself for her children.
A weary sigh, the door cracks open just a smidge. A pillar of warm yellow light enters the space, the presence of such goodness does nothing to rid the shack of the evil contained within, especially the odor.
A horrible gasp, filled with horror and what could've been grief. Her hand flies to mouth and curls around her nose, she deftly turns away and the door is closed again.
The boots come back, but there is no mumbling. Your bloating fingers want to grasp for something, the neck of a bottle, a calloused but warm hand, a gun.
The entrance to your crypt remains shut.
When your conciseness finds its way back to you, you're screaming. Crying out for someone, begging. You feel your jaw crackle and your vocal cords vibrate but don't recall having sent the signal from your brain to the rest of your body to begin hollering.
Kim… Kim… Kim…
You're nothing but animal instinct, now. Humanity all but stripped away, revealing a groveling beast beneath it all. You desperately call out for the one being that showed you comfort. That animal instinct tells you that it's too late for you. It begs anyways, pawing at the filthy cloth that surrounds you.
Everything has melted away from your feeble grasp, your thoughts are word soup and you can't see a single goddamned thing in the room. Your burning and pain addled mind can hardly comprehend the decaying flesh you reside in.
Your ears ring incessantly, though an infernal roar cuts through the meaningless noise. Finally, the gates of infernum have opened up for you.
Mercy, at last.
Your breath hitches for a second, your chest aches whenever you move. Every reasonable part of you tells you to go back to bed and rest, but there's someone out there who needs you. You won't turn your back on your partner.
The netpicker looks at you with a wide array of emotions. Sadness, empathy, and disappointment. Judgment that you deserve.
You wonder what he might tell you, you wonder if he'll want to talk to you at all. Deliberating is hardly worth your time, it's most likely that he isn't even coherent. You know Harry, he'll find his way into a bottle one way or another. If not that then he's sure to have found some speed.
That's alright. You've had time to think about this, about how you'll help him get back on his feet -*if* he actually wants to- and get his job back. You've never met a detective quite like him, you know that no one else will ever even compare to him. The way he thinks, the way he looks at things and pries them open- the way he's pried *you*, open.
You won't let such outstanding skill waste away in some miserable seaside shack. You won't let a good man drown like this, not after the way you failed him at the tribunal.
Should've seen her coming…
"Harry." Your hand is at the shabby wooden door, you feel the netpicker's heavy gaze on you. You want to explain to her that the RCM is doing all it can, but an unexplainable seed of doubt has been sown in your lungs. It's difficult to ignore her.
'Go on, open the door.' Her ireful gaze says. You turn back at her, she looks away. You look down on your hands, your gloves were soaked through with blood so you removed them.
Your hands are now bare and cold. You grasp the rusty door handle, leaving flakes of rust in your palm as you open up the door.
The smell hits you first. A tidal wave of rot, decay, puke, and booze. It's indescribable, someone should send a poet. Your mind screams at you to not look at the bed- look at *anything* but the bed. You close the door behind you, back turned to what was waiting for you.
You stay still for way too long. Raspy and strangled breaths fill the room. You look down, empty bottles litter the floor. The clothes you've seen him gather have been dumped in the corner, they're collecting dust, now. You see the Belle-Megrave he found in the Doomed Commercial Area is propped up against the wall next to… a sniper rifle? You blink and notice a ceramic helmet underneath the shabby little table.
A low groan sounds from the part of the shack you didn't want to think about.
"...Kim…" The pain in his voice sobers you up, quick. You stride over to him, fists clenched.
You fail to suppress a gasp when you see the state of him up close. It was worse than you could've possibly imagined. The sheets are soaked with both blood and sweat, they twist around his bloated frame.
Pus and blood and infection weep from his swollen entry wounds. Harry's face is flushed and gleaming with sweat, an incomprehensible stream of words pour out of his mouth. Though you can discern your name out from the word-vomit. And… the vomit. The cot is soaked with that, too. Some of it's on his shoulder.
You fail to force back a gag, you quickly cover up your mouth with your hand. You wish you could draw your eyes away from the breathing corpse of your partner but you can't. I'd be cruel on a truly inhuman level to leave him, now, in his…
"...Kim… God… Kim, no no no…"
In his last moments.
You're not sure if he can see you. Fuck, he must think he's alone. You grip an edge of the sheets and try to wipe away some of the vomit from his burning wound in some pathetic attempt at help. The texture isn't exactly what you expected, is there a bandage still on him…?
"Fuckfuckfuck fuh… no, please…" He cries out, twisting away from the pain by a few millimeters. All of his strength has been sapped out of him, leaving nothing behind.
You retract your hand, and try to lean in closer. "Harry?" Your voice waivers.
"... Please help- fuck…" It's far too late to help him now. His fate was sealed when his co-workers drove away from here, when something in his pelvis exploded, when woke up without a single memory in his head, when he drove his car into the sea, when he fell down a bottomless pit of despair, when he picked up the bottle, when he joined the RCM, when he got hooked on speed, when started spending more time an the street than at home, when his mother passed the fire inside her bones onto him, inside a place where most go to die. When blood coagulated in Revachol's streets.
Since before even day one, he was doomed to this fate.
"Please… please…"
There's no mercy for people like him.
"...Kim… Please." He chokes on bile before he speaks again. "...come back."
"Fuck- I am here." You gingerly position yourself on the cot, careful not to jostle the writhing being underneath you. "You're not alone here."
His glossy eyes search the shack, landing in your approximate location. "You… you're…"
"It's Kim, Harry, it's Kim." You try to meet his unsteady gaze. You search for his hand in the mess of filthy blankets. You find it twitching and bent at an awkward handle, his fingernails are crusted with blood and his fingertips are a sickening purple, cold and clammy when you join his bloated hand with your own. "It's me" You're losing control over yourself, Harry's always had a knack for making you do that, hasn't he?
"I wanna go home…" He mumbles. You suck in a deep breath.
The words feel foreign on your tongue. "You will, soon." God, you hope you sound soothing.
His glazed over eyes have finally found you. "Oh… ok." Something stirs inside those gray-green marbles, a little spark goes off. It clinks against something inside you. "Kim… you." His eyes widen suddenly, his hand twitches again.
"What is it, Harry?" You wince a bit when you realize how desperate you sound.
"Th… the islet, the…" His breathing grows erratic, and his voice weaker.
You draw closer, breathing through your mouth to cope with the smell better. It doesn't work, you can practically taste whatever is festering inside Harry on your tongue.
"Go there… go." His gaze drifts to the ceiling again, something glistens in his dry eyes. He mumbles something you can't hear. Then: "Was beautiful…"
Your breath hitches, again. "What's beautiful?" You find yourself brushing your thumb over his pale knuckles, you don't know if your partner is even registering the feeling.
Harry's lips curl upwards, a secretive little smile, "You'll see…" you desperately want to be privy to it. His head begins to loll to the side, his eyes grow wall-eyed.
You notice a chill has been seeping into the room, one of the windows has been letting a stream of cool air into the shack. The seagulls stop cawing, the waves stop lapping at the shore, and the bed stops creaking.
A sweet voice tickles the back of your neck.
LISTEN TO HIM.
GO.
A shallow sob escapes you.
You press your hand against his chest longer than you needed to, and pull the sheet up to cover his face.
When you're outside the shack you see Lilliene. Still there with that knowing expression.
"Madam, may I borrow your boat?"