Chapter Text
They make it two months before the bike gives out and the force that had been driving Alice – unwavering, indomitable – snaps along with it.
She says nothing when it happens, looks no visibly different in all of her disheveled outward exterior, does not acknowledge that anything has changed at all, and yet Claire can’t shake the ringing of it from her ears. She can’t deny it now that she’s heard the toll of its warning bell catching up to them on the wind. It rattles, metallic, like the loose bullets in her pockets as they leave the bike behind and begin to survey the area on foot for somewhere safe to stay.
Claire says nothing to acknowledge it, either.
On autopilot, without the need of exchanged words, they secure shelter for the night. It’s closing in earlier and earlier, these days, and up until now Alice has driven them headfirst into it on the back of a liberated Umbrella bike, defiant in the face of the colder season and its sluggish approach to winter. The building they’ve chosen has two floors and both are swept thoroughly until they settle in an apartment at the top, mostly free from scorch marks and the lingering stench of decay.
On the balcony, Claire lights a fire while Alice cleans their guns, and they eat from unlabeled tins until their stomachs are closer to appeased. It’s a familiar routine by now, one Claire isn’t entirely unhappy with, but she can feel the tapered end of it hanging in the air between them, quick like static electricity against the hairs at the nape of her neck.
She wonders if Alice can feel it, too.
Later, when the night has settled in around them, vast and dark and quiet, and Alice sits sullenly staring into the flames, Claire shuffles herself closer on the dusty floor and holds her hands out palm-up in a way that says, hand it over. Alice’s gaze slips down to consider the offer, blinks slowly, and then she rests her hand in Claire’s.
They’re in no short supply of bandages or pain medication, is really their only blessing.
The first place they’d ransacked, after leaving the Hive and its fallen army of undead, had been a hospital.
Claire draws a clean roll of gauze out from a pocket in the cargo pants she’d picked up only the week before, desensitized to her own ragged appearance and foreseeing a greater need for the extra storage, even if she needs a belt to keep them up around the waist. She rests the gauze precariously on her bent leg as she begins to work the bandage free from around Alice’s knuckles. The stumps of her three severed fingers are mostly healed already, cauterised initially and then treated by risk of medical guestimation through the first infection to set in.
The scarring weeps, occasionally, but even that has lessened significantly with recovery.
Claire is careful when she washes the wounds with an antiseptic wipe, follows the creases of Alice’s palm until she’s cleaned off the sweat and dirt and ash from their day’s travels, dips in between her knuckles then down to the wrist which she circles twice in full. This has become a part of their routine, as well. It’s not that Alice will not care for herself, not that Claire doesn’t trust her to do as thorough a job as she herself does. It’s not even entirely how Claire justifies Alice keeping her around, when between the two of them she has the lesser combat experience.
It’s because this is what Claire does. At the end of the world, after the apocalypse has run its course, this is what Claire does to remind herself that she’s still human–to remind herself why that even matters anymore, why it might matter all the more now than it ever has before. Claire cares because she wants to; because Alice lets her.
As Claire reties fresh dressing, Alice digs into a pocket and comes out with a familiar octagonal disc. She examines it in the light of the fire, rubs her thumb over the surface, but does not activate the stored memories inside. As far as Claire has witnessed, she’d only viewed the entirety of them the once and has shown no intention of repeating the experience, but the disc is often in her hand. Claire wonders if it’s ever all that far from her thoughts, and doubts it.
There’s a single, small room in the back of the apartment with a bed that hasn’t been made in years.
Claire dusts it off before she prepares to sleep in it, discards the sheets and the pillows with their indeterminable stains, and flips the mattress over until its belly is exposed. It’s better than most places she’s slept, is the sad truth of the situation, even with the damp seeping into the corners of the walls and the cold blowing in through the cracks in the window. After spending near on five years sleeping partially upright in the front of the Hummer, she no longer has it in her to complain.
Alice slips into the room once Claire has made herself as comfortable as she can without removing her boots. She lies on her back with both hands resting on her belly, fully dressed, and waits for the mattress to dip and the comforting heat that Alice brings with her to swarm in to one side. It’s not unusual for them to sleep in the same space, even when there are other options. More than comfort, the practicality just makes sense.
And finally, now that it’s dark enough that Claire can barely make out the shape of Alice even when she turns onto her side, she pokes a single finger into that earlier acknowledgement that they had both ignored.
“We can’t keep this up, you know.”
Her voice is quiet, whispered, rusted from hours without proper use.
Alice remains unmoved for a few seconds longer, then turns to mirror Claire’s position. The mattress is not so small to afford them space without risk of falling over its edge, and their knees bump and press together as they shift into the new position. Even this close, Claire can barely make out the features on Alice’s face in the dark, just the occasional reflection of light in her eyes and the sensation of breath on her face.
“The bike can be fixed,” Alice says, but there’s no conviction in it.
“There’s only so much road we can chase before you run out of monsters to hunt.”
“You think that’s why I’m doing this?”
She does not sound accusatory, but curious.
“I think you feel responsible,” Claire says, because she knows something about responsibility, namely the weight and shape of it when it’s balanced on your shoulders—when it’s curled beneath an old rattan blanket in your back seat, finally catching sleep. She shifts again, tucks a knee right up against Alice’s, her other leg stretched down to the bottom of the bed. She readjusts the arm that she has bent beneath her head, better to postpone the eventual cramping. “You shouldn’t, and you know that you shouldn’t, logically, but I don’t know… survivor’s guilt, maybe?”
Alice hums like she’s considering the likelihood of this being the case. “What do you want to do?” she asks.
Claire considers their options, but there’s only one worth her attention and she’s known it for weeks, probably longer. When her thoughts touch on it now, Claire sighs and closes her eyes for just long enough to feel the weight of her own fatigue. She opens them again before she can succumb to its appeal. Alice is no clearer, no closer, no further away. It’s just black space in front of her, a complete lack of light, but Claire can still feel the occasional slow huff of breath, warm, against her face.
“I want to stop looking for monsters,” Claire says, and Alice is very still beside her. “They can’t be the only thing left, and even they’re going to run out eventually when the anti-virus catches up to them. There’s got to be something more out there for us. I want us to find out what it is.”
“The colonists.”
“Yeah. If they’re still out there.” Claire still thinks they are, still thinks they have to be, after everything they went through in the Hive. The universe owes them this one. “I want to find them. I want to know what it’s gonna look like when we rebuild.”
“There’s no going back,” Alice says, not unkindly.
“I know, but that shouldn’t keep us from moving forward.”
Alice turns onto her back, after that, and Claire lets the conversation drop with neither argument nor resentment. She’s tired, so tired she can feel the impossible draw of it in every one of her bones, and they have nothing but time ahead of them. She follows Alice’s lead, turning once onto her back and then again so that she’s facing the wall. She waits for Alice to do the same, for the comforting press of Alice’s back against hers, for the warmth that it brings and the comfort of her rhythmic breathing that presses her closer, draws her back away.
“You want to find your brother.”
Claire does not react outwardly, but in her chest a fist, squeezing hard against her heart. For a second, she thinks she won’t be able to breathe for the strength of its grip.
“He could still be out there,” she says, and hates the way that it sounds, like she’s trying to convince Alice, like she’s trying to convince herself. “With K-Mart. They were together when I got separated. If she’s with him…”
If she’s with him, she’ll still be alive, but Claire can’t make herself choke out any more, and Alice does not dispute it. She doesn’t agree with it, either, but Claire thinks it might even be crueller if she had. If hope is the only thing keeping Claire running these days, false hope would drop her quicker than a bullet.
“Okay,” Alice says, her voice carrying from the black and quiet that encompasses Claire behind her eyelids. “If that’s what you want, you should look for them.”
Claire does not allow herself to sink backwards into sleep just yet.
“You’re coming with me, right?”
And Alice might not answer immediately, but her back presses fully against Claire’s and does not retreat again.
“Where else would I go?”