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Kal’tsit would take every one of her emotions to the grave—or likely a furnace or crematory, as was standard protocol for the Infected—and burn to ashes with them if it meant swaying Terra from her utter destruction. Would grind her emotions to dust, if only to achieve a marginally better outcome.
It’s what she has always done, over countless lives. It’s also exactly what she would have done (and it’s what she should have done), except Theresa had told her—
“With the Tower of Babel…that we built, with our hands, you will never be alone.”
—told her she didn’t have to. Had looked her in her eyes and told her that she wanted to share her grief, aching, longing, and to know her on a level far deeper than she was comfortable with, and might never be comfortable with, but found herself slowly warming up to regardless because it was Theresa. And Theresa—
“The…Theresa?”
There is no warm reply, no teasing remark, or even an acknowledging hum. No soft smile, sometimes turned mischievous when they were alone, that would always appear on her partner’s face when she entered the room. Far away, she thinks she can hear someone cry out, and it might have come from her, but only the echo of her own choked voice bouncing off walls, walls that witnessed everything, answers back.
She sees her hair first.
The strands intertwine in disordered chops and waves, so unlike their usual elegance. They are loose, flat, and flow like lawless rivers into an ocean of blood.
From the endless sands in Sargon to the war-torn fields of Kazdel, Kal’tsit’s steps have never once faltered, but in this small, sparse room inside a landship, a landship that, in another life, could’ve been her home (as if it will ever be home now, not without– without—), she collapses like a puppet cut of its strings. For once, she’d found no strength in the legs that had carried her so far.
She opens her mouth, closes it, and forces it open once more in a vain attempt to just say something, anything, but her tongue feels like it’s suffocating her, and her lungs rattle, and she chokes on spit trying to breathe around the hole in her chest. There’s a black, hungry pit where her lungs are, and it’s consuming her whole and she can’t–she can’t say–can’t breathe –
A pathetic sound makes it out of her throat, and it sounds a lot like extracting the last sputters of air from a crushed balloon.
Faintly, she realizes, it’s cold. She knows it’s cold because she sees the cautus pressed to Th—
Th—
Her side shivering, and she recognizes it to be Amiya. The Doctor, a few feet away, is also on the floor breathing. She knows she should feel some resemblance of relief, or concern, should get up and take Amiya away before she wakes to the bloodbath before her, but when she tries to stand, her legs give out, and she stumbles forward into an awkward mess of sharp, bony limbs. She’s never been anything less than persistent, however, and she drags more than crawls her body closer, closer, and closer to…to what, she isn’t sure. She just knows she can’t bear being this cold, and so she crawls away from the cold gripping her legs and clawing at her heart, lungs, and throat, and closer to the warmth that lingers after gentle embraces and whose soft hands caressed her face and hair reverently. Whose hands held onto hers even when she had failed miserably, whose hands had countless faint scars pricked by sewing needles, and…
That were now ice cold.
Like she had been burned, she jerks her hand away, and can do nothing but look at the person she loves—loved?—while her hands stiffen like the statue slumbering in front of her. They go limp at her sides, and she can’t feel anything at all.
It could have been seconds. It could have been hours and days. All that Kal’tsit knows is that when she comes back to there’s still a statue in front of her (that won’t ever move again because she’s–she’s–). One of Her hair strands barely tickles her nose–when did she get so close?-and it’s part of the hair cluster She kept long, always draped over Her right side.
“Kal’tsit…” A voice calls softly next to where she lies curled up beside Her. When did she curl into her like this? It’s another question she doesn’t have the answer to, and one she doesn’t have time to ponder either.
She doesn’t have to look up into Amiya’s eyes to know who the one really speaking to her is.
“I waited for you,” She continues, “I knew you would come.”
“The–” She chokes on air and rising bile, but she needs to say something (anything and everything, because this is the last time we–) , so she attempts to rush out her next words, “I’m so-I should have-”
“I know. I know, Kal’tsit.” ‘Her’ eyes water imperceptibly, and ‘Her’ eyebrows scrunch together like they’ve always done when she’s upset and–it looks wrong on Amiya’s face. “...You’ll be okay. For the last time, please listen to me.”
She tries to, burns everything into her memory even, but for the first time since she’s woken up, Kal’tsit couldn’t care less about Terra.
“Don’t we have more time to say goodbye..?”
“...I’m sorry, Kal’tsit.”
After, time seems to warp in itself and, like she’s watching a film that fast forwards, rewinds, and stops on a trigger-happy director’s whim, scenes materialize before her eyes in bits and pieces. Her eyes scan over the plan for the Doctor to be placed inside the Chernobog sarcophagus one moment, then she stops and realizes she’s in a hallway, running her hand along the wall one, two, no, four times. Her eyes scour over Amiya’s check-up results before leaving her with Warfarin, and–wait no, was that before or after she held the emergency meeting–?
At some point in time, she’s on the floor again. Again?
Her eyes take in her surroundings, but the walls loop and curve in her vision. Someone is coming near, but they aren't fast enough, and the walls aren't answering her, and–and…and someone else had handled…
She looks straight ahead as the medical team confirms what she already knew before she even stepped into the room, and had already confirmed eleven times herself (before she was pulled away, given a blanket) because she just needed to make sure. Make sure that She was…
“Her Majesty is —”
Dead. Death. It’s not like the idea should be so unfamiliar to her, and it’s not, but–
She sees a crayon drawing framed to a wall that She hung up, one of the few decorations kept in this room, of Amiya, the Doctor, herself, and…Her. In that ideal world inside the realm scratched in with crayons, they’re all riding on the back of a burden beast, with Amiya at the helm and the Doctor tumbling off. Herself and Her, sandwiched together.
“Confirmed — at X:XX…”
She thinks she gets why She found it so funny, now. Funny enough to hang up and frame. Because, right now, she wants to laugh, even though she can’t even remember the last time she has. She wants to laugh until she’s dizzy, and…
“...Dr. Kal’tsit?”
She goes to touch her face and finds her hand comes back wet.
The next time her mind clears, she’s sitting in front of a desk. Her desk. When did she enter her office?
There’s a drink (it was probably warm at one point, but now it’s only lukewarm at best) in her hands, and a sticky note to “take it easy” attached to the cup. Even without her name signed at the bottom, Closure’s barely legible handwriting makes it clear who the author was.
Her hands tremble as she lifts the cup, and she feels her eyes stick together oddly, like they’ve been rubbed raw, when she blinks. She musters the strength to take a sip, but it’s less than a beat later that she’s retching, retching, and retching over the bin next to her desk, throwing up the nothing she’s eaten for the past few days (she can’t rest when there are things to do, lives at stake ), and even though she knows there’s nothing to throw up, her body still dry heaves and spasms as if to spite her.
Eventually, she wobbles her way back up, because she always gets back up (but not Her–she’ll never–). She absentmindedly wipes dribble and bile from her face and disposes of the still-full cup in the bin.
She needs to fix this. Fix herself. Deal with the crisis first, emotions last. But how can she, when She’s dying, bleeding out, and if only she had run faster, been by her side — She can do it, the process is part of her at this point, and she can start by looking at what paperwork needs to be done.
…But there’s no paperwork on her desk, as if someone cleared it away before she got here. Fog blocks her from remembering if she completed them, and she finds she doesn’t care–even when a voice in her head tells her she should–but it leaves her with nothing to do. She can't do anything. She's not...
…Not what? Not saving anybody, not helping. Not moving forward, as she has done time and time again. Moving forward to the future, the one that She had always…
(“Perhaps, one day... We'll be able to let everyone on this vast land fall into peaceful slumber.”)
But She’s not here. Not anymore, not anymore…She won’t ever be able to see the future She envisioned, and–and suddenly it feels like there are ants underneath her skin trying to tear her apart, eat her from the inside out, devour every inch of her skin, and meal off the bones that are left.
Before she can register what she’s doing, she’s clawing for purchase on her skin, heaving and shaking, reaching around her shoulders, gripping and digging into her back then her arms so tightly they turn bone white to get them out, please get them out–
Her claws pierce into her skin and she drags .
She pulls open a drawer of her desk and finds the contents disturbed.
Disturbed by a letter, with no sender written on it, but she knows.
Her hands shake as she peels off the seal, and she barely notices that she’s staining the parchment with her blood-crusted fingertips and claws.
Kal’tsit:
The moment you read this, the ending act must already be played.
She spirals.
She wakes up in a cot in the med bay and her throat’s dried as bone, and it takes all the energy she can find to just swallow (it hurts). There are sterile bandages wrapped around her arms and torso, and the wounds underneath don’t make her feel more than a dull stinging sensation as she checks herself over. She feels…not better, but not worse, either. Like the fight against her own body and mind to exist is paused.
To her right, she finds the culprit in the IV bag attached to her arm. There’s dressing secured around where the IV tubing attaches to the cannula. It’s attached–attached under her skin–it’s under her skin and she can feel it and she needs to get it out, get it out–
She abruptly grabs onto where the cannula lies lodged in her arm and–
“Oh. You’re awa–hey, quit that!” A white-haired vampire quickly grips her wrists and pins them to the bed. The clipboard she walked in with clatters to the floor. “Are you crazy?! Can’t you tell that’s just going to mess you up even more, what are you even–” Whatever thought she was going to voice dies on her tongue as she looks down at Kal’tsit’s face. She must see something, because her face shifts, and something close to, but not quite, pity takes over it.
Hah. Pitied by Warfarin, of all people.
“What’s wrong with you? Did you hit your head?” She says it almost sarcastically, but there’s an undercurrent of worry. Kal’tsit doesn’t bother answering, it’s not worth rising to the bait. Instead, she fixes Warfarin with something that only barely qualifies as a glare.
She lets out a heavy sigh. “What? Did you lose your vocal cords instead? I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s–”
Kal’tsit cuts her off, and her voice comes out dry, cracked, and more biting cold than necessary, “If you’ll unhand me, Warfarin,” she coughs, her throat finding revenge on her for depriving it of moisture at the worst possible moment. Her next words come out more wheeze than bite, “I need to get back to work.”
Warfarin pauses. She purses her lips and stares at her as if she can see right through her and her shabby, barely put-together frame holding her together. With how much Kal’tsit feels like a piece of smashed, broken glass, she probably could. She doesn’t say anything for a long time, but the expression on her face gives Kal’tsit a clear guess of what she thinks.
In the next moment, she lets go of Kal’tsit’s wrists, however, and Kal’tsit’s almost surprised it was that easy. She starts to get up–
A bright light hits her eyes. She flinches away, near hissing.
“Well, looks like your brain works after all. No obvious brain injury, at least.” She can’t see Warfarin from where her vision’s still adjusting to the sudden change in lighting, blinking the spots out of her eyes, but she can hear her shaking her head. “Do you even know the last time you ate? Showered? Slept? No, don’t answer that. You probably haven’t even slept a wink since…” She trails off, and she doesn’t need to finish for both of them to know what she’s referring to.
The moment her vision clears, she stumbles out of bed, startling both of them when she knocks into a cart and the supplies on it clatter to the floor in a disorganized heap. “Whoa–fuck, what are you doing?” Warfarin’s back in her space in no time, pinning her back to the bed.
“Mon3-”
“Don’t even think of trying to get Mon3tr to ‘kindly escort’ me out of this room!” Warfarin scowls and grips both of Kal’tsit’s wrists in one hand, while shoving her other at her mouth to stop the command (not like it matters, because Mon3tr doesn’t just listen to her “voice” for orders). “I swear I’ll get Amiya to come down and stare at you with her sad puppy eyes! She’s been worried sick!”
Amiya?
She halts. Bites the inside of her cheek. Her eyes move past Warfarin to the clock on the wall, and it reads six minutes past eleven. If it’s night– is it night? --she should be sleeping by now. She shouldn’t have to worry, but there’s something nagging at her in the back of her mind.
“Where is she?” she asks against Warfarin’s hand. It comes out muffled and hoarse, almost like it’s sticking to the glove Warfarin’s wearing.
Warfarin just gives her a strange look.
“...Wow, you’re really out of it, huh?” She lets out a breathless laugh, before finally letting up and turning away. “Do you remember what happened? You walked around bleeding all over the halls before collapsing. Moreso from overexertion than blood loss.” She turns back. “Amiya found you.”
Indistinct sounds and the feeling of the world turning on its head flashes through her mind, but she can’t remember–
Warfarin checks the time then, too, and swiftly flips through the chart at the foot of her bed. “We tried to send her to bed but her nightmares started up again.” She picks back up the clipboard she dropped on the floor and jots something down. “She’s been asking for you.”
(She hears the timid steps of someone approaching. A wavery voice calls out, “Dr…Dr. Kal’tsit?”)
“...but I can see that you’re not fit for anything but bed rest right now.” Her eyes sweep over her (her gaze lingers on her face, which Kal’tsit is sure is wrecked, then where the bandages wrap around her chest…Kal’tsit can’t even begin to think about that right now).
(She’s running over, now, and it’s not safe because there are red puddles on the floor and she could slip and possibly–
A small, warm body crashes down next to her, her white dress soaked with blood. She’s feeling for Kal’tsit’s pulse–like she had watched others do countless times in the wake of–
“...Are you leaving, too?” Her voice is so small. Too small.)
“Get yourself together, Kal’tsit. That girl still needs you.”
Warfarin looks like she has more to say, concern written all over her face, but there are still patients to tend to, still things to do, and to fix. People are leaving, and there’s been no shortage of issues as the landship expedited its course out of Kazdel. Warfarin, much like Kal’tsit, is overextending herself, but she still leaves clear instructions for the next attending physician on rotation as she leaves that Kal’tsit is to not be let out of the room until she has properly rested.
She can’t bring herself to find the energy to fight the order.
She closes her eyes.
There are still things that she needs to do, too. Amiya needs to be properly looked after, patients need to be taken care of, and documents for their entry into Rim Billiton need to be submitted. Warfarin will need to take a break soon, and more people will need to be scouted, interviewed, and brought on to the ship to fill in the gaps of the ones leaving. She can’t linger in her emotions any more than she already has when there are people in the present she still needs to see through. It’s what Th–
It’s what She would have wanted.
Tomorrow, when she wakes, she’ll grind the unnecessary parts of herself away.