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Noah and Elisabeth planned to be away for one week on a routine supply run and reconnaissance mission.
They were gone for three.
The delay happened for a number of mundane reasons. It had stopped raining so consistently lately; the weather disturbances caused by the apocalypse appeared to finally be evening out, eight years on. Jonas agreed to let them to launch their latest run during one of the new dry spells — it was easier to navigate terrain in the dry than the wet, and it also was a huge boost to morale to not be damp all the time. They all knew that morale needed a boost. But the dry spells were still unpredictable, and Noah and Elisabeth were caught in a deluge for the ages on day five.
The rain was so heavy, Noah joked it might wipe the world away again. Elisabeth did not find this very funny. They hunkered in a tiny old hunting cabin for two long days; Noah sacrificed his raincoat to patch holes in the roof. The rain didn’t ultimately kickstart another apocalypse, but it did destroy many of the old logging roads that Noah and Elisabeth had learned to navigate by. It blew out the few culverts that remained and triggered several landslides — Noah was frankly surprised there were still hills that could slide, after all the rain over the past decade — and generally made travel more confusing, more difficult, and worse in every way.
Now they were three days behind schedule. Not terrible. They had been late before. They radioed to Jonas to tell him about the delay and found that they could not transmit a signal. They assumed the nearest repeater in their makeshift network was down; this meant a harrowing excursion to the edge of the military outpost they were stealing electricity from, an inspection of the hidden repeater, and another two days’ delay. After all that, they found the repeater in perfect working order; their radios, too. And still they could not make contact with the power plant.
“Atmospheric anomaly?” Noah wrote in the notepad he and Elisabeth used to communicate technical terms to each other. Neither of them had ever learned how to sign “atmospheric”.
“Must be,” Elisabeth signed back, exasperated.
Now they were five days behind schedule with nothing to show for it. Noah suggested going back mostly empty-handed — he didn’t like to leave Jonas alone with Claudia for long periods of time — but Elisabeth shot the idea down. They were running out of rice, flour, and other staples. And now that they had to travel completely off trail, they needed to be more cautious — in other words, slower.
It continued to frustrate Noah that despite the fact that their lives were part of the most important trajectory of events that had ever happened or would ever happen, their days were largely filled with the minutia of simply surviving. He expressed this to Elisabeth, as he often did, and she signed, “Ok, then die,” as she often did and he laughed and kissed her because she was right.
They were further delayed by infuriating mundanities: The government had abandoned a storage site that they often stole from and someone else had cleaned it out entirely, so they needed to find a farther site to loot; it rained again and absent a waterproof coat, Noah became mildly hypothermic, and Elisabeth had to fix them shelter and a fire; Elisabeth’s backpack broke and they had to stash their haul, steal a new backpack, and repack.
Noah knew Jonas wouldn’t die in their absence, but still he worried. Perhaps something had happened to the antenna at the power plant. Perhaps Jonas had been kidnapped and Noah and Elisabeth would have to rescue him. Perhaps this was the moment of Jonas’s betrayal: maybe he and Claudia had run off to enact some other plan together.
“Have faith,” Elisabeth signed.
“Ok,” Noah replied.
On the 19th day, dog-tired and ready to be home, they realized they were being followed. This wouldn’t do. They made their route more circuitous, and laid an ambush for their pursuers. The pursuers were a gang of four young adults, perhaps Elisabeth’s age but younger than Noah, half-starved, undisciplined, and desperate for supplies. Elisabeth shot one dispassionately and two of the others scattered, but the downed one’s partner rushed Elisabeth with a rock, and Noah had to intervene. He was hit hard enough in the forehead to bleed, but he dispatched the assailant without further trouble. He even managed to recoup a raincoat, which he promptly put on, as it had started once again to drizzle.
So it was that they returned to their corner of the woods on the end of the 21st day: muddy, damp, exhausted beyond measure, Noah with a day-old head wound.
Claudia was there to meet them. She was hunched over a sputtering fire, evidently waiting for them, as she had perhaps done for some nights in a row now. Despite the fact that she was waiting out in the cold and damp for them to return, which really should have been somewhat touching, she still looked up at them with an expression that suggested she had just found shit on her shoe.
“Jonas hasn’t slept in three days,” she said by way of a greeting, and then she brushed past them and left, heading off to her usual who-knows-where. Noah glared after her.
Elisabeth grabbed his arm, drawing his eyes back to her. “What did she say?” She asked, signing briskly, clearly annoyed. Claudia often didn’t bother to sign when she spoke, which made Noah hate her more.
“Jonas hasn’t slept”, he explained, letting some of the worry he felt creep into his expression as he signed.
“At all?” Elisabeth’s eyes widened.
“In three days, she said.”
Elisabeth glanced towards the half-cracked bunker door, which was emanating light with a vengeance, and then down the path towards her and Noah’s cabin, which looked as dark and inviting as rest itself.
“You put the backpacks away and deal with him,” she signed. “He likes you more.” This last part she signed in a way that indicated it was an understatement, and with an eyebrow waggle to boot. Then she very deliberately shrugged her pack off, turned her back to Noah, and walked down the path towards their cabin, precluding any response.
She must have known that Noah would not put up much of a fight anyway. Tired as he was, he still wanted to see Jonas. He always wanted to see Jonas.
The bunker door was slightly ajar, at an angle Noah knew was perfectly calculated to be just closed enough to keep the rain mostly out but just open enough to allow some semblance of fresh air to circulate. It was a calculation he had made many times himself.
Jonas was poring over notes and diagrams at his desk, propping his head up with one hand. When he heard the scuff of Noah’s heavy traveling boots on the stairs, he turned halfway, then stood up entirely, and very quickly. A few papers fluttered off his desk in his wake.
Noah stopped. Jonas looked terrible: the harsh light on his desk did not flatter the dark circles under his eyes or the few-day-old scruffy facial hair he so rarely let grow. But this was not what froze Noah in his tracks. Jonas’s posture and expression was all wrong. He didn’t look happy to see Noah at all, or even angry that Noah and Elisabeth were late. He stood like an animal cornered, like a fox in a trap.
“You,” Jonas breathed. He sounded somewhere between anger and desperation.
Noah felt the hairs raise on the back of his arms. A slight thrill passed through him as the moment fell into place. He understood what was going on. He had sacrificed his green jacket for a black one and he wore this new coat zipped and buttoned to this throat. He must look to a sleep-deprived and worn out Jonas like his future self.
“Jonas, it’s just me,” Noah said calmly. He set the packs down and kept his distance. His heart still pounded. “Elisabeth and I are back. I’m sorry we were delayed. The radio didn’t work — the storm brought interference and it didn’t let up.”
Jonas let out a long breath and sat back on his desk, further disturbing his hurricane of notes. He put his head in his hands and pressed his fingers to his eyes like he had a fierce headache.
“Noah.” Jonas’s hands muffled his voice. “God. You startled me. I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“It’s fine,” Noah said, like it meant nothing at all to him. “I lost my jacket. I got a new one. Long story.”
Noah took off the offending piece of clothing and hung it on Jonas’s coat rack. He paused briefly to look at himself in the mirror by the door. The face looking back at him was still too young, his eyes still undefinably different than those of the man Noah had known when he was a boy. It was like the lines were there, but the content was wrong. His expression was still frustratingly open; he hadn’t yet figured out how to conceal himself in that enviable way. And of course, he was messy: he had three weeks’ worth of facial hair (still embarrassingly insubstantial at his age), he was covered in dirt, and the head wound was beginning to scab and bruise. At least he knew it wouldn’t scar.
Jonas really must be exhausted, Noah thought. He looked nothing like the man he would become. A strange, faint disappointment lingered in his stomach. He turned away from the mirror.
Noah sat in Jonas’s desk chair, purposefully brushing Jonas’s knees apart as he sat down almost between them. “Nightmares?” he asked quietly.
Jonas looked at him sidelong. He was still wary. From this angle Noah was looking slightly up at him. The desk lamp illuminated the plane of Jonas’s cheek and white scar on his throat. Noah thought that the scar stood out more somehow when Jonas was exhausted.
“About Marta?” Noah pressed.
Jonas turned away. His face plunged back into shadow and he answered Noah’s question with another question.
“Noah, do you ever want to hurt me?”
“No,” Noah answered immediately. It was not exactly a lie. He didn’t want to hurt Jonas. It was just that sometimes, when he thought about the possibility of Jonas getting hurt, he thought also about how it had felt to pull the rope off of Jonas’s neck on that terrible and fateful day in the attic, and before that, how Jonas had looked by candlelight underground, half-dead, while Hanno re-dressed wounds that an older Noah had exposed. In those moments, Jonas had been so perfectly helpless. There was something about that that Noah sometimes wanted back.
Jonas looked at him again, brows drawn together, eyes narrowed. Noah wondered if he’d answered a little too quickly and tried to keep his face perfectly blank.
“But you will want that,” Jonas continued, his eyes searching Noah’s. “In the future.”
For a moment, Noah was back there, the night before he had become a Traveler, the night his older self had hurt Jonas viciously for reasons that Noah was loath to admit he still didn’t understand. The very fact of the act’s savageness meant that it must have somehow been necessary; Noah could not imagine a part of himself that would want to do such a thing.
“Sure,” Noah conceded, holding Jonas’s gaze, trying not to look too affected. “And you’ll betray me, and so on. It’s not time for all that yet.”
Jonas scoffed and looked away again. “That’s what you always say.”
A thought was beginning to take shape in Noah’s mind about this line of inquiry. Something about the way Jonas’s voice had sounded when he had first seen Noah and said You. He swallowed hard and put a hand on Jonas’s thigh. Jonas looked down at him again. Noah tipped his head up a little farther, exposing his throat. “What about you?” he asked, his voice low.
He was pleased to notice that Jonas’s eyes fell to his throat immediately. Noah liked this little dance they did together. He shifted slightly forward in Jonas’s chair. Jonas opened his legs the tiniest bit and allowed Noah a little closer. His head bent nearly imperceptibly towards Noah’s upturned face, and he covered Noah’s hand with his own where it rested on his thigh.
“Do you ever want to hurt me?” Noah continued. His heart beat high in his throat. Jonas’s hand was warm over his own, and Jonas’s thigh warm beneath his hand. He had missed this while he was gone.
Jonas brought his other hand to Noah’s cheek and leaned forward. His body passed between Noah and the light, casting his face and throat in deep shadow. At the very edge of his neck the pale white scar caught the light as he moved. Jonas stopped a hair’s breadth from Noah’s lips; Noah felt their breath mingle.
“Not usually,” Jonas replied. The words ghosted against Noah’s lips. Jonas still sounded so conversational — it was deliciously infuriating. Then Jonas went on, quieter now. “But sometimes you really do look like him.”
Noah’s breath caught. He swallowed hard, which would have been impossible for Jonas to miss with his hand on Noah’s cheek.
“And when I do?” Noah murmured.
Jonas spread his palm out on the side of Noah’s face and pressed his thumb lightly against Noah’s head wound. Noah gasped and instinctively pulled back, but Jonas held him in place and pressed harder. The wound throbbed, and a tiny bit of light exploded behind Noah’s eyes, but it really wasn’t that painful - like stubbing a toe or bruising a shin. It was almost sweet. After a moment, Jonas let go and sat back to look down at Noah again. They were both breathing hard.
“Fuck,” Noah managed. He brought a hand to his forehead and came away with the barest bit of blood on his fingertips. The tip of Jonas’s thumb was also bloody. Jonas stared at his hand like he could hardly believe what he’d just done.
Noah surged upward between Jonas’s legs, took Jonas’s face in both his hands, and kissed him like he was starving. Jonas splayed one of his hands over Noah’s shoulder and beneath his shirt collar. Noah felt Jonas’s thumb dig into the space at the base of his neck between his collarbones as Jonas grasped Noah’s shoulder to pull him closer. Jonas’s other hand found Noah’s waist, grabbed his hip beneath his shirt, and pulled there, too. When Noah finally had to break the kiss to breathe, Jonas slid his arms all the way around Noah’s back and waist, hugging him entirely.
“You were gone for too long,” Jonas whispered. “I thought maybe something had happened.”
A small terrible flare of pride kindled in Noah’s chest: the thought that his absence could do this to Jonas had a compelling force as strong as gravity.
“Nothing can happen to me,” He said into Jonas’s hair. “We’ve been over this. I have to live because-“
“Your older self already exists,” Jonas finished darkly. “Believe me, I’m aware.”
They stayed like that for a while, just holding each other. Eventually Jonas broke the embrace and sat back again. Noah put a hand on each of Jonas’s thighs and leaned a little weight on them, still flirting. Jonas looked back at him, then drew his eyebrows together in consternation or wonder; Noah couldn’t tell.
“What?” Noah asked.
“I - “ Jonas started. Then, without warning, he reached out with one hand and touched the tips of his fingers to the base of Noah’s throat, between his collarbones. Noah became very aware of his pulse there, beating against Jonas’s fingers. “My thumb. I left your…blood. On you. I’ll wipe it off.”
Noah’s world narrowed to Jonas’s fingertips between his collarbones.
“No,” he heard himself say. He grabbed Jonas’s wrist, holding Jonas’s fingers against his neck. “Leave it. Please.”
For one second, for reasons that frustratingly eluded Noah, Jonas’s expression was crossed with a deep sadness that seemed different in quality than his usual general melancholy.
“Why do you want to become him so badly?” Jonas asked, searching Noah’s face. Noah looked away and dropped Jonas’s wrist.
What was there to say to that? Could he say that the instant Hanno, the boy who would become Noah, had first seen the stranger who was already Noah, he had both desperately wanted something he didn’t know how to name and felt like it had been handed to him right then and there? That knowing Noah had made him feel right, like he had an immovable place in an unfeeling universe, a path laid out for him that he could not help but walk down? That the moment Adam, and later Jonas, had called him by the name “Noah”, making it his, making him theirs, he had felt an inscrutable chaos inside himself resolve into a smooth unending circle?
The person I will become seemed to know everything. And I feel like I know just a little more than nothing.
“It’s simply cause and effect,” Noah said instead. “It has happened; because it has happened, the conditions which its happening put into motion will ensure it happens again. It’s not about what I want at all.” He glanced back to see how Jonas would take that.
Jonas huffed out an irritated breath and then started laughing. His was the unhinged laughter of the terminally sleep deprived. The light cast wild shadows across his face and Noah couldn’t help but smile, too, even though he was clearly being mocked.
“Oh, it’s not about what you want? Of course you would say that. You know, I think that’s the most bullshit lie you’ve ever told,” Jonas managed after he had calmed down a little bit.
Noah shook his head. “You need to sleep,” he said. “I need to sleep.”
Jonas glanced pointedly at the two full backpacks forgotten in the corner of the bunker.
Noah groaned. “Fuck off, they can wait until morning. And besides, Elisabeth will be awake then and she can pull her weight and help out.” He pushed himself backwards off of Jonas’s thighs and turned to leave, cuffing Jonas playfully on the ear as he went. “Or maybe you can sort the supplies now, since you didn’t come.”
“Sleep first,” Jonas quickly agreed.
“Of course you would say that,” Noah shot back with a grin. He donned his inauspicious coat in preparation for going out into the rain again and glanced at himself once more in the mirror as he passed. Still that same softness, made worse by the remnants of the smile he had just given Jonas still hanging on his lips. His shirt collar was rumpled and the top button undone. And there, sure enough, an imperfect red circle, Jonas’s thumbprint in Noah’s own blood, nestled in the divot at the bottom of his throat.
“Noah, hang on.” Jonas’s reflection came up behind Noah in the mirror, shrugging on his own coat. “Can I stay with you and Elisabeth in the cabin tonight? I’ve…well, it’s been a long few weeks.”
Noah ruined his likeness further by smiling fully and openly.
Of course. Always. Anything.
“Sure,” he said aloud. “I guess there’s room.”
They made their way together through the unceasing rain between the bunker and the cabin. Noah’s face and hair quickly dampened but his mood was implacable. He opened the door for Jonas in a show of inviting him in and Jonas affectionately thudded in to his shoulder on the way through the doorframe. The fire had burned to smoldering coals in the fireplace, flames long gone, but neither of them needed light to navigate this house anymore. They both found their way easily to the bedroom, where the small dark shape of Elisabeth sprawled across more of the bed than she should have by rights been able to take up.
“One second,” Noah said to Jonas. He climbed into the bed. His weight on the mattress woke Elisabeth, who blinked up at him.
“Jonas is here,” He signed against her hand; it was too dark to see very well.
“Not surprised,” she signed back in the same fashion. She reluctantly scooted to the right side of the bed to make room for the two of them; she had clearly been luxuriating in having the bed to herself.
Noah took his shirt and pants off and settled on his back in in the middle of the bed, pulling the covers over himself. Elisabeth curled against his side and he put a hand atop her head. Jonas stood by the side of the bed for a second, always somewhat shy at “intruding” on the two of them, but Noah patted the mattress with his hand impatiently until Jonas got over it, shed his own shirt, and climbed under the covers too. He turned his back to Noah, but one of his hands stuck out from behind him, and his fingers found Noah’s.
Here, in the dark, with the rain drumming on the roof they had repaired together years ago, Noah could not help but feel something deeply peculiar: a sense of rightness that rivaled the moment he had seen his own future for the first time. He was overcome with a desire not for the next moment and the next moment, but for this moment and no other. Truth be told, when he had first seen himself in the mirror earlier, he had had some slight difficulty recalling what his older self had looked like to compare. His own future face; his father’s face; Adam’s face; these memories and premonitions were slowly being subsumed in Noah’s mind by such mundanities as Jonas’s focused stare as he jotted down notes and figures, Elisabeth’s grin as she shared an interesting passage in a book she’d been reading, and yes, even Claudia’s brusqueness and dismissiveness that in his more charitable moments Noah suspected were an attempt to maintain an emotional distance that sometimes failed.
Noah knew that these thoughts were an incredible failure and weakness on his own part, an offense to his duty, to the prophecy, and, ultimately, to Jonas. But as he lay there with Jonas on his left and Elisabeth on his right, he could not help but wonder, How much better could Paradise really be than this, right here, right now?
The ghost of Jonas’s thumb in the hollow of his throat still weighed heavily on him, but like a lover drifting off to sleep on his chest, not like a burden to be carried. He wondered if his future self had experienced this moment, this crisis of faith. And then, just as he fell asleep, he caught himself thinking something so blasphemous that he knew that he would never, ever speak of it. Not to Elisabeth, not to Jonas, and certainly not ever to his younger self when and if the two of them were to meet.
Maybe my future self didn’t experience this. Maybe this moment is new. Maybe it’s mine alone.