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Somewhere at the end of the longest day of a series of incredibly long weeks, Erika’s able to step down from the control room.
Mark comes in from the secondary bunker, says all the right things, and expresses his sympathies about the General. “You should rest.” He says, and his smile is so warming, so genuinely kind, that she feels like she can finally relinquish the room to him. He's a good man. She's never been more thankful that he's her VP.
“Don't you set the place on fire while I'm gone.” She says.
“Think you'd be able to handle that even if I did.” He replies, with a squeeze of her hand, “Rest up.” She watches him as he goes, taking the room and the new shift over with immediate efficacy. A good man. A trustworthy one. They’re going to need a lot of them going forward.
Two steps down the corridor and it hits her, all at once, exhaustion rolling across her shoulders and down her back. She sags against the wall, body limp, feeling her feet fall out from under her, and would stumble if, “Not the moment for that, I don’t think.”
Jan’s breath wafts across her cheek as one arm comes up behind her back to steady her, and she finds her feet again. Her wife’s embrace is so utterly comforting that she could sob.
“Hard pressed to find a better time.”
Jan rubs a consoling thumb across her side and steers her towards her rooms. It’s for the best. Can’t have people talking. Even after averting the end of the world there’s still time for gossip, and… well. It’s always at the forefront of her mind, their secrecy. Even now.
“I can’t believe…” The words get caught in Erika’s throat, and she can’t finish her sentence.
They’d been so close to oblivion.
Now, the recovery begins. She settles on, “I can’t believe that maniac did it.”
“Hunt?” Jan says. She swipes open their room with her keycard, twists her fingers in Erika’s, pulls her through. “You trusted him. I figured he would. You’re hardly wrong.”
She laughs. It comes out exhausted, weak. A fragment of what she was. “Baby, I am so often wrong.”
Her fingers can barely even make purchase against the buttons on her blouse, slipping and sliding as she pushes them through the holes one by one. Jan takes over, after a moment, pulling the pearl-inlaid buttons free. Her hands don’t shake; but she’s always been a rock.
“You slept?” She asks, her hand drifting down, infinitely slowly, it seems, to land on Jan’s collar. The fabric feels like nothing under her fingers. She’s just drained.
“I had a few. Somehow. When you were on that conference call.”
Somewhere between the hours of - oh, Erika can barely remember. In the haze of exhaustion, it all could be a dream. “Good.” She says. It’s slow. Inconsequential in the scheme of things. She could sleep for a thousand years but also isn’t sure she could sleep at all.
“Do you think you can shower?” Jan asks, but her feet are rooted to the ground. Distantly, she realises she’s still wearing her heels and her soles ache, but she can’t even bring herself to reach down and pull them off.
Exhaustion is tricky. It gets people killed.
She doesn’t have enough energy for her hackles to rise. “I’m… not sure.”
“You have blood on your hands, love. I think we should try.”
Blood. It had been the General’s- it had been Sidney’s. She’d held him as he’d died. They’d never really liked each other, had butted heads constantly, but he’d had integrity, and he, too, had been just like them all - a good person, caught in the wrong circumstances.
Penning the letter to his wife, if he had one, is another mountain on the horizon.
Erika just about manages to hold it all back, but the pounding of the hot water on her shoulders lets it loose the moment she drags her weary body into the shower. Her eyes sting as Jan presses gentle fingertips across her scalp, whispering plaudits she would refute if the world still had edges.
Her shampoo is somehow too sharp, too cloying, and she tries not to gag, stabilizing herself against the wall. All in a moment, the water pouring down her back feels like needles, the drops roaring in her ears. She breathes sharply, choking, panicking, throat burning-
“Erika?” Jan’s voice cuts through, and suddenly, she can breathe again.
“Been better.” She whispers.
It’s then that she remembers she’s not called her son, and steps wrongly on the floor as she tries to leave the shower, but-
“I called him.” Jan says, and pulls her back against her chest, hands so soothing against her hips that it cools her some. They do not pressure, she does not push. “And then I texted when he didn’t answer and he texted back immediately. He’s fine. ”
“That boy needs to pick up his phone.” She replies, voice cracking, and immediately starts to sob.
There’s two texts from Bene when she checks her personal phone, vision hazy, limbs slumping down into the average comfort of the base’s bed.
Jan told me to text you
I am fine
Then:
Well base is crazy but thats a whole other thing and anyway miss u mom hope u are ok
She laughs, chokes on a sob. She doesn’t even know where to begin.
I miss you too, baby. I love you, is a fairly good start.
Even the world’s best soundproofing doesn’t keep the sounds of the base at bay. Erika tosses and turns her way through the night, sleep elusive despite the exhaustion, and never truly manages to fall asleep, but Jan holds her all the while, and the smell of her soap and the scent of her hair is almost enough.
Tomorrow, they begin to draw the world back from the brink. It’ll be an exercise in tolerance, in kindness, in strength and communication. It’ll take time, and she is scared, deep down to her toes . She has never dwelt on aging, but flat on her back in the bed two hours south of the apocalypse, she’s never felt older.
But tonight they’re together, and they’re safe, and her son is safe and the world is safe. Tonight, they’ve got this.