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“I heard this will blow over in 15 days.”
The calendar had moved to the living room, for all sets of nervous and eager eyes to linger on, so the days could be meticulously crossed out. One square remains empty before the next, marked with a big, black question mark. At 9:30 P.M. it had not yet been crossed out, whether fearing an omen or because it was increasingly unnecessary the closer to midnight it got.
Frankly, Hellen found the tip kind of stupid. Maybe the woman in the wall knew something she didn’t, but Sybil had looked, and made increasingly less sense since meeting her. She retained her own sanity, even if with unwanted side effects, but she was doubting the other had completely stayed intact. What invisible timer was the eyestalk piercing the sky on? What did human time matter to this unfathomable being? Why that timeline? It was suspicious for its specificity.
And yet, she couldn’t help her own…not anxiety, but curiosity, seeing the clock tick closer. What sense did everything else this thing had caused make anyways? Maybe it really was on a timer, for all she knew, not like she had clocked in expecting to look to the sky and feel her face twisted like clay. Those freaks in the robes had been disturbingly dead-on in their premonitions of others’ actions, perhaps it was foolish to write off the metaphysical at this point.
In fact, from day one, her intuition had stayed steadfast in one thing: something good will happen. Easy to write off as hapless optimism, especially with no evidence to back it up and nothing but suffering to witness since it came to her, but it had rarely failed her in the past. If anything, it was a nice change of pace, to foretell something good for once. She typically only knew when the other shoe was going to drop. She just knew .
…Perhaps she has no right to judge, actually.
The energy of the apartment was different, the same tense anticipation of waiting to receive bad news she’s experienced many times over, and felt right at home in. Even as people tried to retain normalcy they’d established in this short span of time– picking at leftovers, brushing teeth, settling in makeshift beds…The air was tangibly different, thicker, suffocating. People spoke quieter, the TV volume kept lower, stared paranoid at the ceiling and floor and walls like they’d suddenly crack or sink in. Eyed each other for changes, even those already exposed, as if expecting a werewolf’s transformation.
She didn’t care. Let them stew, she had only one concern, and he was stood at the stove, hand still holding a rag he’d used to wash the stovetop, wiping away the remnants of a dinner that felt like their last. Not even moving, just staring into the burners.
“Sam.”
He jolts a little at her approaching. He seems to soften as she approaches. “Oh, hey.”
“I need to talk to you.”
That demeanor quickly crumbles. “A-alright, sure?”
Disappearing into his room would be an eyebrow-raiser before, but by now not so much, and it’s not like anyone had the mind to pay attention, to care. It had happened enough times he just knew what she meant, followed her in. She doesn’t lock the door behind them, even someone as unfamiliar with them as her could see the way the tension reached the kids, not understanding the weight but able to sense everyone else’s stress. She wouldn’t deny them Sam if they needed him too.
Without looking back, Hellen sits on the floor, familiar with the feeling of the tassel rug by now, used to his bedframe pressing into her back. Without saying anything, he sits beside her, looks at her looking at nothing at all.
For all her lingering on it all day, with naught a reason to leave the premises, she still doesn’t quite have the words she wants to say. She’s sure he knows she’s piecing together something, hasn’t said a word since they sat, patiently waiting for her. She appreciates it, given how much she’d dreaded this moment, has been dreading it for a few days.
“...It’s getting to everyone, huh?”
But typical for him, he can’t withstand the silence for too long, his nerves just as persistent as her difficulty with words.
“I’ve never seen you so…” Sam mutters when he settles on an adjective. “Unsure.”
“I both am and am not.”
“Me too. Kinda.”
Her skin crawls. Sure about what? Not what she’s thinking of, she hopes. Her body doesn’t help her here, trying to think of how to frame her question makes her stomach roll in circles.
“I mean, I guess we don’t…actually know if it’ll be over tomorrow, and what’s over even look like?” He says, adjusting position, sighing. “I keep worrying that, I don’t know, we’re going to wake up and the world’s exploded or something.”
“I don’t think we’d be alive to know that.”
“Heh. Yeah. But I don’t know what’s going to happen, and,” Hellen watches him swallow, brows furrowing, struggling. “It feels like the first morning I woke up and just knew something was off, even before Sybil warned me. Something’s just…different.”
“What do you think will happen?”
“I really don’t know. Is it too much to hope midnight hits and everything just goes back to normal?”
She’d squint if she could, baffled. “...Like Cinderella?”
“Pft. Can you imagine. It’d be nice to have the arm back, but I guess I chose for that to happen.” His hand comes to brush over his clothed nub, protected by a tied sleeve. “Not that I regret it. But you know what I mean.”
“Mm.”
The transformations, yes, that would be nice to undo. She would give almost anything to not look like this. Almost. It’d be good to undo the unnecessary deaths too, she supposes.
“So. What do you think is going to happen?”
“Something good.” The answer is automatic and sudden.
He laughs a little. “You said that before. What do you even mean by good?”
“Beats me. I just have good intuition.”
“I wish I shared your optimism.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Sam’s smile drops, he takes his lip between his teeth. Whatever sliver of levity that’d come to the moment is gone, crumbling back into uneasy silence. After a few seconds, he leans into her, head on her shoulder– almost, even sat, it didn’t quite reach. It should help and doesn’t, but it’s clearly bringing him some peace, so she keeps him there. It’s the weariest she’s ever seen him, even after every hardship he’d experienced thus far. What one would think would bring relief was clearly wracking him with anxiety.
She knows he’s ruminating on it too, but knows their concerns aren’t the same. She lingers on and stores away the feeling of his weight on her.
“I really don’t know. What if it doesn’t leave? What if we can never open windows or go outside again? But what if it does and we’re just left with…whatever it looks like out there.”
They heard noises sometimes, windows unable to completely muffle the outside. Laughs, screams, sobs, roars, shattering, breaking, and everything in between and combinations of. No one dare open the curtains to see the source. The apartment complex had gone unnoticed by the world outside, best to keep it that way.
“It’ll look the same either way. What’s done is done.”
“I know…” Sam sighs heavily again. “I know. I’m scared to see it, I guess. When this all first started I had an “over” to look forward to but it’s…not going to be over, is it? Not really.”
No, it wouldn’t. Hellen knew from the moment she’d looked at herself in the mirror and accepted immediately, bitterly what she was. All you could do was meet the moment, she’s never done anything different, and this would be the same as it ever was, just in a new, fleshy coat of paint. But for someone unused to the turbulence of impermanence and danger? She imagines it’s hard to cope with.
“...Is…that what you’re worried about? What’s out there?”
“No.” Technically. Did she care what the world looked like outside? Only minimally. They’ll figure it out. What she worried about… “...And yes.”
“Uh…What’s that mean?”
Fuck. It shouldn’t be this hard. For once, she knew with crystal clarity her thoughts and feelings, so strong that even her typical inability to separate her mind from her body couldn’t interfere. She’s never felt such a striking, bone-deep worry, after all. She’d never had a clear idea of what there was for her to dread, the darkness right around the corner, not like she did right now. She hated knowing what was to come.
“Hellen…”
She’s never had an issue speaking her mind, offering her opinions and advice on his choices, nor did she hold any particular feelings when he didn’t listen, never overriding his decisions. A good many times, he had even known better than her. She’d followed him every time. But just once this once, she wanted to lead.
For the very first time, Hellen was afraid of what would happen if he didn’t listen to her.
For the first time in many, many years, how many she can’t even say, she was scared .
“You can tell me anything. I mean it.”
Breath leaving her slow and heavy, blowing back in her face under the mask, she forces herself to look at him– Now worried for her, his head off her shoulder, his focus shifted from worry for the entire world in that moment to her. It adds to the wave of nausea it brings her to do so.
“...That ritual.” She has to drag her voice out of her vocal cords. “You’re going to the roof, aren’t you.”
Sam’s eyes widen for a moment, avert from her. He visibly tenses, mulling the question over, unaware she’s boiling. Not in anger, but it feels like the moments before your fight or flight kicks in, hackles raised like a dog. When there’s a noise in the darkness, a shadow through the light emanating from a closed door. Anxious anticipation. She had underestimated her anxiousness.
Near everything they’d done, everywhere they’d treaded, had been at the behest of the astronomers, of the masked man in the lobby offering possible salvation, or at the very least, meaning to their collective end. She’d believed it pure hogwash from the start, the nonsensical ramblings of fanatics brought about by the human mind cracking under the weight of the possible apocalypse. A painting, a tape, a story, a photo. Blood spilled, skin split, poisoned and shocked and stung and frozen and lit aflame. Sam had undergone everything that could happen to a person to retrieve those for them, those four who couldn’t muster the courage to throw themselves in danger’s way for their beliefs.
Hellen had followed, of course. Not out of obligation to them but loyalty to him. She thought it was stupid, but…She couldn’t not follow. She couldn’t risk him to the unknown. The thought not to had invoked the same exact feeling she was going through now, shook her to her core.
They’d asked, just yesterday, if he would join them for it. For the possible saving of the world, for the chance to ask why, for the chance to change it all. They’d placed a folded set of robes in his arm and told him it was fine to sleep on it, that they had the coming day to prepare.
That he had a day to settle his affairs.
They hadn’t said it, but she knows they meant it. They’d handed him the spare key to the rooftop and told him, at the first sign of light, they would step outside and communicate. Her hand had clenched her cleaver tight, giving into the bloodlust had never felt so appealing, so right, so warranted.
Sam was going to say yes, she knew this. And if she knew him, he would wait until the last of them had fallen asleep, and would slip out the front door and spare them the pain of goodbyes, just in case. He was soft like that, endlessly selfless like that, happy to offer himself on the stake to spare others the fire. If he couldn’t deny help to even the most monstrous among them, who would expect him not to for all of humanity?
And that was under the assumption these zealots weren’t just delusional. Sheep knocking on the wolf’s door to beg not to be eaten.
If that thing was here for a talk, wouldn’t all of this be over by now? They were playing on his selflessness, a sacrificial lamb. She wouldn’t allow it. She couldn’t .
“I…” Sam finally starts to say something. She braces, knowing she’ll have to make her case, unused to having to beg. But she will do what she must, even if what she must is to grovel. “I don’t know.”
…
…
“What.”
“I know I should . I’ve helped them this far, and if they’re right, if this is what it takes to get it to go away…then I should. I want to. But it’s just…
…What if they’re wrong ?”
Hellen doesn’t reply, stunned. He keeps talking.
“I…I want to think they’re right. I really really do. But it’s just so risky and, maybe when I was just some unemployed guy sleeping twelve hours a day I wouldn’t care…People depend on me now.”
Sam looks to the door, where all of his temporary inhabitants, as well as his permanent dependents, are just outside. She watches his expression harden, all sorrowful determination. The face he made watching Joel and Junior play, the one he’d made when Sophie asked if they could look for her mom. The look that said he was about to risk it all for a neighbor in need. Hellen admires it even as she finds it reckless and stupid.
“Joel has no one. Junior has no one. I’m sure someone would watch them if something happened to me but…I don’t want that. I don’t–” He swallows hard, getting choked up. “I don’t want to leave them. What happens if they’re wrong?...What if I look? What if I look and…”
Does she see tears in his eyes? Hellen’s chest feels tight.
“I don’t want to change. I just don’t. I don’t want to lose myself. Even if I retain my sanity it won’t be the same and…I like this. Not– Not everything that’s happened. But everybody I’ve met. I like saying good morning to everyone, I like big dinners at the table, and it’s overwhelming sometimes but when everyone’s there and laughing it just…”
God she wished she knew what to say. She isn’t good at this. She’s never been close to anyone like this, has had to even try to comfort someone. The only comfort she’s ever offered was a swift death in the absence of a slow one.
“Before all this I was just. Alive. I guess. No job, had to leave school, I just woke up and…felt lost everyday. This all sucks but at least I can do something. At least I make a difference. I didn’t know more than one guy and my landlord in this building til now and I've been here for years. But I like knowing them. I care about them. And maybe this is the chance to do that, for everybody, but…”
“But we can’t be certain.”
“Yeah.” Sam sags fully into her now. Though she was used to touching him, she hesitates briefly before putting an arm around him. He leans into it, into her immediately. “I just don’t know. I keep back and forth-ing. I feel so…selfish.”
“You did everything you could to help.”
“But what if I can do more.”
“It’s not your job to do so.”
“It feels like it is.”
“Because they chose you?” Anger at them reunites under her skin, seeing him picking himself apart like this. “What can you do that they cannot?”
“Fight. I guess. Those guys aren’t…meant for battle. Granted, I didn’t think I was either, but…I’ve gotten pretty good with a gun.”
“If they’re right, there shouldn’t be a fight.”
“I think they mean something else on the roof, ya’know? Who knows what the hell’s up there, can’t hide from the thing…”
She grunts, unconvinced. His attempts to make excuses on their behalf, his boundless empathy, only makes her grit her teeth tighter. “If they want to risk their own lives, let them. You owe them nothing.”
“...Yeah.” Sam closes his eyes, goes a bit limper, like this he’s more against her chest than her shoulder. She doesn’t mind. “I’m just…scared. Scared of what’s going to happen either way. Scared they’re right, scared they’re wrong.”
Sucking in a breath, he tips his head up to look at her, still pressing his cheek to her clothed skin. She doesn’t move her head, meets his gaze through the bottom of her mask.
“What…do you think I should do?” Not the first time he’s asked her thoughts, Hellen had become used to being his rubber ducky to bounce decisions off of. She was content with it, happy to help, but in this context it felt like racing to catch a bus. Reaching for a vase before it tips and shatters.
“I was going to tell you not to go.” And she’d spent nearly all day sick to her stomach over it, too. The pressure was slowly making its way out of her system, leaving her a little dizzy, but less agitated. The worst of it was over. “I think it’s a pointless risk. Either it doesn’t leave, or it does. And if it does, what difference does it make if you talked to it or not.”
Questions would always be around, but what were answers worth if it didn’t change the outcome? She doesn’t think that thing in the sky could say a single thing worth dying for.
“But we don’t know that. What if it won't leave unless we tell it? If I could've done something all along…It's everyone, everything on the line here. If this is humanity's last chance…If it could right things somehow…” A small shrug, but she sees it, the agony of decision and responsibility in his eyes. “I…just wish there was an alternative.”
That she had considered too. They wanted him because he “joined” them, because he was dedicated to their cause. But ultimately he would end up their protection either way. Anyone could do that, human or cursed. The latter especially. What did the Visitor have on anyone who had already looked? What more could be done after it warps your mind and body? What was left to lose, except what sanity you had retained?
What was worth giving up to save someone?
“There is.”
“Yeah?” Sam laughs a tiny, heavy chuckle. Not the reaction she expected. “You’ve always got a solution.”
“...Hmph.” The tips of her ears burn. “I suppose you don’t need to hear it, then.”
“Hey! Still tell me. I’ll take anything at this point.”
“If it’s protection they want, then anyone who has looked would be a better candidate. Someone still sane. Less risk.”
The evidence it couldn’t damage them further wasn’t a hundred percent, but that…man on floor two had looked at a photo of it and been no more worse than he already was. Suppose they find someone stupid enough to offer themselves in Sam's place and degenerate enough they couldn’t be made worse. Or someone with nothing to lose.
“Okay, I guess you have a point. Who do you have in mind?”
Hellen runs through the faces they’ve met, just as she had a few times before. As much as she would love to put Lyle up there, he was too cowardly. Jeanne couldn’t hurt a fly if she wanted to, too mentally fragile to withstand another exposure. Audrey wasn’t much a threat, nor was Morton. The former couldn't even speak. Leigh was just moronic enough to be foolhardy with her massive power behind her to be considerable, but was too much of a loose cannon to assign something important to. She'd probably just try to fight it.
“Thought so. There’s not really a good option is there, huh? That’s why I–”
“Me.”
Whatever Sam was going to say dies on his tongue. He pauses, processing, and then pulls from her, processing further. She lets him detach from her, looks back at the wall ahead of him, already knowing what was to come. She knew his disapproval was bound to follow.
“That's…not funny.”
“I'm not joking. The Visitor has taken my face, mind–”
She was an option she had considered well before this conversation, in the event she truly could not talk him down. How could he possibly stop her? He couldn’t, no matter how badly he wanted to. She was good at what she did, didn’t freeze in the face of uncertainty. She was dangerous. She was cursed. She had nothing before all this and never had, alive through instinct and circumstance. She had even less in the wake of the Visit.
Lest he forget what her hands have done, the blood that has soaked them.
She was capable of good, or at least, he seemed to think so. Why not let her do this then. Why not let her preserve a life for a change.
“-I am already changed. There is nothing more it could possibly take from me.”
She has nothing to lose. Not any possession, not any part of her being, body or mind or soul.
Nothing except for him .
Every part of her had been corrupted from the start, to die would be removing a stain. If Sam wanted to walk up those stairs he would have to step over her corpse to do so. If she did any one good thing–
“No.” She doesn’t waver, not even when Sam scoots back in shock. “No. I…No. Absolutely not. You can’t.”
“You asked for an alternative.”
“No. Not you. I won’t let you do that.”
Of course he’d be adverse to it. He cared too much, about everyone, even the strangers at the door. She wasn’t expecting his approval, only to gauge how badly he wanted someone to go through with it, so she could if someone must. She’d been happy to be an extension of his forces of good thus far, this would be no different.
Did she want to? Not really. Is she aware she is, objectively, the best candidate, if he truly thinks it will save everyone? Yes.
If only she could stop him? Without hesitation.
Sometimes you don’t get to choose, sometimes you have choose between bad and worse. This was not new to her, only the circumstances were.
“Hellen. Promise me you won’t do that.”
His voice…cracks? She looks back–
Oh. Sam was crying. Barely. Not more than just a wet gleam to his eyes, tears regardless. He crumbles to a kneel, hand winding itself in the fabric of her turtleneck. She stays sitting frozen, reeling, owlish stare darting all over with the spike of adrenaline as he yanks . Their faces are close, and like this he looks terrified . A little frantically, her hands come to rest on his shoulders, urging him down. She hadn’t expected a reaction like this, didn’t understand–
“Sam–”
“ Promise me you won’t. ”
“It was hypothetical.” Mostly, ignoring the fact she would have, had he asked. Had he not…whatever this was. She backpedals, something she’s not sure she’s ever had to do, knocked off kilter by the sheer intensity in his voice and the way he was looking at her. “I won’t.”
Especially not now that she knew he’d react like this. But it does return them to an impasse. She would not allow him either, would hold him to the floor if she must.
“Sorry. I. Oh my god. Sorry.” He lets go of her, hand flying over his mouth instead, surprised at himself too. Hellen doesn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until he lets go. Sam sinks back into a sit, against the bedframe alongside her. “That just came over me. I didn’t mean to grab you.”
“It’s fine.”
“But I mean it. You can’t, okay? You…just can’t.”
“ Calm down. I said I won’t.”
Did the thought of her going in his place distress him that much? She knew he wouldn't like this, but she didn't think he would to such a degree. Yes, she felt something like this, vehemently opposed to him sacrificing himself but it just made sense. He had people, purpose, a place. Even she knew that without him, the people outside the bedroom door, even the apartment door, would be lost and worse off. The loss of him would be as disastrous as it not leaving, as the world ending, he was…he was just too important.
…And try as she might, she cannot deny that without him, she…doesn’t know what she would do if he was gone. What was even left for her. That feeling was an old friend, one she was not willing to return to.
For so long she had spent her life convinced it was impossible for someone to see her, all of her, the ugly, the sinful, and accept her for what she is, in spite of what she’s done, what he seemed to think she was capable of. She worried if it would ever come to be, having to hide her crimes, having to worry if she would turn her blade on them, if the urge would arise.
She just can’t allow it to come to be. She’s not sure how to make him understand.
They just sit, Sam calming himself down, taking deep, even breaths clearly intended to self soothe. Her staring, struggling worse than before, now not even sure what she wishes to say, nonetheless how to say it. She runs over his reaction in her mind, tries to pinpoint what could have prompted it and fails. Something out of her ability, she fears, yet another little something not meant for someone like her, some experience outside her ability to feel.
The silence isn’t helping, she knows, as he apologizes again.
“I’m sorry. The thought of you doing that just…” He wipes at his face, sniffles loud. “It scared me.”
“I don’t get it.” If nothing else, she won’t lie to him. It’s all she can think to say, because it was true, trying to understand the mechanisms behind another’s feelings often worked but she was blanking. Worn down from her rumination, perhaps, or still in shock from someone like him being so unusually forceful. “I don’t understand.”
“...Are you kidding?”
Hellen stiffens, instinctively curls away a bit. She knows she’s missing something apparently obvious here, she is not unaware of this. She doesn't know what to do about it, how to find out. And now he’s giving her that look, the look he did finding out some cursed’s sob story, like she’s something to pity. A magnifying glass on an ant, she feels herself starting to smoke.
“You…you seriously don’t get it? What if you die up there? We don’t know for sure you’re safe because you already looked.”
“I am aware of the risk.”
“I don’t care about the risk. I care about you.”
She sighs. It feels like they’re going in circles. It's not like she expected it to be an easy or ideal choice to him. “I know–”
“No, you don’t, clearly. Because you won’t let me go but you apparently can’t imagine why I’d do the same.” Sam’s voice resumes the intensity he had before, albeit a great deal more stable, shaking slightly nonetheless. “You have no idea how bad it hurts me, imagining you going up those stairs and never coming back down.”
Hellen flounders at the response. “You said it yourself. You have people who need you, who will miss you if you don’t come back. If someone must go with them, then someone like me–”
“Who doesn’t have someone to miss them?”
She didn’t say it like that, but the point was the same. “Correct.”
“Do you hear yourself ?” He seems to resist the urge to grab at her again, his hand clenching and unclenching. There’s clear energy held back, unusually jittery, painfully restrained. “You seriously don’t think someone will miss you? That I won’t miss you?”
She sits straighter than she ever has, something foreign and strange forcing her taut. Of course she knew he would, at least a little, she might not be the most…emotionally adept but she would be a moron to not realize they were probably what you call friends. It was hard not to become something of that sort in the face of mutual fight for survival; Not including the time spent outside of battle, moments like this on his bedroom floor, sharing the kitchen, the couch. Going out of his way to check on her, ask about her. He knew more about her than anyone else had been allowed, had seen more of her than anyone was alive to see, figuratively and literally. His hands knew her body and hers knew his.
Maybe she underestimated the reciprocity a little, she couldn't imagine her importance to him being even in the scope of what he meant to her, more than she would ever let him know. But she hadn’t saved his life, he had no reason to share the same level of fervent loyalty. He didn’t have a reason to trade a life to spare another.
“I know it’s– it’s only been like two weeks, and maybe it’s just me but it feels like you’ve always been here. I’ve gotten used to you being here. I like you being here. You’re important to me. I…” Sam’s voice fizzles out, starting and stopping a few times, her no longer the only one struggling for words. It’s a cold comfort, watching his expression flicker between so many different unreadable things. “I don’t know what else to say. And you’re right, it’s not going to end either way. Whatever it’s like out there is going to stay. I wouldn’t of gotten this far without you– I don’t want to survive the rest of this without you, so…”
Hellen’s tempted to turn away when his expression swiftly turns so…determined. No, desperate . Fragile, maybe even deeply frightened. In place of winding itself in her shirt once more, his one hand finds one of hers, squeezes down on the unresponsive fingers stiff in his hold. She doesn’t even have the presence of mind to react or stop it had she wanted to. She can’t tear her eyes away, as much as the display of candid emotion unsettles her, warps the ground beneath her, reaches deep through her skin.
“Don’t make me imagine it. Please. Don’t make me have to consider what it’s like without you.”
And with that, Sam sags back against the bed, like the plea took everything out of him, and she thinks it had. He was distracted and world-weary before, but now it looked twofold, taking his very soul with him. She feels lightheaded, wrestling to absorb and process, conceptualize everything he’s said.
“As long as I’m here, you’ve got someone who will miss you. So…” Trailing off, his gaze settles on the window, still with blinds taped down, though their length allows a bar of light to escape through the bottom. What was golden-orange was now a deep, dark blue, not yet striped with moonlight. Another sniffle, and he seems to have grounded himself, his voice the firmest and most certain its been. “So fuck the ritual. If they want to do it, all the power to them, I helped enough.”
It’s a relief. The worry did not necessarily disappear, a faint warning sign in the back of her mind, but he would not lie to her, this she fully believed. But with that out of the way, she’s left with everything he’s said, still keeping her in place, having heard every word but repeating them inside over and over.
“But I can't risk losing you like that. I won’t go, as long as you don’t either.”
At first, it’s the total absence of anything, a confusion that was indiscernible from meditation, an unnerving calm. But slowly realization creeps in, as her perspective is flipped entirely on its back, no longer terms of practicality and who was most apt for oblation, but emotion. He…cared about her, but more much deeply than she considered, much more than a useful ally, or even a friend. This, she could at least understand, because he was kind to her, seemed hellbent on taking care of her where he could, went out of his way to make her comfortable, happy even. Because…
While she agrees, he initially hadn’t. It was obvious still he considered, with great worry, that to abstain from the ritual, to perhaps manage communication and reverse track, would be the suffering or even end of not just those in the building, but all of humankind. Of every living being on the earth, both exposed or otherwise sheltered from the Visitor’s gaze.
He was weighing her against all that, and picking her. For some reason unbeknownst to her, he was choosing her over the world.
From that absence blooms something indescribable, bizarre. Vaguely familiar, in the tightening of her throat and chest, invisible hands around each lung, muscles refusing to swallow. But distinctly different in that she didn’t feel the need to run, there was no sense of danger, of incoming, not a tension she only associated with the animal urge to bite when cornered. Warm but not burning, a different kind of adrenaline, her heart fast in her chest but limbs paralyzed.
There was the same urge to act that always came up to her, to transmute the sudden conductivity of her nerves into tangible action, release. Yet she couldn’t move, any imagined use of her hands felt wrong, except for–
“Hellen?”
Distantly, she realizes she hadn’t let go of his hand– in fact, she was holding it tight, her own trembling.
“I’m sorry. That was a lot. I shouldn’t have dumped all that on you…I just…”
Her head hurt, a growing vague but all-encompassing pressure, a spike of which ran down the curving flesh around her right eye. Her jaw ached, tight, attempts to move it failing. At the core of what felt like a full body seize was a faint hearth, something fluttery, something light– gentle, overcoming her but not wracking her. It was not often she felt something between nothing and being swallowed wholly. Somewhere foggy she registers the taste of salt, a drop of something emerging from somewhere in the warped skin that was once an eye socket, itching as it travels down to fall into her maw.
She hadn’t realized she could still cry. She can’t remember the last time she has.
“ Hellen ?”
Sam’s in front of her, leaning in and filling her vision, drawing her back from a million sensations at once, mind a tiny float lost in the sea. The concern in every wrinkle of his face muddies everything further, needing to make it go away. To not worry him.
“You’re worrying me, are you–
His hand starts to slip free, to do something. She won’t ever know what, because the second his knuckles drag her skin she panics, as though letting go of it would send him tumbling to his death. The energy slow cooking in her sinews needs release, and in that snap second decision, it feels as natural as breathing to draw him in.
He squeaks as he’s forcibly dragged between her knees into a hold, her arms crushing him at the waist, grabbing at his clothes like a lifeline. Every bit of her trembles, rattling out of her skin, clinging to him like it'll make it stop. She's supposed to do more, she's sure, but she's never held someone like this, knew only that she can’t possibly let go.
“Oh…” Hellen hadn’t realized she was breathing heavy, short, in a way that made her upper half squeeze. But even despite her mask, despite the hard plastic pushing into his clothed shoulder, he clearly knew what was happening to her. Behind her, his hand rubs circles into her back. The streaks in the wall ahead’s paint may way well be imprinted forever in her memory, unable to look away even now. Looking at him makes her eyes sting. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“It’s fine.” It feels as though her vocal cords are fighting the vibrations. “You didn’t.”
“I mean it.” Sam mutters into her shirt. “All of it.”
“I know.”
It’s easier to think like this– ironic, given another time, the touch would be a bewildering, even if welcomed, distraction, a ripple in her tranquil pond. Fingers tangling in and stroking through her hair, in place of closing them, makes her eyes droop downwards to the fibers of his sweater. Almost sleepy. She’s felt this only once before– the seconds before her transformation, when she’d experienced coming apart at the seams, gently separated into her various layers of skin and viscera, her brain segmented into it’s individual compartments, held together in the net of her nervous system. The uncanny, full-body calm of being delivered from her flesh, from worldly and human weights. Free of her past. But the Visitor hadn’t been so warm, so soft, hadn’t felt right in her arms.
Slowly, she releases her hold, fingers cramping and knuckles cracking. First just loosening, then dropping in a way that he’d be free if he only stands. Sam doesn’t, stays in the radius of her body heat, still close enough that she could almost pretend this was more for him than her. He seemed to need it either way.
“...I…I need to make sure the kids are in bed. It got late.” He doesn’t pull away as he says it either, trying to linger there as long as possible. “But after will you…I mean. Do you want to…spend the night in here?”
Even if she hadn’t wanted to, Hellen isn’t sure she could go much further, and the thought of being seen by anyone but him agitates her.
“Yes.”
“I’ll be back in a minute.” Sam gets up on his own, uses her for support, gives a weak smile before walking over to the door, closing it softly behind him. She resists the sudden urge to follow. He would not lie to her.
Instead, she busies herself, finally able to feel in control of her hands again, unbuckles her mask. The inside is smeared with tiny trails of wet in the middle, streaking down to the chin. Her fingers are stiff, as is her back as she rises, opens his wardrobe. He allowed the few scavenged clothing pieces in her size to be stored in there, folded at the bottom. The loose, breathable fabric is a balm on her aching muscles, happy to be freed of her stiff work uniform.
So long as she moves, she doesn't think, not as much.
Hellen sits on the edge of the bed and waits, turning her mask in her hands, only laying it to rest when he returns. He briefly smiles at the sight of her, and that tepid heat radiates from her center once more, briefly, like a hot flash. Changing takes him moments longer with only the one arm but he manages, her sliding back on the bed as he kneels onto it. The few times she has, she has to rest with her back against the wall, very much at risk of falling off with the fact that his bed wasn’t made for someone her size, and certainly not another body beside her. Stiff as a board, she watches him settle, eyes darting up to her a tad nervously as he makes himself comfortable.
As soon as the comforter is over most of them, her skin on the wall where her shirt rides up, she allows herself to do the same, though not easily. Before it had been awkward, sure, her unused to such close quarters but like anything else, she had pushed through it. It would be stupid to tie yourself to knots about contact after being bared so much, after he'd been all over every part of her. But this was different. It was different. Something winds in the sleeve of her sweatshirt.
“Thanks.” Sam mumbles, a day’s worth of stewing in unease catching up to him, sleepy. He tugs the pillow so they’re more evenly sharing it, she looks at it instead of him. “I wasn’t sure how I’d sleep tonight. In case…something happens.”
She wonders what he thinks would happen, but he was finally in some semblance of relief, and she doesn’t dare risk prompting a spiral. He’s done it enough, when he faced the fridge, a pot, when he thought the others were focused on the TV or their food. There but not present, somewhere else.
“Don’t worry about it.” She was being stupid. She forces herself to relax and mostly succeeds. Sam scoots closer, and with a second of hesitation, puts his face into her neck, under her chin. She inhales slightly and is too distracted by the smell of his hair to note if it’s caught. “It's not like I sleep.”
“I wish you could.”
“There’s worse things.”
Worse things indeed. He nods and closes his eyes. Only when they stay shut does she bring herself to look, observe him so close. There’s still minute unease all over, in his curled position and the wrinkle of his brow, but he was at least resting. Tentatively, when he’s motionless for several minutes, the arm not in his grasp comes to rest over his middle, she bends her legs more comfortably even if their knees knock together. Sam doesn’t move, soundly asleep. She exhales in relief.
“...I’m glad I let you in.” Or so she thinks. Hellen only keeps herself still through pure instinct. “Night, Hellen.”
“Goodnight.”
He probably hears the uptick in her heart rate, but makes no sign of it, sighs drowsily and progressively goes laxer until he can’t no longer. His breaths slow, spacing out further and further, until he is asleep for sure, a tempo she recognizes when she did this last. Experimentally, she presses her palm on his back, and he draws into her further, but doesn’t wake, slots together so there isn't an inch of space between them.
Emboldened, her hand lifts, stays stopped midair as she deliberates, before carefully creeping to his hair, fingertips touching down with his scalp before she scrunches slightly. There’s a big puff of air on her neck, but no stir.
All her eyes fixed on him, Hellen begins to pet, something slow and gentle enough to not disturb him. He still doesn’t stir, if anything, his expression softens.
Those previous feelings creep up her throat, but like this they’re easier to withstand. Like this she can consider them, in the safety of not being perceived, no expectation to react or reply, not that she blamed him. He could not possibly know the extent of the realization that had dawned on her, the fact that he had showered her in something entirely new.
Hellen can put a name to a few of the things running through her. Grief, for one, an old bedfellow of hers, but even it had changed: not mourning something lost, but something she’d never had until now. What she couldn’t name, she could sort by the impulses they inspired: to look, to touch, to hold and draw close. To feel for herself the softness of his hair, his eyelashes tickling her skin, the curve of his cheeks, thumb over deep smile lines. Somethings that made her crave this kind of casual, careless touch, relish in her body dwarfing his. The want for him to be there when he wasn’t, to hear him respond when she spoke. The urge to keep close, the desire to protect, something small in return for his kindness that grew and expanded into something bigger than she could contain.
She had some guesses, but ultimately, she decides, she does not need to test them now. The morning would come, but even she accepts the sliver of chance it may not. And should it come to be, she would want him to be the last she sees. She would want not to be focused on the knotted mess of emotions she couldn’t name or understand, but that which made him Sam. What she was lucky above words to have directed at her, to bear witness to, to hold in her hands.
Had she gone to the roof in his stead…
I don’t want to know what it’s like to survive without you.
For innumerable years she had been alone, had considered it her natural state, her chosen fate. To choose to take blood, to accept that part of her nature, was to doom herself to a life without human connection. She wasn’t a fellow human, she was a threat. The wide berth she was given was the fleeing of zebras from a lion. To be alone hadn't ever fazed her. And yet, now that she knew him, she's not sure she could last ever going back. She doesn’t want to think about what it's like without him, now that she knows.
“...I’m glad I knocked.” One day, maybe, she will say what she means as easy as he does. Perhaps some deeper, still aware part of him will absorb it. Perhaps she’ll just have to say it again when he wakes, when they face what’s left outside together, now that the words are familiar on her tongue. But for now she will let him rest, just as he made possible for her to.
Through layers of concrete, up many more steps, four tread onto the roof. Clutched in their hands are the attempts of humanity to understand its observer, to make sense of of what existed beyond human scope. Clouds part as it heads their words, takes them in, and then draws in their forms, stretching and intertwining, combining. Duplicating, separating, connecting, smeared and blurred into each other. Too late, it realizes they are individual, and the borders erased between minds and body begin to reform but wrong. Mouths disconnected from vocal cords, the wiring at times crossing just enough to scream. Eyeballs separate from optic nerves, momentarily bridging just enough to perceive their own new form and break back apart.
Fabric binds to flesh, becomes flesh, flesh stretches then tears then mends then warps over bones that crack and repair and then crack again. Too late, the being molding them realizes it for what it is, comes to understand pain and distress. Too late it tries to pull them back apart, but has already forgotten their original forms, had not even truly seen them. In that static state, minds almost fully gone work in unison once more to define themselves, redraw the lines in their souls, to distribute the changing mass between each other, to assign to various parts the components of themselves that did not overlap and cluster into one.
The wet, frenzied smack of limbs against the the concrete, the booming agonized trills that arise between gurgles and pleas go unnoticed by the sleeping forms below. The giant stalk pulls away from the sky, as the Visitor’s body leaves the planet, the clock of their plasticity begins to tick down. In those last critical fractions of second, something new and stable takes form; Its rubbery skin mimics the light of dawn that surrounds it, their various limbs fighting for traction on the rough floor. Their quivering noises quiet into silence, many new eyes beholding their new body. Through some innate reflex despite the freshness of their form they take flight.
Humanity sleeps, unaware of their new guardian as golden as the sun it greets.