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“I’m flattered.”
Cole steps up to the ledge beside Deacon, taking the offered bottle. “And why’s that?”
“I never thought I’d be the person the great James Cole chose to spend his final moments with.”
Cole’s eyes roll skyward. “I think the existence of these particular final moments handily disproves my so-called greatness.”
Deacon considers it. “That’s true. I guess Time Jesus is just a carpenter after all.”
“And a lousy one at that.”
“Amen.”
Cole takes a long pull from the bottle before handing it back to Deacon.
Waves ripple above them, a distant memory from a lifetime ago. They flash blue and sparkle white; and Cole feels sand, cold between his toes, tiny rocks digging sharply into his soft, tender skin.
But only when he closes his eyes.
In reality, the sky roils red, a bloody tide set on destruction. Time is folding in on itself, on everything and everyone, turning the world inside out and decimating everything it touches.
A fitting visual, Cole decides, for the storm that rages inside him.
He came to terms with Ramse’s betrayal long ago. He doesn’t accept it or forgive it, doesn’t even understand it -- not in any tangible way. No one person should be, could be, of greater value than humanity, but to Ramse, Sam is. A father’s love is something Cole could never accept as justification, but he can feel the pull of it, the temptation.
Cassie’s betrayal, though -- now that is something entirely different. It’s something Cole can’t wrap his head around, no matter how much he contorts himself. The idea that her own personal revenge was worth sacrificing the future is inconceivable. Humanity had one last chance and she sabotaged it. She betrayed the whole human race.
She betrayed him.
Tricking him, drugging him, abandoning him -- abandoning them. It’s all he can think about, all he breathes. In betrayal, out betrayal, in betrayal, out betrayal.
“You know,” Deacon says, the back of his hand wiping liquid from his lips, “I thought she loved you.”
Cole doesn’t respond, isn’t sure how to. Maybe because he had thought that too.
“I knew she didn’t love me,” Deacon continues, taking another swig, “didn’t stop me from confessing my own bullshit to her, of course -- but I was never under any delusions, not really. Even when there were only the two of us in the room, it was like you were there, hovering right behind her eyes.” Deacons chuckles, just a little. “Turns out it wasn’t you in there after all.”
“She’s not the same.”
Deacon scoffs at that. “And the fact that you thought she should be is what truly baffles me. Probably why I ever thought I stood a chance. At the very least, I understood her. She’s not some doll on a shelf.”
“No, she’s not,” he agrees, his own words echoing in his head, fueling the fires that nip at his ribs from within. Everything I’ve done is so you have a place to go back to. He’d meant it then, felt it then, no matter how she had changed. How they had changed. She was Dr. Cassandra Railly and she was worth fighting for. If he could bring joy back into her life then he would be doing something meaningful. He would be accomplishing something magical. He didn’t want her to be on a shelf -- but he did want her to be untouched, unmarred by this shitstorm of a world.
“But you think she should be.”
“I think she has a right to be.”
Deacon shakes his head. “She doesn’t want to be. That’s the only thing that matters.”
Cole’s life is hell -- has been since long before the plague. But Cassie was pure and she was light and she was love. She was everything positive humanity could hope to achieve. The thought of her in some alternate universe where the sun continues shining -- that was the thing that drove him to continue down this hopeless path, hope fluttering inside him like some stupid, gullible piece of shit who didn’t know the difference between reality and fantasy. Like somehow a piece of the boy Cole used to be was still trapped inside, laughter and joy bubbling, a constant simmer in the deepest recesses of his soul.
But now those waters have stilled, the betrayals of today sinking into them like a hundred shards of ice.
The sky buckles in on itself, emitting a terrifying crack, and Deacon passes the bottle back. “What do you figure, an hour left? Two?”
Cole takes another drink. “Less.”
The tide of destiny is rolling in and here he is, consumed by the betrayal of the two people he loved enough to keep fighting for.
His fingers dig into the bottle and he thinks of them, downstairs in their cells, locked up awaiting certain death. There’s a freedom that he envies to being unaware of the nearness of the crimson sky. He’s up here, with Deacon of all fucking people, drinking whiskey and feeling life pressing in around him. Almost as if the world is backing away from the bloody red death closing in from above and it’s squeezing him, crushing him.
The sky cracks again and Cole wishes for a moment that he could start all over again. From that first moment, his first moment, when she came around the corner toward her car, that’s when it would have to be.
And he would do it differently.
He would have to do it differently.
Because the second Cassie’s light had been extinguished, the collapsing sky falling in all around him had been a certainty.
His eyes close and he sucks in a breath, wondering just how many he has left until he takes his last.