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Human beings are so very fragile. Don Quixote sees hundreds of them die every day in the military hospital set up on T Corp’s borders. Red is always the color that’s dulled less by the Singularity, and oh, how it burns into her mind. She keeps that in the back of her mind as she swipes a sample from the storeroom, trying to swallow it as she swallows her guilt.
And then she’s back out, serving the dying, praying that she can save at least one. Just one. One at all.
Most days she can’t.
She and Heathcliff are security here, only to see direct combat if the worst comes to worst. But nurses are short-handed, and the flood of injured and dying is endless. Don Quixote has learned every suture in the book. She’s learned the fastest way to clean a bedpan. She knows the differences between various antiseptics and their applications and drawbacks. She knows how to best hold down a patient that’s screaming and flailing and sobbing. She has half a mind to go to medical school when this is all over. She’s learning she has a gift for it.
She hates that she knows this.
It shows when they return to the boarding house and there’s no jokes she can make that can keep a smile on Heathcliff’s face, and she admits, she’s starting to lose her flair for the humorous as well. She tries regardless, and the small smiles he gives are worth the effort. He’s worth the effort.
As far as they know, they’re the only two that stayed together. The others they haven’t heard from in at least a decade. Alive or dead, neither of them could say. With nowhere else to go, they had claimed the empty, yawning Wuthering Heights, but the ghosts made it difficult to stay put. Thus, they picked up Fixer licenses and wandered where they were needed. At least, until the war started. And here they were stuck, unless they wanted to risk crossing borders.
A family of twelve has become a family of two. And the silence of that number weighs between them. There’s an unspoken wound when Heathcliff stares off into the distance, the way he dismisses hope so readily. Something unfinished. Something undone. And he’s never explained it, but there’s a shadow looming between them, threatening to suffocate them both.
She doesn’t ask. She can’t bear the thought of losing him, too, the only other person that called her kin now. She curls next to him on the couch, letting the quiet overtake them. Awkward, uncomfortable, exhausted silence.
Every single day they ride the train car to work, and every single day she watches people die. This is nothing new. She’s been a killer all her life. And yet, she tastes it in the blood she steals. Exhaustion. Hopelessness. Fear. Worn down to the bone, the nurses barely have time to know a patient’s name. Don Quixote tries to memorize each one, and finds herself failing.
At the end of the day, she runs her fingers through Heathcliff’s hair and tries to mask the guilt. If she can comfort him, she can say she’s done some good today.
Her fingers trace along a streak of gray, barely noticeable, and yet powerful enough to give her pause. Her hands stop.
“Y’alright, lass?” Heathcliff straightens his head, pulling the gray from her view.
Thunder roars in her ears. Don Quixote forces her voice to stay even. “Verily,” she says, “it is naught but a rogue observation. My mind doth wander, the lunatic that I am becoming. Let it trouble thee not.”
He turns to her fully, mouth pulling tight, and unbidden, she notices the way his expression digs deeper grooves into his face than usual. “You just gonna bite it down and act like it ain’t eating you, then?” he says. “Give it here.”
“It is a trifling matter, and I would not have it wrinkle thy brow so. A smile better becomes thee, I would think.”
He grabs one of her ears, tugging until she complains. “You’re a shitty liar.”
“Thine accusation is unfounded!” She tackles him then, shoving him back into the arm of the couch. He meets her with equal ferocity, and they tumble head-over-heel, falling off the couch onto the floor. They tangle, not as intensely as they might if there were more room in the tiny room, but hands still go for throats, teeth still meet flesh, and at one point Heathcliff grabs her round the head and tries to force her into the ground.
Neither of them hurt the other, though. The bites are light, the hair-tugging playful. And when it ends, she sits across his chest, lording over him. “A true knight is graceful in triumph,” she declares, “and thou shalt be forgiven for thy foul tongue.”
He scowls up at her. “Name your terms, then.”
“Thou shalt smile for me, as befits a companion.” She pinches his cheeks. Though his mouth turns upwards, his brow remains knit. Don Quixote clicks her tongue and runs her fingers along his brow. “Thy furrowed countenance shows falsehood. Be thee merry, e’re I kick thine ass again, young Heathcliff.”
He snaps at one of her hands, as if he were some sort of crocodile. “I went easy on you, lass. You want to piss me off?”
“Nay, my dear squire.” She pushes his cheeks in then, pursing his lips. “I wish only for thy continued bliss. Thou art quite dear to me, and I would have thee know contentment.”
He makes a loud fart noise with his lips, to which she puts her palm on his face and lightly shakes his head.
“Mock me not, young Heathcliff! My heart cannot take such cruelty!”
“Can’t be nice, can’t tease you.” Heathcliff rolls his eyes, then grabs her wrist and pulls her hand away. “Let me up, lass, this is actually starting to hurt.”
She helps him back to his feet, noting the way he runs a hand over his back and groans. Her stomach wrenches. Her smile falls, and of course he notices.
He loops an arm around her shoulder, his voice becoming almost gentle as he meets her gaze. “Look, whatever it is, I’m here if you need to talk.”
She swallows. How can she tell him that it’s beginning to sink in, that as each decade passes, the hour counts down until she will need to say goodbye to him? He has changed so much in the past decade, and as she stares up at him, she sees it so clearly. His face marred with stubble he hasn’t shaved. The faintest lines along his mouth. Gray hair that will slowly overtake his entire head.
He will one day be unable to wrestle with her. The floor will be impossible for him to get up from. He will lose the strength in his limbs and become so frail that she might have to carry him everywhere. Young Heathcliff will be eternally younger than her, but his body will age and break down and fail him. Would his mind follow? Would he forget how they met? Would he forget her name, her voice, the touch of her hand?
His thumb brushes against her face. “Ah, lass, don’t cry. Is it that bad?”
She swallows. “Yeah.” She can’t even manage a speech, because saying more than that would let it all spill out.
Heathcliff’s arms close around her, and she leans into his embrace, holding back the urge to sob. Blood pulses beneath his skin. Muscles that are strong now, but will one day begin to decay. So long as she stays here, she will watch him die, day by day, minute by minute. She has a vision of herself in fifty years, standing above his coffin, unchanged.
Alone.
A thought occurs to her as she buries her face in his shoulder. It needs not be this way. She has the power to stop it, to hold back nature’s cruelest jape. She has no kindred. She could keep him forever, ever her companion, unable to be taken from her by any force so long as she maintained the power to protect him. She would never have to say goodbye.
His hand runs through her hair. She blinks back tears, and so too dismisses the thought. Heathcliff cannot know this cursed life. She could not do that to him, could not even give such thoughts voice, because she feels as if she were to say it, he’d agree. And he’d do so not knowing the full extent of what she’d ask of him, but because he’d want her to be happy. Heathcliff would sacrifice everything for her, wouldn’t he?
She could not allow that to happen.
Pulling back just enough so that his hands rested on her shoulders, she wipes her eyes with her hands and then grins up at him. “Thou art truly a gentle heart, squire of mine.”
“Psh. Whatever.” He looks away, and she laughs.
“For thy love alone, I would capture the moon.” She pats his cheek, drawing his eyes back to her. “Know it true.”
“…Yeah.” He sighs, claps her heavily on the shoulder, then pulls away. “I’m getting off my feet. Been on them all bloody day.”
“I shall join thee,” Don Quixote chirps. “Thou promised that we should play a new game tonight. Has thy mind recovered from today’s ordeals?”
“No,” he grumbles, “but I won’t hear the end of it if I back out, will I?”
“Never!”
For today, she’s resisted the call of her nature. But when she lies in bed that night, she wonders how long she’ll be able to stand it. When Heathcliff’s face shows true signs of wear? When he falls asleep on the couch under her daily care of him? When she counts the gray hairs more numerous than brown?
She wrenches her eyes closed and tries to push back the thought of his hand covered in spidery veins and thin enough to see bone.
“I will not. I must not.”
She whispers it as a mantra until sleep finally takes her.