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The bonds of flesh are undone.
Let names perish; let souls be opened.
You within it, I within it, it within all.
Blood remembers. Pain sanctifies. Love consumes.
Beneath flesh, beneath heart, and beneath eternity…
We are remade. We are reborn. We are family.
The last words of the consecration are like bile in the back of the Surgeon’s throat, squeezed out of them by the diseased tomb of God’s corpse as it caves in from all directions. The Surgeon’s desk splinters into pieces; Mellow, formerly Rodger, is tossed bodily out of his armchair, hitting the floor with a soft, wet thud. The smell—rank, oxidized blood and viscera—is thick and suffocative…or maybe it is just that the Surgeon is, in fact, suffocating in rapid fashion.
One hundred years old by this point, he’d told the boy. A long, persevering, painful life, only to be snuffed out in a blink. It’s almost merciful. It would be, were it not for the unfortunate necessity of Mellow’s presence, and the palpable terror radiating from him in waves. No amount of reassurance that this would be a beautiful death, that his friends and countless unknowns would be able to live on, would ever be enough to quell the fear instinct of such a small, vulnerable boy. For as much as the Surgeon has worked to make themself less of a person, unchristening themself and replacing everything but the bare necessities, the sight of a frightened child in pain will never not wound them deeply.
Their last moments are brief. Mellow’s huge eyes find the Surgeon. There is a hand on his. The walls quake as Mellow buries himself against the other human, face screwed tight, not a sound from his lips.
But then he does speak. One last thing between them, said in a desperate wail.
“I love you, Mr. Surgeon.”
It carves through him like a blade, as though he were still made of flesh and muscle. The Surgeon cups a hand to the back of the boy’s skull, right over where his own work had left a large but neatly-done line of stitches. His mouth is open, but no words come out. No opportunity for it. Just a burst of sudden clarity in his long-plagued mind, and then nothing.
It is utterly unceremonial, his death.
It is a brusque epilogue to a life of detachment, hard work, and few passions. A life committed to saving others and occasionally ruining them. Decades of tedium, regret, and heartbreak. And this last act, what was supposed to be their penance, a last-ditch effort at the selflessness they had once worn proudly on their sleeve, only feels like it’s par for the course. One last regret to cap off an existence rife with them.
For the greater good has never felt more like a great big cosmic joke at his expense.
For brusque and unceremonial, it is also unbelievably painful. The red-hot kind of pain that makes vision tunnel and blacken at the edges. Visceral and agonizing.
The Surgeon has done many things for which such pain could be righteous atonement.
But the nine-year-old boy, doomed to save the world that has been only cruel to him? Nothing could justify it. Mellow doesn’t deserve this, and the Surgeon knows it.
It is this injustice that he is still pondering when he inexplicably wakes up with Mellow’s name on his tongue, prone on a cold floor. Though he does not need air and hasn’t for a long time, he gasps for it like his body has lost where it is in time and space.
“This is…” He trails off. The Surgeon plants a hand beneath him, shaking as he bolsters himself enough to get his knees under him. His vision swims, cracks in the floor becoming intricate spiderwebs.
“Is this hell?” They mumble to themself.
They do not expect an answer.
“We found your soul among the dead.”
Two voices that the Surgeon has not heard express anything but agony for many years now speak in perfect synchronization. When he looks up, he finds them standing on their own three feet not four meters from him, as natural as if they were born that way. Each set of hands clasped together, his loves’ four eyes are devoid of suffering, staring at him instead with cool collectedness. Their faces have healed, restored to their original states.
“You’re…standing,” the Surgeon utters. “You’re breathing without my machines. The brain scans…You’re alive.”
“We are new,” they say in unison. “We are no longer mortal. Your efforts were not in vain. You made us whole again, and now we are together as one, as God, forever.”
The Surgeon does not realize they have begun to weep until they open their mouth to speak and sound waterlogged. “It’s been so long.”
The bride pauses. “This was your ultimate goal. Why aren’t you rejoicing?”
“I’m happy, I’m happy,” he sobs, a mantra to himself as much as the women. He swipes at his eyesockets. “I thought I might never be able to speak to either of you again, after the procedures. I was young and foolish and full of myself. By the time I truly honed my craft, the damage was irreversible. I never wanted it to go so wrong. I wasn’t sure the sacred rite would even work, given my mistakes, and I knew you would not forgive me for what I’ve done.”
Then the reality of his surroundings—of his ability to cry and talk—land.
“Where am I?” Then, “Where’s Mellow?”
His bride inclines their heads. “Safe with us. Like you. Not living, but not yet dead.”
The Surgeon sags with relief so severe they could vomit, nearly prostrating on the floor.
“Good…good,” he breathes into the ground. “Please, kill me if you like, but save him if you can. I dug this grave. He never asked for this. He’s just a boy.”
There’s a miserable silence.
“Do you want to die, Elijah?”
The sound of a name no longer used hits him like a physical blow. He lifts his head, as if searching for the intent behind the question with his eyes. “What I want is irrelevant. I’ve done enough to this world. I broke my oath.”
Their heads jerk, mop of dark hair tossing as bicolored eyes glower with fury. “So you take the easy way out rather than face your crimes like an honorable person would? The Elijah we knew would never run away like a coward. Pathetic.”
Their lambasting of the Surgeon echoes, the last syllables ricocheting around the nondescript chamber. He flinches in surprise.
“This is my penance,” he insists. “To die for you.”
To his surprise, his bride laughs, like a musical arrangement of both Marie and Sheila’s laughter, as sweet as it was over half a century ago even when at his expense.
“Your pity doesn’t vindicate us, you silly boy!” they say with a sneer. “Not once in that bleak, endless time did your isolation and moroseness soothe us. We are together as we have always wanted, while you flagellate yourself for an audience of zero. We loved you while you presumed hatred. We loved each other while you sulked.”
Shaking his head in disbelief, the Surgeon exclaims, “I put the people I held dear through decades of torture.”
“Our purpose came with a cost,” says the bride. “We paid for it.”
The Surgeon’s arms hang limp at their sides, at a loss. They had dreamt this conversation dozens of times, and it had never gone like this. He can’t even conceive of what to say or do next, for what else is there to say or do?
As if privy to his thoughts (and maybe they are), the women go on. “There are people who will need your knowledge and care. More than that, there is a boy without a true guardian who adores you like one. And you mean to leave him behind?”
“He has…capable friends. A bonafide guardian angel, at that.” The Surgeon sighs, servos whirring. “He will be fine without me.”
“He seems to disagree. You were the first one he asked for.”
“R—Mellow is a child,” he says doggedly, swallowing on a hitch in his voice. “He doesn’t understand what’s best for him. He wanted lithium just because I wouldn’t let him have any, for heaven’s sake.”
“Love is one of the only things a child so young can truly grasp,” his bride replies softly. “He loves you. And you need to be there to love him, as we know you do.”
The Surgeon is silent, mind ridden with anxiety.
“What do you want us to tell him? That you hate yourself so much that you would rather die than be with him?”
Something akin to nausea churns, imagining his boy’s face if he were to be told something like that. “N—no. Never.”
“Your death is not the merciful act you think it is, Elijah.” The bride’s bare feet shuffle across the hard ground, before hands alight on the Surgeon’s face, angling it upward. Years of pain and lurking in the dark have done nothing to dull the women’s beauty, only take something that was once soft and sharpen it into something striking. On one face, the wizened eyes of a fellow medical practitioner, and on the other, the stern mouth of an officer in the armed forces. Stitches around the edges.
Even now, the Surgeon’s heart stirs in his chest, reminded of the woman he once had to pretend to be, who fell in love with two angels in the filthy gloom of the second World War. A pair of lovers who saw him for who he truly was and invited him to be that man in the comfortable secrecy of their shared home.
They were so lovely together. Even then, they finished each other’s thoughts. They would stop, look at each other, and their laughter would ring like sonorous church bells before a morning service. Of course he felt unworthy at first, but they promised there was a safe place in their arms. And he was wanted.
“You want us to hate you for pain you did not inflict with malice,” whispers the Bride. “We only hate that you spent decades of your life and career feeling sorry for yourself. We hated your doubts—that it took you this long to get here. We hated that your self-depreciation led you to such reclusiveness that you shied away from even us. You have stunted yourself, cut out the parts of yourself that we have loved. We don’t take pleasure in that. How could we?”
“I’m sorry,” the Surgeon murmurs, their voice a mechanical hum. “It felt like what I deserved.”
“You’ve vilified yourself on our behalf,” the bride drawls. “Then, while you spiraled, you postured for all who would look as a man with everything under control. Even before you did this to yourself, it was always your ego in the driver’s seat. Please, foolish man, spare us the conceit—we are not your victims. It has always been us in control. Us who told you to find the power sources, and the boy to unify them. We knew it would work—it was you who doubted himself into madness.”
The words sting, a precision blow only the two people who know him most intimately would be capable of. One of the women’s thumbs traces the crest of his ceramic zygomatic bone in a display of gentle affection the Surgeon believed wholeheartedly they would never experience again.
“You crave vengefulness,” says Marie and Sheila. “Then our vengeance is this: return to the mortal plane with your Mellow and join his friends. This ancient skeleton is not yours to preserve anymore. It’s no longer your responsibility, nor are we. Be the presence in Mellow’s life you want to be. And for fuck’s sake, be kind to yourself. We are relinquishing you of your guilt and shame. Forgive yourself, please, or else you will never be able to provide what he needs.”
The Surgeon is weeping again.
“My loves…I have disappointed you. Failed you over and over. But you are still so kind to me, even as you must find me repulsive.” He looks into their faces. “Thank you. I won’t waste this second chance.”
The two smile fondly. “Oh, silly Eli. Our anger and our love are not mutually exclusive. We loved you as Elizabeth. We loved you as Elijah. And we love you now, broken though you may feel. Pick up your pieces, Dr. MacCarthy. Find the man who believed in his own ability, the man you left on the operating table. This form is a great gift you and the boy have given us; allow us to extend this favor in return.”
The Surgeon nods as his bride wipes the leakage from his face. He asks, “What will you do now?”
“Repair. Revive. Reinvent.” They drop their hands to their sides. “We have come this far. Now that the hard part is over, the rest will happen smoothly. We will restore equilibrium to this body and the world will move on in ignorance. Only you and Mellow will know the truth of what happened here.”
Sounds like a lot for Mellow to carry on his shoulders. There’s no other way to slice it (and the Surgeon is rather prolific at slicing things), Mellow cannot be left alone to handle something so monumental.
“Do you really think me fit to be…what, a father?” he asks weakly.
“Like most men—you could be, if you tried,” the bride says simply. “So try.”
The Surgeon swallows, uncertainty waning. Perhaps he could be. Perhaps he could have the family he assumed he’d never have.
“Will I…ever see you again?”
His bride gives him a wry, amused look that is entirely Sheila, down to the quirk of the eyebrows. “You know better than to ask such a question. We are God; we are everywhere in spirit. However, the three of us are inexorably tangled by fate. When you truly need us, we will be there. But we will not walk the earth as you do.”
The Surgeon wants to complain about the cryptic answer, but although they are many things, they are not a hypocrite. “All right.”
The new god crouches to once more hold the human’s face between two hands. Elijah’s eyes flit desperately over their expressions, committing every detail to memory.
“Good luck with everything, Elijah,” Marie and Sheila tell him.
In a hoarse murmur, he replies. “Luck is all we got.”
Then he is whisked from their grasp and funneled into the ether, the music of their beautiful laughter echoing in his ears. As the darkness swallows him up, his heart begins to beat a terrified rhythm…
“Mr. Surgeon! Mr. Surgeon!”
A familiarly hushed voice rouses the Surgeon from his slumber. Eyes still closed, the first thing he does is wiggle his fingers, finding them curled in sand. Then he feels an impossible breeze and he turns his head towards it…
Outside…
He’s outside.
The Surgeon gasps, sitting bolt upright, so fast that Mellow squeaks and topples off his lap. “Gah!”
The Surgeon’s hands fly to his ceramic chassis, finding his body solid and intact. He looks up to find Mellow, staring at him wide-eyed. Behind him, the hanging jaw of the dead god. Around them, a starry sky and endless expanse of desert.
“Mellow,” says the Surgeon, voice raw. “Are you all right?”
The boy bursts into tears and collides with them like a bowling ball. “You’re alive! The nice-and-scary ladies brought you back, too! Just like they said!”
This time, the Surgeon wraps his arms around Mellow tight without reservation.
“Yes, Mellow. It’s all okay, sweet boy.” Shuddering, he presses his face into the red polyester of his boy’s baseball cap. “I’m so sorry, Mellow. I’m so, so sorry. I wronged you terribly. I’ll never let you get hurt like that ever again, I swear on my life.”
Hiccuping, Mellow nods against him vigorously, clutching the Surgeon as if he may disappear upon release. His little voice muffled, “Please don’t leave me again. O—or I’ll be really, really, really mad.”
The Surgeon’s own eyes flood over faster than he can regulate, letting out a sound somewhere between a sob and a chuckle.
“Never, Mellow. I promise.”
“Kid!! Kooky surgeon guy! You’re okay!!”
And thus, all signs point to a new life.