Work Text:
Orange is the color of unintentional destruction. Of unimaginable pain caused in a fraction of a second.
Red is the color of safety and danger and happiness and concern. Red is the color of so many things. Red is a color I am told I will never see anymore.
Green is the insidious color, slicing through darkness with its horrifying glow.
Nobody wanted things to go this way.
But they can never, ever be undone.
------
I have been told that it has been a month. A month since
The others come once a week. I think we agreed on Wednesdays, but I'm not sure.
They bring food and speak with empty words and empty faces, expressing false grief for a person they will never miss.
I can't blame them for this; each of them has died an awful death because of this person. A person who, by all accounts, I should not miss.
But my mind revolts. Everything about this house feels wrong because they aren't here.
I sleep on the couch because our bedroom has the book about electronics on their table that they will never finish.
Avoid the kitchen because the fridge still holds the stupid ten-flavor ice cream they love.
Avoid the lab because I'm not supposed to go in there, I wreck how organized their things are.
It's not like they could stop me anymore.
I feel sick thinking about that. Because they're going to come back, any day now. Then we can talk about what happened, about how they survived, about their horrible mission code-
The mission code that got them killed. That wormed its way into their mind until killing me became the only thing they could think about. It must have been agony; to love someone more than anything else, and feel the need to horribly, violently dismember them every time you see their face.
In a twisted way, maybe we'd both have been happier if they had killed me.
------
There was a time when I left the house. It has long since passed. It's not worth the effort, anyway. I'm not sure whether I'm imagining it or not, but the same few people seem to follow me around, wherever I go. It's unnerving.
There was a time when I could go out to buy things when I needed them. That doesn't happen anymore.
I'm running out of bandages.
There was a time when this would scare me. There was a time when I would tell someone. There was a time when someone would care. That time has long since past.
I may run out of bandaids, but I have not run out of sweaters.
Not like it matters. There's no one to hide it from.
------
The layer of dust coating their lab would annoy them so much if they were here.
But if I clean the dust, and I knock something over, I will never know where it goes again.
The intricate way their things are organized died with them.
------
Half the house is off-limits. I treat it like the site of a nuclear accident: everything there is still radioactive, even a year later. (it has not been a year. I refuse to believe that.)
If I interact with the radioactive things for too long, or too close up, I will be poisoned by the invisible energy it exudes.
Gamma and beta and alpha rays.
Memories.
Both are dangerous.
These things, this house, will be radioactive long after I die.
It will be an accident for the history books, taught to the children of the future as a horror story.
They would find that funny. Remembered as a horror, the darkest hour of history. Was that not what they always wanted?
I never wanted that. For either of us.
------
Happy is a funny word. It describes a feeling, right?
Maybe there was a time when I remembered how it felt.
Doing things used to make me happy, right?
I liked stargazing. That's another thing I don't do anymore.
It hurts to think about, because they were always there with me.
Stargazing is radioactive. If I think about it too much, it will eat holes through my mind.
So I don't.
------
The people who have been following me were always going to catch up eventually, right?
I'm somewhat proud of the fight I've put up. Wouldn't it be anticlimactic to give up and turn myself in, after all these years?
They would agree. No, they wouldn't be stupid enough to get caught in the first place. They wouldn't involve the kid, either.
The radiation lives in the bones of my captor, too. It has eaten away at their everything, leaving behind a shell of necrosed neurons and pain.
I should hate this person, but their affliction feels so familiar. Silently we share in the disease that eats away at us from the inside out.
Besides, they cannot cause me any pain worse than I already feel.
------
Maybe No One isn't a misnomer. That's what I've been, ever since
The ocean rushes up to greet me. It's familiar. The salt burns up my sinuses.
It hurts, but...
What a mess I've made of this. How many people I've hurt.
I deserve every stab of pain I feel.
Radiation poisoning is always fatal in high enough doses.
------