Chapter Text
Thick, wet taps on the pane.
A squall had settled in over the area, brooding and heavy. It hit their flight from the underground wreckage like a hammerblow. In the tunnel, the temperature was bearable, but once they emerged, out into the night, the cold returned like a friend with a debt. Yvara had bundled him up as best she could, carried him tight to her chest. She had torn the front of her garments open and immersed him in the soft, furred heat of her to keep him warm. Edwin had no energy left for modesty, only enough to be grateful that his teeth stopped chattering. Even still, each step she took them through the dark and damp rattled him in his bones.
If he’d fallen back asleep back there, that would have been the end of it. He was cold. He was injured. He was exhausted. But for Yvara? He held on. The quickfire thundering of her heart at his ear became his own, gave him the strength to curl around the guttering flame of his own life and keep it lit. The sloshing crunch of her steps through wet snow set the tone.
There was a small cabin. Edwin saw it looming out of the dark before Yvara nearly took the door off its hinges. Inside was furnished with rugged wood furniture. Blankets had been left out on a small chair, like the occupants had just left. Yvara had found it like she knew it was there.
Edwin didn’t have the energy in him to ask questions, either.
That was then.
This is now.
He lays on his stomach on a wooden cot along one wall, narrow for the two of them but there they are. A small iron stove is lit in the corner, pumping heat into the one-room construction. It is also the only source of light, at the moment. It is still dark and storming outside. Flickering firelight from the stove’s gap-toothed grin dances along the shape of shed antlers tacked to the wall. This place was a trapper’s lodge, maybe, or some survivalist’s bug-out hideaway. It doesn’t matter. For the immediate future, while he recovers, it is theirs.
Pap-tap-pap.
The solitary window in the cabin continues to be pattered by wet snowfall. The timber roof creaks a little, just enough to acknowledge the growing weight piling on, but settles.
Edwin’s back has tightened into an ungainly throbbing mass of hurt. Senses scramble out of time and thought. He’s gone from the cold, but now he’s running too hot. Fever, maybe. The shock of the wreck under the earth was horrific. He can tell when Yvara strips him from his sopping clothes, he feels more than hears her let out a soft growl of displeasure as she takes in the sight of his wounds.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, as her shape presses into his side. He’s so tired, he can’t even open his eyes to take her in. Dimly, he recognizes only the feeling of fur — still with her soft, faint animal scent — in the places they meld together. She has also disrobed, turning herself into a living blanket to keep him warm. “I, I thought that—”
Her voice is dull with exhaustion, but still gentle. “We’ve been through too much to lose each other.”
She runs a light touch over his back. Something cool and herbaceous stings in the wake of her passing, before settling into a pleasant, tingling numbness.
“These past few days have been,” she searches for a moment, “something.”
He chuckles, but it's a damp, gurgling thing. “The crash.” He remembers bits and pieces that make no sense, jumbled together like two different jigsaw puzzles without an idea of what either looked like as themselves. “Did anyone else…?”
“No,” she says softly. “It’s just us.”
Edwin swallows. His throat catches, dry and scratchy. She shifts in the cot, and a moment later something cold and wet presses to his lips. He drinks. It tastes faintly of pine. She must be melting snow from outside to drink. He wants to ask more, but the effort of existing is colossal.
He drifts off.
The dreams that follow make little sense. Distantly, some part of him is aware he is burning up from within.
Scenes play out disjointed in his feverish minds’ eye.
Each is scattered and cracked, like light playing through stained-glass. In some, he is alone. Those are the worst. In others, there is Yvara — or someone like her. His mother flits in and out of the fractured shards of memory, too, but the words she says slur and tangle. Sometimes, it feels like the dream isn’t even his. It feels pulled apart, each slice remelded anew, then slammed back into place above his hindbrain roughshod, each the work of a different craftsman. He falls into the nonsense of it, beyond displaced. He is here, locked inside himself and the memories from beyond, then out in the snow, then somewhere beneath the earth, or tangled amidst heaps of torn and shriven metal.
Somehow, he is all of these strange sights; even the ones he isn’t. Chipped fractal memory whorls together, faster and faster, noise and light and light and noise, until they blur into something that snaps itself into place in the here and now. His thoughts lurch sideways; askew upside-down, tumbling over and over like they’re caught in a wave — it’s building, building, huge and heavy — the peak of the thing reaching taller than he thought, spray and salt ripping off the cap as it breaks over and inside and beyond him.
He is falling. Drowning.
“...ot yet, Edwin.”
Something reaches down into the riot of his own mind. The pull is gentle, but the grip is firm.
“...ave you… alright, I… you…”
Insistent.
He knows that voice. It’s her. It’s his Yvara. Not one of the others in the glass, even though he hears them all calling out to him the same. The choice, in the end, was effortless.
It pulls him to the surface.
Pap-tap-pap!
When he wakes, his eyes are crusted nearly shut. He feels… hollow. Burnt-out, a lightbulb with no filament. But clear. Everything looks sharp and crisp. He can feel without it being muted. The small cabin’s interior is lit through the single window. Gray overcast light streams in from the world beyond. By the music playing off the glass, it’s still rain or wet flurries.
His back is killing him. He yawns, stretches. Something slides off his forehead. A towel, still damp and chill. Yvara must have put it there—
—Yvara!
He lurches about, and feels his back scream in protest. There's stained wrappings around his midsection. Edwin is still recovering, but the fever has passed.
Yvara’s shape uncoils itself from around him. He’d grown so used to the weight that it had barely been noticeable.
But the way she looks down at him, eyes twinkling with warmth — how could anyone fail to notice that?
“You’re awake,” she murmurs, relief staining the edge of the words. “It has been days since you took ill. I cared for you as best I could, but… humans are fragile things. How do you feel, Edwin?”
“Like shit,” Edwin answers honestly, and it lands well enough to get a chuff of amusement out of her. “But… I think I’m okay.”
He takes a moment to absorb their surroundings.
“Now what?” he asks. “We made it. The crash. They’ll think we’re…”
Yvara reaches out and cradles the edge of his jaw in her grasp. He can feel the thick, rough pads on her fingers and palm pressing up against his stubble. The faintest touch of claws tickle at his jawbone. “We rest,” she declares. “We recover.”
“Just like that?” he wonders.
“Just like that.”
“But… what about—?”
She shakes her head. Her whiskers tickle at him with movement. “It’s a gift, what we have now. Is it so wrong to break away clean?”
“No,” he decides after a moment. “Not after what we’ve been put through.”
“Just be here,” she tells him, sliding herself into the crook of his neck. Her weight settles on him, and he finds his arms wrapping around her to lock her in place. Right where they each belong. She breathes him in, hot and wet on his skin. “Just… be here now.” So he does, to the echoing silence of the weather weakening its grip. The pattering on the glass falls quiet. Somewhere outside, distant birdsong breaks out. A new day takes shape, and with it, the possibility of a future they walk into side by side. Edwin has to admit, he likes the sound of it.
It’s an end… and a beginning.