Archive of Our Own

A few more steps up the rise of the hill, and Judit pauses.

In old habit, she scans the sky again. But besides the clouds overhead—for now, they remain clear. The Coalition exhausted countless aircraft in the first years. The bones of the crafts mostly lost to the sea. The casualties, the cost of deploying them—they're uncommon now.

Instincts that keep you alive are hard to suppress. She is tense, on-edge in this naked landscape, exposed to the sky.

Behind her, slowly, the approach of an irregular, shuffling step. It pauses once more as Harry starts coughing again, as he fights to catch his breath.

There's a cuticle she can't stop worrying, on her right hand. It's getting harder to know what to say, the pauses in their journey increasingly frequent.

At her usual pace, from this point—rushing through this portion of barren coastline—it would take her another two hours to arrive at the current camp. They are close.

"Just a little further," she says, when he's made it level with her. His face is purpled with exertion, and he leans heavily on the stick he'd found, somewhere out there in the factories.

He gives her a tired smile, and wipes the sweat from his face.

"Heard that before," he wheezes out.

Not maliciously. He turns to cough into a handkerchief. He's right: she's said it before. Many times.

They're close. Just not close enough.

"C'mon," he grunts, dragging himself up the hill. She watches him a moment.

He'd said he'd hurt his leg when she found him. He'd already been making a halting path back to camp. It had been a week since he'd left.

Sometimes—these things happen. Hired guns at old factories. Worn-out floorboards. Old traps, belatedly sprung. People left camp. sometimes, never to come back.

She hadn't been looking for him, in the way they never look for each other. Checking for Coalition activity, talking to the surviving civilians, making loose arcs in the paths you thought your someone may have taken.

"We can rest, Harry."

They've done that many times. She found him early in the morning, picking his way through the shelter of ruins. They rested there as they talked. Then he slept. A fitful nap, punctuated by the endless coughing. They rested again an hour ago, in a half-eroded boat shelter.

"Maybe," he gasps, struggling up the hill, "in a while."

He's got the same instincts, after all. He has survived this long.

A surprising thing. She walks alongside him, pacing her steps to his. His breath labors wetly, his shirt collar is soaked with sweat. Sometimes it seemed there was something protecting him, somehow. If Judit had been inclined to believe in those things. As it stood, fate is random, death always close at hand.

Still, after all this time... She shakes her head. She can't believe this is the end. They've both survived worse. So much worse.

The slope of the hill is gentle. They take it slowly, gradually. When they reach the crest, Harry is swaying. She glances at his gloved hand, clutching at the stick. The bluish cast of his lips. She stands at his side, waiting for the collapse.

A little down the path, there's a massive, wall-like boulder. She learned once, helping on a book report, about how Insulindae was once completely frozen over. The ways glaciers move land, and stone. Monuments that were already here, before anyone—

"Okay," Harry says. He doesn't have the air to say anything else. He seems to steel himself. The downward slope, or a new burst of energy—they take the path down at a decent pace.

The boulder provides a little shelter from the wind. Over time, a hollow has eroded there. Tall grasses rustle around it. A smooth, low stone sits by the hollow. Maybe it chipped off the big one, long ago—but before the air strikes. Before anyone was here.

Harry pauses for a moment, his hand on the boulder. His eyes are distant. Judit looks out at the bay. The topography protects them here, from the weather, from the sky. The early wildflowers sprout up amidst the grasses. When the wind shifts, she can hear it in the reeds.

"Gonna lay down."

Judit nods. Did Harry know this spot, already? Maybe he was aiming for it. Maybe all he needs is to sleep a while, before they make it on their way. She kneels, and feels around the hollow. There's no shrapnel, no long-forgotten tare. She pats the ground before sitting on the low rock, watching the grasses as Harry lowers himself with a grunt, his back propped against the boulder.

He stretches out his legs before him, peels off his gloves. He wipes his face down with one of them. She notices his fingertips are blue, and he looks up, catches her watching.

"Hey. Did hurt the leg," he offers, waving down as if their state is any proof. They've been swollen for years. Raw wounds that won't heal, fluid seeping through the wraps. She's never been involved with that—she knows how to tie a tourniquet, that's the limit—but she's seen the wraps drying, stained red and yellow, strung like garlands in his tent.

"How long ago?"

He starts to laugh, and falls into a fit of coughing. He fumbles for his handkerchief, and spits. No longer actively hiding it, she can't help but notice. His spit is foamy, pink with blood.

"Is it infected?" she asks, still talking about his leg. It's possible he did injure himself, possible the old wounds got infected again. She should run back—they have some antibiotics still. It could buy him some time.

"Naw," he says, wiping his mouth again. She knows it isn't pneumonia. The cough is something else, the same reason his legs are swollen, the reason she can see his pulse thrumming in his neck.

"Had another," he admits. "Waited to die. Didn't. Thought I'd—" he trails off again, hacking.

His last heart attack wasn't as bad as the one before it. But his age, the hard years—he had to stay in his cot for months. He made it everyone's problem, as he always does. Whining and cajoling. Cursing, threatening to get up. They had to pull straws to babysit him. Jean would drag the cot to the opening of the tent, Harry and all, trying to avoid the trap of Harry's interrogations when he pulled the short straw. Harry's heart was already failing, then. His legs were already swollen.

Now all the fluid his heart can't pump has backed up onto his lungs. It started doing that a long time ago, too. He recovered somewhat after the last heart attack. He shouldn't have gone out this time, they all knew. But what else could be done?

They have antibiotics at camp, yes. But there's nothing left to manage this.

I know what to get. I'm good, it's fine! They're my sweet drugs, lemme go out and score.

He'd had a small supply when he left, the remains of what they had. A few diuretic pills, a handful of beta blockers. Some nitroglycerin tablets. Kim gave him a few packs of drouamine, too.

This isn't right. You should let me go.

Kim argues about it, complains as constantly as Harry in his cot. But he's the last person they have who even took field medicine. A bunch of firefighters and building inspectors, living in shacks and tents. It's a joke, one Kim is paying for: now they can't afford to let him leave camp. He has a wish list for pharmaceutical raids a mile long. Once, he made the mistake of summarizing grab whatever you can to Torson, and then half the inventory was birth control.

Judit smiles, despite herself. It's a good memory. Torson was—well. He sure had been Torson, hadn't he?

Harry shifts, blinking his eyes back open. It doesn't seem he'll finish his earlier thought. He looks down the hillside, at the flowers.

"Well, I'm glad," Judit says. She watches them, too, their gentle sway in the breeze.

Two hours to camp, and two hours back. Maybe he'd still be alive. They could spare—they could spare a few people, surely. For this.

He hums, an upward inflection to it. He can breathe better propped up. But he's exhausted. Drowning. Really? he seems to ask.

"What? I am." Her tone is firm. She wonders if he'd prefer to die alone. Some people are like that. Animals, too: the cat in her neighbor's apartment, when she was a girl, squeezing into a cabinet. The time she saw her partner shot, crawling his way into a corner before she could clear the area. By then, he was already dead.

But selfishly—the sea air, the wildflowers, the quiet skies. The hollow that seemed to be waiting for them. It's not an easy way to die, suffocating. But she's seen worse. It's nice to think, when her time comes... she's always hoped she wouldn't be alone.

Harry clears his throat, and spits. He takes a few deep breaths. It's so hard for him to speak.

"'Mind me—your kids?"

God. She blinks, at first surprised, and then not. Harry never had children. When they were all younger, before it all—he'd ask after them. He clearly wanted his own, even if—well, most men aren't made out to be parents. It's no fault against Harry.

"They're in Villiers," she says. "With their father. Or were. They must be on their own now. All grown up."

There hasn't been a letter for years. She had known it would be impossible. It was a decision she made, long ago. Harry nods.

"That's—" he coughs, and starts again. "Far enough?"

Has he forgotten? Judit pulls at a blade of grass. Harry isn't looking at her; it almost feels as if he's asking someone else.

"It's in Archipelagos. Remember? We couldn't afford an interisolary flight..." She had hoped, but three tickets... Impossible. This was reality. Harry wheezes beside her, lost in thought.

She waits a while for him to speak. When he doesn't, she hesitates, then pulls a blister pack out of her pocket.

"Harry, I have some drouamine. You should take it."

All of it, while you can, she doesn't need to say. He sits up a little, patiently gasping while she pops the four she has into his hand. He tries to lift his arm, and falters. Even that is beyond him, now. She doesn't react, just picks the pills back out of his hand to place them in his mouth, one at a time. The flask he carries still has water in it. With his heart so ruined, he couldn't even drink much of that. He swallows them, and tries to smile. He's used everything he had, just to get here.

"It has to be far enough," she says. Harry sighs, and closes his eyes. She looks at his face, gray and worn. "Is there anything else?"

He opens his eyes again, looking at her. There's a spark of his old self, but it feels distant already. As if he's already left.

"Last—" he gasps in a long, rattling breath. "—Requests?"

"Harry—"

"What year?"

Is this just part of dying, she wonders, neurons staticing from one question to the next? Or is this just Harry?

"It's '70. Maybe there will be a new calendar someday," she says. He's lectured on about that before, but really, she sides with Jean on that one. They can't keep counting from scratch. "But for now, that's what it is. Seventy years since the last revolution."

Harry stares up at the sky, gasping. He looks suddenly pained, and she reaches for him instinctively, putting a hand on his arm.

"Was it enough?" he asks, to the clouds. They're rolling in heavily, now. It looks as if it's going to rain. The stone should hold on to a little of the sun's warmth, she hopes, for Harry.

He moves his lips as if he's still talking, pleading to some power she can't hear.

She doesn't answer, knowing the question wasn't for her. The wind shifts, growing colder, colder—one of those winter breezes the bay holds tucked away, to shock you in the spring. Snow in the may bells, even here, on the mainland. She rushes to unbutton her own coat, but Harry shakes his head.

"Please. You must be freezing. Don't be stubborn."

He looks at her, his expression giving her pause. Whatever it was he was asking, whoever answered... Well, when it's her time, she supposes it'll be the same. Whatever answer you hear, or whatever you don't: you'll have to be happy with it. Or not. She's seen men die that way often, railing to the last breath.

"Nah," he breathes. His face is calm as the wind shifts. He eases his way fully down onto the ground, as if submerging himself. Once there, he smiles.

"Wait for it," he says.

And, as if he controls the sky, the sun breaks through the clouds. He coughs, and gestures weakly.

Ta-da.

Judit snorts. "Anyone can do that, Harry. We've been stuck outside for years. You just felt the wind change."

He coughs again, and huffs in a single laugh. And then rolls to lay on his side.

It may be easier to breathe like that, she thinks. Also, he can look at the bay. She watches the waves alongside him. Out a ways, there is a rock with several cormorants. Wings hung out to dry, like old black cloaks.

"It is a beautiful day," she admits. Harry's breath sounds wet, labored. He pauses to hum, acknowledging her. Then he starts panting again.

For a moment, she is struck again by nerves. She picks at the cuticle, watching as Harry coughs and spits pink froth into the grass. Should she run back to camp? Maybe he's wrong. Maybe there is something. There must be something else they can do. There must be. There's still the pharmaceutical plants, after all; pharmacies abandoned in the city, places they haven't—

There's a motion in the water. Judit startles. A dark head popping out of the waves. Even at this distance, she can make out its black, limpid eyes, but only for a heartbeat. It dives back again. She blinks. She didn't think—but the water is so polluted. She reaches out to tap Harry's shoulder.

"Harry, did you see?"

He does not say anything in response, but when she looks down at his face, he blinks up at her. Yes, he's trying to say. He saw it, too. And then he closes his eyes.

Judit sighs, calm again. She watches the water, hoping the seal will surface again.

There's nothing left to do. Harry is dying. She wonders if she's already heard his last words. All the words she's heard him say, all these years of him talking, shouting, questioning. It's hard to think of a world without them.

For it to be his stupid magic trick... Birds are catching thermals, drifting island to island. Ninel had said she was going for a shit one night, and then she was gone.

In the end, they are his last words. Or the last ones she can understand: half an hour later, he makes a few garbled sounds in the cadence of speech. But whatever it is, it's drowned out by the gurgling rasp of his breath, that continues, and continues.

She sits by him, and waits. There seems to be little else to do. She has her pistol, but he isn't a horse. And despite the disquieting saw of his respirations growing irregular—he seems calm enough. She sets her hand in his hair, brushing the thin, damp strands between her fingers. He coughs, and then his breaths calm.

It takes time, as it sometimes will. She has enough time to rifle through her pockets again. To find a spare drouamine, kick herself for not having found it earlier, when he could take it with the rest. Time to think to grind it in the blister pack, to carefully peel it open, to rub the powder on his gums. His face pulls a strange expression, and she clears her throat, wiping her fingers in the grass.

"It's okay, Harry," she says, as she has said many times already. Hearing and touch are the last things to go. Of all the ways to die in this world—perhaps this isn't the easiest, or the kindest. She watches his features relax. But it is by no means the worst.

She touches his hand, which is blue, and already cold.

"Another drouamine," she continues. He doesn't react in any meaningful way. "It will still work like this. Quicker, even. But of course, you—" she trails off, wondering if that's insensitive to say to the dying. If Harry would care, if he understood. She looks away, back over the water. His breath rasps on, and on, and on.

"You did very well," she says. She thinks about what he'd said before, and continues. "Of course it was enough. And it isn't over. We'll keep on. Me and Jean. Alice and Jolie. Furioso. Apricot. Chester, god help us." she squeezes his inert, cold hand. She wonders if he can even feel it. His breath stops, but it's another of those false alarms. He gasps again, like he's emerging from the water.

"And Kim," she finishes. His hand doesn't move. There is no glimmer of recognition. His eyes stare blankly off into the distance.

Years on the run will do this, force an informality, a familiarity. The RCM no longer exists, after all. What does it mean to be a Lieutenant? It is hard to say who is properly in charge, the chain of command has grown fractured. In truth, Harry was the senior-ranking officer remaining.

"What would he tell you?" she asks, as much to Harry as herself. His hand is so cold, so limp. She lets it go, and rests her hand instead on his shoulder, which is still warm. His breathing is slowing, gradually.

"I think he'd tell you the same thing. You did great work." If she were dying, what would she want to hear? But it's impossible. Who knows what any of us want to hear. She falls quiet, and then there's just the sound of air dragging over pooling spit.

Rattling, rattling, rattling—

How long will it take? She looks at him, his mottled face. His blue fingers.

One of her sisters had cancer, died in '47. A lifetime ago. Her sister had just turned 41, the summer before. Throat cancer. She smoked, of course. Drank, of course. but she also worked in one of the dockyards, painting ships. The fumes—Judit has always suspected those. It had been weeks of this. Marjorie in bed, gurgling, the smell of the tumors fermenting her throat. Mucus thick on the pillows, in her hair. Judit shakes her head.

No. This is different. She feels for Harry's pulse in his wrist. It's thready, difficult to find. Irregular. It's his heart that's giving up. The lack of oxygen will force him into another arrhythmia. She pats his shoulder, trying to reassure herself. She's here, now.

"I'm glad," she says, after a long while. "That we could be friends."

Those aren't her last words to him. She finds herself rambling off and on, starting and stopping, never sure if it's an annoyance or not. The superstitious belief that you can say one thing. A magic bullet to take him out. She tells him stories he has heard before, ones he was there for, ones he's forgot. She falls silent again. And then she tells him stories he doesn't know, ones he'd love to hear. There's no harm in it now, she thinks. And maybe that's what he's waiting for. One more can, she thinks. Here, Harry. Have another.

He takes his last breath in the middle of a story she's trying to retell, something Chester told her a few days ago, about breaking into a factory to find fuel and falling through the floor. Even when Chester told it, she'd thought to herself, maybe you had to be there. He takes one of those wet gasps in, and stops. She continues for a few words, assuming it is like all the times he'd done that before.

But, no. She stops talking, and feels for his pulse. She feels it, one beat. Seconds later, another, weakly. She lets go, and strokes his hair again.

She thinks something irreverent. And, because it's Harry, she says it, even if it isn't true.

"You're right. I'd do anything to get out of hearing one of Chester's stories." When she checks for his pulse again, he's gone.

She waits a moment, anyway, before taking the pistol. She thinks about it a moment, and checks his pockets. If there's anything that could give away their location, anything at all—he'd want her to check.

But she finds little of importance. The empty drouamine packs, the empty bottle of nitroglycerin, the empty packs of diuretics. A lighter, which she shakes. There's still fuel, so she pockets it. Harry is still warm. She lets herself think he's just passed out. A worn paperback, a romance. She's read it before. Everyone's read all the books at camp. No one likes this one, save for Harry. She puts it back. A pair of dice. One is amber, and the other nondescript plastic. She feels the warmth of the amber in her hand, looks at the mosquito trapped inside. She puts them back, too.

And that seems to be all. No money, for there's no point left in it. No wallet. No badge. No keys. An anonymous body, like so many others.

Sitting there, she looks him over again, something itching in the back of her mind. And then, there it is: she glimpses the hint of a leather cord, leading beneath his shirt collar. So close to death, of course—they all have their superstitions. Rituals. Tokens.

She overheard this, once. Whispered in the dark early hours, the winter they kept alive, four to a shack.

"Don't get lost. Here." A rustling. A pause. "I want this back."

She eases the necklace from around Harry's head. A cord of leather, a key to a motor carriage. She coils it reverently, and puts it in her pocket, and looks at his still body.

This isn't an easy life. She swallows. This is the wrong time. Forget it. Pretend it's any other corpse, god knows she's seen enough.

There's been a lot of dead. More than there's land for graves, more than there's hands to dig them. To leave the body here is a sort of burial—a gift for the dogs. Judit has seen it before. Bodies laid out, arms crossed, half-eaten and rotting alongside the flowers strewn over their chests.

She sighs, brushing off her trousers as she stands.

The may bells are even in bloom. She could do far worse than this, leaving him here. She looks over the terrain, over the mound of inert tissue that was once Harry. The sheltering boulder, to serve as a marker. The smaller stone beside it. A gravesite, one among so many. And it would be a waste of energy to move him, his body heavy, fluid-logged, drowned from the inside.

The ground slopes down slowly before her. The light shifts as the clouds move overhead. There is a faint groove in the grasses. Small plants have had time, in the years, to fill in a path. One once worn by feet, tyres, the hulls of impromptu boats. It trails down to the water.

Shaking her head, she turns, and grabs his legs. Fortunately, the trousers are thick, the wraps wound tight underneath. His legs are boggy, cold to touch. She drags his weight behind her, the whole time questioning herself.

So he'll be eaten by fish, instead. His body will fester and ooze. Or it won't: the chemicals from flooded-out factories will preserve him, his half-rotting corpse ballooning on the coast.

Still, there is something that drives her to do it.

Something about the path, and how easy it is to drag him down, in the end. How perfectly he seems to fit, hidden from view, as she wades out to nestle him amongst the reeds.

Back on dry land, she rearranges the reeds best as she can. The wind shifts, and a chill runs over her. She puts her hands in her pockets, and looks back up at the boulder. It looks as if they were never there.

Her fingers find the key again. It's still warm to the touch. Of course it is, she tells herself. Kept close in her pocket, wouldn't it be stranger if it weren't? The cord is worn, frayed, an organic thing. One day, it'll decay, too. The key will rust.

But not yet. She takes a step back, ready to finish her journey to the camp. The others will be wondering.

Waiting a little longer, she watches the clouds rolling in off the bay, and listens to what remains of the city.