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The driving becomes easier once she begins. Eyes on the road, hands gripping the wheel, one thin ribbon of asphalt stretching over a landscape that is not covered in ice. No way to make a wrong move, at least not for now; only stop and continue.
Will is slumped against the passenger door, the lines of his face slack and serene. She cannot feel him, wishes against every impossibility that he was there. (Stupid thought. Stupid thought for a stupid girl.) She stops at regular intervals to administer the sedative, Kala’s soft, accented voice giving dosage and instructions in her ear: the fingers sorting with certainty through the bottles, the eyes reading each small-printed label with barely a glance, are not hers, but she knows how to use a needle.
She does not think of the gun, growing farther and farther in the distance with every second, still abandoned on the empty earth where she lost her daughter. She does not think about the probability that none of this will matter.
She glances up at the mirror, checking for the hundredth time that no one is following them, and sees, to her relief–
“Capheus.”
His smile is small, but as sunny as it ever was. “I thought you could use some company,” he says, leaning forward on his knees.
“I–” She lets out a breath; it whistles harsh through her teeth. “… I could. Thank you.”
He doesn’t stare, or press his face against the windowpane the way he used to, just rests his chin on his knees, looking up at her with those clear eyes. (A kind face, she thinks, and feels a little sick.) “You are afraid.”
“I’m always afraid,” she admits. There is so far yet to travel.
“Why?”
“Because this isn’t going to–” She cuts off, jerking the wheel around a curve. Will’s cheek hits the glass with a soft thud. No–she doesn’t look at him. “Because nothing ever works.” She can’t close her eyes. “Nothing ever lasts.”
She sees his eyes widen and then settle, his mouth harden into a thin straight line. “This will last.”
“I can’t keep him like this forever. I don’t have anywhere to go–they’ll find us, and then–”
“They will not.” She thinks she hears an echo behind that: a harder voice, a different accent. “We will find a way.”
No sound except the unceasing rumble of the engine. “How do you know that?”
“I simply do.”
He looks up at her. She looks back at him. His face crumples into laughter, off-beat, his smile wrinkling furrows in the corners of his eyes. “All right,” he says, holding up a finger. “I don’t know. Not like I know that the sun will come up in the morning, or that the Queen lives in England. But I believe it.”
She wishes she could believe it. She wants to hold on to that belief–those beliefs, so different from her own. She tries to imagine rushing headlong into a fight, stepping out under the bright lights of exposure, driving, knowingly, right into the barrel of a gun. (She fled because she wasn’t brave. She came back because she was weak.) In front of her, the empty road stretches away, away, away.
Discretion’s the better part of valor, sweetheart. She glances back towards the mirror again: no sign of Wolfgang. Just Capheus, still smiling faintly up at her. “As long as we refuse to give up, and stay together. It will be all right.”
The sun peeks out over a nearby hill, and she raises a hand to shield herself from the glare.
We’re always together, Nomi murmurs, dry and sardonic, but threaded through with a kind of warmth.
We’re always together, Kala repeats slowly, wide-eyed and literal as ever.
We’re always together, Will would say, knowing as he does exactly how Capheus is about to respond.
She must have said that last part aloud. Capheus leans back on his hands, beaming broadly up at her. “That’s what I mean,” he says.