Chapter Text
It didn’t feel like the wreckage of a city.
That was the thing Meryl kept getting hit by, over and over again. There were no corpses. There were no remains of buildings, or of vehicles, not even foundations or blown-open basements. There were no signs life had ever been here at all. They’d been in the crater for days, and she kept forgetting, somehow, that they were standing where the largest city in the world had been last week, until she remembered with the same dull punch of shock every time that she had seen it destroyed. She saw the moment it was all wiped away, and she’d been seeing it on repeat in her mind for the past four days, and yet somehow she kept forgetting it was connected to now.
A lot of things were slipping her mind, though. Maybe it wasn’t such a surprise. Wolfwood kept having to forcibly remind her to drink water, to eat, to not strip her jacket off despite the heat because she’d get sunsburned even with the smog. She wished he wouldn’t. He treated her like she might collapse at any moment, but all it was doing was wasting time.
And whenever they rested, whenever she had time to think, all she could think about was the elevator and the gun in her pocket and the tank, and she would start to—
It was better when they kept walking.
They trudged forward. The ash shifted and resettled beneath her feet as they walked. It wasn’t quite ash, but it was closer to that than sand; darker than the sand of Gunsmoke, and finer, too. In some places the ash was thicker—marking the spot where a particularly large building had stood, probably—and yesterday they’d hit a patch so thick they’d had to leave the van behind and go on foot. Meryl didn’t mind. Even with Wolfwood watching her blindspots from the top of the van she couldn’t shake the fear that they would miss something. It was…disconcerting, to look down and see it coating her boots. Her whole life, she’d never seen anything like this. It clung, and it built up static as they went, so that every time Wolfwood put his hand on her shoulder they both jumped.
They didn’t have long before night fell. The dust and ash in the air already blocked out most of the suns’ light—that first day it was so thick in the air the van’s headlights had been the only reason they were able to make it into the crater at all. When even the hazy orange glow was gone it was near impossible to see. The crater was so deep that sunset lasted mere minutes once both suns were lower than the rim. The moons weren’t visible, much less the stars. It was a darkness you just didn’t get outside. If you couldn’t see the stars, you were somewhere with enough light to drown them out, but now…Meryl was reduced to complete blindness, and she knew Wolfwood wasn’t much better off. If he used his lighter he could make out a few yarz, but it was useless for searching and there wasn’t much point to it otherwise. Under the ash, the ground was smooth, no rocks or tripping hazards. The only variation, really, was the depth of the ash, and the slope, growing shallower as they headed towards the center—the only indicator that they were still heading towards the center, now that they were deep enough into the crater that no side was meaningfully closer.
“Shorty. Hey, Shorty. Stryfe.”
She didn’t bother turning around. “What,” she said flatly.
They didn’t talk much, and when they did, it was usually Wolfwood pestering her about water again.
“I think I see him.”
Meryl’s legs gave out from under her.
-
They ran as soon as Meryl got to her feet again. Wolfwood grabbed hold of her arm to haul her upright and keep her from falling again, but he didn’t need to pick her up this time. She didn’t know where she found the energy to keep up with Wolfwood, but she didn’t feel the strain of running even as her legs shook and she panted for breath in the heavy air, even when Wolfwood ran fast enough to lift Meryl clear off her feet to dangle behind him for seconds at a time. She just kept running, and running, until she thought she saw what Wolfwood had spotted.
There was a mass on the ground. Wolfwood dropped his cross and gave an extra burst of speed. They both came to an unsteady, stumbling stop in front of it, and Meryl wiped her sweaty hair out of her eyes and blinked frantically to get rid of the spots dancing across her vision.
It was his coat, blackened from the ash and from what Knives had done to it, to him, and for a moment she thought it was empty, but then she realized there was a faint glow emanating from inside.
She collapsed to her knees. The ground beneath her was hard and bruising, the ash just a thin layer above—glass. She was kneeling on solid glass.
He was swaddled in his coat, curled up on his side. His shoes lay a short distance away, like he’d kicked them off in his sleep. The glow was the only part of him that was visible.
Meryl reached a hand out. All the adrenaline had left her at once, and her whole body shook with the effort of it. Beside her, Wolfwood was standing like he thought he’d fall if he made a single move.
She touched his shoulder. The coat sleeve collapsed oddly—it took her longer to find his through the fabric than she’d expected. Carefully, carefully, she took the corner of the collar and lifted it to get a look at his face.
-
It was a child.