Chapter Text
December 21st.
His legs trudge through the snow like steel weights through a concrete wall--the strain long gone from his consciousness, replaced with the numb automation of a body fighting for its life. His fingers are gripped on the hilt of his gun in its holster, searching for some feeling in his hands, hope that he’ll ever get the feeling back in his hands becoming increasingly narrower. The wound on his head, too, has been reduced to a dull, cold, either dried or frozen-over river down his temple, staining his hair and the cusp of his earlobe. Pain jolts up his legs every time he wrenches a foot out of the snow, like a Charley horse on oxymetholone.
He remembers when December had sustained a similar, though less severe, injury to the leg. “It kinda hurt, I dunno,” he’d described it, eloquently as ever, before promptly returning to whatever it was he’d been doing. The imagery makes August smile, if only briefly, before he remembers just how terrified he’d been, inside, at the possibility that December had actually sustained nerve damage.
He stretches his back for a moment, just to feel it, grateful the fractured vertebrae he’d incurred several years prior hasn’t taken to flaring just yet. He’d seen the look on the doctor’s face when she told August he’d be just fine.
It was permanent.
And if anyone else in the Organization found out, he’d be euthanized on the spot.
In some ways, he’s grateful the doctor knew to spare him, though he never understood why she did.
But if this leg becomes a problem, there’s no hiding it from anyone.
His grip tightens on the hilt, and he grimaces. A few moments, growing frustrated, he tears his hand away.
He can’t do it. He never could. Though he should’ve, should’ve, a long, long time ago.
Why? Is it lingering human weakness--some survival instinct? That had been thoroughly wretched out of even the deepest of his memories. Does he fear the Organization’s wrath in the event of a failed suicide attempt? Their methods, frankly, come nowhere close to the worst of enemy torture. Does he fear Hell? There’s no turning back with the sins he’s committed; it would only benefit him to get there sooner. Does he fear April’s and December’s fate without him? They’ve been long well enough to stand on their own.
He falters, a dull pain forming in his chest, the kind that even the cruelest Russian winter could never cause.
Dread?
The wind feels stronger, somehow. No, he can’t do it now--he’d been trudging through this storm for two hours; it can’t be too far yet to the cabin, where April and December hide, safely, warmed by the furnace and copious amounts of blankets and a bed, Christ, a warm bed.
He’s only now noticed his legs have stopped against his will. When he gathers the will to look straight ahead for the first time in a while, the wind and snow barrel into his eyes, expectedly, making them squint.
And he sees it.
Smoke, emitting from the faint silhouette of a chimney, poking through the horizon. Tears coming to his eyes from the sheer cold, the crest of the roof of the cabin becomes evident.
He tries to wrench his leg out of the snow, but his knee twists in a certain way, sending searing pain through his thigh and up his spine. Chunks of caked-together snow and ice fall into the top of his boot, where the laces have come undone.
The pain must make him black out for a second, because the next thing he knows is both of his hands buried wrist-deep into the white Hell, unable to move. More of it falls onto him, the tiny pieces of death binding his knees to the ground, piled on by the flakes of it falling endlessly from the sky.
He makes a final attempt to crane his neck, just to catch a glimpse of the stars, one last time. But his body betrays him again, keeping his gaze glued to the horizon.
A laugh bubbles up his throat, the pressure of his cheeks forming a wry smile. Bitter, bitter. That pressure in his chest grows more and more, as his body begins to panic, something, something, some leftover human thing forcing his brain to alertness, that something’s missing, that he can’t die yet...
The smoke rises steadfastly against the torrent. Their home, haven, amid the storm. Amid everything.
He thought he’d been prepared for death.
He realizes, now, as his vision grows darker, and the smoke drifts away, like two universes drifting further and further apart, that he’d rather suffer a thousand more lives under God’s wrath than die alone.