Work Text:
“When you wither in loss,
you’re a plant
over-showered for years—
roots gasping, lungs burning.
You leak memory,
you lose leaves.”
—Avery Lake, Horrible Dance
Mark knows he is walking.
Rationally, he knows he must be, because the space shifts distinctly around him, smaller objects in the distance gradually growing bigger, the vanishing point getting closer still. Slate grey floors, white walls, tubes of fluorescent lights, doors; more doors.
His legs do not belong to him; they are moving of their own accord, the thin strings attached to them controlled by an unseen puppeteer. He could be gliding, floating through the air, for all he cares. How did he get here? Someone gave him a lift, but he’s not sure who. The vehicle that teleported him here might have been a police car or a rocket ship.
His mind feels numb, inert, inorganic, no more alive than bedrock in the depths of a mine, and just as unreachable. Information rains on him in quantities too large to ignore, but it does not get through, does not filter—it trickles down him like water against a glass wall.
Is Gemma Scout your wife? I’m so sorry, Mr. Scout. There’s been an accident. Do you need to sit down?
He can only recall bits and pieces, like a broken phone conversation at the most remote location on Earth, reception spotty and unclear on his end. Something about ‘impact’, something about the guardrail and the SR-3 to Ganz. What do these words mean together? It’s incohesive, it fails to coalesce. He is slipping in and out of time, startling into each moment as though waking from a dream—each second has no relationship with the one just prior. All he knows is he is clutching her college ID in his hand, and the coroners are long behind him, this hellish place out of their jurisdiction, having transferred his custody to a male nurse no older than thirty with bloated eyes and a neck tattoo. He is silent as a grave and carries a plastic clipboard and gracefully bustles past the heavy traffic in the corridors, and Mark has some brief thought about the current state of affairs and the chronic underfunding.
And everything rings in his ears, the squeak of the nurse’s rubber crocs, the coughs, the sniffles, the loudspeakers high above, murmuring their eternal incantations—Dr. Bell to Emergency, Dr. Ouyang to surgery—Her room. Her room. Yes, that’s it. That must be where they’re taking him.
And diligently they’re calling the elevator and the doors open and being wheeled on a hospital bed there’s an old man, face shrunken like a raisin, with an oxygen tube under his nose, and really, it's more of a trolley than a bed, all stiffness and functionality and collapsible sides, a feat of engineering, and the nurse yawns and presses a button and it’s going down, but it’s okay, and it keeps going down, and he does not ask, and when they reach the underground level, still he does not ask: why would her hospital room be underground?
The doors open, much like a predator would release its prey, and the old man goes, eyes almost rolled back into his skull, free from its jaws and into god-knows-where. Clean lines dominate the next space he’s thrust into, and the air is stagnant and there are bottles of hand sanitizer hanging from every wall, and all he can think of is how thoroughly Gemma despises places like this—even the clinic uneased her—and now here they are, and she’s hurt and he just wants to make sure she’s okay, will be okay, and he’s ashamed that he’s not even bringing her flowers. Jesus, how stupid is he.
Shadows pass him by, and where did the nurse go? It is only then that he becomes aware that there are others milling around the room—other zombies like him, dishevelled and hurriedly dressed and slouched in orange plastic chairs, praying, pacing, casting charms and spells upon everything and nothing. What transpires inside this chrysalis, in this purgatory of a room—it is a universal desire, a collective string of words transcending language and class and religion or the lack of it.
He cannot find the strength to join them.
And here comes another nurse, paler, grimmer, older, with deep lines around her mouth, looking haggard and impassive and almost robotic, and she’s addressing him, and none of it makes any sense, the nurse might as well be speaking a dead language, an alien tongue.
This is for the smell. Put some on, just above the upper lip. It’s for the best. And a small glass jar is being offered up to him, and this is by far the most bizarre request anyone has ever uttered, because the contents look like the kind of thing his mother used to rub across his chest when he got sick as a child. But he does as he’s told, completely docile, applies a generous dose of the cream under his nose and feels it burn his nostrils and then there’s a steadying hand on his shoulder as she guides him in.
Where? Where? Where?
And they’re greeted by a severe change in temperature, a windless draft that bites and atomizes his skin, and a room colder than the arctic opens to reveal a phantasmagorical landscape: white sheets upon white sheets, rows upon rows of gurneys, people laid out as though there’d been a war, as though they’re in Ypres in 1914, the beaked noses of the victims poking out of the maze of spectral fabrics like a series of topographic blips on an icy plain.
And there is a particular point in this cartography of death that beckons him, the focal point of his entire life, and as they get closer the nurse gestures towards a form that’s barely there, barely human, slender and stiff and unmoving. Oh, God, why is he here?
Even now, there is a part of him that grasps that the world is about to change.
The sheet is being drawn back, millimetre by millimetre, heavy as though made of steel and not fabric, the reveal of something too terrible to name, something that is inevitable in nature and yet eludes human comprehension. And it takes him a moment, his eyes don’t know what they’re looking at—the layer of soot, the shock of discoloured flesh, the jolt of lacerated skin—this obscene violation of everything he knows and expects and loves. And when he breathes in the menthol his lungs are filled with a discordant scent, because he knows now that is not what he’s meant to be perceiving. The sight of singed, burnt skin, charred flesh without its accompanying dimensions; its impact not lessened but enhanced by the incongruence of it.
And he wants to say, no, no, no, you’re wrong, this is all a mistake, you’ve got someone else, this is not her, this cannot be her.
But the longer he is forced to look, the weaker his excuses grow: because the angles of the face are hers; the cheekbones, the nose, the ears. What poorly remains of the jumper and the jeans; the blinding glint of her rings on her left hand. And the eyes, the eyes that up until this very second looked, shone with awe and fondness and inquisitiveness and mischief and sadness and anger and love—are nothing but bulbous, blackened clumps, melted deep into the bone of the socket.
Unseeing. Extinct. Dead.
And despite the impossibility of it here he is—a soul without a body witnessing a body without a soul.
Gemma?
Or, I could stay. Or, I could stay. Or, I could stay.
How long ago was it that she had spoken those words?
Could you please confirm the identity of the victim?
And it’s that neutrality, that abominable, maddening clinical neutrality in the nurse’s voice that has no place here—here where everything dear comes to die, here where the fabric of reality splits in half. And his mouth closes lifelessly around the words, he can feel it, but he has no clue what he’s saying.
And there is a slight nod of acknowledgment from the nurse and before he knows it the sheet is being pulled back on with a rustling sound, but the vision remains, the afterimage of a nuclear explosion, a too-powerful light. And it is not possible to synthesize this knowledge—not now, not all at once—but something is sinking deep into his chest, his bones, inherent and irreducible, and suddenly there is nothing to shield him from the terrible truth that he is stepping into a wholly different world—one without her.
How can that be? How can planets go on orbiting, how can the sun rise, how can cells continue their life cycle? Everything ought to stop.
And he’s being addressed again, his signature is needed here, here and here, she’s saying—something about a waiver and belongings and cremation and funeral services. And some portion of his brain, not the one currently at the wheel but a different, wilder one—is screaming.
Wait, wait! Is this it? Take me back! Let me go back! Wait! It can’t end like this! I didn’t even say goodbye! Let me see her! Let me see her again! I can’t leave her alone! Who brought her in, touched her? Was it a doctor or a paramedic? It can’t be strangers handling her body! I need to hold her, kiss her forehead one last time! Let me say goodbye! I need her to know I held her the last time! Oh, my God, let me go back!
And that is the last thing he sees, surreal and dreamlike like an extracorporeal trance: the puppet of his bloodless body, his arm being extended and his right hand fumbling with the pen, signing the documents that confirm the loss of goodness and faith and control and hope—before he is altogether swallowed up by the darkness.
***
It is the dry heaving that wakes him up.
Some involuntary spasm has him already upright, already uncurling himself and haphazardly kicking down the shapes that cover him.
His chest hurts, his throat hurts, every pore of his body hurts and the sound of his own faint, ragged breathing contaminates everything with an intolerable truth. She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone…
There is no clarity, no real perception of depth or space or orientation—only the vision of blurred edges and clouded surroundings. What appears to be a pillow, a yanked comforter, two pairs of slippers on the carpet, a cloak of semi-darkness—the world is askew, tilting back and forth like a ship unable to resist or counter the violence of waves. And Mark tries, by God he tries, but he cannot for the life of him catch his breath, fill his lungs back with the oxygen that leaves him and leaves him and leaves him. All he knows is he stumbles—but up or down, it is impossible to tell, and immediately after something collapses and his knees meet the floor.
The horizontal plane gives him something to grasp, something to hold on to.
His heart seizes in his chest, ribs not straining but crushing under an invisible weight. Fuck, what time is it? He has no frame of reference.
He’s late for work. With all probability he’s late for work and he cannot stay here, because he desperately needs to get rid of these hours, these hours of his life that are dead without her. A day is too long. What does a day mean anymore? What does time mean anymore?
He wants Lumon to scrape those hours off him, abrade him, grate him—and leave of him just one thin layer, hardly conscious at all, with only the necessary hours to eat, shower, sleep, answer the phone and assure Devon that he is okay. That is what he needs to become. He needs to change clothes, get his car keys, step into the elevator, he needs to-
There is a rustling sound behind him, but even in discomposure his mind is treacherously selective about what passes through—a sift that filters only the infinitesimal, the minuscule, the insignificant. He can surmise that he fell off the bed, which means he didn’t sleep on the couch for once, even though the vast space under the covers has become a frightening, sickening sight that he prefers to avoid. He can see that there is a crack right where the wall meets the floor that reveals the previous wallpaper. He can also gather that he’s at the peak of a panic attack, and that unless he finds a way to come down from it, soon, his lungs will collapse in on themselves.
He feels it happen in ripples, with a watery delay: footsteps that approach, a figure dropping next to him, gentle but firm hands that settle on his shoulders, taking in his face, taking in his dazed, trembling form—the opposite of everything he has come to know in recent years. And then it’s like the veil falls altogether and he is aware of the very body that caused his reality to stir in the first place.
Gemma is here. Spirit, flesh and bone—not a single atom missing—her composed breathing in stark contrast against his sharp, shallow gasps for air. The precious details and composites of her far clearer than anything about himself: the mole that sits right on the hinge of her jaw, the other one on her temple, the furrowed brow, the faint freckles spattered around her delicate eyelids. She looks complete and solid and present and undone with worry, and almost instantly Mark is hit with the knowledge that this is real. It simply is. Because she never haunted him, not in this way, not with a body, a face—just the outline of inevitability, an absence made apparent in the empty spaces she used to occupy.
In this moment, it’s almost as though he is the ghost—haunting, not haunted—because Gemma looks as terrified as he feels. Mark perceives himself to be losing weight, lacking presence, about to fade away—and she, the only one holding him together, hands tightening, eyes desperately searching his face.
“Mark. Look,” she demands, staunchly. “Look at me,”
And there they are: her eyes, not those pools of darkened, melted mass that burned before they could decompose—but her eyes! Genuine and bright and sharp and profound and alive and terribly, achingly determined.
He tries to follow the sound of her guidance, the sound of her finding him. “You’re okay. Breathe. Slowly, okay? Breathe with me,”
Nothing about this is remotely comfortable: motor skills refusing to function, his hands are helplessly stuck behind him to avoid falling flat on his back, so that with some difficulty, she comes to sit between his knees, placing a hand upon his chest—releasing it.
And finally he resurfaces, his intake of breath a desperate, guttural sound; and the warm air rushing into him forces him to swallow hard against the onslaught of tears that bloom behind his eyelids.
She takes his hand then, steadying him, and guides it upon her left clavicle, where her own chest rises and falls. And the mere touch connects him back with warmth—with everything good and right—making it all easier, the rhythm of his inhales and exhales growing more and more similar to hers; and in complete helplessness they stay there, just like that, with no sound except for their synchronized breathing.
An eternity passes until things ease down, the world settling and regaining definition. The roof over their heads. The bedroom whose ownership was transferred to them a month ago—full of things, old mixed with new: the drawer that sat under plastic wraps in his basement back on display again, the books they have read hundreds of times on the bedside table; a new, unbearably soft armchair; a vase with fresh flowers crowned by a spiral lucky bamboo.
They have no curtains, not yet, so he can see that the shadows are still pressed in thick against the windows, morning light yet to be announced—the day he’s about to face, he won’t face alone.
The realization comes with its own grievances: they’re not in Ganz, but they’re not in Kier either, and the nightmare is no less real. The chain of events that brought them here as wonderfully strange as it is monstrous: the steps that for two years after that intolerable night he took above—mirrored by hers, circling and pacing and marching underground; their paths diverged, but their hell one and the same.
Suddenly, everything is grave and heavy with meaning.
Gemma herself lets out a shaky sigh, not entirely relieved; hands loosening, giving him the space to collect himself. Only now does he notice the sweatshirt she’s wearing belongs to him, actually—the dark green one with the college mascot imprinted on the front. “Hey. Alright... Okay. Welcome back,”
“T-there was… there was a body,” he tries, but the words are sticking in his throat, voice rubbed raw and hoarse and broken around the edges. He presses his eyes tightly shut, the spectre of the examination gurney still menacing, still lurking close, and before he can even bring his hands to his eyes he breaks down into a sob.
Startled by how quickly everything inside him unravels, he casts his gaze upon the floor, his lungs struggling to maintain the serenity she instilled.
It is miraculous that Gemma comes to save him, again and again. Words upended, she pulls him into the circle of her arms, wrapping his quivering shoulders like a shield. And the truth is he cries, he cries in terrible wrecking sobs, wounded, almost visceral, because he has no way of stopping—and it shakes his entire body with every broken sound that rips its way out of him.
Because how many times did he weep just like this, with no hope or comfort to ever be held by her again? How impossible did this seem then? It is all Mark can do to press his face into the sanctuary of her neck. Warm, endless tears drip from his chin onto the collar of her sweatshirt—and it’s some small, stupid comfort, to know that at least the item of clothing he’s ruining is his, and not hers.
There’s the faintest mumble into his hair. “I know, I know. It wasn’t me,” and there is reassurance in her tone, but also something earnest and solemn. “Mark. It was a lie. They lied, to you and to me,”
Such an abhorrence, such unthinkable evil—and it happened to them. No warning could ever have prepared them for something like this—the monsters that only appear in books and fairytales, waiting in the shadows, ripping children from their families, husbands from their wives—rendered acutely and terrifyingly real.
Mark presses his hands against her shoulder blades, leaning further into her. He clings to Gemma as though she were the source of all things, and she might very well be: the air in the room is only breathable because she makes it so, and it is only under her touch that the snow melts and the skies part to release the sun.
Only she herself knows the extent of her suffering: the constriction of life underground, the erosion of will, the execution of clinical, systemic violence; forcing her into a unique kind of isolation—no familiar touch, no soothing words, no sky, no light. His pain is nothing compared to hers, and yet.
“I’m here. I’m here,” she says, pulling back to look at him. “I’m only here because you came to find me. After all that time,” and her eyes pour into his, glistening with new tears, infinite in their conviction. “And that means something. That means everything,”
Her words and her hands work in tandem: tracing his hairline, the side of his face, the shell of his ear, wiping his tears away, with utmost softness coming to rest upon his neck and jaw—touching him in the way he thought he would never be touched again, in the way he refused to let himself be touched by anyone else.
Fiercely, Mark shakes his head. “It’s not- it’s not true,” as he recalls with renewed pain the strepitous failures and the denial and the delay and the threats that stood in the way. Gemma tries to refute him, of course she does, but with only one look she understands that whatever this is, it needs saying. “You’re not here thanks to me. You’re here because you never gave up. After all that time,” he repeats, and then, like a tide of emotion that cascades out from him. “You’re here because you’re the bravest, the strongest, the truest person I know,”
The words reach her, fully and completely, the way a river reaches the open sea. And Gemma cannot quite manage a smile, but her lower lip wobbles, and Mark wants to tell her that he’ll be there—if she falters, if she falls, if she loses sight of herself. He’ll be right here. There is hope, and longing and aching as they draw each other close, her cheek pressed against his.
“Oh, Mark,” she says, terribly softly. “What happened to us… whatever happened to us…”
Every reminder is unbearable. Distantly, he wishes things were different; he wishes for a kinder world in which neither of them had to be strong, or resilient, or brave. Such world does not exist.
But they can choose what to do with what they have made of them—take care of the pieces and the scars and the battered bodies they have left. And Mark wants to do that—for as long as he draws breath, he wants to do that. So they stay, carving out a space in the fabric of time—to linger just a little longer in this warmth, this closeness, swaying gently back and forth.
When all is quiet, it is Gemma who rises, turning to kiss his temple, his forehead.
“Hey, мой солнышко,” she squeezes him. “Do you remember what it said in the forged passports?”
Mark sniffles, holds her tighter in return. The realization burns brightly in his chest, that she’s trying to bring him to the present, bring him into the moments that are still waiting to be lived. That he gets to experience and make new memories with her, new memories together—it is a wonder, a miracle too big to be put into words.
“Florence Lustgarten,” he replies clearly, thinking about Devon’s genius and her insistence on providing them with fake documents of all kinds.
“Yeah? That’s not so bad. You, on the other hand, were Stu,”
Inevitably, Mark remembers and cringes, nose wrinkled. “Stu Lustgarten? Jesus Christ. Unbelievable,”
“Be glad she wasn’t feeling creative,” Gemma warns him, because the gaps of time cannot possibly erase her familiarity with his sister’s characteristic antics. “She could have very easily put ‘Justin Case’ as your name,”
“Oh, my God,” he groans. “That’s Devon for you. You know, she could’ve called us Mr. and Mrs. Poppycock and she would sleep just as soundly at night,”
They both chuckle at that—and Mark wonders whether a laugh is still a laugh, even when it’s wet with tears.
He thinks he knows the answer.
This is how it feels, to retrace their way back to happiness.
Gently, he returns his face to the impossibly warm skin next to him, not wanting to be separate for even a second, and familiar fingers work their way into his hair. He lets the sensations wash over him, and this time he cannot but weep anew—with helpless relief, bone-deep joy.
Intimately pressed like this, it’s as though her strength passes onto him, and thus he is no longer vulnerable—only now is he able to will away the vision of the mangled body, bringing the pearls of happier memories to the surface, recent and not: how she used to go on walks around the garden proudly announcing “I’m going to forage into the woods, gather some firewood lest we grow cold in the winter”, how she was taller than him on their wedding day; how she used to reach for him during summer nights, slip a cold foot inside his waistband and place it there, right at the crack of his butt, the suggestion both playful and deadly serious; how there was a moment, while they were first setting up their old house, when a shelf plank fell on his head by accident, leaving him with a swollen bump for two eternal weeks, and Gemma had teased him about his skull being permanently deformed and studied by alien archaeologists in the future; how delicately her hands had unravelled a cotton flower, musing that yes, she liked it, but it is a flower “too stained with blood, its history too dark and twisted to be considered beautiful again”; how tightly she had held onto Devon and him in that car, hell behind them and an uncertain future ahead, and with wondrous eyes she had asked them to look at the stars, to look how bright they were; how she says she has “licence to kill” when it comes to plants; how the very same day that a ladybug had perched itself on her knuckles, an instant of magical symbiosis, he managed to capture a butterfly, much to her delight; how her eyes had softened at the restaurant because he asked the waiter whether the dish they had ordered contained nutmeg, just last week; how they are both far messier than they used to be; how the sound of either of them farting in bed makes them burst out into uncontrollable laughter.
These are only an infinitesimal portion of the things he loves, terribly and ferociously and grandly and equally. So he turns his face into her hands, pressing kisses to each—one, then the other—lingering on the callouses of her left hand, finally healing, finally free from the weight of that unnameable room.
After a too-long moment, he simply lets himself be. He accepts the heavy exhaustion weighing down the corners of his eyes, the slight tremble in his hands, and the weakness in his knees.
God, he will probably need an entire roll of toilet paper just to blow his nose, and another one to dry his face. He communicates it as such, with the naked honesty that he knows will make her laugh. And Gemma’s smile widens, her hand still in his, her gaze warming every atom of his being, assuaging every doubt and uncertainty.
There is absolutely no need to go to the bathroom together, but they do it anyway. Because against every rational principle, here they are: away from the brazen world, working to replace every hurt and phantom pain with the smallest happenings, the simplest, silliest pleasures.
And when the light finally floods in, when it slowly finds them curled together in the sun-soaked sheets, unwavering, everlasting—he will determine that he is not a ghost anymore. That for too long he doomed himself to a shadowed existence, for too long yearning for an end to every end.
But dying is too easy; it was always too easy.
So he is going to live. For her.