He was the last. The last man, the last one standing. Here, on the edge of the world, a barren wilderness of sand and dirt and scrub. Even the birds had left him. There was nothing but earth and rock, and water pouring through crevices which had changed so slowly he hadn't noticed them – until, suddenly, he was no longer standing on a hilltop, but swimming in a sea. A sea full of all the life the world had left.
Memories had become golden seams in his mind, crunched beneath heavy rock. That fantastic photographic mind of his so full now that he grew sluggish, slow to recall. It was his curse. No doubt about that. Not now, when time had ceased to matter, when days and weeks and months had eroded into one long, hungry minute of existence.
He wasn't sure anymore whether he sat, or stood, walked or ran… or merely floated – couldn't be certain that the changes of pale white to rich gold in the dark were meteorological, or simply memories on the back of his eyelids. Now and then he could feel the breeze stir. Now and then he remembered what it felt like.
So many centuries.
He had been running. For so long. He had fled the soldiers when they swarmed them all, had watched bombs fall from the sky – seen the dust gradually settle on a new and stronger world. He had run from creatures, the spawn of man and beast grown large and vicious, devouring the Earth.
There had been a time. A time when he had not needed to, had not wanted to flee. When the soft touch of a woman's hands had guided him, held him fast to one path, the right path – a road he could never seem to travel on his own. What he hadn't realised, until this long, never-ending day, was that he would never be alone. Since those vibrant leaves of autumn, that crimson dress, he had never been alone.
One hundred years. To the day, to the hour – he could remember the clock as though frozen – he had remembered her. He had been in a laboratory, in the heart of the civilisation humanity and abnormals had created together, that gilded mess of brilliance she had worked so hard to shape (sometimes he wondered whether she'd done it to give him a reason to live), and he had simply stopped. His hands had ceased to move, his whole body overcome by a sudden deadening that hit his mind like an overpowering scent. His assistant, a dark haired girl who reminded him far too much of Sofia, had tried to make him sit down. He had awoken from it sharply, as though breaking through the surface of the Atlantic. Helen's memory, not his, the icy stab in his veins starting to burn with the cold. He had feigned recovery, but that night, in his room, he had done nothing but mourn all over again.
They had set out on the journey together. It seemed impossible that she would not be there at its end. The others too. The ones which hadn't seemed to matter at the time. Those countless voices from men, and women, who had come and gone like a restless tide but had remained with him regardless. Names which had not entirely merged together with the dross of the world: Henry, Druitt, James, Nigel, Kat, Samuel, William, Maga, Kate…
He could not weep any more – or perhaps that was all he did. Maybe this wasn't rain, or oceanic spray, but constant tears. The shedding of everything he ever felt, the slow erosion of whatever tethered him to this place, whatever it was which kept him clinging on, when he should be letting go.
Whether it was curiosity, or fear, he did not know, but every time he had determined to end it, that he had lived too long – something brought him back. Some predilection for pain? He wasn't needed here anymore. A lone memory bank, the last remnant of several civilisations: ancient by his standards, let alone by those children whose bones were now sandstone beneath him.
He wasn't a vampire. He wasn't a man. He wasn't even Nikola anymore.
Yet he could feel her touch like he could feel the sunlight, smell the scent of her skin like the cloying pollution of a New York summertime in 1999, hear that bubbling fountain of laughter. Music. Wine, that slightly burnt smell of high voltage electricity after it clicked from metal to metal. The sound of fires, explosions, and sighs of passion. The feel of a new born infant's skin, the first time a little werewolf started playing with its tail. The way her legs would cross together as though he had made her uncomfortable, the tingle of fear as she ventured into the depths for an incurable disease. The stab of mortality, the grin of a joker who had never given up, the ebony coffins, the mahogany, the ashes – white flowers, red flowers, yellow and pink – couples and widowers, children and singletons. Smiles, frowns, the lull of a voice as the sun set, whispering nursery songs in your ear. Brothers, sisters, mothers…
This. This was the end. You, and forever, with the love of the ones you loved, fading like ghosts, into nothing.
A/N: A little drabble inspired by Clint Mansell's Soundtrack for The Fountain (I've not seen it yet, please do not spoil the film for me) which is also where the cover image comes from. Some of those names are historical btw, kudos to anyone who identifies the two from the real Tesla's past.
DISCLAIMER: None of the characters, worlds, or images belong to me. I do not make profit for them and I hope I've not brought any into disrepute with my little tribute.