A/N: Lyrics in italics are from Falling Up's Drago or the Dragons.
DISCLAIMER: I'm making no money off this, nor do I own these characters.
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one cholera outbreak; the blinds are pulled,
the shades are drawn here once again
Sweet isolation and darkness mean dreams for every other doctor, relief from the claustrophobia of one thousand sickbeds. Though I maintain every pretense of humanity, sleep will never still my thoughts again. And isolation—isolation is no longer a comfort.
I am a lonely monster—and I believe that I have met my son.
Edward Masen will die soon. I already see Heaven's angels reflected in his eyes when he blinks weakly up at me through his pain. Influenza seeks to claim him for herself; I would very much like to spare him her lethal ministrations, but the cost will be terrible, and he is in no condition to consent to the life I will damn him to almost-live.
I have no right to choose, says the Bible across my knees. God the Father condemned his only Son for the sake of a thousand million souls; I am not so holy. My son will be condemned only to share my eternities of misery—there can be no resurrection from this lifelong tomb. Though made a monster, I could never act so selfishly as to make a monster of another.
a
late aesthetic exit is impossible
but not from rafter sins
Elizabeth Masen pleads for her son. Somehow she finds the power to defy the end, to clench her teeth and take my hand and beg with otherworldly authority.
"Save him," she gasps; her eyes know. They are the pure green of youth and spring and truth; there are angels in those depths. Is she speaking of her own accord, or are those spirits dancing in her gaze sent from Heaven to dictate my path?
I promise, unsure of what I am promising and who I am promising it to. Elizabeth's eyes pierce my pretenses like knives, shredding my excuses into bloody rags. And then her thin eyelids veil the daggers, her eyelashes fall like pale feathers against her still-paler skin.
The angels are gone. I must act alone.
this mathematic sunset starts
a neck to sink her teeth into again
Can I conquer one disease only to perpetuate another? Edward's eyes have fallen closed, echoing his mother's; if those eyes ever open again, they will have traded their gemstone hues for charcoal anguish, emerald vehemence for midnight thirst. I hesitate, a father on the verge of unholy adoption, and then a mother's love decides Edward's fate and moves my hands.
He murmurs from the chasms of delirium as I move him to the morgue; his mother lies dead beneath thin linen, and I wonder if she knows—if she sees—if she realizes what she has given me the resolve to do. It is only the memory of the way the fever roared through her eyes as it picked her frail body to pieces that allows me to steal Edward from the hospital; her strength makes me equal to this nightmarish task.
I act.
He screams.
His fever will abate as my venom mars his blood. He will never burn with influenza's zeal again. His skin will frost over, attain the properties of marble as supernatural rigor mortis gains ground; he will relearn breathing as a voluntary abstraction.
But for now he writhes on the carpet, screaming wordless agony as I crucify him in the name of fatherly love and a mother's final breath.
I am a lonely monster—but now I have a son.