What Comes After
No matter how many times he closes his eyes, lets his mind go blank, he stills sees her. Sees her eyes, brimming with tears, and wide with fear as the silvery glint of the knife catches the moonlight streaking through the hallway. He remembers seeing a flash like that before—right before—and wonders now if it really was the knife, or if was it something, something else flashing across her pale, pale face. Something important. Something he missed.
Whatever it was, he never got to contemplate the fact, not really. Not as Fitz's manic grin burned itself into Eli's brain; as Fitz stuck the point of that blade into Eli's ribs like they were butter. Then all Eli remembers is darkness, thick and suffocating. Nothing else.
Clare is not so lucky. She remembers everything—every panicked, tensioned moment. Eli's eyes, pleading, terrified, even as the point of the knife broke through his skin. The look of shock, the choked recognition on his face as the dark blood began to bleed through his shirt. Blood dripping like a faucet Clare couldn't turn off. How even as she clutched him, hands pressed tight against his flesh, she couldn't turn it off. Couldn't make it stop.
She remembers how she couldn't let him go, held him tight in her arms simply because she knew, felt deep in her bones, that he was slipping away from her. He was slipping away to a place she couldn't follow. Even when someone, Mr. Simpson maybe, or the paramedic (she can't be sure), grabbed her waist and pulled away from Eli's crumpled form, she remembers reaching for him. Grasping and clawing at the air in front of her and screaming, despite the repeated "Clare, Clare it's all right, Clare. Let go. Let go. Let go."
But even now, after it all, she knows she couldn't ever let him go. Not really.
She fainted after that, after they lifted her into the air, after she saw the carnage laid out before her like some kind of slasher movie. Now, especially now, she finds she hates those movies even more.
When Eli opens his eyes, for a fraction of a second he almost doesn't remember where he is. But then he feels the sharp, throbbing pain in his side. It's an ache that makes his lungs convulse every time he tries to breathe. He hears the steady, consistent pulsing of the heart monitor, and its source, clipped tight to his index finger, synchronized with the drum beat of his body. Ready to sound the alarm in case it somehow falters. Though his room is dark, he knows it's daytime, because the curtains are illuminated by a glow that makes it seem like they're about to go up in flames. Knows that if here were to somehow get up out of this bed and pull the curtains back, the lights would blind him and send his senses into haywire.
Eli wants to stay there, suspended in the quiet darkness, but the ache in his side persists. When he looks to his left, he sees that his mother is there, holding vigil by his bedside, her slim body curled into the armchair in a position that surely can't be comfortable. Her forehead looks more lined than he remembers, her hair—normally pure and inky black despite her age seems to hold a grayish tinge, something he sincerely hopes is a result of the lighting, and not his current situation.
He opens his mouth, croaks out her name and she tenses, stirring immediately. Within an instant, she takes her place, asserts her role, hovering over his bedside, fluffing his pillows and calling his doctors.
He opens his mouth again and says the one word that's branded in his mind, the word he chokes out even though his throat feels like sand and his mouth tastes like he's spent the last few hours gargling gravel.
Clare. Clare. Clare. Clare.
His mom shakes her head. And later, when Adam is finally allowed to come in, with a face so ashen it looks like he should be the one lying in the hospital bed, he looks at Eli. And he knows.
He's lost her. She isn't his anymore.
Clare wakes up gasping, screaming, and clawing desperately at her sides. At the clothes she knows are soaked with his blood, metallic and sticky. But her mother is there as, waiting to take Clare into her arms, and she does—pins her tight against her chest even though Clare is thrashing and flailing.
It takes several minutes before Clare realizes where she is. And that her clothes have been exchanged for a blue checkered hospital gown.
"I didn't think you'd want them. I thought it would be best."
Yes, Clare thinks. Yes, it's best. Yes. Yes. Yes.
She repeats these words, a mantra, a prayer, as she washes her hands in the hospital sink until they're pink and raw and aching. But no matter how many times she washes them, uses the industrial grade antiseptic soap that could strip paint.
She can't get the blood off her hands.
Her mother doesn't ask if she wants to see him. Clare says nothing.
Eli spends the rest of the term at home, sulking. Adam brings him his work, but Eli can't get him to talk about Clare.
Adam doesn't want to be the messenger. And Clare knows he already feels strained, straddling the canyon growing between them. Knows he's being pulled apart, stretched towards both sides.
Eli wants to care, to sympathize, but he can't.
All he sees is blue eyes and curls and the freckles. Her whole face shines in his memories.
Eventually they both stop asking.
The only way Clare gets through the summer with her sanity left is to keep busy, a task her parents rise to with the utmost enthusiasm (so much so that their fighting seems to have evaporated in favor of what they deemed "more important issues"). Church groups with giggling girls and boys who've never spoken to them without their mothers present. Hiking and camping and family vacations. Board games and yoga and dancing. And church. Every Sunday without fail. Because her parents still think that Jesus heals and all of that. Can fill any void.
But Clare knows better.
Nothing works. Because she misses him every day, feels him like an amputee must feel a phantom limb. An empty space that throbs and itches, but she can't get relief.
She can't see him. Can't speak to him. Can't even think about him without remembering his face, the light leaving his eyes. And the blood. Always the blood. It's there, staining her ivory skin, blaring crimson against blinding white. She washes her hands so often these days that the skin perpetually flakes. She scratches at it constantly, leaving the backs of her palms puckered and enflamed.
Eli spends the summer in a daze. His parents let him be, because they've seen it before and they know that interfering doesn't do a thing. They just hope he's strong enough to climb out of the hole a second time.
Eli can't look his mother in the eye anymore. Every time he does, he seems her heart breaking a little more. Doesn't want to see the moment when he finally shatters it.
It takes two months before he can walk without wincing. Before he sleeps a full night without waking up drenched in cold sweat. Before he can shut his eyes and not see her face.
It worries him that when he sees it in his mind, it no longer warms him. Instead it leaves him shivering and he feels his blood run cold.
He can't get warm all summer. No matter how long he lies in the sun, the ground hard against his back, dust swirling in tendrils around his head.
He's freezing.
The first time they speak to each other is an accident. It's been more than six months but it feels like a decade. Fall has settled, leaving the air crisp and cool; the ground is littered with dead leaves, turned brown and soggy from the rain.
Eli sits with his back against Julia's headstone. He's lost count how many times he's come here. Feels like the only people he can talk to are six feet under the ground. Because he's starting to think he's halfway there. He's talking to himself, to her, truthfully, but from far away it looks like he's sitting in silence—his lips barely move.
He doesn't see her at first, but that doesn't matter, because he feels her. Looks up and in the trees, following a procession of people dressed in black, she's there. Her hair is long again, and even from far away he sees that her lips are still the same shade of bubble-gum pink. A color that used to send his heart racing. Now, it gives a feeble thump, but those feelings have been dormant for so long it's like his body's forgotten how to react.
It's then that he realizes just how tired he feels.
Clare feels him too. How could she not? Despite the fogged haze she's been walking around in, her head snaps up almost immediately in recognition. She knows where he is without even really seeing him.
Her feet take her there before her brain figures out what her body is doing.
Eli almost doesn't believe it's her walking towards him. Like she's a mirage, like any second he's going to realize he's just a dying man in the desert with lungs full of sand.
She doesn't get too close to him. He knows she's keeping a safe distance and he can't blame her for it. Though he rises to his feet, a perfect gentleman, brushing the dirt off of his jeans.
But he still can't bring himself to speak because he still thinks, suspects, that she's not real. That she's some sick joke his own starving senses are pulling on him.
Utter one word and the spell will be broken.
Clare can hardly believe it's him. He's so gaunt, and pale, and his eyes—there's that deadened, leaded look about them. It's almost like looking in a mirror, because deep down she knows she looks just as bad.
"Eli…you look terrible." She finally offers, still unable to meet his gaze.
"Well, I do try." He retorts, with a grin she knows is fake, which makes the whole thing that much worse. She remembers how his old smile, devilish, proud, used to set her skin burning.
"Who died?" He asks off-handedly, looking at his feet.
"One of the old ladies from our church. She and my mom were friends" Clare mumbles, biting her lip as if to keep more words from spilling out.
There's a heavy silence that falls between them before he finally speaks again.
"I talk to her. Still. Do you think that makes me crazy?" She doesn't need to ask who he's talking about. It's written all over his face, and on the gravestone at his feet.
"I think it makes you lonely. But I bet she's listening." Clare whispers, her eyes soft and pleading. In that moment he looks so scared, so vulnerable. She knows he's coming apart at the seams.
"Well she's dead, so I doubt it."
"Well, I have my beliefs…"
"That must be nice." Eli's voice sounds so hollow that for a second she's not certain it's even him that's even speaking.
Eli knows he's made an error the moment he takes a step towards her. The leaves crunch underneath his feet and for some reason it's the loudest sound he thinks he's ever heard. But it snaps them both out of whatever it is that's happening here, and she goes stiff like some kind of frightened animal.
Her eyes are wild, and before he can say anything else, she bolts.
After their encounter in the graveyard, Eli walks around feeling a little bit warmer, just a little bit lighter. He holds their conversation inside, close to his chest, like it's a small light trying its hardest to see through the fog. He waits and he hopes.
Clare dreams every night after. She wakes up flushed, heart thundering, feeling like she's choking on her own tongue.
But no matter how hard she tries, she can't remember what the dreams are about.
.
END PART ONE
I have most of part II (the end) finished. I just put this part up her as a sort of test...you know, gauge response and what not.
Expect the end within the week.