It was a thing at first, a constant in their newly upside down, and every night they would find a TV somewhere and watch the news. The grungy motel in Odessa, the drafty apartment in Lucerne, the safehouse in Madrid that doesn't belong to either of them but she still knows where to look for the spare key. News cast by newscast they make their way home from Russia, wherever home even is now, slowly so their shadow has time to keep up, slowly so they don't look suspicious and on edge, slowly so they can watch the eyes that watch their backs with every step.
The cross-continental trip they both always wanted to take, now with a somber twist.
When the news becomes too much, when she can't watch another report roll in with a death toll she couldn't prevent, when he can't see any more cell phone footage of failures his friends have to face alone, they stop in Peniche for a while and drown it all out with deep breaths and the sound of the ocean.
At night, she wakes up wanting to scream or cry or both but does neither and she curls herself around him and reminds herself what she almost lost.
At night, he wakes up sweaty and panicked and he traces fingertips over the bullet scar on her chest and reminds himself what he still has.
In London, they stay a few weeks in the flat that used to be theirs and could be theirs again. They drive north and visit his older sister, she fails to contain her surprised confusion at seeing them together. They drive west and visit his younger sister, she pretends not to be angry about this supposed relapse that they can't explain in detail. They shrug it off and hug their nieces and nephews, his family that was once theirs and could be theirs again.
They board a plane.
And another.
They mail a letter from Sarasota to a P.O box in Naperville and think Mack will find it when he's ready. They send a box from Phoenix to Charleston and hope old contacts will understand and pass it on, or the mushroom soup will go bad before anyone gets to enjoy it.
The apartment in Cincinnati already feels a little lighter with both back inside, but she'd forgotten about the leaky ceiling and ruined mattress, never replaced. They set up the pull-out couch instead and fall asleep with all the lights on and a gun on the side table.
In Arlington, he takes her to see where he buried her best friend after she dropped off the face of the Earth. In San Diego, she takes him to see where she buried her mother after she stopped listening to his drunken voice mails. They don't speak, just a kiss to a forehead and hands laced tightly together.
They find Daisy bleeding in San Francisco, or rather Daisy finds them because she doesn't know how to giver herself stitches just yet, and they know that hollowed look in her eyes enough not to ask questions. He makes some jokes about the haircut and she sews neat lines across their friend's shoulder and they make her eat a second helping of dinner before watching her fade away, a ghost of what used to be.
At night, he watches the rise and fall of her chest and thinks about all the things that went wrong, all the way from the beginning. At night, she listens to him snore and thinks about all the things that are right from here on.
Five pages of nonsense and updates are pulled from an envelope in Montreal and they decipher Simmons' chicken scratch around a cabin fireplace. He hands her a warm s'more while she reads out loud and she smiles, the kind of smile he likes, the kind of smile he fell in love with, and she says that maybe they should go skiing in the morning.
In Seattle, she steals fries off his plate, and also his pickles, and also most of his drink. He says they should go South next, somewhere with sunlight, somewhere where they put little umbrellas in every drink, and that maybe she should have ordered her own sweet potato fries if she wanted sweet potato fries.
They watch the news in a sports bar overlooking the Sound and even with the death toll, even with the world crumbling and the stricken faces of the people they still care about, they watch the news and it doesn't hurt like it used too.