"I chant it over and over in my head, a lullaby for my fears. "
o'wanda. trigger warning: it gets pretty intense. pg. contains spoilers. i'm so very sorry for this.
What is the human life expectancy? I know what it was before we came here, I can remember images of old men and women with wrinkled skin and faded eyes.
But here, hidden away as rebels, who knows how long we have? How long can someone go without sunlight every day, with desert dust coating our lungs, and the weight that they are the last remaining humans on their shoulders?
It starts to happen to Ian when he's in his fourties. Streaks of grey start to appear in his blond hair, he pauses more during work to double over and grip at his knees. My weight is no longer easy to him, although he ignores the strain and still cradles me to his chest every chance he gets.
He deteriorates slowly over the years, much like his brother and everyone else I have come to love. The souls medicine has held it off as long as they can, but we cannot bottle our own immortality.
My host-my body-is still young, I still look barely older than Jamie, who has shot up to be taller than even Jared, who works in the fields every day and is no longer the little boy he was when I first came here.
Although I can still move freely, work without any problems, I can feel a change within me. Deep inside, not in my host body, but in my real body, a silver ribbon wrapped around a temporary brain. I can feel it, and it grows stronger every day.
I am tired. I am so tired.
My thousands of years have finally caught up to me, and even though I promised myself long ago this would be my last life - my last time destroying someone else, my first and last time to love- I find myself staring at the ceiling of the cave long after Ian has fallen asleep and wonder what my afterlife will be like. Will it be the clouded gates of heaven as the humans believed? Will I be stuck in a never ending replay of my past lives? Or will I simply be gone, no sense left of who I am, nothing but bleak darkness?
Mortality is crushing me, and every time I see Ian wince from movement or pause to catch his breath, it constricts. Wound tightly around me, it squeezes my lungs until I lose my breath.
I never wanted my time as a human to end, but things have changed since when I was first put into this body and fell in love with Ian.
Jeb is gone, Jared has taken over - there are new faces, so many new faces, so many souls sent back. It is a shock that we have not been discovered yet, and in the spaces of conversation at meals we can all feel it. The nervous tightening of the stomach, that feeling that danger is coming and it is close.
I am ready, I have been shocked by my sudden openness to human emotions. I feel iritiated, angry, much more often than I ever imagined I would. I am ready for a fight, to defend these humans with their crushing mortality around me.
Ian, however, is not.
I have been lying on a cot beside him for three days. He is sick, so sick, and although we try to force soul created medicine on him over and over, he is not getting better.
He keeps his head laying in my lap, and the scene is so familiar to one years ago, but this time neither of us recoils.
I run my fingers through his hair, a frantic motion that calms me more than him, him slipping in and out of consciousness. I hope he dreams, vivid images of colors and times where he was happy.
I hope he dreams of me, and the selfishness of that thought stuns me.
"Wanda," He breathes out one day, voice raspy.
"I'm here." I murmur, and he starts to sit up, but I stop him and slip down so I'm laying next to him. He sighs out of relief, and I try to keep my emotions in check. He's always happy when I show signs of raw, human emotion that shakes me to my core, but tears and sobs and begs will not help.
"My Wanderer." He says with a small grin, and even though his voice is scratchy and shudders keep running up and down his spine, to hear him talking like himself again rushes a warmth through me.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry, so I let out a sound in between the two.
"Ian," I say, like it's the last time I'll say his name. Like his name could save us both, wrapped tight around me with the effect of a warm embrace. "My Ian." I let out, my voice taking on the playful, protective growl it used to.
He manages to wrap his arms around me, hold me to his chest as best as he can, the smile on his face is strained.
"I'm gonna be okay." He murmurs into my hair, and I bury my head in the crook of his neck. The words echo around us, ringing back to our ears and we can hear the disbelief in them.
He is not going to be okay, and my world tumbles once again.
/
I don't eat, I don't sleep. I sit vigil.
Melanie comes in sometimes, hands me a handful of food and eventually pulls my dirty hair up and out of my face. Other than that, we are left alone.
"You gotta eat." He mumbles one day, brushing his lips across the skin on the inside of my wrist. I shove some food in my mouth, swallow without tasting it. I won't let him see him in such a fragile state.
He gets weaker each day, and soon he can't even hold me, his arms slack as they lay across the cot.
/
"We should've tried again." He mumbles one day, eyes closed as he leans into me. I hear Doc, old and frail now as well, leave the room.
I suck in a breath, this is a topic I've avoided for years.
My body, too weak then to handle having a child, no matter how careful I was.
We buried the baby next to where we had buried Walt in what seemed like an eternity ago.
How strange I had thought it was, to be sad and long for something that had barely existed.
(I had slipped back into the Soul style of mourning, silent and dead-eyed even when Ian begged me to say something. It took me two days, and then, in the quiet of the night, I let myself cry.)
"I know." I say, swallowing hard and running my hand through his hair again, down his neck and rubbing between his shoulders. "It doesn't matter though."
I mourn for that baby again, I mourn for the dreams Ian most likely had before the Souls, before me. The ideal american dream, job, family, children, picket fenced houses.
I am suddenly sad for the first time that I could not have that with him.
/
It happens on the seventh day.
He grips at me suddenly, brings my head down so I can look at him.
"I love you." This will be the last time he says it, we can both feel it, and his eyelids start to become heavy.
"I love you too." I say, and instead of his soft voice, mine is loud. Desperate. He can't leave me, this isn't how it's supposed to be. "And.. and when you get better we'll have the biggest dinner ever. Go on a raid and get all your favorites, okay? Maybe we can even find a human made movie. You can take a week off working, I'll let you beat me in soccer. We'll go on a raid and I'll let you come into the store this time, promise." My voice is cracking, I am begging, saying this all to try to reassure myself. Ian will not die. Ian will not die. Ianwillnotdie.
I chant it over and over in my head, a lullaby for my fears.
He smiles for me, he knows this is all a lie. He always knows.
His fingers reach up and brush over my neck, and I know he is thinking of the first time we were ever face to face, his hands wrapped around my neck in a brutal attack.
"Never should've done that." He whispers, and before I can tell him that it was years and years ago, he continues. "Everyone told me I was… was crazy for chasing after you." He grins now, a weak, faltering thing. "I wouldn't take it back. The invasion, everything. Wouldn't have met you otherwise."
I'm crying now, silently, it streaming and staining my cheeks. I haven't cried in years, and it is still strange to me.
I have lived racked with guilt for what my people have done to this planet, and in just a few words, that is gone.
Out of all this destruction came something beautiful, a candle flame of hope within all of this.
He closes his eyes and I quickly lean down, laying against his chest, my ear against his heart, listening for it, needing that reassurance.
"I love you, I love you, I love you," I murmur it over and over, feel his fingers still and go stiff, his heart fades slowly.
The sound slows, grows fainter and fainter until suddenly, it's gone.
I let out a sob.
"Ian, no, no, Ian." I sit up, choking on little whimpers and cries that escape me. I do not hold them back, I do not stop myself. This painful emotion is all I have left, and I see it as a companion. His eyes are closed, and he doesn't move at my pleas.
He is gone, but I cannot accept it, despite how I have been building myself up for days for this very moment.
"Come back, please" I'm wailing, screaming - everyone throughout the tunnels can hear my pleas, but I have lost the urge to care. Ian is gone, my light, my world. I cling to him, to his shirt, to his face, to his arms. My hands are a flury of motion, taking in every last bit of him. "Come back." I whisper again, and I slide off the cot, my knees landing on the hard floor below.
"Ian," I'm practically moaning out his name. Let me see his eyes one last time, I beg in my head, to anyone who could listen.
He stays motionless. I am alone.
I am never one for quick decisions, the last one I made was years ago, when I decided to die in order to give Melanie her life back.
Once again, my abrasive decision making comes back to my death. Ian kept me on this earth, in this body - there is no reason left. I get up off the floor, knees shaking and breath hitched.
I push one more cot over next to the one Ian's body lays on, my bottom lip trembling from the sobs that had made their way through me.
I take one moment to whisper a sorry to Melanie, to Jared, to Jamie, to whoever it is that finds me. I am sorry I do not have the strength to stay alive, to say good-bye.
My last moment of selfishness.
I clench my hands into fists and I stop controlling my real body, I am my real self, and I am using my very last defense.
I remember Ian's arms wrapped tight around me at the burial, hiding my face again as I say "I don't want to see it" over and over and Ian presses a kiss to my for-
Gone. Shredded into nothing.
I remember late nights sleeping on a single mat with my body against him, whispering stories from long ago, before we met each other, learning about an Ian I never -
I remember everyone else's children following me around, being referred to as Aunt Wanda, watching over them and keeping them safe, their small arms clinging to my leg-
I remember Melanie playing and braiding with my hair - such a strange thing to come from her, sitting and watching a soccer g-
I remember Ian's lips pressed to mine, our fingers knotted tog-
I remember Jamie introducing to me his girlfriend, a shy redhead who was new to the cave-
I remember Ian say-
Ian, my only love of all eight li-
Ian-
It's gone.
My body collapses, and I hope it reaches the cot, I hope I am lying next to Ian, just like I always should have.
I hope for a lot of things, but lastly I hope that these humans survive.