Only Human

He dreams.

It is no relief. Of course not. There is no relief anywhere, there is never any relief, only blood filling up his lungs. 'Fluenza. The healthy children are singing skipping rhymes about his murderer. So much pain, and an invisible, horrid, unbearable load, crushing him in a sticky mess between limp limbs and too much phlegm and crimson splashes from where he coughs at every passing moment into his pillow; these are the things that define him, now, alone between grimy sheets. One of millions. Dying.

He dreams anyway. Sometimes, in the dreams, there are cool hands pressed to his forehead, even kisses like butterflies against his cheek.

In one of his dreams, a recurring one that slips over his face like a damp cloak every other night, one of the night shift doctors pauses in his rounds and leans over him. The dream-doctor is pale and beautiful in the moonlight, though half his face is always delineated in shadow. Like marble, cold and fair: high proud cheekbones, a long, straight, classical nose, the sharp line of his jaw cruel in its perfection. Hair that might otherwise have been blond is leached of color by the late hour shadows, instead falls white and shining over the man's smooth brow. Almost a ghost, but too well shaped, too real, more real than the shadowy room, though not, alas, more real than the disease that courses through Edward's thin frame.

Every other night. Then every night.

Then:

"I could save you," his visitor says throughout the images that swim before his sleeping eyes.

Edward – awakens. But the man is still there.

"I could save you," he says again, turning so that no part of him lies in darkness. "Here. Now."

"Do I need saving?" Edward rasps. He manages to force his lips upwards into a crooked curve, a bitter suggestion of a smile; a triumph. It doesn't matter. Battles never matter when the war was won, it seems, weeks ago, early in its onset, when he was still bent over the keys, gasping for breath.

"Your mother thinks so."

"Alive?" So much hangs on a word.

"Not for long, boy. Your father…" The beautiful face softens, edges curving, blurring. Some compassion in his expression.

Edward turns his face to the wall. "But you can save me."

"Yes."

"Then save her!" He tries to shout it, tries to bring down the walls and remake the spaces with his sickening voice. It comes out a whimper. "Save her. Save her." There are no echoes. The earth does not split for the sound of it. He wishes he could murder silence, finds all he can do is add to it with a layering of whispers.

The doctor's gaze is black iron. "If-" he begins. Then something changes, ripples through him. A sudden thought or realization, it seems.

The cool hand he's dreamed of brushes across his face.

"Your fever," the man whispers, reverent or perhaps repelled; "it's breaking."

Edward does not understand. "Save her," he insists.

The hollow hush, beaten back for a moment, returns. The doctor, the savior saved from saving, looks at him.

Then:

"I will."

-x-x-x-

When he is released a month later, bloodless and hobbling, Edward Anthony Masen discovers that Elizabeth Masen is gone. Her very name has been wiped from the hospital's records. Elizabeth Masen never was, according to neatly printed handwriting in dark green ink on white cards.

He screams. He can scream now. The people cringe away from him, visible proof of his power over the quiet.

"Sir?" says the sallow caterpillar of a woman, who hides any vestiges of loveliness remaining to her behind wire-rimmed spectacles and sober clothing. "What's wrong? If you'd just step this way –"

"No," Edward says. "I'm sorry. No. Just. My mother…"

"Oh," she says, false comprehension dawning on her ugly grey face. "My condolences. If I may, Mr. Masen, fresh air will do you good."

"You're right," he manages. "You're right." She's utterly, utterly wrong.

He limps out anyway. Weak sunshine filters through a thin layer of grey smog. He breathes in icy air, breathes out crystalline vapor. Chicago is under his feet and above his head and around him, solid and mortal and familiar. A kind of home, even. The doors to the nightmare world, the hospital, have closed.

His father is dead. His mother is gone, perhaps because of him.

For all sorts of reasons, he starts to laugh, merry and ringing. Why not? Why not, why not, why not?

He's alive.

A/N: Not sure whether I should continue this or not. Depends on the kind of feedback I get. Is anyone interested in reading about an imperfect, scarred, human Edward who survived, or is that just me?