Disclaimer: Repo! The Genetic Opera is copyright to Darren Lynn Bousman, Terrance Zdunich, and Darren Smith. All the characters are theirs. I'm only borrowing them briefly.
Nathan couldn't bring himself to think that she was gone. He still saw her face everywhere, in all the dark corners of the house, in every brief reflection on the window. He still saw her bloodstained face when he closed his eyes. Nathan curled up into a ball on the bedroom floor and buried his face in the bed skirt at the foot of their bed, sobbing. Marni's funeral was only hours before, and the image of her body being interred into that stone mausoleum had been too much for him to bear. Stone was so cold, so permanent, and she couldn't be gone. She couldn't.
Nathan balled up the tear-soaked fabric in his fists and pulled defiantly. The bed skirt popped free from beneath the mattress and he gasped in shock at the realization of what he'd just done. He stood and hastily tried to tuck it back in, but his limbs didn't want to cooperate, and he kept sobbing, "No…! I just want—I just want everything to be the same again. I just want it—I just—" Nathan collapsed onto the bed and buried his face in the sheets hopelessly and cried, but he found no comfort in the bed he and Marni had shared until just recently. The cool sheets still smelled like her. They smelled like her hair, her perfume. He breathed deeply of the smell, trying to hold onto it forever, trying to hold onto her.
He closed his eyes and tried to picture her face, not as it was in that final hour, but how it was when he met her. He tried to picture her smile, that radiant expression that made his heart melt when he saw it. He tried to picture her arms, her embrace, the soft curls of her hair, her eyes... Somehow, if he just stayed like that, breathing her scent and holding those memories, he could pretend she wasn't gone. He could pretend that her body wasn't laid in the ground to be food for worms.
"Nathan…"
The whispered sound of his name almost pulled Nathan back from his thoughts, but he fought desperately against the intruding sound to keep the memories of Marni clear in his mind. The sensation of arms around his shoulders, however, finally pulled him from his half-dreamed memories and back to cold, heartless reality. Nathan gasped in surprise and sat up on the bed, furiously trying to wipe away his tears, "Mag? What… What are you doing here?"
"I… just wanted to make sure you're…"
That he was what? Okay? He'd just lost the love of his life. He watched her quickly deteriorate, and she died right there in his arms. And he'd killed her, killed her with his carelessness, or with his chemistry. He'd killed her with his cure. How could he ever be okay again? How could either of them? Mag seemed to sense this as she trailed off before she finished the sentence, and she opened her mouth to try again, "I wanted to make sure you had someone here to lean on… You shouldn't have to be alone right now."
Nathan shook his head, but couldn't bring himself to say all the thoughts swirling in his mind. He almost wanted to tell her that he wasn't alone, that Shilo was there with him, but he couldn't. What if Mag decided that he couldn't raise a little girl alone? Nathan had already lost Marni, he couldn't lose Shilo too. But, as much as he already loved his baby girl, Nathan couldn't bear to look at her. Shilo already looked just like her. She had Marni's curly brown hair, her dark eyes, her button nose. It was too much for him to take so soon after her death.
"I know… I miss her too," Mag said when Nathan didn't respond after a long silence passed between them. Her voice cracked some under the emotional weight of the sentence. Nathan looked up to speak but he stopped before he even started. He hadn't really looked at her when she came in, but now that he was actively looking he could see just how red Mag's eyes were. She'd clearly been crying all day, which was to be expected, as she had just lost her best friend. He was thankful at once for the convenient excuse they presented.
"How are your new eyes, Mag?" Nathan asked, trying to change the subject so he wouldn't have to think about death anymore.
Mag looked startled by the sudden change in subject, "They're …fine, Nathan. And how are you?"
Nathan didn't acknowledge the question, and instead continued to press the subject, "Everything is working fine? No pain to speak of?"
Mag visibly struggled to find the right words before she replied, "Nathan… You can't run away from this. Please, just talk to me."
"I don't have time to talk. I… I need to go to work," Nathan said abruptly as he stood up from the bed, leaving Mag sitting there alone and baffled by his bizarre behavior. He didn't know where he wanted to go, but he knew that he couldn't stay in that house a moment longer. His feet barely touched the steps as he descended the staircase. It took him only a moment to grab his coat and slip out the front door.
The night air was cool and wet from recent rainfall, and Nathan could feel the lingering mist in the air against his face. Somehow, it just felt fitting, like the sky was crying too. Not knowing where he was going, Nathan just kept numbly walking as though his feet were on autopilot. Houses and streets passed around him without recognition for what seemed like hours, until he found himself standing outside of Marni's tomb. He looked up at the stone exterior in surprise. He hadn't intended to end up anywhere. Rather, he wanted to just lose himself completely in the dark and disappear. Now, standing outside of the mausoleum, he was forced to confront the one thing his brain didn't want to accept.
Nathan opened the door to the mausoleum and stepped inside, almost startled by the portrait of Marni staring back at him from the opposite wall. He sat down on the concrete floor and splayed his hands over the engraved slab bearing her name, and his fingertips traced the mocking letters mournfully. Unable to hold it in any longer, the flood of emotions broke free and his numb façade crumbled away. "Marni, I am so sorry," he sobbed, "I was just trying to cure you so we could raise our daughter together. Oh god, Marni, please forgive me!" Nathan cried as he threw his body over her grave, mournfully offering her a thousand apologies, "I never meant to hurt you. I never ever meant to hurt you…"
Nathan startled at a sudden thwack from just outside the mausoleum and he sat bolt upright. It didn't even cross his mind that there could have been another person in the graveyard with him. He stood slowly and moved to the door, carefully peering through the decorative grate into the graveyard beyond. Just passed the first few rows of graves, Nathan could see a shabbily dressed man with a shovel bent over an open grave with two slender syringes in his hand. He watched in horror as the man pulled the half-decayed corpse from its coffin, dumped it on the ground, and stuck the syringe into its skull.
Nathan felt his stomach drop and he shook his head furiously. He couldn't allow that to happen to his Marni. "I may not have been able to protect you while you were here, Marni, but I promise I won't ever fail you again. Never again."
Author's Note: Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed this first chapter. Please pardon some of the ... emo-ness. I'm not used to writing this much depressing emotional content. Hopefully it's not too awful. This fic is a little outside of my comfort zone, so any comments and criticisms you might have to improve it are highly encouraged.