Summary: The year is 2152, eighty-five years after the world's devestating nuclear war. Killian Jones is a scribe for a not-quite-so-very-legal excavation (read: scavenging) team. In which he discovers a stash of audio logs that he believes are from the 2080's, and finds himself rather enamored with the voice of a woman called Swan.
Warnings: Language
Notes: Inspired by the following prompt on writing-prompt-s on tumblr: "You fall in love through the audio logs of a survivor of the nuclear apocalypse." Title borrowed from "Empire" by Of Monsters and Men. Much love to seastarved for beta-ing this mess!
Red Hook, 4 May 2152, 8:00AM
At precisely eight in the morning, as he notes in his log, Killian Jones stands just outside his home on the edge of camp. It's not much, a cottage of sorts – or a shack, really, compared to the homes he's seen in books from years past – but it's home and work nonetheless. He'd even managed to put a coat of paint on the slats, the sort of pale blue that reminds him of humid days on the coast, horizon pale behind the fog. He'd found the dented can of paint on one of his solo runs to a decrepit supermarket just across the river in Kingston. The label on the side, peeling and faded with time and war and the sort of forgetfulness brought on by both, had assured him only one coat would put his home in a brilliant shade of forget-me-not, whatever the bloody hell that meant. The can had given his Geiger counter a bit of trouble, much to David Nolan's displeasure, suggesting the paint inside was a just a bit irradiated –
"Jones, you're going to irradiate yourself straight to hell."
"The expression, I believe, is no one asked you, Dave."
– but not enough to give him pause. After all, it's his home that hosts their Friday night drinking habit. He'd collected enough cinderblocks from the valley to produce something of a waist high wall around a small sitting area, lined with shimmering ferns. The grass staunchly refuses to grow up on his hill, so he has ferns inside of the fence itself as well, clipped short enough not to bother them while they're rendering themselves deliberately sloshed. The chairs are metal, rusted beneath the weight of decades of rain and irradiation, though they still glimmer in the morning light.
The sky, at least, doesn't seem to have changed. Since before –
That's all anyone seems to say – before.
– and he's eternally grateful that he was born after the post-nuclear Winter, after the limitless gray faded back into blue.
The sky is in beautiful form this fine morning. Here beneath the sunshine, stretched long over the hills, the bioluminescent vegetation is dull, but thick. Not for the first time, he finds himself reaching out as he stands on his makeshift deck of hewn shiplap, pinching a dark green leaf between his fingers, tugging it gently and letting it go, watching as it waves in the wind. The dew falls on his hook as well, out along the dull curve.
"Oi, mate, you're doing it again."
Killian sighs. No peace worth having ever seems to last. He turns, watches as Scarlet kicks carelessly at the wrack beneath his feet. He's carrying a parcel, as per usual, wrapped in canvas, bearing coordinates, dates and times, careful codes he'd established some years ago. He sets it carelessly on the deck, or so it seems, judging by the thud behind him.
"Oi!" Scarlet repeats, thwacking Killian on the back of his head when he turns to watch a gust of wind play with the reflection of the light on the river just down the way.
"Doing what?"
"You know." Scarlet gestures, vaguely, before he finishes, "Staring."
"Otherwise known as thinking. Something you appear to be unfamiliar with."
"Call it what you like, mate."
Killian only glares until Scarlet holds up his hands in surrender. The man sulks off without another word, stepping clumsily over Killian's ferns, grumbling as he goes along. Perhaps, long ago, Killian would have been itching to spar. But his anger's long since faded, replaced by persistent melancholy. A heavy turn in the breeze, an itch beneath the brace on his left arm, the phantoms living in the hand he no longer possesses – it doesn't take much. He used to wonder if it was the drudgery, the unfamiliar demand of a routine on his time. Dull hours passing with dull regularity, his blood boiling where it sits, still, always waiting. For what, he's not entirely sure, too busy listening forevermore, it seems, to the lives of others, long past, as recorded in their audio diaries. And he, Killian Jones, bound to record them in neat, looping script.
And, much to the irritation of the other members of David's camp, always without the aid of a typewriter. They call him scribe, though this too he eschews, demanding that he be referred to simply as Jones. It's his brother's name that he carries, after all, off and into a new, relatively legal occupation in a camp full of peaceful scavengers. He most often attributes his restlessness to that fact, that, though he had a code, he once left tragedy behind him wherever he went.
Only when it's quiet, on peaceful mornings such as this – dew dripping from the foliage around him, curling shyly away from the sunshine – does he have the opportunity to realize, with unfortunate clarity, that it's seated much more deeply in that. In the moments when he lost his brother to the treachery of an unforgiving para-military on the high seas. Further back, the moment his father decided the price on his head was worth more than the blood that bound he and his children together. Even more, when he listened to his mother's heartbeat fade beneath his ear, when he was hardly a lad, when he could hardly remember.
Time passed slowly since. He became something of a pirate, operating on land when the seas began to swell with poison, seaside towns buffeted with deadly storms. He remained close to the bay, even still, painting their walls with paint filled with protective metals, lining the innards of their tents with lead. Trading one poison for another. At least, until his crew mutinied one fine winter morning, bucking off the weight of his growing conscience after his love was lost to the ravages of the life of a lawless wanderer. They left him to bleed out through the hand he no longer hand, and found by a well-meaning idealist by the name of David Nolan on the banks of the Hudson, where he now resides. Valued for his strategy and precision. This is, of course, how he becomes their scribe, and something of a defense specialist, David often jokes, scrutinizing their homes and barricades for the slightest weakness.
The man himself, in fact, appears over the hill, dust on his shoes and in his hair. Here in the brilliant sunshine, his smile is brighter even than usual.
"Did Will bring you those tapes?" David says, leaning back on his heels, fingers picking idly at the ferns by his side. "Found them in an excavation site up north."
Killian frowns, caught as he is, yet again, in the midst of a good bout of contemplation.
"Aye, mate, I – "
"You're brooding," David interrupts. "Why?"
"Thinking. Bloody hell, you and Scarlet both."
David only smiles. "I just wanted to check. And to point out that these are a little bit strange."
Killian steps back, invites David to join him on his makeshift deck before he shreds the ferns to bits absentmindedly.
"Strange?" Killian wrinkles his nose. "How so?"
"Oh, just how many there are, and how they're all marked as Swan, whatever that means. Not sure I've ever seen so many belonging to one person, in one place."
"Are you certain it's one person, then? Could be a corporation or something of the sort."
David shakes his head. "No, don't think so. It's looks like it was written by a child. Oh, and you're gonna want to break out the old tape player."
Killian groans, eyeing the package on the table. "Old, are they? The static drives me mad."
David claps him on the back. "Come find me when you do. Maybe I can finally beat you at liar's dice."
"You couldn't beat me at liar's dice in my bloody sleep."
The man laughs, jovial as always, and wanders back down the hill, likely back to the fields on the periphery of the camp, where, despite being more or less their leader, he prefers to tend to the soil. Killian watches with mild interest before turning to the package on the ground, and carrying it inside. He pulls the old player – replete with scratch marks and duct tape and dents in the metal casing – out from a small chest beneath his cot. He arranges his pens and his paper before he pulls at the strings binding the tapes together. The writing does indeed appear to be that of a child, scratched into the label on the tape with abandon. No date, no location. Killian frowns.
"Just who are you, Swan?" he wonders aloud.
Killian settles into his chair, propping the windows open against the breeze. It smells of water. Water and ruin, as it always does, wafting up from the valley. He takes a deep breath, and pulls the first tape from the stack, and loads it in, sure to blow the dust off the delicate reels. He marks the date and the time in the corner of the page, quirks his ear to the speaker, and presses Play.
"Okay, so, first off, I told Henry that this was stupid, but he says that we have to record this for posterity, or whatever, so here it goes."
This is the first time he hears her voice. The river, bloated as it is with several inches of rain from the evening before, rushes loud enough to nearly swallow it. Killian gives the machine a sharp thwack before he leans forward, listening to the gentle husk of the woman's voice as she stumbles on.
"Everybody in this camp just calls me Swan. Henry is my son. It's a Tuesday, and it's nine thousand degrees so I'm practically naked while I record this. Too bad it's not video, I guess."
Killian laughs. "Flirting with a machine, eh, Swan?"
"…Oh, God, am I flirting with a stupid machine? Listen, it's been a while…which is also none of your business. Ugh, I have no idea how to do this."
He hums, and waits patiently while the click and whir takes precedence in the silence, the sound of breathing coming as if from a distance.
"Okay, so, how about this? I pretty much grew up here, by the river after I did some…moving around, I guess you could say. You can't eat the fish, but it also doesn't kill you to take a swim in it every now and again, so there's that. I came here when…well I guess that's none of your business either."
He laughs yet again, and leans over his desk, turning the volume up when a stiff breeze rattles through the slats of his shack.
"Mom, it's a tape, it's not like it's gonna tell people what you say."
"Ah." Killian leans back in his chair, satisfied with the volume, pulling the window shut for good measure. Light still filters in through the cracks, casting golden lines of dust motes down towards the player. As though they're beside him – for this, he finds, is the only way to fight the onset of boredom – he quirks a brow at the machine and says, "So you must be Henry, eh, lad?"
"Just go like this," the boy demonstrates, speaking clearly into the receiver. "Hi George, my name is Henry – "
"Wait," Swan says, just as Killian tilts his head in silent inquiry, mouthing George as she continues, "who the hell is George?"
"It'll be easier if you pretend like you're talking to a person and not to a tape."
"Okay, kid, but you call everything George, can't you pick a different name?"
"Hi George," Henry says, voice clear once more, as though he's rolled his eyes and turned back to the receiver, or so Killian imagines. "Name's Henry. I found a bunch of tapes and a recorder up north. This is my mom, and she's a bounty hunter. It's exactly as cool as it sounds – "
"It's seriously not," she interrupts. Though the boy presses on, much to Killian's amusement.
"And she's gonna tell you her story." Swan makes a disgruntled noise, at which Henry says, calm and forthcoming, "Nothing's a story until you tell it." Killian can hear Henry's smile in his voice.
She laughs, softly. "You need to stop hanging around Archie so much. You sound like a fortune cookie."
The boy laughs too, and judging by the commotion, voices growing distant and indistinctive, one or both of them are walking away from the tape. Killian quirks a brow at the tape, watching as it whirls and whirls.
"Sorry about that," Swan says, loudly, too close to the receiver. It shrieks in protest, like a mis-wired microphone, and Killian brings his hand up to his ear.
"Bloody hell."
"Oh fuck, that's loud, I'm…not sorry, because again, you're a machine. I guess I should just…" Killian hears what sounds like a chair scuffing against a soft floor. The lady Swan situates herself before leaning back over the receiver, likely at a respectable distance.
"I have no idea what I'm doing," she says, after a moment. "And I mean that in every possible way, not just in reference that I'm apparently too boring to even keep up a conversation with a little tape player thing. Don't know what I'm doung with my job, if you can call it that. Not with Henry. Not with my life. But that's probably everybody honestly. I've not seen anyone else in any better condition. At least, not since the war, I guess…"
"Not since the war," Killian mumbles, taking note of it in his mind. Probable, then, that this is the late 2070s, no later than 2080.
"Okay, so this has got to be enough for a tape, right? Not sure what else I could possibly have to say." There's yet another scuffle, during which Swan seems to be having a battle of some kind with the receiver.
Killian smiles, leans back to look up at the ceiling. "Just press the Record button again, Swan."
"Oh, here it – "
Presumably, she presses the proper button, or at least smashes it enough to convince the poor thing to stop. He shakes his head, and leans back in his chair, tapping his –
His pen.
"Oh, bloody fuck." Outside of what little he had written when Swan had first begun talking, he'd recorded precisely none of what he'd heard. Not that it was critical. As it were, his job is more or less to discover the location of other potential dig sites. But he's nothing if not thorough, convinced that even seemingly mundane aspects of these people's lives could bring them to relative fortune. Even so, he grumbles as he rewinds the tape. Although, pen now poised over the paper, he can't quite help the smile when she speaks.
"Okay, so, first off, I told Henry that this was stupid…"
Red Hook, 24 May 2152, 7:14PM
A few weeks pass, and Killian's quite certain he's never heard so much from one family before. There are twenty-eight tapes in all, the first the shortest of the lot. Henry, Swan's charming and altogether mischievous boy, often makes appearances, gently dictating how one should go about recording a diary of sorts. He is kind and idealistic, hopeful and encouraging, not unlike his own intrepid leader. The tapes take him longer than any other, often swept up in their day to day, a welcome relief from what he often finds himself recording. Inventory and grizzly semi-legal proceedings, that sort of thing. All written down with a thick, permanent ink, the tapes stowed away, where the dust in the air will eventually eat them all away.
Swan, as opposed to Henry, is rather jaded and fierce, though not to the point of impracticality. She whinges endlessly about the tapes, though somewhere around the thirteenth, she admits it's something of a release. Her boy is perceptive, and likely knows that she was lonely. Often it's the isolation she feels that shines through, talking with some level of familiarity into the receiver, occasionally carrying it along with her as she leaves Henry with those few men and women she seems to trust in her camp. She tells George, as it were, about her son, mostly, about his father, who had died poisoning when Henry was hardly old enough to speak. A tragic, and familiar tale, one she tells in pieces over several tapes, in the sort of monotone Killian heard often in his days as a raider.
The poisoning, they would all say. Radiation, of course. In their blood, in their brains, over their backs.
It's with this thought in mind – after hearing the very end of Henry's father's story, long and arduous and ending as they all do – that Killian finds himself walking the perimeter of the camp with David. Though raiders are scarce at this portion of the riverbanks, finding very little to steal and very few people to exploit, he still insists they establish a security routine. David had set guards, of course, but being a former raider himself, Killian is familiar with their mode d'emploi. Often, it seems, there's no rhyme or reason for when or where they strike. He may have had honor, but he still spilled blood when he felt it necessary, and – particularly now, when he can see the gentle candlelight burning down along the slope, where men and women glean what little happiness they can manage – he doesn't intend to let that happen here.
"So, what's been keeping you busy, Jones?"
"Nothing too dreary," he answers, attempting to sound as dreary as possible. But David is no fool, and stops on the path their feet have worn in a rough circle about the camp. There's a torch at his side, running on likely deadly batteries. Not deadly enough to anger the Geigers, though, and so David props it under his chin, a genial smile on his face.
"Come on, Jones, you can tell me."
Killian quirks a brow, and pushes on, boots scuffing against rough dirt. Several paces pass – enough for the sand a gravel to turn to rich soil, where David himself, the miracle worker, has turned what once was barren into workable land – before he says –
"Sure about that, mate? Last time you begged to know what I was on about, you were scarred, as you tell it, with the auditory equivalent of pornography, and I dare say you still haven't forgotten about it."
Even now, David blushes, though he doesn't look away, to his credit. "If it were sex, Will would already have squirrelled it away."
Adjusting the blade at his hip, Killian bites his lip, pausing for a moment before he laughs, soon joined by the man at his side.
"If that ain't the bloody truth," Killian says. "But no, fortunately for Scarlet's neighbors, it's not sexual in nature. Merely a woman and her boy, living the day to day. Quite charming, really."
David looks intrigued, enough to nearly miss the turn off the path and down towards the ditching that lies at the northern end of the camp. When they steady on it, the man himself turns a charming smile on Killian.
"Is that so?" he says, lifting his arms to avoid the sticker bushes, stepping carefully to avoid startling the wildlife into revealing where it is they walk.
"Aye. The woman, Swan, I gather she was a bounty hunter, or something of the sort. And Henry, her son, has a peculiar imagination."
"Peculiar?"
Killian nods enthusiastically. "Yes, indeed. He calls the receiver by name, George, and he's nearly convinced his mother to do the same thing. Considering how practical a woman she seems to be, I'd say that's something of a feat. Why, just the other day, he found a pond a mile or so outside of town and found a rusted old chest at the shore. He'd cooked up a rather convoluted backstory for the woman he'd imagined must have owned it…what?"
Killian pauses his tale, noting the bright, and somewhat mischievous smile on David's face. They've stopped, he realizes, just at the tilted edge of the ditch, where a great deal of rusted barbed wire arcs in a graceless, tarnished warning against any intruders. The man makes no move to check the wire, only searches Killian's face with great interest.
"What?" Killian repeats, reaching up with his hook to rub at the back of his neck.
David's smile softens. His eyes catch the starlight as he leans back on his heels. He reaches out, fingers curling gently around his shoulder. It's a friendly gesture, brotherly even, and despite how many times the man does it, it always catches a knot in Killian's throat, one he clears away with a subtle swallow or two.
"It's just good to see you smiling, Killian." David, perceptive as he is, seems to sense when the moment is over, and leans forward, flicking his torch on to survey the wire, scanning the perimeter as he begins to walk its length. "It's not something I see very often anymore."
"Anymore," Killian scoffs. "As if I did so when we met."
"Oh, you sure did. They were just…" David turns around, shining the torch at Killian's face, earning him a grumble of protest. "…fake. And then there were none. But now, you seem, I don't know, alive, I guess."
Where once his temper might have gotten the best of him, always set to flare, the edges of his anger are settled by routine, by trust Killian still believes to be unearned. Once again, he reaches up to dig at the muscles stretched taught at his neck.
"Aye," he agrees, quietly, nearly swallowed by thick and unforgiving darkness, by the sharp echo of gravel beneath their feet as they turn back towards the main path. "Most of the tapes I listen to are orders of business, the keeping of records, that sort of thing. It's rare, indeed, when I find something of the people simply living their lives."
Killian pauses, and expects to hear a slew of questions. But David, patient as the man is, merely tilts his head, kind and open expression prepared to listen as long as he'll speak. It reminds Killian of his mother, rather suddenly, and his step falters as he banishes the thought.
"It's noble," Killian says, quieter still. "When I was a child, I thought nobility meant war, and heroics, I thought it personified in my brother, who was determined that we should join the International Naval Force."
David's expression contorts. "But the INF – "
"Is led by crooks, aye, men no better than the raiders and pirates we sailed beneath. Unfortunate – " Killian spits the word, the vehemence of which raises the brow of the man beside him. " – that this wasn't apparent before my brother died."
"Jones." David utters his name with sympathy, but that's all he says, and Killian is grateful for it, grateful also that the man can read the strain in his shoulders, and keep his hands off him.
"But I was wrong," Killian says, at length. "Nobility isn't dying, but living. It's teaching your son to laugh when you can't drink the bloody water for fear it will kill you. Getting up in the morning and lying down at night, and not allowing the demons in your head to claw their way to the surface."
When he quiets, Killian realizes – standing now along the edge of town, where the glow of their fires seeps into his bones – that he was practically shouting. David looks surprised, and the people sitting at the fire nearest the path are trying their best not pretend that they're listening in.
"I – "
"Don't," David says. Killian wonders if he's to be chastised for making such a ruckus. But again, when he chances a look at his superior – in every way – he finds only understanding, almost too freeing to bear.
"Don't say you're sorry," David says. He pauses, and makes a fuss over taking Killian's extra torch and checking the batteries, muttering about stowing them away in the communal shed. The man clearly doesn't know what to say, or at least how to say it. Killian wonders if this is when the other shoe will drop. At least until the shuffling stops, and David looks him in the eye, expression as soft as he's ever seen it.
"You're a good man, Jones."
David waits a moment longer, patting him lightly on the back before turning and making his way back to his home. For several minutes, Killian merely stands in the shadows, listens to the quiet murmur of the camp settling into nightfall. The fog grows thicker, the leather of his jacket and the cotton of his shirt and scarf become inadequate. So, with trembling hand, he skirts the periphery of the land, and climbs the hill to his shack. Not fifteen minutes go by before he's huddled over his desk, candlelight flickering gaily throughout the room. Kettle over the fire, moisture in the air swelling shut the cracks in his walls, not half an hour passes before the room warms, and Killian's fingers loosen enough to hold a pen.
"And what are you up to this fine evening, eh, Swan?"
"Hey…" Her voice is tremulous and quiet, underlain with the unmistakable sound of insects, not unlike those that chatter just outside his own window. "…George. Henry's asleep but he'll probably magically know if I don't pretend you're our best friend or something." A pause, long enough that Killian makes note of it in his records. Then, "Maybe you are. There's not much room for friendship when you're moving from place to place. That's why…"
Another pause, longer still. Killian wonders if she's sitting outside, perhaps enjoying a balmier evening than he.
"Just listen, okay? Not…that I need to tell you to do that. We seriously need a change of scenery. Which is why I'm thinking of going to Boston."
"Boston?"
"Yeah, I know," she sighs. "Probably not a good idea to feed the kid's fantasy. Or…maybe it is, who knows."
Killian frowns. "And what fantasy would that be?"
"Just like, for context or whatever, I was found on the side of some dirt road when I was a baby, north of Boston, just on the coast. There was a blanket with my name on it. Literally my name, I mean, sewed into it…like I meant something…anyway, I was shuffled around for a while before I ended up here."
For several moments, she breathes into the receiver, and Killian pauses to catch up. When he does, finger lingering over Play, he sighs.
"Oh, Swan."
"Ugh, I hope no one ever listens to this." She sniffles, and his gut twists. "Point is, there's not much international trading going on these days, and Henry, investigator that he is, is certain he's traced the dyes in the fabric to Boston. We've fought back and forth over it." She sighs, and Killian hears a pronounced creak, like the hinges of a door. She quiets, falling back into a whisper. "I don't want to get his hopes up, but he's convinced that hope is what life is all about. And you know, either I'm seeing the error of my hopeless ways, or the kid's got me sold on it, or maybe I'm just going a little crazy."
Another scuffle, another creak of the hinges. Killian wonders if she's gone inside, if she's checked in on her boy. He wonders if she's cold, or perhaps overwarm, if she might take his jacket, or a cold drink. Then, hook digging at his temple, he wonders if perhaps he's going a little crazy as well.
"Maybe I'll change my mind in the morning. I just…want Henry to have something to live for."
"Nonsense, Swan, the boy has you."
"Maybe I'm not enough." Killian scoffs, and his hand shakes. He scribbles out the word Maybe with gusto, writing it again with nearly enough force to pierce the paper. "Or maybe I am…maybe it's two in the Goddamn morning and I should lay down and shut up."
Killian peers through the glass of the player, notes that he's near the end. Swan sighs, heavily. He can very nearly hear the tension, as if she wants to say more. Hook dragging nonsense into his thigh, he looks away from the player, as if he's standing before her, fearing the force of his gaze will shut her down.
"I guess this wasn't such a terrible idea, after all. You're not so bad…George." Swan laughs softly at the name, and bids an awkward farewell to the receiver. It clicks off with a gentle hush, like the last flicker of a dying candle. Killian turns, watches the steam from the kettle bellow softly into the room, clouding the glass in the window's. He peers over at his bed, the corners turned down in, extra pair of boots lines up beneath the wire frame of the cot. He imagines something better for Swan and her boy, if only by virtue of the fact that they deserve it. Or deserved it, that is.
Killian shakes his head, and peers down into the box beneath his desk. Tapes are stacked neatly inside, a dozen or so. Only four more from Swan, he realizes. None more have been found since they dug deeper still in the trench up north. But, with night dragging on, and his shack growing warm, Killian finds he's far too exhausted to face it. And so, wiping away the dripping wax, stacking his pens and filing his paper, he turns into bed, and imagines Swan doing the very same.
Tidal Hudson, 13 June 2152, 1:25PM
"It's a shame you can't see the Hudson as it is now, you know," Killian says to no one in particular.
Ostensibly to no one, that is. The player, clunky as the old girl is, rests at his hip, leather strap slung over his shoulder. He imagines the portability was meant for surveyors, having listened to dozens of tapes with an insufferable amount of shuffling in the background. Men and women waxing on about the slope of the hills, the lay of the forest. It's hard not to be caught by their enthusiasm. That, or perhaps Killian hasn't quite yet lost his sense of adventure, and basks in descriptions of the land.
"I've understood this river once dried, as mighty as it is," he continues, picking his way along the sands. They are thick here, often swelling with the underlying muds. His boots, typically taking a shine in the sunlight, are weighed down with the sediments, scuffed and dirty.
"Bloody hell," he mutters, sinking particularly deep with a step to his right. Grasping onto a shrub, he steadies himself, and walks up the slope, shaking off the mud as it dries. A half mile more brings him up to the zenith of the hill, where the shrubs slope off into something of a watery prairie, swaying the breeze. Even in the daylight, it glows at the touch of the air. Ever since David had found him, neck-high in anger and vengeance, drowning in blood not his own, he'd been walking this way from time to time, southeast along the riverbanks. The first time, he had meant to run. The second and the third, as well, untrusting of the kindness offered by the people of David's camp. Yet, despite how far he would travel, he'd always turn back.
Now, it's merely an escape, someplace the other members of their camp dare not go, for fear of people like the one he used to be, of the teeth and claws and poisons that lurk along the banks of the Hudson.
In the player at his side rests the very last of the tapes marked Swan. More than enough reason to escape, he feels, to wander about in the unknown, even when the sand turns to rock, and the hills turn sharper still into cliff faces. Not terribly steep, but deadly all the same. He settles on one that sits higher than the rest, arcing up and then back, a deep gray ledge beneath his feet. Brambles struggle to grow between the cracks, turning out and up towards the sun. The rock is warm beneath him when he sits. The Geiger at his belt protests quietly, clicking more insistently than he would prefer. Even so –
"We're all gonna die one day, eh, Swan?"
Killian peers down into the player. The tape inside is short. There's no paper in his pack, no pens. Nothing but water and bread, enough to survive the afternoon, on into evening. Time, as it were – laying out the decades between he and the family Swan – waits for no one, and so he lays the player at his side, pressing play, and turning his face into the light.
"So, yeah, Henry definitely listened to those tapes."
Killian laughs. "Aye, you said so last time, darling."
"Which I know you know already, but Goddamit, I can't believe we're going to Boston. I can't believe I even considered it. I'm his mother, for fuck's sake."
"Mom, language."
Killian laughs harder still.
"Don't sass me, kid. Go pack your stuff or whatever."
He can hear the lad grumbling, followed by the telltale creak of their front door, crooked as it is. Or so he's heard.
"Point is," she says, when Henry's made enough ruckus for five boys, "I don't know how he talked me into it, but he did. He listened to the damn tapes, and I've been paying the price ever since."
Swan is quiet for a long moment. Killian hears very little in the background. Not the bustle of the occasional neighbor, nor the sound of footsteps out the window. Likely it's early evening, before the critters fall out the cracks to welcome the night. She sighs, and her breathing grows louder, as though she's leaning conspiratorially over the receiver.
"Honestly, though – and he'll probably listen to these too, so I'm not sure what the point of all this whispering is – but I'm glad. Boston is a city. There's unrest and diseases en masse and the ocean is like a cesspool of creepy, irradiated fish – "
"Now, Swan, they're not so bad."
" – but it's just about the same no matter where you go. Might as well…" She falters, and what follows is said on a breath, as though one word. "..look for my family."
Yet another scuffle, the thud of glass against wood. She's silent for longer than she's ever been, and Killian opens his eyes, peering down at the tape to make certain it hasn't caught in the rotors.
"Henry," she says, interrupting his search for malfunction. "If you're listening to this, I want you to know that you are my family. No matter what or who we do or don't find. You're enough, kid."
Swan's voice is thick, and Killian feels his jaw clench, watching as the tape runs quickly towards the end.
"You're enough too, Swan," he pleads. He may not be able to see her face. But he can hear it in her voice, the unspoken unlike me.
"Anyway, uh…George." She clears her throat. "It's been fun, if not a little one-sided. Henry says we have to leave these where he found them. Again, for posterity, or whatever. Like the kid's written our story before it's even happened. I swear, he'll probably end up like the mayor of Boston or something while I keep looking for things I'm never gonna find." Killian frowns, listens as the tape whirs louder. Then, with a sigh, she says, with chilling finality, "Nice knowing you."
Her voice cuts off, sure as the loud crack the tape makes when it reaches its stop. It echoes in the thin air, made thinner as the sun drops towards the horizon, falling heavily on the dust kicked up and away in the breeze. Feeling a sudden, terrible thirst, Killian reaches down into his bag, biting the cork away from the bottle, spitting it into his lap. He takes one, long drink. When he's finished, he cradles the bottle between his belly and his arm, pressing the cork back into the lip with far more force than necessary. His jaw clenches, and his teeth grind, the sound loud in his ear, but certainly no louder than the sound of her voice.
Nice knowing you.
Though Killian is no fool, he recognizes that he's played into the hands of fantasy, something he'd once done as a boy, foolish and bullheaded. Fantasy never brought anything but heartache. And now here he is, listening intently for the voice of a woman long since dead, ravaged either by time or by creature or by the deleterious, additive effects of the radiation in the water supply, in the meat and in the soil.
"I could have fallen in love with you," Killian says. And no matter how little several hours of tapes might tell him, he knows it's true. Can tell by the sound of her voice, something kindred in its guardedness, in the loneliness she's known, in the family she's found…
In that moment, for perhaps the first time in many years, he wonders what his brother would have done. The sap, he'd probably already be gone for the lady. The thought makes him smile, if only briefly.
Or perhaps, as Liam often was, he'd be practical about it. She's merely a ghost, etched into tape, and rotting away that very moment. More than seventy years ago, they lived, and none in these times live longer than that. The thought wears away at him, eats at him. Not one to wallow – or at least not without action – Killian suppressed the urge to toss the player and its content into the gorge beneath him. Temper quelled, he packs it away, and turns back towards camp, shadows falling tight against the valley, sun climbing higher in the sky. It's three, long, measured breaths, and then he takes first one step, and then another.
"Nice knowing you," he echoes, and heads back for home.
Kingston, 17 June 2152, 11:42AM
The weather is lovely.
Which is precisely what puts him in such a terrible mood.
There's something deeply incongruous about the breeze, the golden arcs of dust it kicks up into the sky. There are clouds, but they are a cheery white, paunches of red and blue at their bellies. Curious blue jays – or incensed blue jays, at least – screech overhead. Gnarled trees covered in faint, glittering moss curl up and over and back towards the ground. Like willows, Killian imagines, based on the drawings he's seen, only he suspects these trees weren't made to weep. Still, their leaves, like a cross of maple and oak, drape on spindly branches towards unsettled ground, more sand than clay. Gusts draw the branches up tight, the wind rushes through, and he wonders if this is what it was like before.
"Make yourself useful for a second, would you, Jones?"
Killian jerks in place, though he covers with a cough as he peers down into the crags of the excavation site at the dim outline of David's face, down where he checks to see if it would be worth a repeat visit with superior equipment. The ground here in Kingston – though again, unsettled – is safer than those sites bordering the Hudson south of Red Hook, where the rolling landscape dips down towards the marshes, where camps of raiders grow thicker and more unscrupulous. Where he himself once made a living, staking a terrible reputation in a hill adjacent a swamp, where it was rumored he and his crew stashed an innumerable number of bodies.
"To be truthful, while they weren't innumerable, there were more than none," he would say, to anyone who asked. And it was all he would say.
"Jones."
"What."
David regards him for a moment, eyes shimmering at the border between shadow and shaft of light. He reaches a step higher, and for the darkness that lies beneath the broken earth, he looks like a severed torso.
"You're thinking about your raider days again, aren't you?" David accuses, something halfway between sympathy and sadness pinching his lips.
"How the bloody hell do you do that?"
The insufferable man grins, though still, he's accommodating of Killian's penchant for interminable anguish, the sort that grows the longer he dwells. Though, of course, it's not the past that has him in such a mood in the first place. It's the bloody sunshine, typically such a boon, now a symptom of the fact that, while the sky he knows is never quite the shade of blue it once was before the Decade of Dust, as they call it. The shade of blue that Swan and her boy likely enjoyed. The time that stands between them has never stood in such sharp relief. But the more he listens to her voice, the more the husk in her throat, wit in her tone, drought in her humor all call to him from a time he can't reach. And it's absolutely –
" – ridiculous," Killian finishes the thought aloud, shifting on his perch above the entrance to the site, atop a rock that warms beneath the sun, biting away the chill of spring.
"What's ridiculous?" David says. Any other person in their camp, Killian knows, would long have huffed their way back down into the bowels of the excavation. But David, blue eyes clear and earnest and patient, only waits.
"Me," Killian answers, looking just past David's eyes and into the darkness, waiting for David to answer with a well duh. When he doesn't, and the silence stretches, and even the jays overhead listen curiously for his response, Killian leans back on the slab of rock, sighing up and into the sky before he says, with some degree of trepidation –
"It's a woman."
"A woman?" David exclaims, nearly losing his footing. He grabs onto Killian's ankle to stable himself, which earns him a half-hearted glare.
"Aye, a woman. Now can we please get back to work?"
"No, no, no, no," David chants, continues chanting as he pulls himself out of the site. He wears something of a harness, crafted of leather and a thick twining thread. The rope wound through a ring at the back of his vest – wrapped tightly around a heavy, metal axel – nearly whacks Killian in the face as the man fumbles his way up beside him on the rock. He helps David, of course, though he does his best to appear begrudging, sweeping the tin box that holds their provisions out of the way and onto the gravel beside them.
"Okay," David says, shifting in place and wiping the dust from his hands and face with the handkerchief tucked in his back pocket. "Give me a sandwich and tell me about this woman."
Killian clenches his jaw, and promptly regrets his mind's wanderings. Also regrets allowing Scarlet into his stash of hard cider, and the hangover the man claimed he had this morning, practically begging Killian to take his place at the venture to the satellite excavation site in Kingston. All a series of events leading to the moment that he has to confess that he's practically in love with someone's voice. A fanciful sort of love though it may be, it's the only kind he's known since he did indeed commit Milah's body to the waters just south of his camp, where the bay creeps in and steals the sediment for the open sea. In the absence of anything else, and in fact the prohibition he's placed on love of any kind, he's doomed to long for a woman whose bones are turning to dust.
"It's nothing," Killian lies, handing David a sandwich and taking one of his own, hoping an absurdly large bite will get him off the hook.
It doesn't, of course.
"It's not nothing," David says kindly. He allows for a certain amount of chewing, grotesquely loud in silence, though something, at least, with which to puncture the silence.
"You've been moping around for days," the man continues. "And don't try and tell me that you haven't. You have, Killian. I know things haven't exactly been easy for you, but – "
"But perhaps I should take my lot and be grateful for it." Killian sneers, mostly at himself, uneasiness and hatred and bitterness growing fiercely in his chest. "I've lost my family, my hand…perhaps I should be grateful I didn't lose anything else and keep my bloody mouth shut."
David quiets, and the jays flutter away. A particularly stuff breeze sets a thick, golden arc of dust into the sky, where the light billows through it, casting a brief shadow on the rock behind him.
Killian wonders if that's what he is, what he might as well be, what they all are. Shadows made of dust. Brief and tempestuous.
"Now, listen," David says, clapping him on the back. "I'm going to tell you something. And it's not because I want you to throw me the kind of pity parties you've been throwing yourself for the past few weeks. It's because I want you to know…" The man quiets for a moment, and sobers. His fingers, still coated in dust, curl into his knees, digging through the fabric and into his flesh.
"It's okay to live in the moment," David says, looking somewhere Killian can't quite see. "I had a wife once. A daughter, too."
Killian draws in a breath, and immediately braces himself for the tale it seems most wanderers have. Of loss. Of death.
"The war may have long been over, but there were still feuds, most of them over territory, friable land and clean water. I was the surveyor of another land before this one." At this, David pats at the rock beneath them, knuckles still white as he grasps onto the ledge. "They came in the night. Not raiders, but an entire army. I tried to fight them off. Emma was barely a few hours old, and I held her in my arms. For the first time, I held her. But I couldn't…"
David quiets once more. Killian thinks of Milah, thinks of his brother, imagines all that the world has taken from them, all that he has taken from the world. For a moment, at least, he feels on level ground with the man beside him.
"I woke," David says. "Hours later, maybe. But they were gone, they were both gone. There was blood everywhere."
"Mate, I – "
"Killian, I'm not telling you this for my sake. Yes, they're both gone. But for a few minutes, at least, I held my own child in my arms. She looked at me, and she knew me. She knew the sound of my voice. And it was worth it. Because I loved her."
Killian nods. He allows several moments for the atmosphere to pass, for more stray breezes and ornery wildlife to scuttle at their feet. The barren landscape hums quietly, so quietly that he can hear the subtle rush of the Hudson over the hill.
"Tell me," David says. His voice is gruff, and he clears his throat before he says, "Tell me about this woman."
Killian shakes his head. "You'd think me a fool."
"Have a little faith."
He sighs, digs into the shale beneath them with the blunted curve of his hook, where the end catches on the lip of the rock. It distracts him for a moment, enough to gather the courage to answer –
"She's nothing but a voice, mate. Likely dead. I've listened to her and her boy for weeks, now, and it's bloody ridiculous, but I can't help but to…"
Killian chances a look at his friend. But where he expects confusion, at the very least, David only looks interested, if not mildly surprised.
"It's stupid," Killian mutters.
"Oh. Swan, right?"
"Aye."
David leans forward, into Killian's field of vision, faint smile on his face. "It's not stupid, Jones. It's not. If there's anything I've learned, it's that you ought to chase your happiness while you still can. You never know when it will be gone."
Killian scoffs. "Did you miss the part where she's dead?"
"Likely dead. You just don't really know, do you? Why not look for more tapes? Or for her, for that matter?"
"And where the bloody hell am I supposed to start such a search? We've unearthed her tapes beneath our own sites. Her and her boy probably lived and died somewhere north of our camp. And I've done nothing but dishonor her memory by wishing after a woman I can't have, nostalgia for a time I didn't know, the idea of a life I couldn't possibly have."
David – again, much to his surprise – smiles as he clambers of the rock, stretching in the early afternoon light.
"Methinks you protest too much, Jones. If it makes you happy, think about her. There's nothing more dishonorable to the dead than forgetting them when you have the chance to remember."
Killian grumbles, but follows David as they check the ropes and satchels, testing the integrity of both, pouring light back into the cavern and judging the safety by the angle of the dust. His friend, typically chatty, allows a grave silence to pass, at least until he lowers himself back down into their site, one last kick at the retaining wall before he sinks back into the shadows.
"You know," David says, smiling as he tugs on the rope for good measure, "it's really kind of romantic."
"Pardon?"
"Lovers separated by time and space, all that jazz."
Killian sighs, long and loud. "We're not lovers, mate. I'm a lonely scribe and she's a pile of bones."
"You shouldn't talk that way about your girlfriend, Jones."
He huffs, though, as David clambers back down in, shadows enveloping him at last, Killian can't help but to smile at the gentle teasing. Killian imagines that, were he given the chance to raise his child, he'd be a wonderful father, equal parts gentleness and strength, silliness and gravity. In the spirit of tradition, then, one his brother had taught him long ago, he speaks the name of the dead, including Emma among them, before he focuses yet again on the task at hand.
Red Hook, 20 June 2152, 6:41PM
Pen in hand, Killian gazes intently down at the hardy stack of paper beneath him. Beside him is a stack of a dozen tapes, all discovered in the span of the last few days. But, despite his usual work ethic, he can't hardly force himself to put the pen to the paper. The voice on the player is not his Swan's. Neither are any of the others. He wonders if perhaps this is it. If fate dropped her beloved voice into his lap, just enough for him to imagine a different life, before cruelly tearing it away.
"Tearing it away," Killian whispers, in the quiet of a foggy morning, voices swallowed by the mist roiling up from the river. Heat pools in his cheeks, thinking of everything David had lost in comparison to what Killian now suffers, miniscule by comparison. A child. Hours old, never to know the possibilities of life.
Such as they are.
"Jones," Scarlet calls, voice filtering in from outside his window. "I've got another one for ya."
"Aye, just don't – " A tape flies in, landing in his lap. " – throw it through the bloody window."
The man's fingers curl over the transom, mischievous eyes peering in. Killian can't see his mouth, but judging by the crinkles by his temples, he figures Scarlet knows something he shouldn't. As he typically does. His fingers curl tighter against the wood as he peers meaningfully over at Killian's filing cabinet, the very same under which rests his own secret stash of ginger beer.
"What the bloody hell do you want?" Killian grumbles, leaning over his paper and scratching nonsense into the top right corner. "I'm busy."
Scarlet smiles wider still, teeth peeking over the sill as well as he stands on the tips of his toes. "I heard you got yourself a girl, there, Jones."
The flush of embarrassment, still lingering from moments ago, brightens, and turns to anger. "Have you been talking to Nolan – " Killian spits the name. " – because I'm going to kill him just as soon as I remove your head from your shoulders."
Though he's a hardy fellow, Scarlet blanches, his smile fading.
"Calm down, Jones," he says, leaning forward, resting his chin on his hands. "David didn't tell me a thing. I guessed on me own, though I wasn't sure…until now."
Killian frowns disbelievingly. "Sure about that, mate?"
"Hard not to notice when all your transcripts are from the same woman. I deliver those records to David just as sure as I bring those bloody tapes to you. You give 'em all back, except for hers."
"Well aren't you a bloody sleuth. Now get out."
Scarlet sends a long, lingering look at Killian's filing cabinet, though he's apparently not fool enough to push his luck. He doesn't leave, though, merely backs away, practically leaping on the tips of his toes to see inside.
"What, Scarlet?"
The man shrugs, feigned nonchalance. "Just thought you'd be happy to see another tape from her, is all."
"Another…"
Killian's eyes widen, and he looks down into his lap, where sure enough, Swan's initials are scratched into the label, in what's become a familiar scrawl. He nearly falls over himself, yanking the tape from his lap, then nearly knocking the player to the ground in his haste. Scarlet laughs, though he's sense enough to wander off at last, leaving Killian to blissful silence, and enough calm to examine the tape. Which, judging by the thickness, is nearly half an hour of her voice. The shaking of his hand, though, gives him pause. Was he not just thinking of how silly it was to mourn someone he never lost? David insists he should find happiness where he can. But how valuable can it be, if it's so ephemeral?
"Eh," Killian says to himself, after a moment, willing at last to seize a moment, "who gives a fuck?"
The answer to that question, of course, would be him. But as long as he's pretending, Killian pulls a leather satchel from beneath his bunk, carefully placing both the tape and the player inside. Though he'd be remiss to wander about in the wastelands south of their camp while drunk, he takes a bottle of rum as well, more empty than not, topping it off with some soda water he'd gleaned from a warehouse ten miles east. Provisions all stowed away, padded with a thick cotton shirt, Killian throws the strap over his shoulder, and attaches a wicked, claw-like blade at his side.
"Can never be too careful," he says. He realizes, a bit too late, that he says this at the satchel, where the tape resides. As if she can hear him through plastic, as if a bit of audio could fold time over like a road map, and allow him to reach out and touch her.
Killian sighs, and shuffles on his feet a moment before he steps out the door, sure to check that no one follows before he disappears off into the brush, away with what little remains of the sunlight.
Two miles south of Red Hook, 20 June 2152, 7:58PM
"So we're leaving for Boston in just a few weeks, whenever this storm clears up. But I guess…I just wish…"
Killian holds the player close to his chest as he burrows down deep in the cushioned seats. The bright side of having the wreckage of a plane near to one's camp, is that there's a quiet place to think. The rest of his fellow scavengers think it's a bit morbid. But he'd swept out the bones and wired the radio back to life, so it's not entirely without its charms. The seats are plush, and the hull turns away the chilly breezes that rise over the hill in the evening, unimpeded by any of the trees he's told once grew flush along the horizon. Tilted up as it is, it provides a marvelous view of the horizon as it dies into night. The stars awaken, and the world shrinks into the view out the broken glass at the cockpit.
Typically, it's comforting, the sense of smallness, of timelessness. But now, as he listens to Swan's voice, it seems even more tinny and distant than usual, here in the cavernous body of the plane.
"I just wish Henry and I weren't so alone in the whole thing," she says dejectedly.
Or does she? The problem, he realizes, with having a disembodied voice for a friend is that he doesn't know the curve of her face, doesn't know whether she's the sort to furrow her brow, to bite at her lips, to shift from one foot to the other when she's frustrated, when she's excited.
Killian only knows her voice, can only build her from there. He doesn't dare give her a certain color of hair, of eyes, of build or stature. He can only guess at her expression, only fall into whimsy at the imagined swell of her cheeks when she smiles. Nothing less.
And, of course, nothing more.
"You're not alone, Swan," Killian tells her, across time and space. He's being ridiculous, he knows. She's dead, and he is nothing but a scribe with a sordid past. He's alone in the wreckage of plane from the twenty-first century, nursing a bottle of weak and fizzy rum, watching the bioluminescent plants flare to life under the burgeoning starlight, while the lady Swan haunts him from within a dusty old player. Before her breath can even out, and she can say what else is on her mind, Killian pauses the recording, and allows silence to settle. Were she before him, he could duck his chin and soften his expression, entreat her to reveal herself, or at least convince her she's not alone, as he says…
Then again, were she before him, he certainly wouldn't be turning his guts to mush in the belly of an ancient beast.
"Sodding fool," Killian says, because he speaks more to phantoms than to people any longer. Even so, he slouches something terrible into his seat, pressing the play button with perhaps more force than necessary, closing his eyes to the night.
"God," Swan groans, and he can hear a faint shuffling, another moment of silence before she sighs, and says, "That sounds terrible. We have the people in this camp. And that dumb dog that keeps skirting around the edge of town – "
"That's Pongo, Mom."
Killian laughs despite himself, throwing back another sip of perhaps the most disgusting incarnation of rum he's ever had the displeasure of imbibing.
"Henry," Swan says, sounding profoundly embarrassed. "Tell me you didn't hear any of that."
There's a heavy pause, during which Killian takes a moment to imagine the two of them. He wonders if the boy takes after his mother or father, how tall he is. His voice is kind and gentle, so he pictures a similar expression, eager eyes falling on the more guarded ones belonging to his mother.
"I know what you meant," Henry says, at length. His voice is thin, even more tinny than Swan's, though it grows in volume with the sound of shuffling, light steps bringing him closer to the speaker. "But we're not alone, Mom."
"The boy is right, Swan."
"Besides, tomorrow is the new year!" Henry says, followed by a commotion of some kind. Something silly, Killian imagines, because Swan begins to laugh. Even through the mechanical trill of the old player, it's delightful, doing a great deal more to warm his belly than the drink in his hand.
"It will be 2150 in less than two hours, Mom, so stop talking to George, and stop pretending you don't love Pongo…"
Henry goes on, chattering excitedly while the player keeps running, their voices drifting in and out of focus. Likely they merely forgot to switch off the recorder. It's all lost on deaf ears, though, and after a long moment, where the sound of their voices, and of the wind whistling through the broken glass, Killian drops his rum and soda with a thud. The liquid spills everywhere, running down along the divots in the bottom of the plane. He pays it no heed, scrambling to press pause.
It will be 2150 in less than two hours…
"Bloody hell," he pants, as though he's run back through the marsh. Killian wonders if it's a mistake. It has to be a mistake…
Doesn't it?
Swan had spoken of the war, of the dust blotting out the sky, all symptoms of several decades before. That and the ancient technology, bleating out her voice with all the unrefined grandeur of a time gone by. Killian rewinds the tape for a moment, and listens again.
"It will be 2150 in less than two hours, Mom, so stop talking to George, and stop pretending – "
He pauses and rewinds.
"It will be 2150 in less than two hours, Mom, so stop talking – "
Again.
"It will be 2150 – "
"Bloody fucking hell, Swan."
Killian thinks about everything she's said. She's spoken of the dust…but even now, in 2152, from time to time, a system rolls through, kicking up enough debris to darken the sky. It's over by morning, and yet enough to darken the moods all around, to set a terrible cough into the lungs of younger children, especially.
Henry has another cough, she'd said, sounding strained and ornery. It's nothing a hot bath shouldn't clear up, I guess.
Of the war, was less certain. Even if she'd been alive many decades ago, she'd still be at least two generations removed from the fighting. She'd told of horrible gangs of raiders, of radiation oozing out from the soil, heavy metals painting the water terrible a poisonous shade of green. And the technology…
Henry found these tapes up north somewhere, and the player, too. Well, finders keepers.
Nothing…absolutely nothing that guarantees she and her son are long dead. As a matter of fact, given the boy's genuine enthusiasm, Swan's tough as nails constitution, they're likely alive and well. Living in Boston, most likely. Killian knows there's nothing up north, that raiders had torn the place to shreds. But that was only two years ago – perhaps a bit longer, judging by the score marks on the generators along the edge of town. That would have been a few months before David and his camp had settled by the Hudson, having lived in Maine for years before that, settling in for only a few more months before they saved Killian's miserable life. Certainly Swan and her boy had left before then, or perhaps not…
"You're alive," Killian says. Or so he hopes. She could stand before him, given the time. He leaps to his feet, only slightly off kilter, and more so because of the tilt of the fuselage, than the alcohol in his blood. With what he's sure makes a ridiculous sight, he lifts the player and holds it up beneath the light of the moon, grinning up at it, more freely than he has in years. Killian feels a pull in his gut, something familiar and foreign, all at once, the unmistakable thirst for adventure, tempered by the purity of unadulterated hope. As though she were dead, and now come back, up from under the ground.
"You're alive," he repeats, and allows himself a moment to revel. Not much more, though, before he tucks the player back into his bag, and with trembling fingertips, climbs out of the plane and picks his way carefully along the marsh, back towards the camp.
Red Hook, 21 June 2152, 1:32AM
Killian picks carefully along the edge of the pond. The bioluminescents are in rare form, glittering beneath a clear sky in shades of purple and green. The tides are rushing in, and so they slosh up along the cattails. Killian's half a mind to amble outside for a bit, to watch the stars blink out in the darkness left in the wake of the new moon. But – and he reminds himself of this when a distinctly metallic object glints in the starlight – he's out at this ungodly hour for a reason. So he gives his torch a good thwack, waking the batteries up from whatever respite they've decided to take
When he reaches David's shack, he flicks the torch off and lets it drop to the ground. He rubs a chill the chill out of his hand along his thigh before reaching into his jacket for the flask he keeps of purified water, and takes a generous swig. He turns towards the river, and considers it a moment before he commits to waking his friend.
Now that the meager light is no longer polluting his vision, Killian blinks against the landscape. Up here on the hill, he can see the river bend. He imagines, in years past, that all he would be staring at would be trees, dancing against the breeze. But tall things, as it were, are loathe to survive. They live in a sludge world, overtaken by algae and fungus and bacteria of all sorts. He's had plenty of time to consider this, and of course, plenty of time to consider why he considers this, when for all the thinking he's done, the world is still a post-nuclear wasteland.
Sometimes I wish you were real, George.
Then again, perhaps it isn't –
The world is the world is the world. Or something like that.
– perhaps Swan is right. She'd had courage enough to live her life in moments. Why can't he? She and Henry had embarked on their journey, only just two years ago. He allows himself to wonder – as the warped critters crawl along the banks of the surrounding ponds, as the generators whir restlessly on the edge of their camp – if this is how she felt the nights leading up to their move. Too restless to sleep, heart running faster than the clock. Or if she'd been rather resigned to heed her boy's wish, to give tentatively into hope. For as many times as hours he's lived, it seems, he's thought upon her face. Whether it would be weather-worn, like his, whether her hair would be dark or fair, wry or fine.
Alas – and he stamps his feet at the thought, rubs compulsively at the junction between plastic and flesh just beneath his left elbow – he's not the time for such an indulgence tonight. So he picks up the torch, gives it another good smack against the ground.
"Alright, Swan," he says, out into the night, where no one can hear. "Let's try it your way."
Killian turns, and lifts the heavy fabric stretched between David's shack and the elements. It's warmer inside, but not by much. The windows, wide and sheeted with thin glass, are thrown open against the meager breeze. He considers the man – or the lump of sheets and blankets and pillows, as it were – a moment before he disturbs him. It is, in fact, quite early. He could sleep, or at least wait. He could run down to the river, poke in amongst the rocks until the sun rises.
Nah, he thinks, in something that sounds an awful lot like Swan's lovely, radio-crackled voice, and reaches down to yank the covers off.
"David – whatever the bloody hell your middle name is – Nolan. You'd best not be naked under those sheets."
The man in question mutters incoherently, still casting about in the throes of a half-dream, Killian imagines. So he leans down, until he's at ear level, and shouts as loud as he dares, out here in the wilderness –
"Nolan!"
David, to his credit, does not scream, but he does very nearly break Killian's nose when he sits up, tangling his blankets and sheets in a hopeless snarl as he thrashes.
"Jones!" David shouts, half-slurred into the darkness. Killian holds up the lamp, light shining on the man's face, at which David recoils.
"God," David says. "What. What. Just tell me so I can go back to sleep."
"Nope," Killian says, jovially. David already seem determined to fall back into bed, to burrow beneath the blankets, but Killian catches his shoulder, and gives him a shake. "Oi, mate. What if there were a stray pack of marauders, here to kill us all?"
"Tell them they can murder us in the morning."
Killian huffs, sets the lamp down on the table beside David's bed with a rattling thud. "Enough of this, mate. Get up."
"Why. Seriously, why. Why."
"So you can help me pack," Killian says, wrestling the sheets out of the man's grip, and tossing them carelessly over his shoulder.
David grumbles, twists like a child atop the mattress. It whinges under his weight. He snatches his pillow and presses it over his head. This, too, Killian pulls out of his grip, flinging it in brilliant fashion out the makeshift door.
"I am not helping you pack at two in the morning."
David sighs, and peeks up at him from beneath sleep-crumpled eyelashes, as if waiting for him to continue. But Killian remains silent, waits for what he's just said to pierce the haze, to drill in through that thick, oh so charming skull –
"Wait," David says. At last, he grows complicit in the process of throwing off the last of his sheets, of placing his feet gingerly on the cold, dirt packed floor. "Pack?"
Killian smiles. The light from the torch in his hand flickers warmly over his face. The critters outside the shack are still, the winds are mercifully at a minimum. So it echoes, rather marvelously, when he says –
"Aye, mate. I'm going after her."
Red Hook, 30 October 2152, 8:37AM
Philip is certain that this must be hell.
Nevermind the fact that the chill has yet to follow on the heels of fall. For some ungodly reason, it's still scorching hot for so late in October. Humid as well, the river throwing clouds of mist up the hill every morning, and refusing to take it back in the evening, when it should, by all measure of The Farmer's Post-Nuclear Almanac, be cooling down.
To add insult to injury, he's been charged by David Nolan to take over for Jones two days a week. This means cramping hands, slaving over heavy paper – the sort that gives Satan's papercuts – with needle tip pens, listening to folks the county over drone on and on about crop rotations and weather reports and whatever else happens to flit through their minds. And it's not like he can slack, either. Jones was nothing if not a perfectionist, and if he doesn't produce something at least half as neat and orderly as the man, he knows Nolan will give him an irritatingly polite earful for it.
And so, for the second day this week, he sits down in Jones' old office. At least there's a window above the man's immaculate desk. And there's something to be said for the orderly arrangement of the pens. For the paper stacked neatly inside the cherry drawers. For the perfectly oiled hinges, sliding in and out of place as if this were 2050. So he can't find it within himself to whinge too much, especially considering there are only four logs on the desk, one tucked in an envelope, with a Massachusetts address, and marked in red: Top Priority. Briefly, Philip considers skipping to the next, leisurely making his way through the first three – all the while breaking into Jones' stash of ginger beer – before getting to Mr. or Ms. Top Priority and his or her urgent thoughts.
"Alright," he says, to no one. "Let's open you up."
By you, of course, he means the window, because despite the cross breeze from the makeshift bays at either side of him, there are all manner of critters chirping about outside, and if he has to do this, well then he'll at least enjoy the sights and sounds of the scenery while he's at it.
After a few moments of leaning his head out the window, and sniffing the comforting, if not somewhat unpleasant, smell of compost and manure, Philip snatches Top Priority and loads it into the player. He makes a fuss about settling into his chair, about choosing the perfect pen, the perfect piece of paper. All of this with a touch of sarcasm, of course. Only the best for his pal Top here.
And then, with a sigh, he presses play. The machine whirs to life, a familiar click-clack-click echoing throughout the room before a voice spills out.
"The date is the eighteenth of October, 2152. Location, Boston Massachusetts. Name, Killian Jones."
Philip hits pause on the recording, shakes his head as he scribbles as neatly as he can.
"Jones, you son of a bitch," he says. "Boston, you've got to be kidding me."
He takes a moment to drink in the injustice of it all. Stuck in Jones' cramped corners while the man himself gallivants about in Boston, of all places.
"Ginger beer, for sure," Philip says, and gets up out of his seat. He meanders over to the corner cabinet, all the while imagining in great detail what it would be like to wander the streets of Boston. It's relatively intact, from what he's understood. There are taverns galore, ships actually out on the harbor from time to time, a water purification facility of all things. Just everything, really. But – and Philip thinks this when he finds a note beneath the trap door of the bottom cabinet, signed by Jones and reading simply, Help yourself, mate. – that maybe he isn't such a bad guy.
Philip drains one of the beers, nearly by half, before he sits back down, and takes his pen in hand. He rolls another swallow around in his mouth before he hits play.
"You forgot the time stamp, idiot."
He hits pause again, and begins the actual transcript itself, marking the feminine voice down simply as WOMAN before he hits play once again.
"And that, of course, is Emma Swan."
Pause. Again. Philip huffs as he scratches out WOMAN and replaces it with Emma Swan.
"Come on, Jones," he says. "You've scribed these before, why are you and your lady friend making this so difficult."
He marks a legend up in the corner of the paper before he continues: K.J. for Killian Jones, E.S. for Emma Swan.
"You're awfully self-righteous about this, darling, considering you never once mentioned the date or the time in your own audio diary."
"Give me a break, okay? It was just a stupid journal. Or are you never gonna get over that?"
Phillip hears a muted scuffle, followed by a heavy sigh. "The lady is right, on both accounts. I will never forget, and I should note the time. It is, as a matter of fact, quite early in the morning. 2:37AM. Very scandalous hour, wouldn't you say?"
Philip shakes his head when he pauses once more to catch up. He allows himself to hope, for a moment that he won't be –
"Made less scandalous by the fact that we've been sleeping together for like a month. Which like, TMI, but you're asking for it. Honestly, Killian, either turn that stupid thing off, or spit it out."
– won't be blushing. Which, of course, he is. Once he's recorded the words, he adds, as he listens: K.J.: [Stupidly feigned gasp].
"I suppose we should start over."
"Jones. Now."
"Alright, alright."
Pause. Philip licks the tip of the pen, and shakes out his hand, spares a moment to take another swig of the ginger beer before he continues on.
"Listen, I won't bother with all the gory details. Fact of the matter is, you need to come up here, mate. By which I mean David, of course. There's a woman, see, and she is…well, why don't you tell it, darling."
"She's my mom. Henry and I found her when we came here a couple years ago."
"Aye, Emma's mother. I'm quite certain, based on a rather marvelous suite of coincidences, that…well, that…"
"We think you're my dad. Which, like, we would have figured out sooner, but Mary Margaret doesn't go by Nolan anymore, and my last name is Swan now, so – "
Philip very nearly breaks the player at this point, slamming the pause button with enough force to turn the whole thing over on its back. In addition to this, a generous swing of ginger beer makes its way up and out of his nose, much to the detriment of his sinuses. He is, for a long minute, frozen in place.
We think you're my dad.
This is not what it says on the paper. It says We t, followed by what appears to be a swirling black vortex, now dripping with sweet, carbonated liquid. Philip just sits for a long moment, contemplates Killian Jones, contemplates David Nolan. He's not particularly close with either of them. He'd known of Jones, of course, and found him to be a perfectly suitable drinking companion. And he both gave and followed advice to and from David Nolan. But of course, you'd have to be living beneath the sludge to not have heard the tale of his lost child, his lost wife. To not have at least heard whisperings of the crush that Jones had on the disembodied voice.
And now –
Or several days ago, at any rate.
– he's with this woman. With Emma Swan.
Emma…Nolan.
With one last sniff – placing the empty bottle of beer on the windowsill – Philip stands, smooths the wrinkles out in his shirt, takes a deep breath of the warm, tepid, fall air. He shakes his feet free of dust and dabs the liquid away from the record, hoping it can be salvaged. All this, before he turns, and runs out the door.
"Nolan!" he shouts, out across the hill, down towards the lowlands where the crops are simmering away in the heat. David turns at the noise, blocks out the sun with a hand over his eyes. The man signals with a wave of his arms when he spots him.
And then Philip adds, with a breathless smile, still shouting as he runs, "You're never gonna believe this."