If you recognise it, it's not mine.
Inspired by Taylor Swift's 'Safe and Sound'.
"We need to go."
"Then let me come with you, please!"
"Babe-"
"I don't want to spend the next who knows how long wondering if you're alive or dead!"
"Then decide I'm dead." Edilio ran a hand through his hair. "Roger, this could be the last time we talk, and I want the last good thing I do to be that I kept the one person I could say I loved safe."
Roger's face was wet with tears he hadn't noticed, and Edilio reached out to wipe them away. Roger ducked away, a look of betrayal on his face. "Edilio..."
"I can't promise that I'll come back. But babe, for you, I'm going to give it hell to try and make sure I do." He stepped forward, wrapping his arms around the other boy as tightly as he could for several seconds. "Look after Justin."
"I love you," Roger whispered.
"I love you too," Edilio replied, turning away before Roger could see his tears. Hearing a sniff from behind the door, Edilio knelt to look under the bench on the deck. Two eyes blinked out at him from the shadows. "Justin? Why are you under there?"
"Hiding." Justin muttered in response.
"Why are you hiding?"
"Bad things. Bad dreams."
Edilio frowned, extending a hand towards the smaller boy. Justin crawled out from under the bench, blinking in the light. "Justin, we're going to go and finish this, okay? You and your friends have to stay here, but we're going to go get things fixed. Roger's going to look after you, like he's been doing."
Justin's face lit up with something Edilio hadn't seen in a long time. It took him a moment to identify it as hope. He patted the little boy on the shoulder and turned away.
"Edilio? Are you gonna bring my mom back? And my dad?"
"I'm going to try, Justin."
Edilio jumped into the shallows, splashing to shore and making his way to the road. Sam and the others were already there.
"What kept you?" Sam asked, nudging Edilio's shoulder gently.
"Nothing. Stuff. Let's go."
They could see the town by the time somebody noticed that Edilio was walking on his own, eyes focused on the dry grasses at the side of the road.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine." Edilio kept looking straight ahead, one hand on his gun.
"Are you sure? You look kind of..."
"I'm fine." The road was dusty, flecks of dirt flying up with every step, into his face. It was itchy. That was why his eyes were wet.
"I'm fine," Edilio said again, although the boy hadn't asked. The soldier nodded, slipping away to join his friends. A few seconds later Sam arrived. "Edilio?"
"I'm fine."
Sam frowned, weighing up the options of Edilio wanting space and Edilio wanting to talk. Thinking and concentrating. Friend and soldier.
"Edilio, what happened?"
"Nothing. I'm fine."
He was fine. Roger was safe up at the lake.
"Is it something to do with Roger?"
"I'm fine, Sam." The other boy paused, staring at him in concern. "Edilio, dude, you are allowed to be upset."
"I'm fine."
Roger was at the lake. The fight was all the way down here. He was all the way down here. It didn't matter that he was probably going to die. Roger was probably going to be safe.
Probably.
"It'll be okay in the end, Edilio."
"Okay, Sam."
One fight. The end. He figured that he would either be dead on the losing side, or dying on the winning side. He could be alive, but it was a narrow chance.
If they did lose, Gaia would probably kill everyone.
Perhaps there was an afterlife.
Edilio looked down at the road again and kept walking, right through the evening until they stopped to sleep, to rest.
I'm fine. He had to be, Roger had to be.
The message came in the early morning.
Gaia attacked the lake.
Burnt most things to the ground.
Hardly any survivors.
There was chaos, a mixture of 'we should have been there' and 'we have to kill her now' and getting help for the badly burnt messenger. In the middle of it all, Edilio stood feeling as if a carpet had been pulled out from under his feet, a feeling in his stomach he hadn't really felt since the whole FAYZ started. He hadn't looked back since they set off, but now he turned to the hills. In the dusty blues and whites of the dawn, mixed in like a strand of raincloud, were plumes of grey smoke. Edilio closed his eyes, allowing himself five seconds of complete, heart shattering misery, memorising every single second he had ever spent with Roger. Ten seconds.
"Edilio?"
Fifteen seconds.
"I'm fine."
He has a job to do.
A battle to fight.
And he fought. Every single painful moment, every gunshot, every dead body, every dead friend. Everything.
Time rushed and slowed in the same second.
Fire burned but felt like falling rain.
People ran screaming, and then they were on fire.
Caine.
Gaia.
Blazing in the night, for an eternal moment which was probably so much more complicated than Edilio ever wanted to know.
And
then
it
was
all
over.
He checked the lists.
The alive, then the dead. Roger wasn't there. Edilio stopped looking after a while, frustrated and hurt to see the names of the soldiers- not soldiers, not anymore, they were just kids- he had given orders, directed to their deaths, dug graves for. So Edilio left the FAYZ behind him and moved into the trailer park. He kept his heartache to himself, right through getting recognised, getting asked to write a book, offered a proper house.
Until that day when he saw the news bulletin.
It took weeks to persuade his parents, that it was real, that he was serious, that he was fine.
But eventually he did it.
The hospital was white and clean. Even the therapy room was painted in shades of blues and cream, bright rainbow beanbags piled in the corner. Edilio sat behind the desk, jumping as the swivel chair twitched beneath him. He glanced over the piles of papers, and his breath hitched in his throat. Thousands of faces gazed up at him. Justin. Brianna. Even Caine. And another pile, this one ordered and precise. Some are drawn painstakingly precisely, others are rough, almost panicked sketches. It takes him a few moments to recognise the faces as him and Roger. This is Roger's work, of course it is. He'd recognise it anywhere. A few minutes later, the door opens almost silently. There is a stifled gasp, and then a clatter.
Edilio turns round. And within a second, he is standing and jumping over the desk and skidding across the floor, but that doesn't matter, because he's fine, and Roger is here. Still thin, and pale as a sheet, tears beginning to form in his eyes, but he's here and safe and that's all that matters, in the end.
They sit.
They talk.
They are fine.
"Come on," Roger says, gesturing to the open door. "Let's get out of here."
And Edilio takes his hand, because there is no way in hell he's ever letting go again. Roger clings to it with the same sentiment.
"You okay?" Roger asks as they step outside together.
"I'm fine," Edilio says.
And this time he means it.