"What is he like?" Mary asked innocently, her voice small and meek despite the loaded question.
Errol thought for a moment, absently running his hand across his face, scratching at the beard that was starting to form on his chin. He needed a close shave before work tomorrow he noted with the absent mindlessness of true habit.
He looked at her, the sharp slice of one of her blue eyes peaking out from her pillow. Her russet hair was piled around her head and over her shoulder, tousled and messy.
Errol had come to like messiness above all other things as he found it to be the most commonplace aspect of being human.
Mary had the ferocious, reckless look in her eye that he loved about her. Recklessness was another human trait that he was drawn to. No wonder he had fallen in love with her.
"He is the single most dangerous one of us, John is. There is no one who is faster or more precise in his execution of our craft. His ability to see into others, his intuition, if that's even what it is, it is unparalleled." He gripped the blanket tightly in his fist, causing Mary to place her hand flat against his chest.
They were quiet for a while.
"If he's so good, why do you think he hasn't caught on to you?" She asked quietly, choosing her words with care.
Errol returned his hand to cover his mouth for a moment before placing it on top of Mary's hand.
"I don't think he wants to see it," he said begrudgingly, as if he was betraying a confidence.
"What? That doesn't make any sense," Mary said in a gently frustrated tone. "He sounds like a machine, that it wouldn't matter..."
"Do you know what he told me when they arrested Viviana for sense offense?" Errol asked, cutting her off before she could say anything more against John's character.
"What?"
"He said he couldn't understand it. He couldn't understand why she would choose to be a sense offender. That and how he didn't know… he didn't know how he couldn't see it. It weighed on him for years…it weighs on him still."
"Weighs on him?"
Errol took a breath and felt as though he was going to give away a terrible secret. One that could destroy the only other person he cared for besides Mary. But in the end his love for her won out. He wanted her to understand the strange little family he had made.
"He feels Mary. He feels while he is on the Prozium. There is something wrong with him…I don't know how it is possible, but I see it all the time. I see it in his denial most of all. He was in denial about Viviana, and I think it is the same with me. To see us as sense offenders, to lose us, it would cause him pain, so he denies that he can see it."
Mary looked puzzled but accepting of his assessment.
"Do you think he's aware of it?"
Errol chuckled darkly, staring out of the window at the moon.
"No, absolutely not. Just like he doesn't realize that the reason he's so good at sensing when someone is off the dose is because he is getting a feeling, what we used to call a gut feeling about someone else's state of mind."
They were silent again, and Errol continued to stare at the moon, wondering if John ever bothered to look at it.
"What do you think will happen to him?" Mary finally asked.
Errol sighed.
"I don't know. He could go on like this to the end I suppose…it's possible," he trailed off.
"But you don't think that's going to happen."
Errol was silent for close to a minute.
"I think something is going to happen," he said evenly to cover up his own feeling of foreboding, "Perhaps it will be something to one of his children, I don't know, maybe even something to me."
Mary moved to put her head into her hand. She stared off into the middle distance as if she was seeing something that wasn't there. Errol wanted her to clutch his hand, to tell him not to say such things, to betray some measure of deeper feeling.
But she did none of those things, and it left him with a feeling of dread unlike anything he'd ever experienced.
She didn't love him like he loved her. He'd known that since the beginning. Maybe it was because of his job. Even though he was part of the resistance, working from the inside, he still was party to the murder of their co-conspirators on a daily basis.
"You shouldn't think like that," was all that she said. "You might inadvertently tip your hand." The words were mechanical which wounded him, but at least she looked into his eyes when she said it.
"Let's not lie to one another Mary, it will happen. I will be caught in the line of fire, or I will be caught for sense offense. But if that happens I really believe he'll react. He'll feel. Maybe it will be too much for him this time. I expected it to happen with Viviana, but he was so quick to increase his dose after her arrest. Even that was based on his fear I imagine. Fear for himself, for his children."
Mary looked at the light reflecting off of Errol's eyes.
"You care for him," she stated, surprised.
"Yes, very much."
"Why?" She asked incredulously, searching his face.
It was Errol's turn to shift in the bed. He sat up and faced away from her, not wanting her to see his face when he answered.
"We were partnered over eleven years ago. Since before either of us were married. We both lost our wives. We were present for one another during that and even though it may not have been emotional it is a kind of touchstone."
"And if he's the one to catch you?"
Errol smiled darkly but quickly answered, "If I'm to be caught, I hope that it is him. Maybe it could be my gift to him."
"What the hell does that mean?" Mary asked sitting up.
Errol took solace in the fact that his death moved her to some extent.
"I'm not saying I want to die, Mary," he said softly. "I only mean that if it happened…if he caught me and I forced his hand into killing me maybe that would be the thing that pushes him over the edge."
"This is a morbid topic," Mary said angrily.
"It is a morbid world," Errol half whispered to himself, "a dark one, and it gets darker every day. I'm just grateful for the time I've had with you." He turned and kissed her softly. "Without you…I just don't think I'd be able to bear this existence anymore."
She smiled though she averted her gaze. He caught her face turn into an enigmatic mask before she changed the subject.
"Still…he sounds like an interesting person. I'd like to meet him someday."
Errol's heart seized in this chest. She might not love him, but he loved her more than his own life. He rushed at her and placed his hands on either side of her face. He was neither rough nor gentle, but his eyes were beseeching.
"No Mary, you must never hope for that. He would know immediately if he met you. Your emotions are so close to the surface, it's like light coming from your skin. He would catch you and he would kill you. Do you understand?"
"I fooled you for a long time," she said defiantly, though a small amount of tenderness entered her eyes.
"Yes but I wasn't like him. I felt nothing. You worked with Elsa, a coworker, and I trusted you." He paused, a lump forming in his throat as he remembered his late wife.
Mary reached out and clutched his shoulders.
"You mustn't do that. I am as much to blame as you are. I'm the one who convinced her to go off the dose."
"And I'm the one who sent her to the fire," he said bitterly as his voice snagged on the word fire.
Mary smoothed his forehead, kissing him gently.
"And then you felt your grief and you went off the dose," she stated calmly, trying to catch his eyes with hers.
He raised his head, meeting her gaze head on.
"I had no choice you see. Admitting to my guilt, feeling the pain of Elsa's loss, my betrayal…it was my penance."
The world was as grey and cold as dirty ice and the car moved forward through it with the persistence of a glacier.
I will never hold her in my arms again, Errol thought.
He made his face into a mask, fixing his eyes forward and setting his mouth into a line, but inside he was screaming.
How could she have left me? He wondered again for the thousandth time. It had been weeks, but the pain bled fresh every morning when he woke to his empty bed. His empty life.
The break had been amicable enough. She reassured him that she cared for him, but the costs of his job were too great for her to deal with. He told her he would leave the job, but she wouldn't have it, stating that his position in the Tetragrammaton was too important to the resistance.
In the end it was clear that he was more important to the resistance than he was to her, and it made him feel like dying.
He felt the weight of John's presence to his left, like a loaded gun.
A loaded gun he would gladly put to his own head.
He chanced a look at John, who stared stoically forward, unaware of the torrent of emotion by his side.
For a moment Errol became so angry, he wanted to strike out at John. Every day they sat in this car next to one another, moved together through the war that Father wrought on the people. Every day John was able to see emotion in others. Why couldn't he see Errol's? Why was he immune to Errol's pain?
He moves like a shark through this world, Errol thought, regarding him silently. I think I know him, but I don't…we are all strangers to one another in this dark and evil world. Perhaps what I've thought were feelings coming from him were merely projections of myself onto him.
Errol didn't realize that he had fully turned his head to stare at John.
"What is it, Errol?" John asked without looking in his direction.
Errol was mute for several seconds, though he didn't do the smart thing, which would have been to look away.
"I have a question for you," he said, though self-preservation was screaming at him to shut his mouth.
At this John did turn to face Errol, his eyes nearly as grey as the world that passed outside of the car and empty of everything.
"Yes?" He asked mechanically.
Errol chose his words with care.
"If I was to die…what would you think about it?" He watched John's face carefully, and was rewarded with a nearly imperceptible muscle twitch near John's left eye.
"What do you mean, what would I think of it?" John asked. "I'd see to it that your remains were properly disposed of and file the necessary petition for a new partner."
"Yes, of course you would follow protocol. But that is not precisely what I asked. What would you think?" Errol pressed, unable to drop the line of questioning, though it threatened his very existence.
John blinked several times as if he was trying to compute the answer to a complex problem.
"I would think..." he paused, still searching for his answer. "I would think that it was a loss. For the clerics, I mean. And for myself. We are an effective team. It would take years to reestablish this kind of partnership with another. I have my doubts that it would even be possible."
"Why do you suppose that is?" Errol asked, pushing the question to its limit. When John turned to face him again, Errol could see the change in his face. It would likely be invisible to another, but as they were brothers in arms, Errol could see that John was agitated.
"Errol," John stated calmly, his voice betraying nothing. "When we are finished today we are going to the Tetragrammaton."
Errol felt both a great pressure in his chest but also a resignation that was akin to relief.
"And why will we be doing that, John?" he asked calmly, fully expecting John to order shackles to be placed on his wrists.
"We are going to have your dose adjusted. You are acting strangely and I think it is best to be cautious. You may be building up a resistance."
Errol was stunned into silence.
He is trying to save me.
And though Errol did not wish to be saved, he looked John in the eye.
"Yes, John, I think that is an excellent idea."
John smiled the half smile that was his small tell, the one that Errol could never understand, for how could one smile if not for a feeling of happiness? Or in this case relief.
That evening Errol stood in his bathroom holding the new vials of Prozium that John had ordered for him. For many minutes he actually considered injecting one. It would take the pain of losing Mary away, after all.
In the end he hid them in his pantry, and plotted his death. He was not sure how he would make it happen, but he knew with a terrible certainty that John was going to be the one to do it. For that, he was overwhelmingly relieved.