My wrist feels better when I wake up in the middle of the night. The bone-deep ache is faded and distant, and the lack wakes me up in a cold sweat, the fever broken like a wave. I'm not warm anymore- I'm shivering, teeth chattering together, hands shaking.
I don't know if this is supposed to happen when you get infected- maybe it's just the next stage- but I feel better. I feel alive again, freezing and clammy and shivering like a junkie days from a fix, but better, somehow.
I curl into Riley, who's as warm as she's always been, this solid, comforting heat at my back.
She's like summer sunlight, like a blanket in the wintertime. She leeches the shivers out of me, and I sleep deeply.
When I wake again, Riley's warmth has become something malicious. Something evil. There's heat in every fiber of her- she's fever-hot all over, and her breaths are slow and ragged and she's shivering, shaking so hard I think she might tear herself apart.
I grab her by the shoulders, try to keep her still, keep her from hurting herself, and it feels so strange to be the one protecting her, like some unwritten law has been violated.
Even through her Jacket, Riley's skin burns. Whatever fever I had is tenfold in her.
"Riley?"
She doesn't respond, and I feel tears spring to my eyes, feel the inevitable crashing down on me all at once.
"Riley, please, I can't lose you like this."
It's a plea and it's also a goodbye, and my heart sinks to the pit of my stomach when she doesn't respond except to keep shivering.
"Please."
My voice is no louder then a whisper, and I feel so small and so goddamn useless, and I shake her by the shoulders, desperate and needy and helpless.
Riley's eyes slide open. She takes this deep, shuddering breath.
"Riley?"
Now I am crying, sobbing like a little kid, and I watch her regain consciousness slowly, like a swimmer breaking the surface.
"Ellie?"
She sounds so slow, so confused. It's not like the Riley I know at all. That Riley is fast and clever and bright as the sun.
This- this is not that girl. This Riley is muted and bleary-eyed, and she's reaching for me blindly with this almost childish want, and I hug her back and cry into her.
At least she's stopped shaking.
"Ellie, what's wrong?"
I shake my head, lean back, blink my tears away.
"Nothing. Bad dream."
I don't want to ruin what time we have left.
She looks me in the eyes, and there's the Riley I know, the Riley that won't take my shit for even a second.
"You were gone, Riley. For a second there you were…"
My voice chokes off with this throat-closing sob that I can't hold in no matter how hard I try. I can't even speak right.
She laughs, this sad, watery chuckle.
"I'm not leaving you without a goodbye." She says, and when she kisses me, I know it's as close to a goodbye as I'm going to get.
Her lips are too warm. It's like kissing the sun.
I wipe my eyes- I've been doing too much of that, recently.
"This isn't really how I pictured it going down. We were supposed to get old, you know?"
She looks at me, the last sleep falling from her eyes.
"You thought about us?"
I choke, all childish fantasy.
"Well, I mean-"
"It's okay. I did too. I-"
She cuts off the rest of her sentence with a strange fear in her eyes, deer-in-the-headlights. She was always, always stronger then this. Her weakness terrifies me.
"We were just- we were supposed to have more then this." She holds up her hand, the bite puckering at the edges, the scab curling in to show a bright white growing through her skin, like moss, like fungus, like plague.
"Yeah." I grab her hand and run my fingers over the bite and that's a goodbye in itself.
Riley laughs.
"Oops, right?" and that's a goodbye, too.
I lean as far into her side as I can, even though she's too warm, and she makes this noise, like I've hurt her, and I jerk away like she's burned me, and already Riley's shaking her head.
"It's okay. You didn't hurt me. It's just-"
She coughs, this wet, horrible sound with a scream on the edges of it, too close to the sounds those things make for comfort.
"I'm just a little sore, is all."
She sounds more then a little sore, but I don't say that. I say
"Are we talking like, paper cut sore, or lemon juice in a paper cut sore?"
"Closer to just a paper cut." She says, and pulls me back into her side.
We just sit and talk, pressed as close to each other as our skin will allow, and everything she says is a goodbye, and everything I say is an apology.
After a while, she starts to cough every couple of minutes, a whole-body cough that rattles through her like death. She always recovers fast enough though.
Except this time she doesn't.
She just coughs, and coughs, and the hand that isn't wrapped around me goes up to her mouth and comes away bloody, and her shoulders are shaking and I'm trying so hard not to cry.
"I'm okay." She says, once she's caught her breath.
"I'm okay."
Her voice is so shaky. There's this tremor in it, and she was always supposed to be the strong one, and with her like this I feel so lost.
I don't know what I should do, so I just do what I want to do, and pull her into a kiss that tastes like blood and fever. When we break apart, she takes a deep, shuddering breath and says
"I'm glad I got to kiss you before-"
I nod.
Riley Blinks, slow and hazy, like she's trying to remember something important.
"I'm just- I'm getting kinda tired, so I'm gonna lie down, now."
She doesn't sound like herself at all, lying down with stiff, clumsy movements that are so separate from Riley, graceful Riley, infallible Riley.
I lie down with her, resting my head on her chest, feeling her lungs cough themselves apart every few minutes.
"I'm glad too." I say, and she drapes an arm over my back.
"Hey, I might not make it to tomorrow, and if I don't-"
I shake my head, cut her off. She lies there, for a moment, quiet, and I'm afraid I've lost her before she says
"Tell me about how it was supposed to go. Tell me how it was supposed to happen."
I nod. "Close your eyes." I say, trying to be like her, because nothing was ever so comforting as she was.
"We were supposed to leave the QZ- just go live outside, you know? Find a forest, or a suburb, somewhere with plenty of wildlife and no infected, or hunters, or soldiers, or Fireflies, or any of that."
I can feel her breathing slowing down.
"And we- we were going to build a cabin, just big enough for us, and fill it with all our favourite books."
"Music, too?" She asks, and she sounds so needy, so small.
"Yeah." I whisper.
"Yeah, we'd live near a city, with a music shop, and we'd fix up an old stereo and listen to all the music we'd ever want."
She's coal-hot against me, burning up from the inside out.
"We'd have a dog, and he'd sleep on our feet in the winter, to keep warm, and the bed would always be too small, and you'd always hog the blankets, and we'd sit in front of the fire and read every night."
I realize I'm crying, not sobbing, not sniffling, there are just tears rolling down my cheeks and onto Riley's shirt.
"We'd always have enough to hunt, enough to eat, you'd teach me how to use a bow and I'd teach you how to play poker, and we'd have a horse, and we'd both live until we were wrinkly and old."
I can feel her falling asleep under me, breath slowing, and her words are slurred.
"What's the horse's name?"
"I'd let you name it." I say. She nods.
"It'd be big, and brown." She says, like she's reciting from a script. "Not like Princess."
I nod like I understand. "What would you call it?"
Riley pauses to think, and she sounds very far away when she finally says "Callus."
And she sounds even further away when she says "How would we die?"
My throat closes up for a second, and it takes a couple deep breaths to continue.
"It would be summer time. It'd be so warm, and sunny, and it would smell like spring. The dog would sit by our feet, and we would sit next to each other on the front porch, all grey and old, and we'd just drift away. Like falling asleep."
She sighs, and it's half contentment and half death rattle.
"Like falling asleep." She echoes, and I can feel her do just that beneath me, just as I can feel the farewell in the words.
And then I fall asleep on her chest, even though she's too warm, even though her coughing makes it hard to get comfortable. Even though she's going to be dangerous by morning.
"Sorry." I whisper, and there's a goodbye in that, too.
A/N-
I'm going to write a slightly too long shout out section right here, so feel free to skip over it if you want.
First off- everyone who comments and leaves favorites, you're fantastic and amazing
Second, to the wonderful people on 8tracks who keep making good fandom-specific writing mixes, especially River Swelling (both sides), which I'm going to put links to right now.
/herrenjaller/river-swelling-side-a
/herrenjaller/river-swelling-side-b
Third, to the writing fairies for abandoning me this chapter. Seriously. Writing this one felt like pulling teeth. Hope it came out alright.
I think that's it for now.
Best wishes.