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Chapter Ten

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Em isn't in the business of blaming other people for his problems. Really, he isn't. And he doesn't think it's blaming, per se, when he considers the myriad ways in which Arthur has ruined his life. It's just a list of simple facts.

Fact one: Em was perfectly happy to trudge around the airport in circles before he met Arthur. He was perfectly happy to follow the same routine day in and day out with the occasional break for eating brains. He was—well, all right, he wasn't thrilled about the whole 'total lack of interpersonal communication' thing, but at least he'd accepted it.

Fact two: Em was used to being alone in every way that mattered. He was content enough to venture into Heathrow, grunt at Dred and Will and Security Guard Guy and a few others, and then return to his plane and his dragons and his isolation. He knew that even if he wasn't actually the most intellectually capable zombie in residence he might as well have been, because no one else appeared able to speak up and contradict him. He got used to having his own thoughts for company, an incessant inner monologue because the other option—total, all-encompassing silence—would've probably driven him mad long before anything else had a chance to.

Fact three: Arthur (challenging, infuriating, omnipresent Arthur) has successfully fucked up all of the above.

Here's the thing. Em is running for his life right now (such as it is), having somehow managed to go from 'average member of the zombie populace' to 'wanted fugitive who will probably be torn to shreds if he ever dares return' in the space of a few hours. This was not on his to-do list when he got up this morning. And he doesn't think it's too much of a stretch to blame his current situation at least partly on his erstwhile houseguest.

The skies opened up shortly after their departure from Heathrow, and it's been pouring on and off ever since. Em's not sure how long they've been walking down silent roads littered with abandoned vehicles; the sun hasn't shown its face from behind the clouds all day, and if Arthur has any ideas he's not sharing. He's not sharing much of anything, actually, and Em's been too preoccupied with trying to keep up to press him.

At some point they run across a car that doesn't look blatantly destroyed or even rusted over too badly, and Arthur makes a beeline for it. Em hangs back and watches with interest as he squirms under the wheel and fiddles with a few wires.

The engine roars to sudden life. Arthur emerges with a massive grin on his face.

"Get in," he says, settling behind the wheel. "Hurry up, I don't know how much is left in the tank."

Em does, and the next thing he knows they're speeding across the grey terrain. Rain is still pouring in through the shattered windows, but honestly it's not like they can get any wetter, so Em ignores it. Arthur seems almost cheerful about their good luck, and Em feels encouraged enough by that to venture a question.

"Wherrre…?"

Arthur looks at him like he's insane. "The compound, obviously."

Right. Obviously.

Arthur's eyes are already back on the road. Em slumps in his seat, grim.

Of course they're going back to the compound; was there ever any other option? Em will just need to make sure they part ways before they get there, because if he gets within range of gunfire he'll be history and he knows it. Never mind that he's the reason Arthur's still around in the first place.

This is the problem with forgetting who you are, he scolds himself. I shouldn't've expected anything different.

You're lucky it's Arthur with you.

The interruption startles him. Morgana hasn't said much lately, and when she did it was mostly to laugh at his weapons-related ineptitude. He frowns.

What do you mean by that?

I mean if it were anyone else—anyone at all—you would have been dead the instant you left the airport. Or left to distract the skeletons before that. She sighs. My stupid brother and his stupid ideas about nobility.

I don't know, Em replies unhappily. He still might shoot me before we make the compound. Why bring me along if he didn't want to make sure he got rid of me?

Because you were in as much danger as he was, trying to escape, and he couldn't leave you behind. You saved his life. Arthur won't forget that.

Yeah, well, I don't think he'll be eager to introduce me to the rest of your friends either. Which makes more sense—let the zombie walk home and tell his friends that not all humans will decapitate them? Or put three rounds in his skull before he ever has the chance? Personally I think the second option's more likely.

To you, maybe. Not to Arthur. She pauses. Just don't give him a reason to think your option is the better one.

The ominous note in her voice coincides with the whining of the engine and the subsequent stalling of the car. Arthur mutters and curses and smacks the wheel, but there's nothing to be done. They're going to have to go the rest of the way on foot, and the sun is fast dipping below the horizon line.

"There's no way we'll make it to the gates before it gets dark," Arthur says with a sigh. "If I remember right, there should be a neighborhood close by. It was one of the last we evacuated."

They end up tromping through rivers of mud and sheets of rain for what feels like hours, but eventually Arthur lets out a groan of relief as a handful of houses come into view.

"Come on," he says, and Em follows.

The neighborhood is eerie. Em is dead and he thinks it's eerie. The evacuation Arthur mentioned was obviously a hasty one because there are things scattered everywhere. Pieces of people's lives strewn across overgrown lawns and cracked driveways—trellises for long-dead flowers, an overturned bike, the occasional basketball. A child's plastic tricycle. Em shudders at that one and stops paying attention.

Arthur walks through the first open door he finds. The inside of the house is pitch-black, but he still insists on doing a sweep of it before they settle in. Em leaves him to his paranoia and tries to hunt down some candles.

He doesn't find them in the first drawer he opens. There's a deck of cards there, but somehow he doesn't think Arthur's going to be in a gaming mood, so he passes them over. The second drawer has some spare change and a tape measure, neither of which are going to be too useful either. The third drawer has a photo album that he doesn't touch, because just thinking about what might be inside feels like someone is grabbing his insides and squeezing.

Em keeps poking around, sifting through the detritus of someone's life pre-apocalypse with as much care as he can muster. He wonders if he was an archaeologist in his lifetime. Maybe that's why he feels the need to keep everything in its place, disturb as little as possible. Maybe this family will come back to their home someday.

Or maybe they're long dead, ripped apart by Em's kind. Hell, he might have killed them himself. He would never know.

Vaguely nauseous, he slams the last drawer shut. He hasn't eaten in longer than is advisable; that's probably why he's feeling so shitty, why there's this churning in his stomach and an itch under his skin.

"It's clear," Arthur announces, coming back down the stairs. "There's no one here. Living or dead."

Em grunts in acknowledgement, followed by a noise of victory when he finally unearths a few candles and a box of matches. Arthur eyes them dubiously.

"Maybe you're in the mood for some late night reading, but I for one am going to have a shower and go to bed," he informs him. Em is seized by the sudden urge to break one of the candles over his head. "You can sleep down here."

Em glares, but he thinks the effect is probably ruined by the darkness because Arthur heads back up the stairs without another word.

"Nnnight," he mumbles to no one.

Sighing, he tries to light a match four times before giving up and accepting that his stiff fingers just aren't meant for the task. Then it's a quest to find a clear patch of floor he can curl up on, because finding a sofa would involve making his way into another room without somehow offing himself and he doesn't think his chances of that are too good. He's been stumbling around for a good few minutes when a voice speaks from the staircase, making him jump.

"For the love of God," Arthur says irritably. "You're completely pathetic. Come upstairs before you brain yourself on the furniture."

Em blinks, but he sure as hell doesn't need to be told twice. He clambers after Arthur, miraculously managing to survive the stairs.

"Don't get any ideas," Arthur warns him. "You're still sleeping on the floor."

Em shrugs. It's all the same to him.

Arthur takes advantage of the miracle that is a working shower, and Em takes advantage of his temporary absence to eat before the itch in his flesh drives him insane. His mood dips further when he realizes there's only enough of Morgana's brain left for a mouthful. Ah well; beggars can't be choosers. He swallows without chewing, all too conscious of the need to be quick about it—

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My father is dead, Gorlois is dead; they ripped him apart like meat and I'll never see him again, but Uther puts a gun in my hand and says that I can avenge him, and I swear I'll do it until the day they kill me too—

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Gwen spars with me while Lancelot spars with Arthur, and I notice her distraction and her smiles and I notice Lance getting hit on the backside by Arthur's practice blade because he wasn't paying attention, and I'm happy for them both but part of me worries because nobody can be happy for long here—

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The memories are coming faster now, in flashes, blurs of color and light and sound rushing into his head—

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Uther calls me his daughter and the bottom drops out of my world—

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He doesn't understand, he doesn't understand that we have nothing to fight for anymore; I go outside the compound just so I can scream without anybody noticing, scream until I scare the birds from the trees—

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A blade in my hand, pressed to the pale skin of my wrists; I watch as blood blooms from the wound and I feel nothing, I feel nothing—

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Arthur, exasperated with me—

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My baby cousin smiling at me—

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A deadwalker in a red hoodie; I've shot him but it's only pissed him off and he rushes at me, pulls me from the desk I'm standing on and then painpainpainreliefohgod—

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Em gags, spits out whatever's left of the mouthful and gasps for air. Bile is acidic in his throat, burning as he gags.

Not what you expected? Morgana's tone is stiff. Em wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand; his stomach still feels like it's twisting itself inside out.

No, he admits. Jesus, Morgana, I'm—

Don't, she snaps, warning, and he doesn't.

They sit in silence until Arthur comes out of the bathroom fully clothed (Em is not disappointed by this, he tells himself, no matter how nice a distraction it would've been) and with his hair still damp. He clambers into bed while Em stares at the ceiling and awkwardly fidgets. Not looking, but also trying not to look like he's trying not to look. Morgana sighs in his head.

You're pathetic, she informs him. He doesn't even try to deny it.

They're quiet for a long time like that, lying in the dark in a stranger's house. Em keeps rolling around trying to get comfortable on the hardwood floor until Arthur finally loses his patience and throws a pillow at him to shut him up.

It hits Em square in the face and Arthur wasn't even looking. Bastard.

Em's not sure how much time has gone by, both of them well aware that the other isn't sleeping either, when Arthur breaks the silence.

"What's it like?"

You know, I don't think that question was vague enough. He doesn't say anything, too tired to try and get the words out even though they have been coming to him easier lately, and hopes Arthur will take the hint and elaborate. Which he eventually does.

"Being dead, I mean. What's that like?"

That's a horribly personal question, isn't it? What if I asked you what it's like being alive? Except that's not quite right, is it, because Em was alive once too, wasn't he? Even if he can't really remember it anymore. Even if he sometimes thinks that with Arthur, he's so close to remembering he can almost taste what it was like to be human.

Doesn't matter. He's not human or living anymore, and there's nothing to be done about it. He accepted that a long time ago, didn't he?

So he shrugs and says, "Don't…know."

A snort from the bed. "Really. That's all I'm going to get?"

Em scowls, never mind that Arthur can't see. What exactly is the prat trying to accomplish with this line of questioning? "Ssucks," he finally spits out, barely even tripping over the S's.

"…Ah."

"Get….used…to it."

"Yes. I suppose you would." Arthur's tone has changed, taken on that stiff, formal air it does when he's uncomfortable. When he knows he's overstepped some sort of line. Em struggles to articulate something more coherent, struck by a sudden fierce desire to make him understand—what? That Em is more than this? That he used to be a person just like Arthur—well, probably much better mannered, but all the same?

That maybe, if they'd met before all this shit happened and the world went to hell, they might have been friends?

Might have been something more?

"I…miss it," he manages. And there, it's been said. He's never admitted it out loud, never even properly admitted it to himself, but it's true. It's so fucking true and he aches with it, the incredibly frustrating sense of missing something you can't remember having. All he has, all he can cling to, is the knowledge that he must have been human at some point. He would've gone mad a long time ago if he didn't have that, but these days it's starting to feel like less than enough.

It used to be enough. But then, maybe that's just one more thing Arthur has fucked up.

He's not sure all of those subtleties will have made it across in three hesitantly stammered words, but then he wasn't really intending them to. Objectively speaking Em's aware he probably needs some very specialized therapy for this ('Existential Crises for the Undead and How to Handle Them'; he could make a fortune if he thought any of his fellow zombies could handle a sign-up sheet). And Arthur doesn't have the patience to be an armchair psychologist.

Arthur's quiet for a few minutes. Long enough that Em starts to wonder whether he's fallen asleep and rendered Em's best attempt at a grand heart to heart a moot point. Then, so quiet he has to strain to listen:

"Sometimes I think it must be easier for all of you. Not feeling anything." He clears his throat. "Morgana—my sister—she thought we were fighting a losing battle, all of us. She didn't always say it, but it was always there. I know she hadn't had any hope for a long time when she died. Sometimes I think she—"

Arthur's voice cracks and the stream of words abruptly cuts itself off. Em doesn't move, staring at the shadowy ceiling and contemplating the many, many reasons he deserves the eventual headshot Arthur will fire at him.

Because there's no other way for this to end. Em likes to think of himself as an optimist, but he's not actually an idiot. There's no version of this where he comes out in one piece, and he thinks maybe he's okay with that. Maybe if he manages to get Arthur home intact, accomplishes that one little bit of good in his undead existence, he won't fear whatever comes after the headshot quite so much.

"Sometimes," Arthur bites out, sounding like he's trying to get everything out at once before he loses his nerve or his voice, "I wonder if she did it on purpose. She was always a better strategist than I was—could see everything coming, saw five steps ahead of the rest of us. Brilliant aim with a shotgun, too, she—I wonder sometimes if she came out on that last supply run with me looking to die."

There's nothing Em can say to that, really. Morgana makes a choked sound in the back of his mind and he doesn't dare ask whether her brother is right.

But he does remember that look that'd been in her eyes right before the lights in them went out, before Em put them out with his own two hands—that spark of defiance. Of something he'd thought was a dare, something he thought he'd deluded himself into interpreting as relief.

Sounds like it may not have been so delusional after all.

Arthur is still talking, hemorrhaging secrets like he can't stop. "Sometimes I wonder whether she's—whether she was right about all of it. Whether we shouldn't just give in and go out in a blaze of glory, instead of this—this withering away, week by week. We're surviving, not living. Some days I don't know what makes us different from you."

A sharp intake of breath, like too much has been said. Then, when Em doesn't say anything in response, a low, shaky-sounding laugh.

"Wouldn't that be a laugh. Us tripping over ourselves trying to kill you when we're not even that far off from deadwalkers ourselves. What a farce."

That's not true, Em wants to say, wants to scream. Wants to climb onto that bed and grab Arthur by the shoulders and shake him until he realizes what colossal bullshit has just come out of his mouth. You can still try, you can still do better, you can still fucking feel, dammit, don't you realize I would do anything to have that back? To even remember for a fucking second what it was like?

And he's furious with Morgana too, suddenly, if she really did throw in the towel like Arthur suspects she did. I would have sawed off my own arm with my teeth to have your life. Instead I just took your mind and your memories and that used to be enough, fuck, why isn't it enough anymore?

He doesn't know how to say any of that in five syllables or less, and the limitation has never been so frustrating as it is now. And he knows part of it is the guilt that comes with knowing Arthur doesn't open up like this, doesn't talk like this, is actually letting himself be vulnerable for the sake of communicating with a zombie. An emotional vulnerability rather than a physical one, fine, but either one can get you killed.

Em killed his sister. Em killed his sister and Arthur is talking to him like a friend.

It's more than he can take, and the knowledge burns away his anger.

"Sorry," he whispers.

Arthur's reply is a confused "What?" but Em doesn't bother replying to it, doesn't bother trying to explain with words. He's not very good with them anyway. He's too busy fumbling in his pockets for the bracelet, that thick shining thing he'd pulled off of Morgana's wrist after he'd smashed her head against the floor.

It feels hot in his palm. Scalding. Like a brand: Liar. Traitor. Monster.

Still, he holds it close to his chest for one more moment, holding back the truth with it as he searches for one last thing he can say while Arthur is still willing to listen to him. Because once Em passes it over there's no going back. Arthur will take his head off with whatever happens to be handy and then it'll all be over for good.

"You…you're…better," he says. "Better…than us. Ssso…much…better…than us."

"Em, what the hell are you on about?"

He closes his eyes and reaches up, pushes the bracelet onto the bedside table where Arthur can't miss seeing it.

"Sorry," he croaks again. "I'm…ssso…sorry."

There's a long silence, then finally a low scraping sound as Arthur picks up the bracelet. Eyes still closed, Em can see it in his mind—Arthur turning the bracelet over in his hands, putting the pieces together and coming up with—

"It was you."

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I didn't mean to lie.

He can't say that he didn't want her dead, because in that moment he did. He can't say that he wouldn't have killed her if he'd known who she was, because he has no idea what—if anything—he would've done differently.

But he regrets the lying now, he thinks, more than anything else he's done.

Swallowing hard, he tries to break through the fast-growing wall of silence.

"Arthur—"

The click of the safety going off, a rustle of sheets and when Em opens his eyes again Arthur is staring down at him, eyes blazing, past the barrel of a Glock 42.

"Not," he says in a dangerously quiet voice, "another word."

Under the pillow. Of course. Understandably, everyone started taking home security into their own hands once half the police force decided they'd rather chew on those they were supposed to protect.

Now that the time's come for him to die properly, Em finds that he feels remarkably calm. It could just be the aftereffects of clearing his conscience—well, some of it. A bit of it. But a bit less grime is better than nothing, right?

He stares blandly at the gun, waiting for it to go off. At least it'll be quick. Arthur's an excellent shot.

"You killed her," Arthur says. Now that he's paying attention Em realizes that while the hand holding the gun is still, the rest of him is shaking like the proverbial leaf. "So why did you save me? Why the hell did you keep me safe above her or Leon or Percy or Gwen—"

"Don't…know," Em groans, frustrated beyond belief because he's been trying to answer that question himself ever since he first smeared blood on Arthur's face. He could say it's because of Morgana, that livid voice in his head swearing to haunt him if he killed her brother, but that would just be another lie. Ever since he first set eyes on Arthur in that damned pharmacy there's been something different about him, but fuck if Em knows what it is.

"Not good enough." Arthur's tone is sharp.

"I…don't…know," Em repeats. Arthur responds by firing a warning shot barely a hair's width above Em's skull.

"Figure it out," he says crisply.

"Had…to…keep you…sssafe," Em says miserably. "Couldn't…kill. Couldn't…do it."

Just shoot me. Just shoot me and fucking end it.

Don't make me say it.

Arthur keeps his finger on the trigger, keeps the barrel pointed directly between Em's eyes. In the dark his face is impossible to read. Em starts to wonder grimly if he should make a sudden movement or something to startle Arthur into firing, because this whole waiting thing is absolute torture.

Finally Em hears a click and his eyes close on instinct.

Well, Morgana, here's to us both having better luck in the next life.

Silence.

The gun doesn't go off. Oblivion doesn't sweep grandiosely out of the abyss to swallow him up. It's all very confusing.

There's the sound of movement.

Cautiously, Em opens his eyes.

It takes him a second to find Arthur again, standing in the doorway with his back to Em. The Glock is still in his hand, but the safety has been put back into place.

Arthur doesn't turn around when he speaks.

"If I ever see your face again, you have my word that I will put a bullet through it."

And then he's gone.

Leaving Em flat on his back on the cold hardwood floor of a stranger's house, feeling like something's been ripped out of him, staring at the empty space where Arthur had been until long after he's gone.