Aaron

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97.

Aaron drove until he couldn't anymore, finding peace in the road unveiling itself before him. But even that peace was quickly dispelled as the roadway disappeared under, first, a thin carpet of snow and then dangerously invisible patches of ice that fought his tires when he hit them. Before long, they were pushing into a bank of snow blowing up against them. The van chugged along slowly but steadily until he had no choice but to pull it off the road, staring into the empty white-black world ahead as the wind roared and shoved at them. They weren't anywhere where a snow-plough would be by to help them anytime soon, nothing but what he thought might be trees to their left and, to their right, empty farmland. He looked at the line on their fuel metre: quarter tank. If they turned it off and the heater with it, they'd freeze. About fifteen hours idling with it on … maybe. If they were lucky. Was that long enough for the storm to blow over?

"Aaron?" Spencer said from the back, his voice husky. Aaron tensed. Was he ready to turn yet, to face what he'd done? Spencer's misery was still audible, and Aaron hated himself for missing it. How had he been so wrapped up in his own discomfort that he hadn't realised that Spencer's withdrawal wasn't selfishness, but suffering? He should have known that Spence would never let him work so hard and alone unless he couldn't help it.

"Aaron," again, this time Emily. Aaron turned, staring at them in the weird light of the overhead, the windshield almost whited out as snow piled up on it. They were in danger of getting buried as well, and he looked to the back of the van and wondered if the heat from the exhaust would stop it clogging up with snow. If it didn't, they'd suffocate. "Are we stuck?"

"Yeah." He dropped back into the driver's seat, switching on the hazards — not that they'd do much good — and turning the wheels toward the verge. Into first, parking brake on, and he dropped his head onto the wheel and thought that at least they were unlikely to be rear-ended in this weather. Now, they just had to wait it out. Stuck in the van with him, who'd ruined everything in his determination to do right by them.

Emily slid up, ejecting a cassette and shoving another in. "Well, we might as well bunker down," she said, hitting rewind. They listened to the tape whirr as she tapped his elbow and wiggled aside. "Come on, get back here and snuggle. Spence wants hugs."

"I wouldn't mind them," Aaron heard Spencer croak, smiling despite how miserable he was.

"Good, there. We're nesting, while listening to Ethan's magnum opus, Embolden the Seal."

"Is it actually called that?" Aaron asked, curious despite himself.

"Yes. Your friend is weird, Spencer."

Spencer made a soft noise that might have been a laugh if he'd been less sad. "At least I never kissed him," he said, but started to cry moments after.

Helpless and sore and scared of not being able to fix them, Aaron crawled into the back and down into the nest of blankets, pulling Spencer close and hanging on grimly. After a moment, Ethan's music still playing, Emily joined them and huddled in on his other side with their dæmons bunched tight by their feet.

"I'm sorry, I don't know why I'm crying," Spencer managed. "I'm trying to stop."

"Cry if you want," Emily said. "We're not letting you go. You'll just have to sniffle all over us. Aaron might end up crying too, though."

"I might," Aaron admitted. "You know me, I'm a crier."

Spencer smiled wetly. "I love you both."

"Love you too," was Aaron's reply, looking right at Emily as he said it. "And you."

Emily just shrugged. "Yeah, sure, probably," she muttered, earning a glare from them both. "Well, duh, of course I love you idiots — would I be here in this van that smells like feet and farts if I didn't?"

"No," Spencer said. "You'd be back at Boulder with Ethan, being happy."

"Bullshit." Her voice was sharp, her expression intense. "Bullshit, I would. I'm not done here yet — we don't split up until we're done."

"How will we know when we're done?" Aureilo asked. It was the first time he spoken since the bad trip.

Emily answered, "We'll just know. You'll see."

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98.

They took it in turns staying awake to turn the van on and off to conserve gas, drawing straws — or, in this case, broken hair-pins — to see who was getting sent out to check the tailpipe every time they turned it back on. Hours passed like that until Spencer had the idea of sending a dæmon out to check the pipe. After a short scuffle, the dæmons all settled as arctic animals and resigned themselves to their new job of ensuring they didn't all die of carbon monoxide poisoning before the storm blew out.

But it didn't blow out. More hours passed until they were sending dæmons out to knock snow from the windows and windshield on the side it was blowing up against them. Aaron had a horrible feeling that they were in a gully of some kind, one that was quickly filling with snow. Touching the side of the van was horrible, their skin freezing instantly to the metal, and the heater began to struggle to rewarm the van up after turning it off.

Aaron fiddled with the radio, hoping for a weather warning, only to find the thing was broken.

Emily fretted.

Spencer was quiet, watching Aaron with his expression fraught with worry. "We'll be fine," Aaron told him, not liking the concern in those already shadowed eyes. "You'll see."

"I didn't mean it," Spencer said instead of touching on their imminent death by blizzard. "What I said back there, I didn't mean it. I was hysterical. Ever since I stopped taking the pills, I've been … unpredictable, I guess. I get upset about things I wouldn't normally, that was one of them."

"Nah," Aaron said, abandoning the radio and shuffling into the back to sit knee-to-knee with his boyfriend. "That was upsetting. I shouldn't have done it. Em made those paintings for you. I thought I was getting back at her, and I wasn't. Besides, even if I was, it was cruel and unforgivable to do so by ruining something she'd worked so hard on."

"Is this an apology?" Emily said.

"Yes."

"Oh." She looked away, nipping savagely at her nails. Aaron felt a hand take his, rough where the asphalt had grazed it, and hung on tightly. "Yeah, well, apology not accepted. Not to me anyway — they were Spencer's paintings, not mine. I don't care about them. And I don't deserve an apology, you're pretty right about me. I am shit, and I do need to get better."

"I really loved them," Spencer said quietly, eyes downcast. "They were something more than what we have. Something that we created, instead of taking away. A difference. I wish I could do that, make a difference…"

Aaron looked at him, Ethan's words ringing in his brain. And he decided: if they survived this snow, they weren't going back to DC — they weren't taking Spencer back to his dad.

They were going back to Boulder.

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99.

"You know, it's morning out there," Hal said. She was digging her way back into the van as an arctic hare and blinking snow from her eyes. From the hole she'd dug into, no light leaked in. "We're almost buried. I don't know how much longer we can keep clearing the tailpipe. Aureilo's still out there, but it's filling up as fast as he's digging."

Aaron had thought it might come to this. "I have to go for help," he announced, standing up despite the general outcry around him. "We can't all go."

"Bullshit we can't," Emily announced. Spencer wasn't even arguing, just reaching for his coat with his expression stubborn. "Why the hell are we going to let you walk into a blizzard alone? Is that really how selfish you think we are?"

Aaron answered honestly: "Because we don't have enough winter clothes for anyone else but me."

There was silence as they digested that and realised it was true. To avoid him freezing, he'd have to layer up basically everything warm they had, and they had very little that was lined adequately for snow. Only one coat that was waterproof, and nothing with a woollen interior to wick sweat away from his body before it could cool. Not to mention, his only shoes were sneakers, Spencer's a battered pair of fabric Chuck Taylors. Emily had boots, but Emily also had tiny feet. There was no hope of him squeezing into them.

"We can call for help," Spencer offered, but how? They didn't have a car phone and any payphone would be impossible to find in this whiteout.

"Surely we can wait it out …" Emily said.

Ten seconds later, Aureilo appeared and informed them that without a dæmon out there digging constantly to stop the tailpipe icing up, it would be buried in minutes. Aaron's decision was made.

"If you're going to fall asleep, turn the van off," Aaron ordered, setting aside all his worries. He wouldn't die out there. He wouldn't fail. He was the biggest, the strongest, and the angriest out of all of them: no snowstorm would stop him finding help and bringing it back. "Stay together, under the blankets. Don't leave the van. If you can't run a heater, you won't be able to warm your core temperature back up. Don't—"

"Don't go," Spencer whispered. "Please?"

Aaron stepped over to him and kissed him fiercely. It wasn't a last kiss; they had so many more to come, he was sure. "I have to. Look after her?" He nodded at Emily.

Spencer's eyes flickered to her, then back. "You'd trust me with her?" he asked, mouth set into a wry frown. "Even after I … well, you know."

"You were upset," Aaron chided gently. "We're allowed to be upset and irrational sometimes. It doesn't mean you're weak or … or crazy."

Spencer nodded, his shoulders squarer now. Together, they helped Aaron dress to face the blizzard outside: alone.

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100.

It was unlike anything he'd ever done before. The world around him narrowed to just him and Hal, her the wolf with his arm around her, struggling through snow that turned everything white. Within minutes, he was frozen. Then, came the wet. The layers and layers he was wearing did little to stop the cold creeping down through the gap around his throat, up his legs, into his shoes. From wet, it turned to ice. From ice, it turned to a numb sense of nothing, like his extremities were ceasing to exist at the end of his limbs. Despite the beanie pulled low over his face and Emily's scarf wrapped around his mouth and nose, his face stung painfully as the bitter wind lashed against it. Tiny needles of cold burrowed into his skin. Even if he'd been able to open his eyes against it, he doubted he'd have been able to see anything but white.

He could die out here.

Hal kept him going. It felt like he was out there for hours, every step growing heavier as snow built around his sneakers and weighed him down as he tried to push forward into the heavy drifts. When he'd check his watch after, he'd realise it was barely twelve minutes. Twelve minutes to walk maybe twenty feet. But he had to keep going. If he didn't, they'd die. They were out here to protect him. They'd die because of him.

So he kept going. And going. And going. And going.

And going, falling over a fence with wire that tore open his leg, stumbling into a pothole hidden by the snow, and tripping over something else that probably hurt him too but, by that point, he was too numb to tell. And he kept going until he slammed into something with so much force that he was knocked back into the snow, panicking for a second as he kicked around and lost which way was up or down or—

Hal dragged him up and out, bursting out the snow with a yell that was ripped from his mouth. The scarf gone, his hand flailing and reaching and grabbing something wooden and firm. He shook snow from his face, ice from his eyelashes, and held on tight as he felt his way across it. Thump went his foot, finding a step that creaked under him when he rested his weight on it. Up and up and up the three porch steps he went, digging snow out of the way until he found a door.

Grinning, he turned to Hal, just to be sure he wasn't imagining this.

"What are you waiting for?" she asked him, shaking snow from her thick fur. "Knock!"

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101.

Emily was more of an influence on him than he'd ever realised.

Sorry, he thought, and then broke the little pane of glass in the door and reached through to fumble for the lock. In he tumbled into a silent cabin filled with ghostly shapes of sheet-covered furniture only made creepier by his breath billowing in front of his face. From behind him, the wind screamed, sending snow blasting right up the hall even as he and Hal turned and fought to slam it shut. That mostly stopped the wind, some still whistling eerily through the broken pane. Glass crunched under his feet as he stepped back, exhaustion smashing into him and leaving him staggering, still so painfully, horribly cold.

"What now?" he gasped, moving out of the hall and leaning on a sheet-covered couch, everything that wasn't numb hurting.

"Look around," Hal demanded, grabbing his mittened hand. "Move, hurry up. We have to go back for them, to lead them here."

Okay. Okay, he could do this. He nodded dazedly, standing and examining their surrounds. A thick layer of dust coated everything, the inside of the cabin musty-smelling. It smelled like winter in here, but a stale one. A good sign, he guessed, if they didn't want the owners coming home and realising they'd broken in. Better yet, there was a fat wood stove built into one wall, a healthy stack of wood next to it such a welcome sight that he almost cried to see it. Stumbling with his feet frozen in their wet shoes, he staggered into the kitchen area and fumbled open cupboards and drawers, finding canned supplies and utensils, ripping his mittens off and hungrily devouring a protein bar as he explored the next room. A bathroom, without water, but he hardly cared by this point. There was a bath with creepy clawed feet that he side-eyed, before shutting the door. A bedroom; this he dragged open the closet of, falling to his knees to dig through the boxes at the bottom until he found a pair of well-worn rubber boots.

"Sorry, sorry," he chattered again to the absent owners, desperately clawing his shoes from his feet and feeling like he was ripping skin away with them as he peeled back layers of frozen socks. Under the socks, his feet were white and red and blue and absolutely ghastly looking, Hal knocking a drawer open as she rummaged for dry socks. On they went, one by one, followed by the boots. He still couldn't feel his feet when he stood, but at least they weren't icicles now. Next came plaid shirts three sizes too big for him and a fishing coat overtop. He looked ridiculous, he was sure, and would be in so much trouble if they were caught — but it didn't matter. He had to go back.

"Wait," Hal said as he went to limp his way to the door. He turned, feeling weird right in his core, to see what she was doing.

"I can't wait," he stammered, knowing if he stopped he'd never work up the courage to go out there again. He was too tired, too sore, too scared. He wasn't even sure he'd manage to get all the way back anyway, his body aching. He just wanted to drop and lie down until his muscles stopped hurting. "Hal, we have to go. I'm too—"

"Wait!" she snapped again, and stretched. He yelped because it was a horrible, elongating, pulling sensation that felt like it was taking everything he was and spreading it out thinly, so thinly that he might actually tear apart. When it was done and they were left panting and gasping, their middles hurting in unison, she was a horse so big he doubted she'd be able to get out of the door, her head hanging low and sides heaving.

"This … hurts," she gasped, shaking her head and snorting, mane flopping about. One massive hoof lifted and crashed down, absurdly loud even on the rug she was standing on. "Oh gosh, this hurts, Aaron. We have to hurry … I … I'm not supposed to be this big …"

"Why are you?" he asked her, but she clomped forward and leaned heavily against him, his body warmed instantly by just how much intense heat was radiating from her.

"If we're big, we're big for a reason," she told him, mouthing at his beanie and almost knocking it off. "Get on. I'm faster."

"I don't know how to ride a horse."

"Then learn."