XXIV: Day Five, Evening & Night.
Isperia Martorell, 16
Applicant #17
She's relieved when Meris finally falls asleep.
She's still tinkering with the bracelet, a noise that Meris must be able to ignore for how easily she's out of it. Maybe the noise is just something she's used to.
The rain has stopped, leaving everything an eerie sort of quiet. She can hear other things, though, different things. Birds and bugs, faint noises hovering in the air above her head that weren't there before, called by the rain. Even the floor of their little shack is wet with it, just damp enough to be noticeable. She's still layered up, still clutching her sweaters around her, but even she can notice it. For once, though, the cold is a welcome thing. She almost forgot what it was like to be cold.
She's managed to pull something from the side of the bracelet, nearly the size and shape of a needle, maybe a little thicker. She's not sure what it is, but it's serving as a good tool to wedge between the seams of the bracelet, trying to get it off.
It's hard, though. She wants to keep it as intact as possible, for some future use. The components of it have to be useful, that sort of technology would be good no matter where you were, but out here when they have virtually nothing it's even more important. Who knows what it could do for them then.
Against the wishes of her own brain she wants to draw something out. The Sentinels, or the unknown hiding in the barren mountains. Something out there wants to give chase, she's sure of it.
Maybe all of it will come out at once.
Then they're probably dead, much as she doesn't want to think about it. All of this will be for nothing. Her efforts now, Mel... for nothing.
It all sort of feels like it's for nothing anyway. There's no guarantee any of them really live after this.
What kind of life would be out there to live, anyway?
She pulls the sleeve of matches out and accidentally upends a few of them onto the ground, abandoning the bracelet in her quest to pick them all back up before they got too damp to use any further. Her fingers are pruny, wrinkled from the wetness that has been plaguing them, and she can't even be angry at it because for once in the past five days she's not sweating.
How odd it is, to be grateful to not be sweating. Maybe Meris is right - if she'd quit it with the layers, she probably wouldn't be so bad off.
She wedges the little needle between the point where the bracelet joins up into one piece, she's sure, and then strikes one of the matches against the box, cupping the tiny flame in-between her hands to protect it from the strong wind still blowing in off the mountains. She keeps her hand cupped over top of it even as she lowers the flame into the tiny gap the needle has created, exposing the two latches that are keeping the bracelet closed shut. She can feel the bright little point of heat against her wrist.
It seems like a distant, faraway thought now, but burns really aren't that bad. Not in comparison to most things. It's making her pulse spike, this little source of heat so close to her skin, but otherwise she remains unharmed.
That's the ultimate goal in all of this. To remain unharmed, even if she hasn't said that aloud.
She's not keeping any secrets. There's a difference. What she's doing is keeping some things to herself, things that may or may not happen. It's not a secret, or worse, a lie, if it's never going to come true.
She's certain freeing herself from the bracelet will cause some sort of alarm, and if someone comes after them, then so be it. She'd rather it off.
What she knows, as terrible as it is, is that if someone does come after them, especially the Sentinels, it will be much easier to get away if they can't properly track her. She can pitch the damn thing off a cliff, draw them off her trail.
It's what else that means that kind of stings, deep down. Meris' is still on. They'll have no trouble finding her.
The worst bit is she doesn't even dislike her. All of this would be so much easier if she did, if Meris was a person worth hating. She could have left Ria alone, and she didn't. She could have abandoned her every moment since then, and she hasn't.
She, despite her belief otherwise, is a good person.
Ria is beginning to think there's a chance she isn't.
She killed Mel. Yes, they both left him to wander alone in the first place, but that means nothing. She was the one who left him unsupervised long enough for him to hurt himself beyond repair. She was the one who finally put him out of his misery, accident or not.
She's back to wondering if it really was an accident. Surely some part of her brain knew what would happen if she covered his face the way she did. He already had a lack of oxygen going to his heart, his brain; she spurred that further along by cutting it off entirely because she was sick of seeing him suffer. Maybe she didn't want to end his life, but a part of her knew she was.
She is not a good person. Not now and not then, either.
There's a part of her, different to the one that seems to manifest itself every other day, that killed Mel. It's that same part that leads her to believe abandoning Meris will be easier if she gets the bracelet off. One ally dead at her hands, the other left behind.
One thing she didn't have to do, and one thing she doesn't.
But there's still time.
The match's flame finally goes out, burnt to the end. The metal inside is softened, slightly, and she pokes the needle into it, again and again until it begins to come apart, disappearing right before her eyes. Another few simple pokes and the bracelet opens around her wrist. She lifts it up to eye level. The screen is still working. Her pulse has gone flat, that was to be expected, but everything else seems to be operational.
She looks at Meris' sleeping form, curled up by her side. The proper thing to do would be to wake her up right away, get hers off as well.
She doesn't. She leans back against the wall and folds the bracelet around her wrist a few times, seeing if it will close again.
It doesn't. She made sure of that.
And now she has to decide what else she's going to make sure of, too.
She's not this malicious, awful person. She would never wish something terrible on anyone, least of all the only person she has left, one who has stuck by her side even when Ria was sure she doesn't want to.
Fear does weird things to people, though.
She's living proof of it.
Tarquin Vierra, 16
Applicant #4
He loses track of everything.
Time, day, even himself, all of it disappears when he plunges into the mines and lets the darkness take him. After that it goes down to nothing but counting his own footsteps, trying to wager a guess as to how many more he can take before he collapses.
First he takes everything off the corpse, a young man who stares sightlessly up at him the entire him, accusatory even in death. He changes into his clothes, peels his soaked through pants away from his ankle and tosses everything of his own belongings down into a crevasse so deep he can't even see the bottom. The body follows, and he watches it slam into a few rocks before it disappears from sight. He scuffs his foot through the smears of blood it leaves behind, as much as he can before he can no longer balance on his bad ankle.
He stares down into the crevasse for a long while too, as if waiting for the man to climb back up and kill him.
But he doesn't, so Tarquin slips the gas mask over his head, pulls the hood up for good measures, and takes off deeper into the mine.
There were a number of things in the bag, including an ancient looking flashlight that he pulls out now to illuminate the tunnels ahead of him. Everything is already a slightly off-gray tinge because of the mask clinging to every dip in his face, but the flashlight cuts through some of it, a few feet that just has to be enough.
He wraps his ankle once he's further along, pries one of his new boots off at the junction between two tunnels and uses the stained bandages in the guy's backpack to effectively seal his ankle back together, pulling them tighter and tighter, layer after layer, until there's no blood spotting through. He chokes down two pills he finds in a rattling bottle in a sealed pocket before realizing there's water, too, and downs nearly the entire bottle he first grabs just trying to rid the feeling from his throat.
He recognizes the word acetaminophen, something about pain medication, he's sure, and he can use all of that that he can get.
Even if it so happened to be bad, he's already in a less than ideal state.
It couldn't be any worse.
Noelani and Topher both left and never came back. Jay left him willingly, he's certain, left him to get attacked by some stranger in the middle of the desert. That stranger is dead now because of him, body never to be found unless someone gets creative in their looking.
He feels like he's wearing that stranger's skin, now. They were about the same size. Although he's limping he doesn't doubt that from a distance someone would think of them as the same person. That's the entire point of his disguise.
There's no telling what type of people he's dealing with, though, besides the one example he's been given. Someone who sets traps for animals, normal enough, but who seemed almost eager to kill him, like they've done it before. Like they're thirsting for it now that they've had a taste of blood.
There are people out here. People living and breathing and existing out in this desert, down in these mine-shafts.
Have they been here since the Dark Days, them and their descendants?
It would explain the mask. Someone trying to protect themselves from the early instances of radiation would have remained heavily covered, breathing in filtered air most of their lives. It's like a family heirloom, passed down from generation to generation. Once a means of protection now it serves as a disguise, something used to hide the face from the world outside.
That's exactly what he's using it for as well. He doesn't doubt that there are ancestors somewhere, cursing his existence for it.
It takes him a while to tug the boot back on, to get back to his feet. He doesn't want to. He's still so tired, so delirious, and now is stomach is cramping from the amount of water he's taken down, the pills probably combating with his weakened systems.
The pain isn't any better, either.
"Don't just sit here," he urges, trying to encourage himself to do something. Anything. "Get up and move."
He does, painfully slow, wincing at how loud his own words echo off the walls. Some of the walls are half-caved in and he has to clamber over them, all but dragging himself over the largest mounds of stone and dirt to the other side, struggling to regain his footing once he's there. It's hard. It's also keeping him focused. If he doesn't remain focused he's certain to think about other things, like what happened to the others, what he's supposed to do now.
He takes a huge breath and his whole chest tightens, shakes. He puts a hand over his own neck and his pulse feels as if it's about ready to tear through his skin.
That would be one way to get him to stop thinking about it.
Just keep going, he tells himself. That's all that matters.
He almost turns the radio on, a mere minute or two before he hears voices. They could be close-by or hundreds of feet for how loud the sound echoes, at least a pair of them, high and low. Perhaps more. He runs into the nearest wooden post, half fallen into the tunnel, and holds onto it a moment, trying to figure out what to do. There's a gap beyond where it's fallen out, something that looks like it leads down. He could head back to the junction, if he could beat them.
But who knows if the voices are behind him or in front of him? He thinks front, but can he really trust himself right now?
He pulls himself around the beam and practically into the wall of the tunnel, stowed away between more layers of rock and a few more pillars that must be keeping the tunnel standing. There's a sharp, downwards slope, the beam of the flashlight only penetrating the first few feet before he can see nothing else.
The voices are growing louder, steadily. He flicks the flashlight off and takes a step forward.
And promptly falls, as the earth gives way underneath him.
Not the whole tunnel, he realizes, with an odd sense of gratitude that only lasts for a second before he hits the ground, suddenly sliding down with no way to stop. He throws his hands out, his feet even though one screams with pain, and on and on he rolls in the pitch black, deeper into the mines. Or perhaps just the bottom of the pit. Now that would be an interesting place to die.
There's no bottom. He tumbles head over heels and sees a point of light, underneath him, before he falls out of it.
He hits the ground with a thud. There's light around him, now, orange and garish. There are torches on the wall, and lanterns. Something sharp is digging into his back and his hips - pieces of rail, he realizes, still embedded into the ground.
Up above him is the hole, jutting out from the junction between ceiling and wall.
This mine-shaft is properly formed. Some of the walls have clearly been fixed, repaired so there's more room to walk. It stretches on in either direction as far as he can see, but so does the light.
Yeah, they definitely live down here.
His whole body is aching something fierce, now, worse than before. His temples throb when he sits up, along with his ankle. He wiggles everything a few times, as he seems to be doing so often now, to test that everything's working.
Besides the general soreness and the numerous cuts and scrapes he's surely going to discover lately, he appears mostly intact.
For now, anyway.
He's not sure how long it's going to last, and if he's being honest, he doesn't want to.
Soran Faerber, 18
Applicant #8
Shocking as it sounds, Icarus makes noise even in his sleep.
Not like, normal human level sounds. Soft breathing, a snore here and there, a wiggling turnabout as you struggle to get comfortable in the land of the unconscious. It's little twitches instead, things that sound like half-formed words, murmurs that take him from almost asleep to wide awake in two seconds flat.
It was hard to ignore in the car, with Icarus half-ass cuddling him to death. He thought in here, separated at least a bit, that it would be easier.
Not really, though. They're still in the same room even though they don't have to be, and he can still hear him clear as day.
It seems worse tonight. He's twitching more than he has before, eyes moving rapidly behind his closed eyelids. One hell of a dream or one hell of a nightmare, Soran isn't so sure anymore. He's watching him mostly out of boredom, because sleep isn't coming easy on the hard concrete floors like he thought it would. It's darker than the car, makes more odd, creaky little noises. He can't rest when he's too busy wondering what they are.
He's not typically a very paranoid person, but he learned firsthand that maybe it would be smart, considering how Icarus snuck up on them.
In hindsight, it's kind of funny. It's also kind of horrifying, but he has no right to call anything that anymore.
Eventually he gets up and does a circle of the building, peers out all of the windows and doors, checks that the car is still there even though there's no reason it wouldn't be. He goes slowly, careful to avoid making much noise even as his feet crunch through the broken glass strewed everywhere. The earlier rain is still making the air slightly cooler, a breeze that for once doesn't feel so stifling.
If only there was something useful in here besides the gas that they found. He's peeled open all of the cupboards, nearly stuck in their frame. It really does look like the outline of an old diner but there's certainly nothing in here to fit that description besides the counter and the appliances in the back. There's a walk-in fridge in the back that reeks of rot and decay, but nothing useful. All of the perishables, if they ever existed, are gone. There are no knives, no utensils.
He knows being alive is being cut a break in the middle of all of this, but he'd like another one.
There's more quick, crunching footsteps behind him and he whirls around, but it's only Icarus, leaning through the door leading into the front of the building, eyes a little wide.
"What?" he asks.
"I heard footsteps, and you were gone, so..."
"So?" he continues. "Did you think I disappeared and that it was someone else?"
He rubs a hand over his forehead, looking sheepish. Not a word he thought he'd ever come to apply to Icarus. He just looks tired, most of all, which is ridiculous considering how much he's slept in the middle of all of this.
"Nevermind," he mutters, disappearing into the back room once again. Soran waits a minute before following, finding Icarus perched in the lone chair in the center of the room, tapping away at the tabletop's edge. He perches on one of the empty counters, bringing his legs up to cross them, leaning against the back wall.
It's still no more comfortable than the floor.
Unlike the floor, though, the silence is almost comfortable. Not the right word, but he's not sure what else to use. It's not quite silent, after all, due to Icarus' incessant tapping, but it's filling the void.
"I have trouble sleeping," Icarus says, at long last.
"Really?" he says flatly. "Considering you seem to be sleeping every other minute, that comes as a surprise."
He actually manages a little, awkward laugh, rubbing his hands over his face again. "I'm tired a lot. Like, all the time."
"Join the club."
He's just never been a good sleeper, a by-product of growing up in close quarters with other people with increasingly odd schedules and wake-up times. It's been ingrained in him for as long as he can remember.
Icarus has no such excuse.
"Why?" he asks, his curiosity finally getting the best of him. Icarus is staring at the table now, fingers going still. He stares until he can't be bothered any longer, closing his eyes. Maybe he could just sleep up here, like some odd little bird up in it's perch. He has nothing better to do.
"I haven't slept well since she died," Icarus says, almost thoughtfully.
He opens his eyes. "Who?"
"Estella."
He blinks a few times before the words fully settle in. "You said you had a girlfriend."
"I did," he confirms. "Is that not what you were imagining?"
"I'm pretty sure that's not what anyone would jump to, no. That's sort of a fucked up conclusion to come to."
Icarus snorts. "Well, that's my life. One big fucked up conclusion."
"How long?"
"Six months ago... almost seven now, I guess. It feels like a lot longer. She was sick for a while, and I think I always knew, deep down. I wasn't even there when she died - she sent me down to the cafeteria to get her something that the nurses wouldn't let her have. I guess she knew, too, because I got back and everyone was out in the hallway crying. I just went home and... sat there, honestly. Stared at the wall for a long time. I didn't know what else to do."
"I don't even remember my mom's funeral," he admits. "I'm not even sure they had one. They showed me all these papers and told me they'd give me the urn when it was finished, but I never got it."
Icarus sighs. "I hate this."
He hums in agreement. It's weird, to have had something and not remember it in the slightest. He doesn't really remember what her face looked like, the details of it. He doesn't even have a picture, let alone the urn.
Icarus folds his arms over the table and lays his head on them. The whole thing wobbles an alarming amount at the sudden pressure, but he doesn't move.
"I think I'm an awful person," he says eventually.
"What clued you into that?" he asks, and Icarus' lips quirk up.
They really shouldn't be joking about this.
"Y'know, murder aside, I just feel awful. All the time. I can't really remember the sound of her voice - her real voice, not how she sounded those last few months in the hospital. I went and saw her nearly every day and all I could think was I miss how it was before. Like she didn't, you know? She probably missed it more than I did. She tried to shove me away, too, and a weird part of me was happy she was. I feel like it made it easier. Everything in me is just all sorts of fucked up, now, especially my emotions. I know I loved her, but it feels like that was so long ago."
"You can't hold onto things forever," he says. "They'll just kill you, eventually."
"Clearly they are killing me," Icarus says, muffled into his arms. "She filled out the application to send me here behind me back."
He can't help it - he laughs, and it feels like one of the few genuine things that's come out of his mouth in a long time.
"What?" Icarus asks.
"Guess you have her to blame for all of this, then," he says, gesturing around to their surroundings, himself, all of it. He's here because of a name he doesn't have and Icarus is here because of a girl he no longer has. That's kind of ironic, when you think about it. Fate has an odd way of taking things away from you and then giving you new ones.
Because he considers this a thing. It's sort of terrifying, and he doesn't often feel that way. In fact, he can't remember the last time he was.
Icarus hasn't realized it yet, but it makes more sense, now. It's hard to realize things when you're feelings are jumbled into a mess that you haven't yet figured out how to untangle.
Soran got everything in him under check a long time ago, but things are changing, now.
"Do you have nightmares?" Soran asks, before the conversation runs out of energy.
Icarus shakes his head, much as he can with his head on the table. "Not nightmares. Memories. And none of them are right."
That's the problem with feelings; they so often distort pieces of you that were so clear, such a short time ago.
And often times they know things before you do.
Sabre Hennedige, 15
Applicant #6
He finds footprints, nearly dried over, now, in the once-wet dirt.
He stands over them for an inappropriate amount of time, looking in the direction they came from and then in the direction they go. His brain has been playing tricks on him as of late - he even thought the rain was his imagination, at first, until he had been soaked in it.
The footprints definitely aren't a figment of his imagination, because no matter how long he stares at them they don't disappear like he would expect them to.
He turns to head in the direction they took, feeling all the while more stupid for it
He's aware of what he's doing, no doubt about it. Footprints out in the middle of nowhere when anyone you stumble upon could be looking to kill you isn't the brightest idea - probably one of the worst ones he's ever had, really, up there with letting go of Faye when he thought it was fine and dandy to do so.
In another world he'd just be one of those wanderers, the people who refused to put roots down in the earth. That's almost what he feels like, if he ignores everything else going on.
The footsteps grow more erratic as more time passes, zig-zagging this way and that like whoever made them was indecisive in their path, trying to decide which way was best. He follows every diagonal out and back to the main line of them even when he knows the pattern is bound to continue.
Finally they end, but not really. The footprints at this point become too jumbled to tell which direction this person went, branching off in every possible direction away and then overlapping upon their return. With some work he could figure it out, as one path must lead further out than the others. It would be hard work pushing the bike down and back along fake paths, but maybe he could just leave it here in the middle. It would be something to do, as the day turns to night. Something to keep him occupied.
"Hey!"
He jumps, as much as he loathes to admit. A person has appeared over the rise to his left, waving their arm. The action of someone young, someone scared, possibly.
Upon closer inspection, as they take several nervous paces to him, it's definitely someone he recognizes. Shared a room with, in fact, although he never spoke a word to him.
Jay, he knows, who looks nothing like he did before. Ruffled and terrified and covered in filth from the rain.
Sabre can't help but wonder if he looks the same.
Worse, certainly.
"Hey," Jay repeats, voice hitching. "Hey, uh— you're... fuck, uh, you're—"
"Sabre," he says quietly. "We shared a room."
"Right," he says, tripping over his own words. "I knew that, totally knew that, sorry, just forgot, I—"
Jay didn't know that. That's what Sabre himself knows. Not many people ever took the time to learn his name, and they still don't know. People only learn the names of others they think are worth knowing.
He's not one of those people. He's trying.
"Are you alone?" Jay asks, looking around wildly as if waiting for someone to appear out of thin air. Sabre nods.
"Yes. Where are the people you were with. Noelani and the others?"
Jay's eyes widen, eyes darting around again. He's nervous. Beyond nervous, Sabre would say, a feeling he knows all too well, only he's good at hiding it. Jay on the other hand looks positively petrified in the growing darkness, jumping at every twitch that Sabre makes.
"Noelani and Topher went looking for supplies, they never came back. And I don't— I don't know what happened to Tarquin, I went back to look for him and he was just gone and there was all this blood..."
"Went back?" he repeats, a murmur. "Did you leave him?"
Jay nearly bolts - he can see it in his eyes. Something keeps him standing in front of Sabre, some unknown force.
"I was scared, okay?" he admits. "I didn't know what to do. I left, and then I realized the next morning that I was fucking stupid and that I couldn't be on my own but I went back and he was gone. They're all gone."
He nods, slowly, letting that information absorb into his brain. Gone. Not necessarily dead, but gone.
Gone is a scarier word than he realized.
It's odd, the pair of them. Jay seemed so confident back at the Institute even if he slowed in some moments, whereas Sabre was the complete opposite. He hardly spoke to anyone, kept his head down, woke up every morning and planned his day down to every minuscule detail. Jay did none of that, but look at them now. It's like they've switched personalities: Jay and his nervous, quiet confusion, Sabre and his still, unwavering form.
He won't lie, not to himself or to Jay. He likes the feeling of not being so unsure, so conflicted.
"I know," Jay starts. "I know we don't really know each other, obviously, but—"
"I killed someone," he interrupts, before Jay can finish his sentence. He knows what's coming.
"Who?"
"Faye. Do you remember her?"
"Yeah," he says quietly. "The youngest girl... the one that sort of got on everyone's nerves. Right?"
He nods. Jay gnaws on his already bloody lips. "Why?"
That's the part even he can't put words to just yet. There's still a hole in him that safely holds that entire event somewhere deep within him, practically under lock and key. It all seems like such a blur, like he was in a fog and came out of it only after she was dead.
"I don't know," he admits. "I just thought you should know. Before."
Jay smiles. His lips bleed even more. "Am I that transparent, dude? I don't want to be fucking alone out here. Like I said, I'm stupid, alright. I made a shitty decision and I can't fix it."
"I'm not the best company," he informs him.
"You seem like great company to me." Jay takes a step forward, closer to the bike, and Sabre doesn't feel the need to move an inch. "And you seem to be doing well - you've got the bike, and a backpack, and supplies, right? That's pretty good if you ask me."
He stares at him. Even terrified down to his core Jay still has a hell of a lot of nerve. It's enviable.
He slowly reaches into the bag, one of the side pockets, and pulls out one of the water bottles. Full again, after the rain. It doesn't taste quite the same, but they can't be picky about that out here, not even. Jay's eyes widen when he offers it out to him, so much so that Sabre feels like he's about to cry. He's not sure what to do when someone cries, he never has.
"Seriously?" Jay asks. His hand is hesitating by his side.
"That's what allies do, right?"
He's making steps. He's been trying so hard for that for so long.
Jay takes the bottle with a shaking hand, holding it between both of them and staring down into it for a long moment before he lifts it to his lips and takes a huge gulp. Sabre feels like he should be angry, at this practical stranger for taking his water, for using such a precious thing to him.
It doesn't feel like a waste, though.
It just feels like another step.
Arwen Paoul, 18
Applicant #1
"We should have buried him," Jahaira whispers.
It's the only thing she's said in hours. The only thing at all since they got back in the car and drove a few miles, north or south or whatever the fuck direction it is, until they could no longer see the body.
"Why?"
"Because he doesn't deserve to just sit out here. And that's what he's going to do. I doubt the Sentinels are off collecting the bodies."
"You should have considered that before you killed him."
Jahaira looks up, through the hair that's fallen into her eyes. "You killed him."
"We both killed him, because you caved his fucking head in first," she insists. "You think he'd enjoy rotting out here in the sun while in a vegetative state? 'Cause I know I wouldn't. I'd hope someone would do the same to me, if that happened."
"That doesn't mean we shouldn't bury him."
"Be my guest, then," she offers, gesturing to the door. "I'll be here when you're done."
"You won't help me?"
"Actions have consequences," she tells her. "Your action, your consequence. I did you a favor."
Jahaira stares at her lap, her shoes. Anything that's safer than looking Arwen in the eye, certainly. She keeps her eyes resolutely forward, rolling a full water bottle between her hands. To her left, the door pops open. There's the sound of Jahaira sliding the bloody shovel out of the backseat, before the door slams shut.
Oh. She didn't really think she was serious.
She turns to go watch her go, her figure growing smaller and smaller, before the ache in her neck forces her to sit properly again. She still finds herself glancing up in the rearview mirror, watching until she can see Jahaira no longer.
It's odd, suddenly being alone. Jahaira isn't far away, she could be with her again in mere minutes, but the feeling of being alone out here is something else. They started all of this with six of them, with a group that seemed like it could do so much, and look at them now. Who knows if Jupiter and Gideon are still alive somewhere out there. Who knows what Emmi and Myra's bodies have been left to.
They should have at least went and looked for Emmi. They should have, to fix some of it.
Sleeping is difficult when she's alone. Even though she doesn't fully trust Jahaira something in her sleeps easier with her around, the knowledge that there's a human being who is at least partially on her side. She dozes fitfully for several long hours, in and out of it. At some point she stops looking back for Jahaira to return, some corner of her brain convinced that she never will. That's just what happens out here. People disappear. People don't come back.
There's another corner of her brain that accepts the sleeplessness, though, and turns the car around.
It takes her even less time than she thought to return to the original spot. Jahaira is hunched over a very, very shallow grave. The body is covered in a fine layer of dirt, but still visible. She looks up in alarm at the car's approach, face streaked with dirt and mud, and winces when she rises to her full height, like everything hurts.
It probably does.
She's aching, too, from sitting still for so long, but it's nothing in comparison to what Jahaira must be feeling. She gets out of the car and strides forward, ignoring Jahaira's flinch when she pulls the shovel from her grip.
"Get back in the car."
"What?"
"You heard me. Get back in the car. I'll do the rest."
Jahaira hands are raw, blistered, her eyes wet with a faint sheen. She looks up at Arwen uncertainly before nodding, avoiding her eyes.
She's an awful creature, isn't she? The worst kind.
Jahaira returns to the car but Arwen can feel her watchful gaze through the window as she moves for the towering mound of dirt left by the side of the grave and begins to shovel it back in. Even the handle, she suspects, is slick with a little bit of blood from Jahaira's hands, but in the dark she has no inclination to check, nor any way to really tell.
There's a lot of things covered in blood, now, her conscious most of all. It doesn't really matter.
His body looks even smaller than it did in the first place, lying limp in the bottom of the hole Jahaira has created. She continues to scoop in the dirt as quickly as she can, until his face his covered, and then his shoulders.
It's easier to do without him watching.
It's hard work, but relatively quick. Jahaira did all the difficult bits while she was off refusing to help for something she participated in. She's still certain that she did Jahaira a favor, but she did it all the same. She's at fault here too, even if it was something someone else created.
The ground is uneven when she finally finishes, clearly disturbed by some force, but it's as good as it's going to get. The body is safely hidden in the earth, safer than either of them are.
Jahaira is staring at her lap again just like earlier when Arwen returns to the front seat, tossing the shovel in the back where it belongs.
"Thank you," she murmurs, and Arwen nods.
It's no the type of action she should be thanked for surely, but this is what they have left for them now that everything's fallen apart. The act of burying a body warrants a thank-you after they put the body there in the first place.
Like she said, they're all awful now.
There's no changing that.
Happy July! Which is, you know, exactly the same as every other month for me personally but I hope some of you are enjoying it! If you would feel so inclined to let me know even your brief thoughts on this chapter please do - we're past the halfway point now in terms of days, even if not for people. And who knows, maybe your thoughts could do something. You never know.
Until next time.