Chapter Title: On Sleepless Roads the Sleepless Go
Summary: Harvey wanders the city for the first time since his mutilation.
Chapter title taken from Jimmy Eat World's "Hear You Me"
His first night in the city he walked the streets and alleys beneath the suspended highways, smoke from the sewers like acid yellow pillars against the tainted street lights. It seemed as if everything in this city was tainted.
Does your face hurt?
'Cause it's killing me.
(Laughter)
It was, though.
Killing him.
Exposed tendons and nerve, the nails-on-the-chalkboard sensation of air rushing in through the side of of his ruined nose, the dry grating of his teeth in the cold air. Every breath of wind was agony, and the steam that struck his face as he wandered through the floating smoke was like setting it on fire once again.
He had not truly slept since that night with his arms wrapped around her. The soft scent of soap mixed with her one small vanity, a dash of an expensive perfume that he knew hadn't bought her, mingling in the air he breathed.
The last time he had seen the darkness behind his eyelids (though he would not call it true sleep) he had woken to a different scent, the sickly-sweet odor of gasoline and the crackling of her voice on the speaker.
He wondered if he would ever sleep again.
The blaze had burned away the delicate flesh of his eyelids but mercilessly left the vision in his eye intact. Constantly staring, eye lolling in its socket, there was the other agony of air, the searing burn against his unprotected eyeball. Impossible to blink, impossible to sleep with one eye always open. The first night in the hospital he had screamed himself into an uneasy state of unconscious, one eye open and staring as if waiting for unseen enemies.
He wondered if he would spend the rest of his life this way, one eye always open and staring, waiting for those the merciful side of the coin had let live, enemies always at his back. Wondered if his life had in fact, changed at all.
It began to rain. First, a cooling mist that turned to a gentle downpour, soothing the burning of his flesh, bringing welcome moisture to his exposed eye. On the other side of his face, it plastered his hair down and trickled down his cheek like tears.
He did not have much further to walk, and when he arrived at his destination, the sky was turning the dull gray of false dawn. The building before him was swathed in obnoxious yellow police tape but the street had already been cleared of the debris. A lone taxi chugged by, not even pausing at the sight of the man who stood at the entrance of the burnt-out structure.
There were no guards beside the warning tape, and Harvey pushed by it as if they meant less than cobwebs. As he penetrated further in he was greeted by more signs, warning of possible collapse. They too were ignored.
He climbed the blackened stairs until he reached the roof, where, here and there, he was forced to dodge crumbling concrete.
It was not hard to find the center of the carnage. In the distance, something glinted with the glow of tarnished metal. Here he stopped over the twisted remains of what had once been a chair and beside it a white mark in the rough form of a circle. With a start he realized that the small circle was miraculously unaffected by the scars of the explosion. Slowly he removed the coin for his pocket and placed it, dark side up, over the mark.
He didn't know what moved him to do this but and slowly he knelt to look closer at what he had wrought. The coin seemed to disappear into the darkness of the blackened concrete.
This is where she died.
My answer…
He collapsed to his knees and then to all fours, his fingers bent to claws, his nails scraping against the ground.
My answer is yes…
"She's gone."
It took him a moment to realize that the ragged cry ringing through the air was his own.