The air in the room as Illa breathed it in had a thick salt rust. Not the first sign something was wrong. The first sign had been the silent phone call, the ringing clunk of a dropped receiver, the barely-audible breathing that seemed almost a trick of his ears, even as it faded, slowed. He'd hit every Widdershins point he could to get here, his eyes still blurred with will o' the wisp light and brief glimpses of forests and white, endless halls. To hope that bare breath wouldn't stop before he made it.
His boot slid on something slick and sticky. He looked down to see a trail of browning crimson, drips and streaks from the foyer tile to the living room carpet. There in the living room, collapsed by the dropped receiver, was Thairn. Golden. Beautiful. Glassy-eyed. Only the steady ooze as more blood pumped out told Illa that Thairn was still alive.
They'd lived together long enough last go-around that Illa could guess where Thairn kept the bandages. He left the near-corpse in the living room and got the kit, assessing the contents. It wasn't as stocked as it should have been. Thairn must have been relying on healing spells. If Illa tried those, he'd probably get Thairn killed. He had no natural talent for it at all, and no ability to cast it apart from a few rhyme spells that covered situations like dismemberment.
He stanched the bleeding, straightened the crumpled wings. Saw a little light return to those amber eyes from the pain of being moved. He met them, straighter-on than his wont.
"Make it through this," Illa said.
A weak nod. Thairn closed her eyes and breathed, a hissing sound like the last air from an empty balloon. Illa positioned her and picked her up, getting her out into his car. She collapsed heavily into the seat, head lolling, fingers clenching. He did the seatbelt, breathed in the salt smell of her sweat and blood.
"Not far to Widdershins," he said.
She grunted in affirmation.
Technically, once he got to the hospital, that was all he needed to do. They weren't assigned to the same case or even the same region, and he was halfway through an investigation. But instead he found himself making the contacts to pass the work on to a substitute for the next while. Their betrothal was registered, so the accommodations went through without issue. Funny, how the one aspect of their relationship he hadn't wanted worked to his benefit. Just being her friend of however-many decades wouldn't have been enough.
When the hospital released her, he was the one to take her back to the apartment he'd found her in. She unlocked the door without looking at him. As wasn't her wont, she'd barely spoken to him in the hospital. She led him into that foyer where he'd first found her trail of blood. The cleaners had taken care of the bloodstains. And without that to focus on, what he saw instead...
The coat on the coat rack was several sizes too large for her. The shoes beneath it, too. As she led him to the living room, he could see other signs. A green flannel blanket she'd never have picked out herself. A book on carpentry that didn't seem her style. And there on the mantel, a Polaroid of a smiling man with broad features, and her a streak of blonde hair as she hid against his shoulder--Hunters tried to avoid being in pictures, after all.
Her current partner? Or just someone she cared for? Did the man even know... probably, it'd be hard to hide if they lived together. Was he expecting her? Did he think she was missing? And how would he react to Illa? Did Illa need to duck out? It might be better to let someone closer handle her recovery.
She had left him in the living room so she could get tea together in the kitchen. He stepped in, leaned against the doorway.
"You live here with your partner?" he asked.
She nodded.
"Do you need me to let him know you're okay?"
She shook her head. The cups as she got them out clanked hard, and when she saw she'd got out the large printed coffee mug, she put it back to get a smaller cup. Her fingers lingered around the handle of the coffee mug, clenched around it briefly, let it go. She started searching the cupboards for tea, opening and slamming, opening and slamming, the sound too loud in the silent kitchen.
She got it, held it tight against her chest. Her legs gave out, and then she was on the floor, clutching the box of tea, breath already coming in sobs. She closed up fast, hugging her knees, hair dangling in clumped strands as she cried.
With an implosive feeling, Illa realized.
He arranged himself next to her on the floor. His voice caught in his throat, the thought of speaking catching it tighter. He leaned back against the kitchen drawers instead, letting the handles press against his wings as he looked around the kitchen. There was a shopping list stuck to the fridge in a handwriting he knew wasn't hers. Souvenir magnets from places she'd been assigned in the past--Illa and Thairn kept tabs on each other, so he knew. Another picture, this time only of the man. Illa could feel him like a presence still in the house, in all the little touches that weren't quite Thairn's, the layered sediment of what must have been years of cohabitation. The weight of it pressed in on him.
The weight of it crushed Thairn. She couldn't stop looking at his photograph, couldn't stop reliving every point at which she could have changed his fate. She could have forced him to turn not-human, then he'd have lived. Humans could turn into all kinds of things that were hard to kill. She could have gotten to him in time in the battle, healed him faster. That was how he'd survived until now. That was why she was his Valkyrie.
There was a hand by her face. Illa? She took it, gripped it hard, as if he could pull her back into that past and all those lost opportunities. She'd let Don gamble. She should have made him win.
Illa opened the fridge, broke her eyes away from the photograph. The feelings inside her flashed like anger, made her glare his way. But he didn't look away, those red eyes she'd still seen in her dreams even as she lay next to Don at night. This betrothed she was tied to, this eternity of theirs that she couldn't escape no matter how many nights she spent pretending. Don hadn't wanted to be immortal, so it was always going to be this in the end. Illa coming to take her away from every dream the human world formed in her. You'd think he'd blame her for her own stupidity. See everything she and Don built and know it for the playhouse it'd always been.
But how was she to know? He didn't say anything, yet another of those long silences he favored too much. He always made Thairn be the one to break them. Of course. She was always the talkative one.
Don had been like that, too. He'd talk, sure, if she got him going, but he'd hold silence for ages, too, just let her rest in it with him. Maybe that was why she'd loved him. Just another reminder of Illa. Maybe every relationship was just her seeking out facets of the fiancé who'd never love her.
More tears. She put her hand to them, took a look at them. Worthless tears. Humans died constantly and all she had for them were these worthless heavens-damned tears. New loves and new heartbreaks and why did she think this time they could even go so far as to pretend they were married? Even Don hadn't signed them up for the human shadow of the institution.
But she'd thought somehow she could just pretend. That the moments they had mattered in the moment. That she'd somehow live in that illusion forever and never end up here staring at scraps of pictures that were somehow supposed to be enough to capture the warmth of his skin and the bristles of his beard against her cheek and the way he smelled, like smog and... and what? The sense-memory was leaving her already. Everything about him would leave her eventually. Why live in the moment, when it meant living after the moment was over? There were never going to be enough nights together. Even if they'd gotten shortchanged, there was always going to be a day after like this for her, sitting lost and looking at inadequate memorials of his presence, and Illa there. Because there'd always be Illa there.
It simmered bitter in her, that constance.
At dinnertime, Illa cooked for them both out of what he could find in the fridge. Most of the pans were cast iron and stainless steel and required his gloves to use, yet another reminder of the dead man's presence. He served them both on plates matching her aesthetic, gold around the rims, and took the guest's seat at the dining table. Thairn folded herself up into what looked like an accustomed place, keeping what glances strayed from her food on Illa and not on the empty chair with its jacket strewn across the back.
They didn't speak.
To Thairn's silent assent, Illa took the couch and its flannel blanket for the night. Uncomfortable, fitful slumber took him, half-baked dreams of salt-rust air and browning blood trails. He woke in the middle of the night to dark lit only by clock numbers, felt his way to the kitchen and made tea in the mug that was still clean. It felt heavy and wrong in his hands, and he washed it carefully after, so she wouldn't know he'd used it. He checked on her just to see her breathing, the way she'd almost stopped barely a couple of days ago. The bedroom had one bed, and her too small within it.
Alone in bed, she could delude herself enough to sleep, smell a little of Don's scent and treat the empty spot like a late shift and not like... not like the truth. But if she had hoped that in the morning she'd forget, that she'd taunt herself for the first few waking seconds with the belief that Don would be in bed beside her, she'd been wrong. No such bittersweet awaited her. Just awareness and too-clear knowledge that she'd wake up alone in this bed every day until she moved.
She'd have to move house. She could feel it. She could justify it to herself with reason, say she'd exposed herself too much in the fight with the wizard, say she needed to escape the legal intricacies of her combined abode or... or something. Anything, really.
Anything not to admit she couldn't face this place, day after day, as her lone presence wore away the traces of him.
She shrugged on her silk robe and made it out to the living room. Illa was in the kitchen, and it smelled of bacon and eggs. More protein-heavy than his usual wont, but it fit what was in the fridge. Don had cooked it every morning, crisp to the point of burnt and sunny-side-up. Illa's was cooked evenly and scrambled with herbs he'd scrounged up somehow.
"May I?" Illa asked on seeing her.
"What?"
"Fix your robe."
She flexed her wings, felt the strain of fabric. Nodded and presented herself to him. He adjusted the clothing with the precise confidence Don had never developed. Something about that stung. Illa shouldn't know her better. But Illa should know her better. They'd been engaged for nearly as long as Don's entire lifetime.
Illa served them both breakfast and watched her between bites. She didn't know what to say to that attention. She wasn't crying, at least, the pain sent to some dull and distant place. The eggs tasted wrong. The bacon tasted wrong.
She stopped trying to eat it halfway through.
"Sorry," Illa said. "Is it too heavy? I'm not sure what you're supposed to eat while you recover."
She shook her head. Touched her stomach, where the wound had been, where scarring now lay all the way into her guts, cramping and painful.
Clank, and she jumped at the sound--just Illa, setting down his fork. He stood, and held his hand out to her, like he had in the kitchen before, a lifeline. Somehow she felt that in taking it this time, she'd be abandoning every solace she'd found here, rub away the last three years and be back again in that timeless space where everyone was a dalliance while she waited for him to love her.
She didn't take it.
Illa went out just to get some fresh air, back in the world of sound and life. Set up a table at a diner and half-read a newspaper over coffee. He let the ambiance of human chatter wash over him. Occasionally he heard mention or two of an accident at a construction site--it was in the paper, too. One of the workers had died, and it bore the face Illa had seen in the pictures in that apartment. Donald Rhodes, 33, veteran. No obituary--perhaps Thairn had picked him because he had no family to place one for him.
Perhaps in a better world, they could have married and lived to centuries and Illa could have just been a friend. But then, he was from a better world where people married and lived to centuries, and he'd chosen to live here anyway. If he held himself back enough, if he moved on enough, he could pretend everyone here was just as long-lived as home. It was only when you settled down that the illusion broke.
He sipped his coffee, and people-watched, and practiced his pretending.
Thairn spent her time packing while Illa was out, as if she were going to keep anything from this place. All of the Hunters had few possessions they personally kept in the human world. Usually they had pre-furnished apartments, pre-furnished lives, as if every station were a hotel room.
She'd deviated from convention in her life with Don. Built up possessions, collections, as if she were going to stay here. She'd even looked into aging her glamour--it still had crow's feet if you looked from the right angle. They'd had plenty to investigate, so no one higher up had been in a rush to transfer her. But even that was over--the wizard and the ambient magic from his enchanted hearts had been behind everything, case closed.
She packed nothing of Don's, only those things of hers she thought some future self might appreciate. A long, ruffled sweater. Some gold jewelry. Nylons, which she'd hoarded ever since the humans had their war. The war that had made Donald Rhodes who he was.
Only she would ever remember the scars of his she'd kissed into new skin, that first night she'd dropped her glamour for him and he'd dropped his façade for her. Only she would remember anything he'd whispered to her late at night, as she closed fresh wounds from their battles, his Valkyrie. Only she would remember that he'd had that nickname for her.
It seemed cruel, to leave her to bear those memories all on her own. To leave her an Atlas, carrying the world they'd built together on her back.
Would Illa listen, if she told him these things? If she shared every story she could recall, would he bear the memory for her, with her? He'd so long wanted so little to do with her. But he'd come when she called. He'd stayed when she hadn't even asked. He'd spent this whole time since he first found her injured offering her his long, waiting silences, begging to be filled.
Illa didn't love her, but perhaps he cared about her. Enough to bear this with her.
Illa came back as she was yet packing. He crouched next to her.
"Hello," she said.
He looked surprised, but covered it well. "Hi, Thairn."
Her stomach cramped. But she closed her eyes and pushed on.
"If I tell you stories about him," she asked, "Will you keep them?"
Illa settled himself onto his knees, palms to his thighs, as if receiving some great myth or ancient knowledge from an elder. "I will keep your stories." It was in Fan. It should have seemed wrong, discordant, since what she had to tell him was about a human. It should have seemed more of the process by which Illa and the fae culture unconsciously wore away everything about the humans she treasured. The human she'd treasured.
But instead, it seemed like he was saying that her stories of Don were as important as great myths and ancient knowledge. And when she started to speak, he listened with just as much attention as he would have some greater tale.
He took on the memories, and she no longer had to bear them alone.
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