fic: litany of things untouched

[alectorine]

Enne loses hours between blinks. More often than not she is somewhere unfamiliar and unremarkable when she next opens her eyes, Garam’s hand around her wrist like an anchor; they have been running for days, months. Enne thinks this current lucid spell has lasted fifteen hours, though she can’t be sure. Colourless December is unseaming time, murmur by murmur, spark by spark. Let me in, it coaxes, stronger together let me in stronger stronger stronger. Enne cups a hand over the hilt, and it subsides. It’s playing nice for once; maybe it can sense the staticky dead air of the moments before a storm.

They check into a motel, payment upfront, no questions asked, the kind preferred by a less savoury sort of Regular. A perfunctory sweep of the room: Garam inspects the bathroom, Enne draws the curtains shut. When they’re sure the room is secure, Garam unbuttons her jacket and tosses it onto the bed, though Indigo July and Blue August remain sheathed across her back.

“Let me see,” Garam says.

“It’s fine,” Enne says.

Garam curses. “Enne, for once in your life, would you just–”

“Fine.” Enne lifts the hem of her shirt, hisses when Garam’s fingers skim over the skin of her abdomen, doesn’t watch as Garam changes the dressings on a week-old wound that happened two days ago in her timeframe. There’s a terse, electric silence. Finally, Garam exhales, shimmering with tension, and speaks.

“They’ll be here by dawn,” she says. “Maschenny, Yunie, probably even fucking Heice, I don’t know. We need to–if we’re going to get to the hidden floor, we have to go soon–now–I’m not going to leave you behind–”

“Garam,” Enne says. “Garam, you know they’re only after me. It’s not–Indigo July they’re after, it’s Colourless December. If they don’t find you here, they won’t look.”

The clock is winding down, Enne thinks. They have been living on borrowed time all along, snatched breaths between seconds, doubled-up heartbeats. The call of that incipient end cleaving through the air like a bell, mirror-clear. She is tired of the running and tired of the waiting. Tired of the in-between, scraping out some semblance of life at the peripheries by repeating the last few minutes left on the clock, over and over again. Enne is a Zahard. The power to choose as such is hers by bloodright.

She knows there is no way out for her anymore. Colourless December hums at her waist, a wheedling miasma of whispers. Still, it is part of her inheritance. She won’t leave any of it behind. She’s not sure she could, anymore.

“We can still make it,” Garam insists. “If we leave now, we can still make it. Just–don’t make me do this alone.”

Enne brushes Garam’s face with a hand, and Garam inhales sharply. Squeezes her eyes shut. This close Enne can see the minute trembling in her shoulders. So many things she still has left to say, all of them inadequate. “At least one of us should make it out,” Enne says. Her mouth aches as she smiles. “Please. For my sake.”

Garam stares at her. Lit from behind by the dim glow of the desk lamp, the brutal swoop of her cheekbones seems softer, somehow, suffused with gold. She bites her lip, pivots away from Enne’s gaze, and jerks her pack towards her, worrying at a strap with her thumbnail.

 

“I’m going to shower,“ Enne says, softly. “Think about it. We don’t have long.”

 

She crosses the room. As she’s opening the door to the ensuite, Garam whispers something under her breath. Enne doesn’t hear it, but Colourless December does.

 

I would’ve died for you, Colourless December says, in a perfect rendition of Garam’s voice. Enne steps neatly into the bathroom, and closes the door behind her.