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"Red?"
It feels like hell. Which is strange because he's felt nothing at all for the last nine decades. It feels like the cold stinging his face and the ache of sore muscles and the feel of adrenaline taking him by the throat and squeezing and on top of it all it feels like vertigo. He doesn't know how that's possible when he's...
"Sweetheart?"
He tries to push himself up and his body's so weak he goes right back down. Through blurred vision he can just make out the bright red of her hair and the black of her coat against the snowy sidewalk. What did she do to him? What did she do to herself?
"Rosa?"
But she doesn't move, just lays there and he takes all the strength he has and hasn't got and drags himself toward her and as he does he sees his hands against the snow, cold and stiff and solid. He curls the fingers into fists and he can feel the creak of his joints and the weird tickle of his nails scraping against his palms. There’s something else, something he doesn’t immediately recognize because it’s been so long , but it’s the city, he knows. It’s the smell of smog and exhaust and rot, and so many other things he can’t identify because it’s been so long that the city’s changed too much to recognize. It almost overwhelms him, and he’s no good to her like this...
God, what did she do to them?
"Rosa," he says, his voice barely a whisper. "Sweetheart." He can't raise his voice, doesn't know how, hasn't spoken aloud in ninety-some years and he keeps choking on something he can't quite identify. "Rosa, please."
She doesn't move. He reaches out to touch her and god, he can touch her, her hair's oily and damp with sweat but he's never felt anything so good and he pulls the two of them together. She’s warm, so warm, against the cold winter air. Somehow he’s got to keep her warm but he can’t hold her tight like this. He can’t do anything. After all this time being dead he doesn’t know how to be alive. All he can do is try to ignore the sensations, and then he gets his miracle: she opens her eyes.
She opens her eyes and sees him and her eyes turn soft like she's going to smile or cry and she says, "I didn't think that would..."
And she dies.
"No. No!" He grabs her by the shoulders and holds her as tight as he can, like he can keep her soul here when he knows how badly it hurts to be kept here past your time. "No, goddamn it, it's not time yet."
She's already gone. There's nothing he can do. There was a price to pay and she paid it.
To hell with that. He's spent all this time trying to pay his own debts and if he's gotta pay hers then he'll pay them too.
He can feel it all fading away, everything that was him as a ghost, and before it can disappear entirely he takes it tight and presses his forehead to hers and closes his eyes and puts everything he has into her. It's like ripping apart some hole she patched in him, pulling until the fabric gives way because the thread never will. "Rosa," he whispers, and there's a warmth on his face that scares him until he realizes it's tears, he's crying, he's sobbing because he never wanted this, why did she do this, why...
He opens his eyes to look at her one last time and finds her looking back. He cries, and then he loses everything.
Feels soft.
He opens his eyes to the water-stained ceiling of her bedroom. Feels how dry the air is, smells the soap she uses on her blankets, tastes the fuzzy sour taste of his own mouth. He doesn't remember getting back here. He doesn't remember if he left her there, if someone found them, if he let go voluntarily.
It feels soft--the bed feels soft--and it feels like hell.
He rolls to the edge of the bed and forces himself onto his feet. The entire world is tossing like waves on the ocean and he hears something out in the kitchen. It's her , he thinks, even though part of him knows it isn't, that she's gone, and he struggles with solid hands to open the door, hoping against hope, dreading what he'll see, and he pushes the door open and...
...and she turns to look at him.
She's standing at the sink, holding a hot water bottle to her head and she looks confused. Her glasses, a steaming mug of something, and an open bottle of pills sit on the counter beside her. She looks at him and he goes down.
"Joey!"
It's her voice, he manages to think, pawing at the door frame, trying to pull himself up, and he thinks that's a cruel trick to play on somebody, and then she's at his side, a hand on his arm, and he hears himself cry out.
She pulls back like he's slapped her, scrambling backward against that fake plant she keeps by her desk.
"Joey," she says again, looking torn in every direction. "Are you alright?"
"No, I'm not alright, thanks for asking." Is that his voice? He can feel it in his throat and chest and the tears running down his face. The floor feels hard beneath him, and there’s this tickle that might be a draft but might be central heat, and he doesn’t want to feel any of it. "What the hell, Rosa? What did... Jesus christ." He lets his hands fall into his lap, open and empty.
She sits back, wrapping her arms around her knees and looking back at him with those intense eyes that are just like her aunt's. "I'm sorry," she says after a moment. "I didn't think you'd have to see that. I didn't want you to see it. I hoped..."
"You killed yourself." He clenches his hands into fists. "You killed yourself for me. For all of us."
She nods. She's not arguing the point.
"Why in the hell would you..." This noise that comes out of his mouth scares the hell out of him until he recognizes it as a sob.
"It was the only way to stop it," she says quietly. "There was a price to pay and I--"
"And you paid it." He presses his hands to his eyes, presses as hard as he can, hoping half-heartedly that the pain will stop and he won't feel anything at all.
"And I paid it," she agrees. "There's only one of me and thousands... millions... of them. That's a pretty good bargain, don't you think?"
"No. There's billions of people in the world, and there's probably billions more out somewhere in space, and only one of you." He's crying so hard he can barely speak. "And you destroyed her."
"I didn't do a very good job of it." She shifts uncomfortably. "Joey, you shouldn't worry about that right now. Come on. Let me get you back to bed."
She starts to reach for him but he yanks himself back. "Don't." God, he doesn't think he could take her touch at this point.
"Okay. What can I...?"
Part of him wants her to go away if that's what she wants so badly, and the other part doesn't want to ever let her out of his sight again. He starts to pull himself up against the door frame. She comes over and her hands hover just off his shoulder and back, ready to catch him if he falls, and it makes him all the more determined not to fall.
He takes a step back toward the bed and then another, every step a stumble he can barely control, until he bumps against the mattress and goes down. He pulls his legs up onto the bed and curls on his side, feeling everything, god, everything, so much. Rosa moves to walk away and he manages to choke out, "Red?"
She stops. "Yeah, Joey?"
He wants to tell her to stay but he can't speak. He can barely move.
She crosses around to the other side of the bed and the whole world shifts as she takes a seat, crossing her legs on top of the blanket like she always does. He hears a rustle of paper as she picks up some book or another.
For a moment he lets himself cry. He can feel the blanket against his skin, the tightness of his face now that he's crying so hard, the nausea that indicates the vertigo's back with a vengeance, and it's all so much. He's completely overwhelmed and he doesn't think he can take it.
"What can I do for you?" she asks quietly.
She can go back, undo all of this. Can't she? She gave him life after a century of death and he doubts there's anything she can't do.
"You need something to drink? Something to eat?"
No. He doesn't know. "Just... tell me you're real."
"I'm real."
"Tell me you're alive."
"I'm alive."
"Tell me this is all a dream and we never died and I just lost my mind for a little while."
She is silent, and his heart drops. He turns over, sure that she'll be gone, but there she is, looking at him, and he touches her knee and she's warm and alive and there. Cautiously she puts her hand over his and just like everything else it's so much, but it's warm against his cold one, and it's there, and he can't risk it being gone again so he shifts and brings his other hand up to cover hers. He's not going to lose her again.
"I don't regret any of it," she says. Her free hand brushes through his thinning hair, the feel of her fingers against his scalp almost unbearable. "But I'm sorry I hurt you." She blinks rapidly. "I thought if one of us had the chance to really live..."
He presses his forehead to her leg. He's shaking and he can't stop.
"I didn't want you to see that," she says. She's choking on the words. "Joey, I just wanted..." Her voice breaks. "I wanted to go to a movie. And on a vacation. Somewhere sunny."
Another sob shakes him.
"We could have all been together. You and me, and Auntie Lauren, and my parents. Wherever it is ghosts go, I thought we could be happy there."
"And I ruined everything. If I could have let go, if I wasn't stuck here, if..." There's a warm clearness in his face. His nose is running, he realizes. He'd forgotten what that was like. "...if I..."
"It's not your fault." She reaches out, almost seems to think better of it, then puts her hand against his cheek. "It's nobody's fault. It's just the way things are."
He puts his hand over hers and presses it down so he can really feel it against his skin. It feels good and it feels like hell.
"What can I do?" she asks again.
Stay , he wants to tell her. Don't leave me. Live your goddamned life.
She slides down beside him and he can't help it. He presses in close.
"Can I hug you?" she asks.
Please god , he thinks, but all he can do is nod.
A flood of panic hits him as she pulls her hand from under his but then her arm comes around him and he sobs, loudly, startling them both.
"It's okay," she says. "You're okay. We're both okay. I don't know how, but we're..."
He wants to hug her back but he's so desperate that he's afraid he'll hurt her. Instead his hand hovers just above her shoulder, trembling like a palsy. He can feel it. God damn can he feel it.
He curls up against her, feeling lost in this body with its strengths and weaknesses and sensations he's almost forgotten. It's like he got pulled into the hole in the sky anyway. She feels like the last solid thing on Earth and he needs something from her, he doesn't know what but he needs it so badly he thinks he might die in the dawn of this new life she made for him. He cries because it's the only thing he can do.
She pets the back of his head and god he thinks he's going to fall to pieces. All those years he spent intangible, unable to so much as tap someone on the shoulder, he never dreamed that being able to feel would feel like this. He feels everything. Everything.
"I'm sorry," he mumbles, pressing his eyes against her shoulder.
"For what? For this?" She giggles like she can't stop it. "Welcome to the hell the rest of us live in every single day. Enjoy."
If she holds him, if she stays here and never lets go, then it's worth it. It feels like hell, and it feels like home.
It feels soft.
He opens his eyes to the empty bed. He reaches out a hand but there's no warmth in the blanket now. He pulls the hand back against his chest and holds it there, hard as he can, so hard he can feel the steady beat of his heart.
It's quiet out there. She must be writing , he thinks. She has to be. She hasn't done much work recently, after all.
Inside there's an ache that won't go away and he can't identify it as hunger or thirst or grief or love. He'll worry about it in a bit. For now he'll just stay here and imagine, just for a little longer.