In the End
I'm the one they always call, in the end.
I'm the one they call to pick up the pieces, to talk her back from the edge, to put another patch on over the shreds. To keep her alive.
I can't keep her whole.
Every time, it gets worse.
Every time, it's harder to see those eyes, the ones that used to look at me with such trust, like I could fix it all with just a word. We both know that's not true any more. I'm not sure who that hurts worse.
Because they're not even her eyes any more, and that makes it even harder. Because she knows why I avoid her gaze sometimes, when I just can't stand to see it, and I can't fix that.
There won't be any more of the kind of calls I used to get. She can't do anything with razor blades or lye any more, and I don't think pills will do it either. Anyway, she promised me that. She promised not to do it that way.
But there are other ways. Sooner or later, she'll find one. It won't look like suicide, at least not the usual kind. It'll look like she died a hero, trying to save the world, and I guess that's better. For the rest of them, anyway.
But it won't be better for her, or for me. She'll still never have gotten to live the life she deserved, the life I thought I was buying for her with all the racing in and last-minute drama. And I'll still know how badly I failed.
I would die for her, no questions asked, if it would help. She knows that. And it doesn't matter. I would stay there, no matter what it cost me, if it would make it the least bit better for her, but it doesn't. The last time I touched her, it almost did kill me. It gets worse every time; her skin just seems to get hungrier and more rapacious with every bit of contact. I wouldn't even care. I've lived long enough that death isn't much of a terror for me any more. It would be, in some ways, a relief.
But I can't go that way. She told me, the last time, standing a little turned away so I wouldn't have to meet her eyes. She told me how the ones who die never really leave her. She's already got my voice in her head sometimes, just from the sheer number of times I've let her suck me almost dry to close up the long vertical cuts, to heal a throat almost burned shut, to bring her back from wherever that fucking machine had taken her.
She told me she couldn't stand to have me there, forever, that way, when all she's ever wanted is for me to be with her like any normal man is with a woman he loves.
She knows I love her.
But I can't give her that, so being there is just acid dripping on an open wound. It would happen. No matter how careful we tried to be--and that would be a whole other level of pain, trying to make sure that never happened--all it would take would be one touch.
A touch. It's like those kids who are sort of the inverse mutation to me, whose bodies can't mount even the slightest defense against the common cold, the kids to whom the whole world is toxic. Except with her, it isn't the world that's poison. It's her.
And she moves through the world untouched. Maybe those kids get used to it, somehow, if they've never known anything else. She did. God, when I met her she wore more than her heart on her sleeve. You could see everything she ever thought, ever felt, right there on the surface. She'd grown up golden--never knew there were things this unfair in the world.
She isn't like that now. Her thoughts are as concealed as her body, as every inch of the poison skin she keeps away from the world, to keep it safe. I hate what it's done to her, hate who she's had to become to survive.
I hate myself for making her survive for this.
So this last time, turned away from me, looking out the window, she made me promise something else. She wouldn't try again, she said. She didn't know if there was anything left to try, but anyway, she would live as long as her body and a dangerous career choice would let her, and she'd stop drinking and taking whatever else she'd been using to try and forget, once in a while, the way things were.
As long as I promised not to come back.
So I promised, and I left. Not much else to say. There wasn't anything else I could leave her with. I couldn't even take her in my arms just once to say goodbye-all it would take, now, would be an accidental brush against her cheek, one instant of my skin meeting hers, and she'd be left alone with the only worse thing I could ever do to her. My voice in her head when nothing was left for her here on earth.
Someday I'll get another call. I know that. Even if it takes seventy years, that call will come, and I don't think it'll be as long as that. But it doesn't matter. Time I've got plenty of. The call will come, inevitable as the dawn, as birth, as death. I'll get that call, and then I'll go back, one last time.
I'm the one they'll call, in the end.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
I don't know quite what to say about this one. It was supposed to be one short, angsty story, and then it evolved. The first two parts are stand-alone and honestly I think it should have stopped there, but...well, here it is.
We begin with Logan.
We begin with Logan.