2goodarms | Milliways infirmary, with Dejah

Milliways infirmary, with Dejah

He counts the doors they pass through en route to the infirmary: only three, all of them unlocked. The first one leads to a room more like the party at the front of the train than the crowding at the tail -- but even that's not the right comparison, he thinks. It's crowded, yes, and noisy, but all Curtis can think is there's so much room.

People can stretch out their arms. When he and Dejah cross the floor, they can move without bumping into anyone.

The second door leads to an empty hallway, quiet but for the hum of the overhead lights. He keeps his eyes straight ahead, and with each step, thinks of anything but Wilford's voice in his ear. Take as much time as you need.

The third leads to a place so clean and white as to look alien, like the view from the Snowpiercer's windows. By then, he's leaning far more of his weight on Dejah than when they started.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That does it. Dejah shifts to sit beside him, putting her arms around him and guiding his head to her shoulder. She doesn't speak, doesn't offer him false promises, doesn't crow on about happy things like that he's alive and he's here and he's safe, despite that these things are all true.

She knows this sorrow and this grief. She recognizes herself in him, and in her darkest moments, all she ever wanted was someone to lean on. Just for a few minutes, just until she got her feet under her again.

So she pulls him close, crooning under her breath, meaningless sounds meant only to comfort. She caresses his head, presses her cheek against his stubbled hair, and grips him tight. Some healing takes time, and she has all the time in the world here.

It would be easier to pull away. To reject all of this, including Dejah's embrace, and get the fuck out of here somehow. But the exhaustion, and the pain, and the memory of that near-silent engine open up a chasm inside him. It frightens Curtis, how needy and selfish it is.

(TRAIN, said that tiny slip of red paper.)

He sags into the touch, staying as quiet as he can, eyes stinging like all hell as the tears flow faster.

She holds him, her grip fierce for all she's not very strong, and she doesn't let go. After awhile, she speaks to him in a low, matter-of-fact voice.

"There is no shame in tears, Curtis. It is a good thing, to be able to shed them. It shows us that we still have our hearts, battered and bloodied as they are. It means we are not as broken as we might fear. Every wound must bleed, even the ones we cannot see. So please, do not be ashamed. Your loss is great, and deserves to be honored thus."

He has no idea how much of what she says is true. The part that does stick: he can still grieve; can still be horrified.

He got off the train -- and took everybody else with it -- before he could lose that much.

Curtis drags his hand across his eyes again. This time, no fresh tears replace what's been wiped away, and he breathes out shakily before managing a nod.

She feels the nod and sits back, not very far. She keeps a hand on his good arm, firm and solid.

"Let me clean this shoulder up. It'll take just a few minutes. And then you need to decide if you'd rather have a hot shower and a bit of sleep, or if you'd rather have a hot meal. We can have the meal upstairs in a room if you'd prefer, or we can sit in the bar."

She puts a hand on his cheek and pulls his gaze up to meet hers. "I'm not going anywhere, all right?"

"Yeah," he whispers.

He can only hold her gaze for so long. Soon, Curtis has to lower his eyes.

"Thank you."

Her hand clasps his good shoulder in quiet acknowledgement.

And then she begins washing his shoulder with the same gentle, efficient motions she treated his hand with. She completes the job without anymore small talk. When she's done, she wraps the stump with gauze and a self-adhesive bandage.

"I'd like to find you some clean clothes. Do you want to keep these?"

"I do," he says, almost immediately.

How can he not? They're all he has. It doesn't seem to matter that, with Dejah's offer, his ragged clothes won't be all Curtis has any longer.

But his attention drifts to the bowl of water, then up to the faucet not far away; his mind drifts back to the lake. Water isn't rationed here. Hell, there's enough in the lake alone that the whole tail could've drank their fill and bathed on a daily basis for decades.

Still, he wets his lips first and ventures with caution. "Could I wash them somewhere?"

"Yes, I believe there's a laundry. Somewhere." Dejah has never asked, but she's seen rats shifting people's clean clothes about, so she assumes.

She folds up his shirt, and puts it into a plastic bag. There's a locker here, and she suspects it might be like the wardrobe in her own room. One of those that has whatever is needed immediately to hand. She opens the door and pulls out a flannel shirt much like the one he'd stripped off. There's also an under shirt as well. She brings them both to him.

"Where did you come from?" She speaks quietly, as if she knows she has no right to ask.

"The tail," he says, before he catches himself and remembers: right. She's from Mars; she wouldn't know.

"I'm from Earth. It's been frozen almost twenty years; there's -- " Past tense? Present? God, he hopes the explosion rendered it past tense. "There was a train keeping us alive. I lived all the way in the back."

"A train," she echoed, perplexed. She stood by, only offering assistance if he needed it. "Do you mean -- the entire planet was frozen?"

The details about the train would follow, she hoped.

Curtis nods, turning his attention to the clean clothes. Gently, he settles a palm against the undershirt, as if he could absorb the texture of the cloth.

Amazing how soft something can feel without years of grime sticking to it.

"Eighteen years ago," he says, as he picks up the shirt and begins to wrestle it on, "they tried this experiment to bring down global temperatures. Put some kind of chemical into the air. It worked way too well."

"Sweet mother Issus."

Her knuckles go white but she keeps her hands to herself. Later, she will ask I'd he would let her design him a prosthesis. Later.

"And this train. You were in the tail section. Where they kept the undesirables." Not too hard to deduce from the state of him. Malnourished and filthy, he was clearly not someone's priority. As a ruler of millions of souls, the idea made her stomach churn.

His smile's quick, and bitter, more a grimace than any expression of humor. "Exactly," he says. "The freeloaders."

Curtis finally succeeds in getting the undershirt into place.

"That was one of the nicer names they called us."

She couldn't help herself, she had to help him pull it down to his waist. "What is it with Earth and the devaluation of those less fortunate?" Her tone is bitter, and clearly, the question is rhetorical. "I will never understand that about your culture."

"Thanks," he murmurs again. Curtis smooths the fabric down, leaves his hand there for an extra second.

This time, it isn't just to feel the softness of the shirt: it's to give himself a moment as his throat works.

"They always told us," he says at last, "that it was our preordained position. We had to keep our place."

Her tone was adamant, almost savage. "I'm sure you don't need me to say it, but they lied."

Her hand rests over his, only for a moment. "They lied."

I know, he wants to say. Curtis can't quite shape the words.

"Wilford said I was the only person to walk the full length of the train," is what he says instead. "The very last car all the way to the engine."

"Forgive me. Wilford? He was the captain of this train?"

She shakes out the clean flannel shirt, and holds it up for him to slip into.

He eases the stump of his left arm into the shirt first: best to get the trickier movements out of the way. The right arm follows.

"Yeah," he says. "Designed it, built it, ran the whole thing. Including the engine."

"And yet, you were the only person -- to have walked the entire length of it." She sounded incredulous. What kind of engineer created such a thing and did not inspect his own creation?

"If you were -- undesirable -- how did you make it to front?"

"Wouldn't do to get his shoes dirty," mutters Curtis, darkly.

For a beat, he busies himself with the buttons on the front of the shirt. Doing it one-handed requires enough concentration, and effort, to give him a little more time to think.

"We rebelled. We figured out a way to get out of the tail and kept pushing forward. By the end it -- " The words catch. "It was just me and two other people. Nobody ever made it that far before."

She clasps her hands before her, lacing her fingers together to keep her from helping again without an explicit request for assistance.

"And this is how -- you were wounded." How you died.

She swallows, hard. Bites her lip.

"Some of it," he says, without looking up.

Curtis can feel his eyes starting to burn again. He blinks, hard, to drive the tears back.

This time when she steps in to assist him, it's as much to lay her hand over his as it is to do up the buttons on his shirt.

"Enough for tonight."

She lays his hand on the back of hers so he can feel the motions of her fingers as they do up the buttons. Being this close, she can smell the smoke and sweat on his skin. It makes the details of his story all the more real.

"You can tell me more later. In the morning. Or next week, I don't care."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject