PART SIX

 

--AVIAN--

“I need a car,” I said as I walked up behind Royce.  The letter I’d found from Dr. Evans was crumpled in my right hand.  Royce turned to look at me.  He’d been talking to someone and I’d interrupted him mid-sentence.

Royce swore.  “Avian, you look like hell.  Have you slept since…?”

I shook my head. 

Sleep?  How was I supposed to sleep?

“We’re supposed to have the—” the word stopped up in my throat.  “Tomorrow, and I need to find a place to—”  My voice cut off, and I couldn’t make myself finish that sentence.  I cleared my throat.  “I can’t do it here.  She hated the city.  So I’m going to go scout for a place to—”

Royce put a heavy hand on my shoulder and nodded.  “Come on,” he said.

I was given a small vehicle, one that wouldn’t require much gas.  Not that there was much gas left in the world.  Or many engines that hadn’t been destroyed by the corrosive kind we still had.

So I headed out of the city.  I skirted around the destroyed section of Los Angeles, the part of town that the Bane sweep had leveled.  There were millions of Bane there, piled six feet deep.

I couldn’t let Eve’s final resting place be within the city she so badly wanted to escape.  The one she was only confined to because of the threat the Bane posed to those she loved.  Because of her sense of duty to her family.

I looked for green.  I looked for trees.  I looked for water.  In this area of the country, that wasn’t so easy to find.  But I kept driving, and I kept searching.

Until I found a place.

It wasn’t really a town.  More like a recreation area or a pit stop.  There was a gas station that had been completely looted.  Across the street from it was a diner.  The road that led between the two drove almost right up to a lake.  One that was about twice the size of the lake in Eden.  There were five cabins on this side of the lake, and I could see a few others scattered around the edge of it.  The road curved around the lake for a bit before breaking off into the mountains.  On one side of the lake, next to the first house, there was a grass field.

I parked the car at the edge of the lake and climbed out.

The trees that surrounded the lake and the little lakeside town weren’t giants.  They were barely green.  But they were trees.  They were under the wide open blue sky.

Eve would approve of a place like this.

I climbed back in the car and headed back into the city.

 

I looked over Dr. Beeson’s shoulder, staring at the screen before us.  West peered around me.  Vee was there as well.  So was Royce.  And Gabriel.

There was her skull again.  There was her brain.  Her eyes.

Her shoulders, her spine.  Her heart.

Her stomach, liver, hip bones.  Femurs, tiny foot bones.

A cybernetic skeleton and still organs.

No traces of TorBane.

Three nights and three and a half days now, Eve had lain there.  Still and—

Dea—

She really was—

“Okay,” I said, the word trying to stick in my throat.  “It’s time.  Thank you for doing the scan.”

Dr. Beeson nodded, his eyes locked on me.  West placed a hand on my shoulder, but it sat there as limp and lifeless as she was.

I walked into the room, shadowed by the crowd that had hovered around me for the past three days.  I placed my hands on the top of the bed, just above Eve’s head.  Gabriel took the bottom of the bed and we wheeled it out of the room.  Down the hall, into the elevator and to the first floor.  On the way down, Vee pulled the sheet up and over Eve’s face.

The only way I would make it through this day was to be concrete.  I hardened to the torrential emotions that threatened to shred me from the inside out.  I moved, doing things from one second to the next.  One foot in front of the other all the way to the medical wing.

A group of women washed and cleaned her body.  I hovered in the doorway, watching emptily.  West stood at my side, never saying a word.  Vee watched from behind us, her face as empty looking as I felt.

They dressed her in her favorite clothes.  Her boots, her cargo pants, a soft white cotton shirt.  They brushed her hair and laid it nicely around her face.

When they were finished with her, they all exited the room.

“Do you need someone here?” West asked.

I shook my head.  “I think I need to say—” my voice faltered.  “I think I need to say it on my own.”

West nodded and patted my shoulder twice.  Turning, he and Vee walked down the hall.

It took me a long time to step inside the room.  I felt like I was crumbling inside.  Like when that concrete interior I’d been trying to put up fell apart, there would be nothing left and I would cease to exist.

Taking a quivering breath, I stepped over the threshold.

I pulled a seat up to the side of the bed and, my hands shaking, I took one of her hands in mine.  Her left one.  The one that bore the ring I had given her.  It was cold and limp.  There was a cut on the inside of her palm that hadn’t healed.  She must have gotten it when she collapsed after the Nova went off.

I stroked my thumb over the back of her hand and brought her knuckles up to my lips.  A tear slipped over my cheek and a quivering breath gasped from my lips.

“You can’t go,” I breathed.  I shook my head and squeezed her hand harder than I should have.  “You can’t leave me, not now.  Now when I’m finally able to give you everything you needed.  Not when it’s safe to leave this place and go home.  Not when I can show you what life together should have been like.”

The dam broke.  A gasping cry ripped from my chest.  My face rose to the ceiling, the tears freely flowing now.  I squeezed her hand harder.

I took a deep breath and pressed my forehead into the back of her hand.

“The thing is, I think somehow you knew this was coming,” I breathed.  “You knew something with saving the world was going to go wrong.  But you went forward anyway.  Even if you knew…”  Another sob escaped my chest.  I squeezed my eyes closed, forcing a river of tears down my cheeks.  “Even if you knew it was going to take everything you had to give to end this…you still would have done it.”

My breaths came in jerky gasps, stopping and catching in my chest, and then in and out so quickly I was in danger of hyperventilating.  I soaked her hand and the bed beneath it.

“I love you, Eve,” I quivered.  “I’ve loved you for so long, in so many ways.  I just wanted to protect you at first.  I wanted to help you.  And then you didn’t want me to help you and you were determined to help yourself. 

“And then you were this woman and you were amazing and incredible and you had no idea.”  I surprised myself when a little laugh bubbled up out of me.  “And you were beautiful.  Inside and out.”

I couldn’t speak for a long while as the tears consumed me.  “And then you saw me the way I was seeing you.  It took you a while, but you said it back.”

I sat up and placed my hand on her cheek. 

Please open your eyes.  Please.

I let my head fall, my forehead resting on her stomach.  My shoulders shook as my emotions pummeled me.

There was no wedding the day after the Nova went off.  Eve would never wear a white dress for me.  There would be no us starting a new home together or setting up another tent.

Infinity had been cut too short.

Lifting my head up once again, I leaned forward and kissed her lips.  They had curved around mine so many times, I couldn’t comprehend how they were just lying there so still.

“I love you,” I whispered against her cheek.  “And I will see you again when it comes to be my time.  Please wait for me.”