The monster had been there for days now. It sat in the corner, a terrible black figure hunched and distorted as it watched her with huge, sickly eyes. She hadn’t slept in days; she could do little more than sit on her mattress, legs curled up while she stared right back at it, too afraid to look away. One time she asked it what it wanted, and when it outstretched a long, bony finger and pointed at her, she had been so terrified that she very nearly left right then and there.
Instead, she pushed one of her last syringes she had left into her vein and had cried herself into a stupor that was broken up by bouts of maniacal laughter, pausing only when she would chew at the rent flesh of her infected fingers. Then, in a moment of surprising clarity, she realized she was cannibalizing her own fingers, and somehow that made everything so much more hilarious.
It was the next day when she realized the monster was closer, just a foot or two away from her mattress, and that was when she knew she could stand it no longer. If she was going to die, and of that much she was certain, then she couldn’t do it without seeing Ezra one last time, at least. With bloody fingers, some of which tattered to the point of seeing bone, she texted her twin.
And he responded.
Emilie hadn’t wasted any time. She was still riding a high, but she managed to grab a nearby leather jacket, slide her gloves over her mangled digits, and slip her very last dose of wash into her back pocket. As she climbed out of the train car, she could feel the humid, rank breath trail down the back of her neck, and she knew that even if Ezra turned her away, even if she had nowhere to go, she wouldn’t come back here.
She would kill herself. Maybe she wouldn’t have to; maybe her next dose of Wash would do it for her.
It was night time, thankfully, the sun having just set behind the horizon, so she didn’t have to guard her sensitive eyes from the glaring Austin sun as she moved through the streets. There were shamblers here and there, easily avoided through alleys and shortcuts, and before too much longer she was standing in the center of the record store.
--
Ezra had dropped everything. Of course he had. Deep down, he'd known that he would, if she ever did ask him to. And she had. She had said she'd come up, and he had immediately set out for the record store in question. He'd been in the process of deciding when he was going to go see Maizie, thinking he wanted it to be soon.
And then she texted, and he was on his way. He got there before her, and he scoped out the building, making sure there wasn't anything that was going to interrupt whatever was about to go down. Then he paced for what felt like forever. He needed to calm himself, so he forced himself to sit down, and wait for her. He pushed himself up to sit on the old counter next to the cash register, and he listened to the silence around him, waiting on baited breath for the sounds of her steps.
He would know her gait even without seeing her first, something he knew he wouldn’t have forgotten. It had been how he’d know it was her outside of the train car down there as opposed to anyone else. And eventually, he heard it. He didn’t realize it, but he stopped breathing, waiting.
--
He was already there. Emilie could feel it as soon as she stepped inside, even without hearing or seeing him. She could feel his presence as easily as one could feel a storm pressing in, and she had to swallow down a gasp as her gaze settled on his shadow in the dark. He was sitting on the counter and even in the darkness, she could make out his familiar features — features she had missed to the point of tears and fits and violent episodes.
But he was right there, and this time he wasn’t a figment of her imagination. Or maybe he was, but either way she stepped deeper into the store, aching hands trembling at her sides. Even beneath the leather jacket, it wasn’t hard to see that she was disturbingly frail. Without Ezra’s constant reminders to eat and to take care of herself, essential things like food had gone to the wayside in favor of highs that let her forget how miserable she was.
She could never forget Ezra or how much she missed him, though.
“It almost got me,” Emilie whispered, the words hardly even a disturbance to the air around her. “It kept getting closer.”
--
He immediately dropped down from the counter, staring at her silhouette, and hearing her voice was like scratching open an old scar. He was over to her in a shot, pulling her in to wrap his arms around her, and he held her tight, squeezing his eyes shut even as he noted a million different things at once. She was far, far too thin, and something smelled...off. It wasn't the clinging smell of the sewers. That he could ignore for right now, that he hated, but could get past. No, something else. Something smelled...putrid? Rotten?
Was she rotting? It was horrifyingly possible. He held his breath in the hopes of holding back the lump in his throat at the very idea, but that didn't stop the sting at the backs of his eyes. He held on as tightly as he could, and he petted his hand over the back of her knotted hair.
He had no idea what she was talking about, though connected that she'd mentioned something like that in her text. He was guessing it was a missfire in her broken mind. Some synapses creating monsters out of nothing. Or just manifesting them out of the real monsters within. “I'm here,” he murmured to her, knowing that that would be laughably irrelevant if it wasn't quite so tragic. It had never mattered before that he was there, after all. Still. It was all he had.
--
Emilie didn’t just embrace him; she clung to him as though her very life depended on it. No, really, it was more than that, because she didn’t put much stock in her own life these days. She dug her fingers into his shirt and buried her mascara-stained cheeks into his neck. He didn’t smell like the sewers anymore. He smelled cleaner. More alive.
“Are you?” she asked, still not completely sure that he was more than a broken shard of her desperate imagination. “Hard to tell anymore. Sometimes you were there, sometimes you were gone. I’d try to touch you but you’d disappear. Kept looking in the tunnels.” He’d told her he wasn’t down there, that he wasn’t coming back, and yet she spent hours on hours searching for him.
“You feel real,” Emilie said, eyes shutting tight against his neck.
--
That broke his heart. He could imagine it, her searching the tunnels, having forgotten that he'd gone topside. Or she was just wandering in a confused stupor, searching for someone who was long gone. He rocked her back and forth, arms aching with how tight he held on, but he didn't let up.
“I'm real, Emmy,” he promised her in a fierce whisper. “I'm real, I promise.” He drew in a shaking breath and let it out in a rush. Ezra realized her cheek felt cold against his skin, and he had to imagine her body just couldn't keep her warm anymore. That it couldn't do much of anything anymore.
That smell was still there. He led her over toward the counter, where he let go long enough to dig out a small multi-function survival flashlight that had a power crank on it. He cranked it up every day. When he flipped on the light, he set it on the counter to try and give them a little light at least, and he got a look at her. God, it was jarring. He'd seen her in her interview but she somehow looked even worse.
His eyes were red rimmed, and staring at her, tears welled and spilled. He reached up with shaking hands trying to touch her cheeks but it looked to him like she'd break if he even tried it. She looked hollow and fragile, like she was just about to fall apart. He needed to get her to someone who could help her.
--
God, he felt downright feverish against her. Was he sick? Had he fallen ill? It didn’t occur to Emilie that Ezra felt so warm because she was so cold. “You promise,” she echoed, not a question but a sigh of relief, because hearing him promise it was enough for now. And, hell, even if he wasn’t real? He felt real. He felt like he was right there.
Though the flashlight didn’t put out a tremendous amount of light, it was enough to make her hiss in pain and turn her face to the side to avoid the burn of her eyes. She hadn’t even been bothering to light the candles in the train car. Maybe that’s why the monster showed up, because it knew it could stay hidden in the shadows.
When he began to cry, Emilie scrunched her eyebrows in concern and reached up to touch his face with her gloved fingers so she could gently wipe away the tears. “Don’t cry,” Emilie pleaded. “Please, don’t cry, Ez.”
--
He couldn't help it. She just looked like death. He had half a mind to believe this was a dream, or she was some ghost, here to say goodbye because she'd died in the tunnels finally. Or she was a corpse, that didn't know she was dead yet. He couldn't just be okay.
He reached up to take her hand, and when he did, his fingers sank in sickly on the fingers there. His hand shook and he reacted with a step back, staring at her. Then, he grabbed her hand and pulled the glove off. He could see bones, and that smell of rot, it got oh so very much worse. He almost retched, at the sight.
“Jesus, Emilie,” he managed, voice shaking. He didn't need to be a doctor to know those needed to come off. She said her fingers didn't work... Well it was no wonder. They looked like they'd been being eaten.
--
Hell, Emilie thought she might’ve been a corpse who just didn’t know it was supposed to either be in the ground or shambling about to find brains. Either way, she knew that she’d be dead soon enough, and the thought of dying without at least being able to see Ezra a final time was more painful than the thought of dying in itself.
It was only because of the recent dose of prax in her system that she didn’t scream out in pain when he took off her gloves. Instead, she actually looked somewhat puzzled by his reaction, like she couldn’t quite figure out what was so wrong. She looked down at her fingers — two on her right hand were showing bone, where she’d been steadily picking and gnawing — and then looked back up at Ezra.
“It’s okay,” she urged, though she knew better than to try and reach out to touch him with the hand. It was why she’d been so careful about wearing the leather gloves as of late. “Doesn’t hurt much anymore. These two —“ Emilie lifted her hand and tried to bend the fingers in question, but all that happened was a twitch. “They’re asleep.”
--
Ezra shook his head. “....no, Em, they're not,” he told her. “They're...” dead. They're dead, Em. And if they aren't then they will be, and that's what's rotting, can't you smell it? “They're not asleep. We need to take you to a doctor,” he said, swallowing hard. Could he take her to the library? He could text Maizie, see if their doctor could see her.
“You can't – that could kill you. Blood poisoning....” he didn't know everything, he just knew that you didn't hang around with dead bodyparts still attached. Especially not if they were smelling like hers did. It was fucking awful. He'd seen terrible things but this was just a horror show he wasn't prepared for.
--
Would that have been so bad? To die because of blood poisoning? Truthfully, Emilie had wanted to die for a long time — she just wasn’t brave enough to do it herself, so she relied on the drugs and the sewers to do it for her. She only wished she wasn’t so damn resilient. Though, at this point, a solid cold could have likely taken her out for good. Her body was so exhausted from the abuse it took that it was hardly even able to function.
“Doctor won’t care,” Emilie said, reaching for the glove he’d taken off so she could put it back on, not wanting to disgust him any further. “S’not so bad, Ez.” She didn’t want to see a doctor; she wanted to cling to Ezra and breathe him in.
--
“Yes, it is,” he insisted, getting over some of that shock. He reached out to grab her wrist, bringing her hand closer to the light. It looked even worse, the more he looked. “And I'll find one who will care,” he told her. “I'll take you someplace good, they'll...they'll have to help.” He had no idea if he could actually achieve that, but he had to try.
He couldn't just leave it as is. She might be dying anyway, but he didn't need to let it happen, if she was right here. It hadn't occurred to him that she would go back to the tunnels now. “I know a few people now, people who could help, who would care,” he continued. Not many, but enough, he thought.
--
He knew people now. People like his new friend, the one that Emilie tried not to think about. She was probably pretty, probably sweet and warm and soft, and even just thinking about her had Emilie’s full lips thinning in disapproval.
“People don’t care about some sewer rat,” Emilie said, one of the few sensible things she’d said in a while. “No reason they should.” She tried to curl her fingers, to show him that they were better than they looked, but she just couldn’t manage it.
“I miss you.” She looked at him through thick lashes and bleary, red eyes. “I think I’m dying. My insides are all gone and decayed, but I wanted to see you before.”
--
As much as he was aching inside to see her at all, those old frustrations were still there and they flared. “Shut the fuck up,” he snapped at her. “You're not gonna die,” he told her. And he had no way of knowing that. She sure looked like she was going to. And she was absolutely right about thinking she was in the process of it. But she didn't have to just give up.
She wouldn't. Not if he could help it.
“Come on,” he told her, grabbing his things, and killing the light. He grabbed her arm by the elbow, and started leading her toward the door.
--
Emilie wasn’t expecting the harsh snap of his tone, and she blinked, caught off guard. Had it been anyone else, she would’ve lashed out, would’ve reacted the same way an animal would — not that she’d never done that exact thing with Ezra — but she was just too tired, so instead she only stared at him with huge owl eyes as he gathered his things.
He’s coming back with me, she thought, a flare of hope igniting in her chest, and she followed his guidance out of the record store. As she walked, she could feel the last syringe-worth of prax in her back pocket, and she shivered from the mere thought.
--
He wasn't headed toward any of the entrances to the tunnels. He was headed for a building nearby. It was where he'd been holing up, his sort of makeshift home. It was in a half burned out building that used to be town houses, and he'd picked the one with the least amount of damage. He had some water there in a big bath, a leak from the roof filling it when it rained. It provided good enough shelter and was structurally mostly sound.
He realized quickly that he needed to slow his normal gait so she could keep up. She wasn't so steady on her feet. He couldn't tell if it was the drugs or if it was just how poor her condition was physically but he adjusted accordingly.
--
It took Emilie longer than it should have for her to realize they weren’t heading toward the mouth of the tunnels, and she slowed her already unsteady gait to a near crawl as she studied their surroundings. “Are you lost?” she asked, puzzled. “Mouth’s that way.”
She tugged her arm, hoping to lead him back where they needed to go. “I’ll clean it all up for you again. Make it home. Don’t think the monster will still be there if you come. Maybe you’ll scare him away.”
--
Ezra let out a string of curses and turned on her. “I'm not going the fuck back down there, Emilie, and you should know that! You said you were coming up. At no point am I going back down there, why would I do that?” He glanced around then dragged her over toward a store front. He flipped on the light, and set it on the ground, so they could see their reflection in the glass.
“What do you see, Em?” he said, holding her fast to the spot. “One of us is a walking skeleton, and one of us isn't. One of us looks like a haunted shell the other one doesn't anymore. What do you see?”
--
It was as if she’d forgotten that she was the one coming topside, not the other way around. Her brain worked like that these days; there were lapses and strange firings of synapses. She forgot simple things. Some days, she could hardly remember her own name.
And then she was looking at herself, something she hadn’t done quite literally in months, and for a split second there was no recognition there. It looked like she was staring at a stranger, that it didn’t quite connect that she was looking at herself. Ezra looked healthier than he had since they went underground. He wasn’t so shadowed, so frayed, but Emilie didn’t even look like herself.
“Can’t,” she murmured, turning her eyes away from the reflection and onto Ezra. “Stop it.”
--
“I'm not doing it,” he said. “That's what's there, Em. We're not going back to the tunnels, end of story.” he took her arm again, and bent to pick the flashlight back up, shutting it off once more. He started leading her again. “That's over. And so is the rest of this shit.”
And if he had to force the issue, he was going to. That much he already knew. He had her within his grasp again, and he wasn't going to let go. If he did, he'd never see her again, that much was abundantly clear. He didn't accept that. He wouldn't accept that.
--
When he made the point that it wasn’t just Ezra not returning to the tunnels but the both of them, she yanked back on her arm again, though there wasn’t much force she could put behind it at this point. “The nest,” she insisted, as though to remind him that everything they had was still down below.
But that wasn’t quite true. Ezra was up here, and as long as she had him, then the rest could be figured out, right? That’s what Emilie’s sober mind would have thought, but all she could think was that everything she possessed was down there.
”And so is the rest of this shit.”
She didn’t argue the point, simply because she knew she still had a syringe full of the glowing, liquidized crystals.
“Where are we going?”
--
“My place,” he told her. “And that shit hole isn't a nest anymore. Maybe it was before, but it hasn't been for a long time, and we're done there.” He pulled her along, glad that the trek wasn't far. He could get her there in little time, and then...well. He was already formulating a plan. A stupid one, probably, but a plan none the less. And she wasn't going to like it.
But he didn't care anymore. He had the means right now to do what needed to be done, and he was going to follow through, even if it killed both of them. Determination had settled into his spine, and he wasn't going to waver.
--
Even Emilie, in her shattered mental state, could acknowledge that his place was likely much better than the train car, but she’d grown to find comfort in the small space and the trash. It made her feel safe and confined. Until Ezra left and the monster showed up, anyway.
She stared up at the house. From the outside, it looked completely abandoned, not a single hint that someone had set up shop within its half-burned walls. “Okay,” was what she finally decided on, but they both knew her complacency would only last as long as her high. As soon as she needed another hit (which she had, thankfully), it would be all frazzled nerves and violent outbursts.
--
Ezra knew what was coming, but he knew what he was doing. Or, at the very least, he knew what he was going to do. Either way, he brought her into the building two down from the one he actually stayed in, navigating through the other two through a twisted path that wasn't immediately intuitive. Paranoia still rode high in Ezra's mind, especially when it came to places he was staying. When they got to his building, he brought her upstairs into the bathroom, where there was the tub with water. He shut the door behind them then lit the candles in there.
“Get your clothes off,” he told her.
He’d need to travel to get more water, and he wasn’t even sure where he’d get it, but he’d figure it out. in his head, she needed to wash off the filth of the tunnels. He especially needed to try and clean the wounds on her hand. Or...something else, he didn’t know, he was winging that part. He dug out from the little linen closet in there a wash cloth and soap that had been there when he’d arrived. Plugging the sink, he used a cup to start filling the basin, so she could use that to wash up.
--
It made perfect sense to Emilie the maze he traced to get to the place he was staying. As someone who was accustomed to the twist and turn of the tunnels, that much felt familiar and comforting. The place was fairly clean, given its disrepair, and there was so much room that it made Emilie feel overly exposed and vulnerable. Still, she followed him upstairs to the bathroom.
A bathroom.
Emilie hadn’t had one of those in ages, and though there was no running water, just seeing a bathtub full of water was enough to almost take her breath away. But then he told her to take off her clothes, and she hesitated for multiple reasons. First, beneath the leather and the dirty clothes, her arms were infected, her body covered in self-inflicted bruises and gashes. Second, she didn’t want the prax to be taken away.
Finally, after many long moments, she shed her clothing, careful to keep the pants close by (and thus, the prax), until she was completely nude. Her ladder of ribs were sharper, some of her cuts infected and angry, and the places she’d been shooting up were weeping fluid.
--
He had expected the track marks. He could see the infection, and hated seeing her like this at all. He wanted to reach out and touch her, try to comfort her as well as he could. It was sickening to see the full view of it. But he braced himself, because this was going to get worse before it got better. He knew that. So he shoved down everything.
He also noted that she seemed to want to keep her pants close by, and he knew what that meant. He was doing this in the room with her partially because he'd wanted to get her clothes off so he could dispose of them and any prax she had on her person. At no point had he even considered the idea that she didn't have some on her.
For now, however, he ignored it, and dipped the cloth into the water, pouring fruity smelling bodywash onto it. Something from one of the chain stores. It smelled just a little bit like heaven, though, that much was for damn sure. He handed her the cloth. “I'll be right back,” he said, and he gathered up her clothes.
--
Once upon a lifetime, Emilie had been someone who loved all things ‘girly.’ She had more perfume than she could use, all sort of sweet-smelling lotions and soaps and salts, and the thought of smelling like anything but perfection was appalling. Now, the sudden whiff of something sweet and fruity had her very nearly turning away because of the intensity.
Still, it would be nice to not smell like shit and blood and piss for once in two years.
When he began to gather up her clothes, Emilie’s good(ish?) hand shot out and wrapped around his wrist in a grip that wasn’t painful but was tight and instinctive all the same. “Don’t,” she whispered, desperation lacing the edges of her voice.
--
“It's happening, Em,” he told her, voice soft, but there was no give to it. There was a note of finality to it that he wasn't going to budge on. “You can fight me, but you'll lose.” That was said with conviction, too. If he had to knock her cold he would. He didn't want to, but he absolutely would. This, right here, was his last attempt at saving her life. He knew he wouldn't get another one.
“You need to trust me,” he told her, even if he knew it wouldn't do any good. Prax had trumped him from the start. Still, he put it out there anyway, knowing he needed to give her the chance, at least. Hell, he'd even take a two minute head start from her. If she gave him just enough time to get it out of the room, he could find it and get rid of it in no time. If she didn't, well, he'd improvise.
--
“It’s the last one,” she said, not because she thought she had the will power to make it her last one, but because she didn’t have anymore, and the only way to fix that was to add to her growing tab. “Then it’s gone. All gone. Just let me have it, Ez.”
Emilie’s hand didn’t move, both of them in a stalemate. “Last one,” Emilie murmured again, a broken record. “Last one, then it’s gone. Can’t get more without seeing them.” And they were beginning to dislike how much of a tab Emilie was running. She knew they’d be collecting soon, but she would figure that out some other way.
--
“No,” he said. And he dropped her clothes, and took a gamble. He started to crush his feet down onto her pants, and it didn't take that long to hear the crunch of a syringe beneath his boot. He didn't know which 'them' she was talking about, assuming that it was the Dog Park. Either way, he was taking it away before they could even get to the begging part.
“Wash up,” he said, though he expected backlash. Probably a lot of it, and he was prepared for that. He braced himself physically, and stared her down, hoping this was going to be less ugly than he anticipated.
--
“Ezra, don’t, don’t —“ But then she heard the sound of the delicate glass crunch beneath his foot, and it might as well have been her very heart beneath his heel for the agony that contorted her features. Her giant eyes welled with tears, her mouth opened in shocked horror, and for a brief moment she actually considered trying to lick it out of her clothes.
Had it not been for the fact that she was so tired and still riding high from her latest dose, she likely would have gone scrambling at him like a woman possessed. Instead, in a reaction less violent but no less ugly, Emilie slid down the nearest wall, her knees curling up against her chest as she began to cry.
“You don’t know what you did,” she stammered. He’d seen the withdrawals before, but they were so much worse now. Where it once took a day or two for her to start showing signs, now it was only hours, maybe even less, and it was so much more violent and terrible. “You don’t know.”
--
“Yeah...I do.” He was quiet, and it killed him to see just how she reacted. He'd expected it, but the actual expression was soul crushing. He gathered her clothes, and tossed them in the hamper. Then he picked that up and brought it out of the room, leaving her there. “Clean up, Em. There's tooth brushes in there. Brush your teeth. I'll be back in a minute.”
He had this worked out in his head. That determination was definitely going to fuel this. And he hoped to hell that the detox didn't kill her, but he'd prefer that than the alternative. And if he needed to cuff her to the heavy bedframe in there, he'd do that too. He didn't trust that there was much else he could do. There was an enclosed room, a big walk in closet in the main bedroom, and that, he thought, was going to be her first place. Somewhere without a window.
--
“You can’t,” she murmured right back. There was no way for Ezra to know exactly what he’d done, because he had never experienced the agony of the withdrawals, at least not first-hand. He had taken care of her the few times she tried it, had held her when her body went into seizures and had cleaned her up in the aftermath, but there was no way to describe the sort of pain it caused unless you experienced wash withdrawal yourself.
When Ezra left, Emilie hesitated a moment, maybe two, before she viciously slammed the back of her head against the wall. Pain was how she coped these days; causing herself physical damage sometimes let her focus less on the mental. Finally, after repeating the process a few more times, she stood to her feet and moved to the sink.
Emilie’s teeth were, surprisingly, the only healthy part of her left. She’d always been so careful about keeping them clean. Obsessive, really, and she never did know the reason behind it. Still, having an actual toothbrush seemed like a small miracle, so she reached for it and began to brush the teeth in question, careful all the while to avoid looking in the mirror.
--
Ezra got the remains of the needle out of her pants, and tossed it out the window. Then, after a few long moments, he tossed the rest of her clothes too. They were filthy, and there were women's clothes here. She'd wear something clean, at least, not something that still had the stench of the tunnels clinging to it. If he could get rid of any triggers, he would, and he wasn't taking chances on what a trigger may be.
He kept the window open, drawing in deep breaths as he tried to steady himself. Then he got moving again. He went into the master bedroom with the walk in closet in it, and he went in there to make sure that he didn't see anything she could really hurt herself with in there. He removed the mirror off the back of the door, and the rest looked okay. She'd have to get really creative. Even if she did, he didn't think she'd be able to hurt herself that bad with anything in there.
He went to the dresser and pulled out a nightgown, something long that would cover a lot – though the point wasn't to cover her it was to try and keep her warm. He threw a comforter into the closet too, and took a second to appreciate what he was doing.
He was going to hold his sister captive til she detoxed or died, whichever came first. He shut his eyes, counted to ten, then went back to the bathroom with the clean nightgown and he'd grabbed some panties for her too.
--
Emilie couldn’t remember the last time she had bathed. Before, she and Ezra used to make semi-regular trips topside to try and find a source to clean themselves with, but that was before. Now, Emilie smelled as bad as she looked, which was saying a startling amount. The soap assaulted her nostrils with its fruity, floral scent, but before too long she had managed to mostly remove the dirt and grime of the sewers.
She even managed to wash her hair in the sink and, by the time he returned with a nightgown that looked cleaner and softer than anything Emilie could even remember wearing, she no longer smelled of death and decay and shit; she smelled clean and soft. Unfortunately, without the grime and layers of makeup, her sores and gashes and bruises were all the more visible.
Quietly, eyes never leaving Ezra’s, she reached for the nightgown and the panties. Each of them were too large for her frail state, but they were clean, and even Emilie could appreciate the way the cotton of the nightie felt against her raw skin.
--
He was going to need to tend to her wounds, and he would. In a minute. He was still playing this part by ear, knowing at any moment she could snap. He was a little surprised she hadn't already, but was grateful for that reprieve. “C'mon,” he said, holding a hand out to her once she was dressed.
His first aid kit was in the master bath, so they were headed to the bedroom anyhow. He was struck again at how much she looked like a skeleton. She was just so damaged, it truly pained him to look at her. But he didn't let his eyes avert, either. He wasn't going to look away. He was going to see this through, every fucked up detail.
--
When he extended his hand to her, Emilie instinctively went to reach out with her right hand but thought better of it, doubting he’d appreciate the sensation of holding tattered fingers, so she took his hand instead with her left.
“The princess found the prince again,” Emilie whispered, referring to the story Ezra had told her through messages not too long before. “Prince came back. Prince always comes back. Has to, because there’s no princess without the prince.” Out of habit, she began chewing absently at the bloodied flesh of her right ring finger, the worst of the bunch.
--
He smiled. It was weak, but clear. “yeah, she did,” he told her. He gave her hand a very light squeeze, then led the way to the bedroom. There was a three wick candle burning in there, shedding enough light to give them a nice glow but it wasn't too bright. He remembered how hard it was to get used to the light at first.
He winced at her chewing at her fingers, and he almost lost what was in his stomach as he realized that the damage there was because she was eating them. It wasn't just that they were chewed, she was fucking eating herself. He had to breathe slowly, reaching out to pull her hand away from her mouth.
“Stop,” he said, voice betraying how sick he felt in that moment.
--
The candle wasn’t much light, but it was plenty for Emilie to see by, and any more light would have burned her sensitive eyes. She could practically see in the dark, every bit an underground creature, but it was nice not to have to strain to see. Even then, she was expecting some tattered, angry ghoul to come from the shadows, despite no longer being in the tunnels.
For now.
When he reached out to grab her hand, nausea written all across his features, she looked just as confused as she had before. It didn’t seem to bother her in the slightest that she was the reason for the state of her fingers. Hell, as disgusting and putrid of a thought it was, Emilie hadn’t eaten anything real in days, maybe a week or two. Her fingers were likely keeping her alive.
“Sorry,” she murmured, dropping her hand to her side. Emilie twitched, the first signs that it wouldn’t be long until the desire for another hit became a visceral need. That was when things would likely get very, very ugly. Or, well, uglier.
--
He was going to have nightmares about this, he knew it. Still, he brought her into the master bedroom. He sat her down on the bed, and then went to shut the door. Digging out the first aid kit, he set that on the bed too. From there, he dug out a small bag of cashews, one of those that you used to be able to pick up at a gas station for a dollar. He opened it, and gave it to her. Then he started to disinfect what wounds on her he could see readily, though he didn't actually touch her fingers. Those...those were beyond anything he could deal with right now.
Everything else, though, he very much could do. And he wanted to at least try to cut down on the possibility of further infection when he knew things were about to get oh so very intensely bad.
--
Emilie didn’t want to eat. She was starving, literally, but even the thought of solid food made her stomach knot, and she had to swallow down bile. How strange a realization that she could stomach her own fingers, but actual food made her queasy. The only reason she actually took a nibble or two was because of Ezra.
She wanted to make him happy, and she knew eating would perhaps make him feel better. She didn’t eat much at all, really just enough to make it look like she was doing so, and she watched as he tended to her wounds with his careful hands. Some of them were worse than others, full of puss and blood, but even those didn’t compare to her hands.
Maybe, just maybe, they’d save all the fingers on the left. The right? Well, at least two of them would have to go.
“If I close my eyes, are you going to disappear? Dissolve?” As if to assure herself he wouldn’t, she reached out with her left hand and touched his face.
--
He hadn't expected her to eat much, and he would insist if he thought it mattered right now. The reality of the situation was that she was probably going to lose anything in her stomach once things got bad, and they would. Soon.
“No,” he told her. “I'm not going to disappear. I'm here.” He set aside the dirty swabs, and looked back at her, making eye contact. He was silent, for a long, long moment. Then he reached up. Cupped her features in his palms, and leaned close, brushing the softest, barely there kiss he could. “This is going to be awful, Em. And you're going to hate me. And I just want you to know that I love you. That I've always loved you, and I always will love you.”
--
Weeks without seeing him, without so much as being able to reach for his hand in the dark had taken more than a mental toll on Emilie, and when he reached up to cup her cold, angled cheeks, the exhalation that poured past her lips was violent, nearing a sob.
She closed her eyes as he brushed his lips against hers, softer than the touch of a moth’s wings. Once her eyes were open again, however, they were wet with tears. Often, Emilie cried for no reason; she had no control over her emotions, but there was genuine heartbreak in those owl-like eyes.
“But I’m not Em anymore,” she muttered, having replayed that conversation in her head over and over until it was ingrained like a skipping record. “You said so.” If that was the case, did he still love her? He called her a monster, but wasn’t it possible to love a monster? Wasn’t it?
“So tired,” Emilie relented on a shuddered sigh. “Dust and rust and everything aches, and I’m so tired, Ezra.”
Then, in a moment of tragic clarity, she blinked, lip trembling. “Help me.”
--
He pressed a kiss to her forehead after that, then pulled her in and hugged her. “I am helping you,” he told her, voice rough. and you aren't going to like it. And you're going to scream and cry and hate me and it might kill you, but I am helping.
“You need rest,” he told her. Standing, he went to the closet, and opened up the door. He pulled a big, thick blanket from the top shelf, and he laid it out on the floor. He tossed pillows in there for her too. He looked back at her, and held out his hand. “Here's where you can rest,” he told her. It would be dark, and close, so he imagined it would work best for her on a number of levels – and it worked for him because he could contain her in there once things got bad.
--
Emilie wrapped her arms around him and buried her face into his neck. He was so warm, so fucking alive that the two of them there were like night and day. Not too long before, it was impossible to tell where one of them started and the other began. Now, well, he might as well have been the sunlight to her star-less sky.
Rest. Yes, that’s what she needed. She just needed to lie down. Anyone else might have chosen the bed, but Ezra knew her so well. She was accustomed to the closed in space of the train car, to the pile of blankets and pillows and a dirty mattress that had been their bed.
She stood to her feet and crossed to where he stood at the closet door. “Will you lay down with me? Please?”
--
He thought about it, then nodded. “Okay,” he said. He knew it was a risk. She could come crashing down at any moment and he was more than willing to bet she'd be really rough when she woke up. But that was something he could deal with then, and he had no illusions at the moment who would win if he had to try and overpower her, or if she tried to attack him. She didn't have the strength left to get past him.
He also had messages to send, but for the moment, he would lie down with her, and at least let her drift to sleep before he made other preparations. He could listen to her breathe, and let himself breathe with her. He couldn't think about how much he needed that. Or how terrified he was that this was it. That she wouldn't wake up and try to fight him, that she wouldn't wake up at all.
--
When he agreed to lie down with Emilie, she shuddered a tiny breath of relief and nodded, arms wrapping around herself as she led the way into the closet. It was cramped, just enough room for the two of them to stretch out between the shelves and clothes, and that was exactly what Emilie needed. She didn’t like the open. It made her feel too vulnerable.
For the moment, she wasn’t thinking about how bad the withdrawals would be. She was still high, though the crash was coming soon enough, and she was just relieved by the thought of having Ezra curled up next to her like they used to be.
She settled down amidst the blankets and pillows, then reached out her good hand for him to take.
--
Ezra took it, and gave it a squeeze. He didn't know what else to do in that moment, so he just stayed with her, listening to her breathing to gauge when she drifted. He definitely needed to get her medical attention, and he needed to prep the space more if he was going to keep her prisoner here while she detoxed.
This was going to be a long, messy ordeal. He just hoped they both survived it.