Fic: Ending/Start [Y: The Last Man]

[cherry]

Title: Ending/Start
Fandom: Y: The Last Man (Wikipedia Overview)
Rating: 14A
Notes: Many thanks to sprat for beta. Written for Apathy in this year's Yuletide.
Spoilers: Through issue 59.

Things Agent 355 has lost and gained along the way.



Ending/Start
by cherryice

The streets of Paris are grey, last licks of the setting sun flickering fiery in the western sky. Streetlights are beginning to come on against the dusk, throwing pools of light against the chill air. Your shoes click sharply on the stone, the raise of your heels and turn of your ankles unfamiliar and precarious. In a park ahead, a group of children are playing, voices raised in laughter, teeth flashing and hair flying. They are a small patch of colour beneath gothic architecture, none of them older than eight, nine. It's been five years, and you think for the first time of the sharp difference the coming autumn will see, school yards draining dry, the echoing ring of emptying halls; swings creaking in the same breeze that ghosts past your bare legs, along the breadth of your collar bones.

One of the girls bolts past you, whooping. She is all long limbs and coltish grace, open faced and unconcerned, and you smile, because the world is still a long way from silent. You want to tell her that maybe, maybe, it's going to be all right. This is all she's ever known, though, and she's only ever heard of men from the books at school and a picture over the mantle of her home. Monkeys and men, clones and doctors, they wouldn't mean a thing to her. Magicians in their towers, hunched over their magic spells by the light of a single bulb until they give themselves migraines. So-called princes who'll chase their happy endings across any ocean, nary else a thought in their minds.

There are errant knights, you think wryly, walking the Paris streets at dusk. The breeze coming off of the Seine is clean tonight, misting across your face, and there is no gun warm against the small of your back.

There are worse places you could be.

(When Yorick shows up at your door, he will be crumpled, unshaven, smelling still of Beth - a faint, lingering scent of perfume that it still surprises you women bother with - but you traded your gun for a dress that day, so.

Yorick at your door, on your couch, and he will trip over his words, stumbling, intent. His hands will be gentle against your face, skin cracked and rough, eyes full of surprise and something that's been there all along.

Love, you will think, something inside of you twisting that you weren't even sure remained.

Oh.

Love.)

This is the day your life ends.

*

Yorick's face, when he sees Beth, is a caricature of a man waking from sleep. Half exhilaration, half disbelief, weathered skin and crooked smile, he bears only the faintest of resemblances to the boy you first met.

Beth is much like her photograph, creased and faded, all blonde hair and blue eyes. You're not sure what you were expecting but it was something ... more, somehow. Then again, after all this time, pretty much anything would have been a let down. When they come together, finally, beneath the Arc, it is somehow anticlimactic. Then again, this was never meant to be your happy ending.

They're pressed together, forehead to forehead, coat tails and hair swirling together in the breeze, but they don't quite fit. You wonder, tiredly, uncharitably, if they ever did. It would be romantic to say that nothing has hurt like this, but that would be complete and total bullshit. Watching hurts, but no more than you were expecting. Far less than all too many of the things you've done and seen.

You're a big girl. You'll get over it.

You lose something this day.

*

You bid goodbye to Allison for the last time in the thick light of late afternoon, sunlight catching dust motes and the smell of exhaust and dumplings on the air. The hug is expected, as is the strength wound up in her frame, because the years have been no easier on her than on anyone else. She's crying, of course, cheek pressed wetly against yours, and she's not the only one. One of you could say something about seeing the other again, but insulting each other's intelligence isn't the best way to say goodbye. You're both going where you're needed most, and after that there are plenty of people and places that need each of you. The familiar ink and disinfectant smell of her is almost buried beneath fresh air and her weariness, and she holds herself so very still.

"I wish," you say, hands tightening involuntarily on her back, pressing your face to her hair.

"No, you don't," she replies with a muffled laugh, squeezing back. "But thank you for the thought." When she pulls back her face is wet, eyes glittering, but her smile is warm. She looks everything and nothing like the woman you first met in Boston; shoulders slumped over a scope and eyes empty.

"I wish I had something to leave you with," she says, and it's your turn to laugh.

"You already have," you tell her, and press a kiss to her forehead. She looks everything and nothing like she did when you met, and you have no idea how much of that is a change in her and how much is a change in you.

(Occasionally, even months later, you will startle out of sleep, heart racing as you listen close for the missing cadence of her measured breaths, of Ampersand's muffled wheeze. Falling back to sleep takes time.)

You lose something this day, as well.

*

Tokyo, you look at a little girl (ten years old, maybe twelve) and pull the trigger. The air is humid, stale, full of copper. Chances are that she's ten in the same way you were, with nothing left of the girl she once was.

When the gun jams, you're not relieved.

You don't lose anything this day -- only realize it's already gone.

*

You know it's a mistake even as your eyes drift closed. The boat thrums through the deck below, the bulkheads around you, a steady and soothing vibration. Allison is not quite hesitant, not quite yielding, but her skin is warm and her hands are sure, and it's been so very long since anyone touched you. (He's been dead for years, and maybe you were never really in love him, but he was your friend and your partner and he ended with his blood on your skin.)

You don't lose anything this night, for which you are grateful.

*

The mountain air is more than crisp this time of year, so you build the fire high against the night. Things seem simpler by the half-light of the flames, warmth licking against your outstretched hands. Yorick is burning their dinner over the fire. He hasn't shaved in a week, rubbing at his patchy chin absently as he stares up at the trees outlined against the stars overhead. Allison is sitting as close to the fire as she can, forehead shiny from the heat, angled oddly to get the best light possible as she scribbles in her notebook with one of her carefully hoarded pens. Somewhere in the half shadows, Ampersand chatters as the fire pops. The smoke is underlain with the thickness of pine resin, and you'll all smell of it for days.

You are almost comfortable, despite the twinge in your shoulder and the rocks that press into your knees, and it is with a curious lack of surprise that you realize only some of the warmth you feel comes from fire.

You gain something this day, but in doing so lose something of yourself.

It seems a fair trade.

*

The lines that differentiate one nation from another are nothing more than marks on a map. Jordan airspace is no different than the Saudi airspace ahead. 1033 has the radio on low in the background, some country music bullshit you've never been able to stand. He quirks an eyebrow when you stab it off, but doesn't say a word.

The necklace in your hands is heavier than it looks, but it's carrying the weight of three bodies with it.

It takes you a moment to realize something's wrong when it happens, a moment more to process the wetness on your face as the blood of a man who's known you better than any other. Silence on the radio can't tell you who to blame or how to make this right.

Autopilot on, you cross his arms and close his eyes. You know every scar on his body and all of his stupid drinking songs, his favourite gun and his favourite pizza toppings.

It's a long flight back to base, blood drying on your face and the window, your hands preternaturally steady on the controls, but you have his bullshit country music to keep you company.

(When you learn the full extent of it, it will still, somehow, seems less consequential than watching him tip forwards and out of his seat, limbs slack and eyes empty.)

You lose as much as anyone else this day, but the world keeps on tumbling, end over end over end.

*

It is in the Congo that you take your first life. Diamond-runner, low-life, murder, thug. It was entirely necessary and entirely avoidable. Slashed his carotid artery. In the heavy heat of a thatched hut, 1033 pulls the bloodstained clothes from your body, washes the blood from your skin with clinical detachment and sympathetic eyes. There's a line of blood beneath your nails but your hands have not changed, something that seems impossible to you.

"It only hurts like this the first time," he says, easily pinning you when you launch yourself at him, all finesse and training gone, because it should hurt like this every time you end someone. He lets you wear yourself out struggling, bringing up bruises that will last for weeks. He releases you when you curl in on yourself, dry-eyed. You think of your father making careful stitches with red thread, but not everything that's ripped can be sewn back together again.

You are seventeen years old.

(1033 will not be the one to notice, nor to intervene. Maybe he thinks you're stronger, or maybe he thinks you're just another stupid kid. He'll never tell you.

Staying alive just seems to become less and less of a priority, that's all.

After the intervention, 711 will bring you tea, chamomile with a twist of lemon, like your mother used to make. "My father," you will tell her, though she doesn't ask. "Mending." Ripping out stitched and adding new fabric to replace the old and worn.

Sometimes, a thing has to be broken before it can be fixed again.)

You lose something this day. Of course you do.

*

This girl is not you. She shares your mouth, your hair, your skin, but her eyes are bright and clear of shadows. She eats breakfast with an intent concentration, chasing syrup around her plate with her last forkful of blueberry pancakes. Kitchen window open, the air that tosses the pale yellow drapes smells of apples ripening on the tree in the front yard. Her mother, wearing a pale blue dress, has a phone pressed to one ear and baby girl balanced on her hip. "Going to be late for work today," she's saying, and you hear the words as if from a great distance. "No, nothing to worry about. Just have to take her in to the hospital for a few routine tests."

The girl looks up as her father drops her lunch into her school bag. "You'll miss the bus," he says, face ceasing as he smiles. She kisses him on his cheek, her little sister on the nose, wraps her arms around her mother from behind.

"Have a good day," one of them calls as the door closes behind her, "Love you!" calls the other her and she runs towards the bus stop, Mary-Janes thumping against the concrete and backpack bouncing against her back.

This girl is not yet you. She has four hours, thirty-five minutes before the crash, five hours, twenty minutes before the hallway where her world stops spinning and yours begins.

In this moment, she is running, pigtails streaming, beneath a bright blue sky.

This day, your life begins, as it will end: with love.