Their mind needed to focus on something. Meeting Avril’s eyes had been unanimously vetoed so Raime concentrated on feeling the heat of their surroundings. They only felt like drifting away, when they had reached the comfort of the elevator cabin sleep hadn’t found them, their bare skin suffering from the intense cold of metal. More of their senses must’ve dulled, even with their ears clogged they heard Avril mentioning the water was too hot for comfort after she had lunged to the bathtub. Her sudden and unexpected movement had flared up Raime’s senses, forcing them awake. But all they did was move away.
Avril stood against the corner of the door, still and silent. Raime didn’t want to see where she was looking, what expressions she held. The bathroom was too small for her to be out of their periphery unless Raime decided to close their eyes. They feared everything would collapse around them if they shut them for too long, their grasp on reality on the brink of melting away. The warm water had started to wrinkle their fingers, giving them an excuse to get out. Their whole body disorderly followed an attempt at movement, making them trip over while sitting, sliding pathetically across the small tub, sending a wave of water crashing over. This time Avril didn’t jump to their rescue which made the embarassment linger. She slowly approached to turn off the water and the cold of the world caught up to them instantly.
“I’ll get you a towel, don’t break your neck trying to get out.”
Sounds reaching Raime’s ears were still muddy, everything around them dampened like in a dream. They felt the emptiness of their stomach, the inescapable taste of iron in their throat was the only rampart preventing them from feeling hungry. Where had they left a clean towel anyway? The memory of their culinary disaster felt like eons ago now, barely part of their own life. Raime’s mind drifted again. The water had fully evacuated the tub, leaving a trail of leftover scabs, stuck between them and the drain. They held onto both sides in an attempt to regain some sense of balance, heaving from the effort.
“So you can’t hear me after all?”
Avril was already back. Handing a large towel over, her hands reaching for them under it. Raime still held onto the sides, their knees barely holding their own weight. All of it, every single movement, still felt uncomfortable, joints and tendons sending thousands of uncoordinated signals to their brain. Their throat was already sore from all the coughing and vomiting, Raime had stopped trying to formulate an answer. Despite everything, they seemed to be intact. All of their limbs attached at the right place, all of their teeth slotted where they had been, their nails even felt longer than they’d been yesterday. As they stepped over the side of the tub, Raime didn’t meet Avril’s eyes but meekly held onto her hands through the towel, their own felt small. They couldn’t have escaped seeing her face when Avril had lunged for her, but uncounsciously or not, the memory of her emotions, of seeing their face reflected in her eyes was fading away. Raime made no attempt to hold onto it.
Avril threw the towel over them and held onto their shoulders, guiding them slowly out of the tub. One feet after the other, as if they were learning to walk for the first time. The cloth hid their face from her, making it impossible to know whether this decision was out of consideration or fear. Fear. The word only brought with it the feeling of rain, hammering on their skin. They couldn’t guess what Avril was thinking, her emotions didn’t seep from her palms to their shoulders but Raime wished they could. To be sure, to come to a conclusion. Raime let themselves be led out of the bathroom, offering no resistance. They found comfort in letting go, not as much losing control as giving it away.
Raime’s room was small, not enough space to get lost in, they knew how many step it’d take the two of them to reach the bed. They preemptively let go of Avril’s grasp and leaned down to crash on the mattress and crawl under the covers, towel and all.
“You should really wear something, you’re going to get sick with these temperature shifts…”
Raime heard her click her tongue, they instictively shivered thinking it was targeted at them but peeking through the blankets they saw her looking at nothing, arms crossed. Finally confronting her face, her expression was undecipherable. Raime couldn’t remember what life was before they knew each other, seeing her tired traits plunged them in a whirl of nauseating emotions. They attempted again to form words, only to let out a faint whistle out of a tunnel of jarring pain. Nothing felt real, even within the warmth of their bed, Raime’s body was still stuck to that crate in the underbelly, still feeling the hard metal under their fingers.
Nothing in their room had changed yet any sense of familiarity was gone. The dim light of the bathroom cast shadows of Avril’s face. The bare walls echoed their growing unease. Raime knew their stash of books was orderly kept right under them, tucked in the bed frame. They hadn’t taken them out since moving in, leaving them in the comfort of dust. Right now they were better off like this, staying exactly where they were, hidden from the world. Raime gave in and closed their eyes, wishing they could shut off everything.
Draped in darkness, it was as if all of their limbs had minds of their own, trying desperately to get themselves free from each other. From their eyes to their heel, every inch of them held a powerful desire to return somewhere they couldn’t follow. Goosebumps rippled across their whole skin and Raime forced their eyes open, silently heaving. Still cradled beneath the covers, they desperately sought to focus on something. The smell of still fresh laundry, the pain still clogged at the bottom of their throat as they forced bile back down their stomach, the complicated grid patterns in the wall. With every momentary distraction, the presence of Avril crept in their mind.
“Try to sleep. You better hope you can talk when you wake up or I’ll have you write down everything.”
There was no spite in Avril’s voice, Raime had almost been looking for it, a change in how she perceived them. Neither were looking at each other. Her words hinted at a departure but she remained still for a few moments, the distant sounds of life within the complex gently filled the room. Everything was as it had been the day prior.
Raime finally heard her leave the room at a fast pace, not closing the door behind her. There had been so much they wanted to say but it would have to wait. Wait for what? Sleep was so far away yet their entire body felt the weight of exhaustion, their mind swaying back and forth between the fear of drifting away and the inexorable pull to close their eyes and give up fighting against the dark. Raime’s brain was boiling, hidden like they were from the world offered no solace, the events of yesterday were inescapable. They still wanted to run away, as fast as they could around their head, all of their memories blurring around them. Above all else, Raime felt filthy. Even after what felt like hours of water washing over their body, they still felt covered in grime, a phantom feeling of fluids leaking from every part of their body kept giving them shivers. But it seemed like nothing was wrong with them. To be certain, they tentatively probed every limb with their fingers. Raime felt themselves whole, everything was where it should be.
Most importantly, their head was well affixed between their shoulders. They didn’t remember any pain, but the feeling that they’d lost it like their pair of keys was also eating away at their mind. Avril’s absence made their panic grow, failure once again to focus on anything for more than a second only accentuated it. One side of them desperately needed answers, the other would rather act like their books and never leave their bed again. They were barely conscious but they had seen that Avril felt alienated by their other neighbors, they’d known something she didn’t, likely leaving her to think Raime was also in a confidence that excluded her. The invisible hand still crushing their throat had prevented any chance to prove they were as lost as she was and now she was gone.
Avril’s mother and their own adoptive parent, Alina, had been the only one from floor 3 missing from their rescue. Memories of her flooded their mind, had she known this whole time? Raime sought, against their own feeling, in their previous interactions for a moment where things had shifted. They never thought too much about interactions with others, especially with the people of floor 3 who knew them from when they still wet the bed, so the task proved to be as difficult as it was anxiety inducing. Conjuring her in their mind this way, Raime could only remember her back. She was resolute and well spoken, 80 or so years of age. She didn’t look much like her daughter being almost a head smaller with softer features but her striking auburn hair related them without a doubt. She’d given birth to Avril alone, before Raime had arrived. They both respected her, Raime didn’t imagine a life without having been raised in her home, but Alina was not their mother.
They had long supposed Alina never viewed them as a sibling to Avril, even less as their own child. There had come a day when Raime inherited this apartment, separating their life from the both of them, even if they were only two steps away across the hall. Had it been the moment? Raime cursed themselves for not having paid enough attention to anything, the picture of their own life felt so incomplete, so jagged. They’d unconsciously never confronted this festering emptiness. A life of wandering aimlessly, diligently avoiding confrontation, and it led them right here, shivering alone. Raime’s eyes began to hurt, tears began to form again, the water in their body had begun to flow once more. Their sobs were inaudible even to them, still irritating their throat as well as flooding it.
“The Doctor talked about the Stillborn.”
A low and gentle voice, Tenor’s. He had come back to their room without Raime noticing. They shuffled beneath the covers, peeking through them to get a look at him. The lights of the bathroom still illuminated the room, a red hue surrounded his tall stature. He was crouched, his towering back facing the bed, focused on the floor. He had cleaning utensils laid around him. Even if Raime didn’t see the state of the floor, they assumed it still needed some attention Avril had not bothered thinking about.
“The… Doctor?” Raime gasped in a hoarse voice.
The words had managed to come out. Even at considerable hurt, knowing they weren’t forever mute was relief enough for them to rise slightly out of the covers. They hadn’t even realized they’d been sweating profusely until the chill air welcomed them back.
“You asked me to tell you if they said anything interesting during yesterday’s Knightcall. A lot of meandering, it was obvious the Knight was embarrassed. But they addressed the Stillborn.”
The name was infamous, the year of the Stillborn, the curse, the silent death. When Raime was old enough to be aware of their surroundings learn how the world worked, the incident had already been apart of life. Avril and them were some of the last children born, classes for them had been melancholic for teachers, they remembered that much. A voice from the previous resident of Raime’s apartment echoed in their head. “People used to say the end of days was brought two-fold, now they say there was always meant to be a third step.”
“They don’t believe in curses,” Tenor continued, hard at work scrubbing the floor, “They commended the Cors, said they wish they could’ve done something but none of them bore children, they were late in catching it. It was as the Capitán had said, compound in the waterline, spread to everyone through Volantis. Impossible to know if there was a perpetrator or just bad luck.”
He sighed, stowing away the cleaning tools and looking back towards the bed. Their eyes met, he looked tired and Raime felt a pang of guilt. They didn’t reply, he was rarely this loquacious, they felt like he was attempting to alleviate the atmosphere.
“I think it’s convenient, he ended up saying nothing more than what we knew. Didn’t offer any solution. You were way too young to remember but the Capitán had to make a speech at City Hall to calm everyone the year of the incident. Clay and I, we’d never seen that kind of panic, even after Dusk. Still seeing children running around, even as they were born into nothing, must have kept people sane… I guess that includes me as well.”
All of floor 3, and more of the different floors of Complex U40 had come last year to celebrate Tenor’s century birthday. It was mostly symbolic, as barely anyone kept track of the passing of days anymore but it had stuck in Raime’s mind. They didn’t know anyone else who’d lived this long, seeing him reminisce like this sunk in how much he must’ve seen. How many years, did he think he would even live for? Raime had avoided confronting the thought so far but the human had lived eight decades longer and was still healthy enough to see eighty more. They felt so, so far away.
“Alina will talk to you later, she will have to. Clay and I are cowards, all we can do is look away.”
Tenor rose to his feet, his shadow spanning across most of the wall. Raime wanted to say something, his presence had calmed them for now.
“Tha-nks,” Raime coughed, choking halfway through the word.
Tenor grunted and exited the apartment, not closing the door behind him. The light flickered, for no reason likely other than age. Tenor’s blunt distraction had worked well enough that Raime struggled to find their bearings again. What were they thinking about before? Step by step, mentally, stumbling over their own thoughts. Only a distant ray of light from the hall indicated the Sun hadn’t set but it couldn’t have mattered less. All of time could’ve been a blur. Suddenly, a powerful and relentless fatigue took hold of them. Raime dropped to their side like a brick, welcomed by the mattress. Nothing in them had the fight to stay awake anymore. All of their unresolved feelings, lingering pain and words unsaid dissolved like blood in water. Raime’s vision remained focused on the crack in their door as their eyelids closed them off from the rest of the world.