(no subject)
Title: It's Time We Saw A Miracle
Author: Kathy
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, they belong to NBC. I'm just borrowing them.
Rating and Warnings: PG-13. There is a bit of an apocalypse.
Summary: Only two survive the apocalypse, but they bring their baggage with them.
Prompt: 03. Dream
Author's Notes: zenni was gonna beta this betaed this! The title comes from Apocalypse, Please by Muse.
At least she wasn't alone.
But silence got on her nerves more than she could really explain. Before, she probably would've found it a little creepy and weird, but after a nuclear blast of apocalyptic proportions blew apart the city, everything was so quiet that half the time she felt like screaming just so she'd know she was really was still alive. But he was quiet, so she was quiet. It seemed like the proper thing to do. It wouldn't be right to break the decorum of the situation, and what did she know? Maybe silence was the standard thing in a newly created radioactive dystopia. She'd never been in this situation before- hell, she and he were probably the first, she could face up to that fact- so she just went with what worked; their silence worked.
Even though they didn't say much, they'd made agreements. Any food they found they shared. If they found somewhere that looked safe enough to sleep, they each took turns keeping watch. He cleared away the bodies and she "set up camp" per se, and if they found someone who was still unfortunately alive, she looked away while he did what he could to help put the poor soul out of their misery. He didn't touch her, except for the vaguest nudge this way or that, and it was never inappropriate. Nothing like Teri's corny paperbacks, where when two people were trapped in horrific situations all they did was touch.
No. He was the perfect gentleman and she was grateful for life's small gifts. If she was the last girl alive and he was the last guy then she figured she must've done right by lady luck somwhere along the line.
They'd found refuge in a deserted hospital about a week after D-Day, and had set up camp in the cafeteria. He seemed to know his way around the hospital like the back of his hand, showing her where they kept the clean sheets and pillows (Gosh, pillows! She'd never thought of them as a luxury item before.) and had known which lever was to collapse the gurneys they slept on after they'd shifted them to the lunch room. He must be a doctor, she'd thought to herself, when it was her time to keep watch.
He never slept for more than an hour or two, but neither did she so it was fair. Sometimes she found scraps of books that she'd read to pass the time. One day she found half a yellow-pages and had spent a good fifteen minutes counting how many J Smiths there were in Manhattan. 42. Today she didn't read. There wasn't anything to read in the hospital besides burnt leaflets explaining what leukemia was, and how to protect yourself against AIDS. Her life was depressing enough without reading that. Besides, it wasn't as if it was relevant anymore anyway.
He started talking in his sleep that day. Not much that she could make sense out of, and when she did catch a word or two here and there she felt guilty- like a voyeur. He cried out for his mother, mumbled about some guy, "Nathan", always with a little furrow in his brow. He never talked about it when he woke up, and she didn't mention it. Silent agreement. Besides, for all she knew, she talked in her sleep too, and she knew that she probably wouldn't like being confronted about her dad or Zach either. Not anymore at least.
But as the days went by, and their situation began to sink in properly, he got worse. Sometimes he thrashed about, sometimes he was deadly still, but he always muttered about Nathan. Sometimes he screamed it, even, leaving her in no doubt that he had some real baggage with this Nathan dude, and so one night, when they were in some old art studio that he'd taken them to, she finally took it upon herself to shake him out of his dream. He woke all wide eyes and confusion.
"You were havin' a bad dream," she whispered, speaking for the first time in what seemed like a month. But then again it probably had been a month. She'd stopped counting the days.
He sat up, and the ratty towel he was using as a blanket flopped onto the floor. He didn't seem to notice.
"I'm sorry," he croaked, hazel eyes looking away, over at the melted canvas paintings. She wasn't much of an art connoisseur, but she knew these ones had been pretty good. At least they'd been pretty good until they'd been melted by the nuclear blast.
She shook her head. "No, it's fine..." She trailed off, retreating back a little, giving him space, air to breathe, all that.
The silence encroached on them once again, but she wasn't about to let it win so easily just yet.
"You said somethin' about Nathan," she said quietly, finally sitting down, folding her legs and hugging them against her chest. "Did you wanna talk about it?"
He paused, hesitating. "He was my brother."
"Older or younger?"
"Older."
She nodded, resting her chin on her knee, considering. Already this was the most they'd said to each other. Everything she knew about him she'd gotten from observations. He had the same abilities as her, because unlike all the other survivors she'd run into he wasn't covered in radioactive burns. He probably was a doctor or a paramedic or at least had done some kind of First Aid course, because besides his intimate knowledge of hospitals, he treated all the other survivors they met with a business-like detachment that she'd only ever seen from her family doctor back in Odessa. She didn't even know his name, but now she knew he'd had a brother. A brother that was important enough in his life to give him some pretty traumatic nightmares after their world had been literally blown up around them. That said a lot about the relationship this guy had with his brother. She hadn't given her own brother a second thought since D-Day. She wondered if he cared that she was probably dead.
He probably didn't.
"Was he... was he with you when..." She cast her eyes about the room. She couldn't say it explicitly, but she figured if she looked pointedly at the melted paintings, the warped metal and their tattered clothes then she wouldn't have to say the words. Saying the words meant admitting that she really was living this nightmare, and the little part of her that was still clinging to hope wouldn't survive the admission.
He nodded. By the look on his face, he couldn't say the words either.
"I'm sorry." It seemed insincere and fake, even to her, but there really wasn't anything else for her to say. She couldn't risk having him leave her to her own defences. She might be indestructible, but she was only 17 and she was smart enough to know that she needed him. He could deal with dead people and she couldn't. That was a big enough reason as it was.
He closed his eyes and rubbed his face with his hands. She wished she could tell what he was thinking.
He'd taken a deep, shuddering, and heart-wrenching breath by the time he reopened his eyes. "You can get some sleep if you want," he said and nudged the towel at her, shifting his legs so he could get the proper leverage to stand. "I'm not tired anymore."
But she stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. She was dainty, sure, but she wasn't trying to force him with strength. He paused, looking at her quizzically. She unfolded her legs and shuffled a bit closer to him, blue eyes connected with his. She couldn't think of anything to say that wasn't another an apology for something she didn't need to apologise for, so instead she ran her hand, the one that had been resting on his shoulder down his arm until her small and dainty (but perhaps not so dainty) hand was clutching his. She gave it a small squeeze, sending all the things she wanted to say- but couldn't find the words for- to him with her one simple gesture.
He squeezed back gently.
Somehow they ended up laying there together on the hard concrete floor of the art-studio, her back pressed into his chest, with his arm draped across her belly. They were still holding hands, and the flimsy towel was draped over the two of them in a feeble attempt to keep them warm. They slept there together, and he didn't call out Nathan's name this time.
They'd lived through the apocalypse, surviving on a genetic mistake which had deemed them more worthy than millions of others. They were living from day to day, surviving on what they could find. Living as cockroaches off scraps and in an unbearable situation.
But they weren't alone.
Author: Kathy
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, they belong to NBC. I'm just borrowing them.
Rating and Warnings: PG-13. There is a bit of an apocalypse.
Summary: Only two survive the apocalypse, but they bring their baggage with them.
Prompt: 03. Dream
Author's Notes: zenni was gonna beta this betaed this! The title comes from Apocalypse, Please by Muse.
At least she wasn't alone.
But silence got on her nerves more than she could really explain. Before, she probably would've found it a little creepy and weird, but after a nuclear blast of apocalyptic proportions blew apart the city, everything was so quiet that half the time she felt like screaming just so she'd know she was really was still alive. But he was quiet, so she was quiet. It seemed like the proper thing to do. It wouldn't be right to break the decorum of the situation, and what did she know? Maybe silence was the standard thing in a newly created radioactive dystopia. She'd never been in this situation before- hell, she and he were probably the first, she could face up to that fact- so she just went with what worked; their silence worked.
Even though they didn't say much, they'd made agreements. Any food they found they shared. If they found somewhere that looked safe enough to sleep, they each took turns keeping watch. He cleared away the bodies and she "set up camp" per se, and if they found someone who was still unfortunately alive, she looked away while he did what he could to help put the poor soul out of their misery. He didn't touch her, except for the vaguest nudge this way or that, and it was never inappropriate. Nothing like Teri's corny paperbacks, where when two people were trapped in horrific situations all they did was touch.
No. He was the perfect gentleman and she was grateful for life's small gifts. If she was the last girl alive and he was the last guy then she figured she must've done right by lady luck somwhere along the line.
They'd found refuge in a deserted hospital about a week after D-Day, and had set up camp in the cafeteria. He seemed to know his way around the hospital like the back of his hand, showing her where they kept the clean sheets and pillows (Gosh, pillows! She'd never thought of them as a luxury item before.) and had known which lever was to collapse the gurneys they slept on after they'd shifted them to the lunch room. He must be a doctor, she'd thought to herself, when it was her time to keep watch.
He never slept for more than an hour or two, but neither did she so it was fair. Sometimes she found scraps of books that she'd read to pass the time. One day she found half a yellow-pages and had spent a good fifteen minutes counting how many J Smiths there were in Manhattan. 42. Today she didn't read. There wasn't anything to read in the hospital besides burnt leaflets explaining what leukemia was, and how to protect yourself against AIDS. Her life was depressing enough without reading that. Besides, it wasn't as if it was relevant anymore anyway.
He started talking in his sleep that day. Not much that she could make sense out of, and when she did catch a word or two here and there she felt guilty- like a voyeur. He cried out for his mother, mumbled about some guy, "Nathan", always with a little furrow in his brow. He never talked about it when he woke up, and she didn't mention it. Silent agreement. Besides, for all she knew, she talked in her sleep too, and she knew that she probably wouldn't like being confronted about her dad or Zach either. Not anymore at least.
But as the days went by, and their situation began to sink in properly, he got worse. Sometimes he thrashed about, sometimes he was deadly still, but he always muttered about Nathan. Sometimes he screamed it, even, leaving her in no doubt that he had some real baggage with this Nathan dude, and so one night, when they were in some old art studio that he'd taken them to, she finally took it upon herself to shake him out of his dream. He woke all wide eyes and confusion.
"You were havin' a bad dream," she whispered, speaking for the first time in what seemed like a month. But then again it probably had been a month. She'd stopped counting the days.
He sat up, and the ratty towel he was using as a blanket flopped onto the floor. He didn't seem to notice.
"I'm sorry," he croaked, hazel eyes looking away, over at the melted canvas paintings. She wasn't much of an art connoisseur, but she knew these ones had been pretty good. At least they'd been pretty good until they'd been melted by the nuclear blast.
She shook her head. "No, it's fine..." She trailed off, retreating back a little, giving him space, air to breathe, all that.
The silence encroached on them once again, but she wasn't about to let it win so easily just yet.
"You said somethin' about Nathan," she said quietly, finally sitting down, folding her legs and hugging them against her chest. "Did you wanna talk about it?"
He paused, hesitating. "He was my brother."
"Older or younger?"
"Older."
She nodded, resting her chin on her knee, considering. Already this was the most they'd said to each other. Everything she knew about him she'd gotten from observations. He had the same abilities as her, because unlike all the other survivors she'd run into he wasn't covered in radioactive burns. He probably was a doctor or a paramedic or at least had done some kind of First Aid course, because besides his intimate knowledge of hospitals, he treated all the other survivors they met with a business-like detachment that she'd only ever seen from her family doctor back in Odessa. She didn't even know his name, but now she knew he'd had a brother. A brother that was important enough in his life to give him some pretty traumatic nightmares after their world had been literally blown up around them. That said a lot about the relationship this guy had with his brother. She hadn't given her own brother a second thought since D-Day. She wondered if he cared that she was probably dead.
He probably didn't.
"Was he... was he with you when..." She cast her eyes about the room. She couldn't say it explicitly, but she figured if she looked pointedly at the melted paintings, the warped metal and their tattered clothes then she wouldn't have to say the words. Saying the words meant admitting that she really was living this nightmare, and the little part of her that was still clinging to hope wouldn't survive the admission.
He nodded. By the look on his face, he couldn't say the words either.
"I'm sorry." It seemed insincere and fake, even to her, but there really wasn't anything else for her to say. She couldn't risk having him leave her to her own defences. She might be indestructible, but she was only 17 and she was smart enough to know that she needed him. He could deal with dead people and she couldn't. That was a big enough reason as it was.
He closed his eyes and rubbed his face with his hands. She wished she could tell what he was thinking.
He'd taken a deep, shuddering, and heart-wrenching breath by the time he reopened his eyes. "You can get some sleep if you want," he said and nudged the towel at her, shifting his legs so he could get the proper leverage to stand. "I'm not tired anymore."
But she stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. She was dainty, sure, but she wasn't trying to force him with strength. He paused, looking at her quizzically. She unfolded her legs and shuffled a bit closer to him, blue eyes connected with his. She couldn't think of anything to say that wasn't another an apology for something she didn't need to apologise for, so instead she ran her hand, the one that had been resting on his shoulder down his arm until her small and dainty (but perhaps not so dainty) hand was clutching his. She gave it a small squeeze, sending all the things she wanted to say- but couldn't find the words for- to him with her one simple gesture.
He squeezed back gently.
Somehow they ended up laying there together on the hard concrete floor of the art-studio, her back pressed into his chest, with his arm draped across her belly. They were still holding hands, and the flimsy towel was draped over the two of them in a feeble attempt to keep them warm. They slept there together, and he didn't call out Nathan's name this time.
They'd lived through the apocalypse, surviving on a genetic mistake which had deemed them more worthy than millions of others. They were living from day to day, surviving on what they could find. Living as cockroaches off scraps and in an unbearable situation.
But they weren't alone.