[stargate: atlantis fic] my country's only river, pg13
my country's only river
- stargate: atlantis
- john/elizabeth
- 2700
- pg13
- spoilers through lifeline, 4.02.
- more nanite/post-s3 fic. i really need to write something else.
It's the weight in his pocket.
It has to be.
The weight in his pocket - silver, solid, and soft - dragging him down. There's a chain; it must have gotten tangled around his knees. Worn smooth by caress after caress and it must be the weight, he thinks, the weight in his pocket, dragging him down.
Otherwise, he'd never have fallen so fast.
--
They go for a walk after the party, away from the camp. They talk softly and lightly. Their arms brush sometimes, and they both smile.
Neither of them notice the shallow slope in the dark, and he misses her hand as she tumbles. Panic flares, but her laughter cuts the silence as she sits up, her face and hair covered in dirt.
He hurries down the hill, checking her worriedly for cuts and bruises even as she smiles, lays a hand on his arm.
'I'm fine, John,' she says, and uses his shoulder to stand. She jumps slightly, as if to prove there's no pain. A twig is sticking out of her hair and she has a brown smudge on her nose. Without thinking, he uses his thumb to brush it away.
'Good,' he says, in an attempt to break the moment. But there are leaves in her hair and moonlight on her face and when she kisses him, he grins so widely that she laughs again.
'John,' she says, like his name is a much-loved line of poetry.
--
When he gives the first speech - about landing the City and prisoners of war and a tentative plan for a rescue operation - his voice doesn't crack. He doesn't stumble, or falter, or fail, because he's done that already.
Twenty minutes later he throws up over the side of the east pier, because he can't stand the sight of her empty bed.
--
When they pack up her things, they do so in silence. No sounds but the shuffling of their feet and the brown boxes against the floor. The room is too hot, too smothering, but it's better than the sound of the ocean.
--
When they go back to Earth, she takes him to her favorite spot an hour outside the city. It's dark and quiet and they sit on the roof of her car and she points out constellations that she's seen in books.
'I don't remember a lot of them,' she confesses. 'I think I know Pegasus' stars better.'
He leans back on the windshield and shows her Gemini and Aries and a few of them he makes up, just to tease her.
Between the two of them, they map the sky.
Just before she falls asleep - with her head against his shoulder and his hand tangled in her hair - he tells her he wishes he could take her home.
--
Rodney keeps her computer, her files, and her reports. He keeps flash-drives and memos and - though he tells no one - the box of sticky-notes she wrote to herself, of birthdays and names and family members and friends.
Lt. David Carlos - 9/12/82 - 5 sis - Nora, Tamar, Katie, Becca, Ashley, Niece Sarah (12/13/01) likes monkeys. Paris, hates spiders, lactose intlr.
(John remembers when Carlos was shot during the siege. She took his photo and pinned it to the note, but she never threw it away. She never threw any of them away.)
Rodney rifles through the box looking for Katie Brown's birthday, and discovers that her brother, Bill, is an engineer in Miami, her parents are deceased, and her favorite film is Casablanca.
"She likes black tea and she's afraid of fish," he says. He looks up at Teyla with wide eyes. "How did I not know she was afraid of fish?"
Teyla puts a hand on his shoulder, but she doesn't look at the note. Instead, she takes the framed photograph of the two of them that used to sit on the desk in her room. An Athosian festival, where they all had too much wine. They are both smiling, leaning against one another.
Ronon doesn't take anything, just seals the last box because no one else can do it.
'I don't need things,' is all he says when Rodney asks - awkward and miserable.
John tells himself he doesn't either, but he keeps his hand in his pocket, fingers clenched around the slowly-warming metal.
--
When he sends her things to Earth, he doesn't go with them.
He'll fix it. It's okay.
He has time.
--
John grabs her arm and forces her to stay behind in the 'jumper. He takes her face between his hands and asks if she's alright. He can feel the pulse in her throat against his fingertips - fast and erratic - and her eyes are wide, but she nods.
'I'm okay,' she promises. She kisses him to swear by it.
An hour later, he catches her just before she hits the ground.
--
There's no rescue operation.
No return.
No plan.
But he doesn't give up; just waits.
John sets his life by her father's pocket watch - its weight and chain and cold, smooth comfort - but he never opens it.
He knows it's illogical, but he swears he can hear the chick, chick, chick of the second hand as it moves steadily along, steadily along.
He doesn't want to see time pass.
--
She doesn't touch him. Barely speaks to him. The days drag and he paces restlessly and finally she apologizes, but her words are tight and for a moment she looks like she can't breathe.
'I'm not sure this is real,' she says, and nearly runs away from him after her confession.
He finds her in the mess at two in the morning three days later, nursing a cup of coffee so strong the smell makes his eyes hurt. The table is between the like a broken bridge, her father's pocket watch a tipping weight in the center.
She doesn't touch it.
John gropes for something to say - a joke, a distraction, even something meaningful - anything to break the silence. But she's curled so tightly around her mug, her eyes so distant that he doesn't know how to reach her. So he sits, feels useless and awkward until she seems to shake herself out of it, turns back to him.
She asks him questions about the City, about anything that she might have missed.
He hates to remind her: 'You were only out for a few hours.'
She stills, huffs out a sharp breath. 'Right.'
He fumbles for something to say.
The silence makes his ears itch.
Finally she meets his gaze. 'It was months, John. It - it felt like months.' Months without you, is what her eyes are saying, but he doesn't dare to hope for that kind of love.
He nods, says quietly, 'I actually know that feeling.'
'Yeah.'
He looks at the floor, out the window, at her cup of coffee. Eventually he takes a deep breath, and forces himself to speak.
'You know I'm not good with this kind of...stuff,' he waves his hand; the expression on his face is pained and awkward.
She takes pity on him. 'It's okay.'
'Yeah,' he mutters, and wishes he weren't so hopeless. 'Just. You know, if you need...to talk, or...whatever.'
Then she laughs, warm and soft and he might be offended, but he's just too glad to hear her, to see her smile. He grins - sheepish and self-deprecating and she reaches out, touches his hand. It's so instinctual he wonders if she even realizes. 'You really are too sweet sometimes.'
He turns his palm up to lace their fingers together. She tries to pull back, suddenly ridgid and terrified, but he holds fast.
'John,' she begs, but he shakes his head.
'This is real,' he says, firm and quiet and he can't look at her because even he isn't entirely sure what he means - this reality or this moment or them. He hears her breathing hitch, a long exhale on a shudder. Then she sighs, and curls her fingers around his.
--
Months pass.
Piece by piece, but he doesn't feel whole. There are things assembling and reassembling and sliding into place - there are more smiles and looser shoulders, but the shadow is the same.
He overhears Teyla in the hall one night, her voice a desperate sigh. 'I fear we lost them both,' she says. Ronon doesn't respond, but it's an answer in itself.
--
He's lost weight.
He tightens his belt another two notches and puts in an order for a new pair. It'll be weeks, he knows, and he doesn't care beyond the fact that the watch - smooth and familiar now - will have to find a new home.
He thinks about putting it in a drawer, but it's much too final. Too out of sight and out of mind.
He thinks about leaving it on his desk, but the moonlight from his window always hits it just so, and the reminder stings like salt.
He tries to leave the room without it - baby steps he thinks, as he makes his way to the mess hall. He gets around the corner before he goes back, grabs it from the center of the bed and shoves it in his breast pocket.
Later - when he's running fast and firing blind - the watch thuds against his chest like a second heartbeat, forcing his along.
--
'Sheppard, get down!'
He hears the shot before he hears the voice. The slow motion is so cliched, he thinks; then there's so much pain and pressure and he falls hard, but it must be the extra weight.
--
'I can't keep doing this, John,' she gasps, pulls away from his lips. Her breathing is shaky and deep and he shudders; waits. 'I can't be this...'
His patience runs thin.
'This what?' he snaps.
She meets his eyes. 'This unimportant.'
He stares at her dumbly; doesn't know what to say or do when she slips out of his arms, straightens her clothes, runs a hand through her hair.
He swallows tightly.
'You're not-'
'I've made up my mind, John.' When she faces him there is a fierce resolution in her eyes, barely masking the pain. 'I'm not sticking around to act as a floor-mat for the military.'
It stings.
He isn't sure if it's supposed to, but it stings.
He's so hurt and he doesn't know why, so bitter and angry and she's supposed to be on his side, supposed to trust him, supposed to believe in him and them and this City and if she leaves-
'Fine.'
His voice is so cold, so empty.
'John-' she starts. He pushes past her toward the door. She grabs his arm.
'John, wait.'
He tries to shrug her off but she steps between him and his escape, holds his shoulders and stares down the anger.
'Wait.' She orders, then softer: 'Wait.'
As if by proximity, all her exhaustion transfers and he slumps, sighs, leans into her. She wraps her arms around his neck and holds, tighter than he can ever remember. He rests his hands on the small of her back and buries his face in her hair.
It takes him a minute to realize that she's crying.
Her fingers curl around his neck and she turns her face into his shoulder and he's pretty sure he's not supposed to know, not supposed to feel the hot trails of water. He pulls her closer all the same.
'This is such a bad idea, John,' she whispers.
He sighs, his throat tight. 'It'll work out.'
When she pulls back her eyes are glassy, her smile devastating. 'No, it won't. We've been lucky too many times.'
--
Her face is covered with dirt.
It's the first thing that fully makes sense. There are small leaves in her hair and smudges of brown across her cheeks, the side of her nose, her forehead, along her mouth and chin.
Her face is covered with dirt, and she looks ridiculous, he thinks. It's funny. There's a twig sticking out from behind her ear.
She's smiling.
He blinks.
She's gone.
He inhales - there's pain,
then black.
--
When he wakes up, it is mostly quiet, and very white. There's still gunfire, but it's barely an echo. Whether it's time or distance that's passed he doesn't know. Two people are leaning over him and he can hear a third voice in the background, a stream of unintelligible words.
'John?' a voice says. 'John, can you hear me?'
For a long moment, he keeps his eyes closed. With the ringing and the static hum and the beeping and the silence, he can pretend. With his eyes closed around the bright white and shadows, he sees her smile. I'm glad you're home, it says. She never does. Never needs to.
When he opens his eyes, he remembers the past-tense.
'Yeah,' he says. 'I can hear you.'
When his vision focuses, he sees Teyla. Her eyes are frightened, but her smile is true.
There are no leaves in her hair.
John tries to breathe but it hurts so much. 'What-'
'You got shot,' Ronon says gruffly, the twinge of anger to his voice is familiar and welcome.
All of a sudden Rodney's face appears, almost as pale as the light around him. 'What is it with you and this - this - propensity to get killed wherever-'
'Leave him alone, Rodney,' he hears, but she isn't there. Instead it's Keller and a nurse, ushering them all away. 'Let him rest,' she says firmly, but at the same time checks his pulse and his pupils and the small bandage on his chest.
'What happened?' he manages. His voice is so airy and his expression so tight that Keller ups the pain medication without a word.
'You were shot in the chest,' she says.
The warm numb that spreads through his veins enables him to glance down. He tries to pull the hospital scrubs aside, but his fingers are thick and his mind is hazy.
'Too small,' he mumbles. 'Been shot. Not the same.'
He barely catches her troubled, sympathetic glance before he falls asleep.
--
When he wakes up, Rodney brings him a small, brown box full of metal pieces and springs.
'I can, uh, fix it. If you want. I mean, I can try.'
John stares at the glass and the gold and the thin strip of the second hand, now unprotected out of its casing. On the other side of the box there's a bullet, small and round and not quite like those from Earth weapons, but the idea is the same.
'It fell apart when we moved you.'
John swallows tightly, and picks up a little piece of metal with a red tip.
'It uh, it saved your life. Keller says you would have died.'
There's a scar on his chest with the same ragged edge.
'Anyway, just let me know if you want me to...you know.'
He doesn't notice when Rodney leaves. Doesn't notice the nurses or the doctors or the changing lights. He only notices the thin piece of metal, and the bullet that took away his time.
--
He pulls her aside - doesn't care who sees or hears - just tugs her into a dark corner and holds fast and kisses her deeply. 'I don't care,' he promises. She shudders. He pulls her closer, and presses his lips against her forehead. 'I don't care. You're still Elizabeth. You're still my-'
His voice breaks.
She kisses him.
They go.
--
No one says anything about irony.
John stares at the black and purple and blue bruise on his chest, and thinks that it looks a little like Australia. Maybe more like Canada. There's a small bandage over part of it, in the corner not quite beyond where the colors begin to fade into his skin, lightening as they go. The capital, he thinks. It's white and square, like a little plot-point. A little destination. Journey ends here, right above his heart, right where the little piece of metal lodged itself so neatly, so easy to remove.
It's a blue map, with black for the mountains and purple for the cities and a thin little scar for the country's only river.
- stargate: atlantis
- john/elizabeth
- 2700
- pg13
- spoilers through lifeline, 4.02.
- more nanite/post-s3 fic. i really need to write something else.
It's the weight in his pocket.
It has to be.
The weight in his pocket - silver, solid, and soft - dragging him down. There's a chain; it must have gotten tangled around his knees. Worn smooth by caress after caress and it must be the weight, he thinks, the weight in his pocket, dragging him down.
Otherwise, he'd never have fallen so fast.
--
They go for a walk after the party, away from the camp. They talk softly and lightly. Their arms brush sometimes, and they both smile.
Neither of them notice the shallow slope in the dark, and he misses her hand as she tumbles. Panic flares, but her laughter cuts the silence as she sits up, her face and hair covered in dirt.
He hurries down the hill, checking her worriedly for cuts and bruises even as she smiles, lays a hand on his arm.
'I'm fine, John,' she says, and uses his shoulder to stand. She jumps slightly, as if to prove there's no pain. A twig is sticking out of her hair and she has a brown smudge on her nose. Without thinking, he uses his thumb to brush it away.
'Good,' he says, in an attempt to break the moment. But there are leaves in her hair and moonlight on her face and when she kisses him, he grins so widely that she laughs again.
'John,' she says, like his name is a much-loved line of poetry.
--
When he gives the first speech - about landing the City and prisoners of war and a tentative plan for a rescue operation - his voice doesn't crack. He doesn't stumble, or falter, or fail, because he's done that already.
Twenty minutes later he throws up over the side of the east pier, because he can't stand the sight of her empty bed.
--
When they pack up her things, they do so in silence. No sounds but the shuffling of their feet and the brown boxes against the floor. The room is too hot, too smothering, but it's better than the sound of the ocean.
--
When they go back to Earth, she takes him to her favorite spot an hour outside the city. It's dark and quiet and they sit on the roof of her car and she points out constellations that she's seen in books.
'I don't remember a lot of them,' she confesses. 'I think I know Pegasus' stars better.'
He leans back on the windshield and shows her Gemini and Aries and a few of them he makes up, just to tease her.
Between the two of them, they map the sky.
Just before she falls asleep - with her head against his shoulder and his hand tangled in her hair - he tells her he wishes he could take her home.
--
Rodney keeps her computer, her files, and her reports. He keeps flash-drives and memos and - though he tells no one - the box of sticky-notes she wrote to herself, of birthdays and names and family members and friends.
Lt. David Carlos - 9/12/82 - 5 sis - Nora, Tamar, Katie, Becca, Ashley, Niece Sarah (12/13/01) likes monkeys. Paris, hates spiders, lactose intlr.
(John remembers when Carlos was shot during the siege. She took his photo and pinned it to the note, but she never threw it away. She never threw any of them away.)
Rodney rifles through the box looking for Katie Brown's birthday, and discovers that her brother, Bill, is an engineer in Miami, her parents are deceased, and her favorite film is Casablanca.
"She likes black tea and she's afraid of fish," he says. He looks up at Teyla with wide eyes. "How did I not know she was afraid of fish?"
Teyla puts a hand on his shoulder, but she doesn't look at the note. Instead, she takes the framed photograph of the two of them that used to sit on the desk in her room. An Athosian festival, where they all had too much wine. They are both smiling, leaning against one another.
Ronon doesn't take anything, just seals the last box because no one else can do it.
'I don't need things,' is all he says when Rodney asks - awkward and miserable.
John tells himself he doesn't either, but he keeps his hand in his pocket, fingers clenched around the slowly-warming metal.
--
When he sends her things to Earth, he doesn't go with them.
He'll fix it. It's okay.
He has time.
--
John grabs her arm and forces her to stay behind in the 'jumper. He takes her face between his hands and asks if she's alright. He can feel the pulse in her throat against his fingertips - fast and erratic - and her eyes are wide, but she nods.
'I'm okay,' she promises. She kisses him to swear by it.
An hour later, he catches her just before she hits the ground.
--
There's no rescue operation.
No return.
No plan.
But he doesn't give up; just waits.
John sets his life by her father's pocket watch - its weight and chain and cold, smooth comfort - but he never opens it.
He knows it's illogical, but he swears he can hear the chick, chick, chick of the second hand as it moves steadily along, steadily along.
He doesn't want to see time pass.
--
She doesn't touch him. Barely speaks to him. The days drag and he paces restlessly and finally she apologizes, but her words are tight and for a moment she looks like she can't breathe.
'I'm not sure this is real,' she says, and nearly runs away from him after her confession.
He finds her in the mess at two in the morning three days later, nursing a cup of coffee so strong the smell makes his eyes hurt. The table is between the like a broken bridge, her father's pocket watch a tipping weight in the center.
She doesn't touch it.
John gropes for something to say - a joke, a distraction, even something meaningful - anything to break the silence. But she's curled so tightly around her mug, her eyes so distant that he doesn't know how to reach her. So he sits, feels useless and awkward until she seems to shake herself out of it, turns back to him.
She asks him questions about the City, about anything that she might have missed.
He hates to remind her: 'You were only out for a few hours.'
She stills, huffs out a sharp breath. 'Right.'
He fumbles for something to say.
The silence makes his ears itch.
Finally she meets his gaze. 'It was months, John. It - it felt like months.' Months without you, is what her eyes are saying, but he doesn't dare to hope for that kind of love.
He nods, says quietly, 'I actually know that feeling.'
'Yeah.'
He looks at the floor, out the window, at her cup of coffee. Eventually he takes a deep breath, and forces himself to speak.
'You know I'm not good with this kind of...stuff,' he waves his hand; the expression on his face is pained and awkward.
She takes pity on him. 'It's okay.'
'Yeah,' he mutters, and wishes he weren't so hopeless. 'Just. You know, if you need...to talk, or...whatever.'
Then she laughs, warm and soft and he might be offended, but he's just too glad to hear her, to see her smile. He grins - sheepish and self-deprecating and she reaches out, touches his hand. It's so instinctual he wonders if she even realizes. 'You really are too sweet sometimes.'
He turns his palm up to lace their fingers together. She tries to pull back, suddenly ridgid and terrified, but he holds fast.
'John,' she begs, but he shakes his head.
'This is real,' he says, firm and quiet and he can't look at her because even he isn't entirely sure what he means - this reality or this moment or them. He hears her breathing hitch, a long exhale on a shudder. Then she sighs, and curls her fingers around his.
--
Months pass.
Piece by piece, but he doesn't feel whole. There are things assembling and reassembling and sliding into place - there are more smiles and looser shoulders, but the shadow is the same.
He overhears Teyla in the hall one night, her voice a desperate sigh. 'I fear we lost them both,' she says. Ronon doesn't respond, but it's an answer in itself.
--
He's lost weight.
He tightens his belt another two notches and puts in an order for a new pair. It'll be weeks, he knows, and he doesn't care beyond the fact that the watch - smooth and familiar now - will have to find a new home.
He thinks about putting it in a drawer, but it's much too final. Too out of sight and out of mind.
He thinks about leaving it on his desk, but the moonlight from his window always hits it just so, and the reminder stings like salt.
He tries to leave the room without it - baby steps he thinks, as he makes his way to the mess hall. He gets around the corner before he goes back, grabs it from the center of the bed and shoves it in his breast pocket.
Later - when he's running fast and firing blind - the watch thuds against his chest like a second heartbeat, forcing his along.
--
'Sheppard, get down!'
He hears the shot before he hears the voice. The slow motion is so cliched, he thinks; then there's so much pain and pressure and he falls hard, but it must be the extra weight.
--
'I can't keep doing this, John,' she gasps, pulls away from his lips. Her breathing is shaky and deep and he shudders; waits. 'I can't be this...'
His patience runs thin.
'This what?' he snaps.
She meets his eyes. 'This unimportant.'
He stares at her dumbly; doesn't know what to say or do when she slips out of his arms, straightens her clothes, runs a hand through her hair.
He swallows tightly.
'You're not-'
'I've made up my mind, John.' When she faces him there is a fierce resolution in her eyes, barely masking the pain. 'I'm not sticking around to act as a floor-mat for the military.'
It stings.
He isn't sure if it's supposed to, but it stings.
He's so hurt and he doesn't know why, so bitter and angry and she's supposed to be on his side, supposed to trust him, supposed to believe in him and them and this City and if she leaves-
'Fine.'
His voice is so cold, so empty.
'John-' she starts. He pushes past her toward the door. She grabs his arm.
'John, wait.'
He tries to shrug her off but she steps between him and his escape, holds his shoulders and stares down the anger.
'Wait.' She orders, then softer: 'Wait.'
As if by proximity, all her exhaustion transfers and he slumps, sighs, leans into her. She wraps her arms around his neck and holds, tighter than he can ever remember. He rests his hands on the small of her back and buries his face in her hair.
It takes him a minute to realize that she's crying.
Her fingers curl around his neck and she turns her face into his shoulder and he's pretty sure he's not supposed to know, not supposed to feel the hot trails of water. He pulls her closer all the same.
'This is such a bad idea, John,' she whispers.
He sighs, his throat tight. 'It'll work out.'
When she pulls back her eyes are glassy, her smile devastating. 'No, it won't. We've been lucky too many times.'
--
Her face is covered with dirt.
It's the first thing that fully makes sense. There are small leaves in her hair and smudges of brown across her cheeks, the side of her nose, her forehead, along her mouth and chin.
Her face is covered with dirt, and she looks ridiculous, he thinks. It's funny. There's a twig sticking out from behind her ear.
She's smiling.
He blinks.
She's gone.
He inhales - there's pain,
then black.
--
When he wakes up, it is mostly quiet, and very white. There's still gunfire, but it's barely an echo. Whether it's time or distance that's passed he doesn't know. Two people are leaning over him and he can hear a third voice in the background, a stream of unintelligible words.
'John?' a voice says. 'John, can you hear me?'
For a long moment, he keeps his eyes closed. With the ringing and the static hum and the beeping and the silence, he can pretend. With his eyes closed around the bright white and shadows, he sees her smile. I'm glad you're home, it says. She never does. Never needs to.
When he opens his eyes, he remembers the past-tense.
'Yeah,' he says. 'I can hear you.'
When his vision focuses, he sees Teyla. Her eyes are frightened, but her smile is true.
There are no leaves in her hair.
John tries to breathe but it hurts so much. 'What-'
'You got shot,' Ronon says gruffly, the twinge of anger to his voice is familiar and welcome.
All of a sudden Rodney's face appears, almost as pale as the light around him. 'What is it with you and this - this - propensity to get killed wherever-'
'Leave him alone, Rodney,' he hears, but she isn't there. Instead it's Keller and a nurse, ushering them all away. 'Let him rest,' she says firmly, but at the same time checks his pulse and his pupils and the small bandage on his chest.
'What happened?' he manages. His voice is so airy and his expression so tight that Keller ups the pain medication without a word.
'You were shot in the chest,' she says.
The warm numb that spreads through his veins enables him to glance down. He tries to pull the hospital scrubs aside, but his fingers are thick and his mind is hazy.
'Too small,' he mumbles. 'Been shot. Not the same.'
He barely catches her troubled, sympathetic glance before he falls asleep.
--
When he wakes up, Rodney brings him a small, brown box full of metal pieces and springs.
'I can, uh, fix it. If you want. I mean, I can try.'
John stares at the glass and the gold and the thin strip of the second hand, now unprotected out of its casing. On the other side of the box there's a bullet, small and round and not quite like those from Earth weapons, but the idea is the same.
'It fell apart when we moved you.'
John swallows tightly, and picks up a little piece of metal with a red tip.
'It uh, it saved your life. Keller says you would have died.'
There's a scar on his chest with the same ragged edge.
'Anyway, just let me know if you want me to...you know.'
He doesn't notice when Rodney leaves. Doesn't notice the nurses or the doctors or the changing lights. He only notices the thin piece of metal, and the bullet that took away his time.
--
He pulls her aside - doesn't care who sees or hears - just tugs her into a dark corner and holds fast and kisses her deeply. 'I don't care,' he promises. She shudders. He pulls her closer, and presses his lips against her forehead. 'I don't care. You're still Elizabeth. You're still my-'
His voice breaks.
She kisses him.
They go.
--
No one says anything about irony.
John stares at the black and purple and blue bruise on his chest, and thinks that it looks a little like Australia. Maybe more like Canada. There's a small bandage over part of it, in the corner not quite beyond where the colors begin to fade into his skin, lightening as they go. The capital, he thinks. It's white and square, like a little plot-point. A little destination. Journey ends here, right above his heart, right where the little piece of metal lodged itself so neatly, so easy to remove.
It's a blue map, with black for the mountains and purple for the cities and a thin little scar for the country's only river.