Archive of Our Own ^beta

It is a week before Shiva returns.

It is not the first time that Ezekiel has heard her roars; they echo in his head, in the quiet moments when he is not speaking to his people, and he has deliberately kept busy because of it. But when he sees his men pause, frown, looking around, he realises that they heard her as well. That she is real.

He runs through his kingdom in a most un-king-like way, and does not care. The gatekeepers have already hauled open the gates for her, but she has made it barely feet inside before collapsing to the ground, side heaving, just inside the shade of the wall. Her left foot is a twisted, bloody mess.

“Water! Bring her water!” he shouts, and hopes that there is some echo of his kingly status there.

He kneels at her side, and she presses her nose into his palm with a ghost of a chuff, as if she is too weak to do anything else.

He left her. He left her, and she lived, and she lives still. She is more a queen than he will ever be a king.

It takes six men to carry her into the coolest building they have. Ezekiel can feel the heat radiating from her skin, and even the water he holds carefully to her mouth does not seem to help her panting. But she seems more settled when Ezekiel strokes her cheek and stays beside her, and in a terrible echo of how he came to be hers in the first place, he does so.

They do not have a vet, but they have been lucky enough to have a doctor almost since the beginning. And for all that Shiva has been healthier than all but the luckiest of the human residents of the Kingdom, Jana has learned about her, and Ezekiel supposes that neither human nor veterinary medicine would exactly have the tools it would have in a perfect world.

Besides, they are all mammals. All warm flesh and soft hair, and the same bones placed slightly differently. Ezekiel went back to the zoo one more time after rescuing Shiva, to steal what medicines and textbooks he could. Both he and Jana have read them over the years.

Shiva has been easier than the horses, at least.

“It will be okay, my Shiva,” he promises her, words that he hopes that he can keep.

He strokes her brow, hushes the faint growl in her throat as Jana puts in a drip to give her what fluids they can. The Ringer’s is far past the shelf life that it should have, but it is their only choice, Shiva’s gums pale and her skin tenting terribly beneath Ezekiel’s hands. All that they have is Carprofen for her pain, and he cannot help but think of her first accident, the sterile hospital, the fresh new drugs and tools, no question of having to ‘make do’. Ezekiel would make do on a hundred surgeries on his own flesh if he could have the ideal tools for Shiva now.

He remains beside her head to keep her calm, and can only watch as Jana examines Shiva’s foot. The wound is infected, slivers of bone showing through the flesh, but if she has lived this long then it cannot be an injury from the dead.

Ezekiel vows that it will not claim her.

They cannot risk full surgery, and they need more supplies than they have. Shiva loves no others like she loves Ezekiel, but there are those that she will tolerate. He makes sure to feed her, fresh meat rather than carrion, and dissolves glucose tablets in her water to give her as much as he can. Jana does a preliminary clean of the wound using what antiseptics they have, sets up fresh fluids, and pronounces her stable enough for now.

He hopes that people will not have thought to raid veterinary facilities in the way that they raided human medical ones. Jana does not usually leave the Kingdom, she is too important to them, but he needs her for this. Despite everything that is happening, despite the danger that they are in, he handpicks a handful of his best soldiers, and leaves Carol and Richard in command.

Jeffers Pet is far enough outside Atlanta that they are able to approach on horseback relatively safely. The warehouse is intact, the doors broken open but none of the wasted having found their way inside. Two of his men keep guard, waiting at the entrance with Jana, while Ezekiel and the others sweep the building.

In the end, they take more than just what they need for Shiva. Things may be out of date, but many of them are still sealed, and they fill up on horse wormers, hoof putty, vaccines and eyedrops, thousands of dollars before the turn, price labels long since rotted away now. They can review their quality back at the Kingdom; for now, they take anything promising. But it is Shiva who has brought them here, and it is for her that they collect surface disinfectants, iodine, clotting gel, scalpels and sutures. Ezekiel even collects milk matrix, to supplement what meat they will find for her.

(Will find for her. She will survive. He has failed her once by losing his faith; he will not do so again.)

They cannot risk going further into the city in search of more Ringer’s, more analgesics. They do not have the machines that they would need to put her under anaesthetic. Whatever work they do, Shiva will have to be awake for it.

They return before Shiva’s bag of fluids has even run dry. She wakes from her doze as they approach, and raises her head to Ezekiel before he kneels to save her the effort. A soft chuff rumbles through her chest, and he reciprocates the sound, stroking her cheeks and her shoulders. Her coat is matted and dirty; he will need to brush her. He knows that it soothes her, and hopes that it will do so after her ankle is back together.

Even with what analgesics they can bare, Shiva growls and shivers as Jana works on her ankle. Ezekiel sits cross-legged beside her, unafraid of the teeth that clack together just inches from his hand, speaking soft stories from his youth as if she will somehow understand. But there is nothing that he can do but be there for her, as Jana picks out the most splintered pieces of bone, cuts away the dead flesh.

It takes two men to wrench the bones back into alignment, and they have no pins but Jana wraps it with wire while Shiva snarls and shakes her head, claws unsheathing but not striking, not lashing out. Ezekiel hurries his words, wishing that he could take the pain for her, but Jana works as quickly as she can to finish put the wound back together, enough to heal but not closed in a way that would trap dirt in, and put on a splint and cast that, they hope, will be enough to work with even Shiva’s mighty strength.

It is like some nineteenth-century human surgery, quick and bloody and cut through with pain. Only this time, the screams are Shiva’s, not a human’s. But finally it is done, and quiet falls again.

He thanks his men, quietly, knowing that he cannot look anything other than composed in front of them.

It is the cost of being a king, he supposes, not a mayor or a spokesperson or whatever other word people might find for their leader. King comes with pomp, with expectations, and perhaps there used to be kings who were not beholden to their people, but Ezekiel is not one of them. He has led his soldiers, yes, and he has sat on his throne with Shiva at his side. But he has had soil beneath his nails to dig graves for the dead, he has wiped the tears of widows and orphans and parents who have lost children (which does not even have a word, did not have a word before the wasting of the world, because they thought it was not needed), he has given up on his dignity and chased lost chickens through mud and dust. Every death has been his responsibility, taken on his conscience so that those around him do not have to blame themselves.

Shiva is as much a weight around his neck as the people who threw themselves in front of bullets for his sake. Perhaps more; she did not have the same capacity of choice as them.

But then again, their choices had been made on instinct, not with all of the power of thought that Man can muster. Death after death, laid heavy on his soul.

He feeds Shiva by hand, and she delicately takes the raw meat from between his fingers without once hurting him. He has known dogs less careful with their teeth. It is followed with milk matrix, and only when Shiva slips into a shallow sleep does he extricate himself from beneath her and leave to clean the sweat – his – and the saliva – hers – from his clothes.

“Ezekiel,” says Carol, as he is exiting his rooms. He has to pause for a moment before being able to face her, her eyes that miss nothing and her mind that understands and quantifies all at once. “How is Shiva?”

That question, at least, he can answer. “Stable. The wound will heal. Her ankle…” he trails off, and shrugs. Carol does not need his full, grandiose performance. “I will look after her, as she has looked after me.”

“You don’t think that she’ll ever be a fighter again.”

A sigh escapes him, despite his best intentions. Shiva will not be helpless; she still has jaws that can sever a man’s spine, paws that have the strength behind them to rip one of the wasted clean in two. But even in a zoo, in the world before, such an injury as she has suffered would have caused keepers to ask whether it was cruel to keep her alive. She will walk again, he thinks, but it will always be stiff, her ankle weakened and potentially twisted. She may yet prove to have nerve damage which will make it hard for her to even feel her foot – not a problem within the safe walls of the Kingdom, but outside there is broken glass, jagged bone, twisted metal and concrete.

“I think her place will continue to be within these walls,” he replies.

Carol’s expression softens, and she reaches up to rub his arm. It is warm, after he has scrubbed himself with cold water to feel clean, but more than that it is strange to be treated so familiarly. A king is not treated such, after all.

But then her hand falls away. “It’ll be good to have you back,” she says, and it carries a whole weight of warning behind it.

The sound of Shiva’s voice was the first thing that had stirred him beyond the doorway of his rooms. She is the first thing that has led him to step foot outside the Kingdom.

Because she is alive. Because she lives, and he owes her everything that he can offer in order that it may stay that way.

The rest of his people still live, as well.

“Come,” he says. “You should see her. She is in need of a little grooming, but she is as beautiful as ever.”

Carol looks him over coolly, but smiles when he produces the grooming mitt from his pocket. It is white cotton, with a yellow rubber palm covered with soft thick bristles, and was originally meant for housecats. He would not use it in front of most people, of course, and has a simple horse’s grooming brush as well which is plain black, and will raise no eyebrows. But Carol knows a little more of him, and of Shiva, already.

“She appreciate that, then?” Carol nods to the grooming mitt, still smiling.

“More than would befit her fearsome reputation.”

“I know people like that, as well. Sure, I’d be glad to see her again.”

He spreads his arms effusively. Already, it feels a little easier, and a little more important, to play his role. “Then come! Let us see to the needs of my Queen.”

Be it strips of meat, be it iodine swabs, be it concealing her weakness from their enemies lest it make her even more of a symbolic target than ever. Carol shakes her head, bittersweet and fond, but follows him.

And, slowly, he feels himself awaken.