Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It's a cold day today. 

Yesterday it was a pleasant 70 degrees, with the sun shining and a cool breeze whistling through shattered windows and vacant streets. Today is much the opposite: it's 35 degrees out, and that's being generous. A few years ago, Grian would've complained about waking up this morning in his tank top and shorts with ice-cold fingers and toes, but he's long past that point now. Everyone is; this wild, unpredictable weather has been the new normal, especially now that the radiation from the nuclear war has really sunk its tendrils into the atmosphere.

No, he didn't complain when he woke up shivering. Instead, he’d just stumbled out of his rickety bed and pulled on the layers of clothes he keeps a few steps away for days like these. All this to say, though, he really could've done without the wind. 

"Christ,” Cleo bites out, teeth chattering as she pulls her jacket closer to her body. “This wind is awful.”

“Think there's a hurricane coming,” Etho murmurs, voice muffled by the thick, furry hood of his jacket. 

Grian sighs, brushing past them. He crouches on the edge of the rooftop, distinctly ignoring the way his every feather quivers in protest as the wind whips through his wings. “All the more reason for a supply run,” he laments, and is not pouting. He's 28 years old, he definitely doesn't pout. 

For as much as he doesn't complain about the stupid weather anymore, the desire to curl up in bed and do absolutely nothing when it's this bitter outside hasn't gone away. His every bone is aching for the warmth of his blanket pile. 

This is what the three of them get for being complacent yesterday. It was the first warm day in a week or so, and they'd spent much of the day lazing around outside, soaking in the sunshine while they could. Who knows— maybe they wouldn't have had to leave their beds this morning at all if they'd just taken care of their diminished first aid and food stock yesterday.

But that's neither here nor there, and Grian can't really bring himself to regret it. He'd ended the day with the sun still singing on his skin, his freckles speckled dark against his red cheeks, and it was everything. These cold spells have a way of spreading their frost past skin and bone, until it crystallizes and crackles over your very soul. They'd all needed that chance to thaw their bruised, numb hearts.

A quick scan of the street below them tells Grian it's desolate. This block of the city usually is— most people aren't willing to fight the three of them for whatever supplies are left to scrounge up in the few buildings they've yet to raid.

Truthfully, they're going to have to encroach on someone's territory soon, especially if they can't find someone with a supply shipment coming in from out of town. It goes like this: they ask for a cut of a shipment, and give an offer in return— warm, high quality clothes, loaded weapons, things of that sort. Usually, their offers are declined with a few flowery, unnecessary words; to which Etho adorns his darkest clothes and his quietest steps and infiltrates a base or two, just for intel. Shipment locations, times, dates. And then… well. The three of them have some fun, and usually a nice meal after.

But they haven’t caught word of a shipment for a couple of months now, so it's back to the tried and true looting and scooting for the three of them. 

“It looks clear. Want me to fly the perimeter?” Grian glances over his shoulder first at Cleo, then at Etho.  

“Honestly? I sorta want to get this over with,” Etho says, a little sheepish as he shifts his mask further up over his nose.

Grian snickers into the back of his glove.

Cleo shifts forward then, hovering over Grian's head. The sleeve of her jacket scratches against his hood when she reaches out to point somewhere left. “That supermarket on the east side. We haven't cleared it, have we?”

Grian turns on his heel and peeks around Cleo’s leg to look at Etho, who shakes his head. And then he hums, and that can only ever mean one thing. 

“There's a ‘but,’” Cleo sighs. 

"But,” Etho drawls, predictably. “It's reinfected. Or it was. Uh, according to Gem’s last scout, anyway.”

“She scouted three days ago,” Grian deadpans. How much did Etho really think would've changed since then?

Etho holds his arms up, placating and defeated. “Hey. You never know, Grian.”

Grian raises his eyebrows, but otherwise doesn't dignify that with a response. 

“Welp!” Cleo starts with a grin. “Enough standing around. Place won't raid itself!

Her hand claps him hard on the shoulder; she must have underestimated her own strength, because it immediately sends him teetering on the precipice of the building. And oh, Grian has an idea. It takes everything in him to not giggle maniacally, but he can’t hold back the grin that spreads on his lips as he tumbles head over heels right off the roof. 

The world spins with him for a moment; the air in free-fall feels more like frozen daggers digging into his skin, even past his layers of clothes. He spreads his wings as far as they go, until the wind catches beneath them and the ground isn't rushing toward him anymore.

Above him, Cleo screams in shock, long and horrified. Etho yells Grian’s name, too, from somewhere behind her as she throws herself to her knees to lean over the side, and—

Grian is looking up at her, wings beating as he hovers. They make silent eye contact for one, two, three, four seconds, where Grian’s lips just keep curling up and up, and there’s a tsunami building in his throat. Her eye twitches in something like incredulity. 

“I fucking hate you.”

And the dam breaks until he’s cackling, barely able to see even the shape of Cleo’s fluffy red hair for the tears of joy in his eyes. Another body leans over— Etho of course— and he just keeps laughing, loud and unabashed. Etho smiles so wide his eyes crinkle.

“He’s a prankster, this guy.”

Cleo points a finger in Grian's face, stern despite the mirth in their voice as they threaten, “This isn’t over. I’ll get you when you least expect it.” 

Grian is too busy giggling to agree with Etho when he suggests they get a move on before Cleo actually kills somebody. He follows them regardless, cheeks aching and lips chapped.

“Oh, this place is crawling,” Cleo hisses as she peeks over a chunk of concrete and into the windows of the supermarket.

A particularly sharp yowl from an undead sends her crouching right back down so fast she stumbles on her heels, careening back into Etho a little. He steadies her with one hand without so much as a glance, listening intently to the cacophony of gargles and groans. He’s always had a strangely uncanny ability to pinpoint a dozen things from their noises alone. Personally, for Grian, a zombie is a zombie is a zombie; what’s it matter about the species or whatever? They’re all going to have to die just the same. 

Etho starts with his murmuring; something something, well there are least 15— something something, can’t just rush it something…  

Grian is in the middle of stifling a yawn when Cleo, savior of his sanity, groans quietly in annoyance. Because as endearing as Etho can be— which is very, by the way— Grian and Cleo really like rushing things. On Grian’s part, it’s not because he’s impulsive; if anything, he couldn’t be further from it. He loves his plans and his strings and his knowledge. But they’ve been through a hundred situations exactly like this before, and the plan they sit here and come up with is going to be entirely identical to the plan they used those other hundred times. 

He gives Etho a gentle nudge. “Etho, the horse is dead, dude. Let’s go.”

Etho glares at the two of them, but it gets weaker and weaker the longer he stares at the deranged, euphoric grin on Cleo’s face. He chances a glance at Grian, maybe in the hopes that his logical brain will win the fight for control. He just starts wiggling his eyebrows and bouncing on the balls of his feet, matching Cleo’s sharp-toothed smile perfectly. And Etho, bless his heart, shifts between the two of them with a gaze of utter despair. Resigned, he rises to his feet, hands on his hips.

Cleo and Grian share a knowing look, though; they can tell when Etho hides his smiles behind that mask of his. He’s not inconspicuous in the slightest, and he revels in a little bit of mayhem the same as the two of them.

Grian stands, and Cleo follows. The three of them nod at each other, ready to move silently— if these particular infected are irradiated, they'll have to be quiet and cautious. The cataracts from the radiation leave them blind, but their ears work perfectly fine. 

Not for the first time, Grian wonders what it must be like further from the bombsites. If he hadn't moved out here, maybe he would've known; he's not sure how many nuclear bombs were dropped in the end, but to his knowledge, his old town is unscathed by radiation. Or who knows: maybe if he never came here, things would have ended differently entirely.

There are things he'll never know, but that doesn't make it easier to live with. 

They creep forward in perfect step with one another. He frees his blade from its sheath; next to him, Etho and Cleo do the same. No matter what kind of zombie is waiting for them inside, guns would probably be better, but ammunition is gold anymore, especially with that whole supply drought ordeal. They're still a solid five meters from the door when the first zombie lets out a cry, sharp and strangled, and then there's footsteps, pounding in an uneven gait against cracked linoleum. 

“We got a live one!” Cleo shouts, regripping the handle of their blade just as the glass window before them shatters.  

“They're young,” Etho calls over the dreadful grating screech of the zombie. “Move quick.”

Thank God they're young, Grian thinks. The older ones move slower, but they're harder to kill without guns. If all of them are like this, it'll be a workout, but maybe it—

The thing is hardly a meter away from Etho when he spots the blister on its neck, a telltale sign of radiation. It's oozing dangerously from behind a jagged cluster of bone that the infection has spurted, jutting out of its collarbone. From where Etho is standing, knife ready, he can't see what Grian sees: melted skin and violent, bloody blisters. 

His wings flare out behind him, feathers bristling as he cries out, “Irradiated!” And then, he moves without really thinking; it only takes him a few seconds to draw a knife from a sheath on his thigh. The moment he's got a hold on it, he flings it.

It sinks into the flesh of the zombie's neck, missing the calcified mass by centimeters; the zombie misses Etho by the same margin. Under the impact, it sprawls to the ground, blood bubbling along Grian's blade still firmly lodged in its skin. He heaves a relieved breath the second it's down, holding his head in his free hand. His heart is still pounding wildly, a waterfall in his ears. 

Etho by no means would have died if he had missed that throw, but the radiation burns from those things are hell to deal with. Especially when you're working with limited medical supplies.

“Okay!” Cleo strains out, voice high-pitched. She nudges the still-spasming corpse at her feet with the toe of her shoe, careful to only make contact with the thick growth of bone marring the edge of its neck. Its head lolls enough that Grian can retrieve his knife without touching anything he shouldn't. “That was fun.”

And then Etho turns his gaze to Grian, who is still crouched down next to the thing, in the process of freeing his knife. When Grian glances up at him briefly, the corners of his eyes are crinkled and his hands are quivering. Little by little, he regains executive control of his body.

“Thanks for the save.”

Grian grins back, and tips his head toward the supermarket; there's a lot more clambering going on in there than there was a couple of minutes ago. “Pay it forward, would ya?” he teases, and flexes his fingers. The thrum of terror has dissipated from them, so all he has left to shake out is the warm buzz of amusement. 

Etho nods easily. Quickly, Grian wipes the worst of the blood from his blade using a clump of vegetation that's started tearing its way past the asphalt parking lot so he can resheathe it. He doesn't know who reaches out first, only that Etho's hand is in his, holding firm as he pulls Grian up.

Now, Grian will be the first to say it, because he's never been afraid to toot his own horn here and there: they make a great team, despite the growing pains they suffered through the first year of their friendship. By now though— almost three years deep into this team— the kinks have worked themselves out. 

They make quick work of the market, mostly by taking their enemies on as they come. They fight in tandem, with practiced ease.

When Grian's wings let him dart barely out of reach of a zombie’s torn nails, Cleo notices immediately, and her dagger digs into its temple. Cleo's leg swings out to topple another zombie to the ground, and without a breath, Etho’s sword finds a home in its gut. Two zombies pinch Etho into a tough spot, and Grian is there in an instant, gripping one of them by a rough horn-like jut of bone protruding from its skull and slitting its throat from behind. 

Together, they have no weak spots. It's this fact that makes them so fearsome to the people on this side of the city. But caring for one another is why they're so good at doing what they do: surviving, that is. Because they're a group of survivors, sure, but that's not the first word Grian would describe them as, oddly enough. Instead, it's something fonder. Brighter.

It takes twenty minutes for them to claw their way through the horde of zombies, but they come out on the other side alive. Sweaty, shaky, and torn, but alive nonetheless. And the evidence of their carnage remains at their feet: twenty-three or so zombies, practically swimming in their own blood. They're dead, but the shutdown of their bodies enables the infection to take an even tighter hold on them. In the silence, Grian can hear the crackling and groaning as their bones expand. Some of them even have new spurs protruding from their skin, ossifying now-worthless muscle, blood seeping from the bases of the bone. He wrinkles his nose. These people took well to the infection, apparently, with this crazy growth rate.

Next to him, Cleo takes a shuddering breath. It's the first human noise he's heard in at least ten minutes, and he turns to her curiously. Her brows pinch together as she stares down at one of the zombies; it wears a ghastly expression as bone unfurls along its face like thorn-riddled vines. It's a little strange to see the grief so plainly on her face, warring there unabashedly. It's not that she keeps her emotions close to her chest, it's just that profound sadness isn't typically on the list.

“I'm glad they don't feel any of this,” she sighs pensively. Etho hums in solemn agreement. 

Grian’s ears ring as he forces his wings to sit smoother against his back, even as they twitch against his efforts. His gaze darts back to the zombie at her feet, takes in its expression, forever frozen in all its agony. “Right,” he says, licking his lips. And like the mantra it is, the words fall from his tongue effortlessly: “They're not human anymore. Just shells.”

He hates having to step over their broken, bone-barbed bodies. He hates the way his shoes squish and slip in the blood pooling along the floor. But it's the apocalypse, and none of that useless hatred is getting them anywhere. So Grian strides on, taking to the partially-stocked shelves. 

Strangely enough, he can tell by the crudely written dates and the vaguely-intact states of the food on the shelves that these are from a supply drop of some kind. It's common practice now for drops to be inconspicuously left in places like these, all in an effort to counteract people like him, Etho, and Cleo— vultures, they're called, like it's even an insult really. If he had to harbor a guess, the remnants of the people who were meant to pick this stuff up are scattered on the floor now, a grotesque amalgamation of too-thick blood and mangled bone. 

No wonder they were young. It must not have been long ago that they turned, then. The annoying part about this, he thinks to himself as he starts shoveling cans and packages into his bags, is that someone had the audacity to make a delivery like this in their streets in the first place. He's really hoping it doesn't spell trouble, but honestly, trouble seems to be the only word in the apocalyptic dictionary.

They sweep the building in ten minutes tops, reconvening just outside with their bags stuffed.

“You see the expiration dates on these things? Someone's been playing with our toys,” Grian huffs the moment he's in earshot of them, utterly affronted. 

Cleo shrugs, gesturing to the mass of zombies sitting right in the doorway. “Hey, they're ossifying quick, though. Place’ll be nothing but bone-spikes soon enough.” They grin, pleased. “Karma is one beautiful, beautiful woman.”

Grian can't help but snicker. They're right. He gives it a month tops before you'd need a jackhammer to burrow through that doorway.

He listens from the side as Cleo and Etho banter on the walk back home, taking stock of their injuries. There's nothing major; a few cuts from sharp bones and bruises from collisions here and there. Mostly, they're walking away with some pretty nasty tears in their clothes, but it's nothing Etho can't fix up. 

It's a good job they didn't rack up a million injuries. Part of the purpose of this run was to scrounge up medical supplies of any kind— they're sorely lacking— and they've come up with exactly nothing. He'll never complain about food, especially when it's sort of fresh… ish. But this does mean their scavenging isn't over just yet. They've got a long week or so ahead of them, desperately trying to find supplies without having to kill too many rogue survivors in the process. If Etho’s right and there's a hurricane on the way, the week will be even longer.

Of course, he doesn't need to break the peace Etho and Cleo have goofed their way into. They most certainly know this without Grian having to tell them, so he keeps his mouth shut, content to watch them bounce off each other.

Grian changes right away once they're back at their bunker, more than a little sick of the pungent smell of blood— not that changing will do much anyway. The smell clings to his nose anymore, chases him around with a sense of urgency.

He has to throw on two sweaters to achieve the warmth he'd had with his jacket and shawl, but it's worth it to feel a little cleaner, even if there's blood matted in his hair and stuck stubbornly to his skin. But God, when it's this cold out and he's this exhausted, he doesn't have it in him to go bathe. His legs ache in protest just thinking about it. He does, however, take one of their few clean rags to at least wipe himself down and clean his (thankfully miniscule) wounds. 

By the time he's rejoined Cleo and Etho in their little common area, they're both right back to work. Cleo has taken it upon herself to start cataloging their haul from the day and organizing it in their storage room, humming intermittently while she works. Etho is sitting on their rickety couch, already wielding his needle and thread, going to town on a particularly tattered shirt of Cleo's. On the coffee table in front of him, there's a massive pile, clearly in the queue. 

Cross-legged, Grian sits himself in the chair opposite Etho, tossing his own clothes into the to-sew pile as he fishes out his needle too. Etho looks up at him, and doesn't stop his smooth, methodical rhythm of stitching. Show off. 

“Hey. You need anything today?” Etho asks, gaze skirting to the needle in Grian’s hand. He knows better than to use the help word when he asks; something about that makes Grian feel like his insides are bundled in sheep's wool. 

His sewing will never be as good as Etho's, which he's begrudgingly come to terms with. But he does get the privilege of having the guy show him the ropes, even if he can be a pretty awful teacher from time to time. Or really, he's a fine teacher, so long as Grian genuinely tunes out every word he speaks and just… watches his hands move. That's the only part that means anything in an Etho sewing lecture, he discovered very quickly. The guy talks himself into circles. 

“I'm alright,” he answers, and it isn't a lie. He can passably stitch up a rip in his clothes on his own, thanks to Etho. But his gaze lingers on Etho's hands anyway, watching as his needle moves so easily. The soft line of tremors in his hands is noticeable, even from here, but that's nothing new. And he’s utterly undeterred by them as always, despite the fact that Grian can't help but think they might be worse than before. He tries not to worry too much, though; Etho is more than capable of taking care of himself, and out of the three of them, he's the most inclined to actually ask for help if he needs it.

Grian’s own stitching is significantly more hesitant and jerky than Etho's, and it makes a lot less sturdy of a repair job to boot. Everything he makes and fixes is shoddy at best, but he sews anyway. Sometimes, he'll glance up at Etho’s trembling hands as they elegantly pull a tear together until Grian can't even tell there was anything there in the first place. He would feel inferior about it if there was room in his chest for anything but this overwhelming endearment. 

And when Grian gets frustrated at his own clumsiness, Etho just chuckles at him, giving him a pointer or two with barely a sidelong glance. Cleo isn't bothering with the humming anymore, and has instead taken to singing various songs at the top of her lungs, without singing a single one in full. 

Really, it's incredibly obnoxious, the way these two fit so well in the aching gaps between his ribs where loss has dug its claws in. They ought to be planning out their next runs, trying to figure out any possible way to get a hold of some new drop-related information. It's the apocalypse, and the list of things to do is arduous and infinite.

But there's organizing and sewing to do, too. So he lets the ever-present song of grief that haunts him fade into the jaunty, obscure pop-rock song that Cleo is certainly butchering. He stabs himself with his needle and bites out a few bouts of unpleasant words that make Etho’s eyes light up while he bubbles with laughter.

Yeah, maybe this is alright. Grian can worry about the rest of it tomorrow. It's the apocalypse, and all they have is time.

Chapter Text

When Cleo strolls into the kitchen after an actually kind of restful night's sleep, there are a dozen plates scattered all over their kitchen table, absolutely filled with food. Etho is standing next to this masterpiece with a look of utter pride. She doesn't need to be told that the food is Etho's work; God knows if it had been Grian they'd be eating some… questionable shit. He makes good food, it’s just… of dubious content, usually…

But Etho’s standing there, butter knife in hand, spreading some jam over a few pieces of toast— the jam they'd just picked up in their run yesterday, it looks like. 

“You didn't wait long to break that out, huh?” She teases. He stirs ever so slightly, just enough that Cleo's trained eye makes it very clear to her that she's startled him a bit. It makes her smile— not because she's scared him, but that he feels safe enough to take his armor off in this home of theirs. It wasn't always like this, and she's not in the business of forgetting that fact. 

“Got some great news this morning, Cleo,” he practically chirps, polishing off the last spread of jam. “Called for a celebration!”

She grins and slides right into a chair. “Ohh, wow. Does the general public get to know this news, or just Etho Nation?”

Etho hums, tapping his finger against his chin exaggeratedly. “I haven't decided just yet, actually…”

“No!” She gasps. “Whatever will we do?”

Finally, Etho laughs, and turns back to the counter. “Wait for Grian, that's what,” he says. Cleo watches as he starts doling out food on a separate plate, sectioning it into little groups. 

Ahh, Grian. She was wondering where he'd run off to. This potato soup smells delicious, and it's not like him to sleep through his soups. Or his jams, actually. And okay, the longer she thinks about it, the more stifling his absence becomes. 

“What's Grian up to anyway?” She questions very carefully, as if she could ever drown her worry in the presence of Etho's warm gaze.

Etho’s lips are parting in response when something abruptly flings open the front door. The words seem to die in his throat as a bundle of feathers stumbles in, and the door slams shut again. 

“Perimeter’s all clear,” Grian announces, breathless, as he lifts the red and black goggles from his eyes to sit them in his wind-swept-rat's-nest hair. His cheeks and nose are stained scarlet with windburn, the way they always are after he's been flying a long time. 

“There's that answer,” Etho says.  

Great, Cleo thinks. If he's gotten through a perimeter check already this morning, that means they're gonna be dealing with a sleepless Grian all day. Which can only ever go one of two ways: stupidly or insufferably.

“Dude. No way,” Grian gasps the second his wide eyes land on the table; he's in his chair so fast he might as well have teleported there. Cleo has to bat away a stray black-and-white feather before it can fall straight into the soup. “No way. Potato soup. And strawberry jam? Etho, you're joking. Who's getting married?” He pauses and swipes a piece of toast, snickering, “Save for me and this bread.”

“Well, uh, unfortunately no love stories to share,” Etho mourns as he turns to sit too. He leaves the now full plate he’d had in his hands sitting on the very corner of the counter, just behind him. He grabs himself a bowl as he takes a seat, and starts scooping himself some soup. “But Gem was out last night and got some intel on a drop happening in a couple days.”

It's exciting news. Very good news, even. But well…

Cleo has been living with these two for what, three years now? It was about a week in that she realized she is literally the only one with the ability to verbalize anything ever. If something is wrong with Grian or Etho, neither of them are going to say as much, albeit for pretty different reasons. This means, though, that she's gotten pretty good at detecting their emotions and then dragging them into the sunlight like some kind of deranged graverobber.

She sees the tenseness of Etho's forearms. His spoon is poised over his bowl of soup and has been for a minute, but he still hasn't made a move to eat. He has this wrinkle between his brows that he only ever gets when something is nagging at him incessantly.

“Alright, that's good. I mean, it's not too far away, is it?” she guesses blindly, keeping Etho's face in the corner of her eye as she starts spooning rice onto her plate. 

“No, no, ‘s not that,” he answers sort of distantly, shrugging his shoulders. “Just didn't think she was going to be uh, doing any recon. She usually doesn't do that sort of thing unless I ask her to.”

“Teenagers,” Grian laments, mouth full of rice.

Awkwardly, Etho says, “Well, she’s 26.”

Grian casts him a glance. “Same difference, ay?”

Etho chuckles, but it's a distracted sort of thing. He's staring intently into his bowl with his brows threaded tight together, swirling his spoon absently in his soup. He looks… forlorn, maybe. Worried, definitely. Cleo can't pretend to understand— she knows shockingly little about Gem after all, and they might be the strangest set of siblings she's ever met. To her, this feels inconsequential enough, especially since it's resulted in some useful intel.

But she knows it isn't that simple, especially not if it's got Etho's eyes all misty like this. But it's not as simple as asking either. She learned that right away too, just like Grian and Etho learned it with her.

When it comes to Etho and Gem, all Cleo holds onto is this: she's incredibly glad that Etho has her. This godforsaken apocalypse hasn't ripped them apart, and it's good. Cleo certainly wasn't so lucky, and they don't know much about Grian’s history, but they can hazard a guess that it's the same on his front.

While they might not physically see much of Gem, she's a presence either way; Etho practically worships her, and has since even before the world ended. Hardly a conversation goes by without some sort of reference to her. He's like a parent, really. Cleo finds it sweet. 

Cleo breaks the silence, then. Comfortingly, she nudges her socked foot against Etho's. “She was probably just restless, Etho. We all get that way.” 

Etho doesn't say anything in response; he simply nods, and finally scoops up a proper spoonful of his soup.

“So where's this drop at?” Cleo prompts only after Etho has had a few good bites of food. 

Etho blinks a few times before it clicks on his head. “Oh, uh, you know that old mall? The small one, next to that motel thing?”

“On the south side of the city? That's across the rift,” Grian worries. 

Etho nods again.

Grian frowns, less than thrilled. “We'd have to take the tunnels, I guess…”

At that, Cleo can't help but laugh a little at the transparency of it. Grian despises the tunnels. Part of being an avian, apparently, even if he doesn't have all of the traits. He gets antsy being under any roof for too long, but the whole endless corridor vibe really ruffles his feathers. Literally. 

She pats his shoulder and he gives her a frown that’s really more of a pout. It’s only barely that she contains another bout of laughter for Grian’s sake. 

“Supposed to be medical supplies,” Etho pipes up.

“Yeah, well, they better be worth it,” Grian grumbles, flicking one of his wings.

They chat over breakfast a little while longer, before they wordlessly descend into the cleanup process. When Cleo goes to fill a bucket for all the dirty dishes, the plate Etho left on the counter is gone. She doesn’t ask any questions.

For a reason that is beyond Cleo, she actually sort of likes the tunnels. Maybe it’s because for a while, they were the best way to travel; the number of zombies in the city used to be astronomical, but the tunnels were eerily untouched. Some of the lights along the walls still function to this day, which is something Cleo doesn’t want to wonder about.  

Of course, this meant they were dangerous because of people, which is the only apocalyptic danger Cleo faces, really. Her immunity has granted her that mercy. Aside from that, all it's left her with is the jagged, raised bite mark on her shoulder, scarred white and tinged green. It looks especially sickly in the tunnel light, where her jacket has slipped. She scowls and pulls it back in place. 

So, the tunnels are familiar. Cleo knows her way around them by now, especially after Grian came up with a map of them. It wasn't even drawn by hand; he'd just stumbled into it, apparently. If there's nothing else to say about Grian, the guy has some killer luck.

They're wildly useful, spanning all across the city like a spider web, with several hatches in various places. They aren't exactly glamorous with the thousands of mangled pipes and wires covering the walls and ceilings, and the violently intrusive fluorescent lighting along the concrete, but they make for good travel. They even intersect with the subway tunnels in a few spots.

Honestly, she's just glad that she, Grian, Etho and Gem came out on top of the fights that emerged down here. Cleo can count on one hand the number of times she's properly interacted with Gem, and the tunnel fights are at least three fingers’ worth of interactions. They did a lot of nasty shit at the time— Grian’s wings still aren't quite right from lurking in the pipes, and Etho’s tremors only got worse after a mishap with wires and a rival gang— but they won. The tunnels are theirs, and they'd be stupid to stop taking advantage of them, especially now that everyone else has gotten the message and fucked off.

They're pretty tainted with memories though, Cleo thinks grimly as she steps over what could have very easily been a bloodstain.

“How much longer?” Grian grumbles, miserable, and kicks a rock down the endless corridor. It just keeps rolling and rolling, until it finally ricochets off a pipe and disappears into the garbled mess along the walls.

She glances at Etho, who is currently tracing lines in the air with a shaking hand like he's solving a maze. 

“Um,” he says eloquently, glancing nervously at the two of them when he feels their eyes on him. Then he falls back into thought, moving his finger through the empty space and whispering various right, left, right commands under his breath. “Fifteen, twenty minutes…? Probably?”

Grian sighs so loudly and dramatically that it reverberates off the walls. For a moment, Cleo watches him, takes in the way he's curled in on himself as he walks, his wings flared and fluffed as far as the width of the tunnel will allow. She can hardly even see Etho because of them. He keeps glancing over his shoulder, but never to look at Cleo— only at something just behind them. He's really not happy with this, and it's for this reason that Cleo doesn't poke fun at his dramaticism this time. 

And besides, her feet are a little sore. They've been walking without a break for an hour now. She's starting to feel it, the same way Grian is looking absolutely frazzled and Etho is getting a little sluggish. She'd be a hypocrite to chew Grian out for it. Etho must feel the same, because he just casts a placating glance over his shoulder. 

“I don't know how you remember these things so well,” Cleo comments for the sake of small talk, lest her two idiots lose their minds in the silence. “I mean, I'm familiar, but I couldn't tell you where in God's name we are right now.”

It's entirely rhetorical. She knows good and well Etho is just freakishly good with directions. It's a poor excuse for a conversation starter, and part of Cleo expects him to call them out on it. 

He doesn't, though. He never does. That's Etho: taking things in stride. “Well, I was a boy scout,” he says nonchalantly, as if this isn't the most insane thing she's literally ever heard. 

“You're kidding,” she cries, incredulous. She's got this image in her head of a tiny Etho wearing a sash and cap, failing horrendously at putting up a tent. It might be the most wholesome thought she's had in a week. Or a month. Or maybe ever. 

“Nope,” Etho replies, casual as always, but there's a twinkle in the back of his throat; Cleo hears it. “Proud scout in Troop 27 until I was eight. Started having to take care of Gem, so I retired the sash… Never forgot what I learned, though. That guidebook was handy, I tell ya.”

It's not until he stops talking that it hits Cleo that she knows nothing about Etho and Gem. 

Her knowledge starts and stops at this: Gem is Etho’s younger sister by four years, and she's his whole world. He would die for her, but mostly, he just keeps living for her, through all the horrible shit the universe throws at him. And that says a lot more than anything else. In the face of Gem, there is no braver thing— be it man or monster— than Etho.

Cleo tries their hardest not to speculate on their friends’ pasts, but they'll be the first to admit that they're nosy. Their mind wanders from time to time, into dangerous territory like what happened to Etho's parents and then, more nagging, why won't he tell us? Me?

And it's not like they expect that of Etho, or Grian for that matter. It's just… hard, sometimes, to be in the dark, even if she's just as adamant on leaving the graves of her past intact and untouched. It's a lot of hypocrisy on her part is what it is— at least she's self aware about it.

But Etho has been parenting Gem since she was four, at the absolute oldest. That's… an unfathomable amount of time, really. An overwhelmingly profound responsibility. She avoids asking questions like the goddamn plague, but there's one thing she runs from like it's a crashing meteor, and that's pity. Hardly ever does she let herself feel it— either for herself, or for her friends, or for the people they kill— but right now…

She feels it, right now. Squirming in the pit of her stomach like a bug, a parasite, nestling itself right at home in the comfort of her intestines. Eight is awfully young. Four is even younger. And to keep all this on his shoulders… 

Cleo doesn't say any of this. She knows better, frankly, but the way it tears into the lining of her stomach is damage enough.

“That's an awful long time,” she whispers hoarsely after too long of a pause.

“Yeah,” Etho responds heavily. “Hard to believe it stuck with me, right?”

They all know they aren't talking about Boy Scout training anymore. No one points it out. They're ten minutes from the mall where the drop will be exchanged, and they spend it in grief-laden silence.

Fifteen minutes past the time Gem had given them, the would-be recipients of the supply drop come pelting in, breathing ragged and looking disheveled. There are five of them, all covered in blood. She watches closely and notices one boy in the back limping. 

Cleo and Etho are crowded close to Grian on the second floor of the mall, peering over the shattered railings into the foyer. They have to be ready to swoop in, and Grian gliding the three of them down is a lot better of an ambush than dashing down the broken escalators. It's a well-practiced method of theirs. Tried and true. 

“They've been through it,” Cleo murmurs, and winces when a girl turns her cheek to reveal a huge gash down her face.

Etho squints. “Must've come museum route.”

Grian scoffs a quiet laugh into the back of his hand, eyes glittering. “Rookie mistake, dude. No wonder they're late.” He glances at Cleo, meets her eyes. “Are these people new or something?”

There are two things Cleo is good at, two big things she contributes to this team. One: breaking bones. And two: diplomacy. It's a word she uses lightly, because calling her the most diplomatic out of the three of them is… well, it's an easy bar to climb, is all she's saying. But that doesn't change that in this trio, Cleo is the one who does the talking.

So she remembers faces. Not names— never names, no, she sucks at those. She gives nicknames instead. But she knows their faces, their alliances, their enemies. And most importantly, she knows exactly what to say to get them to shut up. What to threaten.

She takes a long look at the people below them. Most of them, she doesn't recognize, on either side of this transaction. Save for the woman at the forefront of the group with the drops and the girl behind her, and a man on the other side, standing at the front. The woman she very aptly nicknamed Metro, because the group she leads is housed in the metro station this side of the rift. The girl she calls Ribbon, because her long curly hair is always tied back with one. The man she's deemed Boulder, because the first time she met him, she cracked his skull open on one. Good nicknames, in her humble opinion.

“I don't recognize them, except for the blonde guy,” Cleo whispers back. “I don't think the people are new, mostly. But the group itself is…? Has to be.”

Etho smiles, and she knows what he's thinking, because she's thinking it too: this is an initiation. You don't live in this city without getting picked apart by vultures at some point. 

“Waiting game now, yeah?” Grian sighs, and shifts his knees uncomfortably. 

“Yep,” Etho hums, settling in at Grian’s side.

And so they wait. In the foyer below them, Ribbon and some other grunts are dragging bags, scuffed and bulging. They start tossing the in the space between the two throngs of people, right at Boulder’s feet, who nudges a bag with his toe. A girl surges up from behind him; Cleo hadn’t even seen her before then. So Cleo commits her face to the memory of “Shadow” as she starts picking up bags and passing them back along a line.

Boulder speaks then. “Medical supplies?”

Metro sighs, and crosses her arms. “Among other things. It’s well worth the weapons you left us, at least.” Her posture shifts, then, into something darker. “Love to know where you got ‘em.”

There’s a long moment of silence, where Shadow and Ribbon both pause and watch their leaders stare each other down. From this far away, it’s kind of a hilarious scene, but more than that, it’s… eerie. No one moves for a solid two minutes, until Boulder glances back at a younger, skittish, plain-looking boy who nods ever so slightly.

“There’s some guy out east. Real savior type,” Boulder huffs. “Thinks it’s a good plan to organize.”

“Huh,” Metro says appreciatively, clearly surprised by the show of honesty. “What, toward the coast?” 

“Yeah, some bigger city.”

A couple of the people in the backs of both groups fall back, sent out to retrieve transport for supplies or on the other end of the spectrum, to drag in more bags for trade. Cleo watches them go and does a headcount of the remaining people: there are eight of them now, and four of them are looking pretty worse for wear. She’s really liking those odds.

She takes in the idle chatter of the people below them as they ramble on and on about some guy a billion miles away from them, about how he’s a threat to small groups of survivors everywhere. She glances at Etho, who glances at her, and they both glance at Grian, who glances at them.

Grian stares at them, deadpan. “You know we can talk.”

“Boooo,” Cleo drawls with a frown.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m the worst.”

“Five minutes,” Etho says, and smiles. “Grian, you count, we’ll move on your mark. Let’s get ready.” 

Grian nods, and his fingers dig into Cleo’s bicep, where she knows that he’ll squeeze once he’s ready to fly them down. Preemptively, she shifts up onto her toes, already prepared to brace for the landing she knows will come. And in the meantime, she does what she’s meant to do: she listens, and she absorbs.

They’re really set on this dude, whoever he is. She’s getting sick of hearing about him, even once they start talking about ordering a hit on him to stop the ball he’s started rolling. To her knowledge, this must be someone ages away, if he really is out toward the coast. It would be foolish of her, Grian, and Etho to feel threatened by someone so out of their reach, but even if he was at their front door, she has a feeling she wouldn’t be too worried either way.

The lackeys who fell back have yet to return. With her drop experiences, they definitely won’t be back inside before their five minute window is up, and the stragglers usually run once they stumble into the finished work of vultures. It’s all so routine, it’s all so easy.

And then Shadow, in her small, dark hands, holds out a figure.

It’s a small thing, made of rumpled, smudged paper. But even from here, she makes out its shape, and feels the weight of something welling up her stomach, spilling over the blades of her shoulders. It’s crushing, like a waterfall. It’s a mudslide, entrapping her breath outside of her body, until all she feels is the rush of water and the beat of her heart, echoing in the cavern on her chest. 

It’s a rooster. A small origami rooster, perfectly and elegantly poised, even with its rips and tears. And Cleo’s ears ring violently, filled with a tsunami she hadn’t forgotten, but one she’d locked away. Buried, even.

His calling card, she hears the quiet voice of the little girl cut through the roar in her eardrums. His calling card. Metro leaves, and takes her people with her.

Grian’s fingers dig into her upper arm, and then the three of them are moving. 

She goes through the motions. It’s still routine. It’s still easy. They’ve made a living of this, and this is the millionth time they’ve done this— it won’t be the last, either. She’s outside of her body, enraptured by the whispers of his calling card, his calling card. She’s not there when, at her side, Boulder spits into Grian’s face something along the lines of fucking vultures. She’s not there when he grins, sharp and vile, and slits his throat. She’s not there when Etho looms over Shadow, and his shaky hands swing an axe forward, splitting her carotid as she collapses. 

Really, she’s not there until it’s over, and Grian and Etho are behind her gathering the blood-stained rewards they’ve reaped. Because the rooster is there, knocked loose from Shadow’s limp hand, soaking in the blood still seeping across the floor from her body. 

Cleo drops to her knees. The blood keeps soaking into the paper, her pants, the pads of her fingers. 

“Scott,” she chokes out.

“Say, could I ask you something?” Cleo starts, her gaze flicking up from Scott's thin, pale hands to watch the stars. Living in a near-rural area has always leant the stars so much light to shine, but in this world gone dark, they burn brighter than ever before. The constellations dance in the whispers of the galaxy, twinkling down at her.

It's beautiful, despite everything. This is a tradition of theirs— when the weather permits, Scott and Cleo dig out a blanket and lay it down outside their home, and they bask in the glow of the stars. Scott, for his part, has always loved beautiful things. He has a soul like stardust, and has for as long as Cleo can remember. Even now, even as they steal and kill just to survive in this cruel, ruthless world, Scott's mercy has yet to leave him.

For Cleo’s part, it's the peace. The routine. The fact that there is a living, breathing, warm human being sitting next to her, and he is not a zombie because he is alive, and he's by her side. Like always. Because they've lived another day together, and this here? This is proof. It's this fact that has her lying on this blanket with Scott's knee pressing against her bicep, staring up at a quiet, star-filled sky.

Scott hums, so Cleo looks at him again. His nimble fingers are still folding away at a sheet of weathered white paper, so quick and practiced it makes her head ache. His hands are nothing but a blur as they unveil yet another perfect origami creation: a rooster, one leg lifted delicately, its head raised to the sky. If only it could see the stars too.

And this is what Scott does, when they aren't stealing and killing and surviving. He folds origami roosters. Different colors, different sizes, but always the same rooster with its curled leg, elegant and regal. 

“Why roosters?” She finally asks, because for as beautiful as his roosters are, she can't imagine why on Earth he would pick them. They aren't effortlessly majestic the way Scott is. They aren't imposing. They aren't even cute. She's known Scott since they were toddlers and she's never associated roosters with him. It's always been more like this: a striking stag, a snowy owl, a grand horse. All sharp edges and sharper eyes. 

He scoffs a surprised laugh, casting her an incredulous glance. “My God, you started that question so seriously.” 

And then he sighs, shifting the rooster in his hand so that its raised foot perches on his finger. He holds it up to the sky, staring at it fondly, a smile on his lips. “They remind me of a sunrise. And besides,” he pauses and extends the origami to her, almost displaying it, and he grins. “I've always loved a good performance. That's what these guys are all about.”

Gently, Cleo reaches out with both hands, cupping the rooster carefully between them. The folds are crisp and precise, every edge purposeful. She thinks of Scott's role in his family's business: a host, a figurehead, an ever smiling and ever dependable face. He performs; it's what he does. And what does a rooster do if not sing?

“That's definitely true,” she hums, and shifts the rooster in her hands so it can look up at the sky again. 

“If I ever started a business, I'd use those,” Scott says, pointing at the rooster in her hands. “Like a symbol. A calling card.”

Cleo shoots him a quizzical glance. “Love the energy, however, there are literal zombies pounding at our wall right now. A start-up company might be, uhh… unfeasible?”

He snorts, and waves her off. “I know. More important things to think about.” He pauses briefly, and his gaze settles on the sky. Cleo is imagining it, but for a second, she swears the stars are swirling in his blue eyes. “But it's nice, y'know? A nice thought. Just something normal.”

That's one thing about Scott: even before this, he sucked at not being in control. Everywhere you went, there he was. He keeps his fingers tangled in miles and miles of thread. He was raised that way, Cleo knows: the son of a cold, calculating conglomerate empress and her crass, vacant husband of a business partner. His nose is never where it belongs, and usually, he gets away with it because no one even sees him. 

But the world has spun itself right off its axis. Nothing is the same, and nothing ever will be. The very fabric of their lives has unraveled and he can't get his hands in the frayed thread left over, and it overwhelms him sometimes. Cleo sees it in those eyes of his. A hole, and a yearning to patch it over. But Scott's parents are gone, and there's nothing left to control. Yet he can't stop searching for a purpose, and for people to devote to it. To him.

She feels bad for him, but she knows him. He doesn't leave his graves unfilled for long. She turns the rooster in her hands, running the pad of her calloused thumb over the curl of its tail feathers. Cleo knows Scott. If anyone could build something out of the wreckage of this world they call home, it's him. He's the type of person that will carry their future on his shoulders, even if it kills him. The paper rooster stares at her.

So Cleo mumbles, “It's a good symbol. Recognizable, right? That’ll matter.” And when Scott smiles at her, she smiles back. 

Carefully, she lays the rooster to rest between them on the pink blanket. 

If anyone could make something out of this nothingness, it's Scott. She knows it.

Once they get home, they do what they do best: commit to separate menial tasks while remaining in each other’s orbits, desperately ignoring the newly formed hole in their safe haven of familiarity. No one spoke a word, really, on the walk home. Or at the very least, no one said anything that mattered.

Etho disappeared the moment they all got home, and Cleo knows he’s gone to find Gem and update her on the news, which is… fine. It just leaves Grian and Cleo sitting in silence. It’s… well. It’s awkward, no doubt. It’s bound to be, isn’t it, when she’s just learned that the person she swore and failed to protect nearly a decade ago is actually alive and well, and has enough of a presence that people want him dead? For real this time? 

So really, the issue is this: Cleo isn’t like their friends. They hate keeping secrets and staying quiet, and every fiber of their being is a wildfire of desire to share, share, share. And they’re plenty independent, yeah, but they love Etho and Grian. Any decision to be made here involves those two as well, because like hell Cleo is leaving them. 

She doesn’t think she could, she thinks privately, and pretends it doesn’t leave her sick with guilt. They're family. This was supposed to be her and Scott, but she left him. What if she’d kept searching back home, for just a few more days? A few more hours? She gave up, and allowed herself to move on, and she’s finding she doesn’t really enjoy it when it’s her grave being robbed.

The rush of water filling the washing tin cuts off very abruptly, but she swears she still feels it pounding against her eardrums. She has to glance over at Grian just to check. When she does, his right wing twitches— it’s something she noticed a year or so in, some unconscious response to being watched. So he’s aware of her presence, at least. 

Part of her wishes he’d turn around, talk to her, say anything, but it’s Grian. He doesn’t speak, or even look at her, but in the absence of the running water, he starts tapping his foot. She knows what it means, though. He doesn’t have to say anything. He never does.

Talk, says the gentle rhythm of his boot. I know it matters to you, so it matters to me, says the relaxed, loose posture of his wings. She hears it. She knows. So she does. 

“Etho has always had Gem. I don’t know how well he understands,” Cleo says, dragging the blade of her knife along the whetstone in her hands, lets the routine of it sink in and suffocate the thousands of years-old promises she’s made. Promises she could very well be breaking just by sitting here, useless. “Or you. I mean…” she pauses, glances over at Grian, who is elbow-deep in the tub as he washes blood out of their clothes— something of Etho’s now. “You were alone when you found us. Was it always that way?”

It’s minute, the way his ministrations falter ever so briefly: his hands go still in the tin, swallowed by the water, and the rhythm he’s been tapping his foot to— the rhythm she’s been using to sharpen this stupid knife— stutters to a stop.

But it’s over before Cleo can really even sit with it. “No,” he says simply, forearms tense as he scrubs at a pair of pants. Tap, tap. His gaze doesn’t stray from the murky water, not even as Cleo stares at him with wide eyes. “But you’d be right to say I don’t understand, anyway. He’s dead.”

Tap, tap, tap.

She knows better than to apologize, and she’s not sorry for asking regardless. Grian is tight-lipped when it comes to his past, to a degree that she had absolutely no idea about any of this. Sure, there are some little quirks she could have sunk her teeth into and ripped the truth out of, but the three of them… it’s not their style. They all have lives from before each other, and they have enough shit to deal with without dredging up corpses from lake bottoms.

So Cleo just sighs, tossing her knife to the floor in utter defeat. She’s lost count of her strokes anyway. 

“Why’d you think he was gone?” Grian asks carefully, still refusing to look at her. The water splashes violently along the edge of the tub, and she watches it puddle on the floor. 

And so, she explains. She tells Grian that they were friends even back in high school, where it felt sometimes like it was them against the world.

Scott was the only person who ever really understood her. They went from a couple of kids throwing snowballs at each other to a couple of teenagers sharing every part of themselves, and also throwing snowballs at each other. They were those best friends who made the pact to marry each other once they turned 30, if nothing else worked out, because 30 felt like it was worlds away. Cleo is 29 now, and her hands look more familiar clad in dirt and blood than they do in fresh white snow. 

The apocalypse had started the summer after their freshman year of college. They'd gone to different schools. Scott lived on campus at the fancy university 250 or so miles from their small town— the university all the smart kids with big dreams at their school went to. Cleo had stayed closer to home for no real reason besides the fact that she couldn't afford much else, and wasn't even sure what degree she wanted, nevermind what she'd do with it. Scott was never like that, though. He had everything figured out, or at least, he liked pretending he did. 

They'd spent the entire summer together once Scott came home, just catching up and filling in blanks. They both finally made new friends, and they recognized that. It wasn't really just them anymore, but it didn't change anything between them. Not really, anyway, not in a way that mattered. Especially not once the apocalypse started. 

They stuck together for the first year or so, right in their hometown. After the Wells family over on Brook Street got infected, Cleo and Scott took over their old brick farmhouse. Once the bombs hit, it kept them safe from the worst of the severe weather that came in even harder.

They'd woken up in the middle of the night a few months after moving in to rain pouring down outside, so hard it flooded their cellar, and with water filling the room, they would drown if they didn't leave. But it's a lot easier to keep track of someone when you're not freezing as you fight through several feet of water, vision clouded by a downpour so torrential you can hardly see a few inches in front of you, and surrounded by zombies who were all your neighbors, once. It didn't take long for them to lose each other. 

She'd clambered her way to a rooftop, exhausted and drenched, and she'd waited there in the rain for days, scared, thinking this is the end, the water will never stop, I've never seen storms like these, it'll kill us all.

But like all things, the floods receded. In their wake, they left nothing but water-logged corpses and endless rubble. 

For months she'd stayed there with the few survivors; they helped each other search for their family, friends, neighbors. In all that despair, Cleo searched for Scott. In every corpse, she looked for him. If they were face down, she would carefully, gently turn them over. For the ones who still had eyes, she would close them. Every mangled body she came across, she would leave in a state a little kinder than she found it in. Some of them she knew— her teachers, her bullies, her teammates. The others weren't recognizable anymore.

“I found— it was his watch,” she finishes quietly. “It was shattered, sorta stuck under a building that collapsed, covered in blood. It was a bit stupid, really, but he never took that thing off. It meant a lot to him. His brother's, I think? I never found his body, everyone was so… disfigured. But…”

She trails off. Grian's foot is still tap, tap, tapping. She stares at his wings, traces the graceful swoops and curves of them. Her eyes catch on a clump of mud, stuck stubbornly underneath one of his feathers, and her fingers twitch with the urge to brush it loose. As if they could ever be trusted with something so gentle in the first place.

“That was enough proof,” Grian finishes grimly. He has yet to look at them. “I… I understand. I don't think I would've looked for his body at all, you know. Pretty brave, that.”

Brave. It's so ridiculous it almost makes her laugh. Hopeless, more like. 

“Well, I left after that,” she sighs, a lot more casual than she really feels. “Headed west. And then there was Etho, and then there was you.”

She made friends after losing Scott, sure. But if Scott is a tender, freshly-healed scar, then the rest of it is a gaping fucking wound. No thanks. Her heart might be closer to her sleeve than Etho or Grian's, but that doesn't mean her closet isn't filled with skeletons. That doesn't mean her house isn't on fire. 

“And now we're here,” Grian mumbles. For a long minute, the tap of his foot and the splash of water are the only signs of life in the room at all. 

Good talk, she thinks sorely, though not bitterly. It's not Grian's fault that he has nothing to say; it's not like Cleo has anything to say, either. So she doesn't. Instead, she goes to stand— that water is in dire need of changing before Grian starts trying to wash anything else. 

“What do you want to do?” Grian asks before she can even move, and finally looks at her. The words leave her reeling under Grian's steely gaze, expectant, like an attack dog just waiting for the word. Like she’s in control, like this is her decision, but not solitarily her fight. 

It's loyalty, and it looks at home in Grian's dark eyes. Of course he wasn't always alone— you don't look at people like that so openly without practice. 

No matter what, Etho and Grian are going to follow her. They'd support her in anything she'd do, and she knows that. She could torch this entire city tomorrow and they'd all leave it together, with fire in their eyes and smoke in their hair. That's the way this works.

She made a promise to Scott nearly a decade ago. She told him she would find him— said there will always be us. Breaking promises isn't a habit of hers. If Scott is alive, and she can hear his voice just one more time… if he's alive, and she can save him this time… 

Cleo meets Grian's eyes. “I… think I have to find him. I owe it to him, yeah, but I think I owe it to me, too.”

She's lived all these years with the weight of Scott on her shoulders. She doesn't know what’ll happen if she lets it keep sitting there, lets it keep festering. Especially now that she knows someone really wants him dead. 

Grian smiles at them, sharp and unfaltering. “Right. Well, it's not like I've got anything else to do,” he answers impassively, like Cleo had asked him to go, like it was ever a question. Good God, he puts on a real show. Cleo doesn't know who it's for anymore— maybe nobody. Regardless, it makes them smile. 

“Oh, really? You’re sure you shouldn't check your calendar first?” 

“Good shout, actually, wouldn't want to double book.”

“That would be a shame,” she sighs heavily. And then, softer, more sincere: “Thanks.”

Grian’s gaze jerks back to her in shock. “I should be doing that, if anything.”

“What, thanking me?” she ventures, disbelieving. “For?”

His brows furrow then and, stubbornly, he looks away. More accurately, actually, he lowers his chin until it rests on his collarbone, a centimeter away from the embroidery on his cloak. Red and purple flowers bloom over his heart and trail along the hem, vibrant as ever, and… oh. 

He's dead, rings Grian's voice in her ears, haunting and heavy. 

Grian doesn’t clarify why he’s thanking her, but she knows now anyway. 

“Anytime,” Cleo vows.

She stirs when a knock sounds on the doorframe behind them, tossing a glance over her shoulder as Etho reemerges. The door clicks shut behind him.

“Hey,” he sighs, looking every bit of 30 years old as he runs a hand through his long silver hair. He turns to look at Cleo. In the dying light of the sun, the smudges under his eyes are so dark they could be black eyes. “So, uh… What next?”

When she glances at Grian, he’s already looking at her out of the corner of his eye, waiting; he nods at her and looks away. This time, she feels a lot more certain. With a tired smile, she says again without wavering, “I need to find him. I need to at least try.” 

There is zero hesitation in the answering curl of Etho’s lips. “Let’s get planning then.” He pauses abruptly, glancing at Grian, who is still on his knees, arms submerged in water. “If you’re okay with it, Grian?”

“Oh, you know me,” Grian says flippantly, one hand breaking the surface tension of the water to wave noncommittally. 

Yeah. Cleo has to look for Scott. She owes it to him and to herself— but now she’s thinking that she owes it to Grian, too. To Grian, and to whoever he’s lost.

But Etho is still smiling at her, looking exhausted but ready nonetheless. At her side, Grian keeps scrubbing at a pair of bloodstained pants that are undoubtedly hers. Cleo will find Scott, and she won't do it alone. That's the way this works: the way it always will.

Chapter Text

Three days after Etho turns eight, his mother dies. 

There are a lot of words he doesn't understand. All he can gather, really, is that she was in the car coming home from work and something happened, and she couldn't drive anymore. She died alone, before anyone could help her. He knows this means she died fast and didn't suffer, like how you're supposed to kill game, but he thinks it would've been better if someone was there. 

So he's eight years old in really tight dress shoes that pinch his toes, standing in the muddy earth of a graveyard as he watches the rain roll off the dark thing containing her now. He's wearing a white dress shirt that's a size too big for him, tie pulled into a shaky double half hitch sailor's knot, because he didn't know how to tie it any other way. Traffic roars on behind him, because cars don't stop just because one did. 

None of this matters to him. What matters to him is that his little sister is wailing like an animal as she clings to his side, fingers digging into anything she can get her hands on. Her curly ginger hair is drenched and frizzy from the rain, loose around her head because Mom was the only one who knew how to do it, even though she's the spitting image of Dad.

Etho wraps his arm around her tighter, squinting down at her against the rain. He can learn how to do her hair, he thinks, but he doesn't know if he can learn how to make French toast, ‘cause he doesn't know how much syrup Gem is allowed to have.

He glances at their dad, who is hunched about three feet away from the two of them, green eyes fixated on Mom like they're super glued there. His assistant stands with him, her hand on his back. This is the first time Etho has ever seen her, and all he can think is that her black hair is even curlier than Gem’s.

The rain keeps pounding down around them, but not even the storm can drown out the sound of Gem’s cries. He doesn't speak; he wouldn't be loud enough anyway, not with all the rain and the crying and the distance. Instead, he just stares at his dad and the assistant lady, and thinks really hard in his dad's direction, tell me how much syrup she can have, please.

His dad doesn't look, not even as Etho stares for fifteen seconds longer just to make sure. So Etho turns back to Gem, and leans her body into his.

“I'll give you lots of syrup with your toast,” he whispers right by her ear so it doesn't get lost in the wind. “Just don't get sick from it.”

He doesn't know if she hears, but her sobs soften a little. Her grip doesn't, though. Something makes him think it might not ever. 

Etho watches his mom’s cold body lower into the ground, presses his sister's cold face into the crook of his arm, and catches his dad's cold eyes following along as the ground swallows up the last of the flowers.

He’ll be the one taking care of Gem from now on. In that moment, he doesn't know how he knows— doesn't even really have the words for it— but he knows. Looking back, maybe it was the all-but-physical rift dragging a line between him and his dad. Maybe it was the umbrella his dad held over the heads of him and his assistant, as Gem and Etho trembled, soaked to the bone in the rain. There was just a breath in the wind that drawled with a sense of finality as his gaze froze to the top of Gem's head, and it breathed, this is on you now. 

And he thinks, I'm going to take care of everything. And he reassures himself: I'm certain of it.

Three days after Etho turns eight, his whole life changes. 

“I don't wanna go to school,” Gem bites out petulantly, which is a cool new word Etho learned from a chapter book his teacher gave him. It really describes Gem, he thinks.

She's acting grumpy even though he can clearly see the tears in her eyes, which is another Gem special. She doesn't stop furiously digging her nails into the soft dirt, and he knows she's going to complain later when he has to scoop it all out. 

“I thought you liked learning,” he murmurs.

“I do!” She shouts in earnest as her head whips up to look at him, hair flickering in the sunlight like flame. But the ferocity seeps out of her once she catches his eyes, and she's left curled over herself, staring at the dirt caking her hands. She looks sad. “It… it just sucks being inside all day.”

Gem is good at a lot of things, but lying isn't one of them. Or maybe it's just that Etho knows her too well. Either way, he knows she's being dishonest right now. She keeps having nightmares, and she's always kind of had them, but not usually this often. He doesn't mention it, though— he just looks at her for a minute, watching in real time as her eyes dance between him and the ground until her resolve crumbles. 

“Everyone thinks I'm weird,” she whispers, hand brushing over a dandelion that her fingers have been sparing. “They're really mean.”

Slowly, Etho blinks. Obviously Gem isn't lying, but he was still in primary school with her last year, and he never noticed her having any issues then. She had people to eat with at lunch, and friends to play with on the playground. She was the first penguin in the Christmas pageant last year, even. 

How could so much change so quickly? They're barely even two months into the school year, and as far as he knows, it's not like she's done anything to change anyone's mind. Gem is the coolest little seven year old he knows! And also the only seven year old he knows, but even if he knew a hundred million seven year olds, she'd still be the coolest. It makes him so angry that there are people who don't get that.

It takes a lot of time for him to squish down the churning, fiery feeling in his chest and stamp it out in the pit of his stomach. It's so overwhelming that he can't speak for a little bit, because if he speaks, he'll yell, and his mom taught him that that's impolite. 

“I don't understand,” he says very slowly. “Why? It was okay last year, wasn't it?”

“You were there, Etho,” she says with a scowl. “Everyone was scared of you, so they were friends with me. But now you're a stupid sixth grader.”

“Gem,” he warns, maybe a little stern, because he would never force people into being her friend, and it's not fair for her to think that. Not about him, and definitely not about herself. 

“I know!” She shouts back, cutting him off with a shove before he can even chew her out for anything in the first place. “You're such an idiot. You didn't have to do anything.”

They stare at each other for a few moments. Gem's fists are clenched tight in her lap as she glares daggers at them. It's a sharp look that she's been wearing here lately, and it doesn't look at home in her big, round eyes. 

“You should stand up for yourself,” he tells her earnestly. She doesn't react.

God, I'm really bad at this, he thinks very solemnly, and no other words come to him. So he stays quiet from there, plopping down in the mud next to her and staring down at the absolute cavern she's clawed out of the ground. Then his eyes shift: just a couple inches away is a mound of mud, carefully and neatly collected. Without even asking, Etho knows she was going to build something out of it. That's just how Gem is. 

Etho leans back onto the heels of his hands, craning his neck upward until his gaze finally reaches the tall peak of their house's roof. It's a huge thing, made of jagged edges and frosted glass. It's far too big for two kids, an absent father, and the ghost of their mom. 

He doesn't know how to do this. He's only 11 too. He should be focusing on his algebra homework, going to Boy Scout camp, playing on the Little League team. But there are no more Boy Scout camps or baseball games; not since three years ago. Not since their father's business trips got longer and more frequent. He's across the world right now, and Etho has no idea when he's coming home. Maybe he won't this time.

The shoes of his parents are such a big space to fill, and he's having to cut away so much of himself to do it. For a second— just a second— it aches something fierce. For a second, he bleeds from the hole he's scraping out of his own chest. 

But then he turns his head and sees Gem. Her curls are looking much better ever since he looked up how to take care of them, still drawn into the loose braid he did for her this morning before school. He takes in the soft curve of her cheeks, her mess of freckles, her mud-stained clothes. Even before their mom passed away, he always loved her, but now, she's all he has left. Etho realizes there and then that he's going to keep her safe, and it doesn't matter how much he loses in the process.

Because he'll have Gem. That's all he needs, really. 

So he smiles, and clambers to his feet. As he walks away, he announces that he's going to go make dinner, but isn't surprised when Gem doesn't follow him. She's started building something out of her mud heap, after all. 

He pauses at the door knob, glancing back over his shoulder, just to make sure. Gem remains seated in a circle of flowers and upheaved grass, squinting against the evening sun as she works determinedly. There is a picket fence between her and the street.

He opens the door.

Gem starts routinely coming home with bloody knuckles and broken noses.

“You said stand up for myself,” she says nasally as Etho plugs her nose with tissue. “They won't leave me alone ‘less they're scared, Etho.”

He stares at her for a long moment, but the longer he tries for disappointment, the further it slips from his grasp. She's only seven— nearing eight— but he knows she's right. He figures he probably wasn't much better at age eight, for reasons obvious to him. 

So his gaze shifts from her eyes to her knuckles. Her pale skin is mottled with bruises of black, blue, and green, the thin skin there split and torn, still oozing blood. He thinks of them stained with mud and holding flower petals. 

Etho sighs, resigned, and picks up one of her messy hands. “You should at least use another body part sometimes. You're gonna break your hand.”

“You can break a hand? The whole thing?”

“If you punch enough stuff.”

She chews her cheek, thoughtful, like she's considering the benefits of punching enough stuff. “Does it hurt?”

She's so small, his brain whispers traitorously. “Yeah, Gem. Breaking bones usually does.” 

Gem scowls down at her knuckles, definitely imagining how it would hurt to break her hands and definitely not liking what she's seeing. “Okay… I could kick, I bet.”

“Just don't start it,” he chides as he pulls out the gauze to start wrapping her knuckles. She yelps a little when it scratches the raw skin, and he moves a little gentler. “Self-defense only, got it?”

He feels rather than sees her nod her head dutifully, and still very narrowly pushes down the urge to sigh again. Or 19 more times, until he's done being exasperated. 

Just as he's finishing up her other hand and making plans to go to the grocery store, Gem's voice cuts in, so small and shaky it's nearly a whisper.

“When's dad coming home?”

Etho pauses with her hand in his, and stares down at the stark white bandages, already spotting with blood. Very lightly, he brushes his thumbs over the back of her hand in something he hopes is comforting, but he worries only really grounded him.

“Soon, Gem,” he says with a smile, but can't meet her eyes. “Maybe we can call him when I get home.”

It's a lie, but he doesn't know if Gem knows that yet. What he does know is that if she doesn't, she will soon. Dad never answers calls when he's off working; he doesn't like to be bothered. 

“Maybe,” Gem murmurs.

Instead of continuing that conversation, Etho decides it best to start another. “I'm going to the store, want anything?”

“Just apple juice.”

As he climbs to his feet, he cautiously removes the cloth from her nose, nods, and turns on his heel. He tosses the blood-soaked tissue in the trash and wipes the rest on his pants, promising to dump some peroxide on it later. 

That night, Gem has a nightmare. 

It's not an uncommon occurrence or anything, but it's the first time she's ever woken up from one and not come straight to Etho. He wakes up to her hyperventilating on the other side of his bedroom wall; they moved into rooms that share a wall a couple years ago because of nights like these. So Etho sits up and waits with his breath bated for the sound of footsteps and his door swinging open. 

It doesn't come. He listens, wide-eyed, to Gem's cries in the room next door. He listens until they grow muffled, like she's turned her face into her pillow. He listens until her breathing slows into something he can't hear, and all that's left is quiet sniffling. He stays awake until the sniffles fall silent too, and then even longer, until there's no more squeak of her bed frame as she tosses and turns.

Etho didn't want her to have to grow up so fast. He's worked to keep all the emails, checks, bills, and lists from her just for that reason, like maybe if he just tried really hard, he could trick her and the world and himself into thinking this is normal. He whips around in his bed, turning his back to the wall and pulling his blanket tight around him.

It was stupid. She never had a chance at normal, not with an older brother raising her, and now she's off beating kids up at school and hiding her nightmares from him. This fucking sucks. Though… this probably means he should stop treating her like a kid soon. She's almost eight, after all.

I'm sorry, he thinks, and doesn't know who it's meant for. I'm sorry.

The next morning, Gem corners him at breakfast and asks to start taking martial arts classes.

Etho, 

Your father should be home soon. I expect we'll have closed this deal within the next couple of weeks. I know it's frustrating for you to be unable to reach him directly, but it's simply business. You understand, yes?

Speaking of: if you could call the primary school and change the contact number for your sister to the home phone, that would be grand. Your father is expecting a highly important call any day now, and their incessant calling is clogging his cell. I apologize for being so blunt, but your father asked that I speak plainly. 

Best,

Vanessa Fairchild, J.D., LL.M.

“You're sure you can handle fencing and lethwei?” Etho asks nervously as he packs up Gem's fencing bag. He runs his finger down the checklist he made, whispering the equipment to himself as he goes: épée, chest protector, glove, mask—

Gem groans as she fights to shove her shoe on her foot, which soothes none of Etho's concerns. “I'm strong enough,” she snaps, shooting him a very fierce look. 

“Trust me, that's not my problem,” he placates as he zips up the bag. “You are a freakishly strong nine year old. It's just… big time commitment, that's all.”

“Thanks,” she says in that soft tone that Etho knows means she's being genuine. “But I've been okay the last two weeks.” And then, like a switch has been flipped, she grabs her bag and starts bouncing on the balls of her feet. “I really like fencing. Did you know modern fencing isn't at all like historical fencing?”

She stumbles over the word historical, and Etho can't help but laugh a little. She's told him this fun fact a million times since she learned it last week. When she isn't at school or her classes, she's almost always reading about historical fencing. It's the only thing he's ever seen her love as much as bugs, and that's a really tall order. She especially likes the old sword things they used to use; if she was any other kid, her obsession with swords would be concerning, but well… It's Gem. 

“You don’t have to pack my bag for me,” she says as she swipes it from him and slings it over her shoulder. “I can handle it, Etho. Promise.” 

After he sends her off to her fencing club— she insists on walking alone— he does a little research. It doesn't take long for him to find out that there are actually historical fencing clubs too, not just modern ones. And then he falls into a rabbit hole of the old-timey weapons they use, and he has to admit, they're pretty cool looking. 

He has a very distinct feeling that she's going to ask for historical fencing classes someday. When that time rolls around, maybe he'll get her a weapon she'd like. One of these rapiers or sabers, maybe. There are a lot of options to research, but he has time, and thank God for that. Lethwei isn't cheap, but it's nothing compared to fencing. Putting both of them together?

They only get so much from their dad every month. It's only later that he realizes as he pours over the budget that this isn't going to work, especially not once she starts doing tournaments and having travel expenses. There's no way their dad will send any more money than he already is, even if he can easily afford it. 

Etho’s gonna have to get a job. Scrub toilets at the mall, flip burgers or something. It wouldn’t be too bad, just… go straight after school. And when he gets off work he can make Gem’s dinner for the next day, ‘cause she wouldn’t mind the leftovers. Then get some sleep, wake up early, make lunches. Yeah, he could make that work. Gem would be okay getting to all her classes after school, since she doesn’t really want his help with that anyway. He’ll be 14 soon; plenty of places start hiring then.

He can do it. If it means a better life for her? He can.

Anything for Gem.

When Etho gets home from work on Wednesdays Gem is always in the midst of making dinner. It’s the only day she doesn’t have classes— fencing (saber now, more expensive), lethwei, or ikken hissatsu, the newest addition to the bunch— so she foregoes the leftovers and does something nice for Etho. Today, he opens the door to the smell of tomato sauce and the bubble of boiling water. 

“How was the hotel?” Gem calls over her shoulder from the stove, where she’s very carefully watching a pot of spaghetti boil. 

“Uh, yeah, good. Good,” he answers as he shucks his bag onto the kitchen table. He doesn’t tell her he wasn’t at the hotel job today; the less she knows about what he’s into, the better. “School?”

“It was okay. One more day,” she says with a smile, plopping the spaghetti in the strainer. “I’ll probably be spending a lot of time training this summer.”

Etho chuckles, digging out a couple plates and bringing them over to the sink. He holds them out while Gem dishes out the noodles. “I figured,” he hums. He glances back at his bag, then back at Gem. “Your birthday is in a few days.”

Gem shoots him a glare as she scoops up one of the plates from Etho's hand, but lingers on his hands for a second. “You're shaking. You okay?”

His brows furrow as his gaze shifts to his hands. He realizes that she's right. It's barely noticeable, but it's there; the tiniest tremble in his right hand. “I'm okay,” he mumbles, and flexes his free hand, shrugging when the shake doesn't dissipate. “Probably need to drink more water.”

“Water’s good,” she says with a consoling pat as she takes a seat at the table. “What were you saying?”

Right. He slides his plate across the table, reaches into the front pocket of his bag, and pulls out a green velvet box. Gem's eyebrows raise curiously as he sits it on the table in front of her. She eyes it curiously for a second before her fingers finally close around it. She cracks the lid slowly— as if whatever's inside might lash out— and reveals a wristwatch.

It's a simple thing. Small, rectangular, but plated in gold and fit with a gold chain. He didn't buy it for the gold or even the look of it in the first place, because he knew that wouldn't matter to Gem. It's just… to the point. Useful.

“You'll need it when you're bouncing between the dojo and the fencing club. Gotta stay on schedule,” he explains, and pointedly doesn't look at Gem's face as he spoons some sauce onto his noodles. 

“I love it,” she breathes, and out of the corner of his eye, he watches her slide it on her wrist. It's a little bit big, which he did on purpose in hopes she'd keep growing into it, though she's already almost his size. He still can't see her eyes, but he sees her smile. That's enough. “Thank you, Etho.”

He just smiles back, and starts mixing his spaghetti. “Yeah, ‘course. Happy early birthday.” 

Etho,

Your father has humbly requested that I reply to your prior emails in his place, as he is very busy. I'm sure you understand.

As for your question on when he will be back in the city, currently, it's hard to say. After this trip has concluded, he has more business on the west coast that could take quite a few months. 

I've also forwarded your financial concerns to his desk. I suspect he finds it hard to believe that you would have run out so soon since his last check. He has asked me to suggest that if this is the case, you consider finding another source of income. Perhaps a different part time job, or tutoring your peers? It is my understanding you've been working since 14, but you're 16 now; you should have more options at this age that will hopefully provide more income.

He has also suggested learning how to save money, and that you might start by pulling your sister from the several martial arts classes she is enrolled in. Modern and historical fencing? He believes it to be a waste of time. If I could give my opinion, I do not particularly agree or disagree. However, if I may, I would like to stress to you this: your mother's decades of combat training could not save her.

For that, I am sorry. I am wishing you well always, and your father is too, of course. 

Regards,

Vanessa Fairchild, J.D., LL.M.

“How is any of this real?” Gem whispers hoarsely as she stares blankly at her computer screen. When Etho glances over, he sees the article plastered there. Zombie outbreak traced to local lab breach, it reads, with a picture of a kid who looks nearly Gem's age and the word ‘WANTED’ in bold letters above it. Beneath that article is another: Cases rise across Eastern ocean after quarantine fails. It's the same old shit that's been in the news the past two days, painted all over every display in the city. Or the ones that are still left unbroken from all the rioting anyway.

The government doesn't know anything about what happened or what comes next. That's why the stupid displays are the same, and why there's a war raging outside Etho's barricaded door. Things are getting worse outside; before, he knew for certain all the noises he was hearing were human. But there are no words to make out anymore, just… screams. Creaky, gurgly screams dripping with sheer agony.  

“Who makes a drug that turns people into zombies?” Gem spits at her computer screen as she reads the article. “God, some people are just fatally dumb.”

Etho bustles around behind her, dragging useful stuff into a pile: all their first aid, everything that could constitute as a weapon, water, non-perishables. The two of them already packed up some clothes last night, right after Etho told Gem they were leaving town. 

They have to. Things are getting bad here. It's the capital city— too many people, sure, but also the politics. If this stuff has already gotten overseas and into other countries, it's not long until fingers start pointing, and it's better that they get out of here before then. Etho's not strong— not like Gem, 16 and able to beat the average MMA fighter to a pulp— but he can run. He's good at that.

“Am I missing something?” He whispers mostly to himself as he hurriedly takes stock of what he's managed to accumulate. It's not that he's panicking, because he isn't, really. The reality of the state of the world hasn't fully settled in yet; it's more like a hydraulic press, slowly encroaching, and all he can do is watch it happen. He's fully aware of what's coming for him, but it hasn't crushed him yet. 

No, he's not panicking. He is, however, rushing. The more wiggle room between the two of them and the hunk of metal waiting to flatten them, the better chance they have of rolling out in time. Beat it to the punch.

“Doesn't look like it,” Gem says as she surveys his pile too. She falls in place right at his side, her bag slung over her shoulder and her hand on the strap. In her other hand she holds the sidesword he bought her years ago for her historical fencing club. “Hey, you any good at hunting?”

He blinks, and shifts his gaze to look at her. He hasn't physically hunted since he was eight, but he still knows the important parts.

“Hypothetically,” he murmurs. He glances between the door and Gem, hands shaking. “You any good at killing zombies?”

Grimly, Gem scoffs out a laugh. Her gaze is sharp as she turns it toward the door, grip like a vice on her sword handle. “Guess we'll find out.”

He finds his lips curling into a smile as the determination settles in her eyes. As if there was ever a question of her abilities; he was more or less asking rhetorically. She knows that too, he believes.

“Alright, cool it, tiger. Let's get this stuff together,” Etho laughs, and grabs his mostly empty bag. 

They work not just in tandem, but also in relative silence, polluted only by the screaming outside on the street. It's a tough fit, even with their two extra bags, but between the medical supplies and their father's spare guns and ammunition, there's not really anything they can leave behind.

His gaze catches the well-loved blue leather cover of his Boy Scout Handbook. As he takes it in his hands, the weight and shape as familiar as it’s always been, he thinks maybe they have a little room for sentiment. Maybe it’ll be useful, he tells himself as he opens the front cover. 

Staring up at him is his name on the “belongs to” line, scrawled in pen and barely legible. He learned how to write his name just so he could put it in his handbook; he was in Boy Scouts the second he could walk three feet in front of him, so it took a while, but he got there. The pages are frayed, some delicate and smudged from use, but never ripped. He loves his book too much for that, but he figures from here on out, keeping it scuff-free might be a tall order. Tucked in the front pocket above his name is a photo, a little faded with time, but otherwise free of blemishes. He glances up in search of Gem, and when he sees she’s across the room still wrestling with bandages, he delicately slips it out. 

It’s the last photo he has with his mom from before she died, and he remembers taking it. It was a couple weeks before the crash, at autumn Boy Scout camp. He’s perched on his mom’s shoulders, all decked out in his uniform, his sash proudly on display with its dozens of patches. Next to them is his dad, Etho’s hat in one hand and Gem’s leg in the other as he secures her on his own shoulders. Gem is clearly wobbly, but she’s laughing as one hand grips her dad’s curly hair and the other grabs Etho’s sleeve. She’s happy.

Everyone’s happy. There’s a smile on his own face that he doesn’t recognize anymore, innocent, free. His dad is beaming too, and back then, it wouldn’t have been such an extraordinary thing. The corners of his mom’s lips are ever so slightly tipped up, but that was always a smile for her, he remembers. His mom wasn’t soft, and she definitely wasn’t weak. But she loved them. That mattered. 

It’s all perfectly frozen in time, preciously untouched, and so far away his stomach churns a little the longer he relishes in it, the way you get sick when you have too much sugar. So he carefully tucks it away again, and closes the book. With one hand, he slips it into his backpack’s final free pocket and closes the zipper; with the other, he scrubs at his suddenly blurry eyes, and hopes they clear up before Gem turns around.

They do, of course. They always do. And once everything is packed, they’re ready to make a break for the garage. The plan is to take one of dad’s company cards as far east as it’ll get them. They just have to make it there first.

Together, they stand in the entryway. Etho turns his head. Gem is at his side, but she’s not the bratty, snot-nosed kid she used to be: now, she’s all lean muscle and calculating green eyes, with half of her hair pulled up out of her face. Her grip is firm and certain on the handle of her blade. She is not afraid of what waits for them past these doors, and she’ll do anything to protect him. She doesn’t know it, and he’ll never tell her, but she’s just like Mom. 

The world has ended, and the only thing left in it as far as he’s concerned is Gem. She is all he has. She can protect him any way she likes; he’ll keep her safe first. Because if he has her, he’ll be alright. He knows that much. It might be all he knows anymore.

It’s very shaky, the way his fingers wrap around the doorknob. He pauses there, glances back over his shoulder— just to make sure. The house behind him is cold and draped in shadow, save for the stark blue-white glow of the computer screen, abandoned on another apocalypse article. There are no memories here, in this empty, too-big house; the memories are standing next to him, ever-determined as she meets his gaze and nods. All he has to put between her and the world is himself, Etho realizes as he pulls on a mask.

He opens the door.

The hurricane Etho had been expecting rolls in three days after his, Cleo, and Grian's decision to leave. It doesn't set them back or anything— they didn't plan on leaving right away anyway. With their pitiful supply of first aid, there's no way they could travel safely in unknown territory. Now, of course, there's the rain.

Gem's fingers tug gently at Etho's hair as she starts to part it. 

“You seriously get on my nerves, but you know I’d follow you anywhere, right? Just… isn’t this a lot?” She asks softly. “We've been here for ten years, Etho. Everyone knows us. They're afraid of us. We have a life here.” 

“The work we do isn't our life here,” Etho sighs, and threads his fingers together to quell their trembling. What he doesn't say is you're my life, but it's implied anyway. He knows she feels the same, even if their status in this city is important to her too.

He sits up as she starts pulling his hair in a braid, her fingers soft but purposeful as she weaves. It's getting too long for him to manage on his own, and he knows she knows that. He was never very good at braiding his own hair, and he definitely can't do it now with his tremors so severe.

“I— I know,” she clips out, her nails scratching his scalp as her fingers twitch. “But it sure does help.”

“Come on, Gem. Don’t be like that.” Etho shoots her a glare over his shoulder, and the moment he does, Gem’s eyes are locked with his, glinting in the bunker’s fluorescent lights like jagged jade. For a long moment she just stares at him, gaze sharp and searching. She doesn’t waver, because she never has, but Etho doesn’t either. 

And then her hands start moving again, so Etho faces forward. 

“I know it’s…” Not scary. He doesn’t say scary, because he knows that as scary as this is for him, Gem doesn’t work that way. He hums, thinks. “We’re different. It’s been a long time since this stuff started.” 

Gem scoffs at that. “You can say that again.” She falls quiet for a moment, working at Etho's hair in silence.

The two of them have been through a lot together. Before there was Cleo— and slightly later, Grian— it was only them.

“I guess we were going to have to leave soon anyway. Resources and all,” she says, and pushes on, “But I still think it's too early.” 

“We won't be going anywhere for a while anyway. We don't know enough about what's out there yet,” he points out, and she sighs.

“I just don't get it. If this friend of Cleo's is so strong and important, who's to say he can't survive a few assassination attempts?”

Etho raises his eyebrows. “Well, if you're wanted by enough people, the attempts on your life get harder to survive.” Softly, he tacks on, “Trust me, I'd know.”

He can feel Gem's eyes boring holes into the back of his head, pressing in until the memories are shoved to the front of his mind. Suddenly, the shake of his hands isn't like his tremors anymore. Suddenly it's desperate, like the way his fingers clawed helplessly as wires dug into his throat and his vision crawled with shadows until it blinked out altogether. 

Etho has never been strong— this doesn't mean he isn't scary. He's fast, mostly. Smart. But there's only so much that can do for you when it's you and eight people blocking each end of a scrawny maintenance tunnel. There was nothing he could do, no tricks to pull, no place to run. It's like that, sometimes. 

“Sorry,” Gem whispers, her breath warm against his back. He notices very abruptly that she's pulling his hair a little tighter; he leans into the tingle of his scalp like he's a drowning man crawling onto land. “I know we're lucky. We've never lost anything, anyone. I just…”

Her voice trails off, but Etho knows she's thinking; he doesn't know what she's thinking— he's not so good at that anymore— just that she is. So he sits silently as she ties off his braid and he waits, just like always, for her to find herself again. When he turns to face her, he watches as her green eyes shift left and right before landing not on Etho’s eyes, but on his hip, where the collection of kunai she bought him for Christmas before the apocalypse sits. Her brows thread together and then her lips part, like something is pinned to the tip of her tongue.

Until finally, she exhales slowly and says, “I'm still getting used to…” she trails off again, curls her lip, bites something back. “I'm on board.”

At that, he softens a little. There's always been this… divide between Gem and the others. Etho trusts easier than she does, and that's saying something; he's no talker, and neither is Gem, but at least he tends to observe. Gem isn't like that. She shoots first and asks questions never. Probably the eight million classes teaching her how to knock a man unconscious in one blow at the age of 12.

She doesn't trust them. There used to be a lot of hostility, back in the day. It's a little less dicey now between her and Cleo; she has a begrudging respect for Cleo’s strength. Their relationship isn’t strained so much as it is non-existent. The handful of times she's interacted with Grian, though, have ended closer to bloodshed than anything else. She's never liked how secretive he can be sometimes, and they both feed on control. But he's not asking her to trust them.

Steadily, Etho holds her gaze, and speaks plainly, because there's no other way he knows to speak. “Trust me.”

For another brief, quiet moment, Gem just studies him. Her answering smile is tiny; she holds eye contact only a few seconds longer before she's turning away again. She reaches for her sidesword, now sharpened to kill, and sheathes it at her side. Etho watches in heavy silence as she pops the hatch to the bunker's basement and swings herself inside. The door clangs shut behind her; only once the impact reverberates does he take in a deep breath.

His feet take him to the common area without him really instructing them; finding Cleo and Grian is instinctive. Sure enough, he runs into them sitting on the couch, practically curled up together. Grian is ranting exaggeratedly and animatedly about one of the thousand enemies he made before he joined the two of them; his enemies are the only part of his past he ever speaks about. 

Cleo is uncharacteristically quiet next to him, though it's clear they're listening as they smile and nod their way through Grian's performance. They've never liked the rain, and it's horrifically relentless right now, beating against the walls. Over the years Etho has known her, it's never really gotten better. He wonders sometimes if maybe she doesn't know how to swim, but he doesn't dare ask; he owes her that much. Cleo's eyes find him before Grian's do, and then Grian's gaze follows hers, and his ramble trails off. 

“You have this really bad habit where you walk into rooms like they're funeral homes,” Grian says very plainly, like it's more of an observation than anything else. “Sit down. Someone dying?” He speaks lightly, but the brittleness of his voice is unmistakable, and his grin is far too wide to be anything but fabricated.

Etho notices the strain at the corners of his lips and the bags under his eyes; he always gets pretty bent out of shape after they use the tunnels. It's why he pretty much disappears into the wind the second the tunnels or the south side are mentioned. Any job involving tunnel usage quickly becomes a two person gig unless it's impossible to pull off, like the raid a few days ago.

Okay, he assesses. Everyone is a mess. We're stuck inside, which Grian hates, because of the rain, which Cleo hates. Damage control time. Etho hunkers down on Cleo's other side as he's been told to do, and shuffles his knees a little awkwardly as he settles in. The two of them stare at him unabashedly, waiting for him to explain, and whoops, Grian asked him a question.

“Not that I know of,” he says a little more cryptically than intended. Awkwardly, he purses his lips, and wishes for the first time in quite a while that he had his mask on to hide behind. And measuredly, he continues, “So… you, uh, wanna share Scott stories? Or…”

His voice dies into an uneasy, self-conscious chuckle. Cleo and Grian are staring at him. Cleo blinks; Grian doesn't. The two of them stare some more, and he can't take it, so he looks away until his eyes are just flitting around the room. He chuckles weakly again, utterly terrified. 

“Once,” Cleo starts slowly. “He somehow iced the floor of our junior high’s cafe.”

Grian looks at her incredulously. “Love the energy. Why?”

She grins. “‘Cause I set it on fire. Obviously, Grian.”

“Why?!” he squawks.

Out of sheer relief, Etho gulps in air so fast he nearly chokes on it. All the pieces slide back into place, and for the first time in days, normality settles like a blanket over his taut, tired shoulders. There's no telling who slumps over first, but as Cleo talks, they've all slowly gravitated into a comfortable heap on the couch. Gem might not be here, but he knows innately that she's right beneath the floor, hard at work on something or other. 

Of course he's nervous about leaving. But his family is finally complete, and he'd do anything for them. All of them. He'll be damned if he loses this now.

Chapter Text

Once things settle, it's a little jarring how everything returns to normal. Like nothing has happened, or nothing has changed. In a lot of ways, Grian supposes it’s true; sure, they're leaving, but not imminently. If anything, the three of them are closer than ever. It's like… a grace period.

But the presence of a grace period implies the impending end of it. It's that feeling that orbits him like his own personal planet: the knowledge that soon, it will come too close to his surface, and his flames will consume it. 

The worst part about this nagging feeling is that Grian is totally self aware. He knows it's spurred on by the fact that change is coming, and he's as far removed from his past as one can be, but something about leaving this place behind has left him bedridden. Except that it's not “something.” It's not even a mystery. But he's not thinking about it, about any of it. He's not.

So he decides the nervous, terrified creature eating away at his insides with its jagged and tired teeth is just… a fear of the unknown. And once he lays in bed long enough telling himself that, he's pretty good at pretending that's the real reason. Yeah. Honestly, it kind of works for a few days! It's great! And then the rain starts. Of course, no other thoughts happen while he’s stuck inside in his bed, completely alone with no chores to do.

With the storm raging on, his favorite coping mechanism of “distract yourself until you're unconscious” is seriously hindered. How is he meant to physically exhaust himself if he can't go outside and fly around and kill infected or something? Even if he did fly around for a little bit, his pathetic owl wings would get soaked in probably half an hour, and be a huge pain to deal with afterward. 

Rain fucking sucks. It's only been two days since the onslaught started and he's already getting stir-crazy, which is kind of dramatic, sure, but sue him. He's a bird. He's meant to be in the sky, not stuck under a stupid roof listening to water pour down around him. And his wings have been cramping.

So maybe Grian is grouchy. Maybe. And maybe that has made him kind of unbearable to be around. Like, a little bit. He's holed up because God forbid his birdbrain gets kicked to the curb in the middle of a hurricane because he's pissed his roommates off beyond repair. He would probably get hypothermia and die. Though really, that would be a comparatively peaceful death to the norm around here. You just kind of… sleep, and it's over.

Oh, God, he needs something to do. Maybe something to plan? Like their upcoming… trip. Sure, you could call it that, yeah. He'll feel better once he sinks his fingers into that mess. With his mind made up, he throws himself out of bed and storms into the common room, expecting to find Cleo and Etho there.

He does not find Cleo and Etho there. Instead, he finds Gem, staring at him critically with a piece of toast halfway to her lips. She leans against the kitchen counter, raises her eyebrows, looks him up and down, and says nothing. 

Her eyes raking over him prompts him to do the same, and he realizes very quickly that he's a right mess. He's still saddled in the same rumpled pajamas he's been in for days: sweatpants cut into shorts and a ratty old t-shirt that didn't always belong to him. It has holes messily chopped out of the back for his wings, unkempt and unpreened where they droop behind him. He's covered in his own feathers; they're somehow in his hair, which he can't see but he knows is well knotted. One of his socks is half off his foot, for Christ's sake. 

Grian does what is most appropriate. First, he smothers the ugly, primal embarrassment wriggling up his chest before it can reach his face. Then, he narrows his eyes at Gem in the filthiest glare and tries to telepathically tell her that he looks like this on purpose, thank you very much. 

“Comfortable?” She asks loftily, lips curled in a grin. His eye twitches. 

“Quite,” he answers, and pointedly does not pull his sock back up to his calf as he turns away to head to the couch, plopping down on his designated cushion.

When he glances back over his shoulder, Gem is gone. And like a cold front has been pushed from the atmosphere, a warm front follows as Etho and Cleo emerge from the basement. Their conversation derails the moment they lay eyes on him, mouths lifting into matching smiles as they round on him. 

“Hey!” Cleo beams as she leans on the back of the couch behind him. “You look fucking crazy. What's up?” 

“I feel crazy,” he grumbles, and fails to squash the embarrassment any longer— his face grows impossibly hot in the warmth of his friends. “My wings are killing me.”

“Maybe because you haven't preened them?” Etho suggests innocently, hands hovering around his wings as he looks them over.

Grian glances at him and tucks his wings tight against his back. “Just sore… but anyway, I was thinking.” He jumps to his feet and gestures vaguely and wildly at the bookshelves. They're scattered with various genres of book, journal, and magazine, and organized with no rhyme or reason, which is to say they aren't organized at all. “Maybe we have a map somewhere.” 

Grian can actually guarantee he's seen one in there somewhere, but where exactly is another story. They haven't really had much use for maps depicting anywhere outside of the city; this place has been all of their homes for a long time. Grian himself was here for years before meeting Etho and Cleo, though in much different company. Even before the apocalypse he didn't live far from here. He's spent 15 years— over half of his life— in and around this city of theirs.

“That'd be good,” Etho hums thoughtfully. “I don't know much about the eastern part of the country. I'm from the capital.” 

“Jesus. Naturally,” Cleo scoffs and rolls her eyes as she descends on the nearest bookcase. Grian follows in her footsteps, grabbing the first book he sees. And We Were Soldiers, the title reads. Memoir, maybe? Meanwhile, Cleo keeps chatting. “The capital might as well have been another country. They didn't care about the people.” 

He flips it over to read the back, where it very vivaciously proclaims itself to be an ‘impossibly, beautifully romantic journey in times of war’ because ‘love is everywhere, if you're looking.’ Why do we have this, he thinks despairingly, nose wrinkled as he drops it to the floor: the start of a discard pile. 

“Very true. Why do you think Gem and I got out of dodge?”

“Honestly, the actual West Coast wasn't much better,” Grian says absently, honestly still a bit miffed from the war love story concept. “I just know the archipelago and lakes. And the mountains in the southeast.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Cleo blink at him in shock. “You’re from the West Coast? What the hell were you doing 900 miles from home?”

Shit. “I’ve lived here since I was 13,” he explains very carefully. “Moved for work.” And then, anticipating the next question, he says, “I was a gifted kid, apparently.”

Etho whistles lowly, and the proximity of it makes Grian flinch. He glances to his other side and Etho is there, rifling through a magazine. He hadn’t even noticed. “Must've been to move that far. What did you do?”

And Grian knows he isn't prying, and that Cleo isn't either. Both their shoulders are loose and relaxed as they flip through pages; this exchange is casual and curious, a footnote, nothing but a tool to pass time. They couldn't actually care less about where he's from or what he was up to a decade ago. It's platitude-filled, friendly conversation. Logically, he knows that.

Logic, however, changes nothing. There's a many-legged creature crawling up his spine, its teeth paralyzingly sinking into him with every word that falls past their lips. Something big looms over him, something dark and heavy with a shadow like a black hole, swallowing him in its endlessness. It's been chasing him for a long time, but he doesn't know why it's choosing now to breathe its hot air against the back of his neck and ghost its razor-sharp claws over the lines of his wings. Maybe it's because he's threatening to leave it behind.

What did you do?

The desire he has to molt out of his body and become nothing is a palpable one, overshadowed only by his ingrained need to run. But his mind isn't his own anymore. He's not sure when it happened, when he was too off-guard to notice— maybe a few days ago, maybe when he tried out the words he's dead— but he blinked, and the cage inside him suddenly contained him, the key no longer in his pocket. He's scared, and for maybe the first time since he cowered on his sister's doorstep ten years ago, he can't run. He can't run. Who is he if not a fugitive? A deserter? 

All he can do is stand here, limbs logged with boiling water. Every beat of his heart is a blow against his ribcage, rapid fire, so fast it leaves him breathless and suffocating. His vision is blurry, but he painstakingly fumbles his hands forward anyway, searching for some sort of anchor. He doesn't know what they find; he only knows they do once his nails dig into something sturdy. 

Maybe Grian's vision clears up in seconds, or maybe it takes hours. All he knows is that it does clear, eventually, and he's sitting now. The first thing he does when feeling returns to his body is look at Etho. It takes him a few moments to understand why that is. It slowly comes to him that Etho is humming a jingle to some old commercial— the kind that sticks in your head for days after you hear it, and never fully leaves you. One of those things that miraculously, of all the memories, has somehow earned a spot of permanence in your mind. He almost asks where it's from, but his tongue sinks in his mouth like lead before he can really even try.

Then he's turning his head— sluggishly, like he's moving through quicksand— to Cleo. They're very quiet, head bowed as they read a book in their lap, lips pursed sort of pensively. They're only using one hand to turn the pages, and are clearly struggling as a result of it. Slowly, with a dread he can't quite place, his eyes trace the solid, muscled line of her other arm.

And Grian finds his hands. His hands, latched onto the meat of her forearm, nails piercing her flesh. They've long since torn through the skin there, so deep that rivulets of blood steadily roll from each crescent-moon chunk ripped under his nails. It’s covering his fingers, staining her arm, dripping onto the floor. His breath hitches, snags violently in his chest like a sleeve to a thorn. He yanks his hands away from her, and when her arm touches his lap he scrambles backward with the heels of his feet. The blood smears with him, all over his hands, his clothes, the floor. 

Cleo says nothing; she just goes back to holding the book in her lap with two hands, uncaring of the blood surely splattering on the pages. Grian watches her with wide eyes for a moment before they flick shakily over to Etho, who turns his head to look at Cleo in confusion.

“What's an archipelago?” He murmurs despondently, as if this has been haunting him since Grian first said it.

Cleo very gradually glances over at him, brows raised and mouth open, utterly incredulous. “Are you serious?”

Etho says nothing. All he does is give her a pinched expression, appearing absolutely inconsolable about this. Cleo's first peal of laughter is short and abrupt, like it's been punched out of her; a brief silence follows, where she claps her hand over her mouth and sputters, trying to hold it in. She fails miserably, and starts cackling.

“Wh- no, no,” Etho pleads. “Come on. It's killing me.” When he makes no progress, he desperately swivels to seek guidance with Grian. He pays no mind to the four feet of blood-trailed distance now between them, or the blown pupils, or the clammy skin. 

“It's just a group of islands,” Grian croaks out automatically, his voice raw. He glances between them in shock, frozen in place as he waits for the other shoe to drop.

It doesn't. Cleo is still laughing wildly, though she's winding down some now, albeit because she can't breathe. Even Etho is sheepishly chuckling now as he tosses his book aside with one hand and grabs himself a new one. And then, like it's some sort of afterthought, he tosses Cleo a rag and some bandages. Grian doesn't know when Etho got them, but he doesn't have time to dwell, because suddenly there's a damp washrag in his own bloody hands. 

No one says anything. The mood is impossibly bright, so much so that Grian bewilderedly wonders if he's walked into an alternate universe where people smile as they wrap up their mauled, blood-soaked arms.

But… well. The rag in his hands is enough to clean the blood from them, and he can't just… leave. He needs this distraction desperately. 

(And the company, something whispers in his head, and is promptly silenced. Wants and needs are not the same thing, and the defining question is do I deserve it?)

With ruddy fingers and an achy heart, Grian shuffles forward, and he grabs a book. 

It takes ages to find a map. Six hours, actually, not counting a quick meal break. That also isn't counting distractions, of which there were plenty; most notably, a riveting one man show from Cleo after they found a play manuscript stuffed in the back of the third shelf. Honestly though, aside from the gnawing familiarity, Grian didn't mind it; they really have a talent for it. When it starts to feel bittersweet, Grian shoves himself back into searching for the map. 

It's not him that finds it, though. It's Etho, actually. They're on their fifth bookshelf and losing steam when Etho yanks a book free and immediately quips, “Wow, I wonder if this atlas has a map.”

Grian side-eyes him. “You're kidding.”

Cleo heaves a long suffering sigh and throws the book in their hands into the absolute mess of a discard pile. It's not a pile anymore; it's a sea of books and papers, stacked six inches tall in some places and covering the living room floor. Just as Grian is scowling down at the trainwreck around them, Cleo makes eye contact with him that screams this is a problem for future us.

And with that, the three of them crowd on one side of the kitchen table. Grian sits in the middle, map splayed out in front of him, his wings tucked out of the way behind both Cleo and Etho's backs. 

It occurs to him as he stares down at this map that it really has been ages since he last saw an actual map of the country. It's been a while since he's seen a map period; the only one he's used for years is the city tunnel map he swiped from one of his co-worker's apartments. Not to mention his map experiences since he turned 13 have been limited to experimental study figures littered with scientific data points. A lot of these city names are new to him, and half of them probably don't even exist anymore.

Etho passes him a pen, and he plants a little dot on top of their city.

“So, step one: where is Scott?”

Cleo swoops in then with a pen of her own, hovering over the line of the East Coast as she talks. “Well, the guy said he's on the coast. Scott was loaded growing up, but he never traveled. So, there's only one place he'd think to go after we split.” She stops her pen on the Southeastern coast, barely north of the Harbel Isles, and draws a star over a city called Parrence. 

“Never heard of it in my life,” Grian deadpans.

“He went to college there. Irotara University,” Cleo explains, and finishes with a sarcastic, “Go Owlbears!”

Etho glances at her, brows raised a little. “Interesting mascot.”

“If by interesting you mean pretentious,” Grian grumbles, twitching his wings. 

Cleo rolls their eyes, elbowing him in the bicep. He knows they're about to say some shit because they're grinning ear to ear. “Don't get your feathers in a bunch, barnyard.”

He takes it hook, line, and sinker as he snips back, “Eagle owl, thank you very much,” and promptly whacks them upside the head with the meat of his wing. 

Cleo yelps, rubbing the back of their head and coming back with a fistful of white-and-black feathers that were dislodged in his movement. “Christ! Those things are deadly.” She sounds more awed about it than anything, so Grian relents. 

“So we can't go straight there, because of the mountains,” Etho murmurs, hand over his mouth as he scans the map.

“We need to plot around other marked cities, too,” Grian points out. “It'll be easier to stay alive in an apartment building than the wilderness. Everything south of here between us and the mountains is straight forest.”

“Everything between here and my hometown is pretty urban, or at least flat,” Cleo says, scribbling a little triangle next to Iris Lake, one of the biggest lakes in the country. It makes sense she'd live there, given her stories; pretty much any town along Iris Lake is a farm town, what with all the fertile land there. 

Grian’s very STEM based education was built for the quick math this map scale requires. So Cleo's hometown is 300 or so miles from here. Looking at the map, they'll probably need to travel about half that before they can safely get to the next city south, while still dodging rough terrain. They still won't be able to make steady progress south until like, 280 miles in, and even then they'll still have 300 miles south to go. But then again, as he's eyeballing the distance straight from them to Scott, he realizes they'd have a 600 mile journey ahead of them either way. 

It dawns on him again just how big of an undertaking this is. If they don't scrounge up a car or something, this is at least a two or three month hike. At least. Not counting rest days or any other roadblocks, like bad weather, or death. Because they could die. They don't know what's out there, and they could die. 

He feels it again: something larger-than-life hanging over his head, curling along his shoulders, weaving between his feathers. His wing twitches helplessly, but it doesn't stop crawling. It slinks up, up, along the pounding surface of his carotid, until it whispers in his ear, what did you do?

What did you do? When he looks down at the pen in his hand, he can still see the blood stains, still see it caked under his nails. Do I deserve it?

He's scared, and he can't run, but he knows that isn't the problem. For all that Grian likes to pretend, the fact is this: when he runs, he never goes far. He's a dog on a chain and this city— all the people he's found in it, all the people he's lost— holds the key. He's made a million mistakes here, but when he buries his skeletons, he plants flowers alongside them. He never truly leaves the graves. 

When Grian was a kid, he would chase after hurricanes. All he wanted was to find the eye: to have ruin surround him, but know that it would never touch him. He's always been fascinated by that; destruction, and what follows it. That's why he stays. That's why he watches. Who else will water flowers in a hurricane? Who else?

Stop, he pleads with himself, and tries very helplessly to get his eyes to focus on the map. You wanted a distraction, so take it. Stop thinking.

But his eyes are cloudy now, like a film has been pulled over them, like he's gazing at the world through a veil. He can't make out the rough lines of the sun-soaked West Coast, or the salt marsh islands of the Northeastern Archipelago. No more scale bar, no more math to do. 

This isn't Grian. Grian knows what he wants and then he takes it. That's who he is. This? This feeling? 

This is you, he seethes at the shadow and its hundred-thousand legs, scraping every vertebrae like pins and needles. He looks over his shoulder then, as if to yell at it, rip it apart, something—

And he blinks at the empty space behind him, bleary-eyed and exhausted. Right. He'd forgotten it wasn't real. Very slowly, he takes a breath, and—

“Ow.”

Grian flinches, eyes landing on Etho, who has effectively been pinned to the table by his wing since he swiveled around like that. He pulls it back immediately, chest suddenly very tight. Etho just lifts his head from the table, flashing a thumbs up. 

“Very strong appendages,” he says plainly. 

“Sorry,” Grian says, sighing. “Thought I heard something.”

Etho frowns a little— just the slightest downturn of his lips. “You gettin’ enough sleep?” 

“Wh… yeah?” he answers, slightly incredulous. As soon as the words escape his mouth, he watches Etho's eyes shift slightly, to where he knows Cleo is sitting beside him. Something hot and shameful spikes through his chest at the sight of it. He pinches his brows together against the sheer force of it, and gives them each a quick scathing glare. “Don't do that.”

He scoots his chair back so they're both in his field of vision, and he watches as they glance at each other hesitantly. 

“Well… We're worried,” Etho insists. 

The words leave a foul taste in Grian's mouth. “Don't be,” he spits out. 

Cleo meets his eyes then, voice serious and stern. “Grian. You haven't left your room in two days, not even to eat. You haven't preened in even longer. In the span of six hours you've had not one, but two panic attacks.” Her demeanor softens then, all the steeled edges leaving her as she exhales deeply. “Just tell us what's going on with you, right?”

His immediate thought is to critique her definition of a panic attack, but he gets the feeling that wouldn't go over well. Either way, when he parts his lips, his vocal cords don't move. His tongue strains as if it were bound. He can't get his body to do what he needs it to, so he slams his mouth shut so hard his jaw clicks, and he pointedly avoids Cleo's gaze. 

This, however, puts him right at eye level with Etho's trembling hands, where he can watch as they start… moving. It takes three seconds of stunned blinking for him to realize he's signing.

Can you talk, he asks with his hands. All Grian can do for another few seconds is blink some more, before he curtly shakes his head. Really, he could. Technically. But not about his feelings, and he knows that's what Etho is really asking, because that's what Cleo wants from him. And so, he says no. 

“He can't talk right now,” Etho translates for Cleo, who frowns thoughtfully.

“Okay, you don't need to,” she says, eyes still on him, ever unwavering. “I just want to say…” she trails off helplessly, and sighs as she starts again. “You've been in an awful mood since we decided to leave, Grian. If you aren't ready, we don't have to. Like, ever.”

God, he wishes he could scream right now, because it's not that he isn't ready to leave. It's the fact that he’s finally willing to. It's the fact that, somewhere along the way, these two burrowed their way into his heart and made a home out of its hollow center. It's the fact that he can claw Cleo's arms to bits and she'll still smile at him. It's the fact that he can snap at Etho's sister and live to tell the tale. It's the fact that they see him, with all his sharp and shadowy parts, and they still love him. 

It's been years since he loved someone enough to leave his cage. Grian got him killed. That's what Grian does. And that's what scares him; not running, not leaving, not dying. It's the selflessness, the vulnerability. 

It's the forgetting. There's a zombie out there, in the very streets Grian flies, wearing the skin of his lover. Or maybe he's nothing but bones, strewn somewhere alongside his sister's corpse, long since decayed into nothing but marrow. When their ghosts follow him around every corner and each step he takes could be upon their cracked bones, the burden on his shoulders is so much lighter. This place is his way of carrying with him all of the people he's lost to time.

He stares at Cleo, all plump muscle and wild hair, her gaze soft and open as she looks at him. She left behind the corpse of her best friend all those years ago. Etho sits next to her, wiry frame shuffling in his nervousness, and yet his good eye betrays that he doesn't doubt for a second they'll figure this out. It was only him and his sister for so long, but he still let Grian in.

Do I deserve it, he pleads in his head, like there's anyone up there to give him the answer he wishes he could hear. All the echoes back to him, ringing in his ears, is a resounding no. Of course he doesn't. 

Even still, they aren't going to leave him behind. Under their confident, warm gazes, he realizes for the first time that for every place he would follow them, they would gladly follow him too. The feeling drips through him like cool water, tingling and soothing all the war-torn parts of him. He even lets himself absorb it.

But he can't say it. He can't put it into words that make any sort of sense, especially not without sharing things he'd rather not share. He just needs more time. Forever and always, he needs time. But it's not to shove everything away, and pack it into a neat cast-iron box in the corner of his mind; now, it's to open the box, to let go of everything still rotting inside it. 

Soon, Grian signs. I'll talk soon. Promise. 

He doesn't wait for Etho's response. Instead, he climbs to his feet and lets them carry him to the door. With one hand, he grabs his coat, and with the other, the doorknob. The wind rattles against the door, beckoning him, calling for him.

It's time to chase one last hurricane.

It's warm out, even despite the wind and rain. Hardly a minute after Grian stepped outside he was already soaked to the bone, but even still, he's not cold. It reminds him a lot of home— his first home, the one of endless sand and gentle sunrises and soft edges. He fit in there, once. He used to look right at home. Isn't that crazy?

Scott lives on the coast. It won't be the same, but maybe it'll be close. 

It's not that he misses his first home, he thinks as he beats his wings with the force of the wind. Truth be told, he barely remembers it. What he does remember blurs together into an undefinable mass: all the parts are indistinct, but every piece of it is golden. So the feeling he's covered in now isn't a yearning, a desire to go back to something long lost; instead, it's fondness. Nothing more, but nothing less either. 

He realizes on his next downstroke that the water trapped under his feathers is already leaving them shivering. He flies anyway, not exactly sure where he's going, his gaze trained on the sky, searching. On the ocean, the hurricanes were terrifying. People would die. Here, so far inland, he's braving the tailwinds, the remnants of something stronger. The winds are harsh, but he's flown through harsher. And so, his eyes stay on the sky.

The eyewall. He could get there like this. The longer he flies, the more the winds pick up. He could get there.

But his gaze shifts. It lowers, locks onto the ground, trapped in place as the world blurs underneath him into an amalgamation of gray and green. He doesn't know why, but he stops. The storm howls around him, the rain like knives against the wind-burnt skin of his cheeks. His wings fight to keep him hovering in the air, but he doesn't look up, and he doesn't move. 

Under his feet is the rooftop he, Etho, and Cleo stood on a week or so ago. He blinks against the rain caught in his eyelashes, and he glides down until his feet settle on the concrete. Unsteadily, he walks himself up to the edge and peers down, down, down. The streets crawl on and on, lined by buildings Grian doesn't know by name, but can attribute to memories. Hundreds of memories, lining every single corner and edge of the roads that stretch out beneath him. 

So the past never left him. It's been living inside him, he guesses, locked up in a cellar with no door. It dug itself right out of the ground, though. 

“How do I get rid of you,” he muses under his breath, by no means audible over the wind and rain. When his legs wobble underneath him, he lets himself sit, feet dangling over the ledge. A full-body shiver courses through him; the water has settled into his wings now. He won't be able to fly anymore if he stays out much longer. 

Through the sheets of rain, he watches the water that's accumulated on the ground far below him rush through the city streets. It occurs to him then, very suddenly, that maybe he should stop trying to get rid of the past. The bullet hole keeps soaking through the band-aid; maybe it's time to treat it. Leave the bullet in, but stitch up the entry wound. 

Maybe it's time he comes to terms with it.

That looming shadow hasn't left him; Grian doesn't think it ever will. Not really. But maybe that doesn't have to be the end of the world. He's never tried to meet it on its level, face-to-face. He knows he's not ready for that, at least not now, but… maybe later. Maybe with time. Real time, where he isn't free bleeding, suspended mid-air, frozen in place. 

It only takes half an hour for him to fly back and settle his feet on his doorstep. When he swings the door open and yanks it shut behind him, Cleo and Etho are still in the kitchen. Etho is putting away dishes that Grian absolutely remembers were already in the cabinets earlier. Cleo is reading a book upside down, the cover adorned with two people kissing passionately in very little clothing. Neither of them look over at him.

“Oh, hey,” Etho says very squeakily, still refusing to meet Grian's eyes. His hand shakes so badly he nearly drops a plate. 

“You're here,” Cleo adds on plainly, and grips her book so hard her arms tremble under the force of it; he tries not to let his gaze catch on her bandages. Sweat shines on her forehead.

Grian doesn't move from the doorway. Water is streaming off of him so steadily that a puddle is already forming at his soggy feet. His hair, clothes, and feathers are plastered to his skin. His eyes bounce between them, unsure, but if he waits for that hesitance to go away he'll be waiting forever, he knows. He decides then to speak without thinking.

“Nothing is ever coming back,” he croaks, his own voice foreign to his cotton-stuffed ears. “I can't go back.”

Etho pauses mid-air with a cup in hand. Cleo slowly sits their book on the tabletop.

Finally, Cleo looks at him. “Why would you want to?” She asks, voice raw, and it isn't rhetorical or sarcastic. It's genuine. It's curious. With her eyes she's asking him, what keeps you here? What did you love here?

In the face of her honesty, Grian reciprocates as vulnerably as he can. “I don't.”

And it's the truth. There's a lot that he misses from the time before these two, but it's all gone. Even if he went back, he'd never be able to change it. Destiny is destiny. He knows that intimately. Here, with Cleo and Etho… 

This doesn't belong to fate. This belongs to Grian. It's Grian's, and it's alive and breathing, and it's worth fighting for. So he'll fight for it; he can do that without forgetting the rest. 

“I want to go,” Grian continues firmly. “But I need some time.”

“Okay,” Cleo tells him without missing a beat, a smile on their lips. “Anything.”

There's no more chain tying Grian down; he's known that for a long while. And still, he never left. Freedom… it's foreign to him, has been for most of his life, for better or for worse. First, he'll get accustomed to the freedom. He'll try out his atrophied muscles. He'll run, but he'll do it in circles; he will chase nothing, and he will not be chased. The rest of it— the leaving, the unknown— that can come later. 

A grace period. Maybe Grian can find some use in it after all.

Chapter Text

On the tail of Grian's heartfelt plea for time, something… shifts, for Etho. The storm passes, as they always do. The flooding sticks around only for a few days, so after that, it's more or less back to business. Not everything remains the same, though.

Namely, Grian is a lot more present. He was obviously around all the time before this— roommates and all— but it goes beyond something physical. Etho has heard more of Grian's thoughts and emotions this past week than he probably has the entire span of their three year friendship. Etho, for one, is too nervous to voice it aloud; he's pretty sure it might frighten Grian off, or at the very least embarrass him. 

It’s a precarious thing, this new normal of theirs. It definitely keeps him in a balancing act anyway, with an increasingly omnipresent Grian and an increasingly distant Gem standing on two sides of him in a constant push and pull. It’s this tug of war that has him walking through the city’s busy center with Gem at his side, far from the safety of their little home. 

“Surely we aren’t here for trading,” Gem huffs, hand on her hip— right against her sword. She makes for a powerful image with her chin up and eyes out, hair half up in a braid, the rest loose around her shoulders. Blood unabashedly coats the surface of her boots; he knows she’s never tried to hide it, knows she never will.

She commands attention. They walk together, but no eyes follow Etho as they slink down the sidewalk; they follow Gem, gazes snagging on all her sharp edges like cotton on barbed wire. It really counteracts the work Etho is doing to blend in here; his hood and mask are pulled up and he’s slouching just to look a little shorter. None of it matters when Gem moves this way: purposefully, like she has a goal, and threateningly, like you’re in her way.

He’s well aware, though, that she can’t help it. No amount of hoods or masks could dull the searing way that Gem shines. If she’s not actively trying for the opposite, she will get noticed. It’s who she is. It’s his fault, really, for not being as forthcoming as he should’ve been. Oh, well. Might as well fill her in now, he figures.

“No, we’re not,” he confirms, and shoots her a long, thoughtful glance. “It’s surveillance.” 

Without another word, her hood is up and her head is down. “Etho,” she hisses, elbowing him in the side. “You should’ve said something!” 

He laughs, and silence stretches between them, but it's not discomforting at all. Her ability to just morph into whatever the situation requires of her will never cease to amaze Etho; in the blink of an eye, she is draped in shadow and secrecy. She looks, to all the world, entirely unremarkable.

“Can I know what we’re looking for?” Gem complains, brow crooking up as her gaze catches on a pair of women just as one of them levels the other with a sickening punch to the jaw. She giggles a little; a quiet thing, but loud enough that it masks the sharp, tiny breath Etho pulls through his teeth.

“I’m trying to see how far the rumors about Scott have spread,” Etho hums, gaze lingering on the woman slumped on the ground as they pass. “If we find someone to steal from, even better.”

“Right… Man From a Far Off Land again,” she grumbles, scuffing her boot against the mangled concrete. Etho shoots her a disapproving glance; even though she doesn’t see it, she must feel it, because she huffs. “I’m just— people around here are lazy! It’s kind of stupid to think one of these idiots could orchestrate a cross-country assassination attempt.”

When she jabs her thumb to her left, she perfectly frames some guy with his leg jammed in a fence gate. From the looks of it, he’s stuck. Etho sighs.

He concedes. “You’re not… incorrect.”

She raises her eyebrows at him. 

God, Etho misses when things were easier. Every day was chaotic, but predictable. He could tell his sister that really, he just wanted to hang out with her, and he wouldn’t have to torture himself over what she’d think about it. She's hardly uttered a word about the plan to leave since the hurricane, be it negative or positive; this is concerning, of course, because Gem is the most outspoken person he knows. She has a lot of opinions, and whether it's love or hate, she will share all of them.

It's something he loves about her. He doesn't know what this — her raised eyebrows and cold eyes and careful silence— is. It's not her, he knows that. 

He wonders, too, if it's his fault. Has he done something to make her believe he doesn't care about her opinions? If that's the case, he's screwed. Gem is stubborn— once her mind is set to something, that's that. 

“Do you remember the first time we came here?” Etho murmurs.

The corners of Gem’s lips twitch up into a fond little smile. “Yeah,” she answers lightly. “I had just turned 17.”

Nine years ago. It was nine years ago that they first set foot in this city.

In some ways, it feels so much longer than that. Maybe it's just because of how much things have changed. Coming just after the apocalypse started, when death was at its most pungent and anarchy its most rampant, meant that any show of humanity was a massive improvement. Back then, no one cared for anyone or anything but themselves; you had to, if you wanted to survive.

When he looks around now, he sees proof of humanity everywhere. The city's center is just shy of their old normal, with its bustling people and glowing lights. Truthfully, its functionality is entirely reliant on the collaboration of dozens of different groups and factions; Etho still remembers when they banded together to fix up the solar panels on the street lamps and clear the streets of the worst of its rubble. It's the final bastion of love in this war-torn world of theirs. 

Which isn't to say it's entirely peaceful. People kill each other here all the time, and he's sure that he'll see it happen before he leaves for the day. But people laugh here too. They'll shop around the little stalls in the thrown-together market corner, or meet new people at the faux parks where nature has reclaimed what's hers, or host parties both big and small in the dusty grand halls of the crumbling hotels.

This city has no leader. No one told them to leave this little chunk of the city free of border disputes. They just… did it. And now, there's some universal, unspoken, beautiful thing guarding this place from the worst of the new world's horrors. Everyone respects it for what it is. 

“Certainly changed a lot,” Etho comments more than a little affectionately after a long stretch of silence. 

“If by that you mean there are less people actively dying in front of our eyes, then yes,” Gem snorts and lifts her head to glance around. And then, more fondly: “It's nice. Like walking through a kinda messed up time machine.”

It grows quiet between them again, but this time Etho is knocked breathless by the awkwardness of it. Gem is walking out of step with him, brows pinched and lips pursed as she glances around; her thinking face. He just watches as subtly as he can from the corner of his eye, determined not to deter her from talking to him. 

She takes a quick breath, and her mouth opens. She hardly has the first letter of his name past her lips before she's cut off by a horn.

It's distant, and a little quiet, but he freezes in place anyway. The street has fallen into startled, fearful silence, save for hushed whispers and shuffling feet. Gem has frozen too, her hand tight on her side sword, already crouched and ready for a fight.

“Wh— the stampede alarm?” She whispers, eyes darting this way and that. “Do you—”

It sounds again, but this time, it's closer, encroaching from in front of them. This is the first pass, and the sound is long, so that must mean the danger is somewhere in front of them too. It's the call to evacuate. Etho squints, peering over the hunkered heads of the people lining the street, but he doesn't see anything—

Again it cries, long and loud, violent as it bares down on Etho's eardrums and rattles every bone in his body. It yowls from the watchtower almost directly next to them, and then it cascades away to the one behind them. With every thunderous beat of his heart against his tightening ribcage, his blood boils hotter, the pervasive tremble of his hands growing worse and worse.

Someone shrieks from in front of them, unintelligible. It's panicked enough that the message is crystal clear: run.

Etho grabs Gem’s wrist, swivels on his heel, and sprints.

The world jerks into motion around them until every person on the street is running in the same direction. The alarm is circling back now in shorter calls, fading behind their backs, but they all know this set of alarms is solely an attempt to lure away the horde of zombies that is most certainly on its way. 

“Etho,” Gem shouts over the pounding of feet, slipping her hand free to run alongside him. “It’s the office building—”

“I know,” he yells back as he leaps over a dislodged crate, chest heaving as the soles of his boots just barely brush the corner of it. “I wrote the stupid thing!”

If Gem is offended, she doesn’t say as much, but it’s true anyway; he did help write the evacuation plan. He and Cleo, along with a dozen others, wrote it up after the very first zombie stampede. Hundreds died in the central part of the city, taken by surprise and too frantic to save themselves. For each section of the city’s heart, a safe building was elected, and for each block along the main street, watch towers were constructed. In every watch tower there is an alarm, and each alarm when sounded follows the other like a line of dominoes: a warning. And then, as everyone runs to safety, the direction reverses: a diversion. 

It works. Etho has seen it firsthand. Luckily, they weren’t far from this section’s evacuation spot— a giant office building, comfortably distant from the gaping maw of the rift, but not too far out of the way— when the alarm sounded. 

Etho runs, and he does not look back, because he knows better. He hears all he needs to know anyway: a cacophony of animalistic groaning and screeching, overwhelming even the harried footsteps of the people around them as hundreds of zombies pour into the street.

It takes them exactly 44 seconds to swing into the makeshift doorway of the dilapidated office building, not quite at the front of the pack, but somewhere close. Etho nestles himself up against a boarded-up windowsill, chest heaving as he fights for a full breath. 

The worst part about this evacuation location is that it’s dark. There are dozens of windows lining every wall, and once upon a time, they were wide open; the glass has since been shuttered in wood, metal sheets, and anything else they could scrounge up. The barest amount of light spills in from slats and holes in the covers, so Etho can see the vague shapes of people storming in on the other side of the room, even if he can't make out details.

The first floor is completely empty, save for an old receptionist’s desk, some foundational pillars, and random furniture strewn about. It was part of the reason they chose the building as an evacuation location all those years ago; in the event that a lot of people need some place to go, there's enough room here for all of them. 

“It's been a long time since we had a stampede,” Gem says, a notch louder than before so her voice isn't lost in the crescendoing volume of this echoey room. People keep pouring in, tripping over each other, shouting back and forth. 

When Etho thinks about it for a second, he realizes Gem is right. It's been probably two and a half years since he last heard of a stampede in the city, and twice that since he was actually present for one.

There are a lot of reasons for that. Most notable is the fact that a lot of zombies don't actually like clumping together; the ones that do, Etho calls “herders.” Herders tend to be older and irradiated, but with everyone's more coordinated efforts to wipe out zombies before they can age into scarier creatures, that combination has been getting rarer and rarer. 

To Etho, the presence of a stampede means one of two things. One: these guys were trapped somewhere, but something happened to get them free. Not an impossible feat. More likely, though, is two: someone is slacking on keeping their territory clean. The problem with that is the fact that there's no real rule being enforced about purging your area’s zombies. How could there be, with nothing and no one to enforce it? It's more of an unspoken courtesy, if anything— if you want your presence in this city to be granted with even the barest hint of respect, you deal with your zombie infestations.

It's for this reason that so much of Etho and his people’s time is spent patrolling. When sat against the size of their group, the area they call home is comparatively massive. But with how well they work together, they can manage all the zombies that come with an area so big in a way most other groups just couldn't. The work the four of them do directly benefits even the people who despise them, and so, they're left alone.

Truth be told, it doesn't really irritate him that people are cutting corners. He just hopes whoever has been is here to see the consequences. For as many lives as the evacuation plan has saved, it can't save everybody. It hasn't and it won't.

These facts have filtered through Gem's mind, too. Etho might not care, but even in the half-light of this makeshift bunker it is abundantly obvious to him that she feels differently. The fire blazing in her eyes makes sure of that.

Lightly, almost laughing, he asks, “Why do you care so much? You couldn't care less if some guy across the city dies from his own stupidity.” Every bone in Gem's body stiffens. She turns her head to look at him so slowly it's almost comical.

Only, it's not comical; Gem's gaze is utterly withering as it fixes on him. Her nails claw crescent moons into the meat of her calloused palms, digging in so hard he can see the way her forearms shudder. She doesn't even notice when someone bumps into her as the swelling crowd of people descends on their little corner. He swears he hears something creak, but he doesn’t look away, afraid that if he does she might explode into the wildfire she was born to be.

He's expecting her to start yelling. It makes it scarier when all she bites out is a clipped, careful, “It's the principle, Etho.”

It makes him twitch. She says the word as if it were from a foreign language, as if it were a concept so novel he'd collapse if he even tried to grasp it. As if he wasn't the one who taught her every principle she holds. He bites his tongue, figuring now isn't really the time for a petty argument. The throng of bodies shoves in even closer, until he and Gem are pressed against each other, caged into the corner of the room. He holds his breath, brows furrowed as he tries to see over the heads of the people surrounding them.

It happens in horribly brief steps.

One second, Etho is thinking, are there too many of us?

The next second, the entire room shudders. There's a deafening crack from somewhere under them, like thunder resonating from the earth. And the floor undulates, bowing and rippling as if it were only half-solid. It nearly rips Etho from his feet, sending him tumbling into Gem. She crumples against the wall with a yelp, forearm scraping against the brick as she fights to hold the two of them up. 

There are too many people for Etho to see anything, but even so, his good eye is currently pinned against Gem. He couldn’t see anything going on if he tried. All he knows is that there are limbs everywhere, and his entire body quakes violently with the floor. He thinks fleetingly that it might be an earthquake, but he’s never seen an earthquake here. Maybe there was one once; he thinks of the rift, cutting the city into two, but that happened before Etho and Gem got here.

He has no time to think about it. The ground is splintering beneath his feet into jagged chunks of marble, ripping into his calves as he tries and fails to shove himself backwards. It isn't until the heel of his hand catches on the rough edge of the windowsill behind him that his body acknowledges the need for higher ground. He swings himself away from Gem, fighting the tidal wave of people slamming into each other like pool balls.

It sort of works, if only in the sense that he’s able to fling out a hand and dig his fingers into the crook of two boards. His heart plummets as the board pops loose, but he holds on for dear life, even as the stark white sunlight blinds him. With his other hand, he impetuously fumbles in the direction he knows Gem was in; when his fingers press into the peak of someone’s shoulder, he just assumes it’s her, yanking her to his side. When he heaves himself onto the windowsill, it’s remarkably ungraceful; the sinew of his arm twinges and aches with the pull of the crowd as he grits his teeth, heaving Gem up with him.

Once she catches her breath she kicks her way up the wall, pressing herself in the nook. She takes the board from Etho’s hand and pries it from the window with ease. When he glances out, though, the sunlight disappears, suffocated by the cloying cloud of dust billowing in the room like smoke. It isn't until he glances down and sees nothing remaining that he realizes the floor is sinking. 

Next to him, Gem looks over her shoulder to the outside world. “There’s nothing out there,” she shouts over the cadence of screams and the cascade of rubble. “It’s just the building!” 

From the sea of bodies and wreckage, an arm flies out, fumbling wildly against the brick wall for purchase. Their fingers dig into Gem’s leg, yanking on her pants desperately as they try to wrench themselves free.

“Shit!” Gem cries out, but it doesn’t drown out the anguished pleas for help. Etho can’t tell if it’s from the person holding her, or the person holding them, or if it’s everyone all at once. All he knows is he’s feverishly clutching Gem’s cloak but he’s losing ground, his mind set to a broken and helpless soundtrack of please, please, please, please; he doesn’t know what he’s begging for, but he knows he needs it. 

But he blinks. When his eyes reopen, the heel of Gem’s blood-stained boot is digging relentlessly into the hand that pulls her. Three brutal kicks are all it takes for the fingers— bruised and broken now— to wrench themselves free. He blinks again, stunned, and the arm is gone, sucked into the vortex of the shattering floor. If the person is still screaming, he can’t hear them. Etho grimaces as Gem sighs heavily, drawing her knees to her chest and shifting back. 

The ominous roar thrumming in through Etho’s veins dies down, dust settling into something more stagnant; the floor has stopped collapsing, he figures. He stares out and sees in its place a body-lined cavern, wriggling and squirming and alive with the sound of people, frantic as the floor swallows them. There are hundreds of them piled one on top of the other, crushing each other. His heart pounds violently in his chest, so ferocious he worries it might just snap his ribs into two.

And then the building groans again, booming, sinister. He doesn’t know why it occurs to him, but he looks up: deep cracks span the wall and ceiling over their heads, ripping further and further with no foundation to stop it. Forebodingly, a chunk of the roof tears itself free of its jutting metal and web of wires, plummeting somewhere into the crowd. He glances to the barely-visible open door they came from just in time to hear the gargling cacophony of zombies pouring in. He whips around to look out the window— the next escape route on his mind— and flinches when a swarm of them slams into the building in a grotesque cliffside of flesh, nails, and bone. He understands immediately that their only chance is up.

Gem moves first, but Etho isn’t far behind. Treacherously, they pick their way to the stairwell, keeping to the edges of the room. It’s the first time Etho has ever trekked over a floor of human bodies, and he prays it’s the last. 

There are other survivors, too, safe from the avalanche and far enough from the encroaching zombies; they follow Etho and Gem’s lead. Etho glances back only once, and regrets it when the first survivor he sees is a little girl, sobbing as she tries and fails to keep her footfalls delicate for the bodies underfoot. 

They find solid ground in the stairwell, though it's a bit unsteady. Gem keeps a brisk pace as she climbs, and at the door to the second floor, she pauses and nudges it open. Etho peers in from over her head, taking in the concave slope of the floor and the pipes ripping their way through the uneven surface. He exchanges a look with Gem, and they keep climbing.

Solace comes in the form of the fourth floor. It's yet to be rattled by the damage that has plagued the floors underneath it; even the furniture is relatively intact, if a little decayed. It's almost uncanny how the cubicles have managed to remain standing. Etho very gingerly sits down at one of the dusty, rickety tables in the little bullpen area; Gem sits atop the table right next to him.

Settled, he watches quietly as the handful of other survivors comes trickling in from the stairs. On the whole, he doesn't really recognize them. Now that he's getting a better look at her, the little girl looks familiar, with her dark curly hair adorned with a ribbon; he realizes she was part of the last drop they raided. So was the woman that stands with her, with her broad shoulders and ever-present scowl. He knows she leads one of the groups over this way, but he doesn't know which. That sort of thing has always been more up Cleo's alley. He thinks not for the first time that he might take them for granted. 

The moment the woman’s eyes land on him and Gem, she bristles. “You gotta be kidding me. Of course we're trapped with the vultures.”

“We appreciated the supplies,” Etho says and means it, but he lets it come out as more of a taunt anyway. 

She doesn't deign that with a response. “No wonder this happened. Death follows you assholes wherever you go.”

“For good reason,” Gem lilts, voice dripping with honey, her smile dangerously jagged.

The two of them lock eyes. They have a conversation that Etho can't decode, and it ends with the woman relenting entirely, walking off toward a cubicle. The little girl, though, lingers; she shifts closer to them, wordless but visibly curious. 

Well, the way Etho sees it, they might be stuck in here for a little while. Once they do get the opportunity to escape, they're all going to have to work together. It's this simple truth that has Etho asking the girl, eyes crinkled in a smile, “What's your name?”

She stirs, blinking wildly. She glances around, like she's convinced he must be talking to a ghost. And then, plainly, she answers, “Dawn.”

“What a pretty name!” Gem coos, absolutely beaming. The sound of her voice has Dawn's shoulders dropping a couple notches as she shuffles closer. “I'm Gem.”

“I know,” Dawn mumbles, pressing her thumb into her palm and kneading anxiously. “Everyone does.”

The effect of the words is immediate; Gem swells with pride, eyes glittering like frost-coated grass. Still, there's something familiarly wicked in the tight line of her smile. Gem has always been enamored by her infamy, never cowering in the face of the reputation that precedes her. This is not something Etho particularly enjoys about his sister; maybe it's because, to him, she will always be the scared little girl who cries too much and makes beautiful mud castles. The two versions of Gem that live in Etho's mind exist solely to juxtapose one another, he thinks, but he knows which one is just a front.

“Flattery will get you everywhere, Dawn,” Gem says, smiling. She glances to the cubicle in the distance, where the woman had tucked herself in; her gaze lingers, smile faltering. “That girl you're with. What's her name?”

“Ivanna,” Dawn supplies easily, and cautiously sits down at a nearby table. “She took me in.”

Gem hums. “That’s so sweet. Now, do you think she would work with me and my brother here, so we can all get out of here?”

Thoughtfully, Dawn frowns, but stands. “You killed her girlfriend,” she drops very shamelessly. “But I’ll try.”

Etho grimaces, watching as the girl retreats. That’s… not ideal. When he glances over at Gem to verbalize as much, she’s glaring at him viciously, accusatorially. He can’t help the indignant way his jaw drops. “Wh— don’t— it wasn’t me!”

She rolls her eyes. “Uh-huh.” 

“Her group was gone by the time we stepped in.”

“Well, I didn’t do it. I know better,” Gem says loftily, crossing her arms as she pointedly looks away.

Etho’s hands shake. “This isn’t eating the last of the jelly, Gem. This is murder.”

Her eyes meet his, steady and searing. “What isn’t?”

Dawn reappears before he can find a response, so suddenly that Etho actually startles. She wastes no time in relaying, “She said no.” She glances around, scratches her cheek. “...Plus some other things.”

Without hesitance, Gem clicks her tongue, swings herself to her feet, and storms across the room. It's all Etho can do to scurry after her, feeling more than a little pathetic in his desperation. Even so, the last thing they need is Gem making this even worse, and he just knows that's what's going to happen.

“Which of them was it?” Gem demands, inches away from Ivanna, half a foot shorter than her, and unwavering nonetheless. “Which of them killed her?”

Ivanna does not look shocked, nor does she back down. She just scowls, hand gripping the gun holster on her hip so hard her knuckles turn white. 

“The little winged one,” she answers heftily.

Etho immediately sighs in dismay. Of course it was Grian. Etho loves him, but out of the four of them, he definitely has… well. The least regard for human life feels a little… bad. But Grian is without a doubt the most merciless, volatile one of their bunch. He’s sure that Grian had a reason, but Gem already hates him. This is the last thing anyone needs to deal with right now. 

Meanwhile, Gem does falter— not out of fear, but sheer incredulity, so potent she actually laughs out loud. “Grian? Listen to me,” she starts, breathless, half-laughing. “I hate that guy. Hate him! Don't trust him as far as I could throw him! So when I tell you there's no one on Earth I associate with less, I need you to understand that.

“I'm sorry for what he did. I really am. But you're alive,” she declares. “Don't waste that by letting yourself die here. I can tell you're stronger than that, and you know she wouldn't want that for you.”

Silence permeates the air in the wake of Gem's speech, practically surging with electricity. Etho doesn't know what parts of her monologue were hand-crafted to get what she wanted, and what parts were real; he finds that realization to be a sour one, polluting everything it touches as it nestles in the pit of his stomach.

He can't comprehend how or why, but it works. The man sitting next to Ivanna— Jesus, Etho didn't even see him, he's so out of it— nudges her thigh and says quietly, “C'mon, V.”

And Ivanna’s fists miraculously uncurl. “Okay,” she murmurs begrudgingly and takes a deep, steadying breath. “What's the plan?”

The plan, for now, is to wait. Which is to say that the plan is that there is no plan. 

Etho needs to parse out these zombies in order to understand what they're dealing with. He's been hearing them make their way up the stairwell, but they fill out each room on the way up, so they have some time. It does mean, though, that an undead confrontation is inevitable. Etho wants to be ready for it. 

As he sits on the floor, straining to hear any identifying information from the creatures downstairs, Gem delegates. She's sent Dawn and the man— Sam, his name is apparently— to walk the perimeter of the room in search of other escape routes. There was a brief bout of hope in the form of a fire escape, but when Sam looked outside, he'd realized that 90% of the staircase had been completely dismantled. It was unusable. That was many, many hours ago.

Etho just keeps wishing that Cleo and Grian were here. Cleo would calm him down, would press little circles into his back until he’d actually able to focus on what he needed to do. They'd help keep this delicate alliance with Ivanna stable. Grian would be tirelessly and wordlessly finding a way out of this, through brute force if necessary. Maybe he could even fly them out of here; Etho knows he's strong enough, but he's never done it before. 

He misses them. He doesn't do much without them anymore, and this is stiflingly obvious now; it's like his brain just doesn't know what to do in their absence. It stubbornly catches on how much better this would be if they were with him now. Because if they were here, he would be confident. He would be himself. As it stands, he's uselessly trying to decode the muted footfalls of far too many zombies, efforts sullied even further by Gem's interrupting.

She keeps poking and prodding, asking him if he knows anything yet, what he's learned. Between the continual screams of the people still dying three floors under them, Gem's incessant interrogating, and Ivanna's loud complaining about his character, he's learning next to nothing. All he knows is that there are too many of them for five people who hardly know each other to take out on their own.

Right. If he can’t hear, he’ll have to try and see. Somehow. 

The second he’s on his feet, Gem is in his face. “Well?” She prompts urgently. “We haven’t got all day.”

The line of his shoulders is tauter than a bowstring when he answers, “I need to get a look.”

Ivanna shoots him a look from across the room where she watches the stairwell. “You’re going downstairs?”

Stupid. Why would he do that? “No,” he sighs, and wordlessly walks over to the window. 

He shudders at the sight of dozens of zombies shambling along the outskirts of the building; he knows they don’t even scratch the surface of what lurks below them. His eyes aren’t the greatest since he lost one of them, but it’s immediately obvious that these things are old. There’s a horrifying silhouette just down the street of three humanoid bodies, melded together in a tangled web of thick bone, crusted over in countless layers of dried blood. Zombies don’t get that way overnight.

Yet, no matter how hard he tries, he can’t see any sign of radiation. It’s usually a lot more obvious in old zombies, with their hulking bone formations; in irradiated old zombies, their bone growths are visibly porous, as if something had been burrowing tunnels through their bodies. They’re always chalky and brittle from the wear of their own toxic blood, so fragile they don’t quite get to form those imposing, sharp peaks of ivory the way young zombies too. 

It doesn’t make sense. Herding zombies have to be irradiated. That’s how it’s always been. If they aren’t irradiated, he has no clue what to expect; that’s a terrifying concept even without the weight of four other lives on his shoulders and an undeniable time constraint he can’t ignore. 

Etho doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know anything. All he keeps thinking is that this would all be so much easier if his family was here. The other part of it, anyway. 

Still, he relays what he knows to an expectant Gem, who purses her lips. “Okay. So… our only option is to fight.”

He doesn’t know what it is. Maybe it’s the fact that she hasn’t listened to a word he’s said for the past hour. Maybe it’s her demanding aura, or her stubbornness, or her borderline suicidality. Maybe it’s the little girl watching them earnestly, with her curly hair and curious, fiery look that perfectly mirror Gem’s. Maybe it’s the fact that all he wanted was the chance to spend time with his little sister, and instead, fate has placed them in a building full of enemies and the undead. 

Maybe, though, it’s a horrible concoction of these things that has him dragging Gem across the room by the sleeve of her shirt. 

“Gem,” he hisses, yanking his mask down. “We don’t know how many of them there are, or what’s happening on the first floor. We don’t have guns, or medical supplies, or backup. We don’t know these people.”

Gem spits, wrenching her sleeve free. “I don’t want to fight this. But sitting up here and just hoping something changes is suicide,” Gem spits, wrenching her sleeve free. “I mean, do you think I’m stupid?”

“Sometimes, yeah,” he snaps back, stepping away from her. Because it’s true. Even one old zombie is dreadfully hard to kill without a gun, nevermind tens or hundreds of them. He doesn’t want to sit up here and die, but he needs a plan, and she has no interest in helping him make one.

Without missing a beat, Gem unabashedly laughs in his face, bitter and cold as she jabs a finger in his direction. “ I’m stupid? We wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for you getting all sentimental and dragging us out here for no good reason…”

“Because you don’t talk to me,” he implores. 

“You want to talk? Fine,” she says dangerously, steadfast and decisive. “I think leaving is an awful idea. I think you’re stupid for planning on it, and I can’t think of anything I’d want to do less. A cross-country roadtrip in the middle of the apocalypse, and for what? Some guy we’ve never met? We’re safe here, established.”

“Who cares, Gem!” He pleads, overcome by the sheer unadulterated distress that has been raging inside of him for weeks now. “This is just a place! It doesn’t matter to me! We could make a name for ourselves anywhere.”

Gem gestures wildly around them. “Well, what about the evacuation plan failing? We helped write the last one, and we need to be here to write the new one.” She sighs, and lowers her gaze. “Etho, we owe it to this place to—” 

“No!” Etho shouts, the word ripping itself from his chest like a dagger, so loud it leaves him a lightheaded. He only half comprehends that Gem is backing away from him as he pushes on, “We don’t! This isn’t our home, Gem! You are my home!”

She slams her fist against a cubicle and cries out, anguished, “No, I’m not!” She swings her shaking fist to point across the rift. “They are!” 

Her voice, melting with her desperation, rings in Etho’s ears even after it no longer echoes across the room. Her nostrils flare with every breath, loud in the silence that stretches endlessly between them. There are seven feet between them, Etho counts, but he’s never felt further from her than he does now. 

The door to the stairwell slams, and Ivanna screams, indistinguishable but urgent. Gem’s sword is drawn in an instant as she practically skids across the room.

“We gotta hold this position,” Gem orders, shoving Ivanna out of the way to behead the single zombie that clambers to the top of the staircase, surely at the front of the pack. Then, over her shoulder, sword ready as the footsteps grow louder, “You three have guns?”

All three of them nod; Etho stands next to her, his own sword in hand. He doesn’t like that they’re the first line of defense, but he’d rather it be both of them than just Gem.

Gem takes a few steps back, and everyone follows. “They’re going to funnel in. We need to get down the stairs later, so we can’t let their bodies block it,” she calls out, crouched and ready. “Take care of what gets past me.”

A series of affirmative shouts soundtracks the explosion of the next wave: four of them this time, climbing over each other all at once, bone spurs catching on the door frame. He searches briefly for soft spots, places where the bones end and flesh begins. Gem lunges forward first, sinking her sword into a zombie’s thigh. It collapses, and the others trip over it; Etho whirls around to sever one’s spinal cord, blessedly unprotected by bone growth. When two gunshots ring out, he instinctively lowers his body to the floor. He gets front row seats to the other two zombies as they crumple beside him, blood leaking over the floor. He exhales in relief.

From there, it’s less of a “wave” situation and more of a steady, progressive flow. Gem looks at home in the flurry of gore she leaves in her wake. She is an unyielding force of calculated strikes landing one after the other, a whirlwind with her blade. Even as her muscles tremble with exertion and blood coats every surface of her body, she shows no weakness. 

On her own, she's a force of nature. As it stands, though, she can't help but overwhelm Etho. Mistimed swings send her sword colliding with his, or they bump into one another in the pursuit of the same zombie. When Gem kicks one to the ground, Etho is over top of it on autopilot; he narrowly misses getting skewered on her sword as she finishes it off herself. 

“Watch it,” she barks and whips around; even hair drips with blood as she goes. 

They fight like this until, little by little, the stream of zombies trickles to an end. Etho is panting, hands trembling tenfold from his exhaustion. His eyes flutter closed, just for a moment, and he pretends Grian and Cleo are here, pretends he's leaning on Grian's shoulder, or following Cleo's lead home. He has never felt more alone than he does now. 

When he opens his eyes again, he's greeted with Gem's back. The mangled corpses of dozens of zombies litter the floor at her feet, creaking with the push of their growing bones, swimming in the pool their own blood has left. It covers Gem, too, from head to toe, so thoroughly that her skin is ruddy and wet, and it drips from her sword still pressed tightly in her palm. 

And then she's turning her head. Blood adorns her face, smeared like war paint, and she wears it proudly as she levels Etho with a glare sharper than any sword, eyes impossibly green. Her back heaves with every breathless gasp she takes, standing tall despite the way she shakes against her own weight. 

The other three survivors have surged forward now, and they stare at her with wide-eyed, unabashed awe. It overwhelms him with a sort of fear he can't put a name to, to see the devotion this side of Gem inspires. He feels like something has been dislodged within him, as if one of his organs has shifted out of line, and he doesn't know how to put it back in place anymore.

They end up making their way back down to the second level; the rest of the stairwell down to the first floor has collapsed, swallowed by rubble. Nothing is coming up now, and nothing remains on the second level, save for the smattering of holes left in the floor.

The five of them end up dropping into the grass from a second floor window, unscathed save for the fatigued ache in all of their bones. He doesn't know where they came, but there are tons of people outside, surely responsible for the carnage covering the ground; every zombie that remained outside has since been slaughtered. By the time they've escaped, night has long since fallen, and all he wants to do is sleep.

He doesn't want to start walking home without Gem, but she's several yards away, chatting with Ivanna and Sam. He's not sure what she could possibly have to talk to them about after they spent nearly twelve hours locked in a room together, but he's hoping she wraps it up soon. 

Someone shouting his name drags him from the vivid vision he's having of his warm bed, and he looks around, trying to decode all the blurry images around him. He doesn't have to try for long before a figure is dropping from the sky in front of him. It takes all of two seconds for his tired eyes to focus and comprehend that Grian is in front of him, wings puffed up behind him.

Grian, he thinks distantly as he watches Grian's lips move. He doesn't hear a word of it. His body moves entirely on its own; he practically tackles Grian into a hug, falling into him, because God , is he happy to see him. Grian's arms wrap around him without hesitation, thumbs pressing gently into the tensest parts of his shoulders.

“Are you hurt?” Grian asks faintly, feebly, and it's code for were you bit? Etho has no words to share, so he just shakes his head against Grian's shoulder. He feels the fear drain from Grian's limbs as they pull him in closer, until Grian's body is practically curled over his. When he opens his eyes, he realizes Grian's wings surround them like a shield. 

“You alright?” Grian prods, but doesn't move.

Honestly, Etho hums softly, “Better now.”

Grian laughs lightly at that and shifts back. His clean hands find Etho's cheeks, cupping him so gingerly, uncaring of the blood surely splattered across Etho's face. Whatever he was going to say, though, is ultimately lost when he abruptly flinches, wings folding against his back so quickly Etho catches the wind from them. He opens his mouth to say something, but fingers dig into his shoulder— not pleasant and warm like Grian's, but aggressive— and bodily yank him out of Grian's hands. He stumbles against the force, blinking blearily at the loss of warmth, only narrowly avoiding toppling to the ground altogether.

Grian is not so lucky; he's been shoved to the concrete, and Etho realizes the figure over top of him is Ivanna. She's screaming at the top of her lungs, a nonsensical string of violent insults and enraged profanity, but he hardly hears it over the ringing in his ears. It takes Etho’s fatigue-addled mind five straight seconds to process the frantic kicking of Grian's legs, and a couple more for him to realize she's strangling him, she's strangling Grian .

Etho's exhaustion is all but forgotten, washed away so quickly it's actually jarring. His sword is in his hand in an instant, pressing firmly enough into the back of Ivanna's neck that blood wells against her skin.

It gets her to stop; he can hear Grian gasping for air, legs limp against the ground as he focuses on filling his lungs. He finds that his chest is heaving too, as if he were the one pinned under Ivanna's hands. 

He doesn't notice that Gem is here too until she's kneeling on the ground, gaze trained evenly and coolly on Ivanna. For a moment, she's quiet. Her mere presence drags Ivanna's attention off of Grian, until Ivanna's wild eyes find hers.

A crowd has gathered, circling around them from a safe distance. All of their focus lies on Gem, on her expressionless face and her unwavering stare. Etho doesn't let himself take in the awe that they so unabashedly wear; he would rather die than take his eyes off Grian right now. 

Firmly, Gem's hand settles on Ivanna's shoulder. “Don't let him kill you too,” she says simply, like some sort of instruction. Etho's spine quivers against the chill of the words. 

And it works. Ivanna moves to stand, so Etho carefully sheaths his sword, letting her clamber to her feet; Gem guides her a couple steps away with a gentle, caring hand. She holds up Ivanna's weight with relative ease.

Grian sits up, still breathless as he holds his throat in his hands. Etho is at his side in an instant, grunting as he heaves Grian to his feet. They lean on one another, unwilling to part. Grian's voice is hoarse as he asks, eyes narrowed, “What was that ?”

Etho blinks, shocked momentarily, but really, of course Grian doesn't know. He just shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Hey!” Someone shouts, concealed in the crowd. Grian immediately jumps, glancing around feverishly like he's half expecting something to appear. It unsettles Etho, even as he tries to chalk it up to reasonable paranoia, because it isn't a fearful thing. It's a crazed thing.

He doesn't ask about it, because suddenly there's Cleo, bursting their way through the crowd of people.

“Oh, Cleo,” Grian croaks, relieved.

“I saw you flying, then the commotion… Wasn't hard to put two and two together,” she says with a grin. And then to Etho, more genuinely, “Are you okay? We've been looking for you for ages.”

Etho glances over at Gem. She's several feet away, pulling Ivanna closer, a comforting hand on the woman's shoulder. “I'm fine,” he lies, and knows that Cleo isn't fooled. One of those open secrets, he guesses. 

With his panic subsided, every last ounce of energy has drained from his body; he’s entirely pliant when Cleo shifts him around to share his weight with Grian.

“Can you walk?” Grian asks, still a little raspy. He just nods. 

He casts one last look to his side and this time, Gem meets his eyes. Ivanna is still tucked against her as she states simply, “I'll meet you later.” 

Etho doesn't respond. For once, he has no desire to protest. Cleo and Grian's bodies are warm against his, and he can't remember the last time he felt this exhausted. When he turns away, he catches the two’s matching ferocious glares pointed squarely in Ivanna's direction. The looks are gone as soon as he sees them, though, replaced instead with plain, unadulterated worry as they look him over. He's sure he's in a sorry state. 

Honestly though, he can't even bring himself to spiral. Grian and Cleo are here, and all he really wants now is to sleep.