White. Stillness. Cream.
Opulent balloon shades. Lapiz-lazuli. Gold.
The compressed weight of minutes measured off by the metronomic precision of the round Nouveau brushed steel clock on the wall.
So silent.
So frail.
A hospital gown is no respector of persons. Swathed within the loose folds of bleached, thick cotton his body seemed shrunken and vulnerable despite his frame, the relentless IV drip and uncompromising wires of the life-support system robbing him of whatever dignity he had held in life. Even this, the grandest of hospital rooms, only made the contrast more pathetic against the splendid vigour and energy of his former self.
Life. Such a mockery of the word, the disastrous results of that genetic experimentation severing the delicate cord between consciousness and unconsciousness so permanently, leaving behind only a breathing shell in its wake. Pseudo-life perhaps, controlled by the sleek mechanism of the machine that was his last and only link to the waking world.
Do the living-dead dream? In the recesses of that dark sphere of the mind, what thoughts take form? Are they still in possession of the memories that wove such vivid skeins in their sentient world?
She didn’t know. Invisible, bursting bubbles of the last of her hopes, rising into the air and vanishing with something akin to the echo of a sigh, the room heavy with its aching.
The call had come so suddenly. Ashley, her voice thick with suppressed emotion, enunciating each word with terrible care as if they were eggshell porcelain. "We’ve…the family has decided to turn off life support Sha. The doctors have no hope of recovery. It’s been…it’s been months. I thought --I thought you would want to know."
No time to bolster defences. No time for bracing against the inevitable, the mental spine-stiffening that would make the news bearable over the days.
She left that hour itself. Running down the dusty Quaquan streets, pushing her way through the Sivadian security checkpoint as fast as possible, tearing herself free from the mill and rush of bodies in the Independence Dome. Making the entire planetary journey in blank-faced silence, her fingers twisting together harshly, calm and bow-string brittle collected. How could she not want to know?
His hand felt weightless in her own small one. Bones sharply defined through skin now faded from its tan to a lacklustre pale. Blurred images of the family standing around the room, medical staff around the hospital bed, vague recollections of having spoken, been civil, been led to this place she had come to know so well over the months.
The mahogany music box with gilded decoupage. One of his favourite things, an antique he had found. Ashley had brought it to the hospital and placed it on the nightstand. The last notes of ‘Irene Goodnight’ tinkling in the air as the doctor cleared his throat, came forward to the construct of wires and plasteel which held that last, tenuous, Ariadne-skein between life and death.
Her hand had darted out to catch the doctor’s wrist just as he reached for the switch. "Let me." A voice that she couldn’t even recognize as her own, toneless and distant. "It’s the last thing I can do for him in this life. Let him go where there’s no pain any more." A pause. "Please." And that last word had carried a poignancy she couldn’t hide, a desperation that caught at the edges of her voice and pleaded what she could not say.
Did the family try to stop her? She couldn’t recall. Volindric, his aura glowing a pale shade of silver-grey, saying something that she could not remember nor understand, despite it being in standard. Dully, vaguely watching as the doctor mouthed words she didn’t register and moved aside.
The power of life and death. Such a weighty responsibility.
Time, melting like snow, slipping away as the minutes ticked by relentlessly. She held his hand tightly, tracing her thin, dark, calloused fingers over his still-smooth skin, engraving his face and form and feel into a seal of memory she would brand into her mind forever. Seeing the planes and angles of his features with such piercing clarity as if through a telescopic lens, antiseptic and the sterile odor of the room not enough to mask the remembered scent of him, that elusive, elegant, expensive cologne fragrance. A sudden, fierce ache that seized at her, twisted within like a garrot’s sharp wire around her innermost psyche.
The room, with its uneasy weight of unspoken words and unheard sobs.
So still.
So silent.
Images, coalescing into sharp focus, forming a cinematic parade on the screen of her mind. Purple roses, the hue deep enough to be almost black. Playing the dangerous double-game of secretary and personal aide whenever she visited him in that panelled, lush office in the Government complex, masking her true relationship with him through arrogant formality. The music of his voice, drifting across the sands of Enaj Bay as his fingers strummed restlessly on his guitar, his gaze turned towards the splendid colors of the horizon and the setting sun. His eyes, blue, blue my love is blue, as blue as the ocean and deeper still, shining and eager and so tender. The feel of his lips, the feel of his arms during that memorable dinner date with Snowmist and Sharpeye, the sharp pang that caught at her heart and set it racing right after those equally memorable words out her lips, "Give me your word you'll wait for me, that you'll trust me, and come hell or death, I will be there."
"I’m here." A response to that memory, an urgent reassurance from the need to have him hear her, to let him know that she had not and would not abandon him. Not now. Spoken aloud? The syllables hung in the air, arrested, only to dissipate like distant echoes.
Past, present, future eclipsed. Tangible, intangible, bittersweet, heartbreaking. One more kiss. Her last to him and the one she would remember for the rest of her life, more poignant than that first one on the balcony overlooking the phosphorent, sparkling waters of Enaj Bay, her short hair brushing against his cheek in the way he loved so well. "Au revoir…" A soft murmur, meant only for his ears alone in the hopes that the bond which held them together in his waking life would now extend to the elusive realm in which he had been suspended for so many months. His lips, so soft still against her own, yielded easily and for one fantastical moment, she almost thought that they held hers fast till she finally, reluctantly, drew away.
Her fingers, so deft around the hilt of her knife, wavered as they hovered over the switch. Trembled, suspended in the heavy air, over that small white object which controlled this earth-shattering decision of life, of death. Paused, tensed, then deliberately and slowly flicked it off. Was there family around her? Only a blur remained to remind her of their presence. Slipping her arms around him, she laid her head against the beating of his tired heart, frail from the long struggle for life.
Beat beat. Beat.
Beat.
And she knew he was gone at last.
"Goodnight Constantine Cyril Isherwood..." A soft breath, released like an ache, edged with a tremble. A brief, quivering kiss pressed against his lips once more. "I'll see you in my dreams."
In the jerky, incomprehensible manner of mechanical wind-up music boxes, the disjointed, off-key first notes of ‘Goodnight Irene’ plucked fitfully, then fell silent.
She had asked to see the penthouse for the last time, that bachelor apartment Constantine had kept for occasional getaways and in which she had stayed on quite a few occasions. The family had been kind enough to grant her that, sensing that it was as necessary to her as breathing, that some integral part of her had to face this last hurdle before acceptance could be complete.
The place in which she had first realised there could be someone else after Jaxx. The place in which the proud Foreign Minister of Sivad had asked, with atypical stumbling, to be allowed to court her.
One step, two steps. Through the threshold and into the living room. Like a ghost, passing through the wastelands, her slow, dazed journey taking her into each area, each confrontation of memory. Grief, twisting a little deeper with every stumble into the past.
The ticking of the antique wrought iron clock on the wall sounded abnormally loud. Insistent, constricting, filling the space with tension. Suddenly she felt rising panic. A nameless something clutching at her throat, dark and fearful and predatory. A choked little whimper, a frantic clawing at the catch of the glass door in the living room, flinging herself out of this place of sorrows –
-- and onto the balcony.
Sea breeze, salt-tanged and sharp, bringing with it the scent of frangipani, warm summer air, the bittersweet taste of shared hopes and fears and yearnings. A first embrace, the soft press of a kiss against her forehead. And like a dream, as if time were frozen and played back, that first declaration to her, as clear as the night he uttered it, audible enough to be real: "I think I deserve something I want, too. And I would want you, if you will have me."
Inside the living room, the clock continued its ticking like a still-beating heart, marking off time with surgical precision, delineating seconds from minutes from hours. Impersonal, mechanical, tyrannical.
And Khatri N’Sha-El - freedom fighter against and survivor of the Hive Mind, hacker, self-proclaimed bitch, mother, sister, veteran of Sanctuary, once-wife of Orandius Jaxx the former Eye of Val Shohob and once-love of Constantine Isherwood – sank to her knees against the balcony railings and began to weep.