Slashed in twain

===?? Spring 1386==========

The startling thing was this: I was asleep.

It was so startling, in fact, that I was out of the chair like a crossbow bolt, and on my feet almost before I remembered what things like awake and asleep even meant. I whirled to take in the room, still trying and not quite managing to grasp that the last three weeks of my life had never actually happened.

Curry was lying on the bed, so still my heart almost stopped to see him there. I recalled now, rather confusedly, that in my dream I had never stopped taking my suppressants until after Curry died—but now I was awake, it seemed that in fact I hadn’t taken any since the morning of the day we’d worked on mending in the front room. I had no idea what day that was, or what day it was now, but that must explain why his shade had been able to wake me despite being eerily silent, and why Hildy had been able to give me instructions.

In the dream I had simply slept through the night in my exhaustion, and woken to find him gone. I turned slowly, taking in the room and trying to evaluate what was properly real, and what was not. There were a lot of dirty rags and other sickroom detritus cluttering up every flat surface in the room. I could not stop now recalling the intensity with which I had hated myself, when I woke up and realized that because I had fallen to sleep instead of going to the Rook hospital for help, he had not made it through the night, and in my miserable exhaustion I had slept uninterrupted through his passing. If his shade or anybody else tried to intervene I never knew any different. I had woken unsuspecting.

Now I dragged my eyes over Curry’s still form and tried to work up the resolve to take a step toward him. I needed to find out one way or another. My legs wouldn’t move.

My legs wouldn’t move, because this was still quite a lot like that first morning of my dream, and for this fact, and the fact of his terrible stillness, I sensed suddenly, with perfect clarity, that if I went to him I would find him cold. Instead of moving I sank trembling to the floor and knelt there with my head on my legs, folding my arms around myself.

Before more than a few seconds passed, though, someone called, “Bersk?”

The someone was Baggett, I realized after another protracted moment of confusion, and I recalled belatedly the whole reason I'd woken from the dream that was now coming true—someone had called my name. Curry dying must mean I couldn't talk, so I couldn’t even call out to tell him where I was. I remained, head down.

But almost no time passed before I felt someone’s hand on my shoulder and looked up to see Baggett crouched at my side. It came to me that I had never seen him look outright frightened before, and it seemed I understood his feeling perfectly, that Baggett was most afraid of the exact things I was: losing someone from our meager collection of people who mattered. “Yerg!” he called. “Up here!”

“Magnus is dead, Bag,” I whispered without moving, half-startled to find I could speak at all, then felt the warmth of his body heat as Baggett leaned close to hear me. “And it’s all my fault,” I began as a peculiar hysteria gripped me, “because I fell asleep instead of getting the Rooks like I meant to. But I—Nan won’t want me to have any of his ashes and—and now I don’t have any laudanum for Blackchapel or anybody to take care of my chaunceyhorse,” I babbled hysterically. “The harpooneer—”

“—Yergen!” called Baggett, more urgently, staring at me in uncharacteristic horrified bewilderment.

But when we both looked up Yergen was already there, leaning on his cane in the doorway, breathing a bit hard after the exertion of climbing the stairs quicker than he normally would. He took in the scene with a single glance and moved straight to where Curry lay motionless on the bed. In one motion Baggett turned me bodily away from the bed, pulling me against him and bowing his head to my shoulder, and let me cling to him with my eyes squeezed shut.

Yergen was one of those even-keeled, unflappable sorts with a knack for fixing just about any situation no matter how hopeless, except dead couldn’t be fixed and neither of us wanted to see his imminent enflappening.

“Magnus,” Yergen said in his familiar, firm voice, doing something with the bedclothes and fussing unconcernedly over Curry like somebody experienced soothing a balky cart horse. “It’s Yergen. Wake up now, let's have a look at you. I’m taking over. You’ve torn your poor Fuzzy down just about to the studs. She’s all in. I need you to wake up and let her see you’re still with us, will you? She thinks you slipped away in the night and I swear I never saw such a broken heart in all my life. Don’t let her carry on another second longer like that, yeah?”

There was no reply, and Baggett dragged in a shaking breath. I groped for his hand, realizing that like me he was anchoring himself before the moment Yergen realized it was all for naught. He caught it and gave me a fierce squeeze back without looking up.

Then came a faint wheezing sound that about stopped my heart, and Curry said something in a voice so whispery and quiet that I couldn’t make it out. I felt Baggett’s grip on me loosen, and we pulled back to look at each other in disbelief, and then at Yergen.

“She will be,” Yergen said cheerfully, as if nothing were very wrong, then leaned in to hear as Curry said something else. “Yeah. Who can say when the woman last ate or even changed clothes—you ran her worse than ragged, my friend.” Yergen glanced at me and Baggett, who were helping each other get to our feet while we also got over our shock.

“Tom, love,” he said pleasantly when we were both standing. “Would you mind running to the closest kiosk and having someone send for a priest to look at them both? I think he’s going to be all right, but he’s still weak, and it’s no good if Fauzia takes sick with the same fever Magnus just had.”

Baggett nodded, with an air of the exact same heavy numbness I also felt, and Yergen smiled and leaned over to touch him comfortingly on the shoulder. “Thanks. I’ll look after things here. See you in a bit.” Baggett nodded again, turned back to me with a look like he didn’t quite know how to act or what to say, and simply reached over and gave my shoulder a squeeze.

Instead of going immediately to the bed I stood rooted there, listening to Baggett’s steps through the house and the sound of the door closing downstairs, because now that things weren’t going like the dream anymore, I no longer knew the script and was childishly afraid to do anything that might make this unexpected reprieve vanish into thin air again.

Curry whispered something else in that awful, frail voice, and Yergen nodded. “She’s just here. Let’s give her a moment. When I came in she was huddled on the floor going a mile a minute at Tom about gods only know what. I can’t even start to guess what a scare you gave her. I’m going to get you some water to help with that hoarseness.” Yergen turned to the bed stand, found the water carafe I’d left empty, and picked it up. “Go to him, if you want. He won’t break,” he told me, then left the room.

I went timidly to Curry’s side and set my hands on his arm, where he was warm and alive, then stood looking at him and trying not to make it obvious how unnerved and confused I still felt after the terrified panic of having grieved over him with all my heart for three weeks and having all that suddenly reversed in almost no time at all. This was, after all, good news. It was good news, when nobody you loved had actually died.

Curry studied me intently. “Are you all right?” he whispered.

“Yeah. Fine,” I managed. My eyes felt watery and swollen, even though I’d managed so far to hold off from crying. I blinked and wiped at them with the heels of my hands to clear them while I tried to forget what Nan’s face had looked like in my dream, when the priest handed her the urn containing everything left of the person we both loved most, and I realized she was not going to let me have anything to do with his remains.

“You don’t look very yeah-fine,” he observed weakly.

“What about you?” I asked, because he was probably right, but I didn’t know how to answer, or even what he was looking for from me.

“Better than last night.” He managed a weak little smile for me.

I wanted to smile back, so he wouldn’t worry. Except I couldn’t stop thinking now of how he had looked, laid out for his wake, and how the flowers had smelled so strongly at the time that I suspected flowers were forever ruined for me, and how bitter the laudanum had tasted, and how the sun-warmed metal of the Blackchapel bridge had felt under my bare thighs.

“Fuzzy?” he whispered when I still didn’t speak.

“Mm?” I managed, while I tried to shove away the unwelcome memory of lonely it had been here after he died, while I waited all those days for Nan to come home, and then how much lonelier it had been than that, after she did.

“Guess we know now you shoulda run out and got that wild cat skin for me after all, yeah?”

In our shared history this was the type of reliable gag that he had every right to think would make me laugh and quip back with some dumb retort. Curry looked startled when instead of making some crack about fucking the poison out or greasing up his naked body with bear fat, I stared dully at him for a moment, then bent and leaned my head on his chest while I began to heave with the three weeks worth of broken sobs stored up from that terrible dream.

“Fuck,” Curry whispered, and I sensed him realizing that even after I was smacked around and halfass **** and terrorized by Markus Lydell, he had never seen me like this before in all the years we had been together. That other time had been bad, but when all was said and done afterward, both of us were still there and together. We had joked about Lydell attacking me, but I wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to joke about anything adjacent to Curry being gone forever.

Curry reached up weakly and tipped my chin up so he could see me better, and I thought I saw from his eyes that he understood now. “Sorry,” he whispered. “Come up here?” I crawled onto the bed and climbed carefully over him so I wouldn’t be in Yergen’s way when he returned, then wedged myself against him, using his shoulder for a pillow and letting him curl his arm around me. I was still mewling my useless anguish into Curry’s chest when Yergen came back with the water, and since things wanted doing I bit the inside of my cheek until things slowed to a steady leak.

“I still dream occasionally,” Yergen said as he poured the water, “about the time Tom got caught in crossfire between some idiot smugglers. Liver shot, too. Some stupid young patrol constable had the bright idea to pull the bolt out and he almost bled to **** right there. A Cassian nun happened to be passing by and she saved him. Coulda been just that quick, though.”

Baggett had never once mentioned such a thing. Which, I sort of understood in the aftermath of this awful near-miss. I never wanted to think about this time again as long as I lived.

“I can’t believe him—he got fucking shot?” Curry whispered hoarsely. “When?”

Yergen gave the familiar little shrug and half-amused smile he often employed when talking about his husband. “Dunno. Five years ago, maybe? You know how he is. You hang on to that little nugget and surprise him with it sometime, yeah?”

Curry gave a weak little huff of laughter.

Yergen helped him to a sitting position, propped up against pillows at the head of the bed. Seeming to understand things perfectly, he made no effort to chase me off the bed or encourage me to occupy some different place where I couldn’t touch Curry and be reassured by his warm presence.

Curry drank the cup of water Yergen gave him one-handed, holding me in the crook of his other arm without remarking on any of it, then set the cup on the bed stand.

Yergen went to the clothes dresser and pulled open drawers until he found a fresh pajama shirt and sleep trousers, which he tossed to Curry. “I’m assuming you won’t need my help, but let me know if I’m mistaken,” he said in a faintly teasing tone. Yergen was built stocky, not quite as big as Curry, but he’d probably have no trouble making good on that offer.

“I think I can manage,” Curry said dryly, his voice sounding a bit stronger than before.

Yergen began picking up the spread of sickroom debris scattered across every flat surface in the room. “Where’s your linen closet?” he asked, heaping everything in the basin I’d used to sponge water, and picking that up.

“In the hall to the right of my door,” Curry said, not moving to do anything about his pajamas despite being still bare-chested from last night, probably because it would have meant dislodging me from where I lay huddled against him.

“Grand,” said Yergen. “I’ll be back.”

Curry sat there with me after Yergen had gone, idly stroking my back where his hand rested, while I snuffled quietly against him and got more accustomed to the feeling of him not being dead. Despite this being a wonderful fact in itself, it gave me the peculiar feeling of my life having been set on the edge of a razor this morning, and slashed in twain. One of me had toppled into a well of grief that would never relinquish her, and for a time I had been mired there with her, except that I had got free and been given a do-over, and she had not.

I could not now shake the upsetting notion that rather than having woken up from a dream that had never been real at all, somewhere still existed this other Fauzia who had not been lucky like me. Nor could I cast off the feeling that because prior to our separation I had shared a taste of her impossible burden, we were somehow still linked, with all the horrifying possibilities that implied.

The logical answer to this was simply, don’t think about that situation, which for me had never happened, and don’t think about the other me, or the other Nan, or the other Baggett. And especially do not wonder whether that other Fauzia had ever succeeded in tossing herself off the Blackchapel bridge, and whether if so, how Baggett and Nan were getting on without her. This was the logical answer.

Only, the logical answer felt equal parts impossible, and disrespectful to her loss. I must think about that situation. It could not be helped.

I was grateful, that Curry seemed to understand that there was no rushing whatever was going on with me, and that he was all right simply letting me cling to him in a way that maximized our shared surface area, crying intermittently, until the priest came.