social salvation

your stomach normally hurts. you’ve always had a sensitive constitution — as long as you can remember, as much as you can remember, anyways. always sick. not bad enough to warrant hospital visits, just enough to puzzle doctors, with nothing left to pursue. it took you many more years to figure out — it’s living that makes you sick. ironic. given your particular abilities, it doesn’t surprise you that the rot lives in the pit of your belly. it has burned holes in the lining and laid you up in bed for days, wracked you with fever, with nausea, and always that twisting, burrowing pain.

you’ve never felt quite this bad before.

your stomach hurts so badly you think you'd die if you tried to eat. as a result, you can no longer remember the last time you ate. you might have remembered yesterday, however that can be demarcated, but it's slipped through your fingers. even if you could stomach food, the pantry's down a rickety set of stairs you will not survive. it took you an hour to cross your floor to get to the bathroom this morning. the floor dipped out from under you.

that might be the sleep. or the lack thereof. it's starting to get to you.

your breathing's gotten very slow, these past couple days, and you don't want to close your eyes too long. if you aren't thinking about breathing, you fear you might stop. so you don't sleep — as if you could anyways. as if this razed hellscape would let you. you close your eyes, you get that falling feeling, but it doesn't stop. the net is gone. it was pulled from under you. some fucking freedom, huh? tangled in your sheets, drenched in sweat. trapped in this shithole room. alone.

well. you started seeing things a while ago. it's gone, now, you think. the thing that you're seeing, or that's seeing you. the specifics don't matter, not for our purposes.

does it being there make you less alone? its absence triggered this line of questioning, anyways. the whole point of this —

you don't think you should be alone right now.

you've spent the great majority of your life alone. more hours than you care to calculate, though you could, if you wanted. you remember the timeline with painstaking clarity, if not the sensation. you don't remember it being like this. maybe, those years in the cage, but that part of your life is gone, a vein of burnt carbon playing memorial to some vital part of your brain. it's growing, you think. the fire is spreading. the romans are burning villages everywhere. razing them to the ground, wiping them out of existence.

you're maybe most afraid of how much (how little) you have left to lose.

you need a killer to stop them before it's all gone. there is only one name that comes to your mind, that crosses your dry, cracked lips like a plea:

"rookie. rookie, i need you. i need your help."

a pathetically-familiar comfort, but she's helped you before. helped you more times than you can count. quieted your mind, drowned out the static. you've never asked her to help with the pain. it's too much to ask. you don't think she can do it, anyways. you've been entombed in that particular cord, one man-sized gordian knot, and there's no way out. you wonder how she sees you at all, through those eyes.

just a breath of air, just one solitary gasp. it's all you need, to get you through this.

she can't hear you. ridiculous. you have to get to the phone. it's on the wall, beside the door.

you don't know these legs that fall out of the sheets. your body hurts, faster than you can swallow down, so you pull yourself across the floor. you wish she was already here. it takes you fifteen painstaking minutes — you've been watching the clock, just to know. just to not let time get away from you. you can't lose any more moments.

slumped against the wall, you pull the phone down by the cord. when it slams against the wall, an inch from your head, you feel it rattle in your teeth. your fingers hover over the buttons.

you don't know her fucking number.

You’re sincere and tender and warm, at least in your contemplation, in your care. You watch, and listen, and think deeply about the people around you. And you know, intellectually, that — none of these traits or behaviours or actions are inherently or inextricably sexed or gendered, you are a Marxist, after all; you understand these are all expressions of divisions of labour, that the relationship is causal but not permanent, that it’s never always like this, just often enough to recognize a pattern.

But.

You never feel more like a man then when you’re standing there, and a pretty girl is crying right in front of you.

And, God, you don’t see women in that way, but Isabele is so beautiful when she cries. You know — she’s an opera singer, an actor, a professional at this; of course when she does it, it’s beautiful. You know her powers must be like yours, seeping out of every pore, demanding you to play along with her performance. Invites you into the scene, demands your belief and commitment, even without intention.

Still. She’s crying, and more than anything, you’d like her to stop. You just don’t know what to do with yourself, what to do to help her. If you were — more normal, maybe you’d sit beside her. Hand on her back, rubbing small circles, like your mother did for you when you were small. Maybe she’d lean her head on your shoulder, and you’d curl her hair through your fingers. Maybe then, you’d know what to say. Or know that she doesn’t need you to say anything, just listen to her, just be there. Maybe then, you’d know how to do that. You’d know how to comfort.

But you’re still a man, of a worse, stupider time, who was raised half a boy, half a housewife, who learned to offer comfort silently, stoically, without touch or warmth; the impulse to be the one who does it, the one who soothes, but the inability to act on it. The foot between you might as well be a mile, and you don’t know what to do, just the blunt hammer of fix this beating against your brain. You want to ask questions. What’s wrong, Isa? What happened? Did someone do this? Who? Why? Show me in your heart where it hurts. Let me fix it. Please, please, please stop crying. I can’t take it anymore, I’ll cry too.

And maybe you’re too obvious, too conflicted and miserable and oppressively constricted by what you don’t know, because she looks up at you and smiles. Those mesmerizing lips part, shinier and redder than any cerise glacées you’ve ever seen; impossibly, smiling at you. Useless, unhelpful you.

You reach out to her, offer your hand, brace yourself against the flinch when she takes it. She doesn’t need to know it hurts, and you don’t want to explain why it does, why you offer it anyways. Just because you want her to keep smiling. The same reason you take her calls, the same reason you write her back, the same reason you bring her chocolates and let her kiss you on the cheek and try to set you up on dates you’ll never, ever go on.

When she smiles, you smile back. When laughs, you can’t help yourself, you laugh too. Something about her, unrestrained and in the moment, permits you to join her in it.

It’s never going to look right.

His blood, your hands. You didn’t ask for reversal, you demanded transformation. All blood or none. Can we not both live? Do we not have better things to do? Let us be done with it.

(You know you’ll never be done with each other. It doesn’t end with amicable separation. A war, even a cold one, demands a winner. Is losing better than a stalemate? Was it worth crossing the parallel?

You know it was. The bombs were dropping either way.)

It doesn’t look right, but it is. Not in its correctness, but in its reality. Whether it should be or not, his blood is on your hands. You didn’t even cut him. You gave the orders, now you watch him bleed to death.

(How does a general make time to weep for every soldier? How do they call the families? How can any condolence suffice? How will you tell his son you killed his father, too?)

Because it is, it wasn’t going to be anything else. If there were better choices you could have made, you’d have made them. If there was another way, you’d have found it. If it was going to end differently, it would not be you, and it would not be him. The only question left is — what now? His blood, your hands, bleeding out in your arms. Salvation isn’t waiting. He isn’t going to Heaven’s pearly gates. You have no desire to send him to Hell.

You have to pull him out of Perdition.

You aren’t the Caladrius, you do not know how to heal. Hurting, healing — those realities live outside your domain. You know hunger, satiation. You know how to make things, to how to make them change. How much heat, how much pressure, how much repetition. But that requires — tools. Raw materials. You only have yourself.

(But you make yourself, don’t you?)

Primitive life-cells, knowing only their own limited function, replicating and acting on instinct, without consideration. You force reason through each vein and pathway, through each current coursing down each nerve. You don’t just reverse the flow, you change it. You demand it act differently, against instinct, towards reason, towards a purpose. You eliminate the entropy by making it build something new.

Most things in this life are not in the domain of the Spirit. They live in the world of the Body, of the form and its relations. Retreating into the Spirit, the Mind, when faced with the Body, Dying — that is a dereliction of your duties. You hold him in your arms, and it hurts, but not on the skin. Not in the humming nerves or the muscle flexing under this burden, but your blood. Red-hot, human. Alive.

(You know what you have to do.

You know it could fail, miserably.

That trying and failing may end worse than letting him die in your arms.

You might die too.

You’ll bet on it.)

You tilt his head up, fingers shaking under that slackened jaw. (Clench, strain, fix, bite, goddamn you.) You part his lips, and raise your fist. Knife drags across your arm, forming a jagged cross, catching against an old scar. It opens, skin and muscle parting, opening its mouth and pouring out the chalice — first a trickle, then a flood. You direct the flow. This thing you made, that is life, that you are always doing, the principle foundation of your very existence, you push it past yourself. You are more than your Body. You are what it does to the Other.

You feel your blood in his mouth, smearing across his teeth, down his throat, into his stomach, into his lungs. It is an extension of yourself, and you see it everywhere. Reddened fractals, bleeding edges, shards smashing against each other. There is resistance, rejection. You cradle his head, free hand knotting your fingers in his hair, and will yourself to change. To change him.

You feel it take. Flesh hits the pan, coagulates against the cast-iron heat. It changes. It bleeds, until it stops. The glass grinds against itself, until the edges are dull, sanded. What you can do is not — replace the thing that was, you cannot repair it, but you can do what you’ve always done: take the composite parts, scraps from a bare cupboard, and you make something that will be enough. That will serve its purpose. That will hold him over. It’s not a broken pot, fixed back together with gold. It’s a shattered iron blade, beat into steel with blood.

(It’s a process of becoming. It always has been.

This isn’t the end. It’s a new form.)