Back to the stone age. Pressing leaves and dirt against wounds, hoping they would heal when in reality antibiotics were the only things that might have saved their patient. Over and over, they would watch people die when they knew the one thing that would save them no longer existed.
All her fault. All of it.
Selene walked through the double doors leading into the private areas of the hospital where they brought the women in labor. No one looked in her direction, but they wouldn’t anymore with so many distractions. She remembered a time when she was always stopped because the staff recognized someone who didn’t belong.
“Do you work here?” was the question she heard most. Although there was always the few moments of “Excuse me, can I help you find where you need to go?” Those people were always nicer than the former.
It was strange to wander the halls of the hospital without anyone really caring she was there.
The stone vibrated in her pocket, as if the soul finally understood what she was going to do. A second chance. A moment to prove that he wasn’t the man he’d been in his real life. And what was a century to a goddess of death? A blip in the time she would be alive, because even without humans, there would always be death in this world.
A doctor with a paper mask over his face blasted by her. She nearly slammed into the wall to get out of his way, but he didn’t pause to apologize. Their jobs were far more important than apologizing to someone how stood in their way.
She could hear the stains on his soul. He’d let a few patients die knowing that he might be able to save them, but he’d been too tired to care. He was mostly too tired to care now, even in the moments when he was doing what he was proudest of. The doctor didn’t know how to answer to this dark side of his soul. Working fed its power, and eventually, that would consume him.
Selene shook her head, palmed a doorknob behind her, and shoved it open. Slipping into the darkness beyond was so easy it should have been criminal. In a way, it was.
Reaching out to the wall, she flicked on the light. Rows of incubators lined the walls. Babies slept comfortably within their mechanical homes.
Selene made her way to the side of one, picked up the tag attached to the incubator, and read aloud. “Baby boy Jefferson. Healthy, 10-hour labor, mother intact.” She looked down at the baby who slept with a fist curled underneath his chin. “Well, aren’t you a lucky one? Both parents alive and well, with a family who will love you.”
There wasn’t much of a soul in the child yet. It glowed, dim and quiet, but a new soul that had never seen the world before. This was exactly what she wanted.
Selene lifted the cover and touched the soulstone to the baby’s forehead. It dissolved on contact. Ethan’s soul would merge with the one inside the child, melding until they were one. He’d forget everything he’d done, every life he’d lived before this moment, and a second chance would begin.
“I hope you do well,” she whispered, lowering the cover to the incubator and ignoring the warning signal that beeped. “Live a long life, do great things, and wander the streets of this forgotten world with an open mind and a loving heart.”
She sincerely hoped he would do all the things that she thought him capable of. It wasn’t an easy life to live. Not anymore. But there was a spark of capability in his soul that made her think he might have been something great if someone had just let him.
Selene stepped away from the incubators and turned her eyes away from the glowing blue lights radiating down on the tiny forms. They weren't for her, children. No one had made these creatures with her name on their lips, and hopefully they would never find her when they grew old.
They deserved someone much better than her. They deserved a death god who would lie to them regardless of the life they lived. Someone who would claim to be an angel coming to gather them into the arms of their god. Someone who would know how to reassure them when fear made their delicate, fragile souls quake.
She took one step backward, then another until she backed out of the room and could flick off the light in her wake. Let them sleep. They didn’t know what waited for them out in the world, and they didn’t deserve to see it just yet.
She hoped their dreams were filled with beautiful things for a little while longer.
“Excuse me,” a voice interrupted her thoughts and everything inside her froze. “How is she?”
Oh, how she knew that voice. It had disappeared from her life for so long, only to reappear so often in just a few specks of time that it made her heart bleed. How was he here? Why was he here of all places when she was righting her wrongs that he would have convinced her were trivial things?
Selene squeezed her eyes shut, took a deep breath, then turned around to look at Ronin who sat on a bench behind her. His face was sunken, his eyes dark with circles of exhaustion. This wasn’t the virile man she’d known who even under the most pressure any person could experience, still somehow contained fire in his gaze.
He looked at her face, flinched at her scarring, and then shook his head. “I’m sorry. I thought you were the nurse.”
She could have ended it there. Let him apologize and leave, which was the right thing to do in this moment with a man she once loved who didn’t know she existed. But she blew out a breath and replied, “No. I’m not.”
With a flippant gesture, he pointed toward the door next to the one she’d slipped through. “I thought you came out that door.”
“No, I didn’t.” She should leave, but instead, she hesitated and then asked the question which felt like a stab wound through her gut. “Do you have someone here?”
“My wife,” he replied. “She’s in there.”
Those two words ended the world as she knew it. A wife? He’d married? Why didn’t she know this? She’d wanted a happy life for him, but she hadn’t wanted him to ever move on. But of course he had. What person could be happy without love in their life? The kind of love he’d shown her existed?
“Your wife?” she repeated. “She’s in labor?”
“Yes, and it’s not going very well.” He ran a hand through the strands of his dark hair. Slanted eyes squeezed shut even further, and she’d never seen his face make that kind of worried, panicked expression. “It was a mistake, you see. I wouldn't ever put her in danger like this. I haven’t wanted children before, but she wanted them so badly and I think… I wouldn’t ever tell her this, but I think she forgot to take her pills, and then it just happened. I can’t help but think it would be my fault if she died, if something—”
Selene stepped in front of him and held up her hand. He stopped speaking and looked up at her as if she held the answers to the world. And for him, in this moment, she did. She searched the hospital for the dying or those who would die this day, but no one in the room beyond beckoned for her help.
There were many who would die. An elderly man on the sixth floor, a woman on the second, a young boy in the ER on the first floor who had fallen out of a window and landed four stories below, but no one in the room beyond.
“She’s not going to die,” she murmured quietly.
“Women die every day in childbirth. You can’t say with any kind of certainty that she won’t die.”
“I’m one of the few people on this planet who can say that with every level of certainty.”
He blinked a few times at her, then his jaw opened slightly in surprise. “You’re the woman from the bank. The one who wouldn’t get on the floor with the rest and of us and then…”
“You should not remember that,” she chided him.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not for you to remember. Sometimes, there are moments in our lives when something strange happens, and we have to justify it so that we can live with it. I suggest you do that, so you don’t go mad wondering how I did what I did.”
His gaze shifted and she realized she’d made things worse by talking. That was always something she’d done before, even when she was just a child and didn’t really know what she
was doing.
Ronin bit his cheek and then nodded. “All right. If you say so, I’ll forget it.”
Go, she told herself, get out of this situation with your heart still intact. But she couldn’t leave him when he was sitting on that bench looking so… small.
She didn’t remember him ever being small. Ronin was larger than life. A man who could and did carry the entire world on his shoulders with grace and poise. This man was simple, someone who just wanted a family to love, and for a wife to survive a tough moment in her life. And he’d been kicked out to sit on a bench while wondering if she was even going to live.
One last chance to leave.
Selene sighed and sat down on the bench next to him. “So, a wife?”
“I was on my way to my wedding a year ago when I stepped into that bank and—” He paused and scratched the back of his neck. “Ah, that’s the memory I’m supposed to forget.”
Of course, that’s why he had looked so strange when he walked in. What man wasn’t a little nervous on his wedding day?
“Oh,” she replied. Her fingers twisted into knots in her lap. She hoped he didn’t notice the nervous tick. “What’s she like?”
“She’s perfect, in every way. Kind, thoughtful, a woman that would make any man fall to his knees if she wished. But she doesn’t, because all her attention is on me. I couldn’t have wished for a better wife.”
He’d ended up with a paragon then. Not a freak who was physically deformed and who wanted to kill things indiscriminately. Uncomfortable, she shifted on the bench to get away from him, even if it was only the few inches her body would let her move. “That’s good.”
“It’s really good. I was nothing before I met her, and then I had to become something just so she’d look at me.” He shrugged. “You know that feeling?”
She did. But she couldn’t say she’d felt that way the first time she set eyes on him.
Instead, Selene shrugged. “I have before, but not in a long time. You’re lucky if you have that in your life.”
“I’m lucky I have her in my life.”
It was like she had hanged herself. The noose tightening with every word he uttered about his wfie. Any sane woman would have gotten up and left. No one wanted to willingly hear the person they were crazy about speak of the woman they loved.
But here she was. Anchored to the bench without any air in her lungs, holding her breath just so she could hear him speak.
What was she doing? Why was she being such a fool about this? Selene finally told herself to grow up, to be a better woman and not be quite so afraid of losing him.
She’d done it once. And in reality, this wasn’t losing him again at all. She’d never had him this time. Standing, she ran a hand over the scarred side of her face, a habit as she tried to hide the sight from another person.
“I should be going,” she said quietly. “I hope everything goes well, but I promise, you both will be fine.”
“Stay?” the word echoed one he had said to her before. The one that started everything so many years ago. Guttural and with so much meaning it made her head spin, she forced herself to remember this wasn’t the same man as before.
Still, she stared at his bowed head and felt something inside her chest crack. Selene sank back onto the bench, stared at the wall, then said, “Okay.”
They didn’t say anything while they waited. The same as so many years ago. But then again, they’d never needed words between them.
She couldn’t even begin to count the number of times they’d sat on a rooftop, staring out at the world they’d destroyed, and just watched. People were far more entertaining than words. Sometimes he’d point out something in the distance so she didn’t miss anything. But most of the time, they said nothing.
Ronin and Selene hadn’t needed words between them to show their love.
As she stared at the wall, Selene felt her throat close up. She struggled to contain an angry sob. Tears welled in her eyes that she refused to allow to fall.
Every fiber of her being wanted to shout, “Losing you was like watching every memory of ‘I love you’ fade into nothing, all at once.”
Eventually, a nurse stepped out of the doorway and turned toward the both of them. She looked surprised to see Selene for a second before she focused on Ronin. “She’s doing just fine. They both made it through the labor, and you have a daughter.”
“A daughter,” he breathed. “When can I see them?”
“We’re cleaning them both up, but you should be able to see them in a few minutes. I’ll come back out and get you when we’re ready.”
Ronin’s shoulders curved inward, relief radiating from his body like a heat she could feel. Selene watched with a mixture of sadness and strange pride that his wife had made it. She didn’t want to admit that the woman had taken her place, but stress no longer rode his shoulders as an unwelcome guest. In a strange way, that fulfilled her more than if she had given him a child herself.
“Thank you,” he said, the quiet depth of his voice reaching Selene’s ears. “Thank you so much.”
She couldn’t tell if he thought she had done something to help his wife. Life wasn’t her gift, it was his.
The nurse went back into the room beyond and left them sitting in silence.
Selene berated herself again for staying. She should have let him handle this moment on his own. He was a full grown man; his wife was on the other side of that door. She remained at his side, because she couldn’t stand the helpless look on his face.
Standing abruptly, she tugged the hem of her hood lower over her face. “I’m glad your wife made it.”
“How did you know she would?”
“I can just tell.” She couldn’t tell him she fed off death like some kind of godly leech. He wouldn’t react well to that, because he wasn’t the same man as before. He wasn’t the creature whose smile would split the shadows at the mere mention of blood or gore.
The appreciation in his gaze was too much for her. She couldn’t take this anymore. Not when her lungs were still squeezed of air and her heart wanted to pound free from her chest just to see him one more time.
But worst of all, she couldn’t bring herself to say goodbye. The words felt too final coming from her lips. Now that she’d seen him, more than once, her soul would reach out to him. She could survive this painful suffering if it meant her eyes were on him. And maybe, if she was lucky, she would see him smile.
As she strode past, Ronin reached out at the last second and caught her hand. The mere touch burned through her being. She was certain the appendage had turned to ash.
When was the last time anyone had touched her willingly? Without some hope behind the touch or a different idea in their mind?
She looked down where they were still connected, then followed the line of his arm up to his eyes that looked up at her with such hope in them it made her ache.
“I don’t know why it feels so easy to talk to you, and I don’t know who you are, but thank you.” His eyes were too large for his face. They’d always been too large, but she’d thought them otherworldly long ago. Now, they just looked sad. As if his soul knew she was too far away for him to ever grasp again.
Selene couldn’t tell him there was a reason why it was easy to talk to her. That their souls were tied together from the beginning of time until the end. Instead, all she said was, “I know.”
And then she walked away, because what else was there to do when her heart was breaking?
5
I was never really insane,
except on occasions where my heart was touched.
~ Edgar Allan Poe
“Why are we here?” Mutt asked. A scowl made her stern face even more intimidating as she glared at the other gods and goddesses surrounding them. Not that many of them could see her. Few of her comrades could actually see the dead. Only death gods like Selene.
“Because we were invited, and I didn’t want to be rude,” Selene replied, although it wasn’t entirely true.
She’d been feeling horrible since seeing Ronin. Less like herself and more like the shell of a woman she was meant to be, or should have been. That’s why she came to this small bar in a back alley where only gods and goddesses gathered. It was also why she brought Mutt along. For all her sudden interest in being sociable, Selene didn’t actually want to talk to anyone but the friend she was most comfortable with.
“Since when do you care about being rude?” Mutt growled in response. “It’s unlike you to be anything but.”
Selene snorted and lifted the cigarette between her fingers to her lips. If there was one good thing about being around gods, it was that no one gave her any angry looks when she smoked. Gods and goddesses didn’t have to worry about pollution. It wasn’t going to kill them anyways.
Humans, on the other hand, were far more concerned with the health of their lungs. They didn’t want to put anything else in jeopardy. Selene didn’t really blame them. There were so few of them left, after all.
Stomping footsteps made her head ache. Jack rounded the table in front of her and sat down so hard he made the floor shake. He then struck the worn wood with so much force that it made her flinch.
“Doom-and-gloom,” he said with a chuckle that was far too loud. “I never thought I’d see the likes of you here. What happened to make you seek our company?”
“Nothing,” she grumbled while Mutt snickered to his right.
“It’s not nothing. You never come here to see us, and you never want to be around people. So spit it out little, dark thing, or I’ll shake it out of you.”
She’d seen him do that to others before. The Trickster was a little too large for his own good, and he’d turn someone upside down by their ankles. She eyed the tankard of ale to see how low it was before finally relenting.
“Fine,” she hissed. “I saw him again. Is that what you want to hear?”
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