Fic: Triptych (Young Wizards)
I did a tally the other day and found that I have about 55,000 words in just-barely-unfinished stories on my hard drive - as in, one or two hour's work and a quick beta is all they need to be postable. I'm so bogged down in old work that I rarely pursue a new idea because I feel bad about not finishing the old ones, and that is extremely silly.
So I put my editing hat on and here you go: 6800 words less of unfinished work for me to keep picking at like a scab.
Title: Triptych
Author: ravenclaw42
Fandom: Young Wizards (Diane Duane)
Pairing: Tom/Carl
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Three missing scenes during known events from Tom and Carl's points of view: failing, forgetting, dawn.
Disclaimer: No profits made here. Diane Duane does a much better job at the pseudoscience than I ever would. I only want to borrow a few ideas to play with, but I'll put them back in mint condition when I'm done, promise.
Notes: Set during WH/WAW. I started reading these books when I was much too young to pick up on the subtext of Tom and Carl, but now that I do, it's hardly even “sub.” Mostly just text. And I ship it to bits, because I have always loved them both separately, but I love them even more together. All quotes are song lyrics; the first two are from “The House Wins” by OK Go, the last two are from “Bring on the Wonder” by Susan Enan.
------
Triptych
------
“If evil were a lesser breed than justice, after all these years
the righteous would have freed the world of sin.
The house wins. The house always wins.”
Accompanied by an air-shredding crack and roar like a concussion grenade exploding, Tom and Carl arrived in their backyard in the middle of the night.
Carl's legs gave out without warning and he slumped against Tom. His left knee brushed the ground before Tom managed to brace against him, leaning to the side, trembling hand hooked under Carl's armpit. Tom's grip slipped and he bent jerkily forward to lower Carl to the ground.
Carl couldn't feel his legs for the cold. Was he shaking? He couldn't tell.
“Neighbors heard that,” said Tom, a little too loudly. Talking over the ringing in his ears - the ringing in both their ears. “Sloppy work. Sorry. Could have left our skins on Europa. Sorry, I'm - I didn't think about the rotation differentials -”
Nothing scared Carl more than Tom babbling.
Carl opened his mouth to tell Tom to shut up, but nothing came out. He couldn't feel his lips. Or his feet. His fingers were beginning to throb, though, and the tip of his nose and the tops of his ears were in agony. His eyes felt like hardboiled eggs, if hardboiled eggs could feel simultaneously dry as sandpaper and covered in a thin film of napalm.
A single sharp bark from inside the house cut Tom off, and a second later Annie had managed to work open the sliding lock and was shimmying between the back door and its frame. Monty's nose poked out just behind her, followed closely by his full mass of wriggling, furry shadow.
It was dark in the backyard. They didn't like to leave lights on - it was a waste of energy. The moon was bright enough to glint off the worry in the dogs' eyes and to outline the slumping of their shoulders, their tails drooping at a fearful half-mast. Both of the chatterboxes were unusually reserved. Carl only heard a soft echo of their thoughtspeak, scared and fitful.
“Help me,” Tom asked into the quiet. “Please.” In English, not the Speech. Carl's stomach lurched.
Annie walked up to Carl, whuffed once into his aching ear, then edged behind him and leaned all of her not-insignificant weight against his back. Monty got up behind Tom and wedged himself between the two men, bracing against Tom's thigh to give Tom some leverage. Tom took a couple of deep breaths, then reached down and wrapped one arm tightly around Carl's back, other hand steadying Carl by the shoulder. With agonizing slowness and strain that Carl really, really hated to see on Tom's face right now, Tom managed to bodily haul Carl upright. Monty squirmed around to Carl's other side and leaned his broad shoulders against Carl's hip until Tom regained his breath and pulled again, and somehow got Carl partly draped over his back.
Carl did everything he could to force his body to move, but it simply refused. He was crashing in the worst way, stalling out from shock. He squeezed his eyes shut, hating to be a literal burden, hating to hear Tom's labored breathing close to his ear, hating the soft whine Monty let out and the scritching of Annie's paws as she tried in vain to open the door again. Carl flexed his fingers, finally, the movement coming at far too great a cost in effort and pain, and managed to get a loose grip on Tom's sweat-soaked shirt.
“Come on,” Tom was chanting under his breath, fumbling with the door. “Come on.” It opened all the way. Annie shot inside while Monty lingered, letting Tom go first. Carl knew Monty was spotting, in case Tom dropped him.
Tom hit the light switch by the door just as Monty twined past his legs and the door slammed shut. He limped his way into the living room, Carl in tow, but didn't bother with any more lights. Annie was circling the coffee table, ears flat to her skull.
Carl could curl his toes inside his shoes, finally. Tom got him to the edge of the couch and he slid his foot forward, gaining a little control over what was otherwise a graceless collapse. Tom heaved a little more and got him onto his back, grabbed a knit throw off the back of the recliner and managed to wedge it under Carl's head for a pillow. Then Tom sank to his knees by the couch, folded his arms on Carl's chest, let his head fall forward and stopped moving altogether.
Carl focused on breathing. He found himself wondering if Tom was going to cry. Carl wanted to cry, although the want was sort of distant and academic because he didn't think he would have the energy to manage tears for a week at least. He was doing good right now to hold in the involuntary moan that clogged the back of his throat on every exhale. Tom's head was a solid weight on the right side of his ribs. Carl's right arm was trapped between Tom and the couch. He felt a cold wetness touch his hand and wiggled his fingers to give Monty a pathetic pat on the nose.
After a few minutes he could think about more than just forcing oxygen in and out. His ears and nose had started to feel like they were on fire, along with his feet and fingers. He worked his throat again and found that the choking feeling had eased up.
“Tom,” he said. Tried to say. It was more of a rasping groan. His own voice alarmed him.
Tom jerked, then pushed his head upright, hands braced against Carl's chest. Carl couldn't quite see his face in the dark.
“'M cold,” said Carl, and he saw Tom nod.
“Annie,” Tom asked - in the Speech this time, and that relieved Carl more than he was willing to admit - “would you please bring me some blankets?”
Annie gave a throaty woof and trotted off towards the bedroom.
Tom lifted his hands from Carl and pressed his palms to his eyes, then scrubbed them back over his temples.
“God,” muttered Tom. “Carl...”
“Don't,” rasped Carl. He dragged his arm towards Tom and flopped his hand around until Tom got the idea and took it, twining their fingers together. Tom shifted his legs to one side so they wouldn't go to sleep and leaned sideways against the couch, facing Carl.
Annie backed in from the hallway into the living room, dragging the big comforter from the foot of the bed. Monty loped over to help. Tom laughed softly.
“Good girl,” he said, scratching Annie's ears when she came close enough. She leaned her head forward, looking up at him with big, liquid eyes. “Thank you.” He glanced at Monty. “You too.” Monty's ears perked.
Tom pushed himself onto one knee and dragged the comforter over Carl, leaving a corner hanging off the couch to wrap around his own shoulders. He settled back into the same position, a little closer to Carl's head this time, and leaned until his head was resting against Carl's chest again. Carl let his arm dangle off the edge of the couch, found Tom's hand. Tom put the back of Carl's hand to his cheek, then to his mouth. He blew warm air against Carl's knuckles, brought up his other hand and rubbed Carl's between them.
Carl hissed.
“Sorry,” said Tom.
“Pins and needles,” said Carl. “It's getting better.” Actually, now that he was regaining sensation everywhere, his whole body felt like it was being crushed by a steamroller covered with rusty nails. His eyes had thawed enough to water and he felt the involuntary trickle of tears down the side of his face, sliding into his ear. He made a face.
“Remind me,” he said after a long minute of silence, “never to get exposed to the vacuum of space again.”
Tom huffed in what might have been a helpless laugh. Carl couldn't think of anything to say. He had never been involved in a wizardry that had gone so horribly, explosively wrong before, and he knew Tom hadn't either. He didn't even know the names of all of those who had died, or where they were from. Almost no one said a word afterward; almost no one stayed to be debriefed. There was a silent agreement that there was no point in keeping the survivors away from their homes and loved ones for a moment longer. Everyone just wanted to slink away, lick the wounds that could stand licking, bury the dead, sit in reflective quietude and remember how to breathe. Not for too long - only long enough to rest and come to grips. The manual would already be updating itself with a precis, if either Tom or Carl felt like looking. They didn't. They knew it hadn't worked.
Carl couldn't think about how close he'd come to losing Tom. Or the other way around. He couldn't think about what would have happened if Tom had needed another five seconds to pull together a fresh shield and air supply after Carl's failed. The Rirhait Senior to Carl's other side had lost control first, breaking Carl's concentration, and she had paid the last price - Carl's sleeve was spattered with what remained of her. Gaps had been appearing all over the circle by then...
Tom was beginning to shake in earnest. His hands had already been trembling, but now he gripped Carl's hand tight in his and Carl could almost hear his teeth gritting as he spasmed involuntarily. They were both too old to pull brute-force rescues out of nowhere.
Carl murmured reassurances as soothingly as he could while Tom gave up control to his body's quaking. After a minute or so, it slowed to a fine tremble again.
Tom sucked in a deep breath, eyes closed. “I feel like throwing up,” he mumbled. “I hate throwing up.”
“Breathe,” said Carl.
Several minutes passed in silence. Tom's trembling slowed, then stopped, and his breathing evened out. Carl knew he'd dozed off when Tom's hand went slack in his, their fingers slipping apart. Carl tightened his grip and propped their joined hands on Tom's knee. He let his gaze linger on the top of Tom's disheveled head, a shaggy charcoal patch tinged with silver. A tiny string of pin-sized lights cut across Tom's blanket-covered shoulders and over his head - the moon shining through the little holes through which the blinds were strung up.
Eventually, Carl's eyes drifted closed.
The darkness was absolute. It pressed in like a tangible thing, cold and dry and leaving a feeling like brittle flaking everywhere it touched. Carl squirmed against it, tried to push back, but he was bound into dead stillness and his mouth felt gluey, thick. The cold was picking away at him, a low chuckle coming from the writhing black. His eyes ached, and there was no difference between open and closed -
He jerked against whatever was binding him so hard that he jarred himself awake, nearly sliding off the couch. Tom let out an undignified yelp. After a moment's confusion, Tom pushed Carl back onto the couch with his shoulder and groped around in the dark for something to hold onto. Annie yipped as Tom accidentally whacked her. Monty yawned loudly.
“Okay, okay,” said Tom, voice thick with exhaustion. “I'm up. Sorry. Shit, Annie. Sorry.” He found the edge of the couch and tried to push himself up. It took two tries, but he managed to stand without swaying too badly. He put one hand on the arm of the couch just above Carl's head and leaned down. Carl could barely make out his face in the dark, and the deep shadows made him look ten years older.
“Hey,” said Tom.
“Hey.” Carl slowly stretched along the length of the couch, testing all of his joints, and found that he had slept through the worst of the throbbing pain. Thank the Powers for small favors. He ached, but he could feel and he could move. “I'm better,” he said.
Tom's smile made Carl's heart hurt. “Good,” said Tom. “How long did I conk out for?”
“I don't know,” said Carl. “I passed out too.”
“Okay,” Tom repeated. He leaned his forehead down to rest gently against Carl's, closed his eyes. “Okay.”
“You gotta stop saying that,” said Carl. He tried to smile, but it was like his face had forgotten how.
“I love you,” said Tom. “You're okay?”
“Yeah,” said Carl. Tom pressed the back of his hand to Carl's cheek, then the palm. A reassurance, a physical presence... and okay, there came the tears, maybe, if Tom didn't stop. And Carl was really too tired to cry. “Stop it,” said Carl, voice thick.
Tom seemed to understand. He nodded against Carl's head without opening his eyes, then pressed a kiss to Carl's forehead and wobbled upright again. “I'm going to make some tea,” he said.
Tom made ginger tea. Carl despised ginger tea. But Tom knew, in that freakish psychic way of his, how nauseous Carl was going to be when he sat up. He was right. Carl choked down the tea and let it help his stomach settle, then stuck his tongue out at Tom, who knocked him lightly on the head, handed him a glass of water and went to feed the dogs.
When Tom came back, Carl was staring at the clock on the wall. It was 4:47 a.m. He wasn't actually sure when they'd gotten back, but it didn't felt like he'd slept for long. Then again, he was pretty sure a solid week of sleep wouldn't feel like long enough. “You'll spoil them for breakfast,” he told Tom absently.
“Annie claimed that worrying about us makes her extra hungry,” said Tom. Something like a smile teased the corner of his mouth, then slipped away. Carl had balled himself up in a cocoon of comforter, but he lifted one side out to let Tom sit next to him, pressed against his side. Tom slid an arm around Carl's waist under the comforter and stared at the coffee table.
“It isn't going to do anything interesting unless you ask it to,” Carl said eventually.
Tom snorted.
Carl bumped his head against Tom's shoulder and closed his eyes. He suddenly flashed back to the crushing black, the taut-to-breaking deathly dry absence of atmosphere against his skin, the cold. He snapped his eyes open again and took a deep breath.
“Thank you,” he told Tom. “For the save.”
Tom's arm tightened around him. After a second, Tom said, “My Ordeal wasn't as successful as it could have been. I was scared, I made some bad calls. I barely got through it on the plus side. But I never had any expectations then. I was doing the best I could. This, I really thought... I really thought we had a chance. How could every single one of us think we knew what we were doing and all be so - so fucking wrong?” He spat out the question, and Carl understood the foulness it left behind because the same bile was burning his own throat.
Carl shrugged awkwardly under the blanket. “Hubris,” he said bitterly.
“I never thought we were so proud,” said Tom, “as to deserve this.”
In the “we” Carl could hear the implication of - well, of humankind, for one, but also of all sentient life. Carl's lips twitched upward. They'd be okay as long as they both still firmly felt that they were part and parcel of Life and the One. Carl didn't think he could take Tom's existential doubt right now, but his anger... Carl understood that.
“I've got nothing to say, babe,” Carl said quietly. “Vent if you need to. You know I've been where you are now and I wouldn't hold anything against you.”
Tom sat in fuming silence for another minute or so, before his shoulders slumped. “It was so much easier to go out and punch a tree before I knew the tree could talk back.”
Carl snorted. “And we do have a tree wizard living down the street. He might take offense.”
Tom groaned, but the tension of his anger had seeped away. Tom couldn't hold his rage at a cold simmer indefinitely the way Carl could. Tom always flared once, fierce as propane on dry tinder, then let go. They were good for each other that way, and Carl had stopped begrudging that fact a long time ago. The first thing Tom had taught him to let go of was his stoic isolationism.
“Well, I won't tell Filif about the salad you had for lunch yesterday if you don't tell him I knocked the Japanese maple around a little bit.”
Carl almost laughed aloud, but the gathered breath caught in his throat and he wondered what the hell he and Tom were talking about, when Lill'het's blood was rubbing from Carl's sleeve onto Tom's and Carl had almost died and the universe was being eaten alive.
Carl stood abruptly. The movement nearly made his knees buckle, and Tom batted at the corner of comforter that got dragged over his head.
“Carl,” said Tom, not quite a question.
“I'm,” said Carl, then stopped, working his mouth a little while nothing came out. “I need to... I have to change. Shower. I -“ He looked down at his sleeve, thought: This has been all over me all night, oh God, oh God is that a piece of an eyestalk? “I, uh,” he said, and all the blood in his body ran fever-hot, then ice-cold, and he dropped the comforter and stumbled over Monty in his beeline for the bathroom.
How he made it to the toilet he wasn't sure, but a couple of blurry minutes later he came back to his senses to the feeling of a damp cloth pressed against his forehead and a hand between his shoulder blades. He held onto the rim of the bowl and tried to gauge whether anything else was going to come up. He wasn't sure there was anything left.
Tom rubbed his back and wiped his forehead, and Carl managed an entire deep breath without any lingering catches in his diaphragm. A second later the washcloth was pressed into his hand and Tom moved away. Carl closed his eyes, heard the shower start as if from a distance.
Carl wiped his mouth, flushed, stood up, closed the toilet seat and sat down on it. He spat into the washcloth and tossed it into the sink. Tom got the shower temperature adjusted, poured Carl a glass of water from the tap. Then Tom leaned against the wall and waited.
Carl sipped the water, swished it with a grimace and leaned over to spit in the sink. He swallowed the second sip. After a long pause, he put the glass down and started to unbutton his shirt. The bright fluorescents over the mirror showed the gore in more detail - Carl's stomach gave another weak flip, but he held together - and now he could see that it wasn't just his sleeve, really, but his whole right side. It was tacky to the touch, well-soaked and halfway to dry. He really wanted to set his clothes on fire and burn them off, taking off a few layers of skin in the process. Lill'het - he'd known her pretty well. She'd introduced him to a kind of mime-like Rirhait performance art that he'd found strangely beautiful, and he'd told her so, and she'd chitter-laughed and talked about the art's history with a passion that could only come from experience. She had been the Rirhait equivalent of a dancer. Grace and poise transcended physical shape...
Tom knew her as a sometime friend of Carl's, a passing acquaintance, and now Carl bitterly regretted never introducing them. It could have just been lunch at the Crossings one not-too-busy day, a matinee show in Lill'het's native city. Tom would have liked the art and loved Lill'het. For the Power's sakes, Carl should have taken Betty Callahan to see Lill'het dance. Why, why had he never - ? Why didn't he just do things for people like that? Tom was the master of random acts of kindness, but what did Carl expect - to get cosmic brownie points by association? And now - too late.
Carl finished peeling off his shirt and handed it to Tom. He toed off his shoes, shimmied out of his pants. Tom folded each item gingerly and laid them on the counter, shoes on top. Even those were spattered. Naked, Carl hunched over on the toilet put his face in his hands. The shower hissed steadily, wasting water.
“I need to call her family,” Carl said finally, folding his hands between his knees.
“You need to shower,” Tom said mildly. “And then sleep.”
“I -“
“Carl.”
And that was a tone Carl didn't hear often. He shut up. After a second, he rose and stepped into the shower.
Fifteen minutes later, he stepped out again and the bloody clothes were gone and Tom was holding out a towel. Carl left the water running and wandered out into the living room and then the kitchen while Tom showered. Annie was looking speculatively into her empty food dish, and she looked up and gave Carl a big doggy grin and wag of her tail when he came in.
You don't smell like a frozen steak anymore, she said.
“Hah,” he said. “I'll take that as a compliment.” He leaned down and scratched her neck, still fighting on-and-off pangs of unease in gut - flashes of unreality. “Tom already fed you,” he added.
She looked at him forlornly.
“Not now,” said Carl. “Sorry.”
He'd forgotten why he'd come into the kitchen in the first place. He thought he should probably eat something, but the thought made him feel sick. He turned back to the bedroom and Annie walked with him to the door. She circled once, then flopped down. I'll keep guard, she said.
Carl smiled. “Thank you,” he said solemnly, and went in to find Tom sitting on the edge of the bed, wrapped in his ratty old blue-and-green striped robe, hair damp, staring at the cell phone in his hand.
“Who're you calling?” Carl said after a second.
“I thought maybe Harry,” said Tom, not looking up. “But I don't...”
Know what to say, Carl filled in in the silence. Don't want to wake him up. Don't feel like you should get to call a friend before you have to make the really hard calls. Don't want to tell him we failed, and what's going to happen next. What's going to happen to his kids.
Carl sat down next to Tom and took the phone out of his hand, turned it on silent and put it inside a drawer of the bedside table.
“Six hours,” he said. “Then we start all that. Okay?”
Tom sighed. “I'm too tired to sleep,” he said.
“Then lay here for six hours while I sleep,” said Carl.
Tom snorted, but he got up and fetched the comforter back from the living room, and within a minute of turning all the lights off and pulling the blanket over both of them, Carl could tell that Tom was already halfway gone.
“We're going to lose our wizardry,” Tom mumbled, brows furrowed as he tried to fight off the exhaustion. “We're going to... we've got to let the kids know.”
“Don't want to talk about it,” said Carl.
“Should have told them earlier that this might happen.” Tom closed his eyes.
“Go to sleep,” Carl muttered, but Tom already had. It was a long while before Carl was able to follow suit.
“You don't have to be alone to be lonely.
You don't have to be sick to be dying.
You don't have to have lost to be lost...
You might as well give in.”
Tom woke on Sunday with a sour-milk stomach and crawling skin.
He sat up in bed, leaned against the headboard and held his arms tight over his abdomen. The gradual power drain had been costing him... He wanted to believe that what he felt now was due to lack of sleep, stress, merely a new and vicious manifestation of the day-to-day strain of living through the end of world and knowing there was nothing he could do about it.
But he didn't think it was just that.
Tom watched Carl's face in his sleep for nearly half an hour. Was there something different about him? He wasn't sure what he was trying to memorize about the man that he hadn't already. The lines and planes of Carl's body were carved deep into Tom's self-ness, his mental image of the fundamental structures of the universe, and in the long version of Tom's name in the Speech his relationship with Carl was described in the same conditions used to describe geological features. The breathing heart of a mountain. Carl's name treated Tom the same way. They had always been each other's constants, since their partnership began, since their Ordeals, since they'd been lonely, angry kids kicking themselves for dreaming that someone like the other might exist for them in the world.
When the alarm went off at 6:30, Carl's brow furrowed and he rolled face-down into the pillow. The alarm kept up its insistent buzzing. Carl's groan was muffled.
Tom tried to smile and clicked the off button on the clock before turning over and running a hand firmly down the center of Carl's back, around his waist, tugging him a little closer. Tom pressed a kiss to Carl's shoulder and could swear that he felt Carl's grin against the pillow.
Carl shifted his head to the side so he could speak. “A man could get used to waking up like this.”
Tom couldn't count how many times Carl had said that. He was still himself. Tom let out a long breath of released tension, but the sour feeling in his gut wouldn't go away. Something was wrong.
“I love you,” he whispered against Carl's back.
Carl rolled over and kissed him and Tom tried to convince himself that as long as whatever had changed hadn't touched this, then it couldn't be the end of the world.
Not just yet, anyway.
---
Carl finished off his coffee in one long pull, put the mug in the sink, walked over to the table where Tom was reading the paper and reached past him to unplug his cell phone from its charger.
“Back into the den of beasts we ever so euphemistically call network execs,” said Carl. He casually brushed his fingers through Tom's uncombed hair.
Tom caught his hand and kissed his palm, then gripped it tight. Carl raised his eyebrows at him, but Tom couldn't quite meet his eyes.
“Go well,” said Tom. It came out... strange, like it wasn't a phrasing he used often. Except he did, he knew he did. But the harder he thought about it, the more stilted it sounded. Go well on the... on someone's business. Errant. Running errands? Shit, it kept slipping away.
“Yeah... okay,” said Carl. “I'll see you later.”
“Okay,” said Tom, feeling oddly... shamed? Like he was a kid again and had mispronounced a word and everyone knew he was wrong but no one wanted to correct him. Eyes. Eyes on the back of his neck. The universe watching him, and watching with disapproval.
He wanted to shrivel up and die.
Carl left.
Ten minutes later, Tom was still staring at the same spot on the page of his newspaper, unable to see the words through a liquid blur that he couldn't entirely stave off. And he didn't know why.
Something bumped his knee. He looked down into Annie's mournful eyes. Her tail lay flat and still against the floor tiles.
Her expression was so human. He laid a hand down on his knee, palm up, and she poked her muzzle against it and licked once. Then she just turned her eyes up to him and he -
Carl didn't say goodbye this morning, said Annie. He ignored me. And you're sad. What's wrong?
Oh God.
Oh, Powers, no.
Tom thought he had prepared himself. Why? How on earth had he ever thought it would be possible to brace himself for this? He wasn't ready, he didn't want to go like this. It was the difference between knowing he was going to die someday in the course of entropy and knowing he only had hours left to live. To truly live.
And he hadn't ever thought that Carl would go first, and leave him alone.
Tom dropped the newspaper and slid off his chair onto the floor, wrapping his arms around Annie and pressing his face into her fur. She sat still for a few long-suffering seconds before her tail gave a half-hearted wag against the floor and Tom let her go. She pushed her head up under his hand again and he scratched behind her ears.
“Annie,” he said, in Speech that was slower than usual and full of painful pauses, as he kept losing the structures of the language and had to force himself to remember... like a tenth-grade Spanish class left to rust in the back of his brain. “Do you remember when we told you that things were getting bad? That they were going to get much, much worse before they got better?”
Yes, she said. But I thought that was happening in the sky.
She used her usual vague “up” indicator to mean sky, space, universe - anywhere that was not Earth, or more specifically was not the sphere of Earth she was used to, i.e. the house and the neighborhood.
“No,” said Tom. “It's happening everywhere. Carl didn't ignore you, Annie, he just... forgot to say goodbye. He's forgotten a lot.”
Annie's ears went flat back against her skull. Like what?
Tom sighed. His guts twisted in on themselves. Couldn't this just not be happening? He could feel something like panic rising, and he squashed it as fast and hard as he could, but it just kept bubbling up.
“He's forgotten about wizardry,” Tom told Annie. “He's forgotten the Speech. He's forgotten that you can talk, and that he can talk back to you. And I'm...” He trailed off, putting both hands against Annie's head and rubbing gentle circles into the back of her neck. “Annie, sweetheart, I'm forgetting too. This may be the last time I talk to you.”
Annie whined as if in pain, the sound thin and high and piercing. There was a bang at the back door as Monty pushed it open, called away from his usual morning romp by Annie's distress. Monty trotted up and looked back and forth fitfully. Annie looked at him and Tom had the feeling that she was relaying what Tom had said, but other than a faint tickle at the back of his mind, Tom couldn't hear her.
Abruptly Monty's ears went back and his eyes turned to Tom with something between terror and accusation. Tom didn't need to hear him to know that he was asking why?
“We didn't tell you the specifics,” said Tom. “That we would forget everything. That in itself... Us not thinking of you, forgetting to tell you, that was probably one of the first symptoms. I'm so sorry. But it's already too late. Understand? Carl and I, we'll be the same people we've always been. Just... not wizards.”
Which means we won't be anything remotely resembling the people we've always been, Tom thought. How easily the little lie had come out. He'd never been able to let slip a gentle untruth like that before. This whole affair was so incredibly not good on so many levels. What if he lied to Carl? What if he didn't think anything of it?
Annie said, Please don't go.
Monty asked, What are we supposed to do?
Tom gritted his teeth against the welling-up of everything from tears to a scream. “I can't stop it, sweetheart. Ponch and his people are trying to help.” Both the dogs perked at Ponch's name and Tom gave them a little, watery smile. “Yeah, he's good. You can't worry too much about me with Ponch on the job, right? And in the meantime, what you can do is take care of yourselves. And... and us. Carl and I, we may just become dumb, blind, staggering monkey-cousins again, huh? So you've got to keep us in line. You're good at that.”
Monty offered a hesitant doggy grin and Annie pushed her nose against Tom's hand again. He resumed scratching.
You're going to come back, said Annie. It wasn't phrased as a question. Tom felt himself leaning on her unwavering faith, because that question mark was looming huge in his own mind.
“Believe it,” said Tom - a request, not a lie.
Annie and Monty seemed to accept that. After giving Monty the same amount of ear-scratching Annie had gotten, just to be fair, Tom stood, stretched, got out a box of dog biscuits and indulgently gave the dogs five each.
He put up the box, went to the back door and stared out into the concealed yard. The koi pond was no longer steaming gently. That had been Carl's work, and it must have faded with the failure of his belief.
Tom found himself thinking of Carl, thinking of what it would be like if he had to go one more second knowing everything Carl had forgotten, and Tom suddenly, urgently, desperately wanted to forget, too. If it was going to go, he wanted it gone. This slow fading... had this happened to Carl? Had it been happening all through yesterday, and Tom had failed to notice? It seemed like Carl had just woken up a blank slate. Either way, it didn't bear thinking about.
He had work to do that might take his mind off of... all of this. Articles to write that he'd been allowing to slide because his and Carl's last desperate marathon of Advising had taken precedence. There was no point in that now. He turned to go back inside.
There was a book on the dining room table he didn't remember leaving there. It was about the size of a trade paperback, not a very thick one. He walked over to the table with a sinking feeling.
It was his manual.
A cold, deadened acceptance washed through him. His personal claudication had failed. Its contents were probably scattered around the house in reasonably logical places. Carl's manual would be here too, somewhere, as small as this or smaller. Not really a manual anymore. Just a book.
Tom picked it up, opened it to the listings in the back. Swale, Tom B. was still listed, but with a power level of almost nil and the menacing qualification “in abeyance” after his address.
There was no entry for Romeo, Carl J.
Slowly, Tom flipped to the title page. The title was something about AP writing guidelines, the “author” a name he didn't recognize. The next page, which should have contained the Oath, was blank.
Tom closed the book and put it down. Numbly, he walked to the sink, washed Carl's coffee mug, dried it and put it up. After a moment's hesitation, he moved to the living room and sat down at his desk. Annie and Monty followed him and curled up on the floor near his chair. Monty went to sleep within minutes. Annie kept her eyes on him.
He opened his laptop, opened a document, stared at the blank page. His eyes stayed dry, but his face hurt from the effort.
After a few minutes, he began typing. For the life of him he couldn't remember what had made him so upset.
“We got it all wrong... We pushed you down deep in our souls for too long.”
A deep, golden-shadowed stillness filled the bedroom as another sunrise felt its way through the yellow curtains. The last faint echoes of a howl like a wolf's faded into silence.
Carl's eyes, which had shot open the moment the howling had begun, started to focus. Tom's face stared back, eyes wide.
They studied each other in silence for a while. An unbearable cliff-face of knowing loomed above Carl to touch the upward edge of being; it gaped into endless depths beneath him.
Finally, Carl spoke. “I'm almost afraid to ask,” he murmured.
Tom broke into a slow grin, which spread to a huge smile that lit up his whole face. And then he started to laugh. After a minute, Carl joined in.
Everything - everything! His mind, his self, his relationship with existence, his name, they were complete again.
Carl didn't realize there were tears streaming down his face until he'd nearly laughed himself sick. Tom was already sitting up, folded up against his knees and gasping through spasms of fading laughter. Carl pushed himself up to lean against Tom and Tom leaned back. Tom found the back of his neck with one hand and kissed him.
“Ow,” Tom said against his lips, still shaking with laughter and clutching his side.
Carl snickered and kissed Tom's face, his neck, his hands, everything he could get to. The sunlight had brightened through the curtains and the room seemed as if it were filled with fire.
“We should check in,” Tom began after a moment, although he'd been working just as hard as Carl at getting them inextricably tangled in the sheets.
“I think we can safely say it worked,” Carl said through a grin that just wouldn't go away.
“What would you have done if I'd looked at you like you were crazy?” asked Tom, laughing again.
“Other than lock myself in the bathroom and read Plath poetry for a week, I have no idea,” said Carl, muffled against skin.
“Ouch,” said Tom, but the smile never left his voice.
Carl pushed himself up on his elbows suddenly. “Let's go to the Moon. We never just go for fun anymore.”
Tom curled up in another fit of the giggles.
Carl fixed the sight in his mind and thought about saving a piece of today, just ten seconds - he could enact a static timeslide, visit this moment whenever he needed to remember why he bothered to continue existing...
But the next moment would be better, and the one after that. Every moment when Life stood triumphant, and the language of it was quick on the tongue, and the light was not so hard to find in the retreating dark.
“Yes,” Tom said finally. “Let's go.”
“I can't see the stars anymore living here.
Let's go to the hills where the outlines are clear.
Bring on the wonder,
Bring on the song.
I pushed you down deep in my soul
for too long.”
---
So I put my editing hat on and here you go: 6800 words less of unfinished work for me to keep picking at like a scab.
Title: Triptych
Author: ravenclaw42
Fandom: Young Wizards (Diane Duane)
Pairing: Tom/Carl
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Three missing scenes during known events from Tom and Carl's points of view: failing, forgetting, dawn.
Disclaimer: No profits made here. Diane Duane does a much better job at the pseudoscience than I ever would. I only want to borrow a few ideas to play with, but I'll put them back in mint condition when I'm done, promise.
Notes: Set during WH/WAW. I started reading these books when I was much too young to pick up on the subtext of Tom and Carl, but now that I do, it's hardly even “sub.” Mostly just text. And I ship it to bits, because I have always loved them both separately, but I love them even more together. All quotes are song lyrics; the first two are from “The House Wins” by OK Go, the last two are from “Bring on the Wonder” by Susan Enan.
------
Triptych
------
“If evil were a lesser breed than justice, after all these years
the righteous would have freed the world of sin.
The house wins. The house always wins.”
Accompanied by an air-shredding crack and roar like a concussion grenade exploding, Tom and Carl arrived in their backyard in the middle of the night.
Carl's legs gave out without warning and he slumped against Tom. His left knee brushed the ground before Tom managed to brace against him, leaning to the side, trembling hand hooked under Carl's armpit. Tom's grip slipped and he bent jerkily forward to lower Carl to the ground.
Carl couldn't feel his legs for the cold. Was he shaking? He couldn't tell.
“Neighbors heard that,” said Tom, a little too loudly. Talking over the ringing in his ears - the ringing in both their ears. “Sloppy work. Sorry. Could have left our skins on Europa. Sorry, I'm - I didn't think about the rotation differentials -”
Nothing scared Carl more than Tom babbling.
Carl opened his mouth to tell Tom to shut up, but nothing came out. He couldn't feel his lips. Or his feet. His fingers were beginning to throb, though, and the tip of his nose and the tops of his ears were in agony. His eyes felt like hardboiled eggs, if hardboiled eggs could feel simultaneously dry as sandpaper and covered in a thin film of napalm.
A single sharp bark from inside the house cut Tom off, and a second later Annie had managed to work open the sliding lock and was shimmying between the back door and its frame. Monty's nose poked out just behind her, followed closely by his full mass of wriggling, furry shadow.
It was dark in the backyard. They didn't like to leave lights on - it was a waste of energy. The moon was bright enough to glint off the worry in the dogs' eyes and to outline the slumping of their shoulders, their tails drooping at a fearful half-mast. Both of the chatterboxes were unusually reserved. Carl only heard a soft echo of their thoughtspeak, scared and fitful.
“Help me,” Tom asked into the quiet. “Please.” In English, not the Speech. Carl's stomach lurched.
Annie walked up to Carl, whuffed once into his aching ear, then edged behind him and leaned all of her not-insignificant weight against his back. Monty got up behind Tom and wedged himself between the two men, bracing against Tom's thigh to give Tom some leverage. Tom took a couple of deep breaths, then reached down and wrapped one arm tightly around Carl's back, other hand steadying Carl by the shoulder. With agonizing slowness and strain that Carl really, really hated to see on Tom's face right now, Tom managed to bodily haul Carl upright. Monty squirmed around to Carl's other side and leaned his broad shoulders against Carl's hip until Tom regained his breath and pulled again, and somehow got Carl partly draped over his back.
Carl did everything he could to force his body to move, but it simply refused. He was crashing in the worst way, stalling out from shock. He squeezed his eyes shut, hating to be a literal burden, hating to hear Tom's labored breathing close to his ear, hating the soft whine Monty let out and the scritching of Annie's paws as she tried in vain to open the door again. Carl flexed his fingers, finally, the movement coming at far too great a cost in effort and pain, and managed to get a loose grip on Tom's sweat-soaked shirt.
“Come on,” Tom was chanting under his breath, fumbling with the door. “Come on.” It opened all the way. Annie shot inside while Monty lingered, letting Tom go first. Carl knew Monty was spotting, in case Tom dropped him.
Tom hit the light switch by the door just as Monty twined past his legs and the door slammed shut. He limped his way into the living room, Carl in tow, but didn't bother with any more lights. Annie was circling the coffee table, ears flat to her skull.
Carl could curl his toes inside his shoes, finally. Tom got him to the edge of the couch and he slid his foot forward, gaining a little control over what was otherwise a graceless collapse. Tom heaved a little more and got him onto his back, grabbed a knit throw off the back of the recliner and managed to wedge it under Carl's head for a pillow. Then Tom sank to his knees by the couch, folded his arms on Carl's chest, let his head fall forward and stopped moving altogether.
Carl focused on breathing. He found himself wondering if Tom was going to cry. Carl wanted to cry, although the want was sort of distant and academic because he didn't think he would have the energy to manage tears for a week at least. He was doing good right now to hold in the involuntary moan that clogged the back of his throat on every exhale. Tom's head was a solid weight on the right side of his ribs. Carl's right arm was trapped between Tom and the couch. He felt a cold wetness touch his hand and wiggled his fingers to give Monty a pathetic pat on the nose.
After a few minutes he could think about more than just forcing oxygen in and out. His ears and nose had started to feel like they were on fire, along with his feet and fingers. He worked his throat again and found that the choking feeling had eased up.
“Tom,” he said. Tried to say. It was more of a rasping groan. His own voice alarmed him.
Tom jerked, then pushed his head upright, hands braced against Carl's chest. Carl couldn't quite see his face in the dark.
“'M cold,” said Carl, and he saw Tom nod.
“Annie,” Tom asked - in the Speech this time, and that relieved Carl more than he was willing to admit - “would you please bring me some blankets?”
Annie gave a throaty woof and trotted off towards the bedroom.
Tom lifted his hands from Carl and pressed his palms to his eyes, then scrubbed them back over his temples.
“God,” muttered Tom. “Carl...”
“Don't,” rasped Carl. He dragged his arm towards Tom and flopped his hand around until Tom got the idea and took it, twining their fingers together. Tom shifted his legs to one side so they wouldn't go to sleep and leaned sideways against the couch, facing Carl.
Annie backed in from the hallway into the living room, dragging the big comforter from the foot of the bed. Monty loped over to help. Tom laughed softly.
“Good girl,” he said, scratching Annie's ears when she came close enough. She leaned her head forward, looking up at him with big, liquid eyes. “Thank you.” He glanced at Monty. “You too.” Monty's ears perked.
Tom pushed himself onto one knee and dragged the comforter over Carl, leaving a corner hanging off the couch to wrap around his own shoulders. He settled back into the same position, a little closer to Carl's head this time, and leaned until his head was resting against Carl's chest again. Carl let his arm dangle off the edge of the couch, found Tom's hand. Tom put the back of Carl's hand to his cheek, then to his mouth. He blew warm air against Carl's knuckles, brought up his other hand and rubbed Carl's between them.
Carl hissed.
“Sorry,” said Tom.
“Pins and needles,” said Carl. “It's getting better.” Actually, now that he was regaining sensation everywhere, his whole body felt like it was being crushed by a steamroller covered with rusty nails. His eyes had thawed enough to water and he felt the involuntary trickle of tears down the side of his face, sliding into his ear. He made a face.
“Remind me,” he said after a long minute of silence, “never to get exposed to the vacuum of space again.”
Tom huffed in what might have been a helpless laugh. Carl couldn't think of anything to say. He had never been involved in a wizardry that had gone so horribly, explosively wrong before, and he knew Tom hadn't either. He didn't even know the names of all of those who had died, or where they were from. Almost no one said a word afterward; almost no one stayed to be debriefed. There was a silent agreement that there was no point in keeping the survivors away from their homes and loved ones for a moment longer. Everyone just wanted to slink away, lick the wounds that could stand licking, bury the dead, sit in reflective quietude and remember how to breathe. Not for too long - only long enough to rest and come to grips. The manual would already be updating itself with a precis, if either Tom or Carl felt like looking. They didn't. They knew it hadn't worked.
Carl couldn't think about how close he'd come to losing Tom. Or the other way around. He couldn't think about what would have happened if Tom had needed another five seconds to pull together a fresh shield and air supply after Carl's failed. The Rirhait Senior to Carl's other side had lost control first, breaking Carl's concentration, and she had paid the last price - Carl's sleeve was spattered with what remained of her. Gaps had been appearing all over the circle by then...
Tom was beginning to shake in earnest. His hands had already been trembling, but now he gripped Carl's hand tight in his and Carl could almost hear his teeth gritting as he spasmed involuntarily. They were both too old to pull brute-force rescues out of nowhere.
Carl murmured reassurances as soothingly as he could while Tom gave up control to his body's quaking. After a minute or so, it slowed to a fine tremble again.
Tom sucked in a deep breath, eyes closed. “I feel like throwing up,” he mumbled. “I hate throwing up.”
“Breathe,” said Carl.
Several minutes passed in silence. Tom's trembling slowed, then stopped, and his breathing evened out. Carl knew he'd dozed off when Tom's hand went slack in his, their fingers slipping apart. Carl tightened his grip and propped their joined hands on Tom's knee. He let his gaze linger on the top of Tom's disheveled head, a shaggy charcoal patch tinged with silver. A tiny string of pin-sized lights cut across Tom's blanket-covered shoulders and over his head - the moon shining through the little holes through which the blinds were strung up.
Eventually, Carl's eyes drifted closed.
The darkness was absolute. It pressed in like a tangible thing, cold and dry and leaving a feeling like brittle flaking everywhere it touched. Carl squirmed against it, tried to push back, but he was bound into dead stillness and his mouth felt gluey, thick. The cold was picking away at him, a low chuckle coming from the writhing black. His eyes ached, and there was no difference between open and closed -
He jerked against whatever was binding him so hard that he jarred himself awake, nearly sliding off the couch. Tom let out an undignified yelp. After a moment's confusion, Tom pushed Carl back onto the couch with his shoulder and groped around in the dark for something to hold onto. Annie yipped as Tom accidentally whacked her. Monty yawned loudly.
“Okay, okay,” said Tom, voice thick with exhaustion. “I'm up. Sorry. Shit, Annie. Sorry.” He found the edge of the couch and tried to push himself up. It took two tries, but he managed to stand without swaying too badly. He put one hand on the arm of the couch just above Carl's head and leaned down. Carl could barely make out his face in the dark, and the deep shadows made him look ten years older.
“Hey,” said Tom.
“Hey.” Carl slowly stretched along the length of the couch, testing all of his joints, and found that he had slept through the worst of the throbbing pain. Thank the Powers for small favors. He ached, but he could feel and he could move. “I'm better,” he said.
Tom's smile made Carl's heart hurt. “Good,” said Tom. “How long did I conk out for?”
“I don't know,” said Carl. “I passed out too.”
“Okay,” Tom repeated. He leaned his forehead down to rest gently against Carl's, closed his eyes. “Okay.”
“You gotta stop saying that,” said Carl. He tried to smile, but it was like his face had forgotten how.
“I love you,” said Tom. “You're okay?”
“Yeah,” said Carl. Tom pressed the back of his hand to Carl's cheek, then the palm. A reassurance, a physical presence... and okay, there came the tears, maybe, if Tom didn't stop. And Carl was really too tired to cry. “Stop it,” said Carl, voice thick.
Tom seemed to understand. He nodded against Carl's head without opening his eyes, then pressed a kiss to Carl's forehead and wobbled upright again. “I'm going to make some tea,” he said.
Tom made ginger tea. Carl despised ginger tea. But Tom knew, in that freakish psychic way of his, how nauseous Carl was going to be when he sat up. He was right. Carl choked down the tea and let it help his stomach settle, then stuck his tongue out at Tom, who knocked him lightly on the head, handed him a glass of water and went to feed the dogs.
When Tom came back, Carl was staring at the clock on the wall. It was 4:47 a.m. He wasn't actually sure when they'd gotten back, but it didn't felt like he'd slept for long. Then again, he was pretty sure a solid week of sleep wouldn't feel like long enough. “You'll spoil them for breakfast,” he told Tom absently.
“Annie claimed that worrying about us makes her extra hungry,” said Tom. Something like a smile teased the corner of his mouth, then slipped away. Carl had balled himself up in a cocoon of comforter, but he lifted one side out to let Tom sit next to him, pressed against his side. Tom slid an arm around Carl's waist under the comforter and stared at the coffee table.
“It isn't going to do anything interesting unless you ask it to,” Carl said eventually.
Tom snorted.
Carl bumped his head against Tom's shoulder and closed his eyes. He suddenly flashed back to the crushing black, the taut-to-breaking deathly dry absence of atmosphere against his skin, the cold. He snapped his eyes open again and took a deep breath.
“Thank you,” he told Tom. “For the save.”
Tom's arm tightened around him. After a second, Tom said, “My Ordeal wasn't as successful as it could have been. I was scared, I made some bad calls. I barely got through it on the plus side. But I never had any expectations then. I was doing the best I could. This, I really thought... I really thought we had a chance. How could every single one of us think we knew what we were doing and all be so - so fucking wrong?” He spat out the question, and Carl understood the foulness it left behind because the same bile was burning his own throat.
Carl shrugged awkwardly under the blanket. “Hubris,” he said bitterly.
“I never thought we were so proud,” said Tom, “as to deserve this.”
In the “we” Carl could hear the implication of - well, of humankind, for one, but also of all sentient life. Carl's lips twitched upward. They'd be okay as long as they both still firmly felt that they were part and parcel of Life and the One. Carl didn't think he could take Tom's existential doubt right now, but his anger... Carl understood that.
“I've got nothing to say, babe,” Carl said quietly. “Vent if you need to. You know I've been where you are now and I wouldn't hold anything against you.”
Tom sat in fuming silence for another minute or so, before his shoulders slumped. “It was so much easier to go out and punch a tree before I knew the tree could talk back.”
Carl snorted. “And we do have a tree wizard living down the street. He might take offense.”
Tom groaned, but the tension of his anger had seeped away. Tom couldn't hold his rage at a cold simmer indefinitely the way Carl could. Tom always flared once, fierce as propane on dry tinder, then let go. They were good for each other that way, and Carl had stopped begrudging that fact a long time ago. The first thing Tom had taught him to let go of was his stoic isolationism.
“Well, I won't tell Filif about the salad you had for lunch yesterday if you don't tell him I knocked the Japanese maple around a little bit.”
Carl almost laughed aloud, but the gathered breath caught in his throat and he wondered what the hell he and Tom were talking about, when Lill'het's blood was rubbing from Carl's sleeve onto Tom's and Carl had almost died and the universe was being eaten alive.
Carl stood abruptly. The movement nearly made his knees buckle, and Tom batted at the corner of comforter that got dragged over his head.
“Carl,” said Tom, not quite a question.
“I'm,” said Carl, then stopped, working his mouth a little while nothing came out. “I need to... I have to change. Shower. I -“ He looked down at his sleeve, thought: This has been all over me all night, oh God, oh God is that a piece of an eyestalk? “I, uh,” he said, and all the blood in his body ran fever-hot, then ice-cold, and he dropped the comforter and stumbled over Monty in his beeline for the bathroom.
How he made it to the toilet he wasn't sure, but a couple of blurry minutes later he came back to his senses to the feeling of a damp cloth pressed against his forehead and a hand between his shoulder blades. He held onto the rim of the bowl and tried to gauge whether anything else was going to come up. He wasn't sure there was anything left.
Tom rubbed his back and wiped his forehead, and Carl managed an entire deep breath without any lingering catches in his diaphragm. A second later the washcloth was pressed into his hand and Tom moved away. Carl closed his eyes, heard the shower start as if from a distance.
Carl wiped his mouth, flushed, stood up, closed the toilet seat and sat down on it. He spat into the washcloth and tossed it into the sink. Tom got the shower temperature adjusted, poured Carl a glass of water from the tap. Then Tom leaned against the wall and waited.
Carl sipped the water, swished it with a grimace and leaned over to spit in the sink. He swallowed the second sip. After a long pause, he put the glass down and started to unbutton his shirt. The bright fluorescents over the mirror showed the gore in more detail - Carl's stomach gave another weak flip, but he held together - and now he could see that it wasn't just his sleeve, really, but his whole right side. It was tacky to the touch, well-soaked and halfway to dry. He really wanted to set his clothes on fire and burn them off, taking off a few layers of skin in the process. Lill'het - he'd known her pretty well. She'd introduced him to a kind of mime-like Rirhait performance art that he'd found strangely beautiful, and he'd told her so, and she'd chitter-laughed and talked about the art's history with a passion that could only come from experience. She had been the Rirhait equivalent of a dancer. Grace and poise transcended physical shape...
Tom knew her as a sometime friend of Carl's, a passing acquaintance, and now Carl bitterly regretted never introducing them. It could have just been lunch at the Crossings one not-too-busy day, a matinee show in Lill'het's native city. Tom would have liked the art and loved Lill'het. For the Power's sakes, Carl should have taken Betty Callahan to see Lill'het dance. Why, why had he never - ? Why didn't he just do things for people like that? Tom was the master of random acts of kindness, but what did Carl expect - to get cosmic brownie points by association? And now - too late.
Carl finished peeling off his shirt and handed it to Tom. He toed off his shoes, shimmied out of his pants. Tom folded each item gingerly and laid them on the counter, shoes on top. Even those were spattered. Naked, Carl hunched over on the toilet put his face in his hands. The shower hissed steadily, wasting water.
“I need to call her family,” Carl said finally, folding his hands between his knees.
“You need to shower,” Tom said mildly. “And then sleep.”
“I -“
“Carl.”
And that was a tone Carl didn't hear often. He shut up. After a second, he rose and stepped into the shower.
Fifteen minutes later, he stepped out again and the bloody clothes were gone and Tom was holding out a towel. Carl left the water running and wandered out into the living room and then the kitchen while Tom showered. Annie was looking speculatively into her empty food dish, and she looked up and gave Carl a big doggy grin and wag of her tail when he came in.
You don't smell like a frozen steak anymore, she said.
“Hah,” he said. “I'll take that as a compliment.” He leaned down and scratched her neck, still fighting on-and-off pangs of unease in gut - flashes of unreality. “Tom already fed you,” he added.
She looked at him forlornly.
“Not now,” said Carl. “Sorry.”
He'd forgotten why he'd come into the kitchen in the first place. He thought he should probably eat something, but the thought made him feel sick. He turned back to the bedroom and Annie walked with him to the door. She circled once, then flopped down. I'll keep guard, she said.
Carl smiled. “Thank you,” he said solemnly, and went in to find Tom sitting on the edge of the bed, wrapped in his ratty old blue-and-green striped robe, hair damp, staring at the cell phone in his hand.
“Who're you calling?” Carl said after a second.
“I thought maybe Harry,” said Tom, not looking up. “But I don't...”
Know what to say, Carl filled in in the silence. Don't want to wake him up. Don't feel like you should get to call a friend before you have to make the really hard calls. Don't want to tell him we failed, and what's going to happen next. What's going to happen to his kids.
Carl sat down next to Tom and took the phone out of his hand, turned it on silent and put it inside a drawer of the bedside table.
“Six hours,” he said. “Then we start all that. Okay?”
Tom sighed. “I'm too tired to sleep,” he said.
“Then lay here for six hours while I sleep,” said Carl.
Tom snorted, but he got up and fetched the comforter back from the living room, and within a minute of turning all the lights off and pulling the blanket over both of them, Carl could tell that Tom was already halfway gone.
“We're going to lose our wizardry,” Tom mumbled, brows furrowed as he tried to fight off the exhaustion. “We're going to... we've got to let the kids know.”
“Don't want to talk about it,” said Carl.
“Should have told them earlier that this might happen.” Tom closed his eyes.
“Go to sleep,” Carl muttered, but Tom already had. It was a long while before Carl was able to follow suit.
“You don't have to be alone to be lonely.
You don't have to be sick to be dying.
You don't have to have lost to be lost...
You might as well give in.”
Tom woke on Sunday with a sour-milk stomach and crawling skin.
He sat up in bed, leaned against the headboard and held his arms tight over his abdomen. The gradual power drain had been costing him... He wanted to believe that what he felt now was due to lack of sleep, stress, merely a new and vicious manifestation of the day-to-day strain of living through the end of world and knowing there was nothing he could do about it.
But he didn't think it was just that.
Tom watched Carl's face in his sleep for nearly half an hour. Was there something different about him? He wasn't sure what he was trying to memorize about the man that he hadn't already. The lines and planes of Carl's body were carved deep into Tom's self-ness, his mental image of the fundamental structures of the universe, and in the long version of Tom's name in the Speech his relationship with Carl was described in the same conditions used to describe geological features. The breathing heart of a mountain. Carl's name treated Tom the same way. They had always been each other's constants, since their partnership began, since their Ordeals, since they'd been lonely, angry kids kicking themselves for dreaming that someone like the other might exist for them in the world.
When the alarm went off at 6:30, Carl's brow furrowed and he rolled face-down into the pillow. The alarm kept up its insistent buzzing. Carl's groan was muffled.
Tom tried to smile and clicked the off button on the clock before turning over and running a hand firmly down the center of Carl's back, around his waist, tugging him a little closer. Tom pressed a kiss to Carl's shoulder and could swear that he felt Carl's grin against the pillow.
Carl shifted his head to the side so he could speak. “A man could get used to waking up like this.”
Tom couldn't count how many times Carl had said that. He was still himself. Tom let out a long breath of released tension, but the sour feeling in his gut wouldn't go away. Something was wrong.
“I love you,” he whispered against Carl's back.
Carl rolled over and kissed him and Tom tried to convince himself that as long as whatever had changed hadn't touched this, then it couldn't be the end of the world.
Not just yet, anyway.
---
Carl finished off his coffee in one long pull, put the mug in the sink, walked over to the table where Tom was reading the paper and reached past him to unplug his cell phone from its charger.
“Back into the den of beasts we ever so euphemistically call network execs,” said Carl. He casually brushed his fingers through Tom's uncombed hair.
Tom caught his hand and kissed his palm, then gripped it tight. Carl raised his eyebrows at him, but Tom couldn't quite meet his eyes.
“Go well,” said Tom. It came out... strange, like it wasn't a phrasing he used often. Except he did, he knew he did. But the harder he thought about it, the more stilted it sounded. Go well on the... on someone's business. Errant. Running errands? Shit, it kept slipping away.
“Yeah... okay,” said Carl. “I'll see you later.”
“Okay,” said Tom, feeling oddly... shamed? Like he was a kid again and had mispronounced a word and everyone knew he was wrong but no one wanted to correct him. Eyes. Eyes on the back of his neck. The universe watching him, and watching with disapproval.
He wanted to shrivel up and die.
Carl left.
Ten minutes later, Tom was still staring at the same spot on the page of his newspaper, unable to see the words through a liquid blur that he couldn't entirely stave off. And he didn't know why.
Something bumped his knee. He looked down into Annie's mournful eyes. Her tail lay flat and still against the floor tiles.
Her expression was so human. He laid a hand down on his knee, palm up, and she poked her muzzle against it and licked once. Then she just turned her eyes up to him and he -
Carl didn't say goodbye this morning, said Annie. He ignored me. And you're sad. What's wrong?
Oh God.
Oh, Powers, no.
Tom thought he had prepared himself. Why? How on earth had he ever thought it would be possible to brace himself for this? He wasn't ready, he didn't want to go like this. It was the difference between knowing he was going to die someday in the course of entropy and knowing he only had hours left to live. To truly live.
And he hadn't ever thought that Carl would go first, and leave him alone.
Tom dropped the newspaper and slid off his chair onto the floor, wrapping his arms around Annie and pressing his face into her fur. She sat still for a few long-suffering seconds before her tail gave a half-hearted wag against the floor and Tom let her go. She pushed her head up under his hand again and he scratched behind her ears.
“Annie,” he said, in Speech that was slower than usual and full of painful pauses, as he kept losing the structures of the language and had to force himself to remember... like a tenth-grade Spanish class left to rust in the back of his brain. “Do you remember when we told you that things were getting bad? That they were going to get much, much worse before they got better?”
Yes, she said. But I thought that was happening in the sky.
She used her usual vague “up” indicator to mean sky, space, universe - anywhere that was not Earth, or more specifically was not the sphere of Earth she was used to, i.e. the house and the neighborhood.
“No,” said Tom. “It's happening everywhere. Carl didn't ignore you, Annie, he just... forgot to say goodbye. He's forgotten a lot.”
Annie's ears went flat back against her skull. Like what?
Tom sighed. His guts twisted in on themselves. Couldn't this just not be happening? He could feel something like panic rising, and he squashed it as fast and hard as he could, but it just kept bubbling up.
“He's forgotten about wizardry,” Tom told Annie. “He's forgotten the Speech. He's forgotten that you can talk, and that he can talk back to you. And I'm...” He trailed off, putting both hands against Annie's head and rubbing gentle circles into the back of her neck. “Annie, sweetheart, I'm forgetting too. This may be the last time I talk to you.”
Annie whined as if in pain, the sound thin and high and piercing. There was a bang at the back door as Monty pushed it open, called away from his usual morning romp by Annie's distress. Monty trotted up and looked back and forth fitfully. Annie looked at him and Tom had the feeling that she was relaying what Tom had said, but other than a faint tickle at the back of his mind, Tom couldn't hear her.
Abruptly Monty's ears went back and his eyes turned to Tom with something between terror and accusation. Tom didn't need to hear him to know that he was asking why?
“We didn't tell you the specifics,” said Tom. “That we would forget everything. That in itself... Us not thinking of you, forgetting to tell you, that was probably one of the first symptoms. I'm so sorry. But it's already too late. Understand? Carl and I, we'll be the same people we've always been. Just... not wizards.”
Which means we won't be anything remotely resembling the people we've always been, Tom thought. How easily the little lie had come out. He'd never been able to let slip a gentle untruth like that before. This whole affair was so incredibly not good on so many levels. What if he lied to Carl? What if he didn't think anything of it?
Annie said, Please don't go.
Monty asked, What are we supposed to do?
Tom gritted his teeth against the welling-up of everything from tears to a scream. “I can't stop it, sweetheart. Ponch and his people are trying to help.” Both the dogs perked at Ponch's name and Tom gave them a little, watery smile. “Yeah, he's good. You can't worry too much about me with Ponch on the job, right? And in the meantime, what you can do is take care of yourselves. And... and us. Carl and I, we may just become dumb, blind, staggering monkey-cousins again, huh? So you've got to keep us in line. You're good at that.”
Monty offered a hesitant doggy grin and Annie pushed her nose against Tom's hand again. He resumed scratching.
You're going to come back, said Annie. It wasn't phrased as a question. Tom felt himself leaning on her unwavering faith, because that question mark was looming huge in his own mind.
“Believe it,” said Tom - a request, not a lie.
Annie and Monty seemed to accept that. After giving Monty the same amount of ear-scratching Annie had gotten, just to be fair, Tom stood, stretched, got out a box of dog biscuits and indulgently gave the dogs five each.
He put up the box, went to the back door and stared out into the concealed yard. The koi pond was no longer steaming gently. That had been Carl's work, and it must have faded with the failure of his belief.
Tom found himself thinking of Carl, thinking of what it would be like if he had to go one more second knowing everything Carl had forgotten, and Tom suddenly, urgently, desperately wanted to forget, too. If it was going to go, he wanted it gone. This slow fading... had this happened to Carl? Had it been happening all through yesterday, and Tom had failed to notice? It seemed like Carl had just woken up a blank slate. Either way, it didn't bear thinking about.
He had work to do that might take his mind off of... all of this. Articles to write that he'd been allowing to slide because his and Carl's last desperate marathon of Advising had taken precedence. There was no point in that now. He turned to go back inside.
There was a book on the dining room table he didn't remember leaving there. It was about the size of a trade paperback, not a very thick one. He walked over to the table with a sinking feeling.
It was his manual.
A cold, deadened acceptance washed through him. His personal claudication had failed. Its contents were probably scattered around the house in reasonably logical places. Carl's manual would be here too, somewhere, as small as this or smaller. Not really a manual anymore. Just a book.
Tom picked it up, opened it to the listings in the back. Swale, Tom B. was still listed, but with a power level of almost nil and the menacing qualification “in abeyance” after his address.
There was no entry for Romeo, Carl J.
Slowly, Tom flipped to the title page. The title was something about AP writing guidelines, the “author” a name he didn't recognize. The next page, which should have contained the Oath, was blank.
Tom closed the book and put it down. Numbly, he walked to the sink, washed Carl's coffee mug, dried it and put it up. After a moment's hesitation, he moved to the living room and sat down at his desk. Annie and Monty followed him and curled up on the floor near his chair. Monty went to sleep within minutes. Annie kept her eyes on him.
He opened his laptop, opened a document, stared at the blank page. His eyes stayed dry, but his face hurt from the effort.
After a few minutes, he began typing. For the life of him he couldn't remember what had made him so upset.
“We got it all wrong... We pushed you down deep in our souls for too long.”
A deep, golden-shadowed stillness filled the bedroom as another sunrise felt its way through the yellow curtains. The last faint echoes of a howl like a wolf's faded into silence.
Carl's eyes, which had shot open the moment the howling had begun, started to focus. Tom's face stared back, eyes wide.
They studied each other in silence for a while. An unbearable cliff-face of knowing loomed above Carl to touch the upward edge of being; it gaped into endless depths beneath him.
Finally, Carl spoke. “I'm almost afraid to ask,” he murmured.
Tom broke into a slow grin, which spread to a huge smile that lit up his whole face. And then he started to laugh. After a minute, Carl joined in.
Everything - everything! His mind, his self, his relationship with existence, his name, they were complete again.
Carl didn't realize there were tears streaming down his face until he'd nearly laughed himself sick. Tom was already sitting up, folded up against his knees and gasping through spasms of fading laughter. Carl pushed himself up to lean against Tom and Tom leaned back. Tom found the back of his neck with one hand and kissed him.
“Ow,” Tom said against his lips, still shaking with laughter and clutching his side.
Carl snickered and kissed Tom's face, his neck, his hands, everything he could get to. The sunlight had brightened through the curtains and the room seemed as if it were filled with fire.
“We should check in,” Tom began after a moment, although he'd been working just as hard as Carl at getting them inextricably tangled in the sheets.
“I think we can safely say it worked,” Carl said through a grin that just wouldn't go away.
“What would you have done if I'd looked at you like you were crazy?” asked Tom, laughing again.
“Other than lock myself in the bathroom and read Plath poetry for a week, I have no idea,” said Carl, muffled against skin.
“Ouch,” said Tom, but the smile never left his voice.
Carl pushed himself up on his elbows suddenly. “Let's go to the Moon. We never just go for fun anymore.”
Tom curled up in another fit of the giggles.
Carl fixed the sight in his mind and thought about saving a piece of today, just ten seconds - he could enact a static timeslide, visit this moment whenever he needed to remember why he bothered to continue existing...
But the next moment would be better, and the one after that. Every moment when Life stood triumphant, and the language of it was quick on the tongue, and the light was not so hard to find in the retreating dark.
“Yes,” Tom said finally. “Let's go.”
“I can't see the stars anymore living here.
Let's go to the hills where the outlines are clear.
Bring on the wonder,
Bring on the song.
I pushed you down deep in my soul
for too long.”
---