Back in the broken world, we climbed over mountains of rubble and stumbled across the wasteland of destruction.
We'd been walking for who knew how long before Natasha collapsed in fatigue, her limp body sliding down a pile of rubble, a discarded rag doll.
I let myself fall down the distance of the rubble mountain to reach her, my feet slipping and sliding, arms flailing to keep balance.
"Natasha?" In the brighter light of the outdoors, I could see her properly. Shoulder length brown hair, rigidly straight and slightly tangled. Perfectly tamed eyebrows and long eyelashes that framed large brown eyes. A sharp chin concealed partially by the metal mask clamped across her nose and mouth.
When we'd first emerged from my apartment complex, we'd looked at each other out of curiosity, to find the owner of the voice that had guided each other through the darkness.
Her eyes had widened. "Your skin… did you know?"
I had nodded swiftly, knowing by her reaction that it was probably worse than I had imagined. There was fear in her eyes, the kind of disturbance of a person seeing a nightmare come to life. But then the fear had settled into indifference.
"You have pretty eyes," she said casually.
That was it, that was all it took for me to smile.
Lying in the rubble, her eyes were closed.
"Natasha? Wake up, please wake up. We have to keep going. You said this base of yours was close by."
Her eyes flickered open, then closed again. A battle with herself to stay awake.
I gently shook her. "You have to wake up." I shook her harder. "What is it? Why do you want to sleep now of all times?"
She muttered incoherently, a slur of words mixed with a whimper of pain.
"What? What are you trying to tell me?"
Her eyes opened, a little wider this time. "Take… off my mask."
"But you'll die. The radiation. Have you forgotten?"
"I'm dying already. The symptoms… I've seen these symptoms in other people right before they die. I want to breathe."
Hesitantly, I unhooked the mask from behind her ears.
Maskless, she began to convulse. Black liquid spurted from her mouth, streamed from her nose, trickled from her ears.
"Natasha?" I shook her helplessly. "What can I do? There must be something I can do?"
The convulsing stopped. Now drenched in thick, tar-like liquid, her eyes shuttered.
"Natasha? Wake up, we have to keep going!"
I pressed two fingers to her wrist. An discordant thump of a heartbeat greeted me, like the smash of piano keys, a chaos of a beat, like broken music.
With much effort, I hauled her upwards into my arms. Being a scrawny boy who had an aversion to working out, it felt like my legs were about to give way. I skidded, wobbled and teetered on the tower of rubble. Finally at the top, I placed her gently atop what looked to be the comfiest piece of rubble… if rubble could be comfy.
Gently, I patted her face. "Come on, wake up, please?"
I placed my fingers to her neck this time. Relief washed over me as I felt the irregular heartbeat persist.
Her eyes fluttered and finally opened. She battled with herself to keep them open before they remained open. A slow smile spread across her lips.
"Why on earth are you smiling?"
"Isn't it funny?"
"What could possibly be funny?"
Her teeth were black. "It's just hilarious that I had so many dreams. That I dared to dream about the future. I dared to think that I would become the most respected journalist in Titan. I dared to dream of my name printed on billboards around the city of news articles that I'd written. I dared to dream of marrying her, of growing old with her. Isn't it funny? All of those dreams seem so stupid now. It's hilarious that I'll never feel what its like to complain about a bad back and tell children to enjoy their youth while they still can. I'll never leave Titan, isn't that funny? I'll never have coffee and croissants with the view of the Eiffel Tower. I'll never have a ring on my finger. I never lived, I only trudged through life, just existing. I never really lived. Now, I never will. Isn't that hilarious?"
"No, it's not funny at all."
Her smile vanished, her face crinkled and then the tears began to fall, tracing paths through the black tar. I slid my arm underneath her back, propping her up on my knee and supporting her head gently with my hand.
"Cato? Hold my hand, please? Just until I go."
I gently picked up her hand, intertwining my fingers in hers. "Tell me about your girlfriend. Not what she's become, but what she was like."
A bittersweet smile lit up her face that reminded me of liquorice and chocolate. She continued to grin, more black liquid bubbling at her mouth. She stared at nothing. She struggled to speak, the liquid smothering her. I lifted her head up more, letting it spill out. "Her… name is… Chloe," she choked out. "She has heterochromia. That was what first drew me to her when we first met. One brown eye, one green eye, both staring at me through the window of the café. I could feel her warmth through the glass, could feel the sunshine of her smile. Drinking coffee in Paris was her dream, she told me that that day when I'd impulsively sat across from her at the table of that café. I'd ditched work that day for her, I got the worst telling-off of my life from my boss the next day. But it was worth it, to see the way her eyes lit up when she talked about her dreams, the way she got emotional when she talked about her favourite movie. I'd never met anyone like her, a person that you instantly wanted to protect.
"It was never smooth-sailing. I would shout from the pressure of work, my horrible boss creating a monster in me that I never wanted her to see. She would cry, asking what she'd done wrong. I would feel the immense weight of guilt after seeing the pain in her eyes and I would cave in, apologise fifty times and buy her coffee and croissants. She would never shout at me. If she was angry she would never show it. She was the diplomat, the rational to my irrational, the calm to my turbulent. We were like sweet and sour, beauty and the beast: the perfect balance. It got so that I couldn't live without her, that my life felt bitter whenever I wasn't with her." She began to cry again. "It's so bitter without you, Chloe. I'm scared."
I grasped her hand tightly. "Keep thinking of her. If you keep her face in sight when you close your eyes, she'll be with you, she never truly left."
She slowly closed her eyes then began to shake her head. "It's dark, so dark."
"Think of Chloe."
The smile slowly returned to her face. "I see her. She… she's standing in front of the Eiffel Tower. It's so much bigger than I imagined. The sun's setting behind it, the colours are bouncing off the metal. The colours are reflecting in her eyes. One eye green, one eye brown. She's smiling… laughing… she's holding out her hand."
"That's it, you can let go of my hand now. Take hers."
Her hand detached from mine, reaching outwards to something I couldn't see.
Then, like a light flickering out, I felt her life leave her. Her body became limp in my arms.
I couldn't ward off the tears.
After cradling her for what felt like an eternity, I left her at the top of the mountain. At the bottom, I looked back up. "I couldn't give you the Eiffel Tower, but your dreams live on. In dreaming, any pile of rubble can become your Eiffel Tower."
Then the sky let out a tremendous rumble, like it was splitting in half.
Then the rain fell. Black.
The hideous liquid descended from the sky, turning everything to oil.
Natasha's body lay at the top of the Eiffel Tower, her permanently closed eyes crying tears of black.