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nutteu · 9 months

Text

a poetry for the last winter

[AO3]

Sykkuno would promise him, every night. They would buy their own house, eat burgers again, go to arcades and restaurant, travel the world; they would be happy, someday. Toast let him most of the time and simply held him close. He didn’t ask why there was a stain of blood on his shirt, or why Sykkuno held him throughout the night as if he was saying a farewell. [Toast/Sykkuno; post apocalypse au; published 2021-07-23; word count: 45,499]

[Warnings: gore, post-apocalypse esque violence, cannibalism (mentioned), flesh eating monsters]

He found Sykkuno at the end of the world.

There had been talks about strange occurrences. Graveyard robbers going on rampage, bodies that kept disappearing from the last place they were discovered. Toast read the news with a detached sense of interest and chalked it up to an obsessive cult. But just like everyone else in this world, it was hard to be worried about something that didn’t reach him. At times, it made him feel arrogant and apathetic. He tried to soothe the unease with justifications that he had his own life to worry about, his closest people.

Toast wasn’t a kind person, but he could be to people who mattered to him. He felt like this was enough. If God existed, then surely they would understand that Toast had tried his best. There was a long list of rules to kindness, and Toast thought how weird it was that something that was seen and praised as a selfless act had very hard give-and-take terms. You did something nice, and you got good karma. You did something good, and you got peace for your soul. It wasn’t selfless—there was always a trade even in the things people deemed as pure.

He never thought that it made him better than anyone else, to think this way. He was, after all, doing the same trade in a different path. He worked his ass off, he endured the talks and the stress that came from media exposure, and he got the means to improve his life. Everyone else did the same, and Los Angeles proved to him every single day how human’s life was dictated by trade. If humans really were meant to be selfless, then they wouldn’t be so sad and stressed out from working and trying to stay alive. People could share, everyone could be happy.

It was a ridiculous concept that he never wanted to entertain. Not everyone could be happy, not even those who were supposed to be. He wondered, every night before he went to sleep, whether he was happy or not. He thought that he was supposed to be, but he really wasn’t sure.

“I’m going to stock up so much, in case we have a zombie invasion,” Sykkuno joked through the call. He didn’t sound like he was jesting, however.

“You know what people do, Sykkuno,” Toast sighed, and thought that perhaps he had never wanted to befriend this guy after all. At the time, it was just a coincidence, and he wasn’t a bad guy to be around. But Toast couldn’t stand his way of thinking. It was too different, too confusing. He didn’t like unpredictable variables. “They embellished the truths and reported only the most sensational ones. It’s how the media works. Don’t worry about it.”

“Well, you never know,” Sykkuno said, rolling easily with Toast’s stiff view of the world.

He wanted to snap at him, strangely. Because he always felt like he was being indulged. Toast didn’t see himself as jaded, and he understood that there were multiple differences in people’s life. But it really was hard to be a flowing river when the current was too harsh. Over the years, he managed to build a dam instead. Something permanent and immovable. It irked him that he really did have a stiff point of view. Because he was afraid, maybe. The dam didn’t take a night to build after all, it took him nearly his whole life. It was far too soon to give it up.

Corpse had taken to the theory with an intensity that was expected of him. Toast wasn’t surprised when both Sykkuno and him went into tangent of their plans to make the most perfect bunker in the world. With the amount of money that they had accumulated, it was entirely possible.

Rae asked him if he was all right by the end of that group call and he assured her that she should be worried about these two crackheads instead. She wasn’t convinced, but Toast had a feeling that she had long since accepted that he would always lie about small things like this. Those were the most dangerous to express, in his opinion. Small tells told a bigger story than the flashy details.

Every time they had conversations, the four of them, Toast would lay on the bed afterwards and thought that maybe it wasn’t Sykkuno that he disliked. But instead, his own inability to echo the same frequency. It was a hard topic that he seldom visited. His dam was erected into place already, and he couldn’t afford any confusion.

On some nights, he really did regret being as self-aware as he was. Jealousy was easy to recognize, and Toast understood the limit of things he could pursue with efforts, and things that required dumb luck to possess. Sykkuno was one of those things. He usually slept restlessly on those nights, guilt of viewing a person as a possession eating him from the inside. Denial was effortless in practice, and he liked it better when he didn’t have to think about possible feelings that he wasn’t even sure about.

Life was a trade, and he wasn’t going to make one with such precariously vague reward in the end. So he didn’t, and convinced himself that someday he wasn’t going to pick up Sykkuno’s call anymore.

Someday turned out to be sooner than he thought.

See, Sykkuno was hardworking, but God favored him with a luck that Toast was willing to admit he envied. If people wanted to adore him, then the easier it was to detach himself from this man. What a walking contradiction; someone so shy who thrived in the care people gave to him. Toast sometimes imagined himself as someone kinder, and being one of those people. He wouldn’t. He didn’t want to wake up someday and find himself as another faceless person in the throng of people who loved Sykkuno. He was selfish and he never learned to share properly.

He got this far in his career, and it was easy to admit that he wanted to be special. These… feelings he harbored for Sykkuno couldn’t grant him that exclusivity. So he just—didn’t.

One ignored call turned into two, turned into three, and soon he lost the count altogether. None of their friends said anything to him. Probably because Sykkuno didn’t tell them. Probably because he reverted back into that overly optimistic mindset that was born purely from self-preservation. Sykkuno wanted to see the best in everyone because he knew how painful it was to be proven otherwise. It wasn’t logical, but it made sense, even to Toast.

When the news hit Los Angeles again, Toast stared at the bottles of milk in front of him. He stood alone in the aisle, and he felt almost bitter when he bought more groceries than he usually did. Even now, when they no longer talked to each other aside from streams where everyone was involved, Sykkuno still influenced his life on things he couldn’t expect about. He didn’t like this, but he went and did it anyway. It wouldn’t hurt to be prepared, though he felt foolish doing it.

The panic settled slowly, which was why it caught them off-guard. It was always like that with things like this, wasn’t it? The wound that wasn’t treated because of how menial it was. Before long, even the smallest injury could be infected and spread throughout the whole body. He thought that maybe he was being too sentimental when he likened it to his feelings for Sykkuno. It was this very reason that spelled his doom, in the end.

At the end of the world—or his world, at the very least—he was in Las Vegas.

He was reluctant, but the contract bound him to go. Another video to shoot, another anecdote to make, another day watching Lily shrieking and Poki enduring the upcoming onslaught of hatred. Inevitably, they met Sykkuno. He didn’t act any differently, and Toast thought he was in denial, too. Nearly a year since the first time he ignored his call, and still Sykkuno kept his hopes up. People of the same frequency always recognized each other; those of great minds, the crazy, the evil. In this situation, perhaps the idiots too recognized their kinds. That was the only explanation why he could pinpoint quickly the reason Sykkuno was smiling at him like nothing happened.

See, people like Toast lived based on logic and foolishly pompous belief that if something didn’t make sense in their mind, then it wasn’t real. It was the reason why there were a lot of prejudiced and ignorant people in this world. The missing people came back to their families and friends, even the ones declared dead, and didn’t look any different than when they were alive. And they were alive; they moved and behaved normally, and they had heartbeats. There was just a specific kind of trauma on their brain, one that turned into inflammation with time. It was unstoppable, except for one thing: eating human flesh.

When he watched the news for the first time, he was tempted to call Sykkuno. There were medical experts talking to the newscaster and he couldn’t believe that people allow this fantasy to be broadcasted. He realized later on that it wasn’t because of lack of efforts in spreading awareness and information that brought humanity down—it was their own ignorance. If people cared more, they could have prevented this disaster. Sadly, there were a lot of people who were just like him.

Sykkuno grabbed his hand and ran out of the restaurant when Lily fell, and Michael along with her. Poki ran along with them, but they lost Scarra and Brodin in the throng of panicked masses. Soon, they lost her too. The only thing that prevented him from losing Sykkuno was the tight grip he had on his hand. He ran without looking back, though Toast saw the tears on his face. The shock still hadn’t registered fully in him, but he had always accepted that Sykkuno was more humane than he could ever be.

There was no time to get into the car, even if he had the key to it. The road was in shambles, and he refused to stop even for a moment when pained screams and squelch of human flesh being torn travelled to his ears. Toast had never run that much and that fast in his life. With each step he took, the fear steadily climbed up inside him. It felt like hours before they reached Sykkuno’s house.

“Do you have something to barricade the windows and doors?” he found himself asking, despite the panic, despite the fully settled grief. In just a flash, he lost nearly everyone he had ever cared about. He accepted that it was futile to think about his family in this moment. They were too far, and the chaos had spread too fast for him to reach them in time. He cautiously detoured around that thought, however. An emotional breakdown was fully understandable in this situation, but it benefited no one.

Sykkuno did. It should come as a surprise that he would be this paranoid to have planks and nails at the ready, but it didn’t. Toast might not be talking to him anymore, but he couldn’t forget about him. He remembered that Sykkuno was the first one to entertain the possibility of an outbreak. It wasn’t quite a zombie invasion, but it was close enough, and more terrifying. Those creatures looked alive, were alive, and they didn’t look any different than other people. It was scary to know that he had no means of differentiating between monsters and humans. He thought that it was strangely ironic that monsters had always been there amongst the humans, though not quite in this sense.

The doors were already grated, and he wondered just how far Sykkuno had prepared for this moment. Granted, it was always good to have it as a security measure, but the man lived in a peaceful neighborhood. The neighborhood that was still wrapped up in their quaint, disillusioned world. They wouldn’t know what would hit them later, and Toast was heartless enough to not bother with warning them.

His legs were burning, and his stomach twisted with anxiety and fear, but they worked tirelessly in boarding every window in the house. When they were done, Toast went to the bathroom, and cried properly after hours of holding it in. Sykkuno didn’t approach him, and he was more than okay with it. He didn’t want sympathy, and he couldn’t handle any contact right now. When he got out, Sykkuno was trembling in the living room, smoking with shaking fingers holding the cigarette.

Toast smoked, sometimes. He figured that this was a coping mechanism for the other man. He didn’t have any interest in commenting about it. So he just poured himself a glass of water and sat silently in the kitchen. The signal was still working when he checked his phone, and he waited in trepidation as he tried to call Jenny. The call went unanswered, and he wasn’t surprised in the slightest. He tried Jimmy, his mother and father, even his cousins before he stopped and hung his head low. This loss was expected, but it shook him nonetheless.

He wondered what kind of entity that hated him so much, that he was now in the face of an apocalypse, trapped with a man that he had tried so hard to avoid. Maybe this was the right time to believe in God again and start praying for his soul. He hoped there was still a part of him that could be saved.

They ate dinner in silence, and Toast slept in the guest room after Sykkuno handed him a change of clothes. The pants were too long, and the shirt was a tad too tight. But he paid no mind and tried his best to sleep. He knew he should have been more alert, but the emotional and physical exhaustion from the day caught up to him and he fell into a restless slumber.

He woke up feeling awful. He had nightmares; Lily’s bloody face and Michael turning back to help her. He shouted at him, because it was useless. She couldn’t be saved now. He dreamt of seeing his friends being torn apart, and returned from the brink of death to claw at him. He didn’t throw up, but he felt sick and nauseous. He didn’t know what he should do now beyond trying to stay alive and staying away as best as he could from Sykkuno, given the situation.

He could manage with the first plan, but the second one just crumbled down the moment he saw Sykkuno sitting in the kitchen. He was still smoking, but he was no longer trembling. His face was blank, and he looked. Fragile, distant. As if he wasn’t there.

Toast pulled a chair for himself and lit up a cigarette. It tasted familiar and terrible all the same. He felt like something just died in his mouth, and maybe something had. His life, his career, his normalcy and stability was no longer available. After a while, he opened his mouth. “We need to ration things and go out sometimes to stock up, if there’s still anything available in the stores. God knows what’s happening out there.”

Sykkuno nodded, but he didn’t say anything. They both were well into their thirties, and Toast could see it now. Neither of them were young anymore, and still they engaged themselves in something so juvenile as running away from their emotional problem. Did it matter now?

It did, apparently. To Sykkuno, at least.

“Why do you keep ignoring my calls, Toast?” he asked, softly.

There was something that Toast always had in mind since the first time he met Sykkuno. He felt like someone who was supposed to be in the spotlight. A protagonist in a story; a main character whereas Toast was nothing but a footnote. Though, to be fair, he was smarter than most main characters he had read about. Maybe not so wise in controlling his emotions, but they were human. Right now, they were the most humane than he had felt in a long while.

“I don’t like you,” Toast said. Simple, hurtful. He doubted he knew which one of them the words were supposed to hurt.

Sykkuno nodded. “I see,” he said.

In his mind, they all were children. They took their responsibility to the heart, but he felt like they never really grew up. In the world where they were seen as entertainment, it was easy to be caught up in such thinking. But the sight of Sykkuno accepting such crude admission woke him up from that illusion. He was a man, older than people perceived, and he was gentle in his resignation. Toast thought, it would take him a while to mature into such loneliness.

He was used to it, and by now it was easy to cut people off from his life. He wasn’t unhappy with it, but he wasn’t happy either. This was the answer to the question he asked himself every night.

Sykkuno left his cigarette on the table, and went to his room. As the door closed behind him, Toast felt how fitting it was to his life right now. The end of his old life, and the start of a new world. One where he was well and truly alone.

The first few weeks went on as smooth as one could say about an apocalypse. They rationed the stocks Sykkuno had accumulated for more than a year. It could last them for months. They started early with training their bodies to adapt with scarce resources. They ate twice a day, and started finding empty containers to fill with water. Electricity and water were still running now, but who knew what would happen next. Better be prepared.

He tried to call social services, but the line was always busy. Everything on the TV was always about the recent chaos out there. The government tried to minimize the damage, but this wasn’t politics or war. This was a natural disaster, if anything. They couldn’t stop something they didn’t know how to fight. Scientists were working tirelessly and shelters had been made to protect people. Toast knew it wouldn’t be a good decision to join one. Despite the protection it offered, the panic and anxiety in the air, not to mention the inevitably dwindling resources would make everyone lose their mind faster than the monsters could get to them. The government couldn’t cater to them forever.

They heard nothing from their friends or their families.

Sykkuno didn’t talk to him, and they only met when they ate. He looked fine, but there was an emptiness to him that hadn’t been there before. Toast figured that he looked the same. He had nightmares every night, and he missed his friends and family. But there was nothing that could be done about it. He didn’t know until when they were able to survive. This outbreak could last for years, for all he knew.

The first and only time Sykkuno spoke was when they watched the news on a Sunday morning. The death toll was piling up high in every country. He wondered when they would stop bothering with the count. Later, when everything was too out of control, perhaps. But wasn’t everything already out of their control since the start?

“I miss Bimbus,” Sykkuno said, hugging his knees close. Toast didn’t ask why he prioritized his dog over anyone else. It was easier to bury the pain rather than deal with it. Pain could be overwhelming, and an internal one was even worse. There was nowhere to run from yourself.

He nodded, and didn’t reply. The noodles they ate felt tasteless on his tongue.

They talked, eventually. If only to talk about scavenging plans. There was nothing they could call it with except for that. It had been nearly two months since that day. The neighborhood had been noisy, and then silent. The cause was the same thing: fear. They didn’t answer when someone banged on their door, pleading for help. It surprised him still, that Sykkuno sat on his chair and ate his breakfast as if he didn’t hear anything. Perhaps, he desensitized himself as a part of his preparation. Perhaps, that was the reason why he took Toast’s hand instead of trying to help his fallen friend.

He suggested going together for efficiency and safety, but Sykkuno disagreed. The house could be broken in if they left it unsupervised. With how desperate people were becoming, it was a fact instead of possibility. They gathered everything they could use as weapons, and Sykkuno was silent when he handed Toast a big bag for their supplies. He ate and went out without a word.

He had come to a term that this was the end of the world, but it still hit him pretty hard to see just how bad it was out there. The streets were either full of people with the same intention as him, or devoid of life altogether. Buildings and houses burning without being attended to, long line of cars abandoned. Some of them had splatters of blood inside; Toast stayed as far as he could from them.

He squeezed in through the throngs of people wreaking havoc in the nearest supermarket he could find. There was no order in this new world. People hadn’t settled in yet to put a new rule of trade for resources. People who came in for supplies, and thieves who were there to slip in without being questioned—they all seemed the same to him. He was one of those people.

The isles were already thinning in stock. He figured that people had scavenged this place after the initial shock had settled in. It was through pure luck that this particular area wasn’t as dense as other places in Vegas, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to find anything here.

He filled his bag with as much medical supplies he could find, canned foods, nails, kitchen knives, and batteries. He hardened himself as he pushed someone away to get the last portable generator. They would need this when the electricity had been cut off. He could think about the fuel some other time. He managed to find ropes and flashlights, and had to run around longer than he would like to find lighters, matches, and water purifiers. People were so focused on what they needed right now, but Sykkuno’s preparation had taught him to be ready for a long winter when they didn’t have the luxury of technologies around them.

By the time he tried to squeeze in gloves and a blanket, his bag was already too full. He couldn’t risk slowing himself down by bringing too much supplies. So he ran out of the supermarket as soon as he was done. People hadn’t resorted to murder yet, but he kept the kitchen knife he got close to him. He didn’t know what kind of monster he would encounter—be it a human or something else.

He had seen those monsters on that day, but the experience was too fast to be properly examined. All he could remember was shock and grief. But along the way, he spotted suspicious people who didn’t move quite right. They weren’t in panic, and didn’t seem particularly bothered about the chaos around them. Toast knew by instinct that those were one of them .

It pained him, to see that they looked completely normal upon closer inspection. Save from the disheveled appearance and traces of blood on their mouth, their hands, they looked just like everyone else. His friends and family could look like that, too. He gritted his teeth, and slipped into an alleyway to avoid any encounter.

He more or less got home fine, but he was seized by panic and fear when he entered the neighborhood and some…things saw him. He didn’t know what they were, but they suddenly took a quick stride as soon as they spotted him. He fumbled with the bag that now felt like it weighed more than it was before. He ran as fast as he could to the familiar house, and nearly collapsed in relief when the door was opened as soon as he got close enough.

Sykkuno pulled him inside, quick and harsh. The same panic Toast felt adorned his face as he slotted the lock in place on both doors. His breath came in quick pants, and Sykkuno’s face was pale with worry. Toast swallowed around the familiar feeling in his throat at the thought. That the man was waiting for him at the door; worried for his safety. It might be the supplies, but he knew better than to lie to himself about this.

Sykkuno didn’t do anything but stood there as his lips trembled. His hands were clenched tight, and he stepped forward for a moment before remembering himself. He asked instead, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Toast nodded. “Saw some of them along the way, but they didn’t spot me. I don’t… know what were the things that chased me just now.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sykkuno said. Toast should get used to it, but it was still something strange to witness how flippant and apathetic the man was about this. Maybe he expected Sykkuno to go around trying to help people in this hard time. But he reminded himself that people could be selfish, and no one was immune to it. “Human or not, we can’t afford the risk.”

He didn’t say anything about that, just nodded and followed Sykkuno to the kitchen so they could manage the supplies. He only felt how exhausted he was from bringing such a heavy bag, not to mention the small generator he carried on his hand and the blanket he slung around his neck. His arms and shoulders ached terribly.

“You should rest,” Sykkuno said then. “I’ll… wake you up when it’s time for dinner.”

What unsettled Toast the most, more than the deaths and the state of the world right now, was how silent Sykkuno had become. The man wasn’t as talkative compared to most of their friends, but it wasn’t like this. Toast was aware that he mumbled and shouted in his sleep when he had nightmares, he was sure that he was heard even through the walls. But Sykkuno—it was as if he had disappeared along with their old life. The only sound Toast heard from inside his room was when he changed his clothes after showering.

It was funny, how this was everything he wanted back then. Sykkuno’s silence in his life meant so much for his peace of mind at that time. But right now, the olive branch that he tentatively offered eased the tension in his chest.

“Okay,” he said, “I’ll see you later.”

Sykkuno nodded. He didn’t reply, but it was enough for Toast. He went back to his room, and fell asleep thinking about how different life would be if he listened to the man back then, if he wasn’t so afraid of the uncertainty of his feelings.

He was woken up by a knock on the door, and he blearily stepped out to the kitchen. They ate in silence, just like usual, but it wasn’t as stifling tonight. “We need to find some sleeping bags. Walkie-talkie, CB, shortwave or ham radio if you can find one. And proper weapon,” he said between mouthfuls of tuna and eggs. In the first few weeks, they went through the food that could go bad fast. They still ate proper meals back then, but they stuck to dry or canned foods and only rarely used the stove now.

“I’ll try to find them in the next supply run,” Sykkuno replied. “Though I don’t know where to find the place that sold weapons.”

In the initial chaos, somehow Sykkuno still had a mind to withdraw as much cash as possible. It was the only time either of them had gone out before now. The network still worked somehow, but who knew when it’d go to shit. He figured he couldn’t very well venmo people in time like this. He thought about the canned foods he had stocked in his room back then. Maybe they had been stolen by now. That house was empty, after all. With almost all of its previous occupants dead, or finding shelter somewhere else like him. He knew that it was foolish to do, but he still kept a small hope in the back of his mind that Brodin, Scarra, and Poki was still alive somewhere. Yvonne hadn’t been there; she was taking care of something else back then. He hoped that she was all right, too.

Weird how the apocalypse reversed his characteristics with Sykkuno. He was more empathetic, about people who mattered to him at the very least. While Sykkuno hadn’t even expressed any concern about anyone but Bimbus up until now. Maybe he was always this—not cold, or heartless, but strong in accepting loss.

“Get a baseball bat,” he said. “We can put nails on it. I got tons of them today.”

Sykkuno nodded and went back to his food. Toast thought that it was the end of the conversation today, but the man opened his mouth again after they were done. “Do you… want to play games, sometimes?”

He hadn’t really thought about it. They were inside all the time, with no communication except for the news. He had spent his days either reading the books Sykkuno had in the living room, or just mindlessly watching any videos on YouTube. All of his social media was filled with panic and news of the outbreak, and he couldn’t stand looking at them all the time. He would utilize the available internet and electricity as long as he could.

But that was the only entertainment he could get these days. He didn’t think much about it, either. His life went by as if he was in automatic mode, as if he was detached from reality and wasn’t really there. Maybe this was all a dream and he would wake up before all of this happened, before he decided to ignore Sykkuno’s calls.

“Yeah,” he said, carefully. “That would be nice.”

Sykkuno let out a breath that suspiciously sounded like a relieved sigh. They cleaned up and went back to their respective rooms. It wasn’t even a guest room by now, and he sometimes found himself thinking about it. Two months didn’t seem too long, but it felt twice as long now. Maybe Sykkuno was right. Having something to distract himself would do the both of them good.

Being so close to Sykkuno again after so long felt weird. Toast brought a chair from the living room, and they sat next to each other as Sykkuno loaded up some games on his computer. They couldn’t do their job in time like this. Though it might offer comfort for some, most people wouldn’t have the time and resources to sit and watch someone on their screen for hours on end. Money was a big problem, too.

Touching controllers and getting his mind remembering the mechanics of the game was also weird. He felt like it had been years since he had done this. They didn’t say anything in the meanwhile, but he found himself smiling when they passed the stages, groaning softly when either of them made a mistake. When he chanced a glance to Sykkuno, he found the man sporting the same smile he had.

It had been too long since he last saw him smiling. The last time had been a bad memory that haunted him in his sleep. Sykkuno’s sincere, hopeful smile that day felt so long ago. Toast stared at the harsh current outside of his dam and wondered, for the first time, what would happen if he built a ship instead.

“Let’s play something else,” he then said. He felt more nervous than he should.

But Sykkuno just went along and switched up the game. They played for hours, and Toast felt normal for the first time in a while. The world was crumbling down outside, but he allowed himself this moment of respite.

When they were done, however, they were back to the previous awkwardness that he had gotten used to. He steeled himself and thought back about the olive branch that had been offered to him. It was time that he returned the favor. They were going to be stuck for a long time, after all. He couldn’t just keep the continuous wall they had built between them. They needed each other right now.

“We should play again sometimes,” he said. “Might as well do it before the electricity gets cut off.”

Sykkuno gave him a small, unsure smile. But he said, “Okay, that’ll be fun I think.”

That night, he slept without a nightmare disrupting his sleep. Instead, he dreamt of dipping his toes in the water, and Sykkuno waiting for him in the middle of the dark ocean.

When Sykkuno went out for another supply run the next week, he came home in tears. Toast was alarmed. He locked the doors, and quickly took the bag from him. It was quite heavy; maybe he really did get the radio. But it didn’t matter right now. He immediately stepped closer to the man, inspecting him to see if there were any injuries. When he found none, he let out a sigh of relief.

“What happened?” he asked. Now that he wasn’t in fear of Sykkuno being hurt, he was reminded of the distance they had. No matter how much they had warmed up to each other for the past week, it didn’t completely erase the memory of why they were in such a predicament. “Sykkuno? Talk to me, come on, bud.”

It took a while for Sykkuno to calm down, and Toast steered them both to the couch. The man looked like he was ready to collapse at any moment. When he finally spoke, it was something that broke his heart.

“I saw- I saw Michael,” Sykkuno said between hiccups. “He was there, I know it was him, Toast. He- I- I didn’t think straight. I went to him, and he didn’t say anything. He just looked at me. I knew then that he had- had—“

He didn’t say anything when Sykkuno couldn’t continue. This was the first emotional response that he had shown ever since everything went to hell, and it was triggered by such a horrible thing, too. He couldn’t imagine if he were the one who experienced it. He tentatively reached out to put an arm around the man, and pulled him close. At the barest of touch, he immediately surged up and clutched at Toast’s shirt as he cried. Despite everything, it hurt him to see Sykkuno like this. They were all they had now. No friends, no family—nothing but each other’s company. He couldn’t bear even to imagine if he lost Sykkuno too.

“Did he hurt you?” he asked, wanting to make sure.

“N-no,” came the muffled reply. “I ran as fast as I could from there. I didn’t look back to check if he was following me.”

“Okay,” he said, then to reassure himself, repeated it. He stayed there, holding Sykkuno close until his sobs had subsided and he pulled away with an embarrassed face.

“I’m sorry,” he croaked out, voice hoarse from crying so much. He might have been holding it in until now.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” he said. “That… must have been hard. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“Yeah,” Sykkuno said gloomily. “I just—never thought that I’d see them again like that, I think. I was hoping that they’re still… alive. Somehow.”

“I know. I was hoping for the same thing too.” He let the man take a breath for some time, before taking the heavy bag and walked to the kitchen. “You get some rest; I’ll take care of this. And—Sykkuno?”

“Yeah?”

“The next time we see someone we know, just run. It doesn’t matter whether they’re alive or not,” he struggled to continue his words. Because it was hard for him to decide such a thing. If they were alive they could stick together and help each other. But the risks outweighed the possible benefits by a long shot. “I’d rather have you alive than taking any chances.”

Sykkuno swallowed, looking at Toast like there were a lot of things that went through his mind. He figured that it wasn’t just about this incident. Admitting things like that—Toast didn’t want to think about their dysfunctional relationship right now. He wasn’t ready for it.

“Okay,” he finally said. “Okay, Toast.”

He nodded and left to take out the supplies. Sykkuno really did get a CB radio and a pair of walkie-talkies. He didn’t know how he managed to get his hands on them, but he wasn’t about to fuss over practicality. What mattered was that they had a means of communication if their cellphones were rendered useless later on. He might have to get more batteries in the next supply run, too. He wondered if he could find a solar battery.

He had fashioned a broomstick with a knife. They didn’t get a bat, but maybe he could find one later. The supermarket they had gone to was probably pretty empty now. He had managed to locate several ones that were nearby through the map on his phone. That was another thing he should get, and a compass. He listed the things he would need to get in his mind, so focused that he was startled when Sykkuno placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Sorry,” the man mumbled.

“No, it’s okay. What’s up?”

“Toast,” Sykkuno started, then shut his mouth. He seemed hesitant, he looked like he was nauseous too. Toast wondered what it was that he was trying to say. “I- I just. I kept thinking about Michael and—“

“Don’t,” he cut in. “It will do nothing good for any of us.”

“No, Toast, listen to me,” he tried again, more urgent this time. “Toast he- I think he recognized me. Do you remember what the news said? That their brain is still functioning in some ways, before the need to consume overwhelms them. They went back to their families and friends, too.”

He understood, then. There was a possibility that Michael, or any of their friends that had been turned, came here. All of them knew where Sykkuno’s house was located, after all. But there might be the chance that they wandered away somewhere else. They needed to have steady sustenance, so they would go to the nearest living thing they could get their hands on. They also didn’t have any other place they could take shelter in, not to mention it would take such a huge effort to take their belongings—even if they took the most essential ones.

And he—he wasn’t sure if he would be capable of killing one of those monsters should the need arise. Toast was a streamer, not a fighter.

“I get it,” he said. “But we can’t do anything about it right now. It’s too risky, we need to properly plan this. Tomorrow, okay?” He didn’t get any reply, so he went back to the supplies.

“Toast?” Sykkuno called again after some time.

He sighed. He wanted to test the radio as soon as he could, and as much as he wanted to accompany Sykkuno, he was being a distraction right now. But he turned to him nonetheless. “What is it this time?”

Sykkuno physically recoiled from the cold reply, and Toast reprimanded himself inwardly. He let go of the supplies he was categorizing, and properly faced him to soften the impact. Sykkuno only continued when he gave him a small smile. “What if—what if we have to kill them one day, our friends?”

He felt the pang of pain in his chest at the thought. But this world wouldn’t spare them, the only thing they could do was to try staying afloat in the current. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

Sykkuno nodded hesitantly, and retreated back to his room. Toast stared at the kitchen table full of supplies and the radio he hadn’t tested, and took a deep breath. Somehow, the danger of the situation only settled inside his mind when the discussion about potentially killing their friends came up. They were no longer human, despite wearing the faces of their loved ones. They would stop at nothing to satisfy their hunger, and the both of them had to survive in a world like that.

They could die, or worse got infected with the same disease that had caused all this hysteria. Either of them could turn and try to kill the other. He wouldn’t—he didn’t want to inflict and experience that kind of pain on Sykkuno. They had to train, to protect themselves. He had to get them weapons, and try getting used to using them.

He didn’t care whether he had to rob someone’s house—and why didn’t he think of this sooner? —or to trade with a weapon dealer with ridiculous prices for them. Losing Sykkuno was simply a trade he would never make in his life, for anything.

If he had to break his dam to reach Sykkuno in the middle of the ocean, then so be it. Either they swam to a shore together, or drowned with each other in their arms.

In the next supply run, Toast brought a wad of cash with him. He had searched for places that sold weapons, and places where he could get camping supplies. He needed the backpack, sleeping bags, more ropes, and sturdier shoes than what Sykkuno had. They had built a tentative plan should they need to travel somewhere safer. It hadn’t even been a week since the last supply run, but he thought that this wasn’t just about having food and water anymore.

They were severely lacking in survival instincts and skill, and he was trying to amend that somehow. But first, they needed the right tools. He had figured out how to use the CB radio, but then cursed himself when he realized they needed another one if they wanted to communicate. The walkie-talkie only covered as far as 10km, and he was going further than that. It was tiring to walk that far. But having a vehicle was even more of a hassle. Even a bike would be useless if he were to try slipping through small alleys.

The gun store was boarded and shut in when he arrived there. He knew that there was someone in there. When he tried to call, he came face to face with the barrel of a shotgun. It took him a while to convince the guy that he wasn’t one of the monsters. In the end, however, he managed to get a small handgun and a shotgun, along with several magazines. He felt incredibly lucky that he anticipated the outrageous price, because he knew these should have cost him a lot less. He didn’t have time to haggle, however. He told the man he’d come back some time later.

“Be careful out there,” the guy said. “Those things—they’re vicious. I don’t even know if they can be killed. I- I shot my own wife , three times in the chest and she still got up.”

He stopped at that. He didn’t particularly have any energy to care about someone else’s problem, but his head immediately conjured the images of his friends grappling to take him down. Sykkuno, mindless with hunger, charging at him. He shuddered and nodded at the man. “I’m sorry for your loss. The news said the problem is in their brain, so try shooting their head next time.”

“Harder said than done,” the guy replied. “They're still one second, but then they move so fast. It’s like being chased by a hellhound.”

Maybe it was the right metaphor. The world felt very much like hell right now. “My friend said he saw one of our… dead friends. Said he recognized him. They can follow you home.”

“They really feel like a sin haunting us for our mistakes, huh?” the guy said wistfully. He then motioned for Toast to wait, and rummaged inside for a moment before he went back and slipped a knife through the grated door. “Here, have this. I don’t know what good this will do for you, knowing how much stronger they are than us, but anything counts in this situation.”

He accepted the knife gratefully. It was a combat knife, better than the one he had on his makeshift spear. “Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate it.”

“Yeah, well, you said you’re gonna come back,” the guy shrugged. “Might as well give you the incentive to actually do it.”

“Maybe you should try lowering the price down,” he suggested. He didn’t want to say that money only meant something if the man could survive until the end. He didn’t want to make his situation more difficult too soon, if he could help it. He knew sooner rather than later, the trade would circulate around actual resources.

“I’ll consider it,” the guy said, and hastily closed his door again.

Toast strapped the knife to his belt, and slung the strap of the shotgun around his shoulders. The handgun and magazine he put inside the bag. He jogged to the outdoor equipment store, and felt his heart stop for a moment when he saw trails of blood from the door. It was ajar, and he couldn’t see anything from the outside.

Was it worth it to take this risk? He mulled. But then again, this kind of encounter was bound to happen anyway. He just had to assess where the threat was located, and try to get around that. If he couldn’t, then he ran like crazy and just tried again another day.

He took off the shotgun, and held it tightly in his grip. He had never fire a gun before, and it felt surreal that he would use it more often now. He loaded the bullets and cocked the pump just like how the guy had instructed, and peered his head inside cautiously. It was silent inside, but he did hear the faint squelching sound further into the place. It was one of them, he figured. But they weren’t close, and he still had the chance to get the gears he needed.

As silent as he could manage, he stepped into the store and put the shotgun on the nearest counter. If anything happened while he was loading the goods, he’d have it at the ready. He took three backpacks and two sleeping bags, and deposited them near the entrance, then went back to get the rest. It was when he was in the middle of putting the ropes and shoes that he realized it had been too quiet.

He zipped the bag, and took his shotgun, aiming it at the door to the back of the store. He mostly had everything he needed, though he didn’t get to take the axe before he heard movements. It was high time he got out of here. He took the backpacks, snatched the rain gear and hiking jacket nearby, and was out of the door when he heard the crash. Toast didn’t look back, running as fast as he could while remembering the route back to Sykkuno’s house.

Despite not looking back, he heard the harsh thud of footsteps that was accompanied by a loud shriek. The gun store guy was right: they were fucking fast. He put quite a distance between him and the store before he stopped to take a breath. There was a convenient store nearby, he could try to find something in there. But frankly, he wasn’t ready for another encounter like that. He just jogged through the road so he wouldn’t tire himself so fast, while keeping an eye out on every corner.

When he was finally home—it felt so foreign on his tongue, to call a place that wasn’t his as home—Sykkuno was already shaking from anxiety. He shot him a quick grin to reassure the man, though it seemed to not doing anything to alleviate his stress. He understood; the long track costed him more time and he arrived later than usual. But they soon had to travel far because they couldn’t find anything else nearby.

He spread the gears and weapons he got on the table, telling Sykkuno about how to use the guns and that they better start getting used to navigating with maps and compasses. He nodded throughout the explanation, but he was still restless.

“Did something bad happen? Are you okay?” he asked. “You were gone for so long.”

“Yeah,” he said, not quite knowing why he felt guilty. Maybe because Sykkuno looked so stressed out, so frail in his fear. “I needed to get these. I- I met one of them. Well, not really. But it was in the equipment store.”

“Jesus, Toast,” Sykkuno said, sagging on his chair. “Why’d you go inside if you know? You could have gotten hurt, or- or—“

“But I didn’t, okay?” he said, reigning in his irritation. He didn’t need to make the situation worse and start an argument. “Look, we need these. Especially now that we have to be prepared if we want to move somewhere else. I know it’s dangerous, but this is necessary.”

“I know,” the man sighed, resigned. He rubbed his face with both hands, closing his eyes for a second. “I just—I’m worried. I don’t want anything bad happening to you while you’re out there.”

“It’s kinda impossible,” he said softly. “There will be danger even if we stay inside. And, for what it’s worth, if anything bad does happen, it’s better me than you.”

Sykkuno paused at that, and Toast froze in his seat. He didn’t mean to say the last part. But it was out in the open now, he couldn’t take it back. It would hurt Sykkuno if he did. He opted to think of this as dipping his legs deeper in the water. It was probably not the right metaphor, because it just meant that he was trying to close the distance between him and Sykkuno in the ocean—much like what they were doing in the real world right now.

“I wish we didn’t have to say that kind of thing,” Sykkuno then said. “That we’re not in such danger we need to choose which life we want to keep.”

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what to say to that. Both of them watched the news everyday. It was getting even worse out there. He was right in not joining the shelter set by the government. There were cases where the infected got inside. The newscaster was gloomy when she relayed the news, and had to stop for a breath before she finished the whole story. They were advised to stock up necessities, avoid going out, and to be wary of any visitor of some kind. As if he needed to be told about that.

The government was incredibly slow in handling this situation, but he supposed they couldn’t do much either. The military and police force were planning to sweep the streets and buildings for any infected person. Because of this, citizens were cautioned to be extra careful because the force would be concentrated somewhere else than guarding the people. Toast watched as he ate his stale bread, and wondered if the gun store guy had any rifle or heavy duty gun. He probably had to bring even more cash than before. Better use them now, though; soon the money would lose its value.

“I miss eating apples,” he said suddenly. He didn’t know what prompted that, but it was most probably because he was sick of this situation. All they talked about were plans of survival, even their occasional gaming session couldn’t distract him anymore. His mind kept thinking about all the things they needed, all the ways they could stay alive. He was aware he was getting obsessed and more distant, he couldn’t help it.

Sykkuno smiled at him. “I’ll see if I can get you one,” he said, and it was such a simple thing that brought warmth to Toast’s chest.

“Let’s play monopoly?” he suggested. “I’m sick of looking at maps all day.”

It was useful, yes, and he had marked possible places they could look into, but he really needed something to refresh his mind. Sykkuno said that maybe he should get more board games or physical toys in the next supply run. It was mundane, and they were better off looking for necessities. But in bleak times like this, those things were just as valuable. It reminded them of normal life, and that they were still capable of having it despite the situation. So Toast easily agreed, even telling him what games he’d like to play the next time.

They fell asleep in the living room while playing. They talked more now, about nothing and everything—anything but the disaster. He didn’t realize that he was so comfortable to the point of falling asleep, but when he came to, Sykkuno was already curled up on the carpet. He shook him roughly a few times because he didn’t wake up when he called his name, and the man blinked sleepily when he came to awareness.

“Go sleep in your room,” Toast told him. “You’re gonna have back pain if you sleep on the floor like that.”

Sykkuno nodded, still halfway between dream and reality. “I dreamt,” he said, voice still thick with sleep.

Toast paused in tidying up the monopoly. “Yeah?”

“That night we talked about zombie invasion?” Sykkuno said, then smiled sadly at the memory. “It feels so long ago.”

“It is,” he said quietly.

“Do you still hate me, Toast?”

The question caught him off-guard. Sykkuno might not be fully aware of what he was saying right now, but it made the inquiries all the more important. This was an honesty that he couldn’t hide behind his smile or his palm. There was something in his chest that felt like spindly hands trying to crush his lungs. He breathed unsteadily, and finished tidying up.

“I don’t hate you,” he finally replied after some time. He expected Sykkuno to already fall asleep again, but when he looked at him, he was alert and watching Toast like he wanted to say a million things he had kept inside the beat of his heart.

“Do you—“ Sykkuno stopped, looking away before he clenched his fists and finished his sentence. “Do you still want to stay away from me?”

He considered lying about it. This was a dangerous water he wasn’t ready for. But it would be unfair, for both of them. He was reminded why he had wanted to, back then. This—this thing that Sykkuno had, his ability to convey the things that mattered the most in sincerity and honesty just unnerved Toast so much. He couldn’t wrap his head around it; how someone could still choose to be so kind despite the world he lived in. Of course, he had witnessed coldness and selfishness in Sykkuno too. But he understood that.

He just envied how Sykkuno could be who he was, and not be swept away by the industry. Toast had to harden himself and learn how to cut a part of his heart, lessen his empathy, so he wouldn’t be drowned. But Sykkuno went along with the punches with almost offending ease. It was more than that—of course he had his struggles too. But Toast, with his dam and his stiff point of view, just couldn’t help but envy the flexibility and the strength it bespoke.

He pushed away all the thoughts of their current reality, thinking in the purest sense of what ifs. If they weren’t here together, relying on each other in this hard time, would he still try to avoid Sykkuno? Ignore his calls and pretend that he didn’t do it because he was scared of finding out about his feelings, because he didn’t want to be just another one of the people who adored Sykkuno, but the only one he had eyes for?

Yes, he would. And exactly because of that, that Toast knew much he wanted to stay. Even in such unfortunate circumstances, he managed to get something arguably good from it. And he got it through his own efforts and dumb fucking luck. So he looked Sykkuno in the eye, and said, “No, I don’t.”

As if all tension had been drained out of him, Sykkuno let out a breath, leaning against the couch more than before. He still looked cautious as he nodded. “Okay,” he said, “I don’t want you to stay away, too.”

He acknowledged it, but he didn’t say anything about it. Sykkuno didn’t seem to expect him to, either. He went to his room, and stared at the ceiling; imagining submerging himself in the water, and started swinging his hands so he could get closer to where Sykkuno was. The water was dark, and he felt like the distance was getting wider the more he swam. But Sykkuno’s eyes, his lips saying I don’t want you to stay away , made him push against the weight of the water.

I’ll get there, somehow , he thought before he closed his eyes. I hope .

Trouble didn’t come at the gun store he told Sykkuno to visit in his turn for supply run, or in the convenient stores Toast scoured, or even the houses that he nervously pried open with a crowbar to scavenge. No, trouble came right at their doorstep.

It was close to six months since this all started, and he struggled trying to balance getting their supplies, planning things, scouting possible shelters, and trying to swim closer to Sykkuno. They had to travel further and further with each supply run, and they encountered more and more of the infected. Wendigo , the media decided to call them. As if they all needed more reminder of how these people—who were previously mothers, fathers, friends, colleagues—turned into a flesh-hungry monster who sought out to kill everyone to quench their unending thirst. It was fitting, and grotesque.

There was no good news aside from the scientists saying the nape of the wendigos could be their weak point since the control after their death seemed to come from there. Great, he thought bitterly, an even harder target to shoot. The sweeping that the forces did was more or less successful, but only on the big cities and the public places. They didn’t have enough manpower to check every house and apartment complex, but they were planning to. Toast still told Sykkuno to be cautious anyway; with the rate of people dying, and getting infected, there were bound to be some stragglers in the previously swept places.

Not all of the people who died from wendigos became infected. Some simply died because the infection didn’t get to their brain fast enough to revive their heart. The most terrifying part, was the fact that they could heal .

“Jesus fuck,” he muttered. Sykkuno looked about ready to throw up next to him when they showed the footage of healed flesh on the body of one of the wendigos they managed to capture alive. The flesh looked good as new, aside from the tender pinkness. It should be expected; it was a new chunk of flesh after all. The only consolation they had was the scientist saying that while small wounds would heal fast, grave injuries took longer to heal. They could incapacitate them, so to speak. But of course that one, meager good thing was trampled by another bad news: healing took energy, and the energy these monsters needed was from human flesh. The more they were injured, the more ravenous they became—the more threat that they possessed. It was a vicious cycle that everyone was helpless about.

The gun store guy—Ronald, he said his name was—told them that he only accepted bartered goods now. But he seemed to be fond of Sykkuno so much that he was generous in his pricing. Sometimes, he even gave them an extra magazine or two. He admitted that he probably wouldn’t be able to sell as much as he previously could; he needed to keep some ammunition and weapons for himself too. He had a workshop to make the bullets and knives, but guns were harder to manufacture so he wouldn’t sell anymore guns. That was all right, Toast had prepared for that; they had enough guns to build a small arsenal now.

In return, Ronald sold Sykkuno a crossbow. He said he could make the arrows easier than bullets. He sold them steel arrows too, that they could reuse should they be able to retrieve it. Toast always sent Sykkuno on the weapon run now; he figured that Ronald felt at ease with Sykkuno’s calm temper and easy going attitude. He probably already developed a paternal affection for him or something.

Toast forced them both to exercise in their free time, and practiced with the knives and crossbow. They didn’t use the gun unless they had to. There were several close encounters with the wendigos that required them to fire their guns, and Toast decided that it would be their only means of practicing. They shouldn’t waste ammunition, and the sound of the gun could draw the monsters to them if they did it at home.

He ran them through drills of remembering the maps they had collected, ways of tying knots, knowing how to treat small to medium injuries, how to differentiate plants, and how to operate the CB radio. Ronald didn’t have one of those, but he directed them to a place where he knew he could find them. That was the first time that Toast actually killed a wendigo.

It was the owner of the place, and he remembered how panic and fear seized him up. He shot the old man multiple times until he got the head. He didn’t know how much bullets he had wasted, but he cautiously turned the body around and shot the nape for good measure. He felt bad about it, but he took the radio, batteries, and boosters for the radio. He felt nauseous when he had to rummage around the mangled body for the keys to the shop. They might need some more things from here, and it could be a potential shelter so he locked the door behind after disposing of the body on the street.

That day, Sykkuno hugged him so tight, shaking like a leaf in Toast’s arms. Sykkuno was terrible at shooting, but he was good with the crossbow. He said that the guns made him feel uneasy. By now, they both had enough encounters with the wendigos to know how to react. But it wasn’t easy—these creatures still bleed, and killing them felt a lot like killing a person instead of a monster. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how it would feel to kill someone he knew.

He tried to soothe Sykkuno, but the younger man was far too anxious. So Toast let him be. They ended up sleeping on the couch in the living room again, still holding each other when they woke up in the morning with back pain and cricks on their necks.

It was Sykkuno who packed their things in the backpacks Toast had gotten months ago. They would need to be ready to leave the house at any time. It was sensible, and he gave him a proud smile that Sykkuno returned shyly. At times, looking at his face hurt Toast in a way that wasn’t quite unpleasant. He just got chest pain and suddenly became nervous. He couldn’t hold Sykkuno’s gaze for too long in those times.

The internet was shot to hell in the fourth month. Toast was very, very glad they prepared for it. They had downloaded tons of survival and how-to videos and articles to learn from. Now that people were too scared to go out even to scavenge, and the city was in shambles, it was to be expected that the services would die down one by one with no one to operate them. It was only a matter of time before the electricity got cut off in a lot of places, and supply of fresh water became scarce.

Toast had located several potential shelters that were close enough to the public places where they could scavenge, and places close to water sources. He also noted down places with lawns where they could maybe plant something, and some near the army bases or the compounds where the police forces resided now. He doubted they could benefit from them, as they couldn’t possibly take care of two citizens only, but it wouldn’t hurt to put it as a possibility they could fall back to.

Things too big to take home like solar panels or regular generators they hid in places that they marked on the maps. Hopefully they could go back to retrieve it someday. They were getting more and more used to this new world. Toast hoped it would be enough to keep them alive until the end. He didn’t like thinking about what would happen if by the end of it, nothing was left but the wendigos and the cities in rubles. If it came to it, he’d deal with it. But he couldn’t spare any energy to worry about that. Keeping them both alive took so much of his priority that he couldn’t think much of anything beyond that.

It helped, in a way. God knew how many times he struggled to repress the terror and trauma that haunted his nights. Having something to do and think about that would help extend their lives kept his thoughts from wandering to those dark places.

Having Sykkuno helped, too. Especially now that they were no longer as awkward or stilted in their interactions. They laughed more often when they bantered, and keeping such normal things was detrimental for their mental health. They couldn’t afford to fall down the rabbit hole and be hung up on issues that would dampen their spirits.

Sometimes people came to their house—both wendigos and humans. Funnily enough, the wendigos went away quicker than the actual humans once they thought that they could find no prey inside. The scavengers took much more effort to fend off. Toast found a new thing to be delighted about when Sykkuno stood by the window and threatened whoever it was outside.

“I need you to leave my house right now,” he said, still so polite and soft spoken. But the calmness in his voice carried the threat so well. It was ominous, chilling. “I have a gun and I won’t hesitate to use it. Who knows? Maybe the wendigos will come along and help clean your body once I’m done with you.”

Those with weak hearts scattered away pretty quick after that. But sometimes it required more incentives for them to leave. Neither of them wanted to kill actual people, though they were aware that they were bound to someday, so they intentionally missed their shots instead. They preferred injuring those scavengers, and let the wendigos do the rest of the job when they heard the gunshot. It was cruel, but it was necessary. Besides, he got Sykkuno joking about how they could make the wendigos as their security system.

There were wendigos filling the neighborhood now, though not as much as open streets and public places. But enough to make them wary. They knew that they had to move away soon before they were completely swarmed.

“I wonder how Corpse and Rae are right now,” Sykkuno said one day. They were sitting in the kitchen, discussing plans and whether or not Ronald would be willing to teach them how to make bullets or arrows. They could find the tools later, if the man was willing. “ Where they are right now.”

They both avoided talking about people in past tense unless they knew those people were already dead. Even the dead came back now, anyway. It was quite a confusing grammatical jargon to use in the current situation. It also kept their hopes up, made this all a little bit more bearable.

But hearing those names right now brought back memories that Toast didn’t want in his mind. He recognized jealousy at that time, and he recognized it now. It wasn’t right, and he shouldn’t think like this about their friends right now. But Corpse and Rae had always been closer to Sykkuno. He knew how fond the man was towards the both of them, Corpse especially, with him being the youngest in that particular circle of friends. Corpse could claim all he wanted about only being interested in girls, but Toast knew a crush when he saw one. And oh, what a fucking gigantic crush it was.

The young man took to Sykkuno like a moth to flame. He unabashedly expressed his affection and how he missed Sykkuno, unrestrained in his soft words when he said it. In a way, it wasn’t about Corpse as much as his sense of freedom of expressing his feelings for Sykkuno that made Toast jealous. He thought that while he wasn’t jaded, he had made himself to be in order to protect himself. And being so open and vulnerable with his emotions the way that Corpse had done was simply something he couldn’t do anymore.

“I missed them,” Sykkuno continued, sighing softly.

“Sykkuno—” Toast began, but got cut off.

“I know,” he said, and looked dejected still despite his words.

Sentimentality was a good thing to have to soothe their mind and soul after doing things that they had never even imagined of doing. But having too much of it was dangerous. He supposed he got what he had hoped for, in the worst possible ways. There was no one around Sykkuno but him now; and the younger had grown attached to Toast to the point of being so open in his affections and touches lately. Toast was, quite literally, the only one he had his eyes and mind on.

He thought about it at night. Was he happy? Maybe he shouldn’t be. But he couldn’t help the feeling of satisfaction and elation he felt about it. He was aware that it made him a jerk, to be this selfish, but he had always been so selfish in keeping things that was important to him anyway. Especially now, when there were so few things in life that made him happy. There was no need to start developing morals and being guilty in a world where he couldn’t afford them.

Maybe God did exist, and answered his prayers back then. Though if they really did, then it was surely such a cruel God to grant these blessings to a horrible man like him.

“Do you think we can still meet our friends?” Sykkuno asked then.

He pondered. The logical and truthful answer would be no. Even if they somehow managed to get out of this alive, their lives simply couldn’t go back to how it used to be. Even in a few months, Sykkuno and he had changed a lot. They were more prepared than normal citizens, and he didn’t know how their friends and families could cope if they didn’t have the same mentality that the two of them had. Because as soft, and kind as Sykkuno was, he undeniably had that steel in him. A shard of ice that made him trudge on despite his sensitivity; the very same one that enabled him to focus only on their survival and safety instead of letting his kindness ruined him. He had adapted to this life faster than Toast did, after all.

But at this moment, he thought that he should allow his own kindness to wrap around Sykkuno. To protect him from the misery of his own mind, if not the monsters out there.

“Someday,” he said, letting a smile take a place on his lips. “When everything is done and we’re safe, we can try to look for them.”

Sykkuno’s smile was sweet and made Toast’s chest ache again. But he was glad he said that instead of letting his jealousy show through. “Thank you, Toast,” he said, reaching out to put his hand on top of Toast’s.

He flipped his own hand to grasp it tightly. “That’s why we have to stay alive, okay?”

“Okay,” Sykkuno nodded. Happiness and ease were apparent on his delicate face, and Toast let himself relax for a brief moment.

It was all right; they could get through this, one way or another.

But of course, happiness was such a fleeting and dangerous thing both in the old world and the new. When Sykkuno came back from a supply run, and learned how to make arrows in Ronald’s workshop, their nightmare finally caught up to their front door.

Toast was practicing his aiming skill with the dartboard they got in a supermarket near the radio store. He usually would wait near the door when Sykkuno was about to be back. They had agreed to put a curfew on their scavenging time. They had to be home no more than five in the afternoon. But Sykkuno had stayed in Ronald’s place for two days, bringing a lot of food for the man because he had been a tremendous help for them. Toast was right: the man saw Sykkuno as his own son, and Toast as his detached, rarely visiting son while he was away for college.

And so because he didn’t know when Sykkuno would be back, he wasn’t as alert to the danger waiting for them outside. He was startled when he heard a scream, and the familiar sound of an arrow hitting flesh. He dropped the darts and hurried to the front door. When he opened it, he wasn’t prepared for the sight of Sykkuno, pale and trembling as he held his crossbow tightly, sprawled on the porch with a dead body just scant inches from him.

Toast hurriedly picked him up, holding him close as Sykkuno fought back the urge to throw up. He had always been queasier than Toast about killing the wendigos. But when he took a proper look at the wendigo that Sykkuno had just killed, he understood why. He felt his own nausea rising on his chest, gagging his throat.

It was Michael. He finally followed them home. Toast heaved a deep breath, and took out the gun he had on him all the time by habit now. Sykkuno had lodged several arrows on his chest and throat, and one went through Michael’s mouth to the back of his head. But they couldn’t be sure if he was really dead.

It was as hard as he imagined to do this. He made a mental note to attend to Sykkuno later. It must have shaken him to the core that they had to kill their own friends in the end. He carefully nudged the body until he had a clear shot of the nape and pulled the trigger. Only then did he allow himself to pull out the arrows from Michael’s lifeless body, hands shaking and tears making their ways to his eyes. He didn’t know that he would feel this attached to someone he knew had long since lost his consciousness about them, but it wasn’t about Michael only. It was the fact that this act cemented their isolation from hopes of ever having their friends back in their life.

He quickly shoved Sykkuno inside and locked the doors. “Stay away from the windows and keep your weapons ready,” he said, feeling a lot more unstable than his steady voice.

Sykkuno finally snapped out from his reverie by the sound of another human being. “But Toast, Michael—“

“We have no time for that,” he snapped. “The wendigos must have heard us by now.”

The younger man stood there, mouth agape. He was still in shock from what had happened. But when he saw the tears that had cascaded down Toast’s cheeks, he visibly hardened himself and nodded. They stayed silent, gun and crossbow aimed at the door and window as they heard the upcoming footsteps of the wendigos. Hopefully, they would leave soon; wendigos rarely feasted upon the bodies of someone who was long since died. Something in them must have recognized that the infection wouldn’t take as easily as a body whose brain could still be used as a nest. Sometimes they did eat them, and sometimes the disease did take on the rotten body, but it was far and few in-between according to the news.

They waited for so long, terse and afraid of the worst scenario. But the footsteps retreated after some time, and Toast cautiously peeked through the barred window to check if there was still some lingering nearby. He turned back to Sykkuno afterward, who had dropped his bag and crossbow on the couch and was now hugging himself tightly. His hair was tousled in all directions from sweat that seemed to have rained down on his forehead, his nose, the side of his mouth. His eyes were unfocused, and he cried in silence.

He wondered just how many times they had to shed these tears before they ran out of them.

He put the gun back inside the holster on his waistband and went to the younger man. When he opened his arms, Sykkuno went to him quickly. He clutched at the fabric on Toast’s back, his tears dampening the front of his shirt. Toast closed his eyes and grieved.

It took them a long time to finally calm down enough to stand up. He took care of the supplies while Sykkuno showered. He looked clean; he must have taken a bath previously at Ronald’s house. But Toast understood that he must be feeling like he was unclean. They both had Michael’s blood on their hands now, despite the creature he had become. He sighed and tipped his head back. As much as he was aware of his jealousy, he truly hoped that Corpse, and Rae, was all right. If they ever encountered him one day as a wendigo, he didn’t think that Sykkuno could take that hit.

When Sykkuno was done and had changed into a clean set of clothes, he beckoned him to come closer. “Are you hurt anywhere?” he asked, turning Sykkuno’s head this way and that to see if he was bitten anywhere. It was one of the ways to transfer the infection. The blood of the wendigo was safe to the touch, though why would they want to escape Toast’s mind.

It was the certain substance they had inside their teeth, to be exact. The teeth of the wendigos were sharper than normal humans, and the elongated fangs were hollow. Inside was the fluid that could be injected into the bloodstream of the victim and turn them into a wendigo. The amount of time it took to be completely turned varied from one person to another, but it generally took eight to ten days to see the physical signs of someone turning.

“No,” Sykkuno assured him, grasping Toast’s hand on his face and basking in the warmth. “I was shocked, but I managed to shoot him in time before he got to me.”

“Okay,” he breathed out, body going lax from relief. “Take a gun with you the next time, okay? You have to get used to them. They deal with the wendigos better than the crossbow.”

At that, sadness crossed Sykkuno’s face in ripples. “How long do you think it will take us to get used to calling our friends wendigos, instead of their names?”

He sighed, and shook his head. “I don’t know. But it’ll be faster than we’re ready for,” he admitted.

“I know that we have to do that again someday,” Sykkuno said, sounding so crestfallen and miserable. “But Toast, it felt—I felt so cruel for doing that. I saw his eyes; he knew it was me. Those wendigos, they went to their families and friends because they wanted to go back. I think they’re lost, Toast, and they just wanted to come home.”

He understood that. The disease infected their brains, and by extension it used their memories to guide them to their loved ones. It was something truly despairing, how they were moved by affection and connections, only to bring despair to the very same people they wanted to see again. “I know,” he said. “But they can’t control their instincts anymore than we can prevent them.”

“What if they can be turned back?” the younger suddenly said. “Toast, this is a disease. What if the body can fight back and dispel it? What if—what if we can take the diseased part out and—“

“Sykkuno,” he cut in tiredly. Of course he had entertained those thoughts. But wishful thinking like that was as dangerous as going out without weapons. If even the most advanced institutions of science and health couldn’t figure out how to do it, then the chance to actually do it was slim to none. “Don’t- don’t hurt yourself more than you already did.”

Sykkuno’s face crumpled, tears falling down his cheeks and slipped through Toast’s fingers. He moved from his seat and pulled Sykkuno into an embrace, holding him with desperation and bone-deep fear that he could lose him the way it had taken so many people in his life. He didn’t want to look at the man he cared about the most through the barrel of his shotgun. Not now, not ever.

They slept in the same bed that night; holding each other so tightly as if one of them would disappear if they so much as blinked. Both Sykkuno and he kept waking up from nightmares, and he didn’t know what to do to make this pain disappear. So he pressed a soft kiss to Sykkuno’s forehead, murmuring soothing words that neither of them believed, and cried together in the silence of the room.

He promised himself that this would be the last time he would cry. If losing another piece of his empathy was what it took to protect Sykkuno from ever having to kill any of the people they knew again, then it was a trade that he was willing to make without hesitation.

If he couldn’t get them both to the shore in time, then he would do everything he could to make sure that Sykkuno wouldn’t drown in the dark water with him.

After what happened with Michael, Toast doubled his efforts in finding a new place for them. The house was no longer safe. Though it took almost half a year, but Michael still reached them. He didn’t know how many would approach if they stayed any longer. He had visited Ronald to ask whether they could stay for a week or two there until they found a new shelter; he would be greatly rewarded, promise. But there was a happiness in the older man’s face at the request, one that didn’t have anything to do with trades.

Toast realized just how lucky he was to be with Sykkuno instead of ending up being stranded alone. Ronald had no one but his wife before all of this; his son had long since died while he served the military, and he himself had to kill his own wife. He imagined how lonely he must have been, save for the occasional customers. Toast and Sykkuno were truly the only ones he was close to right now.

So he packed all of their supplies, organizing as many things as he could in the bags they were able to carry. He filled the three camping backpacks, and Sykkuno’s suitcase too. It wouldn’t be too tiring to pull it along with the wheels, and they wanted to give some supplies for Ronald, too. It was the least they could give for his generosity. The older man didn’t know just how much his presence meant for them—he was one of the last lines of humanity they had in them.

He made sure to find a mesh trolley to take back. It would help them with mobility and they could bring more things that way. He scoured the neighborhood for a car that still worked. They wouldn’t be able to get past the streets filled with other vehicles deserted on the streets, but it would still be quite a distance covered without having to trek with all their heavy luggage. The difficult part was finding an empty enough spot so they could take out the trolley and belongings without being spotted by the wendigos.

After all the preparations were done, and all their necessities packed in the car that Toast had managed to drive home with a barrage of wendigos on his trail, they sat in the living room together. This was Sykkuno’s house, that he had bought by himself. Memories of days he spent here, and moments they had created together in the months since the outbreak started—they all made this place something they fondly called home. But home couldn’t stop the wendigos and their fears, so they had to leave it behind to seek for safety.

Sykkuno wrapped an arm around him, leaning his head on Toast’s shoulders. “We’ve come so far,” he said, sounding so nostalgic.

He smiled, something bittersweet and sincere. “We have,” he said. “Think your lease and water bills will still be sent to you after everything is over?”

Sykkuno laughed. “I don’t know,” he grinned. “I hope not. I don’t have any money left now. I’m literally broke.”

“Same,” he replied, feeling at ease for the first time in what had felt too long for him. Sykkuno was right; they had come so far, and they were better at surviving in the new world now. The outbreak would get worse, he was sure of it, but at the very least they could handle themselves. And they had each other, too.

“Hey, Toast?”

“Hmm?” he replied distractedly.

“After… all of this is over,” Sykkuno said, so soft and pretty when the lines of his face weren’t etched with worry and fear for their safety. “Let’s find somewhere nicer to live. Something that we actually buy on our own.”

He let out a chuckle. A few months ago, he felt extremely nervous about scavenging someone’s house, regardless whether the owner had died or not. And yet here they were, about to steal one and live there. “Yeah, that’ll be nice.” What made him happy wasn’t the legality of the house, however. It was the way Sykkuno said it—as if they could continue to be together, as if he wanted Toast to be there with him.

“We should go to a burger joint, too,” the younger man then continued, excited now with the prospect of a faraway future. “I missed eating one.”

“Okay,” he indulged, looking at Sykkuno with a smile on his lips. He was aware that he probably looked so open, so endeared right now. He couldn’t stop it, however. “We can do anything you want.”

“Promise?”

It was dangerous, to promise such an uncertain thing. Toast still disliked unpredictable variables and the future of this new world was one of the biggest of it. But a future with Sykkuno was the only dream he allowed himself to cling to these days, so he nodded.

“I promise.”

They sat there for a moment longer, basking in each other’s presence. There were dangers out there that could still rip them apart, but at this moment, Toast finally felt like he had swum far enough to reach Sykkuno. The distance that felt like it was stretching forever, now surmountable as he kept swimming despite his tired limbs. Soon, he would be there and they could find a shore where they could rest and build a life.

If Sykkuno wanted to build a house, then they’d stay. If he wanted to build a ship to cruise the dark water, then Toast would go with him. He would be anywhere this man wanted to be and he hoped, he hoped so hard that he was breathless from the desperation of it, that Sykkuno wouldn’t go where Toast couldn’t follow.

They left at night. There had been tentative news about how the wendigos were much more active during the day. It might be because their senses had been dulled from their death, and their eyesight was worse at night because their cornea couldn’t focus enough light to the retina. Their lack of tear ducts also made it difficult for the eyes to function properly. The infection had resurrected only the necessary parts of the body to hunt their sustenance.

Toast stopped the car in a relatively empty alley. They waited to see if any wendigo would approach them, and quickly unloaded their luggage before starting the trek to Ronald’s house. When they finally got there, the man helped them put their things inside and hastily locked the door behind afterward.

“Good god, I thought something bad happened to you two,” the man said, rubbing his chest to alleviate his stress. “I was worried you couldn’t get here before the morning.”

Weird how humans had become creatures of the night now. Toast gave him a quick smile. “Yeah, we had to stop quite far from here.”

“Well, the most important thing is that you’re both here now,” Ronald said with a grin. “Come, I’ll show you your rooms so you can unpack.”

“Uh,” Sykkuno started, smiling when Ronald turned to him with such a fond look. They all lost their families, and this sense of warmth helped them in coping with the loss. “We’ll just take one room, actually.”

In the days that followed after they had killed Michael—no. No, it was too cruel to attach a name of someone they cared about to a creature that didn’t hold any characteristic to the person. No matter how sad Sykkuno became, they had to think of them as what they were: wendigos. After they killed the wendigo , Sykkuno had taken to sleeping with Toast, and he easily agreed because physically having the man next to him made him breathe slightly easier. If shits came knocking on their door, at least Sykkuno was close by and Toast could protect him immediately.

“Oooh,” the old man said with a cheeky grin. For some reason he didn’t want to examine, Toast felt a flush crept up to his cheeks and neck. “I see, I see,” Ronald said, and Toast wanted to ask him what exactly did he see. “Well then, let me take you there. I’m sure you both need rest. The room you used when you stayed here will be fine, no?”

They took their belongings from the trolley, and told Ronald that the rest was for him. The man smiled and clapped their shoulders in a firm grip that felt like home from a world they had long since lost. After they had unpacked and washed up, he lay in bed with Sykkuno’s head pillowed on his chest. He liked that, he told Toast. He liked hearing Toast’s heartbeat and knowing that they both were alive against all odds.

“Ronald is so nice,” Sykkuno said.

“He’s lonely,” Toast told him.

“Well, he has us now,” the other replied. “And when we find a place for ourselves, we can still visit him like we usually do.”

“Sounds like a good plan to me.”

They both had developed a habit of sleeping with their guns close by. Sykkuno had taken his advice and had gotten more used to carrying and using guns, though he still preferred his crossbow. It was ridiculous, Toast thought with an amount of fondness that alarmed him; Sykkuno looked even more like a protagonist from those stories he read. He supposed he would be even worse because this man was crafty as fuck.

Toast was meticulous and detailed in their plans and management, but Sykkuno had been the one who figured out that the wendigos’ eyesight was not functioning correctly even before they heard the news.

“They rely so much on their hearings,” Sykkuno had told him. “When one of your senses is not working properly, you’re bound to rely more on the remaining ones. I- I remembered when I saw Michael when I was scavenging that day? It took him a moment to actually focus on me. There has to be something wrong with their eyes.”

He couldn’t believe it when they watched the news, and he turned to Sykkuno. They both had shock and genuine happiness written on their faces. When you had accepted the presence of the enemies, you got used to them. When you were used to them, you started noticing little things that made them tick. By knowing your enemies, you gave yourself a weapon to fight them.

Sykkuno was adept in making strategies to bait more wendigos to buy himself more time to escape when he was chased by one. He utilized their sensitive hearing with noises to attract them. They were fast and strong, but they were uncoordinated. They trampled each other in their haste to go to their prey, and it could stall their movements for some time.

“You’re a fucking genius,” Toast had told him, feeling more alive than he had felt in a long while.

“I know,” Sykkuno laughed.

In the morning, Ronald greeted them with scrambled eggs and canned bread. Having another person around after they were so used to each other’s presence felt strange. But it was something pleasant to have, nonetheless. They scavenged together, now that they had someone to watch their belongings when they were away. It doubled the effectiveness and the amount of supplies they could have. The resources were quickly dwindling down by now, but the government had opened several stations where people could get some dry food and clear water. Medical supplies were rare and expensive things, and Toast couldn’t be happier that he decided to stockpile it early. It was fortunate that neither of them had ever needed them this far. Efforts and dumb luck, what a way to change his point of view.

Ronald chattered when they had their meals together. Thankfully, he was also in the habit of limiting himself to eating only twice a day to ratio the supplies. He just seemed so happy that he could talk to someone else, and having someone to expect to come home at the end of the day. Toast kept his guard up still because he needed it to stay alert, but even he wasn’t immune to this warm environment. He let himself relax a little bit, knowing that all of them were adept with weapons and could protect each other.

But misfortune would always follow their footsteps no matter where they went. He watched as Sykkuno took the last step across the line that held his humanity intact. It was the day where they scoured the places they had marked on the maps for their shelter. Since they were a little bit closer to the center of the city, it was easier to check those places out. He liked the place near the river bank, but he relented when Sykkuno wanted somewhere closer to Ronald’s place. He couldn’t exactly argue—the place had a backyard, after all; soil where they could grow their own food and had something fresh between the canned goods. He was already sick of them by now.

When they came back to the gun store, there was a car in front of it, and the front door was wide open. They both looked at each other, knowing that nothing good would greet them inside. He heard voices from inside; Ronald shouting at someone and the noticeable sound when someone most likely hit him. By their voices, there were four people—two of them they could see gathering all the weapons on display, and the other two he assumed to be further inside holding Ronald hostage.

Toast signaled for Sykkuno to move cautiously when the men had their backs turned to them. He had expected that they would finally need the medical supplies now. These men looked tough, and he knew that it wouldn’t be an easy feat to injure them enough to get them out of the store. He could care less if the wendigos came and ate them alive. In a corner of his mind where viciousness grew, he vindictively thought that they deserved it.

What he hadn’t expected, however, was how they both had turned from streamers and two bumbling adults who knew nothing about surviving, into fighters who knew how to handle their fights. It was nearly a year, but even in such a short time, danger had forced them to push the limit to stay alive.

Right when the men were done gathering the weapons, and turned their back to call out the other two, Toast went in and jumped across the counter to stab the knife Ronald had given to him that very first day they met on the nearest man’s back, and pulled it out quickly to press it against his neck. “One wrong move and you’ll die faster than you can scream.”

The man went still from the pain and the threat. He glanced at Sykkuno to see that he had shot two arrows to the other man’s leg and neck. The arrow on his neck was stuck there, he struggled to move as he grasped the arrow. Sykkuno loomed over him, crossbow pointed at his head. He looked—different. With them scavenging together, he had seen how Sykkuno moved in a fight. Contrary to the flexibility of his mind, his fighting stance was a lot sturdier. He moved like he was prepared to fight his last battle on the spot.

Right now, he looked deadly. There was no trace of kindness on his face. He looked like a dark God about to rip someone’s soul from their very lungs with his bare hands. With how cold he looked right now, Toast thought that he might actually do it.

The commotion from the front made the two other men rush to investigate. Toast stabbed the man he was holding once more on his hip, where he knew there was nothing to protect the insides. But before he could even move, Sykkuno turned with impossible speed and shot an arrow, right to the middle of one of the man’s head. He fell to the ground without so much of a gasp.

Sykkuno shot the remaining one’s hand when he recovered from his shock and moved to grab his gun. As the man shouted and grunted in pain, he trained his crossbow on him. “Where’s the car key,” he asked—demanded.

“I-it’s on him,” the man stuttered, looking at his fallen friend, fear evident on his face now. “I swear, it’s on him.”

“Take it and put it on the counter,” Sykkuno continued, motioning to the dead man on the floor. “You try anything weird and I’ll shoot an arrow through your eyes.”

The man quickly crouched to hastily search for the keys. When he found it, he put it on the counter and took a few steps back. Sykkuno wasn’t done, however. “Drop everything you have and take this disgusting animal out of our place.”

As the man pulled out his wallet, a knife, and two magazines, Sykkuno dropped down to search the man that was still groaning in pain at his feet. Toast watched the one who was trying to heave the dead weight of his friend, and only searched the one he had next to him after Sykkuno was done. He roughly pulled the man up and ushered him out with the tip of the knife pressing lightly into the wound he had made before. Sykkuno did the same with the other, though with much more difficulty, seeing that he was incapacitated from the arrow on his neck.

He reigned in his shock that Sykkuno had actually killed someone. A person, a living person who wasn’t a wendigo. Between the two of them, he thought that he would be the first one to do it. It was understandable; these men were armed and dangerous, and they had tried to steal from Ronald, not to mention they most definitely roughhoused him too. But Sykkuno took a step further when all the men were outside.

He pulled out the gun strapped to his hip, and aimed it with assured confidence from the amount of time they had practiced, on one of the men. The only one who got out unscathed. The man, knowing that he was about to be shot, looked at them with eyes as wide as saucers.

“No, please,” he begged. “Please, you can’t do this, man. Look, I’m sorry we tried to rob you. I can- I can tell you where you can get more supplies, yeah? Just- just let me go, please .”

Somehow, Toast knew that Sykkuno wouldn’t kill this man too. No, he would put his life on a much crueler fate. He watched, in an equal amount of fascination and horror, when the younger man shot both of the robber’s legs and shot at random spot twice more. It wasn’t because he missed the shot—no, he did it to attract the wendigos. The man couldn’t escape with his legs out of commission.

When they all heard the rushed footsteps of the wendigos, Sykkuno pulled the grated door close, still watching the man with eyes so cold and heartless. The man was begging tirelessly for them to take him inside, to not let him die like this.

“You should have known that the wendigos aren’t the only monsters out there,” Sykkuno said, and closed the door behind him. Outside, they heard the screams and the sound of flesh being torn apart, the shrieks of the wendigos as they feasted upon the men.

Toast looked at him; the tension on his shoulders, the way he gripped his gun until his knuckles turned white, the sadness and resignation that took over the coldness in his eyes. He strapped back his knife, and silently reached for Sykkuno’s hands to take the weapons from him. As if a string had been cut from inside of him, his fingers went lax as soon as Toast touched them. He deposited the weapons on the counter, and pulled Sykkuno into a hug.

It wasn’t just Sykkuno, he realized. He let that happen, he had killed those men too. He would shoulder this burden together with him. He didn’t know how much humanity was left in their hearts, but he knew that he had enough to want to keep Sykkuno safe. Even if he had to condemn the rest of the world to do it.

He held him close until the screams went silent, and the sound of retreating footsteps reached their ears. He knew that there would still be some of them lingering outside, hoping for more feast. Only then did he pull back slightly to cup Sykkuno’s face in his hands and leaned in to kiss him softly.

Sykkuno responded in kind, an immediate reaction that pleased Toast greatly as he turned his head slightly so their lips could slot better. He reached out a hand to Toast’s hair, carding through it gently as they slid their lips and tangled their tongue in a languid kiss. He didn’t know what made him do it at this moment, but he knew that he wanted this. He had been wanting to do this for longer than he realized.

It felt so right . It felt like he finally reached Sykkuno in the dark water, and said to him, I won’t stay away .

Perhaps, Sykkuno shared the same feeling, too. Because he sighed into Toast’s mouth like he finally found a shore after so long stranded in the ocean. Like he had been waiting for this for as long as he did. His mouth tasted faintly of the overly sweet juice they had this morning and traces of the cigarette he had when they took a rest a few hours ago. It fit him, somehow. The sweetness that blended in with something harsher, something gritty.

He wondered… he wondered if he wasn’t so afraid back then, if he believed even in the slightest that pure dumb luck would allow him a chance to be with Sykkuno—if he kissed him at that time, how would he taste?

Probably something gentler, something that reminded Toast of how quiet and calm he was in the morning. But he preferred this, he thought with certainty. This Sykkuno who had stayed and went through life with him; Sykkuno who looked at Toast like he, too, didn’t want to see him drown.

He didn’t know how long they were kissing, but it must have been a while. Because Ronald walked into the front store and coughed loud enough for them both to hear.

“Is this what youngsters are up to these days?” he said, holding his jaw that was now sporting an impressive bruise. “Snogging after scaring some bandits off?”

Sykkuno jumped in his arms, face flushing with embarrassment and something that Toast recognized as happiness. It was a good look on him, he decided. He looked cute.

“Something like that,” he drawled, grinning as Sykkuno rushed over to Ronald to fuss over his jaw.

“Gotta warn a man next time,” the older man grumbled. “I don’t wanna get a handful of you kissing like it’s the end of the world tomorrow.”

“Ronald,” Sykkuno said exasperatedly. “This is the end of the world.”

It made him calm, in a way, that the three of them looked at each other after Sykkuno said that, and laughed until he felt tears forming in his eyes and Ronald groaning about the pain.

“You know,” Sykkuno said later that night. They had taken care of Ronald’s jaw and thankfully he wasn’t hurt elsewhere except for another bruise on his thigh. The men had posed themselves as buyers, and forced themselves inside when Ronald had opened the door. Good thing they came home in time.

“No, I don’t,” Toast teased him.

Sykkuno flicked his chin, laughing when Toast yelped. He really had gotten stronger now, that one actually hurt like a bitch. “That’s not what I mean, dumbass.”

“Okay,” he said. “Tell me then.”

“If we get that garden up and running, we can plant some flowers,” he said, a smile on his lips that Toast kissed away. He kissed back briefly before he went back to talking. Toast liked it when Sykkuno talked, but he’d rather have them making out. Like, right about now. But he waited patiently for the younger man. “Maybe we can open a flower shop one day, Toast.”

“We can grow poisonous flowers,” he said absentmindedly.

“Yes, that too,” Sykkuno agreed easily. “I’ll make you flower crowns. You’ll look so pretty with it. And then you can stand outside of our shop and attract customers. We’ll be rich! We can pay my debt from the lease and water bills then.”

He laughed, because Sykkuno’s musings were silly sometimes. Wishful and silly—all the best things they could ever hope for to have in the current state of the world. He just nodded along. It made Sykkuno happy, these wishes. So he’d go along with them no matter how impossible they were at the moment.

“And then we’ll have enough money to buy burgers. I’ll treat you, I promise.”

“This all just boils down to the burger huh,” he said.

“It’s always been about the burger since the start,” Sykkuno nodded seriously, then exploded into a peal of laughter that he smothered on Toast’s shirt.

“Okay,” he said, soft and warm with affection.

They lay there, awake and enjoying each other’s presence. Until Sykkuno started tracing patterns on his chest, and spoke hesitantly. Toast knew what he was going to talk about, so he a reply on the ready when Sykkuno said, “Toast… about what happened today—“

“Don’t,” he cut in, voice solemn and quiet. “You did it to protect ourselves, and those men deserved it. Don’t worry about things like that, Sykkuno. I won’t judge you. I’d do the same too, for you.”

Sykkuno went silent for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was thick with emotions. “I said to the man, that the wendigos aren’t the only monsters out there.”

He nodded. He remembered those words and the way his hackles rose when he heard Sykkuno spoke with such an ominous edge to his soft voice.

“Do you think I’m a monster?”

“No,” he said. “Other people might, however. But frankly, we didn’t survive this long because of them. We didn’t get any help but ourselves. Except for Ronald, but he worries more about catching you and I making out than about you killing people.”

Sykkuno nodded, his body relaxing once again. “Good,” he said. “You’re the only one who matters, anyway.”

It was suddenly difficult to swallow. Here Sykkuno was, saying out loud the exact thing that Toast had wanted from him. He wondered just how much longer he could stay in denial about naming these feelings he harbored for the man. Not for long, he guessed.

“You’re the only one who matters to me, too,” he said. “So stay with me until the end, okay?”

The man lifted his head to look at Toast. He felt naked under the attention of those dark eyes. But he let himself be seen, willing to share this vulnerability with this person. Sykkuno nodded then, “Okay, Toast.”

“Promise?” he asked, wanting to seal it because as useless promises were in this new world, he still needed to hear it.

“I promise,” Sykkuno said, and Toast believed him.

“I can’t believe it’s two weeks already,” Ronald said. He looked at them both with a look that made Toast pay attention to the wrinkles around his eyes and his mouth. He was an old man, and he felt that too. The man seemed so happy to have them around. “You know that you can stay here as long as you want, right?”

“We do,” he said as he checked their belongings for the last time. “But we also need a place for ourselves. We’re planning to plant some things there. If we can get around to it, maybe we can bring you some fresh vegetables.”

“I’ll hold you to it,” the man said, the threatening tone softened by the smile he had. “I’ll miss having you rascals making ruckus in this house. You both argue like an old married couple, and I’m supposed to be the one who’s both of those.”

He grinned at the last comment and heaved the backpack on his shoulders. Ronald told them to take the trolley, so they could have it for future usage. Sykkuno nodded at him when Toast raised his eyebrow. It was easier than he thought for them to know what the other was thinking through small gestures alone. They had always been good at that, even before. But it was an entirely different thing now, more personal and meaningful.

Ronald clapped them both on the shoulders. His warm, heavy hand a weight that anchored them both. When the older man taught them how to make crude weapons from basic tools, or when he told them stories about his life, when he insisted that they sit and drink and talked about nothing every few days—Toast was reminded of his own father, and how terribly he missed him. He grasped the hand firmly, trying to convey his gratitude for everything he had done for them. It was pure coincidence that he chose this gun store to approach first on that day, but he was immensely glad with his decision.

Sykkuno stepped forward to envelope Ronald in a tight hug. Toast noticed briefly that he almost lifted the man off his feet from the intensity. He just grinned. It was a pretty funny sight to see; a big, burly man swept off his feet by this fragile looking boy. Of course, Sykkuno was no longer a boy and he didn’t look as delicate as before. He had muscles all over his body now, Toast did too. But he supposed carrying that crossbow everywhere gave him extra strength on his arms.

“Take care, okay?” Sykkuno said to the old man. “Don’t drink too much, and please remember to watch your sugar intake.”

“Bah!” Ronald complained, but there was something that looked suspiciously like tears in his eyes. “You nag just as bad as my wife.”

Sykkuno smiled after he pulled away. “We’re close by. Just three streets away from here. We’ll visit as often as we can. Contact us sometimes. You know how to use the CB radio, right?”

“Aye, aye,” Ronald said, patting Sykkuno’s cheeks with fondness that shone in his eyes. “You be safe out there. God knows you both can take care of yourselves, but I’m still gonna fret anyway. Let me do it—it’s time I annoy you back from all those canoodlings you got me witnessed.”

Toast laughed. They had been making out all over the house whenever the urge took them. They were new to this, and the fire in the pit of his stomach hadn’t fully settled down yet. He felt slightly guilty, but having Sykkuno moaning breathlessly under him was fucking amazing. He stepped forward to give Ronald a quick, firm hug. “Thank you,” he said sincerely. “We’ll see you around.”

They inspected the situation outside carefully before stepping through the threshold. Ronald locked the grated door and waved at them as they walked away. “Remember, boy!” he shouted. “Just because it’s the end of the world doesn’t mean you can snog out in the open streets!”

Their laughter joined in unison as they waved back to Ronald and turned around the corner. They arrived at their new shelter without much trouble. They encountered some wendigos along the way, but they had taken care of it quickly. He figured he should start training harder to keep up with Sykkuno. That man’s reflexes were fucking insane.

Before they actually put the plan to move out into action, Toast had observed whether the potential shelters were actually occupied, whether they had fences and grated doors and windows, if someone came back for their belongings and decided to stay, if there were dangerous groups of people nearby. People had started to understand the rules of the new world. They made communities and smaller groups, and the trades had been fully realized now.

The electricity and water were still running, and he found out that the government had specifically allocated people and police forces to keep them up and running. He supposed it was to be expected, those things were important resources and the city would go down into further chaos if they lost them. There were limitations to the usage, however. They had broadcasted over the TV and radio about the hour when the services were running. It was only for a meager of two hours for the water, and three hours at night for the electricity. They needed to find something big to put the water in if they wanted to realize the garden. The streetlamps were gonna be on all night, to make it easy for people to recognize the threat should they find themselves without shelter at nighttime. Toast didn’t know how long it would be before the hours got cut down, but they had to prepare from now.

When they arrived, and checked the perimeter as well as the locks on the house, he looked at Sykkuno and took his hand in his. “Here we are,” he said, feeling something inexplicable that was so close to pride in his chest.

“And I’m glad we’re here,” Sykkuno said in return, squeezing Toast’s hand.

He gave the man a quick smile before he started cataloguing the things they needed to do. “Let’s check the water and electricity, check for any holes, get our weapons ready, and unpack. And then we can make out like stupid teenagers afterward.”

Sykkuno laughed, eyes crinkling and looking so pretty that Toast had to lean in to kiss him. “Sounds like a good plan.”

Things more or less settled down after that. They got barbed wires to put over the fence, struggled to transport the water tank they finally got after two months since arriving, checked the things they previously hid in places they had left, and started their garden. Toast took everything he could take from the gardening section of a mall, and felt only slightly sorry when he saw a rotten body in the backroom of a flower shop he went into. That must have been the owner.

He tracked down places and groups of people where he could make a trade, and tried to spread words that he could fix things and sell them crude weapons for the right price. They expected the garden to give them benefits several months from now. They visited Ronald every two weeks, and enjoyed the time they spent there. He felt safer leaving their house unattended now that they had learned how to set up traps and makeshift alarms.

Sykkuno and he tried their best to remember the instructions for gardening from the videos they had watched, got their hands on as many books as possible because the only broadcast they had nowadays was news channels, made out like stupid teenagers, trained, learned how to cook when they finally got their first harvest, and fumbled their ways into sex because sex between two males who had no prior knowledge about it whatsoever except from porn was fucking confusing.

They tried looking for their friends. Toast asked around to the people he traded with, and he periodically checked in with the officer he was now familiar with about the list of names he wanted her to check if they got new people in the shelter. She was a mother of two, and he sold her fresh food and fixed her walkie-talkie when it was jammed. He got into the habit of social smoking, because some people felt more at ease when they talked while having cigarettes. They were less guarded, and more likely to share information for free.

Sykkuno, to no one’s surprise, had amassed something that Toast had dubbed as a cult. There was no other word for it; they adored and asked about how Sykkuno was doing whenever Toast was there to make the trade and supply runs instead of the younger man. Some people were even generous enough to give them things because they were so thoroughly charmed. Toast realized after some time, that the initial reluctance to be just another person in the throngs of people who adored Sykkuno no longer hooked his gut so viciously. He was content, because he believed it when Sykkuno said that Toast was the only one who mattered to him.

They didn’t have any run-in with any of their presumed dead friends anymore. And for that, he was thankful. They were strong enough to handle it now, but he imagined it would make quite an indent in their carefully built safety and tentative happiness. It had been nearly two years now; he wouldn’t disappoint himself by hoping that they could stay in peaceful time forever.

More and more cities had barricaded themselves so the spread of the infected could be curbed easier. But there were cities and countries who succumbed to the overwhelming mass and ferocity of the wendigos. Las Vegas was relatively safe now, in the sense that they wouldn’t fear being ambushed by a horde at every corner. Both Sykkuno and Toast remained vigilant. Call them paranoid, but they were mere civilians when this all started, ones with wealth too. They felt the emotional and physical impact more than those who were used to fights and harsher living conditions.

This city wasn’t as big as the other states, with most of the surrounding perimeters filled with deserts. But the forces had concentrated the barricade to the center of the city, and urged those who lived outside the perimeter that had been set to travel inside. Toast knew sooner rather than later, the barricade would be rendered useless because resources were all used up. The government still kept the posts for dry foods, clean water, and basic supplies, but not everyone could get them. There were too many people still, and too few of the posts.

They both had fended off not only wendigos but also robbers and scavengers. It was to be expected, with how obvious it was that someone lived there, and had a running garden. People would want to steal because there was no other way to get something except for trading, growing things themselves or stealing. Scavenging wasn’t very effective now except when people needed furniture. The supplies were scarce in abandoned places. So people who had at least two brain cells in their head had started to teach themselves so they could make a trade too.

Sykkuno, even after so long, kept his habit of saying silly wishes and promises right before they went to sleep. It was a promise to actually have a farm one day, and then having a cow another day because he wanted to slaughter them to make burgers. But there were nights when Sykkuno’s wishes were unbearably painful to hear. Promises to find Bimbus, to attend Corpse's concert, to try finding their families after everything was over.

He didn’t know whether he could fulfill those promises, and he didn’t know if Sykkuno could either. He only knew that Sykkuno meant those with his whole heart.

“Why did you stop talking to me back then, Toast?” Sykkuno asked one day.

He paused for a moment, the watering can suspended on his hand as it kept pouring water. He knew that he should stop drowning the poor tomatoes, but he was surprised by the questions. They talked about each other, how they felt, what they wanted from each other, but to hear the same question that Sykkuno had asked two years ago made him feel so… old, tired, but also grateful. Because he wasn’t in that time anymore, and had come to terms with his feelings.

“Because I was afraid,” he answered honestly.

“Of what?” Sykkuno whispered when he was close. He took the watering can from Toast’s hand and put it on the ground.

“Of my own feelings, for you,” he explained. “I didn’t want to like you, back then. You’re just so different from me, and it confused me—still do, actually. I wasn’t used to feeling something I’m not sure about, Sykkuno. So I was afraid. There were a lot of people who admired and adored you— still do, right now. And I didn’t want to be just another face amongst the mass. I wanted you to see me, I wanted you to only see me.”

Sykkuno smiled at him, a little bit fragile around the edges. “You’re a fucking idiot, you know that?”

The younger man did curse, sometimes. But it still made Toast grin whenever he heard him utter one, no matter the situation. “Yeah, I know.”

“ No ,” Sykkuno shook his head, and drew Toast closer by the hips. “Did you even realize why I clung to you so much back then? Jesus, Toast. Rae kept saying that I was a liar because I kept yapping about being straight when she knew that I clearly had a gigantic, embarrassing crush on you. Why do you think I kept calling? Why do you think I kept hoping for you to one day pick up the call and talk to me, about anything , even if you just wanted to say that you don’t want me?”

“Oh,” Toast said, feeling utterly, completely like an idiot now. He was somewhat aware of his habit of overanalyzing things and forcing them to make logical sense. He forgot that just because he refused to acknowledge that he had feelings, didn’t mean that other people did too.

“Uhuh,” Sykkuno nodded, laughing so brightly now. They had planted sunflowers, amongst other flowers Sykkuno grew in their increasingly crowded garden, and Toast was taken aback by how sappy his thought was when he likened the laughter with the sunflowers. “I kept telling you how much I simped for you, how much I missed you. Jesus, do you remember Sydney’s birthday party?”

How could he forget about that ? It was the exact time that Toast realized he had started accumulating these feelings for Sykkuno. He tried to keep to himself, but the younger man tagged alongside him with such persistence that he just relented. He got him the suit, paid for his meals, helped him wearing the very same suit, and stayed next to Sykkuno when he should have been having fun amongst the crowd. He didn’t want to know why he’d rather sit and listen to Sykkuno complaining about how loud the music was, and how many times he had been served champagne, rather than socializing with his other friends.

For someone who observed and planned so much, Toast could be blind sometimes.

“If that isn’t me tripping over myself so I could spend more time with you, then I don’t know what is,” Sykkuno continued.

Toast was vaguely aware that his arms had slipped around the taller man’s hips, but he just couldn’t focus on anything else that wasn’t Sykkuno’s eyes, so bright and so sharp, his shy little smile, the fact that they both had been so fucking dumb about expressing their feelings back then. He nosed Sykkuno’s face, feeling his breath hitting his lips and let out a chuckle as he realized the full magnitude of their full idiocy and denials.

“Well,” he said, finally speaking for the first time since he was astounded as he pieced the puzzles of their interactions together. “It’s sad to know we spent years circling around each other, when we could have used them to make out and be gross together instead.”

“Exactly,” Sykkuno nodded.

“But I…” he said, caressing the jut of the man’s hips gently. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad I met you again that day.”

“Me too,” came the whispered reply. “How do you feel about me now, Toast?”

“Like I won’t let you drown in the murky water,” he answered, not caring if Sykkuno didn’t understand the full meaning of his words. “Like I’ll follow you to the shore, and let you do anything as long as you’re happy. We can build a house if you want, or build a ship to explore the world. Anything , as long as you’re happy, and I can be with you.”

He felt the smile that Sykkuno pressed on his lips, feeling an answering smile of his own. Was this how it felt like, to care about and love someone so deeply that his happiness pulled through despite his worries and fears? It felt wonderful and dangerous at the same time.

“I love you, too,” Sykkuno spelled out for the both of them, and leaned in to kiss him.

It was akin to their first time, at Ronald’s front door, right after Toast made a decision to follow Sykkuno across the line of their humanity. He found out later that they could still retain it, despite the inevitable fact that not many others would share the same sentiment. They had Ronald with them on that particular trembling plank, at least.

The kiss was soft, unhurried. Something that felt like he had waited too long for. And maybe it was true, with the recent light of their honesty. He had waited far too long to have this realization, to have Sykkuno in his arms while he fully accepted that he loved the man.

“Stay with me on the shore,” he said, almost pleading.

“You said we can build a ship, though,” Sykkuno teased gently. “We can go, together.”

“If you want,” Toast replied. “Just stay with me.”

“Okay,” Sykkuno nodded. “Okay, Toast.”

In that soft moment, in the midst of the chaos the world had fallen into, Toast didn’t realize that it was the first time Sykkuno didn’t promise him anything.

The relative peace they held for two years was broken on the night Sykkuno came home smelling of and drenched in blood, despite no visible injuries to his person. Toast didn’t question it, and he didn’t realize that this was the last time he could maintain the illusion of serenity they had in their home. After all, he knew that Sykkuno killed more people than the four men at Ronald’s gun store. He himself had shot people who tried to mess with him when they were trading. He didn’t know if he actually did kill them, he never looked back.

But Sykkuno, no matter what the situation was in, would always look back and see the proof of his deed. As if he was trying to atone, as if he was trying to accept his sins and bear the retribution from God. Toast had long since scrapped the thoughts of any higher being from his mind. It wasn’t safe to rely on something so uncertain in their life right now.

His lover didn’t seem like he was hurt, but he was trembling greatly. Toast held him tight, and tried to soothe him as best as he could. But he knew, that whatever had ailed Sykkuno tonight, it wasn’t something physical. It was a disease that had taken a corner in his soul, infecting his mind and his physique—much like the wendigo infection, he thought.

“Sykkuno?” he called out. “Baby? Talk to me, please.”

“I killed someone again,” came the weak answer. He sounded terribly heartbroken, like he was disappointed in himself. “He- he tried to stop me from going through. Calling me all sorts of names— I just- I feel so disgusted, Toast. No one had ever said those words to me right to my face. And he- he tried to grab me. So I- I—“

“It’s okay,” he said hurriedly, knowing that the longer Sykkuno talked, the more he would blame himself. “It was necessary. It’s okay, Sykkuno.”

“No, no it’s not!” the younger man suddenly snapped, struggling to get out of Toast’s hold. He didn’t let him, and after a while Sykkuno just ceased his struggle. He might be the stronger one between them, but Toast was unbelievably stubborn in his endurance. “You- you don’t understand, Toast. He only had a knife, he didn’t try to kill me either. I killed him simply because he annoyed me. I just felt so angry, I just wanted him gone . Am I going insane?”

He didn’t know what to say to that. For someone like him, who had never bothered with empathy except for certain people in his life, Sykkuno’s reason didn’t sound crazy. The man was a pest, and he was probably the type of smarmy guy who made people uncomfortable with his ignorance. Toast wasn’t sorry that he was dead. But for someone like Sykkuno, who still managed to keep his gentleness despite everything, it must have been incredibly hard to accept—that he had just killed a man not for necessity, but instead because he wanted to.

“No,” he said, firm and leaving no room for objection. “You’re not going insane, you’re not crazy. I can’t justify something that you already considered as murder, Sykkuno. But I can tell you that I don’t give a shit whether you killed the whole city in cold blood. People can have dark thoughts, they’re allowed to. You simply have the strength necessary to put them into action. Does that make it right? Perhaps not. But does that make you an inherently bad person? No, baby, no.”

Sykkuno’s eyes were red-rimmed when he finally looked up to see Toast. His eyes were searching, looking as if he was lost. Maybe he was in this moment. So he tried his best to be the anchor to their ship, and let Sykkuno find his own compass, let him know that even if it seemed that it was only dark, murky water as far as the eye could see, it didn’t mean that he had to drown in it.

“Do you hate me?” he then asked, voice so wary and fragile that it nearly broke Toast’s heart.

“I could never hate you, Sykkuno,” he said, as sincere as he could.

“Even if I become a monster?” he pressed.

“Yes,” he said. “Even if you become a monster.”

Sykkuno held his gaze for a long time. Toast felt like there was something he should be aware about, things that Sykkuno was probably too shaken to say right now. But in the end, he kept his silence until the younger man nodded and leaned his head on Toast’s shoulder.

“I want to stay with you,” he said. Toast held him tighter. It was seldom that they spoke of their promise to be together with such resignation and hopelessness nowadays. They had quite a strong grip on the harsh reality they found themselves in, and they had dug their nails so deep into the will of living. But right now, he felt like he hadn’t in years. As if were he to blink, Sykkuno would disappear. “Until this is over. I want to stay with you, Toast.”

“I want you to stay, too,” he whispered.

When he kissed Sykkuno, there was a faint metallic tang on his tongue that he paid no mind to. Sykkuno was soaked with blood, some of them was bound to get into his mouth at some point. He just didn’t know what became of that man now. Seeing this much blood, it was safe to say that the younger man didn’t use his preferred crossbow. He wondered just how angry and irritated the man made Sykkuno to be to the point of him coming home like he just committed a massacre.

So he guided him to the bathroom, and tried his best to scrub away all the blood that had halfway dried on Sykkuno’s skin. He knew he was wasting the rationed water, but he didn’t care. Sykkuno needed all the care and attention he could get right now. He stripped them of their clothes before entering the bathroom, and made a mental note to burn the blood-soaked attires after Sykkuno was asleep.

The younger man, for the entirety of the bath, and even after Toast had dried and clothed them both and led him to lay on the bed with him, looked as if he wasn’t quite there. He stared at thin air, but there was a little frown on his pale face that told Toast he was lost in his thoughts right now. He let him be. He had never fussed when Sykkuno took his own way to consider some matters or when he was so stressed out that he needed some time alone. He had a similar method, too. So he understood that all he had to do right now was to be there for him when he came back to reality.

Toast couldn’t exactly sing, not like Lily did, but he hummed softly to lull his lover to sleep nonetheless. Sykkuno had gotten himself a guitar some time ago, and forced Toast to join and sing when they had the time for leisure. Remembering her didn’t feel quite as painful as before. Accepting the possibility that their friends could be dead or infected had been hard but manageable even so early in their new world. Michael still gave him this quiet sort of feeling that slithered around his heart and squeezed viciously before letting go. He thought that it was probably because they dealt with him personally.

He put the layers of blanket around them and brushed his fingers through Sykkuno’s hair. It was… what? Autumn now? It was nearly August. The wind had been chillier than the past months, and they were preparing for things to make when the soil would be too cold for the plants to grow. Winter was nearly here again. He remembered the winter last year; they went to Ronald’s place and celebrated Christmas with the booze they made themselves, while Toast scolded the old man to watch how much sugar he had consumed that night. It was a memory he kept dearly to his heart. Seeing Sykkuno laughing so much, and Ronald making anecdotes about when he almost shot his brother when he first learned how to use a gun. They didn’t stay the night, but they came home with full bellies and warm hearts.

They celebrated Sykkuno’s birthday this year, after the hectic progress they made the previous years to survive made them forget about such things. It was a small thing, really. They stopped by Ronald’s place after they were finished with their supply run, and Toast sang the happy birthday song off-key while Ronald and Sykkuno laughed their asses off. The brilliant smile his lover gave him, and the fantastic sex, afterward was more than worth the embarrassment. Ronald gave the man a jumper that he knitted himself—they didn’t even know that he knitted and they had been friends for a long time. Toast gave him a knife that he painstakingly succeeded to make in Ronald’s workshop after numerous trials.

Sykkuno brought that knife with him everywhere, alongside his crossbow and gun—even in the house. Though it proved to be quite useful when they were tending the garden. He had carefully put that knife inside the drawer on the nightstand so Sykkuno could find it easily later. For now, though, Toast just watched as fatigue and stress caught up to the man and lulled him into sleep. They didn’t get to eat dinner, though he could just make them breakfast earlier than usual.

On his birthday, right after they went home and were busy tearing their clothes off of each other, Sykkuno promised him that he would get Toast that apple he wanted a long time ago. They had eaten fruits since then, though rare times as they were. But he was adamant in getting Toast one himself. As he pushed his lover to the bed, and held his hand tight as he delved inside the unbelievable heat and pleasure of Sykkuno’s body, he thought of how the man had always tried his best to fulfill his promises. There were quite a few that he couldn’t, too, but instead of seeing them as unfulfilled Toast chose to think of them as promises that he hadn’t fulfilled yet .

His birthday would be a cold day, he thought absentmindedly as he extricated himself from Sykkuno’s tight clutch carefully. It took him some tries, the man’s clenching fingers were really strong, but he managed. He went to their piles of clothes, and decided to burn his too because they had been stained with blood anyway. He went to the backyard, and put the clothes inside the big hole on the ground they usually used for burning trash and weeds. He put some leaves and a small amount of gasoline on top before lighting the match and threw it on the pit. He wasn’t worried that someone would see and investigate; he could always handle a wendigo and it was common around this time of the year to see people having a small campfire to keep themselves warm. The limited electricity that had been cut down to half an hour each day definitely didn’t help with the upcoming cold winter.

He got back to bed as soon as he was done pouring water on the embers. He was already shivering from the cold. They had stocked up on so many clothes once they were sure they would stay here for a long time. But the thick jacket wasn’t working as effectively as coming back to Sykkuno’s warm embrace as he sleepily asked where Toast had gone off to.

“Just burning some trash,” he assured the man. “Let’s sleep. And then we can eat an early breakfast tomorrow. You can have one extra egg.”

“Just one?” Sykkuno mumbled, already halfway to the slumber land again.

“Don’t push your limit,” he laughed a little, and pressed a kiss to Sykkuno’s waiting mouth before he wrapped the blanket tighter around them and closed his eyes.

He didn’t know that starting from today, their days were running on limited numbers.

Strangely enough, Sykkuno didn’t touch his breakfast at all the next morning. He must have been hungry because they didn’t eat dinner last night, but as Toast chewed through mouthfuls of canned bread, he noticed that Sykkuno only ate one of the eggs.

“I thought you wanted the extra egg?” he teased good-naturedly.

Sykkuno shot him a smile. “I did. But… I don’t know. I don’t feel like eating right now.”

“Aren’t you hungry?” he asked, frowning a little. Sykkuno did eat before he went to scavenge, but it meant that it had been nearly a day since he last ate.

“No,” the younger man said. “I feel full, actually.”

“Are you…” he tried hesitantly, not knowing whether he should bring up the subject this soon. “Are you still thinking about what happened last night?”

Sykkuno looked up. His eyes were slightly widened, and his left hand nervously traced a pattern on the table. It was a tell that he was about to lie to Toast because he didn’t want to make him worry. He downed the glass of water, and decided not to push it. It was evident that Sykkuno went through such a shock; he would need a lot more time before he could accept it as another thing they did in this new world. Perhaps it wasn’t because he had to, but it was done anyway. There was nothing they could do about it now.

So he just buried the subject under layers of compose they made for their plants, and stopped asking questions about that incident. He just tried his best to observe Sykkuno’s emotions and reached to him as soon as he realized the younger man was spiraling down into the dark depth of his mind again. It worked, mostly. They were back at peace for several days, before a police officer came calling from outside their fence.

They didn’t let the officer in, but they did listen to her queries. There was a body found in the alleyway just a few houses away from here. The body was mangled beyond recognition but someone told her that he saw the dead man arguing with another man that night. The witness didn’t stay around to see what happened next. She said that she had been questioning everyone who still lived in the neighborhood.

Toast didn’t even bother with crafty lies. He was pissed at the officer for bringing this up again after he had tried so hard to calm Sykkuno down. The man was now shaking in his arms, face pale and fingers clutching Toast’s shirt tightly.

He looked the officer straight in the eyes, and said, “My lover killed him.”

Whatever she was about to say about Sykkuno’s suspicious behavior got stopped right that second. She let out a small gasp, and Toast glared when her hand inched to her gun, daring her to take it out. He had his own shotgun grasped in the other hand he didn’t use to hold Sykkuno.

“That man called him with disgusting slurs and tried to touch him inappropriately. When my lover resisted, he tried to steal the supply bag he had with him. He was threatening him with a knife and wouldn’t let him pass.”

“That’s…” the officer started. “That’s still not a justification for such brutal murder.”

She was right, of course. But what she thought shouldn’t matter to their own rules. He made sure his face was stone cold when he said, “Tell me, Officer. These past two years, is there anyone in this city that hasn’t sully their hands with blood? Either they did it to protect themselves, or if they didn’t it was because they were already dead. Even to those who actually never killed, are they the ones who kept the both of us alive? No. Not even you. We struggled by ourselves, in a city so crowded we only found one person who’s selflessly kind to us. I didn’t come along this far just to have my lover killed because you thought that a murder , something that you had done before, isn’t justified. If he had to kill someone so he could live, then you have no right in saying what’s justified and what’s not.”

The officer’s mouth was agape after he was done with his long tirade. Sykkuno was getting steadier by the second next to him. When he glanced up, Toast found that he was being watched with such an adoring, heartbroken look in Sykkuno’s eyes. He didn’t understand why he would feel that way, but at very least he was calm enough to stand properly on his own.

“Now, if you’re done with your investigation , I’d suggest you continue to the next poor sod you will preach to about justice and whatnots. If you push, I will assure you why we survived up until now—we don’t discriminate with our bullets, Officer .” He gripped his shotgun tighter, and lifted it slightly to emphasize his threat.

She looked as if someone had slapped her on the face. She nodded tightly. “I understand. Thank you for your cooperation. Just one last thing.”

“What is it?” Toast spat out, actually snapping this time. This woman was slowly getting on his nerves, and he thought he understood why Sykkuno had killed that man last night. Some people really did just make your blood boil in anger and contempt. Especially people like her who still clung to a foolish ideal like justice and morals in the time of chaos where justice was dead long before the first victim had fallen to the ground, and morals were burned in a campfire to give them a fleeting warmth that left them feeling even colder than before.

“That man, his body is mangled. Ripped apart,” she started, but Toast cut her off impatiently.

“If you’re still not aware, Officer,” he said, already turning back to get back inside. “There are monsters out there who walk on the same ground as us. He was a fresh food that they didn’t need to hunt, they ate him.”

As they were about to reach the grated door, she continued, voice now cold and distrusting. “Wendigos don’t eat dead bodies, you know.”

This time, surprisingly, Sykkuno was the one who turned around. His voice was slightly louder so she could hear him, but the softness and the sinister undertone stayed with each syllable. “Then maybe you should have questioned the dead body instead of us, no?”

Toast snorted, and glanced back to look at her expression. He expected a scowl, maybe a nasty glare. What he found there was a pale face and eyes so terrified that even he could see it from a distance. She left quickly without a word, she didn’t look back.

“What kind of face did you make?” he asked with a laugh. He felt uneasy. People who had known them at times showed fear and reluctant respect because they were capable with their hands—be it weapons or crafts. But he had never seen such pure, unadulterated fear like that. “She looked like she was about to piss her pants.”

Sykkuno shrugged. “I actually just smiled at her.”

This time, his laughter was more genuine. “No wonder,” he teased, locking the door behind them. “You and your pretty face, saying damned things like with a smile. She probably thought you’re the grim reaper about to feast on her soul.”

“I think I’ll be a pretty cool grim reaper,” Sykkuno joined in the banter.

“You’ll start another cult in the underworld, probably,” he quipped. He was relieved. The younger man seemed to be in a better mood than before; he even ate his lunch with such gusto after having little to no appetite a few days prior.

“Toast?” Sykkuno said as they attended to the last few bouts of harvest from their garden. Soon enough, they would tile the soil and fix their equipment for any damage. They had decided to keep planting the same seeds as this year for summer. One third of the soil for vegetables, and the rest for Sykkuno’s flowers. He collected them and gave them to the people he traded with, or when he visited the shelter. Officer Shelby, the kind officer with two kids, was quick to dote on him once she was informed that Sykkuno was with Toast. The flowers didn’t do much, but they did brighten some people’s days. He made flower crowns too sometimes, and would praise how pretty Toast looked when he wore one. He just smirked and basked in the pampering.

He grunted noncommittally as he pried out a particularly stubborn weed. He had never thought even once in his life that he would be a farmer, of all things—regardless of the apocalypse or not.

“Thanks,” the taller man continued. “For saying all those things when the officer asked.”

“Well, they’re true,” he insisted, cheering quietly when he finally got the weed out. “If she’s too blind to see the state of the streets of her own city, even after two years, then it’s obvious why she’s too blind to protect it.”

“But she’s not completely at fault, either,” Sykkuno then said. “You did tell me that some people will see me—us—like that because they don’t understand us.”

“That’s true, too,” he said, collecting the full basket of weeds and dumping them in their burning pit. “It's not her fault that she didn’t experience the same thing as we did. But I told you, didn’t I? None of their opinions matter. It’s just us here. We live by our own rules, for ourselves. We don’t need other people to conform to them.”

Sykkuno leaned his chin on the handle of the shovel he was holding. “But when normalcy returns, I think we won’t have any choice but to conform to theirs .”

He stood there for a moment. It was true. Their way of thinking and actions wouldn’t bode well with a normal world without the danger of wendigos. Heck, they would be long since thrown to jail by now if this wasn’t a world built from the aftermath of the apocalypse. But they were here now because they chose those actions, because they thought the way they did, and every single day Toast was thankful for that.

“Sykkuno,” he said, gently, so he could soften the impact of ripping an old wound that they couldn’t completely heal. “When Michael followed you to our door, we managed to handle it. We weren’t so sure about it beforehand—we were terrified. But when it’s time to cross the bridge, I trust that we both will know what to do, how to adapt, how to stay alive and stay with each other.”

His lover was no longer so gloomy when they talked about Michael usually, but today, his face crumpled a little. He looked sad for something that Toast didn’t quite understand, and that scared him. He could mostly figure out what Sykkuno was thinking or feeling. But when he tried to dig deep inside him for an explanation of his sadness, he came up with nothing.

“Okay,” he said. “Yeah, okay.”

“I think we should stop and get some rest.” He decided. Now that they had the luxury of eating three times a day again, he wasn’t about to skip any meal. “Let’s have lunch and inventorize our seeds and plans for next year's crops.”

Sykkuno followed with slow steps. Toast honestly didn’t know how to cheer him up. His mood swing went by too fast for him to follow at times. He understood the reason, but it still made him feel unnerved and agitated. He didn’t like seeing Sykkuno like this, without knowing how to make it better. Should they visit Ronald next week?

They both had discussed about asking the man to move in with them. They could leave the gun store locked and barricaded with traps, so they could still visit and make ammunition. The man wasn’t that old yet, but they had to admit that he was old. His steps were getting slower, and his diabetes acted up more frequently. They had tried their best to stockpile the medicines he needed, but it would be better to just have him nearby to take care of. Sure, they’d lose a sliver of their privacy, but they couldn’t very well just leave the man that had taken care of them like a family on his own like that. Especially when he had gotten too weak to handle the guns to protect himself. Above all, they didn’t want him to die alone.

Toast could see that Ronald’s biggest fear was loneliness. He himself had adapted to that pretty quickly. But the old man had lost everyone in his life, and he was left with an empty house with only the memories and the guns to keep him company. Toast had Sykkuno with him on every step along the way since the beginning of the end of the world. He would like to extend his admittedly limited empathy to Ronald. The presence of the old man would soothe Sykkuno’s nerves, surely.

He understood and knew Sykkuno inside and out by now, but Ronald was more experienced than the both of them combined. He sometimes talked to Toast when they stayed there, giving him advice on how to treat Sykkuno right, how to make him cheer up when his walls were built up so high and Toast’s own patience couldn’t handle the push and pull. He trusted what Ronald said because he knew the man cared a great deal about the both of them. To think that they started as a potential recurring client and a gun seller with prices ridiculously high.

He smiled to himself. There were few things left in this world that made his heart feel warm. Ronald was one of those things. They both had accepted that he would die one day, hopefully from old age instead of anything else. So they’d like to spend as much time with him as possible. Now that they could grow their own supplies, the once every two-week visit shortened to once a week. Ronald was a good cook, definitely better than either Sykkuno or Toast. He was always happy when they brought him vegetables and flowers.

“Hey,” he whispered in Sykkuno’s ears, hugging him from behind as the man washed their dishes. “Wanna go to Ronald’s place next week? We can take him here, have a little picnic at night.”

Thankfully, it did make a smile bloom on Sykkuno’s lips. “How will we get him here? No offense to Ronald, I love him and his beer-belly, but neither of us can carry him that far, Toast. And walking by himself is not an option.”

“Well, that’s why we have the trolley, right?”

Sykkuno’s peal of laughter made him smile too. He stayed there, perched on Sykkuno’s shoulder as they planned the picnic. It was a wonder, to have this kind of luxury when less than two years ago they had been struggling so much about food and water ratio. They slept easier that night after a few days of restlessness.

On the day they told Ronald they would come through the radio, they laughed as the older man scolded them for not visiting often enough. They mostly communicated through the radio when they had the time, but it just wasn’t the same with having the man in person. Sykkuno had been so excited in planning the picnic. Toast was the one who mostly cooked, because the younger man was so fucking atrocious at it that it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. So he took the responsibility to prepare their food. Sykkuno had taken a bunch of flowers to bring to Ronald. The basket of food they left on the kitchen table because they’d come back here anyway.

Sykkuno and he took turns getting in the mesh trolley and trying to quell their laughter in case it attracted wendigos. They joked about whether Ronald would actually fit inside the trolley, and mimicked his scowling face when he was about to nag them. The sign of the store had been taken down because Ronald felt like he didn’t want to risk any customer like the four men from back then. Besides, they insisted—threatened—him that they would bring the supplies for him so he didn’t need to trade anymore. He could just make ammunition and lame, outdated dad jokes to trade with the supplies.

It was a good day, he decided, stopping the trolley for a moment and leaned down to kiss Sykkuno’s confused but pleased face just because he could.

When they arrived at the street where Ronald’s gun store would be, Sykkuno looked up at him from the trolley and grinned. He looked younger like that. Both Toast and Sykkuno were already thirty-three and thirty-two years old respectively. He supposed he should thank the infamous Asian gene for making them look younger than their age. But in this second, he felt like they were in their twenties again, meeting for the first time as Sykkuno smiled with so much reservation and fear that Toast wondered just how much the world had hurt him to be that afraid of connecting to other people. But the man had always wanted to have that connection, so he could remind himself that there were people worth being brave for. And when Sykkuno had forgotten to cover his laughter when Toast joked about something stupid he couldn’t remember about, a grin so bright on his gaunt face, he understood .

Sykkuno was beautiful, and the universe loved beautiful things. It was why those who were favored by God, also suffered from the cruelty of the world. The universe loved them too much to let them flourish and live to an old age—it wanted them back on its side as soon as possible. To be another galaxy that adorned the vast emptiness of space. Maybe the universe had been lonely, too. And in its loneliness, cruelty was born out of the desire to have a companion it could stay with for eternity.

The galaxies had always looked so majestic, hadn’t they? But they were also so far away, untouchable. In its quest to possess a companion, the universe forgot that galaxies could be lonely, too. When they were so far from each other despite being close enough to touch.

Toast didn’t want Sykkuno to be a galaxy he couldn’t reach. He didn’t want to be the universe that had put him by Toast’s side and still felt like he was so far away. What happened to that man that night made him feel lonely, and he knew that Sykkuno felt lonely in his distress and war of morals. He didn’t want to have him there, lying in his arms, but feeling like they were light kilometers apart. After so long in each other’s presence, it pained him to remember this loneliness.

He smiled at the man he had learned to accept, to care for, to love. And reached out gently to caress the side of his face. Sykkuno looked so serene now. They were unafraid for they were ready for the danger; they, too, had become one of the monsters. He thought that he could hardly feel any fear when he was by Sykkuno’s side. And soon, Ronald would join them too. The thought made him speed up, feeling excited after such gloomy days. But he should have known.

Danger was as old as the shadows, and they worked hand in hand in spreading chaos and misery. Danger didn’t just exist out here in the open streets or the empty public places; it existed in every nook and cranny that they weren’t aware of. A little carelessness, a slip of the moment, a pure dumb fucking luck that allowed it to occupy the space and spread its tendrils.

At this moment, danger existed in the gun store that Ronald owned.

Toast didn’t see it at first. But Sykkuno suddenly straightened up and signaled for him to go faster. “Something’s wrong,” he said, the happiness vanished from his face and was replaced by overwhelming terror instead.

Toast felt his gut churn with anxiety and deep, deep denial. No, it can’t be. Not Ronald. Please, fuck, please not Ronald .

When they got closer, he felt his heart fall to a bottomless pit. The grated door had been forcibly pried open. The metals bent in weird angles and the locks were scattered on the floor. He was suddenly hit by a strong sense of déjà vu, and he knew that they both remembered that incident with the four men years ago. Both of the doors were wide open, but they couldn’t see anyone in the store. If this was a fucking cosmic joke that the universe wanted to throw at them, it wasn’t funny in the slightest.

Because exactly like that day, they heard voices from the back of the shop. No—not voices. It was writhes of pain and a nauseating, familiar squelch of flesh being torn from the body. Sykkuno jumped from the trolley faster than Toast could hold up his shotgun. He ran after him into the house, and felt the blood drain from his face when Sykkuno shoved a wendigo away from Ronald’s pale, prone body. The shove was so violent that the wendigo let out a loud shriek upon hitting the wall.

Toast was so overwhelmed with panic and the knowledge that he didn’t want to accept. In his moment of great distraction, he overlooked the display of strength that was nearly unnatural from his own lover. He ran to where Ronald was slumped against the stair bannister. He heard another loud, horrible shriek and looked away from the blood flowing steadily from the wound on the old man’s chest.

On the far wall, beyond a mangled body he couldn’t care about, were two monsters. The wendigo curled in on itself as Sykkuno rained kick upon kick with such viciousness that Toast was breathless from confusion and—no, no —fear. The younger man was screaming in such rage that he felt the tremble in his lungs. His eyes were alight with wrath, his muscles coiled so tight that it was only the healing factor of the wendigo that prevented it from being beaten to a pulp.

“WHY?” Sykkuno screamed, and though it was in such absolute anger, Toast’s heart broke when he heard how much pain in his voice. “ You have all those other bastards to tear apart, why HIM ? WHY?! ”

At this point, his scream was getting louder and louder. Before long, Toast could no longer differentiate between the shrieks of the wendigo and Sykkuno’s own voice. It scared him—it truly scared him just how grief and rage could transform a man so gentle, so delicate in his kindness, into something so vindictive: into a monster.

Right then, he heard a small gasp. He turned so quickly that he was almost dizzy with it. Ronald was alive. But he was losing blood steadily. Toast fumbled with the bandages and saline he always had on him. He took off his jacket to press it against the big, gaping chunk of missing flesh. It was a jacket that Sykkuno had gotten him when he suggested they had a date night sometimes, so you can wear something fancy , he had said at that time. God, it felt so long ago.

He didn’t want to face the present time. He didn’t want to even exist in the plane of time where he had to deal with a loss deeper than he had ever experienced. It wasn’t just Ronald he was losing, but also Sykkuno. And he was losing them both fast .

There was another wound on Ronald’s stomach. Something that wasn’t from a wendigo. He looked at the mangled body next to them and had never felt such hatred for something he knew he couldn’t reach anymore. “It’s okay, we’re here, Ronald. We’re- we’re- we’re here. Hang in there, please —I can fix this, we just need some- some—“

He grunted in—he didn’t even know what he was feeling right now. Anger, frustration, disappointment, and sorrow so deep he could feel it in every beat of his heart. They had a working medical center nearby, just twenty minutes away if they ran fast enough. They had the trolley, too. They might— no , they would make it in time. He couldn’t afford entertaining any possibility right now.

But then, Ronald—with skin turning so pale it was almost translucent, beads of cold sweat on his forehead from the pain, the sad, lost look in his eyes—reached out a weak hand to cover Toast’s. The jacket was now soaked with blood, and he could feel his own palm getting damp from it. He looked at Ronald, pleading with his eyes to hold on. But the old man just shook his head slightly and heaved out a deep breath ladened with blood. His breaths were shallow and stuttered, and of fucking course they were . He had hole in his chest, for fuck’s sake.

When he saw the resignation adorning the man’s wrinkled face, he gritted his teeth and cursed the universe to hell and back. He pushed back his own grief, struggling to stay afloat when the waves of tsunami came crashing on him. Was grief supposed to be this—this painful? This consuming? This… inevitable? Because grief, to him, felt like waves after waves of destructive thoughts and regrets and pain so imaginable that he felt like he was dying along with Ronald.

He heaved out several deep, quick breaths and turned to Sykkuno. He would lose Ronald today; he wouldn’t lose his lover too.

“Sykkuno!” he called out, but his own scream, despite how loud it was, must have sounded so small in the dark water that Sykkuno was drowning in. Grief worked differently with each person; whereas Toast thought he would be more apathetic to it, he was proven wrong by how much he felt from the loss. Sykkuno, though, let out his grief with a wrath that would burn everything in its path. Toast didn’t want them to burn, he didn’t want this man to turn into a monster so fast before he could save his last humanity for Ronald.

In his last, desperate attempt after trying so much, he finally roared out, “ SYKKUNO! ”

This time, Sykkuno did turn back to him. He couldn’t help the tremendous relief he felt from that action alone. He motioned to Ronald with his head. “Please,” he pleaded, voice weak and trembling. “Come here.”

Upon realizing that Ronald was alive, Sykkuno snapped his head back to the wendigo and forcefully turned its body. He fired once, twice, three times, four—he kept clicking even after the round was gone and the wendigo was still, lifeless for eternity this time around. And then he stalked over to where they were crouching next to the stair. His movements were fast, faster than Toast could comprehend. But maybe his head was processing things in a different pace now that he was overwhelmed by this yawning emptiness inside of him.

“Ronald,” Sykkuno said, and his voice sounded so terrible after screaming for so long. But for the first time since they arrived, he finally sounded humane . “Ronald, we can still fix this. We can save you. You just gotta hold on—“

It felt like someone had just gutted him with a serrated knife, and twisted . He stared sadly at Sykkuno’s desperation, the same words he had uttered to the old man just a few moments ago. He put his hand on Sykkuno and shook his head helplessly when he suddenly stopped and just—he just shattered . It was as if his whole body was alight with silent agony when tears washed away the rage that had blinded him so much. His shoulders that were previously strung so tight now just sagged in defeat.

Ronald struggled as he put his other hand to ruffle weakly at Sykkuno’s hair. “Don’t- cry, my boy,” he gasped. “This- this is the trade of- life. You simply have to—“ he was cut short by a shudder that wrecked his already frail body, but he shouldered on. Even in his last moment, Ronald still couldn’t stop worrying for these two men who had made his bleak days so much easier to bear. “You have to accept it.”

Toast’s eyes burned from his words, tears of anger and bitterness fell down to his cheeks. He remembered promising himself not to cry anymore, but how could he steel himself against this unstoppable anguish? He wanted to laugh, wanted to accuse and blame life because he had always thought of it the same way, hadn’t he? Life was always about a trade.

But you see, in life, there were trades that you simply couldn’t afford, for the price was so high and you had nothing but regrets and pain.

“It can be reversed,” Sykkuno suddenly said, eyes going manic as he plunged through desperation straight into the sweet, poisonous whispers of the dark. “If you stay alive long enough, the healing factor of the wendigo will kick in and it will regenerate your flesh. It can be done, Ronald.”

“Enough of- of the nonsense, Sy-kkuno,” Ronald said, tired and so, so ready to let go. But he couldn’t leave with these two boys looking so distraught like this. As if they were ready to follow him into death’s embrace. “You just- just stay here and ac-company this old man, heh .”

“No!” Toast heard Sykkuno shouted, so violent in his rejection of another loss that actually mattered in his life. He hadn’t even reacted like this when they finally accepted that their families were long gone. But maybe—maybe it was because Ronald was everything that signified what he no longer could have from his family. Toast understood, he really did . But much like what Ronald said, this insanity had to stop.

“Sykkuno, please,” he begged. “Let’s just. Sit here and spend the time with Ronald, okay? We don’t—we don’t have time to entertain impossible fantasies.”

“What are you talking about,” the younger man hissed, eyes so sharp and so vicious. “It’s possible! We just have to keep him alive until he turns!”

“Sykkuno—“

“Don’t you want him to stay alive?” Sykkuno cut him off coldly. “Don’t you want him to stay with us? I’m trying to keep him here with us, Toast.”

“Boys,” Ronald said. He gave a jovial smile, marred with blood. “I thought- I thought I told you to- stop bickering like an old married couple.”

“Ronald, please,” Sykkuno then said, turning to him as if Toast had abandoned him; as if they both weren’t drowning in the same sorrow. “Please, believe me. We just have to—“

“No,” the old man said, firmer this time, though not unkindly. Toast’s hand was completely wet with his blood now. He didn’t know how much time he had left. “This- is my last stop, my boy. Let me go.”

“Please, I just don’t want to lose you,” Sykkuno continued, gripping the old man’s hand so tight. “If you just give this a chance—“

“No!” Ronald finally shouted. Though weak as it was, it made them both still. “I said—“ he coughed, but ignored the pain he must have been in, “I said no, you stupid boy!”

“I just want you to live!” Sykkuno shouted back. He had lost control of himself, and Toast closed his eyes as he witnessed it. He was slowly going numb from all the feelings that had filled every single space in his body, and none of them was that much different than grief and misery.

“You want me to live as a wendigo?!” the old man snapped. “You want me to li-ve as the very same thing that took my wife away from me?!”

At that Sykkuno seemed to recoil, the words slapping his face like an iron brand. “No…” he whispered.

“Damn right, ‘ya stupid rascal,” Ronald said, huffing out breaths faster and shorter than before. “Just stay here with- me.”

Sykkuno bit his lips, so hard that he drew blood. He was probably as numb as Toast felt right now. None of their physical pain would register when the inner turmoil was so much worse. “Okay,” he said then, “okay, Ronald.”

“Tell- me.” Toast looked up when the older man’s tone turned soft again. “About the—picnic.”

“It’s in our backyard,” he said, taking the responsibility for both of them because Sykkuno was lost in tears. He wondered when he had stopped crying. Probably around the time that he had felt so resigned—that he did lose Sykkuno, too. “It’s a bit crowded with our plants, but I’m sure we can find some space to squeeze in.”

Ronald managed a chuckle. His eyes were drooping, and from how hard he was pressing against the wound, Toast could feel his heartbeat slowing down with each second. “You telling- me, I have t-to sit next to a bush of to-matoes?”

“Precisely,” he said, allowing himself a smile, if only for Ronald’s sake. “I made lunch. We used the vegetables, it won’t taste so much like canned food, promise.”

There was no reply, but he knew Ronald was still there. So he continued, gritting his teeth so hard his jaw hurt when he felt his eyes heating up with tears again. No, he wouldn’t allow this . Ronald deserved better than just tears and misery in his death. He deserved good things that awaited him, should they chance a life in another universe, another lifetime where they could meet properly without the impending doom looming above them like an eternal rain cloud.

“We’re gonna ask you to live with us, actually,” he said. “Come on, just admit that you’re too old to shoot the punks trying to rob you.”

That got him a quiver of smile on Ronald’s white, white lips. It even startled a laugh out of Sykkuno. He briefly looked at him, and let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding when he saw something familiar in those dark eyes. Something that he knew held endless love for both Ronald and him. He saw that the old man was struggling to keep his eyes open, darting from looking at Toast’s face to Sykkuno. So he reached out to pull the younger man closer, so Ronald could see them properly.

“You’ll probably shout at us so much for—snogging, all the time,” Sykkuno said, voice hoarse and soft. There was no fight left in him, but he tried his hardest to smile and held Ronald’s hand to his chest. “You can sit in the backyard while we go out for supplies. You’ll actually have a lawn to shoot punks off of.”

Ronald’s mouth moved, but there was no sound coming out. Toast could read what he said as clear as day. “I know,” he said. “We’re gonna take care of ourselves. You don’t have to worry. You take care too, okay? Be safe over there.”

Sykkuno lifted up Ronald’s hand to kiss his fingers. “I love you, old man. I won’t forget you, I promise.”

Ronald Andersen died on a sunny Wednesday with a smile on his lips. With his death, he left two lost souls who hadn’t quite discovered yet how cruel fate could truly be. Perhaps, his fleeting moments with these two men would give them the strength to carry on until they could see the shore and carve his name on the house they built over there. Perhaps… it could happen, in a kinder world, in a gentler fate.

Sykkuno’s sobs were silent, but his face spoke so loudly of his loss. He embraced the limp body, the shudders shook his shoulders and his soul. Toast let go of the jacket; there would be no use of it anymore now, and wrapped his arms around them both.

“I can’t—“ he heard Sykkuno whisper. He sounded so small, like a gust of wind would blow him away. So Toast tightened his hold. He lost Sykkuno for a moment, he wouldn’t let it happen again. “I can’t, Toast—I can’t .”

“I know, baby,” he said, and to his own ears, he sounded so broken, too. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry .”

He didn’t know to whom he was apologizing, but it didn’t matter. They all lost something today; a life, a soul, a heart. “We should- we should take him home. Give him a proper burial.”

Sykkuno nodded, but didn’t say anything, didn’t let go of Ronald’s body. Toast knew, they had to leave soon. They were loud in their anger and grievance, and soon, the monsters would come in by following the scent of death. This area had been swept, but there would still be inevitable stragglers. Like the one Sykkuno had just—obliterated. He figured that someone—that mangled body—was trying to get in, and by opening the door, he invited the wendigo along with him. A greed that not only ended his own life, but also the life of others. It was unfair, and he knew that Ronald’s death would take them months, years even, to recover from. He just hoped that in that time, they both learned how to let go of him little by little.

“Baby,” he called, with more urgency this time. “We have to leave, now.”

Sykkuno heaved a breath, two, then pulled away from Ronald. What emerged was someone who Toast recognized, and not at all. He tamped down the fear that had started climbing in his chest again. They had just lost someone who meant a lot to them—he should understand if it took a good chunk of their innocence and hope.

“Toast,” he said. “He—Ronald said, if he died because of a wendigo one day, he wanted us to- to shoot his nape. So he won’t wake up anymore.”

“Okay,” he sighed. Ronald told him the same thing, too. That old man knew too much. “I’ll do it. This way, no one can disturb his rest.”

“No,” Sykkuno shook his head. “I—please, let me do it.”

“Sykkuno,” he started, already knowing the amount of guilt and blame the younger man had carved into his bones. “You’ve already gone through so much today.”

“So did you,” came the reply, along with a bitter smile. “I lost myself quite a bit back there, huh?”

He really did. But Toast chose to kiss the top of his head, and tried not to think too much about how they were going to burn another set of clothes because they were soaked in Ronald’s blood. He relented, in the end. He watched over the entrance from the room with his gun at the ready. His shotgun was already slung over his shoulder again. When Sykkuno gently turned Ronald’s body, he turned to witness it. He had to see this finality, otherwise he might stay awake at night thinking about it.

Sykkuno aimed the gun on his nape, the barrel pointing down. It would ruin the throat instead of the face. Deep inside, he knew that the both of them still wanted to see Ronald’s face for the last time when they buried him later. The shot was quick and precise, and his heart ached when he saw how hollow Sykkuno looked afterward. Maybe—it was the wrong decision to let him do it. But after one wrong decision after another piled up without Toast’s knowledge, what could he do but ache for a lover who was slowly slipping away from his grasp?

They heaved Ronald onto the trolley, and Sykkuno locked the door with the keys the old man had given to them. They now possessed both sets of keys to this house. He knew that they had to come back here for necessities, but he wondered just how long it would be before the memories they created inside stopped haunting them. He watched with a sense of detachment as Sykkuno pulled the broken grated door forcefully, and stuck a crowbar in the middle. They’d come back later to fix it.

The rest of the trip to their home flew by without even a second of it registering in his mind. After the torrents of emotions, Toast felt the emptiness more than ever now. He couldn’t push aside the worries about their future, what they would need to survive not only physically but mentally. He felt like he was going to throw up from how noisy, how crowded his mind had become despite the yawning abyss in his heart. In the silence of the heart, the mind started to corrode away with burdens that couldn’t be soothed.

If someone saw them pushing a trolley with a dead man inside, he honestly couldn’t give a damn. Maybe that officer who kept asking them questions would see them too. He didn’t know if he would be able to stop Sykkuno from actually killing her if she came again to ask about the dead man—about Ronald.

They chose a spot near the apple tree they had just planted four months ago. They thought that Ronald would like it, to have a shade and a trunk he could lean against. God knew his back pain was making him grouchier every day. If the tree bore fruits, Toast would flaunt it to him later, after he got Sykkuno to handpick it for him. The man was so adamant in getting him an apple, after all.

He dug the soil, while Sykkuno chose the flowers to adorn the grave. When the hole was deep enough, they carefully lowered Ronald’s cleaned, covered body into the ground. They undressed and cleaned his body as soon as they arrived. There were trails of blood on their floor, but they frankly couldn’t give a shit about it right now. Since they didn’t have anything in Ronald’s size, they wrapped him up in a blanket and opened the top to reveal his face. Even in his eternal sleep, Ronald managed to look both a grouchy and indulging grandpa.

Toast didn’t exactly believe in God, and he knew that Sykkuno completely let go of his belief a long time ago. But they prayed nonetheless. They prayed to the God that Ronald believed in, pleading that he would be safe on the other side, that he could finally be reunited with his son and his wife—that he would finally find an everlasting happiness.

“He’s not gonna be lonely anymore,” Sykkuno said after they had put the soil inside the grave. The man carefully put the flowers on the head of the grave and carved Ronald’s name on the apple tree. It was his tombstone, and it fit him a lot. Despite being this burly, scary looking guy, Ronald was filled with so much kindness and love for them both. Maybe that was the reason why it was so hard to let him go. Toast and Sykkuno might be getting stronger, but they both still lost a lot of people close to them. They didn’t have time to mourn, to drown themselves in grief before the needs of survival pushed everything aside and demanded everything from them.

Now that they were capable of surviving, it allowed them the chance to grieve for a man who showed them warmth and paternal affection that they still needed. They were both adults, but sorrow didn’t discriminate. In their existence, they pulled Ronald out of his loneliness; in his existence, he sheltered them both from being so corrupted by the new world.

Now that he was gone, Toast would make sure to fulfill his promise to the man. The shore was nowhere to be seen, and he felt like the tendrils of darkness were starting to wrap around their ankles. But fuck if he wouldn’t still kick his legs and swim as far as he could.

“I’m glad,” Toast said slowly. “That we were there with him. That he didn’t die alone.”

“Me, too,” his Sykkuno replied. Then, he offered a tentative smile. Their faces were still red; tear tracks evident on their cheeks. But Toast readily gave a smile back. He wanted to know that he was here—so Sykkuno needed to make sure that he was here , too. “Hey, lover,” he called. “Let’s have that picnic now.”

“The bread’s probably soggy now,” Toast muttered without heat. “Disgusting.”

“Yeah,” the younger replied. “It’s a… disgusting toast .”

“Fuck, you’re horrible,” he sighed, rubbing his face in despair. “Of all things you could get from Ronald, why must it be the lame jokes?”

“You love them.”

“Yeah,” he nodded, smiling a little. “I love you,” he said, because he needed to hear Sykkuno saying it too, especially now.

“I love you too, Toast,” he said, and stepped closer so he could hug him.

Toast leaned his head on Sykkuno’s shoulder, telling himself that they would pull through this. They got the picnic basket from the kitchen table and sat on the grass next to the grave. It was a matter of time before the nightmares fully settled in, the bouts of panic attacks and hysterics. But before they went into that particular thunderstorm, he wanted to be allowed to have this.

They ate the soggy sandwiches, talking about all the things that Ronald would usually talk about with them. They didn’t change their clothes, Toast’s hand was still covered in blood, and it was unhygienic as fuck. But he didn’t care, this time. He would eat his damned sandwich and enjoy the feeling of Sykkuno’s head on his shoulder, the warmth they shared before the month changed and the cold wrapped around their hearts and turned their souls into ice shards.

Wouldn’t make much difference, anyway. Sykkuno had long since had those shards inside him, and by extension, Toast was used to the coldness of his soul. He just hoped that the cold wouldn’t freeze his heart, too. It was the only thing that could warm the increasing chasm inside of the younger man. If he wasn’t careful, he could slip and fall through the crack. Toast couldn’t follow him then. He squeezed Sykkuno’s hand in his.

“Don’t go where I can’t follow,” he said suddenly.

Sykkuno looked at him, eyes sad and understanding. He tipped his head up and kissed Toast softly on the lips. “Okay,” he said, gently, as if he was afraid of letting Toast down so suddenly and having him shattered beyond saving. “Okay, Toast.”

It was enough, that affirmation—but it shouldn’t be.

Life… went on, somehow.

They went through the emotional torrents of grieving and dealing with it. He feared that it would split them apart, but it made them understand just how much they needed each other in these times. They had no one to fall back to now, so they wrapped their arms so tight around each other. At times, he felt like he was slipping, and at other terrifying times, he felt Sykkuno slipped through his hold.

Somehow, even if Ronald’s house was the one without someone occupying it, they felt emptiness in their own home instead. He tried, in multiple ways, to not let this emptiness spark the distance between them. He knew that Sykkuno tried, too. But there were moments when their efforts didn’t feel like they had done anything good.

They fixed the grated door on Ronald’s house, but they moved all the guns and the tools they could take with the trolley to their home instead. After that, they barricaded the doors so meticulously that Toast didn’t even know how to get inside again. They wouldn’t forget Ronald, but staying in that house while they worked in the workshop wasn’t good for them. Sometimes distance could be a good thing, too. As long as they didn’t let it spread too far.

See, the books lied to him about stages of grief. Instead of a linear line, it was a totally organized chaos. Right after they thought they went through a stage, they somehow found themselves back at their starting point—over and over again. There were no stages of grief, rather it was more akin to visitation. From one place to another, they had themselves broken apart and sewn together again. Ronald left an ache that they weren’t willing to erase from their hearts, and it was this ache that reminded them to honor his wishes.

Be safe. I love you, my boys .

He had read those words on the man’s lips before he died. He tried his hardest to fulfill it, but how could he tell Ronald now that there was no more safety in this world? That they couldn’t be safe, even from themselves. They had several coping mechanisms; some healthy, some… questionably acceptable. They got into farming full time, now. They had talked about expanding their lawn—it wasn’t like the neighbors were there to complain about it either. They started playing chess, and Toast trounced Sykkuno all the time. They also learned how to knit. They had taken the knitting tools from Ronald’s house, and asked officer Shelby how to do it. She was more than happy to show them.

Sykkuno smoked, a lot. He smoked in the house, when they were out for supply runs, when he waited for people to trade his goods. People asked about what happened, but he just smiled and didn’t say anything. Toast… went into an obsession. At times he was so unbearable to be around, he was aware of it. He just didn’t know how to stop. He was getting more and more strict about protection and curfew; on his worst day he didn’t even let Sykkuno go out at all.

Then, the fights started.

See, they no longer struggled with the first and last stage. They had gone through shock and denial of losing Ronald, and with the way they were, they had accepted it and clung onto their hopes. It was everything in-between that was the problem. One moment, they were tending their wounds and putting the pieces of their shattered heart back together; they built their lives, expanded more trade, trained themselves tirelessly for they knew that the outbreak might be calm now, but it could surge again. They had only one goal since the start: to survive until this was all over. And then, afterward, they could go through their promises when the world was back at its feet again.

But then, another moment came and they were so wrapped up in guilt and unbearable pain until they were suffocating. All the what-ifs that circulated around their minds; the hot, blinding agony that felt like it had replaced the blood in their veins with venom instead. The instances when they needed time for themselves grew more and more to the point that Toast could no longer know whether they were isolating themselves, or each other.

But they were nothing compared to the anger.

It started out simple: difference and distance. Toast found himself reverting back to his habit of pointing out all the things that Sykkuno did wrong, and he would be met with eyes full of shock before it melted away into something colder. In return, Sykkuno didn’t hesitate to barricade himself with walls so high and impenetrable. Toast would apologize, and Sykkuno would lower down his guards. But then it took longer for Toast to recognize his fault and it took longer for Sykkuno to forgive. At times he felt like he was unheard when he tried to reconcile, and it made him angry again, making Sykkuno break down his walls just so he could snap back at Toast.

It was an exhausting cycle. One that drained so much energy and spirit from them both. There were nights when they just silently found their way to each other on the bed, and holding on tight without saying anything. They knew and accepted their mistakes; there was no need for apologies and forgiveness. Nights like those would always bring a better day the next morning. It was the only time they could relax and not bracing for another argument.

But anger was something tricky. It looked like it was something solid, but it really was just a wall of molten lava that could flow to the tiniest crevices in their mind. They dealt with anger in such a bad way that it left them both hurting. And when they were too tired to hurt each other, they hurt other things.

Instead of being stealthy and avoiding conflicts like they used to, they didn’t even care about masking their presence from the wendigos when they went out. He remembered, how they would avoid any fight unless it was absolutely necessary. And yet, whenever they found their way blocked by those creatures, they simply fought and gunned down their napes. It brought such a brief satisfaction to his heart. Before long, he wondered what would become of them if they were so used to being the hunter. The world wouldn’t stay like this forever; where would the hunters go if they no longer had any prey to kill?

Sykkuno took this habit to an extreme. Instead of fighting in encounters, he would chase the wendigos. Toast had lost count on how many times they went home while he was shaking in fear and rage.

“I told you to be careful!” he remembered himself snapping. “Do you think you’re invincible? Just because we can kill those monsters, doesn’t mean that we should go around looking for troubles.”

“What trouble?” Sykkuno would reply. “They are supposed to be hunted. The government is doing the same thing, too. So why shouldn’t we?”

Because it would break him without any chance of salvation if he ever lost Sykkuno. Because while they should remain vigilant, it didn't mean they had to be vigilantes. Because he wasn’t sure if Sykkuno still had the last remaining pieces of his humanity and it scared him. It made his throat clog up and his stomach churn when he thought that he no longer knew anything about his lover anymore.

But he didn’t say those things. And when he was alone, thinking about things that he should have done and said, the thought that between what was said and not meant, and what was meant and not said, he felt like love, too, slipped from their grasp.

With how many trades they had right now, it came as no surprise that a lot of people would try to bring them down or steal from them. Toast had never had any problem with killing actual humans when he needed to, but Sykkuno just—he just went on a rampage. On nights that Toast allowed him to go, after a lot of arguments beforehand, he would always come back smelling like blood. Always .

He tried to talk about it, because this much murder on an unstable mind would just break Sykkuno further. But all he said was, “It’s necessary.”

He didn’t get much explanation, and Sykkuno clammed up if he pushed. So he reluctantly let it go. Perhaps, this was also another one of the decisions he took at the wrong time, in the wrong place. But Toast was just a human, after all. Things eluded him, and he was none the wiser to the slips.

But the more Toast chose to peg down his ego and anger, so Sykkuno and he could talk without hostility, the more that Sykkuno saw it as a sort of freedom. He no longer just came home with scents of blood—he came home soaked in blood. Sometimes the blood would look so dark, and smelled so pungent that Toast wondered just how much he had killed and how long he had spent his time killing. After some time, Toast learned to just leave him until he was done showering and changing his clothes. The amount of clothes they burned kept piling up each month. He thought, one day they would find themselves with no thread to cover themselves because everything had been soaked with the blood of others.

When he kissed Sykkuno on those nights, he always tasted like the metallic tang that by now he had recognized as blood. It wasn’t something strange, he thought with a humorless laugh, with the amount of blood that drenched him. there would always be some that slipped into his mouth just as a proof of his sins that he couldn’t erase.

Sykkuno ate less and less, and sometimes Toast had to literally beg him to eat. He would relent then, with the faint whisper of guilt in his eyes. But he never finished the meals. Toast ate what he couldn’t finish because they shouldn’t waste food just because now they had an abundance of it. But he was thankful enough that the younger man ate something rather than nothing at all. Strangely enough, none of his body mass decreased. He still had the taut muscles from all their training and fighting, and it bothered Toast a lot.

Did he eat outside? Did he just eat whenever Toast wasn’t home? Did he no longer want to sit and eat with Toast anymore?

He didn’t know. He thought that if this was grief, then he was ready to make a deal with God, the universe, fate, the devil, just to make it disappear from the lines of their exhausted faces. Grief kept them going around in circles, and he was sometimes so afraid of moving forward in fear of setting off a landmine. This fear, in turn, allowed the worst night in his life to happen.

When Sykkuno came home that night, Toast was angry . It was later than their agreed curfew; much, much later. When he saw the man approaching the fence, he unlocked the door and pulled him inside without preamble. Sykkuno had smiled at him, but he really couldn’t concentrate on anything other than the rotten smell from the younger man and the hurtful words bubbling in his throat.

But before he could say anything, Sykkuno dropped the backpack and advanced closer to him. This close, the smell made him want to throw up. His eyes were starting to tear up from how sharp the smell of blood was. Blood—and something else. Something that Toast wasn’t sure he wanted to know. But he couldn’t move to escape it, because Sykkuno gripped his arms tight and breathed out, “Toast, I think I’ve become a monster.”

For a long, long second, Toast’s heart stopped beating. He couldn’t believe what he just heard. He thought that maybe this was Sykkuno’s past fear haunting him, but he took a proper look at the man’s face and felt like he had been dunked into a lake full of ice.

There was no fear or anxiety in Sykkuno’s face. Instead, there was this ominous serenity that made alarms blare loudly inside Toast’s head. His eyes were, impossibly, alight in the darkness. There was a sense of exhilaration that came from his elated smile. He couldn’t comprehend what Sykkuno was happy about. There was nothing right about the situation. None at all.

“What are you talking about, baby?” he tried cautiously, breath quickening along with the pace of his heartbeat. No, no, no. Had Sykkuno fallen through the yawning chasm? Was Toast too careless, too angry, too controlling, too late to catch his hand and pull him up onto the surface? This was something much worse than his nightmares. Because it was real ; the grip Sykkuno had on his arms was real, the rotten smell that seemed to suffocate the room was real, the absolute certainty that he couldn’t recognize this person who wore the face of his lover was all too real.

“It makes sense now,” Sykkuno said if he didn’t hear Toast. “It all makes sense now. I’m like this because I’m a monster, and because I’m a monster, I can kill them. I can kill them all now, Toast.”

“Sykkuno,” he said sharply, forcing control upon himself lest they spiral down in this madness. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“The wendigos,” the other replied, as if it was obvious.

And maybe, it should be obvious. There were reports of people being murdered, or just straight up missing around the city and neighborhood. But it wasn’t that many. He should have known, he thought as his heart leapt to his throat. All the bloodthirst, the aggressiveness, the pungent smell of the blood—Sykkuno wasn’t killing just humans, he was massacring the wendigos all along.

In a way, it should be a good thing. Eradicating the wendigos was the only way life could return into a semblance of normalcy. But not—not like this. He didn’t want it to be like this. He didn’t want Sykkuno running around losing his sanity and heart while he killed wendigos left and right. The blood that he sometimes tasted on the man’s lips… he gritted his teeth and steeled himself. There was no use of being queasy now.

He shrugged off the grip Sykkuno had on him with greater difficulty than he expected. But once he managed to, he clenched his hands on his shoulders in return. The man himself didn’t seem to be fazed. He ignored the pang of fear that he wasn’t heard again, that Sykkuno wasn’t here . “Snap out of it,” he said, voice cold and hard.

That brought Sykkuno back. His eyes were filled with honest confusion. “What do you mean, Toast?”

“This isn’t you ,” he said, almost trembling in the sudden sadness that settled in his lungs. “You talk about killing those monsters as if you couldn’t get killed. As if you’re one yourself—“

“But I am one!” the younger man insisted.

“You’re not !” he roared. He had had enough of this—of all of this. Sykkuno needed to come back to his senses, and he would take the entire schedule off for tomorrow. They needed to talk about this, or he would completely lose Sykkuno to the dark water.

Sykkuno looked at him as if he was seeing Toast for the first time. He shrugged off Toast’s hold on him easily, far too easily, and took several steps back. “You don’t- you don’t understand do you, Toast?”

“ You’re the one who doesn’t understand!” he said harshly. “This is too far, Sykkuno. I don’t know what happened to you, I don’t know what you’re doing out there, I don’t know why you’re so obsessed with calling yourself a monster. But this has been going on for too long! I don’t even recognize you anymore!”

That seemed to shock the younger man into silence. His hands were trembling, and his face—oh, God , his face was a mess of emotions that broke Toast’s heart when he examined them properly. There was confusion, doubt, betrayal, disappointment—heartbreak.

He felt his sanity and guilt creeped back into his mind. He sighed, and tried to step closer to the man who seemed to be frozen in place. “Sykkuno…” he tried. “Is this about Ronald? Did you do all of this because you still can’t move one?”

That name, brought a face that not even Toast’s deepest affection could recognize. It was just so ugly in the twist of emotions and contempt. “What does Ronald have to do in this situation? You think I haven’t let him go? You think I did this because I’m so hung up on one death, that I’m going insane with it? You haven’t moved on, Toast. You’re the one who was stuck in the past, so much that you see past me. I did this because I’m moving on. Because I understand my new purpose in life, and I’ll honor Ronald’s death by looking forward.”

“Shut your mouth! ”

Toast trembled, no longer in fear now that was completely blinded by rage. How dare Sykkuno say those things, when all Toast did was try his hardest to move on and honor the man’s last wish. How dare he say that Toast didn’t see him when he kept disappearing from him. How fucking dare he say that as if a new purpose would justify all of this pain and anger they had inflicted on each other.

“You don’t know shit, Sykkuno!” he yelled out, slamming his fist against the door. “I’m doing all of this for us ! I can’t sleep at night because you won’t tell me anything! I have to take care of managing our trades, our resources, our relations to people—on top of it all, now I have to manage you !”

“Manage?” Sykkuno said, low and dangerous. “ Manage ? So I’m just a thing that you put on the schedule for the time of the day, huh, Toast? It’s always about you! You keep thinking that you did all of this by yourself! You think that I like being put in a cage like this? You think you’re so great, that you think you’re the one who’s saving me, when you can’t even save yourself!”

“Oh, we’re talking about greatness, aren’t we?” he asked, mocking the man he had vowed to protect in his life. There was no rationality or sanity left in either of them. Once the dam was broken, there was no choice left but to drown in the harsh current of the dark water. They had no shore, no house, no ship. If they were going to drown, then fine . He’d drown them both together. “You talk as if you’re the savior of the human race. As if by going on a killing spree, you’d somehow save us all. You’re a fucking human , and you can die . Even worse than that, you could be turned into those things that you killed—you said you’re a monster, Sykkuno? You want to be a monster that bad? Then go ahead and be one!”

“ I already am one! ” Sykkuno growled out, loud enough to be deafening. The wall he punched behind him left a small crater, the paint chipped away and crumbling along with some concrete. Toast paused, eyes widening at the impact. Human fists, no matter how strong they were, shouldn’t be able to do that. “You never listened to me, Toast! You always, always, always think that you have to do everything by yourself. You only accept your own reality while tossing away any possibility I’ve given to you! You’re so wrapped up in yourself that you don’t even know that you’ve lost me!”

That— that ripped away everything Toast felt right now. He was left as a blank canvas, because it didn’t make sense. He wouldn’t—Sykkuno wouldn’t say that. Toast hadn’t lost him, he was here .

But… was he?

“What?” he asked, feeling so hollow.

Sykkuno looked at him then. His eyes, that still strangely shone in the dim light, expressed so much grief and loss in them. It wasn’t one for Ronald, Toast realized with a sense of detachment. It was for them.

“You’ve been losing me since a long time ago, Toast,” he choked out, the fight draining out of him now that they both weren’t so intent on drowning each other. “It’s not- it’s also my fault. But I know you won’t understand. You keep saying that you don’t care if I’m a monster, that if I’m one then you’re going to burden it along with me. But this—this isn’t something I can share. I think… I think you keep saying that all I did is okay, that you’re okay with it, because you just don’t want to accept that I- I really am a monster.”

He tried to move, to step forward and touch Sykkuno, just to make sure that he wasn’t already a galaxy so far away in this universe. But he couldn’t. He felt like seeing everything from an outsider point of view; it was his body, his voice, his face—but he couldn’t even tell himself to move .

“Sykkuno,” he finally managed to croak out. “If this is about you killing people then—“

“No,” Sykkuno cut in softly. “It really isn’t.”

“Then what is it about?” he asked. He was so confused. All of his previously wiped out emotions were turbulence that was shaking under this temporary blankness. “What are you not telling me?”

The younger man shook his head. “I already told you. Again and again.”

“You’re not a monster,” he said. He felt like a broken record, repeating the same word over and over again. “The wendigos are the monsters, Sykkuno. I don’t- I don’t understand. One moment you’re telling me that they’re people who are lost, and you keep—you keep talking about making them into a human again, and the next moment you start killing them like crazy. Sykkuno—Sykkuno, what the fuck is going on with you?”

Sykkuno smiled, soft, so gentle in his sadness. “See, Toast? You heard me, you remember what I said, but you don’t see me. All you see is someone you have to protect without ever knowing who it is that you’re truly protecting— what it is, that you’re protecting. The Sykkuno that you love, you might have left him in my house. The one standing in front of you right now is not someone you can love.”

“Stop—“ he said, tried. He couldn’t get the words past his mouth. “Stop talking like that, Sykkuno. You- you’re not gonna—“

“I’m leaving.”

That word, that one word that was uttered so simply with so much conviction broke Toast in ways that he had never imagined he could be broken by before. More than drowning, this felt like the whole ocean was dried up and left nothing but emptiness behind. There was nothing but rotten bodies, past mistakes, and sins that he had tried to leave behind him.

He didn’t know which way was up anymore. He didn’t know if he could breathe, if his heart was still beating. He didn’t even know if he was still alive.

Sykkuno didn’t wait for him to respond. He just went to unlock the door with reflexes that Toast should have paid better attention to. When Sykkuno was about to unlock the grated door, Toast managed to snap out of his encompassing ache and grabbed onto his hand.

“If you,” he started, then stopped. He didn’t know what he was about to say anymore, what he should say to make him stay. Because that was the only thing that he carried with him since the moment they left the house in that peaceful neighborhood. He wanted Sykkuno to stay, he wanted to stay. But what came out of his mouth was: “If you step out of the door, out of our home , I won’t look for you.”

He didn’t know what he expected from that. But he couldn’t even gather the slightest bit of surprise, though painful as it was, when Sykkuno tugged his hand away.

“Maybe it’s better that way,” he said; wistful, somber. “For your own sake, I truly hope we never see each other again, Toast.”

Sykkuno was gone before the tears had the chance to fall.

Toast sat there, next to the door, for so long that his legs felt numb. He didn’t know whether it was actually that long, or if it just felt like that. Without Sykkuno, his world no longer had order. Everything fell into shambles; the emptiness inside of him just grew and grew until it filled his whole body. He felt like if he cut himself right now, he wouldn’t even bleed.

He couldn’t comprehend what had just happened, couldn’t wrap his head around the situation. Sykkuno… had left him. The only person who mattered in his life—he was- he was gone . Toast wanted to wake up from this nightmare. But as much as he tried slapping, punching, biting himself, he was still there, and Sykkuno was still gone.

What had happened? How did it go so wrong? Was it because of the four men? The man Sykkuno killed that night? Was it Ronald’s death?

No, he knew it wasn’t Ronald. The old man was a catalyst of some sort, perhaps, but not the source . Jesus fuck, he couldn’t believe that he let it be this bad. He thought that maybe Sykkuno was right; he had lost the man a long time ago. When was it, he wondered? Was it when the rampage of murders started? Was it their fights? Was it their sudden, crushing inability to read each other anymore? Or was it something way back when—was it Michael?

“I failed him,” he said out loud. He realized, with such a sudden that he was dizzy with it, that every single turning point of their life, Sykkuno had been the one who dirtied his hands to kill those people, those monsters. All the burden that Toast swore to take along with, had never been on his shoulders all along—it all rested on Sykkuno and he had been drowning long before Toast realized it.

He kept claiming that he didn’t care about killing people, because he believed himself to be apathetic about it. He had talked, long and feeling vindictive, to that one officer about justice and justification, about morals. But was he a hypocrite? Because despite saying those, time and time again he was the one who set the black and white barrier of what should be right and what should be wrong in his world and Sykkuno’s. It wasn’t—it wasn’t even their world. It was his and only his.

In his blind, pompous selfishness, he believed himself to be capable of committing those atrocities because had put a goal in his head to survive. But Sykkuno had been the one who had started everything. His cold attitude and careful lack of empathy towards other people so they could survive, killing Michael so he wouldn’t follow them home again, killing those robbers so they could protect Ronald, killing the wendigo who had bitten Ronald because Toast was paralyzed from shock, even—even killing Ronald, so he could spare Toast from it. Fuck, even before the end of the world, he had been the one who crouched on the starting point before anyone could realize they were in a race against time.

How could he ever think that he was the one who protected Sykkuno, when he had been so sheltered all along?

Sykkuno had his own faults, goddamn, he did. He kept secrets from Toast, he kept trying to take all the burdens despite saying that he trusted him, he kept gauging his reactions without actually telling what he had in mind. All the killings that he did, it wasn’t Toast’s place to judge, but those weren’t something that people would call as kindness.

Kindness was killing the wendigo so they could rest forever, kindness was killing those wretched bastards so they wouldn’t hurt other people, kindness was proving his trust by actually saying something.

What Sykkuno did wasn’t that, not at all. He hunted them down like animals, like he was a God and thus should do whatever he wanted because he felt like he could. He butchered them all because he thought that it was his purpose, instead of other personal reasons. Why should it become his purpose?

He kept thinking, and thinking, and thinking, and when he tentatively reached out to it, he understood why Sykkuno said that Toast had never seen him all this time. Because it was there, all this time it was there. All those little things that he did notice but never consider, all those words that he had heard but never wanted to understand. In his single-minded focus of bringing them to the shore, he was blind to all the dangers and islands that were there all along in what he thought as a vast, empty ocean.

Oh God, oh God.

He wrung the last bit of strength he had in him, and ran to snatch his backpack and weapons. He only had half a mind to lock the doors and stepped away from the traps they had set on the gate. His mind was running a mile a minute. Even after everything that they had gone through together, after he thought that he finally had his peace with Sykkuno in his arms, he turned a blind eye to the danger in his own house. It wasn’t his lover— would he… would Sykkuno still want to be called as his lover? —but the loneliness that he brought with him because of Toast’s ignorance.

The world turned into chaos because people were ignorant, and his world shattered into emptiness because he had never changed at all. He was still that ignorant person with a stiff point of view. He didn’t learn, after all this time, he hadn’t even learnt anything.

Even back when they still lived in Sykkuno’s house, he had noticed these little things. His steadily increasing speed, his insane flexibility, his inhumane strength. They all had accumulated and Toast had brushed them aside because he had never learned how to consider the possibilities when it didn’t make sense to him. Everything Sykkuno said about the wendigos being lost, that they could still be saved because the only problem was the small part of the brain that had been infected, that because it was a disease their bodies could still fight against it.

That day that he had tried so hard to insist on turning Ronald, his implication that someone could live their life as a wendigo—with consciousness, with thoughts. He had been so adamant about it, had been so sure that the turning process wouldn’t take as long as the media said. He talked as if he knew just how the healing factor of wendigos worked, intimately. It all started with pity, with speculations, and it ended up in a bone-chilling fact that Toast couldn’t manage to understand.

There was someone who managed to reverse the disease, who could be turned and still live their life as a person. That someone, was Sykkuno.

He understood, then, why Sykkuno had been so reluctant in calling the people they knew as wendigos, despite it being necessary to protect them from more pain. Jesus fuck, Toast was an idiot. He had insisted so hard, all the time they were together, that the wendigos were the monsters. He talked about disregarding morals and reasons to justify their survival means, when he had been so prejudiced to the point of dictating about the line of humanity that they should never cross.

He shouldn’t have chained Sykkuno in Toast’s perspectives, without ever wanting to listen and learn about his. He thought that by killing actual people, they were chipping away at their humanity; that by thinking about the wendigos as mere animals to hunt, it would rip away the last remains of their conscience. But it was his point of view, it was his opinion.

He skidded to a halt at the slightest bit of sound, checking every alley and every places where he thought he heard the wendigos. People who had gone out for supply run, or simply scavenging the remains of the neighborhood stared at him as he shouted Sykkuno’s name tireless. None of them tried to stop and help him, and he felt so, so foolish.

By technical definition, the wendigos were monsters. But just like what Sykkuno said on the day when they killed the four men who robbed Ronald’s place: you should have known that the wendigos aren’t the only monsters out there . Because wendigos weren’t the only ones who could turn into monsters. Ordinary people were more than capable of being infected by corruption, anger, jealousy, envy—everything… everything that had infected Toast at some point in his life.

Maybe Sykkuno was right, when he said that Toast kept saying he’d burden the sins along with him because he didn’t want to accept that Sykkuno was a monster. What kind of moral bullshit clusterfuck did he have back then? How naïve he was to think that everyone wouldn’t emerge as a monster after they had seen such atrocities they could commit? Even on his first supply run, what he fought was human, instead of wendigos.

Wendigos were, in a way, animals. In the sense that they didn’t think of anything else but to satiate their hunger. But much like animals, they couldn’t fight their instincts. They posed a threat to humanity simply because humanity didn’t understand their nature, and therefore was helpless against them. Sykkuno had figured out their motives, their movements, their weakness, and their strength because he was willing to understand the wendigos, and gave himself the knowledge to beat them.

It wasn’t that Sykkuno wanted this to be his purpose, slaughtering wendigos left and right because he was physically capable of doing so. He could, of course he could; his strength was on par with them, and he had the advantage of having his consciousness. He could heal if he was hurt, and their bites could no longer infect him as he was already infected.

Instead, without his knowledge, Toast had made it as his purpose. Because he was so adamant in what he thought was right. He had declared which side of the lane was the monster, and in doing so, hurting Sykkuno and pushing him deeper into the murky water of his loneliness. They were together all the time, but he was the only one who was aware about what he was. Toast thought that he was holding the man, but he hadn’t even reached him.

Part of it was still Sykkuno’s fault, because Toast couldn’t possibly be expected to know everything, even if he entertained those possibilities and thought about them. He had decided to drown and Toast unintentionally helped him along the way.

“You stupid fucker!” he roared out to the night. “Sykkuno!”

He thought that maybe, just maybe, Sykkuno himself wasn’t aware of him turning, because the symptoms simply weren’t there at the beginning. When he asked Toast all those nights ago in Ronald’s place, he had asked if Toast thought that he was a monster. But that—that was simply in a metaphorical sense. Then when did he—?

That man. The man that Sykkuno killed on the day he came home soaked in blood, the one that the officer had asked about. He remembered what she said. Wendigos don’t eat dead bodies, you know. Because it wasn’t a wendigo who ate that man, not exactly. The irrationality, the excessive anger, the cruelty that he so easily wielded simply because he wanted to— that was the last turning point, and the time when Sykkuno realized that he was wholly, completely a wendigo.

He had asked again whether Toast hated him, even if he became a monster. And Toast had—he had denied him the very same thing that he promised. He had promised . Sykkuno’s promises were as much as the galaxies out there. And like the galaxies, just because people hadn’t discovered the rest of them, didn’t mean they didn’t exist. Just because he hadn’t fulfilled them, didn’t mean he wouldn’t .

And Toast only had three promises, didn’t he? To let Sykkuno do anything he wanted as long as he was happy; to stay with him; to not hate him even if he turned into a monster. Three promises that he managed to break, every single one of them. He controlled Sykkuno, he lost him without even realizing it, and he had made Sykkuno think that he hated and couldn’t love him when turned into a monster.

Those promises Sykkuno kept whispering to him every night stopped when Toast asked him to stay. He couldn’t, simply because he knew that he wouldn’t be accepted if Toast knew. He had realized by then that he was well into his way of turning into the very same thing that Toast—not loathed, no, it was even worse—didn’t care about.

One case didn’t change the majority. Wendigos still killed too many people, and caused the suffering and agony humanity had to go through. But they didn’t matter to him—Sykkuno did. He was willing to be called a hypocrite, because he would be willing to bend his beliefs for one person only. Anything , as long as he could find Sykkuno and tell him that he was wrong about one thing.

Wendigos weren’t the only creature who could be a monster. If humans were capable of the same feat, then Toast, someone who had experienced all the corruption that infected humanity, was a monster, too. If he wasn’t able to bear the sins with Sykkuno as an ignorant human, then he would try again as another monster who knew that he could, he had, and he still did love Sykkuno.

He just hoped that in the race against time that he only now participated in, he could still tell him all of this.

He couldn’t find Sykkuno. Not even a week of tirelessly searching. He asked the people they usually traded with, the people at the shelters, anywhere. Officer Shelby was alarmed and promised him she would contact him through the radio if she heard any news about Sykkuno. He nodded and tried not to look as dejected as he felt.

He came home once every few days, and packed as many supplies as he was able to carry to continue his search. It would be easier than wasting time trekking home every night while he could use the hours to sweep every corner of the city. He had a sudden, irrational fear that Sykkuno wasn’t even in the city. It was possible that he could slip through, but every perimeter was secured tightly to prevent anyone from entering and getting out.

He tried to calm himself down. His mind hadn’t stopped running on thoughts since that night. He was at the mercy of the sharp talons of fear. Not for himself, but for Sykkuno. He knew what the man was, and he knew about his physical capabilities. But it couldn’t stop the fear that always kept him awake through his slumber.

The nights were getting progressively colder. He huddled close in his sleeping bag, inside an abandoned convenience store. There was no heater to keep him warm, no layers of blankets, no Sykkuno. It was dark inside the store, the only light he got was from the street lamps outside. It had been nearly two weeks now.

The house was in shambles with no one to manage it. Manage . He smiled bitterly; that word left such a sharp tang of disappointment at himself. He remembered how hurt Sykkuno had looked when he spat out that word like rotten fruit. The garden was even worse; it looked like a wasteland. Sometimes, when he got home, he would go to Ronald’s grave and just sit there for a while. The apple tree had grown taller since the last they remembered, the name engraved there stood out in the dark bark. How long had it been, since his death? Toast couldn’t remember. He smiled apologetically at Ronald’s grave and told the lump of soil that he would try to remember next time.

How long had it been since this all started? Two years? Three years? More than that? He honestly couldn’t keep up anymore. In just two weeks of Sykkuno’s disappearance, his meticulously kept schedule had been shot to hell, along with his own thoughts. His mind kept circling back to their last fight, all the time Sykkuno told him something but he simply didn’t listen, and his fear of never finding Sykkuno again. He felt… tired. Even more tired than those months they spent struggling after Ronald’s death.

He felt untethered. The only anchor he had in all of this chaotic mess was Sykkuno, now that he was gone he couldn’t even fathom just how to function properly anymore—not his automatic routine: his heart. He had tried to visit places that were most likely to be filled with swarms of wendigos, but when he got there, he was always several steps behind. The mangled bodies of the wendigos scattered in front of him like grotesque flower petals. They had been killed a few days before he arrived there. He tried another place, and was met with the same sight.

He wondered, if Sykkuno ate them or just viciously killed them until they were unrecognizable. All of the bodies had their heads crushed or smashed open. The only exception were children who were turned into wendigos. They had been treated kindly, with bullets to the back of their head instead of through brute strength. He imagined the pain Sykkuno must have felt to witness it; just how sick and exhausted he was from doing the same thing over and over again.

Sykkuno seemed to derive no joy in his slaughters, now that Toast thought about it. He came home grinning sometimes, that night too, but there was always this manic look on his face. As if he was on the verge of hysteria. Toast let that happen, right in front of his eyes.

He now knew why Sykkuno didn’t seem to have any appetite to eat. He had eaten—either human or wendigos, Toast didn’t know. Did he need to consume the flesh to sustain himself? He ate regular food just fine, but that might be because he had all of his senses working properly. But the other symptoms were still there, because he was infected. Sykkuno’s body might work differently than that of a regular wendigo, but it didn’t mean that he could escape the change of physiology into one. Was that… why his eyes shone so strangely that night?

Everything that had happened, now became clearer when Toast looked at them through different lenses. He thought about them often, but bit by bit he managed to control them. He couldn’t conduct an effective search if he was too distracted, too caught up in his mistakes and self-blame. He would lie them bare, with his honesty and his apologies, but he needed to find Sykkuno to do that.

He tried to check Ronald’s place, even going so far as coming back to Sykkuno’s house, but he wasn’t there. He visited places that Sykkuno liked, the ones that they intentionally detoured to in supply runs because he liked playing around in them. He checked one by one each of those places, and still no trace of him aside from some stragglers that Toast killed through muscle memory alone.

At the end of November, he decided to go back and regroup his thoughts. Sometimes, he found dead bodies near the fence, or around their house. Seemed like their traps still worked just fine. He disposed of the bodies on the street, not caring in the slightest if people questioned why the bodies were piling up there. At the very least, they died because of their own stupidity. One some days, he found wendigos either trapped on the barbed wire on the fence or the traps inside. Their regeneration kept them from dying and simply healing over and over again. He killed them, too. He had killed a lot in the past few years, but he felt so damn tired of it now. He couldn’t even imagine how Sykkuno was feeling.

He lay awake in the bed that felt too big, too cold, too empty. He took the time to properly tile the garden and set the tools aside on the shed so they wouldn’t be damaged. He threw the rotting vegetables on the pile of compost, and ate without really tasting anything. He didn’t trade anymore; he ran out of things to trade, and didn’t want to make anything. Even thinking about the word made him feel sad and old.

Sykkuno had made the right trade with all the wrong prices, while Toast had made the wrong trade thinking that he knew the value.

They both had been fucked to hell and back in the absolute trade that life had offered without a hint of allowance of refusal: misery.

He wondered which part of the ocean Sykkuno was swimming in right now, if he hadn’t drowned himself to stare at the rotting bodies that had piled up so high they had made an island out of them. In his dreams, it was an ocean with dark water; in his mind, it was a river with harsh current. He had told Sykkuno about them—how he had built his dam, how he had dipped his legs in the water, how he did it just to reach the man. He told him about finding a shore, about building a house, about his pondering on why he didn’t build a ship instead of a dam.

He had nothing, now. The dam was broken, in shambles along with his mind. Sykkuno was lost in the ocean, and he was gasping for air against the current. He had thought of them as two separate things, but perhaps they were more connected than he previously thought. After all, the river would always flow into the ocean.

He remembered, with such fondness that made him ache, of Sykkuno’s promises on this bed. He wasn’t here now, but maybe Toast could continue it. They could go to an actual shore, overlooking the ocean, have a picnic there and work on their tan lines. Unfortunately, the closest one would be quite a trip. But they did have a river nearby. It would still be a shore, too. They could go there, to the river—

The river . The potential shelter near the riverbank, the one that he previously had wanted to go to before he relented to Sykkuno and chose this shelter instead.

It was as if all traces of fatigue and exhaustion were wiped off from his mind. This was a small chance, but the possibility was there. If he didn’t find him there, he would just—sit for a while and think. Maybe it was time to actually face the river, just so he could stop fighting so hard against the current that he wasn’t quite sure anymore was there.

He prepared his supplies, renewed the traps, and started the long trek. It took him almost two days to get there, stopping on some places for rest and shelter when the night became too cold. When he saw the familiar white building, he felt like his heart might jump out of his cage with how fast it was beating. There were no visible signs of Sykkuno outside, but he might be inside.

But then, his mind whispered, what if he didn’t want to see Toast? What if he knew Toast was there and went into hiding? He did say to Sykkuno that he wouldn’t look for him, and he told Toast that it was better if they never met again. After all, why would he want to look at the man who had hurt him so much that he left after everything?

He swallowed against the sudden block in his throat. His chest felt tight, but the state of chaos his mind and heart was in reminded him why he was here. He wouldn’t throw away the possibility just because the fear made logical sense. He had learnt that he had to go through every single one of them so he would understand a different perspective than his own. If Sykkuno wasn’t there, if he didn’t want to see Toast, he just had to adjust his goal and sit on the riverbank to think. The river meant a lot to his state of mind. Just because one goal couldn’t be reached by a meaning, didn’t mean that it was futile. He just had to consider another door that would be opened by the action.

So he steeled himself, heaving a deep breath, and trudged through the damp soil to where the front of the building would be. When he opened the door, he was greeted by dust that had accumulated there. There was no sign of Sykkuno inside, either. He clenched down the acute disappointment that settled in the pit of his stomach. He checked the rooms one by one, calling out Sykkuno’s name. After spending much too long on what he knew was a futile attempt, he closed the door and went to sit on the front porch that overlooked the river.

It was cold. He knew the water would be freezing, and deeper than it looked. But he couldn’t help the urge. So he opened his shoes, and deposited them next to his backpack. He sat on the edge of the riverbank, and dipped his toe on the shallow water where the pebbles would anchor him. He shivered when his previously warm skin suddenly went through such a temperature change. The water was very clear, and though he could feel the flow of the water, there was no harsh current that would drown him.

He went a little bit deeper, until he felt the water nearly touch his knees. It was going to be a bitch drying his legs later, but right now, despite the freezing water and the cold air of early December, he felt—at peace. With a part of himself, at the very least. He had made the current with his torrents of thoughts and fears. He forgot that there would be riverbanks where he could try to swim to and sit there for a while. He forgot that there was steep water where he wouldn’t feel as lost while still feeling the flow of the river around him. He forgot… that there would be branches of trees along the way, where he could reach for them and pulled himself onto the dry land.

Most of all, he forgot that someone could reach out a hand and help him, too.

There were a lot of things in his life that turned out to be so different than what he initially thought about them. People, beliefs, opinions, emotions, affections, even such things like disasters and emotional state of mind. He thought he knew himself, and thus by that confidence, he thought he could know people. Little did he know that he had casted an illusion right in front of his eyes.

He realized, that calling himself blind for not seeing all those things wasn’t quite right. A lot of people couldn’t help the way they were raised to think, or how their environment would shape it up. Of course, there was the certain variable of his own nature. But these things added up, you see; there were things he should feel responsible about, but there were also things he should acknowledge but understand that it wasn’t completely under his control. So rather than blinded, he instead didn’t see them through the right perspectives.

It had been more than three years, he remembered. The attack in the restaurant, the one that changed a lot of people’s lives for a long time, started on the fourth of March. It was already the end of the year now, another winter to go through. He couldn’t even remember that his birthday had passed. They didn’t get to celebrate his birthday the first year, because they were too busy preparing themselves. The second year, they were struggling with grief and changes. This year, he had spent it searching for Sykkuno, as well as pieces of himself that he had shed and forgotten along the way.

Three years, and he was so busy, so wrapped up in things that while allowing him to survive and advance, made him isolated from his surroundings, as well as isolating Sykkuno. In the initial months, he remembered calling the outbreak a natural disaster. Because up until now, no one knew where it came from. There were rumors and speculations, but they were never confirmed. It felt like a natural disaster back then because no one knew how to fight it. Now, it still felt the same, but the reason changed: the inevitability of the aftermath. Even if this outbreak lasted for less than five years, it would take decades to rebuild the society.

In three years, despite dubbing it a natural disaster, despite knowing that it was supposed to remind him about how inevitable and timeless nature was, he had never once try to reconnect to it. Even with the garden, it had been a business, too. The only time he ever felt like he was close to nature was the apple tree that had become Ronald’s tombstone. Death, and nature—what a pair, he thought to himself.

He was almost… what, thirty-five this year? God, it felt like he was much older than that. With Sykkuno, somehow, he felt like they were young still. Like they wouldn’t age, like they would live forever. Sykkuno—with his current state—wouldn’t look like he aged past late-twenties anymore. The cells would regenerate too fast for any wrinkle or health complication to catch up, especially with a different variable like he was. He imagined how it looked, if Sykkuno would be there with him in the future. This old, grouchy man and his twenty-something lover. Sykkuno would love the chaos that would ensue, if only for entertainment.

He smiled wistfully to himself. All those years ago, when Sykkuno slowly built his confidence and his chaotic nature slowly revealed itself with such unapologetic determination. He had enjoyed their time playing together. But he let his own mind sabotage a friendship that he could cherish without thinking of any possible trade that would wait for him if he were to keep that bond.

Humans really were such fickle creatures, weren’t they?

He remembered what he thought about kindness. How something that was supposed to be selfless, was still a trade of some sort. He supposed he deluded himself about that, too. All this time, he thought he wanted to protect Sykkuno without any trade in mind. But he had wanted a lot, hadn’t he? The promises that he asked of him, all those times that he thought he was doing it for the sake of them both, while in reality he traded his own goal with Sykkuno’s loneliness and misery as Toast trapped him in his own mind.

Sykkuno had a clearer way of thinking than him. It might be because he knew which was the actual current and which was a hurdle he created in his own mind. Toast not only created the waves that would swallow him, it would swallow them both too. He used to be able to cross the bridge when the time came, but when did it change into him calculating far too many possibilities before actually crossing it? Those possibilities were only the ones that he had wanted to consider. Before long, the wood of the bridge would decay, and he would fall into the river when he tried to step on it.

Sykkuno had waited with him, hadn’t he? And so, when Toast was plunged into the river, he would too.

He realized, how ironic it was that things had come into a full circle in all the worst ways. Everything he had thought about back then, either he had done it, had it happened to him, or he had applied to himself. The trades, the truths, the kindness. Even the concept of God came back to bite him in the ass. He prayed, with the hopes of someone who never quite believed in the existence of a higher being, that what he thought about the universe and the galaxies wouldn’t come true. He had accelerated the process along the way, but Toast could still reach out to him before he adorned the sky in his loneliness.

He let out a breath, and enjoyed a few moments just breathing in the clean air. Nature could be unpredictable, cruel, devastating, but such things were inevitable for something that didn’t concern itself with the rules of humans. It wasn’t that nature was evil, it just didn’t care. But nature was beautiful, in its pure lack of trade. When it gave something to humans, it simply didn’t ask for something back.

Toast thought that he couldn’t be quite like that; it simply wouldn’t work with the rules of the humans, and he had to adapt to them. But he could change several aspects of himself to be someone he actually knew; someone who was disillusioned from ego and selfish truths. He looked down at his legs and saw that the water had distorted the shape, but he could still see it clearly. Perhaps that was what he wanted. Someone who knew that they didn’t know everything, but could still see pretty clearly where they stood.

When he left the river, his toes were wrinkled and he felt a little numb from the cold. But he felt content, at ease with his mind. Maybe he should visit again sometimes. If… if he couldn’t find Sykkuno after a long time, maybe he could move here. He was sure he could figure out how to grow some things on soil like this. If the world came into order once again, he would try to find ways to buy this property. He looked at the river as he walked back, feeling himself smiling a little at how a frantic search could end up with such a clarity for another part of himself.

A frantic search that came to an end, when he turned and saw that Sykkuno was sitting on the front porch of the house.

He didn’t stop, but he did slow his footsteps. He didn’t quite know how the man would react to him, or what he should actually do. But he did know what he wanted to say. When he got closer, Sykkuno was looking at the river. He had never once glanced at Toast, though he knew his presence was somewhat acknowledged. He sat next to his backpack, straightening his legs so the cold wind could dry the water.

He didn’t mind this, he thought. Even if he ended up not being able to talk to Sykkuno, just seeing him and being close to him after months was more than enough. He was alive, he looked well, though it might be just the infection covering up his physical exhaustion. His hair was longer than he remembered, and the edges were jagged. Maybe he cut it himself.

They sat and stared at the flowing river, the melodious sound of the calm current that glided with the harsher one in a harmony. A balance.

“I thought you said you won’t look for me,” Sykkuno then said.

Hearing his voice after so long without it made Toast ache, but he heaved a deep breath of cold air and looked at him. “I did,” he said.

Sykkuno still didn’t look at him. “Why are you here, then?”

“Because I made a mistake.”

The younger man nodded. “I did, too.”

They didn’t speak anymore until his legs were dried and he put on his socks and shoes. He didn’t touch his backpack. He would wait, and he would speak only if Sykkuno wanted to hear it.

“Do you know what am I, now, Toast?” he asked, calling his name for the first time.

“Yes,” he said simply.

This time, Sykkuno turned to look at him. The set of his dark eyes still looked the same, though there was a certain resignation that flashed through it. “And what am I?”

He could say the fact. He could tell Sykkuno all the way he had figured it out. Instead, he opted with honesty and affection that he could feel thrumming gently in his ribcage. “The man I love.”

There were a million things that he still wanted to say, but it all boiled down to those words, anyway. He should learn how to be simpler, in thoughts and in actions. In honesty.

Sykkuno didn’t say anything, but the smile on his face was frail and bittersweet. He looked back to the river. Toast noticed that the man only had a gun and a knife strapped to his belt. The knife that he gave to him on his birthday. His clothes were slightly disheveled, but they were clean and there was no stain of blood there. At the very least, he was taking care of himself—physically at least. He left his crossbow at home, but Toast knew he didn’t need any weapon to kill the wendigos.

Between a man and a monster, Sykkuno was both and neither. To Toast, he would only be Sykkuno—someone he had hurt, but would like to apologize to; someone he loved, and would try to be clearer, simpler in his affection towards.

It was funny, in a way, how his worries evolved over the years, and they all involved Sykkuno. The ignored phone calls, their frantic means of survivability, their shelter and trades, and then the stability of their relationship and emotional health. Toast lost him not because he missed the signs, but rather because he noticed them and opted to be ignorant about them.

He didn’t ask Sykkuno to come back with him; to their home, to his arms. He didn’t ask for explanations. He didn’t ask for anything except for this chance of spending this moment with him. Toast loved him, as simple as that. And he had told the man, so really, there was nothing he could ask for anymore.

“Do you know what I’m doing?” he heard the man say. He didn’t sound like he was particularly asking a question, but he replied nonetheless.

“Somewhat,” he admitted. “I have a vague idea.”

“No one will try to turn them back,” Sykkuno said. “And though there could be others like me out there, they might not realize it until it’s too late. The only option is through eradication.”

“And you’re going to do that,” Toast finished for him.

“It’s more efficient that way,” the younger man shrugged. “I’m strong enough to overpower them, and I can’t die unless someone shoots me in the nape. Or if I’m eaten.”

“That’s such a grotesque ending for a protagonist,” he said, smiling at the memory of his thoughts.

Sykkuno raised his eyebrows, his face doing that funny thing like he couldn’t make up his mind between feeling offended and wanting to laugh. It was… nice, to be able to see him clearly like this again. “Protagonist?”

“Used to think of you as that,” he admitted. “Kind, smart, adored by people, and has multiple arcs ranging from training, power up, battle climax, vigilante, and ended up with saving the world. I still think of you that way.”

“I did actually go through all of that, save for the last one,” Sykkuno said, a faint laughter at the end of his voice. Toast missed it dearly. “I can’t save the world... but I can save the world of the person I love.”

At that, Toast’s heart skipped a beat or two. He knew that hope was so clear on the lines of his face, but he found that he didn’t quite mind. If anything, he would like to keep some of the promises he made to himself. If he kept breaking his promises to other people, perhaps it was time to practice by doing what he promised to his mind, his heart, his soul.

“I think a lot these days,” Sykkuno continued. “I made a lot of mistakes, and I threw blames and accusations like I had the right to do it. I was blind in what I thought was my purpose, and I think that rather than saving the whole world, I can try saving myself instead, so I can be someone who deserves to save the one I love.”

With how much Toast spent his life thinking, he still didn’t know how to put his feelings on the right word. Sykkuno was able to do that, and Toast felt that he ought to be more connected to his heart, the way Sykkuno was.

“You’re also someone who deserves to be saved,” Toast said quietly.

Sykkuno looked at him, properly looked at his face, his appearance, the words he knew Toast couldn’t say because he hadn’t learned how to. “I think I want to be saved, too.”

Toast moved then, walking slowly until he could kneel in front of Sykkuno. “You are someone I can, I have, and I do love,” he said. “We found the shore, we have a house to go back to. If you have decided what you want to do, will you let me build the ship with you so you can travel the ocean?”

“Will you travel it with me?” Sykkuno asked, and for the first time, finally showed just how tired, how afraid he was.

“I will.”

“This time, instead of staying until all of this is over, can I ask you to stay longer?”

“Will you let me stay?” he asked then. Even if his purposes were misguided back then, Toast still wanted to have them in the end. He wanted to stay, and he would follow where Sykkuno went. If he went to places where Toast couldn’t follow, he would want him to know that he still had a home to go back to.

Sykkuno smiled softly, kneeling down in front of Toast so they could be on the same level. Equal, balanced; a calm and harsh current that cancelled, balanced, and harmonized with each other instead of clashing. They were a part of the same river; why should they try to fight a path that was generously opened by nature itself?

Perhaps, Toast thought to himself, just because you wanted something, didn’t mean it was the best thing for you. Just because you loved someone, didn’t mean you knew what was best for them.

That was why he wanted to know what Sykkuno wanted, what he thought would be something that was the best for himself. Maybe they could find a compromise; a balance between the two spectrums. He had made peace with this, had known what he wanted and what he felt was the best thing for him, as well as making his compromises. Right now, all he needed to do was to wait for Sykkuno to make peace with himself, too.

“I will,” Sykkuno answered. “Will you let me love you, too?”

A smile found a way to his lips, to his heart, easing his soul, soothing his mind. “I will.”

When Sykkuno opened his arms, he didn’t follow. No, they met in the middle. He had embraced him on a lot of nights, on a lot of hardships and joyful moments, but this felt like the first time he truly had him there, with him. Toast figured out that this was the first time he ever felt real to Sykkuno, too.

It took him more than three years to have it, but for the first time in his life, he didn’t regret.

When they went back home, they visited Ronald’s grave and told him they would be away for some time. They would come back, when their bones ache and they needed to come home to a place where their memories lay. Toast asked officer Shelby if she wanted to stay at the house with her kids, attend to the garden, maybe have a picnic sometimes so Ronald could complain about soggy sandwiches from beyond the barrier. She hugged them both and said that she’d take care of their home, so should they feel the ache, they could come back to the familiar house with its crowded garden.

They moved from one place to another. Toast listened to Sykkuno when he told him what to look for in an Immune. He kept his knife sharp and his eyes sharper still. They moved throughout the day, when the wendigos were active and hunting, and held each other throughout the night. It was a little bit difficult with the sleeping bags on the way, but they managed.

When they were away, Sykkuno missed his garden terribly. So Toast found him some plastic flowers. It wasn’t the same as the real thing, but his lover’s answering quiet smile was something he cherished. They played games when they had their hands on one, and invented some when they couldn’t. When Sykkuno walked back to him with such sadness that bespoke of his age and experience, Toast held him close and told him that they were here, they were real, and it was okay to remember that he had someone to fall back to.

When they were within range, officer Shelby told them through the radio that she met someone named Brodin, and though he was terribly lanky and terrifyingly chaotic, he was nice to be around. Toast and Sykkuno laughed and laughed until they cried when they heard Brodin’s voice over the static. Toast didn’t try to stop and tell himself not to cry. He cried whenever they both felt the ache of loss and life in their lungs, he cried whenever he laughed until he couldn’t stop the tears, he cried when he was sad, and he cried when happiness filled him so immensely.

They told him they would come back someday. He said that he would wait, but please not to take too long because officer Shelby might kill him if he annoyed her one more time.

They put Scarra and Ryan to rest, and discussed that maybe they could check over their friends’ houses in Las Vegas. If not to direct them to their home, then to allow them the proper death. They were okay with hoping, now. And they were okay if their hopes didn’t quite agree with reality. They stayed away from military bases, police compounds, and science or medical institutions. They accepted that not everyone would understand what they were doing, or what Sykkuno was.

They argued sometimes but they always put a time out where they had to talk and resolve their issues. Sometimes it took days, and some issues persisted over the weeks, but most of the time they only needed a few hours. They tried to not let desperation be their driving force.

By the time the borders were lax enough for them to slip by, they were met with a lot of work. People who couldn’t afford to get into the city, they all were trapped outside. None of them were human or the Immune. They spent quite a while on those places and were thankful that they brought a lot of supplies before they ventured there. Sykkuno still ate regular food sometimes, but when supplies were scarce, he only ate wendigos. Toast now fell into a habit of cutting up the flesh so Sykkuno didn’t have to dirty his clothes.

“How do they taste like?” he asked one day.

“Raw meat and ginger,” Sykkuno replied.

Characteristics like anger, viciousness, cruelty, they learned that those could still coexist with the good ones. They weren’t trying to be good people, after all. They were just trying to save their world that they had only started to build, together.

Toast brought condoms and lubes as a joke, but they ended up using them anyway when they had someplace with water and bed. Toast was about to fucking lose his mind when Sykkuno casually said that he had very good stamina now. Of course, the younger man had to go and torture him as he rode Toast’s cock with a pace he couldn’t match. He didn’t even break a sweat, that damn bastard.

When the world had adapted a little bit better to its current situation, Toast and Sykkuno talked about starting the long trek home. They hadn’t heard anything from their friends because they had no means of communication, but apparently the electricity and water in the city they were in right now had returned to normal. It would be in no time that some of the other services would start running again, give or take two years from now, hopefully.

They did find two Immunes so far, one that they left alone because she had taken the same route as Sykkuno. They just gave her their address when she felt that she couldn’t control her bloodthirst. Maybe she could start moving now, stay nearby. There were a lot of empty houses now, anyway. The other one they had to kill because she was going on a rampage. Toast witnessed for the first time how two Immunes with even better strength and speed than the wendigos grappled at each other. He couldn’t get a clear shot because they moved too fast at times, but he managed to land two bullets in her head to incapacitate her before Sykkuno moved in for the kill. They were so used to wendigos now that they grumbled about how Immunes were just a fucking pain in the ass. They wasted so many bullets.

They collected their supplies by scavenging places, visiting governmental aid services, and by offering their service of cleaning some places from wendigos. It was what they came to do anyway, and they were crazy good at it, so why not enjoy some payment along the way too? They were paid in food, medical supplies, clothes, and, sometimes, money. Soon enough, the current way of trading would be erased, too.

They only visited a few cities now, because scouring one for wendigos took a long time, but the governments of a lot of major countries were becoming more adept and quicker in their thinking. They saw less and less broken cars on the street, and the amount of wendigos decreased dramatically now that the forces were more meticulous and efficient in their work. They met another Immune; he was an old man who kindly invited them in for some tea, and asked them to let him rest. Toast buried the man while Sykkuno dealt with some wendigos. They came back with some plastic flowers to put on the man’s grave. It made them miss Ronald terribly.

Immunes, as expected, were so far and few in-between. They had visited more than ten cities by now, but only found four of them in total. The newest one was this chirpy young girl that made them both smile and ache at the same time. Ronald would love her, he’d pamper her and show off to the neighbors about his new granddaughter. The only family she had left was her sister. The young girl herself most probably had been infected by her parents when they went out to a theme park while the older sister was in her college class. They explained what it meant to be an Immune, and how she should handle the hunger should it arise. They gave the sisters a knife, a baseball bat, and their address. If the older sister managed to keep themselves alive until now, then they were sure she could handle the situation, especially now that she had more knowledge about it.

To the two alive Immunes that they met, they told them to never tell anyone but the people in the address. They could only speak about it publicly when there were some new and definite ways to treat the Immunes. The government would surely catch wind of one, and they wanted them to be safe from possible chances of being experimented on. The view that wendigos were the enemies wouldn’t bode well with the public and government should they find someone who was part of both worlds. Prejudice and hatred were to be expected, but they would cross that bridge when they were there.

They found out that the best way to identify if a corpse was eaten by wendigos or Immunes, was from the shape of the bite. It was quite hard to tell at first, but they got used to it after some time. Immunes couldn’t infect other people because they didn’t possess the hollowed fangs filled with the substances for the disease. So the shape of their teeth would still be the same.

When the world finally managed the outbreak to a certain extent, Sykkuno was now in a habit to kiss the wrinkles that were already forming their ways on the corner of Toast’s eyes. “You look hot with them,” he said with a shrug and Toast groaned because he wasn’t young anymore, okay? He needed time before his refractory period ended.

When they arrived at Las Vegas with its borders opened, with some major parts of the cities running in full force, it had been nearly four years since they left. They couldn’t score the whole country, of course, but they came home with easy smiles because they weren’t the only ones out there who could fight the wendigos. Sure, it would be more efficient, as Sykkuno said, but they missed home and they needed rest, too. Well, Toast at least.

The Immunes they met in those four years were either killed, given their address, taught how to live by themselves, or put to rest on their request. As they walked, hand in hand, on the familiar streets that seemed so far away from their memories, he asked, “Was it Michael, who infected you?”

“I think so,” Sykkuno said. “I’ve never been bitten before I turned, and it’s the most plausible reason. He was close to my face; I think I didn’t realize that some of the poison got into my mouth.”

“How much dumb luck do you think we have in our life?” Toast wondered, laughing.

“Much more than we can comprehend,” his lover said, and leaned in to kiss him. “Though imagine if I’m not immune. You’d die within the first week with how much you were panicking.”

“Hey! I got our plans ready pretty fast!” he complained, but he indulged anyway. Of course the what-ifs could be pretty bleak, but they were more or less used to those conversations. It was nice to have another thing that you were ready for, the two of them.

“You did,” Sykkuno allowed, smiling like Toast was this almost-forty-year-old-man and the young man who looked at Sykkuno with a wonder in his eyes when saw him laugh for the first time. “But you’d also die pretty soon because you’d be so stressed out.”

He nodded. “I would die pretty soon,” he pointed out. “Sooner than you, at least.”

They were pretty used to this, too. Death really wasn’t so scary when you had accepted it. Between the two of them, they had spent their life together for years, got broken apart, and relearned to know about themselves and each other. They kept trying each day to express their feelings and love in all the ways they both appreciated. On some nights, they said apologies about things that had long since happened, but still needed to be let out.

They sailed their ships and discovered the dangers, the islands, and the world in the dark ocean. They knew what was waiting for them at the bottom of it, and that, too, was comforting.

“Will you wait for me, love?” Sykkuno asked.

Toast gave him a grin in return. “I’ll wait at the front porch with my coconut water,” he said. “You go travel the ocean to beat some fear into those rascals.”

“Oh my God,” his lover laughed, eyes crinkling and slapping the side of Toast’s arm. “You even already sound like Ronald! This is perfect!”

“Shut the fuck up, you damn brat,” he grumbled, aware that he sounded even more like the old man that they had missed so dearly, but wished that he was well out there. He had his own ocean to sail with his family, after all.

The house looked different and familiar from afar. They felt their hearts sped up, matching grins on their faces. They could see the trees —they had more than one! Just before they walked the last few steps, however, he pulled Sykkuno close and smiled against his lips.

“Will you allow me this promise?” he asked, feeling so content, so tired, but happy nonetheless.

He only ever asked that question to himself once after they started travelling. Was he happy ? Yes, yes he was.

“I want you to make this promise,” Sykkuno answered, and leaned in into a kiss that felt so soft, so encompassing in their expression of love.

In all those years, the both of them tried to fulfill Sykkuno’s promises, with various results of success. But Toast was right, all the way back: he would try to fulfill those crazy, wishful, silly promises. He kept his promise to himself, too. And they both let Toast promise Sykkuno once more, that he would stay, and his lover told him, I’m glad that you want to.

Life didn’t quite get into a full circle, after all. He managed to reach Sykkuno, before he became one of the galaxies. Maybe someday he would. But Toast would damn well try his hardest to be a star, a planet, a moon, even the space debris to be there with him. He’d keep his promise, and the universe could shove it.

When they came into view, the fences were no longer lined with barbed wires, the traps without doubt were already removed. They told officer Shelby how to avoid and remove them, all those years ago. As they opened the gate, a familiar girl was there watering the bush of flowers. Her eyes widened when he saw the visitors, she fumbled with the watering can. It was the very first Immune that they had found—Lana, was her name. They smiled at her, and there was something akin to what they would like to think of as joy and excitement on her face. Before any of them could expect it, however, she screamed at the top of her lungs: “ Brodin! Poki! They’re home! ”

Sykkuno let out a light chuckle, and took his hand so they could step inside the now fully grown front lawn. They had taken out the concrete, and planted bushes of flowers there instead. The house was bigger than they remembered; they probably had to renovate with how many people Toast and Sykkuno had sent here. There were vegetables lining the side of the house instead of traps. They saw the tall trees properly now, and thought that they could visit Ronald after this, have a little picnic, tell him their stories. Inside the house, they heard loud exclaims of a lot of people. It warmed their heart to know that their shelter had become a home for them too.

Life where they met, where they got disconnected, when they met again, when they tried and failed, when they lost and gained, when they hurt and soothed, when they found each other in the middle—it felt so long ago. They had come quite a long way, hadn’t they? Right now, they could rest their tired joints, and bask in the warmth of not only the place they called home, but also something that they maybe could call as family.

Like he always did, this time with clear purposes and simpler honesty, Toast followed Sykkuno. They stood there for a moment, and he wrapped his arms around the younger man—this person, who was someone he could, he had, he did love. Always. And it was a promise, too. But maybe he’d let them take a breath before he asked about it to Sykkuno.

He felt warm hands come up to cover his, and Sykkuno’s warm, dark eyes that shone so beautifully in the dark water of the ocean, met his own. His lips pulled into a relieved, gentle smile. “Welcome home, Toast.”

To which he answered, with another smile that bespoke of his adoration, “I’m home. We are home.”

#video blogging rpf #shiki writes #from ao3 #toastkkuno #disguisedtoast #sykkuno #post apocalypse

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daryl-dixon-daydreams · 3 years

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Words: 8,347 Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Reader Reader pronouns: she/her Era: the Greene farm Warnings: Language, violence, gore, attempted sexual assault, discussions of trauma, typical TWD A/N: This is Part 1 of the new miniseries! This should be 2 or 3 parts total, and it's kind of intense and a bit dark at certain points so heed the warnings ya'll. Summary: Y/N is considered quiet, standoffish, and even a bit odd by the group, but Daryl knows how much she does around camp to care for everyone. After a traumatic incident while searching for Sophia, Daryl starts to discover why Y/N is the way she is.

Your name: submit What is this?

The group was all sitting around the low campfire, eating some breakfast. The two Greene girls came out with baskets in hand. Beth approached Rick and held hers out. “We have some more eggs for you all. Our hens lay more than we can eat,” she said.

Rick gratefully accepted them with an earnest look and a nod. “Thank you. That’s very kind.”

“And some potatoes,” Maggie offered. Lori grabbed her basket.

“Really, you all are being so kind. If there’s anything we can do to help around the place just let us know,” she said.

Beth was looking off into the distance at you sitting alone, away from the group, your back to the farmstead. “What’s wrong with her?” she asked, without really thinking.

“Beth!” Maggie scolded her.

“Well, I—I just mean she never eats with ya’ll. She seems like she’s always off on her own,” Beth explained, a little sheepish from her sister’s scolding.

The rest of the group was looking your direction now too, many of them asking the same questions in their minds.

“C’mon, now. That’s enough,” Maggie said. “Daddy needs help with the laundry.”

The group watched them head back to the farmhouse and Shane was the next one to break the silence. “It’s a fair question,” he said, chuckling to himself wryly, glancing back over his shoulder at you before leaning in to grab another helping of breakfast. “She hasn’t exactly meshed into the fabric of the group, has she?”

“Shane, give it a rest,” Lori said sternly.

“No offense meant but I don’t think I’ve ever heard her say more than two words at a time,” Andrea said. “You can’t pretend like there isn’t something… odd there.”

Dale hummed. “Not that it’s really our business, but she’s never said anything about what happened to her before we found her out by the quarry. I’ve tried to ask her about her family, what she used to do before all this,” he shrugged vaguely. “Never got a thing out of her. That’s her right if she doesn’t want to talk about it, but it does seem a little strange.”

“That’s all I’m sayin’,” Shane said. “Somethin’ weird with that girl,” he trailed off.

Daryl stood up, annoyed. “Ya’ll are a buncha busy body gossips. If ya’d open your damn eyes for two seconds you’d realize she does more for this group than most of ya combined,” he growled. “She gathered that wood burnin’ in your fire right there. Them mushrooms mixed in with your damn eggs, who the hell ya think found those? Ya think they just magically appeared along with that stuff you’re usin’ to make tea every night?” He tossed his empty plate down on the grass and scoffed. “People who don’t trust easily usually got a damn good reason. ’M outta here.”

Shane watched him go in slight amusement, but most of the others looked a little ashamed of themselves. Daryl was right, of course. You did do a lot for the group. You just kept to yourself. You didn’t make a big show of bringing back some meat or foraged food. You never complained when Rick or Shane asked you to do something. You took more than your fair share of the night watches. And the fact that no one knew anything about your past, the fact that you didn’t talk much, didn’t need any explanation to Daryl. Based on his own background, he could guess there was a reason you were the way you were.

A short time later, Daryl noticed you gathering up your pack and grabbing your pistol and recurve bow. He wandered over as you were snapping your knife into its sheath at your hip. “Ya headin’ out to search again?” he asked softly. You and him seemed to be the only ones who hadn’t completely given up hope of finding Sophia. You simply nodded once.

“Alright,” Daryl drawled. “What’s your plan?” Asking a question that wasn’t a simple yes or no was always a toss-up with you. Half the time he’d get a short answer, half the time he wouldn’t.

“North side of the ridge,” you said. Your voice was always quiet and measured. The archer usually wished most people would talk less, but with you he always hoped to hear more. The little that you said was purposeful and deliberate. There was no idle bullshit.

He nudged his nose up in a nod at you. “Alright. I’ll start by that creek and work along the south side. We can be close by in case either of us gets into trouble with walkers,” he said.

You simply nodded again and gave him a long thoughtful look. You did that a lot. Daryl had the feeling there was a lot going on behind your eyes, but you never spoke any of it. Surprisingly, he never felt nervous or uncomfortable when you looked at him like that. He just hoped someday maybe you’d open up a little bit more. The next moment you had turned and were heading toward the tree line already. Daryl scrambled to gather his gear and set off after you.

He could see your figure ahead, disappearing into the brush and soon he couldn’t see or hear you at all. He set out along the south side of the ridge as planned, picking his way along the creek, scrutinizing every inch of ground and hoping for a shoeprint.

Along the north side you were doing the same. You frequently knelt to examine some little scrape in the litter or soil and as you went you filled the little cloth bag you carried with edible and medicinal plants, berries, and fungi. The day wore on with no sign of the little girl and your frustration and fear grew even as the sun reached its apex in the sky and started to drift back down toward the western horizon.

You turned and started picking a new path back, heading toward the farm now rather than away. The deepening shadows made detecting print or trail more difficult but you kept your focus sharp on the ground as you moved, your bow slung over your shoulder next to your quiver.

You were becoming tired when you noticed an impression in the mud. You knelt, one knee of your jeans sinking into the damp soil. It was a boot print, but certainly not left by Sophia. You stared at the detail of the sole impression and your brow drew down low immediately. You have everyone’s shoe designs memorized. It wasn’t one you recognized. Your eyes drifted up and you could see a worn trail through the underbrush and more prints, heavy in the mud. There were at least three men who had left this trail, and they weren’t walkers. The path was straight ahead with no stagger and you could tell they were picking their way through the underbrush. You crouched and started to follow the trail. You needed to get eyes on these people. They were awfully close to the farm… Close enough, certainly, to see the smoke rising from the chimney and your fire circles.

You ghosted through the woods following the trail, moving as silently as you could. You’d been on the path for probably ten minutes when you could hear careless, noisy movement ahead. You must have caught up with them. Your heart hammering in your chest, you stayed low and crept closer. As you moved around a partially downed tree you could finally see the shapes of two men ahead. They were scruffy and filthy, clearly living on the move in the woods. You needed a closer look. You wanted to see what kinds of weapons they had on them. If you could scout out the group, you could determine whether something needed to be done about them or not.

As you tried to shift to another patch of concealing cover, you didn’t notice your bow catching on a low hanging dead branch. By the time you felt the resistance it was too late. The whole branch pulled loose with a loud snapping sound as it bent and cracked other dried branches and twigs on its way down. The two men you had been watching spun immediately and had weapons raised, rifles pointed in your direction. You were swearing under your breath and instantly on your feet aiming your pistol right back.

“Well, shit! What the hell do we have here?” one of the men asked, shifting a little to get a better look at you. “You alone out here, sweetheart?”

You fell an immediate swell of anger and dread rising up in your chest.

“What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?” the second man asked, grinning and revealing teeth that were tobacco stained and yellow.

“What’s a fine little thing like you doing out here by yourself? Don’t you know it’s dangerous? There are all kinds of monsters in these woods,” the first man said, looking you up and down thoroughly. His companion laughed.

Fuck. This was bad. Why had you pushed your luck and crept in so closely? Now you were outnumbered and you knew there was at least one other man somewhere that you didn’t have eyes on.

Your chest was heaving with anxious breaths from the rush of adrenaline. The first man stepped a bit closer again and you responded by taking a measured step back, your pistol aimed squarely at his chest. Now what? Should you make a run for it? Would they shoot you? Based on the animalistic looks in their eyes you knew things could go very bad, very quickly if you couldn’t get the fuck out of there. Your mind was whirring.

Suddenly, you heard a stick crack behind you and you turned instinctively to see a third man now rushing you. He landed a fist into your jaw and your vision went black as you fell to the ground, holding onto your pistol as tightly as you could. The pain radiating from your jaw into your head was overwhelming. You blinked, willing the darkness to clear, but it lingered as you suddenly felt rough hands on you, rolling you over and ripping both your bow and rifle from your back.

You struggled blindly and managed to get yourself onto your back again as the darkness in your eyes faded instead to the outlines of blurred shapes. You could make out the shape of the man standing over you and you instinctively raised your pistol and squeezed several rounds which sounded like cracks of thunder in the close woods. You missed, the scene still foggy, and you immediately squeezed again and discharged another round but the man leapt down on you with a wild yell, knocking your arm to the side and pinning it into the ground. His weight pressed down on you and you were vaguely aware of an acrid smell filling your nostrils, causing bile to rise up in your throat. He pried your pistol from your hand and tossed it away into the brush.

You writhed beneath him, struggling to get clear of his grasp but he was much bigger than you and soon there was another set of hands on you. You were rolled onto your stomach again and your arms were pulled back behind you and held painfully tight.

“We got ourselves a wild cat here, boys!” one of the men laughed. “Get her up,” he ordered. You were pulled roughly onto your feet, still trying to blink away the remaining fuzziness in your eyes and struggling against your captor.

The first man, who seemed to be the leader, paced over, watching you with a look of satisfaction on his face as you still tried to fight loose. His rifle was now dropped casually by his side. He grabbed your chin cruelly and pulled it up so you looked right into his eyes. His fingers dug into the tender spot on your jaw where the other man had hit you. “Ain’t you a pretty little thing,” he murmured silkily.

You yanked your face from his grasp and he chuckled, glancing back at the other man standing just behind him. “She’s a good one,” he said, a sick smirk on his face. He looked back at you and his eyes roamed perversely over your body. “This’ll be fun.”

He turned violent and grabbed the front of your light cotton shirt, ripping it harshly down off one shoulder, tearing the breezy plaid fabric easily and popping off the first three buttons. The man holding you only tightened his grip. Your throat constricted so tightly it was hard to breathe. You felt like your heart was beating so hard that it would surely burst. You could feel everyone’s eyes on your newly bared skin. Next the leader withdrew a knife and pressed the point into the center of your chest just above your bra. You cringed at the feeling of the biting cold metal pricking your skin.

He stepped close into you and moved the knife up to your throat, pressing it to the side of your neck and drawing it lightly across your skin just enough to cut you. You winced and shut your eyes, trying to keep as still as possible with that blade to your throat and you soon felt a rivulet of warmth rolling down toward your collarbone. You opened your eyes as the knife left your throat and he slipped it under your exposed bra strap, rotating it and lifted up until the fabric started to separate along the sharp edge. Finally, it gave and the strap hung loosely down. He sucked in a hiss of breath through his teeth, his eyes hungry and crazed. “This will be a lot easier on you if you just cooperate. Then again… I like a woman with some fight in her,” he snarled. “Your choice.” His companions let out more appreciative laughter as fear twisted your stomach.

You felt yourself going numb. Suddenly, you couldn’t feel any pain anymore. You couldn’t feel the man’s hands pinning your arms back. You couldn’t feel the blood that was now running down your chest. Your eyes drifted to the leader’s cold, blue blade and then unfocused so the scene simply became a haze. And you suddenly realized that they hadn’t taken your knife. It was still in its sheath on your hip…

A short distance away, Daryl had been thinking that it was probably about time to call it a day and head back when he heard a series of loud gunshots. His body went rigid and he turned frantically, staring off into the brush. He strained his hearing to its limit. They’d definitely come from your direction. Abandoning any other thought, he sprung into motion, racing through the woods as fast as he could in the direction he thought the blasts had come from.

Back in camp, everyone else had heard the shots too. Shane turned and looked at Rick, his gaze intense.

“Were those gun shots?” Lori asked, fear in her voice.

“Yeah,” Rick said, rising to his feet and rushing to grab his gun from the stash of weapons in the RV. “Shane, T, Glenn, let’s go! The rest of you stay here!”

Hershel stepped out onto the porch and watched the group of men racing across the pasture toward the trees. He had a bad feeling in his gut. Maggie and Beth came out, the slamming screen door punctuating the piercing silence that fell after the shots.

Daryl smashed through the brush carelessly, his eyes scanning the ground for a trail, any trail, something to follow. Finally, his eyes locked on boot prints that were surely yours. He vaguely registered that there were much larger impressions in the soil too, several different boots much larger than yours. And they certainly weren’t from walkers.

“Son of a bitch,” he cursed under his breath. He froze and scanned the thick greenery. He strained his hearing again, listening for some sound, anything, to give him an idea of what was happening. Please don’t let me be too late, he thought frantically. He took off again but more cautiously, following the tracks you had clearly also discovered. Probably what had led you right into something…

Rick and the others were well into the trees now but Shane stopped everyone. “Rick, what the hell are we doin’ man? We don’t have a clue where Y/N and Daryl are. We can’t just go blindly crashing through here or we’re gonna end up in a bad spot too.”

Rick’s eyes frantically whirred over the seemingly endless tree trunks.

“Wait—I saw Y/N’s map yesterday. She had the whole thing sectioned out into search areas,” Glenn said. “Most of them were already crossed off.”

“Well, which ones weren’t?” Shane urged, checking to make sure there was a round chambered in his gun.

“Uhh—” Glenn’s mind raced. “I think—I think by that ridge, straight north of here. But I can’t be sure,” he trailed off.

Rick rubbed a hand over his face. They all listened for any sound, but the woods were oppressively silent now. “Shit…” he cursed under his breath.

“It’s the best we got,” T gasped, out of breath from the frenetic dash from camp.

Rick nodded. “Alright. Then we head north. Keep your heads on a swivel and your eyes peeled for any sign of Y/N or Daryl.”

Daryl moved as swiftly along the trail as he could. Suddenly, he spotted something lying on top of the litter out of the corner of his eye. Your pistol. Daryl grabbed it and the muzzle was still warm. Clearly, you’d been the one to fire at least some of those shots. “Fuck. Fuck…” He tucked it into his waistband and moved more cautiously now. His heart was pounding and sweat was pouring down his forehead. His knuckles were white on his crossbow. He rounded a downed tree and froze when he saw a dark shape on the ground ahead. His heart dropped into his stomach. Please don’t let it be Y/N… He was almost paralyzed with fear but he forced himself to take another couple steps. As he rounded the brush and straightened up, he knew it wasn’t you but his apprehension didn’t evaporate. It was a large man, clearly dead, completely covered in blood. The hair on the back of Daryl’s neck suddenly stood on end and he spun around, his crossbow up to his eye, ready to fire. But he dropped it involuntarily as he took in the scene before him, his jaw dropping partially open and his eyes narrowing as he tried to figure out what the fuck he was seeing.

You were standing there in front of him trembling from head to toe, your hands out in front of you with your knife clutched in one like it was a lifeline. Daryl could easily see the shakiness in your hands. You were completely covered in blood. Your clothing and skin were soaked in it, like you’d bathed in a crimson river. There was thick splatter on your face, neck, and chest. Your eyes were wide and fixed and you didn’t show any awareness that he was there in front of you. Daryl registered that your shirt was torn down from one shoulder and your bra strap had been cut. He didn’t need an explanation to know what the fuck had happened and rage swelled in his chest, stoking an intense fire. His eyes drifted down to two more bodies lying at your feet, each with uncountable stab wounds and one with his throat cut, his clothing drenched. The metallic smell of blood was in the air and Daryl could almost taste it on his tongue.

Still you showed no awareness that he was there. You seemed frozen, catatonic. He now registered that you had slash wounds through the fabric of your sleeves and cuts on your arms. Defensive wounds where you had blocked a knife attack. There was a purposeful cut partially up the hem of your jeans at the bottom, clearly from one of the men… It was nearly impossible to tell if you were hurt anywhere else because there was just so much blood…

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he murmured. “Y/N?” He took a cautious step toward you. “Y/N? Can ya hear me?”

Nothing. No reaction at all.

Just then Daryl heard the noise of several people in the woods nearby and he planted himself between you and the sound, raising his crossbow. “Ya better get the fuck outta here unless ya want an arrow between the eyes!” he roared.

Rick straightened up. That was Daryl. “Daryl?!”

Daryl gulped. “…Rick?”

“Yeah, it’s me, Shane, Glenn, and T! We’re comin’ to you! Are you alright?”

Daryl glanced back at you again. You were still just standing there shaking. “‘M fine. Wasn’t me who fired…” Daryl swung his pack off his back and dug inside it.

The men crashed through the underbrush and came into view, taking in the scene. “Oh my God.” The words spilled from Glenn’s lips. They were all glancing from the bloody bodies on the ground to your blood-soaked figure.

“Jesus Christ,” Shane uttered, pacing closer and bending to look at the slash wound in the one corpse’s neck. Daryl finally laid hands on his poncho and yanked it out of his bag. He turned to look at you and began approaching cautiously. “Y/N? It’s Daryl. Can ya hear me?”

Nothing.

Rick was slack-jawed as he looked at the scene. “Daryl… be careful,” he cautioned, eyeing the knife still gripped in your fist.

Daryl glanced back at him. “She ain’t gonna do nothin’ to me,” he drawled.

“Do you see this?” Glenn asked him urgently indicating the bodies. “This is insane. You don’t know that! She looks completely out of it, like she doesn’t even know we’re here!”

Daryl’s jaw clenched and he turned back to look at you again. “Don’t ya fuckin’ see her? She’s terrified. Look at her clothes. They were tryin’ to rape her,” he growled. “They deserve what they got.”

Shane straightened up from examining the bodies, glancing furtively over at you. “Maybe but… on the force, we’d call this ‘overkill’,” he said, backing up and exchanging a glance with Rick.

Daryl ignored him. “Y/N? It’s alright. You’re safe. Nobody is gonna hurt ya. Just lemme take your knife, okay?” There was no recognition on your face, your eyes still wide and fixed, until Daryl’s hand gently closed over yours and started to open your hand around the handle of your knife. He could feel you shaking beneath his fingers. “S’alright,” he said softly as your eyes landed on his face and then locked with his. Your brow drew down low, casting a shadow over the vaguely confused look on your face. As Daryl gently took your knife, he could see there was a very deep gash in your palm. It was bleeding heavily. He guessed it was either another defensive wound from you putting your hands up to stop one of the men’s knives or otherwise your hand, slick with blood, had slipped down onto your own blade when you’d been fighting them. “Glenn, get some gauze out of my pack and bring it over here,” he said. He spoke calmly and softly. He glanced back over at Glenn when he didn’t move from his slack-jawed frozen position. “Glenn. Gauze.” Glenn snapped himself out of it and went to Daryl’s bag. The archer gulped and draped his poncho over you, covering your ripped shirt. “S’alright,” he murmured again.

You didn’t take your eyes off his face. He wasn’t even sure if you realized the others were there. Glenn walked forward and handed Daryl the small roll of sterile gauze before backing up slowly. The look in your eyes was haunted and dazed and it left all of them feeling empty and concerned.

Daryl opened your hand flat and your eyes drifted down to watch him wrap the bandage over the wound on your palm. You couldn’t feel it. You couldn’t really feel anything, except Daryl’s hands on yours.

Shane turned to Rick. “Rick, what the hell are we gonna do about this? We can’t just waltz her back into camp covered in blood. You don’t want the others seein’ this… Carl? Lori? Or Hershel. Look at her. She looks completely unstable. This might be enough for him to kick us out right now.” He looked back at you over his shoulder.

Rick sighed heavily. “So, we’ll get her cleaned up first.”

Daryl was keeping one ear on the conversation going on behind him. “She needs stitches on this hand,” he drawled. “And who knows how else she’s hurt. Can’t see a damn thing on her right now. And since ya’ll are more worried about yourselves than her, I’ll take care of it. Why don’t ya just get the hell outta here,” Daryl growled.

Glenn stepped forward. “We are worried about her. But you have to admit that this is—this is—” He didn’t even know what word to use. Daryl just stared at him. You were hugging your arms around yourself now, still shaking. Your eyes were downcast, staring unseeing at the ground.

“Listen, I don’t give a shit what ya do. I’m gettin’ her outta here and taken care of.” He hastily shouldered his pack and his crossbow.

“Just—Daryl,” Rick started, pinching the bridge of his nose, the situation weighing on him heavily. “Clean her up a bit before you take her to Hershel to be looked over.”

The archer eyed him through a narrow glare for a moment before he nodded. He turned back to you, your frame swallowed up in his poncho. “C’mon. Let’s get ya home,” he said gently. Your eyes snapped up to his face again and you allowed him to lead you back toward the farmstead.

He picked a path carefully and finally the two of you broke out from the edge of the forest. The others back in the camp were staring at the tree line, wracked with nerves. Lori straightened up as she recognized movement. “Dale—someone just stepped out.”

Dale, standing on the RV, raised his binoculars to his eyes. “Oh my,” slipped from his lips.

“What? Who is it?” Carol asked anxiously.

“I think it’s Y/N and Daryl,” Dale said. “I can’t quite tell properly, but I think something is wrong with Y/N.” He squinted into the binoculars again. “My God. Her jeans are covered in blood and it—it looks like there’s blood on her neck, her face…”

Carol pressed a hand over her mouth. “Is she hurt?” she asked anxiously. “Was she bit?”

Dale shook his head, lowering the binoculars again. “They’re too far. I can’t tell what’s going on.”

Daryl looked up to see everyone standing almost in a line watching the two of you as you started across the field. He gulped and then put a hand lightly on your back, nervous and unsure of how you would react to the contact. He guided you toward his camp which was closest and was set apart from everyone else’s.

“C’mon and sit down, alright. We’re just gonna clean ya up a bit and then take ya to Hershel.” The look in your eyes was worrying him immensely but you sat down on a round of wood pulled up near the fire ring. He anxiously chewed on his bottom lip, trying to figure out how he could reassure you. “Hey. S’alright. You’re safe.”

You met his blue eyes and he finally saw some sense of relief in them. His stomach flipped at the way they softened and he nodded. He took in the sight of you in his poncho again and realized you’d need something else to wear to go see Hershel that wasn’t half ripped off you. “I’m gonna, uhh—” he cleared his throat nervously. “I’ll put a clean shirt out on my cot for ya. Ya can change in in my tent and then we’ll just clean ya up a bit, alright?” He knew better than to wait for a response and climbed to his feet and disappeared into his tent to set the clothes out. He dug around in his duffel bag until he found one that was still folded tightly, definitely clean, and he set it out for you. You watched the handsome archer reemerge from inside his tent and nod his head toward it. “Alright. Go ahead. I’ll just be right out here.”

He watched you get up and disappear, zipping the door behind you. He paced in front of the fire circle, rubbing his thumb over his bottom lip thoughtfully as the image of you standing there in the woods, frozen, absolutely soaked in blood with your shirt half torn surged forward in his mind and he felt another sickening swell of anger. Jesus. Things could have gone so bad with those men… and they were fucking lucky they were already dead when he got there.

The soft rustling of the tent fabric interrupted his thoughts and you stepped out in his long-sleeved flannel, looking a bit dazed still but more grounded. He nudged his nose up in a nod. “C’mon and sit down,” he said, gesturing to the round of wood again. You sank down on it. Daryl grabbed a bucket of clean water that had been warming in the sun all day. He grabbed a cloth from inside his tent and caught sight of your bloody and torn shirt discarded on the floor, feeling another tight twist between his lungs, like someone had tugged a knot there.

You watched him kneel down in front of you and sink the cloth into the bucket of water, wringing it out before bringing it close to your face. He hesitated short of touching you. “S’this alright?” he drawled.

You gave him a questioning look but finally nodded, just one slight tip of your chin. You closed your eyes as the fabric came in contact with your cheek and Daryl started wiping away the blood. The cloth stained crimson quickly. He cleaned the splatters from across your forehead and your nose and the spots on the other side of your face. With the red stains gone, Daryl could see the shadow of a deep bruise along the side of your jaw. Without thinking he gently clasped your chin and turned your head so he could examine it, a heavy shadow falling over his blue eyes. He sunk the cloth back into the bucket of water and wrung it out again, this time pressing it to the side of your neck.

Despite how gentle he was being, you involuntarily sucked in a sharp hiss of air through your teeth as the cloth found the cut on the side of your neck from the leader’s knife. Your eyes blinked open through your wince.

“Sorry,” Daryl drawled, pulling back to look at the wound. “Jesus… Those assholes had a knife to your neck?” he asked. It was rhetorical and he didn’t expect an answer. He wiped at the blood spatter and you closed your eyes again, trying to breathe deeply and still the trembling you still felt wracking through you. Daryl could hear a shaky quality in your breathing. Soon, your face and neck were clean and Daryl turned his attention to your hands. Your eyes were still shut as he rinsed the cloth out again in the bucket. “Lemme see your hands,” he said softly. You found the deep gravel of his voice comforting.

Out of everyone in your group, you usually felt like Daryl was the only one who really saw you. You’d wanted to get to know him better, but held yourself back. He seemed to seek solitude like you did, and you didn’t want to force yourself into his world.

He took your hand, your palm resting against his, and he swept the cloth lightly over the back of it and down each finger. The sensation sent goosebumps rising on your skin and you glanced up at the concerned and intent expression on his face curiously. You couldn’t even remember the last time anyone had shown you so much attention and care. He took your other hand in his now, the one with gauze around it and the deep gash in your palm. He rubbed the blood from the back of each finger and then flipped it over in his hand. He frowned as he noticed that your blood had soaked through the bandage. “Probably need stitches on this one,” he murmured softly. The cloth tickled over the underside of each finger now, sweeping off the ends. “Alright. Push up them sleeves,” he said, dunking the cloth into the bucket again for what felt like the hundredth time.

“What?” He was startled by your voice and his eyes snapped up to look at you.

He straightened up, one of his eyebrows quirking down at the question. “Ya had a buncha cuts on your arms. We need to clean ‘em up and check ‘em. See if ya need stitches anywhere else.”

You shook your head.

He gave you a questioning look for a long moment and chewed on his bottom lip. “Alright. Ya can do it. I’ll just go tell Hershel you’re on your way in, alright?”

You stared at him for another long moment as he set the cloth on the edge of the bucket, whose water was now stained a dark pink. You glanced up as he climbed to his feet and nodded.

“Alright,” he said. “C’mon up when you’re done and we’ll get that hand taken care of.”

Daryl started over toward the farmhouse and as he approached Carol rushed up to him. “What happened?” she urged him. “Are you okay? Is Y/N?”

He stopped, his hand on one hip. He glanced back out toward the trees and saw the rest of the group making their way back toward camp across the field. “‘M fine,” he drawled. “Y/N ran into some men out there when we were searchin’.”

“Men? What men? What happened? Is she alright?”

Daryl chewed his bottom lip and shrugged vaguely. “I don’t know how to—how to answer that,” he said truthfully.

Confusion muddled Carol’s expression and she glanced in the direction of you over at Daryl’s camp. “Well, what happened?” she asked again.

Daryl looked at her seriously and shrugged vaguely. “Y/N killed ‘em. Didn’t have no choice.” He continued his path up to the house and bounded up the porch steps, knocking on the front door. Carol stared after him, a bit shocked. Maggie answered, looking worried.

“Were those gun shots earlier?” she asked.

Daryl nodded. “Mhm… Hey, can your dad take a look at Y/N?”

“Of course. What happened?” she asked, holding the screen door open so he could step inside.

Hershel was there in an instant. “Daryl. What happened? We heard those shots.”

“Y/N and I were out lookin’ for Sophia. There were some men. She—she ran into some trouble.”

Hershel took a deep breath and nodded. “Is she alright?”

“I think she needs stitches in her hand. She took a good hit to her jaw too. Might have a concussion. I dunno,” he said. He anxiously chewed on his bottom lip again. “I know she’s got some cuts on her arms, defensive wounds, but she wouldn’t let me look at ‘em. Got a cut on her neck.”

“Oh my God,” Maggie said, her hand flying up to her mouth.

“What happened to the men?” Hershel asked.

Daryl quit chewing the side of his thumbnail. “Dead,” he said, watching the old farmer’s reaction closely, but the man’s face was blank. He simply nodded.

“I’ll get my kit. Have her come on in.”

Daryl headed back onto the porch to see how you were doing and you were on your way over. His eyes caught on the dark splatters and stains of blood on your jeans and the slit at the bottom. His stomach twisted. Maybe he should have had you change clothes completely… You were trying to ignore the eyes on you as you made your way over to the house.

Andrea and Lori exchanged a look at the state of your clothes.

“Come on in here and sit down,” Hershel said kindly. “Let’s take a look at that hand.” You offered up your gauze-wrapped hand and Hershel laid it out on the table, unwrapping the already blood-soaked bandage and taking a look at the deep gash. “Pretty deep cut here. Definitely need stitches.” He grabbed a needle from his kit and pricked the end of each of your fingers. They all twitched in response. “You can feel that?” You nodded. “Good. Looks like we dodged any nerve damage. Much deeper and you would have needed major surgery for a cut tendon and who knows what else. Maggie, dear, would you get the sutures set up while I clean this off?”

Nerve damage. Cut tendon. Daryl shifted uncomfortably in his spot leaned up against the wall. You hardly seemed to react to the news at all.

Hershel swabbed at your hand and you shut your eyes against the bite of the alcohol. “Now, Daryl tells me you took a good hit to the jaw. I’m just gonna check it and make sure nothing is broken.” He palpated both sides of your face, across your cheekbones and up your jawline. “Just a bit swollen,” he said. “Did you lose sight when you were hit?” he asked you, grabbing a small pen light and checking the dilation response of each of your pupils. You gulped and nodded. “Do you remember your name?” he asked you. You nodded again. “I need you to answer my questions verbally. I’m interested in your answers but also your speech.”

“My name’s Y/N.”

“When is your birthday?” Hershel asked.

You stared at him. “No one here knows my birthday. How will you know if I’m right or not?”

A small smile grew on Hershel’s face. “I’d say your speech and cognition are fine. Probably a mild concussion though with your eyesight blacking out. You’ll need to take it easy the next few days, rest and fluids, and let me know if you develop any new symptoms like vomiting or nausea, confusion, a worsening headache. Understand?”

You nodded again. “Yes. I understand.”

“Sutures are ready,” Maggie said.

Hershel put on a pair of clean gloves and prepared. “I’m afraid I don’t have anything to numb you,” he said, propping your hand up on a towel so he could see it better.

“It’s alright. I would have told you to save it anyway,” you said. Daryl straightened up from his place against the wall and came to stand next to you. You could feel his eyes on your face.

“You’re one tough cookie,” Hershel said. “Let’s get this taken care of.” You hardly flinched as he passed the needle through…

Outside, Rick and the others were just arriving back at camp. Everyone gathered around and seemed to read on their faces that they were all unsettled.

“Rick,” Lori said, grabbing him into a hug. “What happened? We saw Daryl and Y/N come back. Her jeans were covered in blood.”

Rick looked down at her. “Nothing to worry about. It’s been taken care of.”

“Well, what was it?” Lori pressed him, her eyes still a bit wide and fearful.

Carol spoke up. “Daryl said she ran into some men and they’re—she killed them.”

Glenn and T were avoiding everyone’s eyes while Shane let out a frustrated sigh and paced away from the group, disagreeing with Rick still about the decision not to tell everyone you had clearly gone slasher on those assholes. Provoked or justified or not, Shane felt like that was something everyone should know. He’d gone far enough to describe you as a serial killer before Rick had stood him down. Rick nodded and looked at his wife and then at Andrea and Dale. “Y/N was attacked and she dealt with it. Hershel is gonna patch her up and there’s nothing to worry about.

“What if there are more of those men?” Carol asked fearfully.

“We only ever saw three different boot prints out there,” T reassured her. “But we’ll keep watch like we always do. We’ll be fine.”

Everyone still looked uneasy, but settled back into their tasks. Lori was about to go fetch some more water when Shane grabbed her arm and tugged her around the side of the SUV. She gave him a stern look and pulled her arm from his grasp.

“What?” she snapped at him, a bit unkindly.

“Rick ain’t tellin’ you everythin’,” he said.

Lori just stared Shane with a guarded expression. “I trust my husband. And you used to, too.”

“Yeah, well… What happened out there today? It should concern everyone.” His expression was dark and Lori felt her sense of unease grow.

Shane rubbed a hand over the stubble on his face. “Y/N just—” Shane let out a sigh that had the edge of a growl to it.

“What are you talking about?” Lori pressed him in an undertone. “Are we in danger?”

Shane straightened up and pressed his lips into a thin line briefly before meeting her eyes. “Honestly? I don’t know. But I’m not taking my eyes off that girl.”

Inside, Hershel tied off the final stitch and snipped the suture. “All done.” He applied a layer of antibacterial ointment and wrapped your hand in a fresh dressing. “Try to keep it dry. And I mean it,” he gave you a pointed look, “take it easy for a few days. Daryl, you hold her to that. Anything else you need me to look at? Your arms? Daryl said—” You shook your head no. “Alright.”

The archer straightened up as you climbed to your feet. “Thank you,” you murmured to Hershel.

Daryl held the door for you and you cringed at how everyone’s eyes were on you immediately as you stepped out onto the porch. You avoided them and started heading in the direction of your camp. Daryl was still in step beside you and you hazarded a glance in his direction.

He could read a question in your eyes. “I’ll keep ya company for a bit if that’s alright... Besides, ya should be restin’ and somebody needs to make sure ya take care of yourself.” You didn’t say anything, but that also wasn’t a refusal. Daryl could tell you were still reeling a bit, and he wanted to be there just in case.

You arrived at your separate camp area and watched as Daryl immediately went and stirred up the coals in the fire, adding more wood and soon having a nice blaze going. You headed for your tent and glanced back over your shoulder at him. “Just gonna change,” you said softly. He nodded and went about heating something for you to eat along with water for tea. He was sure you had collected more ingredients and remembered that your bag was still sitting at his camp. He jogged to grab it and brought it back along with your bloodied and torn shirt, not sure what else to do with it. When he got back, you were sitting by the fire in clean and comfortable clothes, his shirt resting over your lap. You held it out to him as he dropped your pack beside you.

“Thanks,” he murmured. The fabric was still warm from your body. “Dunno what ya wanna do with this,” he said, holding yours out in turn.

You stared at it for a long moment before your fingers closed on it and Daryl watched as you immediately tossed it into the fire. In a moment, it was only ashes and embers. He sank down beside you and felt you studying him. He turned and met your eyes and was surprised when you spoke. “You aren’t afraid of me now? Like the others?” you asked softly.

“Nah. Why would I be?”

Your striking eyes focused back on the crackling campfire and the embers dancing upward on the warm torrent of air. “You saw what I did. Why wouldn’t you be?”

Daryl peered at you curiously for a long moment. “Ya were only protectin’ yourself. Can’t say I wouldn’t have done worse if I’d been there,” he drawled, and you could hear anger in the tension in his voice.

“I blacked out,” you said suddenly.

“When they hit ya? Ya, yer gonna have a good bruise tomorrow.”

“That’s not what I mean.” You cradled your injured hand absently in the other. “The last thing I remember was the one starting to cut my jeans and then—then I was just covered in blood and they were all dead. And next thing I know you were taking my knife from me.” You shut your eyes for a moment. “I don’t remember anything else.”

Daryl considered the regretful expression on your face. “Don’t matter. Yer safe. That’s what counts. Those men? They had it comin’.”

You looked up at him in surprise and he simply nodded and then grabbed a mug and filled it with hot water for you. You accepted it and dug into your bag, pulling out the small sack of foraged herbs from the day. You dropped a few berries and leaves into your mug and cradled it with your uninjured hand.

It was nearly sunset and the quality of the light was cooling, oranges turning to reds and then fading into deep purples and inky blues. You allowed yourself to frequently study the archer as he shoved a bowl of reheated stew into your hands or added more wood to the fire. You felt surprisingly at ease with him there and he didn’t seem at all bothered by the passing of so much silence. Maybe the concussion just had you slightly numb, but you didn’t think so.

“You aren’t going to ask me?” you finally said.

Daryl looked over at you and he felt a stirring in his chest at the way the firelight was catching the shine and colors in your hair and the soft shape of your lips. “Ask ya what?”

“How I—Why I—” You didn’t even know how to phrase it really.

Daryl watched you struggled for a moment. “Ain’t none of my business. But if ya wanted to talk about it, I’ll listen. Not gonna lie and say I haven’t wondered about what came before ya were with the group.”

You had been on the verge of speaking it but suddenly lost your nerve and sipped at your tea again. Daryl watched you withdrawing again and rubbed a hand a bit nervously over the back of his neck. Darkness had fallen completely now. “Well, I’ll leave ya alone. Yer probably sick of me anyway,” he drawled. “Get some rest, alright?” Daryl had climbed to his feet and started to head in the direction of his own tent but your voice froze him.

“It’s not that I want to be alone all the time…” Daryl could hear the crackling of the fire in the silence that followed. “It’s just that alone usually feels safer.”

He glanced back at you, turning partially. “Ya. I know the feelin’,” he said gently, pacing back.

You looked up at him and something about your expression, your wide eyes, went straight to his core. “Stay,” you said quietly. “Please.” You chewed on your bottom lip for a moment. “Being with you feels safer…” you admitted, timidly.

Daryl felt an ache in his chest and nodded. He grabbed a seat beside you again and puzzled over this unprecedented turn of events.

You seemed to come to some decision suddenly and looked over at him intensely. He caught your eyes briefly and then watched as you pushed up your right sleeve. At first all he saw were the knife cuts, crimson against your skin, but you turned your forearm toward him in the firelight. “This is what I didn’t want you to see,” you said. You gulped. You’d never told anyone, never shown anyone, literally never talked about what had happened to you since you got out. You’d vowed that you would just move on, but the longer you suffered in silence the worse it seemed to get, until you felt like it would consume you. And then today, with those men, you’d just completely lost it. It had triggered something, a memory or maybe more like a nightmare, and when you came to you were bathed in blood and didn’t even recognize yourself, couldn’t believe what you’d done. Enough was enough. Maybe if you spoke it, admitted it, dealt with it in some way… maybe it’d get easier.

Daryl stared at a scar on your forearm. It looked like a brand and the skin was still slightly pink, showing that it wasn’t that old. It was four numbers. 1048.

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