#keirenxsimon

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The Impermanence of Flesh

Kieren Walker’s hands were shaking.

Over the last three weeks this had become a usual occurrence, but the slick black liquid dripping to the floor had not. This was new. This was concerning. 

Kieren wasn’t entirely sure that the shaking in his hands was involuntary now.

A nosebleed was nothing to worry about. The shaking had prompted the doctors to up his dosage of Neurotriptyline, which hadn’t helped. Nothing to worry about, they said. Lots of people have this side effect. Doesn’t mean anything.

Doesn’t mean anything. 

Kieren scrubbed at the black blood furiously, ripping toilet paper off of the roll and plugging up his nose like that would make this better. A nosebleed. Shaking hands. He knew those signs. They’d been passing around flyers not that long ago with those signs listed in bold, warning people, be careful, watch out. Those signs made the doctors start whispering things like might be getting resistant and regressing and rabid.

Kieren’s hands were still shaking. His shirt was covered in black stains.

He changed it. Went to his room and put on another shirt and an oversized sweater. Sat on his bed and stared at his hands, clenching and unclenching them, watching them tremble, out of his control.

He was having muscle spasms. Forgetting things. He knew those signs, too.

Nosebleeds were now frequent. 

He needed to tell his doctors.

He needed to tell Simon.

The doctors gave him a different form of Neurotriptyline, something different, stronger. They told him to come back in a week or so if he wasn’t feeling better. The drugs didn’t help.

Kieren made his way over to the bungalow that Simon still lived in, where he still kept Amy’s room untouched and preserved in case of some second miracle. Second Rising. Simon no longer held meetings and congregations in his living room, didn’t preach at Kieren about the Undead Prophet or the superiority of the redeemed. Kieren no longer wore the cover up, chose not to shy away from mirrors when he caught a glimpse of his pale white eyes. They fit better together now. Two undead people who’d just lost a friend. Simple.

Kieren felt like he was dying again as he knocked on the door.

Simon answered a moment later, barefooted and wearing too many layers as usual. Kieren wondered why Simon wore so many sweaters when they didn’t feel the cold.

“Simon,” he said, and his voice was too raw, damn it, he’d meant to make this come out slowly and meant to make it easier but Simon somehow knew everything that Kieren was feeling the second the younger boy opened his mouth. The thin smile fell from his face, pale brow creasing in concern. 

“Kieren,” he said, motioning him in. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

Kieren laughed. Just a little. It felt hysterical. 

“Can we talk?” he said, instead of blurting it out, instead of saying kill me before it all goes bad, do it now, for me, please, because Simon had to be reasoned with first. Had to be made to understand.

Simon was nodding, led him to the couch and sat him down, turned to face him while he drew one knee up onto the cushions. Slid his fingers through Kieren’s hair, the gesture unconscious and unfelt by either of them.

“So what’s going on?” Simon asked, letting his fingers settle on Kieren’s neck. If he’d been alive, the older man might have felt a pulse there, just below his fingertips. Now there would be nothing. Maybe a slight chill. Silence. 

Kieren stared around the room that Amy used to live in. It seemed grayer now. It was dull before, he knew, nothing bright about it, but Amy was bright. Amy had made everything bright, even boring old Roarton. Amy found the light in things, made their brightness come out. Without her the world was rotting away.

He held up a hand for Simon. Fine tremors ran along his fingertips, a hum that Kieren couldn’t feel. Simon studied it, and Kieren didn’t watch his face.

“There’s nosebleeds, too. And… seizures, and memory loss. The doctors can’t help. I -” Kieren took a breath. He didn’t need it. Some kind of involuntary response, lungs opening, catching more air, moving on. Bellows to blow out his words. “I’m regressing. The medication… isn’t working anymore. Nothing is.” 

Simon was silent. A statue. Wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing. Kieren wondered if Simon breathed at all, or if he was undead to his core, something totally otherworldly. Kieren felt human, sometimes, when he wasn’t paying attention to the numbness of his skin or the colour of his eyes. Simon felt like something… else. An alien. An angel.

Simon opened his mouth and said, “You don’t know that, Kieren.”

“Don’t be intentionally thick, Simon,” Kieren said, and he meant to snap it, but the words sounded brittle and small when they fell from his mouth. Tired. “I’m going to go rabid again.”

The other man gripped Kieren’s shaking hand tightly, tightly enough that his knuckles went white and some part of Kieren’s brain that refused to believe that he was dead quietly went now that must hurt. Kieren looked up at Simon, who was looking at him like he was something special, like the sun after a million years in the dark. Simon looked at him like that a lot. Like Kieren held the key to his absolution. “You’re not,” Simon said, firmly, with the conviction of someone who had to believe something or be ripped apart, and chose the easier path.

“When it happens,” Kieren replied, “you have to stop it. Stop me.”

“No. Kieren.”

“You have to kill me before I hurt anyone else.”

“No, I -”

“Simon.” Kieren took both Simon’s hands in his own, looking into the other man’s milky eyes. Beautiful, he realised, belatedly, too late. So fucking beautiful. “Simon, you have to. I can’t… I can’t hurt anyone else. Please.”

Simon pulled away, stood up. Paced. Ran a hand over his mouth, distraught, frazzled. It was the most animated Kieren had ever seen him. Simon was charismatic but controlled, direct. Quietly devoted and enlightened. Now he was vibrating out of his skin, couldn’t seem to stop moving. There’s what I believe, and then there’s you. He was always changing for Kieren. 

“What you’re asking me to do…” he said, pacing, rubbing his arm under his sleeve, “I can’t do it.”

“You have to, Simon -” Kieren started, but Simon cut him off.

“I’ve tried,” he interrupted. “I tried to kill you, once. The Undead Prophet wanted me to, we, I thought you were the First. I had to bring about the Second Rising. I had the knife in my hand,” he said, showing Kieren his palm, fingers splayed out, as if he were dropping the knife even now, “I had it, and I saved you instead.” He laughed a little. “I am physically incapable of doing you harm.”

Kieren stared at him. “You were supposed to kill me?” he asked, fingers twitching in his lap.

“Supposed to,” Simon agreed. “Couldn’t. Can’t. You’re not going to go rabid. We’ll fix it,” he said, and this was his new cause, Kieren could see it in every line of tense muscle, this was Simon Monroe’s new religion. “We’ll fix it, we’ll find a way.”

“If we don’t,” Kieren said. Knew. This was unfixable. “If we don’t, don’t let me go. Don’t let me hurt anyone else, don’t let me go back to Norfolk. Simon, I can’t be that again. I can’t live like that, not ever.”

Simon sat again, took his hands. Kissed his fingers. “I know,” he said, “I know. It won’t happen. I promise it won’t.”

Kieren nodded and Simon pulled him into a tight hug, something somehow more intimate than kissing now that kissing no longer involved much sensation. Simon Monroe was in love with him. Too in love to do the right thing, to save other people, to save Kieren. Kieren couldn’t find it in himself to feel anything but disappointment. 

He would ask Jem. It wasn’t fair - wouldn’t be fair, to anyone, not ever, it was all so, so unfair - but it had to be done. Jem was strong, and she loved him. It would break off pieces of her, he knew that, but hurting her like that was better than killing her later, rabid, on the rampage. 

People had died because of him, before. Never again.

Simon eventually let him go home. Said, “I’ll see you tomorrow” like nothing was wrong, gave Kieren a quick kiss and a smile. Belief was a powerful thing. Simon Monroe believed in him, but Kieren had always been faithless. Especially after the dark cold nothing of the grave. If there was a God that had given him this life again just to take it back, Kieren would finally find someone that he hated more than himself, maybe. And he was an optimist, like Amy said. He couldn’t believe that anyone was quite that cruel. 

He walked home in the fading light, night sweeping in and cradling the world, covering the sky in a blanket of dusky clouds. 

Kieren Walker’s hands were shaking, so he stuffed them in his pockets. The clouds shifted above him, slowly opening, raindrops falling like tears onto his skin, his hair, sliding into his jacket and along his back and he could feel everything.

Kieren Walker’s hands were shaking, and he felt alive.