4.6 | Dark Ages ✓

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A MAN GRIEVES for the woman he's killed.

Already, her absence has a presence. It haunts him everywhere he turns, in everything he sees. That chair where she often sat, curled up on his lap, and he'd pretended like he didn't know the answers to her crossword so that she could finish it all on her own. That shelf which they'd considered their communal library, and had spent many an afternoon searching for an answer to end the Dark Ages. That table where they'd had meals at, where he'd once looked at her from his seat opposite hers and knew that he already had the answer to their future—yes, someday, I'm going to marry this girl.

That future no longer exists.

So, in the wake of her passing, he turns the house into the epicentre of destruction. He overturns the chair and the table, sweeps the books off the shelves, leaves everything in disarray. Every crash, every slam, every splintering of glass ricochets off the wall; every vicious action an echo of his fury and despair.

His grief is matched by a man in his spitting image.

In the basement, a man sits motionlessly beside the woman that he's killed. He stares vacantly at her body—Taehyung, you'll have to make sure I won't turn even after he's killed me, she'd said—noting the lack of color in her cheeks, and the bullet-hole in her heart. Barely an hour has passed, but already, he no longer thinks of this body as her. Wherever she is, it's not here—this is just an empty shell she's left behind.

Slowly, he forces himself to reach for her hand. He moves as though on autopilot, his fingers curl around her cold wrist. Carefully, he removes the watch—the Cypher—that she had been wearing. She'd put it around her wrist some hours before, and he'd spotted it the moment she'd stood in front of his other self to die. It's as clear a message as she could've given him, and he can almost hear her say it:

This, I believe, now belongs to you.

He slips the watch into his pocket. He now has two—the Cypher of this timeline, and the one he'd already had to travel back in time. Then, blinking hard, he presses his lips to the back of her hand.

Goodbye.

This is his closure. His other self does not have it yet, because that version of him will still meet her in the past when he time-travels. But for his current self, there won't be another time-travel. He'll have to go back to the future, where she no longer exists. This is the last time he will ever see her.

He tightens his grip around her hand and closes his eyes, his shoulders shaking with the sheer effort of controlling his sobs. Fuck, he misses her. He misses her. He misses her so fucking much it feels like his heart might just explode with the sheer pain of it.

I love you.

As the chaos upstairs quietens, he gently sets her hand down and shifts away. It's just in time too. Not five minutes later, heavy footsteps thump down the stairs. He has left the door a fraction open, and through the gap, he sees his other self return to her side.

Shoulders hunched, a wretched expression on his face, his other self slips his hand into hers and hugs his knees to his chest. A quiet sobbing fills the silence, the kind of utter brokeness that comes with the knowledge that nothing—nothing—will ever be the same again.

He understands perfectly.

They are the same man, after all.

At last, after what seems like forever—but does forever really mean anything when it's not with her?—his other self's cries fade. With steely determination, he pulls her into his arms, climbs to his feet and disappears back up the stairs. The door opens, then shuts, and they're gone.

He knows where his other self has disappeared to. She'd told him before she'd died. A crematorium in the neighbouring town, where people sent the bodies of their loved ones to be burned. It was, she'd explained, a more pleasant option than burying the dead in the backyard and having the zombies dig them out while hunting for human flesh.

He shivers at the memory of that. How she'd managed to face the prospect of her own passing is still beyond him. He can remember the way she'd reacted to her own future, her calm acceptance that she didn't have one. If he closes his eyes, he can still feel her—warm and wet beneath his lips, her fingers gently raking through his hair, urging him closer, then harder, nails digging into his shoulders. Her warm laughter is an echo in his ears; her affectionate Iloveyous still buried in his heart.

I wish I could forget.

The thought rises, unbidden, into his mind. Not her—never her. But everything else. Everything that has led to this. The Dark Ages, the blood, the trauma. Strand F, his creation of Armageddon, all the destruction he'd indirectly caused. That night, the zombie. Its teeth in her back. Her fading before his eyes. His desperation. Her sadness. His finger on the trigger. Her death.

He twists around, his gaze landing on the object atop the dresser. An odd contraption, shaped like a thermometer, with a red button under the screen. His feet move of their own accord. In a flash, he's standing by his makeshift bed, object in hand. His thumb hovers over the button.

You have to be sure that it's what you want.

He stops as her voice surfaces in his head.

Is it?

Slowly, he settles down on the edge of the bed. But what of her? What of her smiles, her laughter, her affection? What of all the hushed conversations in the light of dawn, the torrid lovemaking at dusk, the absolute simplicity of just being in each other's company? What of all the nights he'd gone to bed loving her, and all the mornings he'd woken up knowing he was loved?

Is it worth losing you, in exchange for forgetting all the heartbreak?

He makes a decision, and climbs to his feet.

It's closing in to midnight when the man returns.

In his arms is an urn that he cradles to his chest, as if trying to burrow it into his heart. Dazedly, still swept up in his grief, he curls up beside the overturned coffee table, and sets the urn down beside him. As he yanks off his coat, his gun falls to a clatter on the ground. He picks it up, studying it under the light, then flips it over. His gaze sharpens; his hands begin to shake.

A thought rises, unbidden, into his mind.

Just as he shifts his fingers to the trigger, a strange object hovers by his head. He doesn't notice it. He's oblivious to the man in his spitting image rising from his hiding place, his hand shaking just as much as his finger hovers over the button.

"I'm so sorry," comes a whisper in his voice.

His voice?

It's the faintest of sounds; an echo of the words he'd said just before killing her. He begins to turn, just as the finger comes down over the button.

Don't be, he hears her voice in his head. I've been well loved.

It is the last thing he remembers before he remembers no more.