The Plague {One Direction AU}

6. Isabella

Portland
December 14

Isabella had watched the end of the world on television. She should have gone into work--her clients needed her. But her family needed her more. And so she had stayed, watching their health deteriorate, their bodies weaken.

She glanced down at her sleeping husband and son, their red hair like fire on the white pillowcase, and cried silent tears. The rest of the world was dying off. No wait, had already died off. The television went black a few nights ago, but the horrors on the screen before it did let Izzy know she should be worried about the two loves of her life. She didn't want to believe that they were going to die, but with each cough, each shuddering breath they took, she knew deep in her heart that they were.

With a shaking sob, she lay beside her son and wrapped her arm over her husband, needing to feel them close.

Her husband's eyes fluttered open. "Hi," Ed murmured, caressing her cheek, the bright tattoos on his arm in stark contrast to the clean white of their apartment. He frowned when his fingers found her tears. "No, baby. Don't cry," his voice rasped.

Izzy just shook her head. She couldn't even form words, she was fighting so hard not to break out into full-on sobs. Ugly crying, she and her friends had called it. That awful crying where your face contorts and you sort of wail as you cry. She could feel that sort of sobbing on the horizon, but she didn't want to scare Woody, her seven-year-old son, sleeping between them.

Izzy never used to be much of a crier, really. She had always been tough, strong, driven. That's how she rose to the top, how she stayed at the top. Top of her class in high school, top of her class at Stanford--both undergrad and law school. All she wanted back then, before Ed, was to be the best corporate attorney in the country. To be rich. Not so much because she was greedy, but because she never wanted to struggle like her family had when she was little, rationing out their rice and beans like an episode of "Survivor," rarely eating meat and vegetables. She just never wanted to know that hunger again. And she was well on her way to becoming that hotshot lawyer of her aspirations, interning at one of the largest corporate law firms on the west coast. Everything was right on schedule. Everything was as she planned it. Except none of it really made her happy.

But then she met Ed. And everything changed. God, she could remember so clearly the first time she saw him up on that little stage in that little bar. He was just a bit chubby, his red hair a frizzy halo around his head, his tenor voice raspy and raw. And she was sprung, spun, done. Izzy was never the same again. Ed was so free, so easy, so happy. He made her so happy. Influenced by his carefree hippie hipster ways, Izzy let go of her schedules and plans. She realized that she would prefer to use her education, her intelligence to make the world more equitable rather than get rich, so she changed her focus to civil rights. But as was always her nature, she rose to the top. She was now one of the best civil rights attorneys in the nation. But that didn't matter anymore. All that mattered anymore was her son, her husband, her loves. And now, instead of tough and strong and driven, she felt so weak, so fragile, so lost.

"We're gonna be fine," Ed assured, smiling sweetly. His smile faded as he began to cough. He held up one finger to show he had more to say, but Izzy was terrified as his his small frame convulsed violently. At five foot eight, he was shorter than Izzy, who was nearly six feet without shoes. For their wedding, eleven years ago this month, he had worn lifts to make himself taller and still had to tip his head back to kiss her. Their anniversary was in just over two weeks. Would he even be there to see it? She closed her eyes as the tears started to pour from her eyes again.

"Dammit," she muttered, burying her face in Woody's hair.

"Mommy," her little man rolled over and clung to her, his tiny hands grabbing at her shirt.