Nothing Left to Say

Based upon the song "Nothing Left to Say" by Imagine Dragons, currently item 53 on my "Eradicate" playlist, the songlist for my novel. These characters are directly taken from the story.

Dimly, Katerin was aware she'd been awake too long.

Five days was pushing it at her age. Perhaps youth could manage it, their supercharged minds running off computer screens and tubes of vitamin supplements. It wasn't to say she hadn't been taking things when Felix hadn't been looking, ignoring the canisters of prescription medication he'd left for her. She wasn't ill, a concept she'd held on strongly since her own youth.

Five days and she hadn't slept. She'd laid beside her boy, who actually hadn't been a boy for nigh on two centuries now. He was an old man, grey hair that almost matched her albino-born cut, wrinkles and scars over his face and his hands. When he breathed, there was a low noise; an imperfection in a lung repair many decades below. And now he slept silently, not a twitch betraying his darkened dreams, a trick he'd mastered a very long time ago.

How cruel it is, that we live so long. She mused, wishing longingly for the nights he'd disturbed her, allowing Katerin a nocturne taste of the fear she'd instilled in him. Though other times she'd simply used it as an excuse to wake him and allow herself a companion in a life-long battle against her own night demons. Katerin had no doubt he did dream, if the look upon his face come morning said anything, but that didn't stop her for wishing to see it. Felix had become an expert at hiding things, something he'd perhaps learned from her.

The shadows flickered dangerously, curling into claws and shapes she vaguely recognized. Looming monsters and small children, their hands reaching-

She shuddered, felt her companion shift at the movement. She could sleep and instead of seeing, she'd hear, old voices calling and beckoning, from beyond the grave and beyond her touch. They wanted her, wanted to take and tear like she'd done to them. Or, Katerin reasoned; she could stay awake and explain her ghosts away as delusions. Here, in the land of the living, she had... an excuse.

A frail one. Felix would see through it. Her last lines of defences were beginning to approach. Her subcommanders, Kass and Keir had begun to question her quietly. How far would they go? They were weak and if Katerin had half the strength she had before - and the money to pay for replacements - she'd have stripped the two of them of their bones and shipped their fingers to their loved ones.

But she was old, so old and she could barely admit it - she was weak.

Two hundred and forty. An average citizen lived two hundred, a heritage family member such as herself lived to maybe two fifty.

Ten years - or just borrowed time, depending on her dirty blood and terrible medical history. Not enough, never enough. Could she manage? Or would the voices carry her down into madness and death prematurely.

Felix shifted, awoke with a start, sheer terror on his face and then it was gone. He licked his dry lips and stared for exactly fourteen seconds at the ceiling. His fingers tightened on the bedsheets and Katerin wondered. Was he seeing her? Or was it something else, a rare event of outside abuse, or even simply a dark spot on their combined history? Things they had both regretted but had never been able to fix.

His soft green eyes shifted to her and he frowned at her face. "You've been awake this whole time."

"No." She hissed, wondering how this boy - who she had fed, clothed and trained - dared to question her too. But he wasn't a child anymore, his shoulders were boarder then hers, his weight twice her frail body, almost half a foot on height. He was only six - or was it seven? Ten? - years younger, barely anything after a century anyway, but he greatly outmatched her. He could question her, but who was she to demand he did otherwise?

Felix drew her close, warm breath feeling as odd as ever against her cool skin. He didn't seem concerned enough to push her lies. He was tired, he was old. Katerin had spent her life weaving false words, he had known no other voice, no other way of speaking.

Katerin had come too far to speak the truth. Years and years she'd kept secrets and now she was so close - perhaps years, or perhaps mere months from the end.

And she refused to say, to voice. Felix dear, I was horrible to you - I love you, don't let me go. Felix, I think I'm seeing my dead child, make her go away. Felix, was I married? Was it you? Or was it this man who whispers in my sleep, he's so sad, Felix, I think I killed him.

Katerin had spent a lifetime lying, a lifetime faking, a lifetime pretending. She had mangled and taken, within asking, without returning. She was dangerous, she was deadly.

She was dying and she just kept pushing. She couldn't stop, a bad addiction to a terrible drug.

Felix shifted against her, his eyes glossy with sleep. "Please tell me what's wrong."

Something around her cracked, something splintered and she wanted to. Wanted so badly.

But she couldn't escape the pull of her own instincts. She was falling, falling and drowning inside herself.

She opened her mouth, Felix, I think I'm going crazy.

"Go back to sleep."

"Katerin-" He pleaded, desperate even for this, wanting to know, wanting to help for reasons she didn't understand.

"There's nothing left to say." There was plenty but she was falling, falling down and down-

Felix left it. If she had coughed her last right then and there, and she had told him to leave well enough alone, he would have.

So Katerin surrendered to the tides of her own blackened intentions and at the age of two hundred and forty three, for the first time in her long life, she gave up.