Chapter Text
The metal steering wheel of the delivery van did not appreciate his strength. Not that many ever had, but most at least had the decency to be afraid. It clicked and ground as he leaned his weight forward, as if it might make the miles pass any quicker.
Breekon could only think of one other who hadn't succumbed to the terror they.. he brought; he could imagine the way he might've ached from slamming to the walls on his way out of the Eye's pedestal if his body had had any bones in it.
The road stretched straight ahead before him in an unpleasant blur of green and bleary morning grey, English countryside zipping past him at a speed Hope would have found delightful.
For the first time since their stint of being highwaymen, Breekon did not know where he was going. The usual compass in his palms, itching to turn left or right or to hop out of the car and march, was absent. It was a prickling, anticipatory pain, and it had gone along with his Hope.
It didn't hurt so much to think about now. That was unnerving in it's own right, but he reassured himself the wound was still there via randomized flashes of memory that briefly returned the feeling to him like a spike of iron through his skull.
Now he just felt exhausted. The coffin had been unbearably heavy without another to help bear it's weight, even if he'd lifted things three times the size in the circus. Even his own limbs were sluggish, his chest weighed down with the heft of sorrow.
The longer he was alone, the more he felt.. seperate. It was awful. He tried so hard not to think about it, but he had to, didn't he? He couldn't very well clutch desperately to the last, remaining bits of his partner without remembering him. Not when memory was all that was left.
It would do a little easier if those memories could be the ones they'd liked, though, he thought indignantly. The looks of resigned horror or clawing, struggling fear. But instead, all he could think was "gone", "gone", "gone".
Breekon And Hope—one name split between two, but not evenly. The edges of the divide were jagged, and so each new piece of the whole remained at least somewhat unique.
Breekon was here, Hope was not.
Breekon was steadfast, Hope was jovial.
Breekon took the front of the casket, Hope took the back.
Breekon tended the mule, worked the levers, made sure the car ran smoothly.
Hope carried the corpses, punched the tickets, got signatures for deliveries.
Breekon was here, Hope was not.
Last time, Breekon had gone first.
The sudden, vivid assurance that there had in fact been a before stopped any other thought in it's tracks.
He'd been so aware of his breath since The Unknowing, but now it had sped into dry gasping without his consent nor knowledge. He could not have been anything other than what he was.
Breekon repeated that thought to himself over and over, but it failed to drown out the dread. He could feel it rising in his throat, heavy and hot—the sensation he could now recognize as coming tears. They could not have been anything but what they..
Were. Were, past tense, and if one did not die with the other now, could it have been so before?
It was so, so long ago. So long that it hadn't been seen even when the Archivist had scoured his head for all his history, the minute detail of a true beginning so buried it had somehow escaped their prying fingers.
The van juddered sharply, reminding him that even so useless as he was, he should be looking at the road instead of his hands. The rugged bit of land were concrete road met the gravel ditch had dark marks from the tires going over the edge now.
Even as he stared ahead, fixing his gaze to some safer point more likely to keep him in the lines, he veered. Swerving gently in an attempt to correct his path, cutting back through the yellow, over the white, back to the middle again.
There was really no reason to be so deliberate. You couldn't eat from half a plate. Half a box was already open. A nesting doll without it's double was just an empty vessel, alone, containing no true mystery.
Breekon's hands had gone slack on the wheel. He barely felt it turning slightly on it's own as the road curved and the car did not curve with it, and maybe, just maybe, he was weak enough to be mercifully ended as a human might, and—
The oncoming wall of earth was small, but steep. It was a shallow dip in a hill that had been cut straight through to make way for the road, rising from the grass at the moment the road curved sharply to the left. Each layer of soil was visible, like a classroom diagram; dead life just beneath the scraggly grass, a pale and dusty stripe, and then it got darker each layer until somewhere it became clay became rock became gravel became street.
It seemed to be such a natural next step, maybe the only natural thing they had ever done. One simply could not exist without the other. That was the way of things. That was their way.
The van sped forward, faster than it had gone in a decade or so, no longer carrying the burden of the casket and it's second courier. Its last few seconds of movement would be its most free. The little red dial at the dash ticked up, up, up.. And Breekon loudly filler his lungs to capacity, hoping that he wouldn't need to do it again.