Aftermath: 18 - The Garland of the War

Overhead, Queen plays.

Chapter warnings: Realistic depictions of neurological, physical, and bureaucratic trauma. War. Grief. Death. Mental illness. Regular illness.

Text iteration: Witching hour.

Additional notes: None.

2027 (Eighteen – The Garland of the War)

Hermann sits at their kitchen table, outlining a manuscript for Quantum Physics Letters. He’s quite behind on his work, if measured against the benchmark of the pace he’d set for himself pre-2025. It’s been suggested to him on multiple occasions by a variety of parties that his historical benchmark may no longer be appropriate.

This is, perhaps, why Hermann is devoting approximately ten percent of his attention to outlining and ninety percent to watching Dr. Geiszler’s culinary exploits. The man’s abilities in the kitchen have improved dramatically over the past year. Hermann suspects he misses working with his hands, which is becoming increasingly rare as his collection of personnel grows. Doubtless, cooking is an excellent outlet for frustrated empirical skill. This, however, is not why Hermann is watching him. 

Working with his hands and distracted to a very particular degree, Newton will sing to himself. 

It’s a tendency Hermann has been studying for the express purpose of aggressively fostering it, though this is difficult to do while preserving the unselfconscious quality that makes it all it is. He’s certain the man has no idea he’s doing it. Hermann would like to keep it that way.

There is a constellation of conditions that, when met, will result in absentminded singing a majority of the time. If Newton has had a day without undue stress and is performing some variety of manual labor he doesn’t find mentally taxing he will, in the absence of conversation—

Ah yes. There it is.

Newton, pouring olive oil over a collection of winter vegetables, begins to hum. It’s a tune Hermann cannot name and hasn’t heard before. The melody carries a wistful edge. Hopeful. Newton’s expression is attentive but untroubled, his concentration unbroken.

Does his mother do the same, wherever she is? New York, Paris, somewhere far from the Pacific? She must, Hermann thinks. How could it be otherwise?

Newton has begun to carry himself again in something of that old way—though he’s less arrogant now than confident—but sans his aura of showmanship that Hermann finds he very much misses. The man’s dexterity has returned. So too has that breathtaking focus. Newton’s sartorial style has settled into something better befitting academics than his historical norm. Hermann suspects his own tastes have influenced Newton’s post-apocalyptic wardrobe choices, though the extent to which this is due to EPIC Rapport—versus the man’s particular proclivity for driving Hermann out of his mind while paying off a ten-year deficit of sexual tension—is unclear. 

Nevertheless, Newton somehow finds a way to impart a tousled quality to a green sweater pulled over a white dress shirt.

The man stops humming long enough to swipe his index finger through whatever he’s heating in the pan. He makes a pained sound and swiftly inserts the injured digit in his mouth. Hermann rolls his eyes. The man sucks on his finger while adding a small amount of salt to the dish, pushing vegetables with a wooden spoon.

He seems better. The winter has been difficult, and it’s not yet truly spring. Newton had fallen ill three times, been hospitalized twice, and continues with a lingering cough. But now—it’s true, his stamina has improved to the point he can reliably manage a ten-minute walk, in the cold, across the UC Berkeley campus without needing to stop and recover, midway, on a bench. His entire demeanor is brighter. Relief unfurls, dragging reflection in its wake. 

Stop thinking so much, Hermann tells himself, to no avail and much too late.

Newton pulls his finger out of his mouth and resumes humming. 

You would have destroyed me, Hermann thinks, watching him. With this, you would have. These quiet times. These unguarded moments. In the Shatterdome, over coffee, late at night. It would’ve been unbearable. I did it correctly. It could have happened no other way.

 Newton transitions to singing. 

Hermann had done it correctly. 

He had. For himself. For Newton, though—

Hermann could have made so many things easier on the man. Instead, he’d chosen to make them harder. Why? Because he’d thought that there was protection to be had in distance? That was true for him, but he doubts it’d been true for Newton. Had he needed the Drift to see it? It doesn’t matter; he sees it now. He wants to pour a panacea into every physical and mental crack the man has, some warm nepenthe that might undo a lifetime’s worth of suffering in one night.

Impossible.

Newton returns to humming, this time what sounds like an abstracted version of a musical bridge. 

If Hermann continues in this vein, upsets himself enough, he’ll ruin their evening. You’re doing the right things, Mako had told him, on the phone, weeks ago. He tries to hold to that, but he has a poor track record of controlling his own negative emotions when they grip him by the throat.

If Hermann continues to sit here, watching Dr. Geiszler’s poignant melodic preoccupations, trying to assess the man’s absolute and relative levels of happiness and health—he’ll make himself miserable. No question. It’s already in process.

Hermann shuts his laptop with a definitive click and stands. 

Newton looks over at him. “Done?” The humming fades into the air, going as it had come, unnoticed.

“For now,” Hermann confirms. He leans against the kitchen counter, trying to decide what Newton is making. 

“FYI, we need a tissue homogenizer. But, y’know, for food. What do they call those things?” Newton dumps butternut squash into a food processor. 

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Hermann says dryly. He looks pointedly at the food processor. “That doesn’t count?’

“No, Hermann. This is an entirely different—” Newton breaks off with a snap of his fingers as a recollection clicks into place. “An immersion blender.” He points at Hermann. “We need that.”

“By all means,” Hermann replies. 

“Still maybe thirty minutes or so until dinner,” Newton says.

“Take your time,” Hermann tells him. “I enjoy watching you cook.”

“Oh you do, do you?” Newton looks over his shoulder, putting a lascivious glaze on a symmetrical phrase.

“You’re becoming quite skilled,” Hermann says. 

“I seem to recall,” Newton says, arching an eyebrow in a very becoming way, “predicting this exact outcome.”

“Indeed you did,” Hermann admits. “I deeply regret any prior doubt I might have expressed.”

“How terribly unlike you, Dr. Gottlieb.” Newton says, with faintly seductive sarcasm. But rather than continuing on in this fashion he simply says, “Put on some music or something if you’re not working, yeah? This dinner is too fancy to eat in front of Star Trek.”

“Oh really?” Hermann syncs his phone with their speakers, then makes his way to the table near the door to set the device on its charging pad. Absentmindedly, he selects an appropriate album.

Newton has the top off a sauce pan and is evaluating its contents with a critical eye. “Yes, really,” the man confirms. Anything that involves—” He stops.

The first bars of “Bohemian Rhapsody” play over their speakers. 

Newton places the lid he’s holding on the counter, then theatrically turns his head to look at Hermann, as if doubting the evidence of his own ears.

Hermann flushes. He feels it in his face. He has the urge to look away, but doesn’t. On principle.

They stare at one another. A conversation’s worth of information passes between them, transiting that fixed gaze. Wave functions of possible explanations and actions oscillate before they collapse into—

“No!” The word rises sharply in warning. The man is fighting a grin, two fingers pointed at Hermann, already pacing forward.

Hermann snatches up his cane and makes a break for his phone. He nearly reaches it before Newton tackles him from behind, pinning Hermann’s arms to his side.

“Don’t you dare,” Newton says, laughing. “Don’t you DARE change it!”

“Newton.” Hermann twists enough to free an arm. 

“No!” The man bodily drags him backward, which would, Hermann is certain, be far more effective if he weren’t laughing so hard. “You have to leave it!”

Hermann loses a few feet of ground strategically then turns, steps in, hooks a foot behind one of Newton’s ankles, drops his cane, and presses him backward. 

“Hermann!!!” Newton, still laughing, scrambles for a better grip, settles on the front of Hermann’s blazer. He falls backward onto the couch, dragging Hermann down after him. 

They end up in an uncoordinated tangle, Newton doing his level best to prevent Hermann’s escape. They look at one another, breathing hard.

Overhead, Queen plays.