Aftermath: 6 - Untangle This (2030)

Rain beats against the windshield. Hwi navigates by infrared.

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

Text iteration: Witching hour.

Additional notes: None.

2030 (Six – Untangle This)

Hermann flips the car into self-driving mode. It’s safer anyway, in this torrential rain. Dark clouds turn darker as the sun sets unseen. He crosses his arms against the cold. “You don’t understand,” he says.

“Well no shit, man.” There’s a catch in Newton’s voice, though whether that’s because he’s shivering or because he’s close to tears, Hermann can’t say. 

“I think you have no idea how much it is that I love you,” Hermann whispers.

“Oh I think I do.” No hesitation. 

“You’re wrong.” Hermann smiles faintly. 

“I’m not wrong,” Newton says. “I’m never wrong.”

“I would do anything for you,” Hermann whispers. “Anything.”

“Yeah,” Newton says, voice cracking on the word. “I know. You have.”

“And it does not feel like enough. It will never feel like enough.”

“Stop,” Newton says, still and always trying to explain. “Stop. You don’t need to do this—this is not my point. My point is that I’m sorry I didn’t let you go get the car, drive back, and pick me up. You’re worried I’ll get pneumonia, somehow, from rain, which doesn’t happen, Hermann, and then you’re worried I’ll get a fever plus or minus a seizure or two and it’ll be horrible for you. That’s why you’re pissed. Because, best case scenario, I just consigned you to at least a week of anticipatory dread. Don’t go taking this whole stupid non-argument argument and twisting it into some way that you were bad for ten years. You love to do that. Cut it out.”

You do not deserve this, Hermann thinks, watching him shiver in the passenger’s seat. If I had it all to do again, I’d have protected you as you were churning out unrelated brilliance to your heart’s content. Until the day we would have died, in 2025.

Rain beats against the windshield. Hwi navigates by infrared. Even now, after all this time, there are things that remain to be said. Once he says them, he’ll need to keep saying them, again and again, for at least the next decade and a half, presuming they both live so long.

It is well past time to begin.

“After we met, I wanted very much to—to start over. Two weeks after your arrival in Alaska I was able to see the extent to which my reaction to you had hurt you. Had hurt you in a way from which we might never recover. Two weeks, Newton.”

“Stop,” Newton says, as unprepared to hear the words as Hermann is ready to say them. “I don’t want to do this now. I don’t want to do this ever.”

“I had an idea,” Hermann whispers, relentless, “back then, at the beginning, when I was still optimistic, when you were still optimistic, about the end of the war. I had an idea of what I would do. The ways I wouldn’t let you get away.”

“The ways—Hermann. You didn’t even like me,” Newton snaps. “Let all of that go. Leave it alone. It’s over. It’s done. It doesn’t matter.”

“It does, Newton. Hear me out.” Hermann pauses, gathering himself. “In those early years—I thought that, when the time was right, I would come to you and I would explain myself. I would apologize for my demeanor, for everything I put you through when we first met. We had a misunderstanding so profound the shockwaves propagated for months, but I would tell you I was sorry. I would show you I could do better. And I thought that you’d forgive me. Maybe not on the spot, but over time, with a consistent message.”

“I would have, y’know.” Newton wipes wet eyes with a wet sleeve. “You idiot.”

“As time went on, I thought that, after it was all over, I would make some grand gesture, some sweeping apology. I would tell you how profoundly I admired you. I would tell you how much about myself I liked—how many of my better qualities—could be traced to your influence, direct or indirect.”

“Are you trying to torture me?” Newton asks, half his face covered by his hand. “Because it’s working.”

“I am not. I will tell you what I am trying to do once I’ve done it,” Hermann says, as gently as possible.

“Well,” Newton whispers, “okay fine. So long as you have a goal.”

“After Dr. Lightcap died,” Hermann whispers, “I decided to tell you of my feelings. I thought that, if you knew, it might help you. I was concerned something would happen, that you would do something like she had done—that you wouldn’t survive to the closing of the breach. I’d made up my mind to tell you, but then, Newton, you very nearly did die of a relatively minor environmental exposure. And I knew, I knew I couldn’t do it. Not before the end of the war. If I had, all feelings would have been magnified; they were already too much for me to bear.” Hermann pauses here. 

Newton is staring at him, eyes wide behind the streaked lenses of his glasses.

“I then—” Hermann’s throat closes. He takes a breath and starts again. “I began to think in less childish ways. I realized there could be no rational explanation for years of misdirected emotion and repressed frustration that at times I couldn’t control, despite my best efforts. Impossible, I thought, and unfair. And you—that night we spent in Geneva, 2020 I think it was—you had so clearly done what I had not been capable of. You had forgiven me; you had forgiven me years prior for not matching your expectations. You had done your best with what you’d been presented with—and I realized that you loved me.”

Newton looks away, self-conscious, clearly miserable.

“You loved me, but not in the way that I loved you. You had not made a secret of it. You had not made a secret of it for years.”

Newton’s hand is pressed to his face; he’s shaking his head. Hermann has ruined their night, but in pursuit of a higher purpose. Were he to stop now, it would be the worst outcome: all pain, no resolution.

“So I knew, then, I wouldn’t have to convince you,” Hermann whispers, “but nor could I ever explain. Nor could I ever apologize. I thought perhaps to start afresh. After the war. That you deserved to be—I believed you deserved a sustained and wholehearted effort. I believed I would make that effort. And I thought if I could only do it that way—that would be best.”

Newton doesn’t speak.

Hermann wipes his eyes. “There would be one drawback. You would get no explanation for my change in attitude. I knew you wouldn’t understand; you couldn’t possibly. I knew you’d be confused for years—and you have been.” Hermann whispers. “You are.”

“I’m not,” Newton says, but the words are reflex. 

“You are,” Hermann repeats, stronger this time. “You cannot reconcile my behavior for the first decade of our acquaintance with all that happened after the end of the war. You’ve expressed the belief that the drift altered my feelings for you in some way I don’t fully understand and can’t articulate. That is absolutely false. You constantly fear that if you do something wrong—if you say something wrong—if your behavior falls outside a set of occult parameters—that I will leave you. I would never do that. I’ve been in love with you for the whole of our acquaintance. You have the impression that we fell into this life by luck and by accident, and only because I was too honorable to allow you to drift alone, too loyal abandon you to the PPDC.”

Hermann takes a breath. They are nearly home. The rain shows no signs of letting up. He stares determinedly out the front windshield. 

“By the time you were in a state to reflect on what had happened, months had passed and you felt lucky. There was nothing lucky about what happened, there is nothing lucky about it, Newton. There has never been; I succeeded in pulling you from the brink by the thinnest of margins. I very nearly failed. You’ve been left with a host of truly horrendous sequelae, your life is not at all what I wanted for you, and if you are hospitalized one more time this year, Newton, I will not be able to take it, so please. Make an effort.” Hermann breaks off, breathing hard, unable to go further without crumbling.

“Hey,” Newton whispers. “Hey, look at me. I want to tell you something.” 

Hermann does his best.

Newton waits for him.

Finally, Hermann is able to take him in, soaking wet, those green eyes, that ridiculous hair, his expression and his bearing possessed of that deep poise Hermann has always loved, always envied. 

“I’m happy,” Newton says. “Okay? I’m happy.” And that’s all.