Aftermath: 12 - A Borrower of the Night (2020)

Hermann needs to reinvent his life; he needs to do it tomorrow.

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

Text iteration: Witching hour.

Additional notes: None.

2020 (Twelve – A Borrower of the Night)

“Have you taken leave of your senses?” Hermann stands in the doorway to Newton’s office. “Your behavior is ridiculous.”

Newton glares at him. He leans against his desk, recovering, badly, after his most recent fit of coughing. 

“You are extremely ill.” Hermann can hardly bear to look at the man. 

“Eh,” Newton rasps. What does it matter, really?” He’s trembling. His elbow brushes a precarious stack of print journals, mostly Nature: Kaiju Science, and they slide to the floor. “Shit,” he mutters. “This place is a mess.”

“Yes,” Hermann snaps. “But as to your question, Newton, it matters to me very much. If you—” He aborts, then starts again in a more familiar vein. “We cannot afford to lose time. Rest before you are taken out of commission in a more serious way. There’s work to be done. The long term should not be sacrificed for the short. So. Please allow me to reschedule this meeting. Your tolerance for any infection regarding your lungs is spectacularly poor; it has been poor since your experience in Manila. In all likelihood, this has already progressed to pneumonia, you clearly have a fever, so will you please just,” Hermann lifts a hand, feeling helpless, “lie down?”

Newton nods, watching a few more journals slide to the floor. “I agree. I will. After the briefing.” He’s speaking in bursts, trying to cover up the extent to which his shortness of breath is impacting him.

Hermann buries the urge to shake some sense into the man. 

“After the briefing you will, no doubt, insist upon drafting your grant.” 

“I’ll do it lying down.” Newton smiles at him, trying for charm, succeeding. “All the science? It’s done. The rest? Easy.”

“Newton.” Hermann rallies for another salvo.

Newton looks directly at him, and, oh, Hermann is having a susceptible day because that green stare is piercing; no other word will do.

Newton shakes his head. “Hermann,” he rasps. “You know.”

“I know what?” Hermann snarls, still fighting. 

“It doesn’t,” Newton pauses to draw a shaky breath. “Matter.”

And yes. Of course Hermann knows that. Has he not worked to the point of collapse himself? On multiple occasions? They must get this funding. They must. The Coastal Wall is the costly, pointless waste that will bring down their civilization, that will facilitate its razing. It’s the Sicilian Expedition for an Age of Monsters.

“You’ll set us back if you die.”

“I know,” Newton whispers raggedly. He grins at Hermann. “But I’m not gonna die.”

“Give me your word,” Hermann says.

Newton laughs, coughs, traces an x with a finger over the left side of his chest. “Cross my heart,” he whispers.

They go together.

Hermann cannot shake his dread, cannot make Newton do anything, has never been able to make Newton do anything. This is insupportable. He shouldn’t have given him the coffee; it’s allowing him to rally. Marginally. 

Hermann needs to reinvent his life; he needs to do it tomorrow. He can’t reinvent his life; if the world doesn’t end, the subject can be revisited.

So many others must have watched loved ones die slowly, working themselves to death. He’ll need to find a book to find some company. Keats, he thinks, was a doctor who died of consumption. He must have had literary friends who watched his slow demise, spilled some ink over it? Evariste Galois, firebrand that he was, must have known someone whose particular misery Hermann can share. His hands itch to grab Newton by his stupid tie and drag him to the medical bay before it is too late.

In the briefing room, Hermann sets up the projector. Newton dims the lights. As expected, Pentecost and Hansen overlook the wretched state of Newton’s health. 

As Hermann sips his bitter coffee, he finds himself, against all odds, missing Dr. Lightcap fiercely. This is something she never would have tolerated. Not this briefing, not any of this. She’d have canceled this superfluous torture session and sent Newton to the medical wing post haste. She’d have killed the Coastal Wall. She’d have built more Jaegers, given Hermann the time to map the breach, the peace to tangle with the math—

Hermann blinks away the heat in his eyes.

They’ll lose. 

All of it.

They’ll die in the midst of a terrified final effort. He’s watching the end happen. This, right now, Newton struggling pointlessly through this slide deck. This is the beginning of the end. The room itself is a tableau that Caravaggio might have favored, with its darkened corners and four ill-starred faces shining with reflected light. Hermann cannot keep his eyes on the glowing screen where text, describing the decimation of the science that might save their species, blurs into prophecy. 

He finds himself staring at Newton’s right hand, braced against the table.

Something catches an edge in his mind.

“Stop.” Hermann’s on his feet and jabbing the end of his cane into the light switch before he even knows why. But as the lights come up—

Newton blinks, stopping mid-sentence as three people, now standing, aggressively invoke their preferred variants of his name. 

“What?” 

“You look bad, kid,” Hansen says, winning this year’s Understatement Award. “Sit down, maybe.”

“I’ve looked bad all day,” Newton rasps, aggravated, scowling at Hansen. His breathing is shallow and he’s not—he’s not trying as hard as he ought, given the blue cast to his nail beds and lips. “It’s the lighting.”

Hermann clamps a hand on his colleague’s shoulder and forces him to sit. “It’s not the lighting.” He keeps the screaming urgency from his voice.

“I tend to agree,” Pentecost says. He glances at the empty chair at the head of the table then back at Newton. Perhaps he, too, is thinking of Lightcap. “Newt, you think you can walk to medical?”

Oh it’s ‘Newt,’ now, is it? Hermann thinks.

“Yeah,” Newton whispers, leaning into the table, eyes closed. “Sure.”