Chapter 40 - Marco
I was looking out through the window at the world that was continuing to exist even though I was no longer participating in it.
Alexei came behind me and I felt him before I saw him. His arms wrapped around me from behind. “Hi, beautiful.”
He called me that often.
Beautiful.
The word that didn’t match what I saw when I looked in the mirror.
I turned around in his arms and I looked up. He smiled down at me.
I loved his smile
I think it is the most precious thing the world has ever given me.
More precious than the stars themselves.
Because it was the thing that had been the hardest to get. It existed for me.
Because of me.
Alexei Morozov’s smile was the thing I was most grateful for, the thing I would hold onto the longest, the thing I would carry with me into whatever came after this.
I brought my hand up and I ran my thumb over his bottom lip. “Hi, baby.”
He melted whenever I called him that.
There was always a flush of red that crept up from his jaw to his cheekbones. It was faint and so subtle that anyone who didn’t know him would have missed it entirely.
But I saw it. He was blushing when I called him baby.
He would never admit it - that much is clear - but my eyes always caught the red on his skin. “I want to go out a bit,” I said. “Can you take me?”
He furrowed his eyebrows. “It’s night, and it’s a bit cold.”
I hadn’t been out in days. My legs were too weak. Actually, my entire body was just too weak.
I opened my arms and wiggled my fingers. “You’ll carry me,” I giggled. “And keep me warm.”
He looked uneasy. I knew that he always found it hard to refuse anything I asked of him. “I don’t know.”
“Please?” I pleaded gently.
He sighed, which meant he was defeated. “Okay, only for a bit.”
I smiled.
He was going to take me outside.
And I was going to see the sky one more time.
We weren’t far from home.
There was a sea nearby and he carried me the whole way on his back while I swung my legs back and forth.
“You’re quiet,” he said after a while. His voice was low. “Are you cold?”
I shook my head against his shoulder. “No. Just… looking.” I tipped my head back and let my eyes find the sky.
I searched the eastern horizon the way I always used to, and then I saw it. Slightly brighter than the ones around it. My hope star.
A soft breath left me. “I can still see it,” I whispered.
Alexei’s steps didn’t slow. “See what?”
“My star.” I smiled against the side of his neck. “The one I told you about when we were little.”
There was a pause. Then I felt the quiet shift in his shoulders, the way his breathing changed. Even without seeing his face, I knew he was smiling. I could feel it in the way his body softened under me, in the careful way his hands held the backs of my thighs.
“I watched it every day while I was growing up,” he said quietly.
My fingers curled weakly into the fabric of his shirt. “You did?”
“Yeah. I always thought of you when I saw it.”
“That means…” My voice came out thinner than I wanted. “That means we were never really apart.”
Alexei was quiet for a few steps. When he spoke again, it was a whisper. “No. We weren’t.”
I rested my cheek against his shoulder and kept my eyes on the star. “We will never be apart.”
We walked a little further in silence. The sound of the sea was getting closer now.
“Alexei?”
“Mm.”
“I’m glad it was you,” I whispered. “In the garden. I’m glad it was your eyes I found first.”
His hands tightened just slightly under my thighs. “I’m glad it was you too,” he answered.
I smiled again, weaker this time, and pressed a soft kiss to the side of his neck.
“You can put me down now.”
My feet touched the ground, and I looked at the sea. “It’s beautiful.”
I could feel his gaze even without turning. The constant attention he directed at me at all times. He was always watching. “Are you sure you aren’t cold?”
Yes, I was cold. He had made sure I was dressed warmly and wrapped me in layers before we left, but I was still cold because my heart wasn’t pumping enough blood in my body. “Maybe a little.”
He took his jacket off and slid it over my shoulders. It was large. It swallowed me and I felt a sense of déjà vu. The strange feeling that this has happened before. A child with green eyes appeared in my mind and I smiled.
It was bizarre. When I looked at him I saw not just the present version of him but all the versions. The boy in the garden. The boy on the rooftop. The man standing in front of me now. All of them the same person. All of them mine. All of them connected by a thread that led from my heart to his.
His eyes moved across my face. “You seem pale. Maybe we should head back.”
I knew I was pale.
I was pale because I was fighting my last breaths. My body was spending its remaining energy on keeping the organs running and had nothing left for making the skin look alive.
I could feel myself falling away.
And I think he saw it.
I knew he saw it because of the almost imperceptible tightening of his jaw, the response he could not fully hide no matter how hard he tried. His control failed when it came to me. It always had.
He wanted to take me back but I wanted to be here because if this was the end, if this was the reality that my body was telling me was coming, then this was where I wanted it to happen. Here. Under these stars. With him.
“Let’s stay a bit.”
“Marco.” I felt him panicking. “You don’t look okay. We should call the doctor, okay?”
I brought my hand up and caressed his face.
My fingers didn’t have the strength to grip. They were losing their power. They were running out of the fundamental energy that hands need to hold. “Later.”
He trembled against my palm.
I felt it through my fingers. He was afraid.
“Let me look at you a little longer.” My throat was closing around the words. My lungs were producing less and less air for speech. Each word cost something, and I was spending what I had left on him.
His breath hitched and I think I saw his eyes turn wet.
The moisture gathering at the edges.
He kissed my palm.
The one that was still resting against his cheek. His lips pressed into the center of it. The kiss was so reverent that it felt like something being sealed. “I love your smile,” I said. “So much.” My eyes were getting hazy and I could barely stand.
He was holding me steady now with his hands on my waist. He was the only thing between me and the ground.
“Promise me you’ll keep it.”
I have never begged life for anything. It has taken too much for me to believe it would ever give something back. But if I could ask for one small mercy, I would ask it to leave Alexei’s smile untouched. Let every sorrow find me before it finds him.
“Don’t do this, okay?” His lower lip trembled and I think he was struggling not to fall to his knees. “Let’s go back. I’ll call the doctor.”
I smiled because the alternative was crying, and I didn’t want to cry.
I didn’t want the last thing he saw on my face to be grief.
I didn’t want the last expression I wore in this world to be something that would haunt him.
I wanted him to remember me smiling. I wanted the last image he had of me to be happy.
“Will you find me again?” I raised my shaky hand and I pointed up at the sky.
“You have to look up there,” my voice was so weak I didn’t know if he could hear me. “To one of the holes that poke through the dark. I’ll look back, I promise.”
We will find each other in the stars.
We will never be apart.
I felt him breathing so harshly, like an animal threatened to be killed. He was struggling not to collapse.
Even though I was the one who was dying. I was the one whose breath was going away. “Keep your smile.”
For me.
For the boy you were before me. For the man you became because of me.
Keep it.
Don’t let it die with me.
Don’t let the void take it back.
“If you want my smile to stay,” he said, and each word was a fight, each word was something he was dragging out of himself through force, “then you have to stay. You’re the reason for it.”
“I’m always here.” I put my hand on his chest and felt his heart. The heart that had been beating for him his entire life and that had, when he offered it, been willing to stop beating so that mine could continue.
I leaned on my tiptoes, with all my strength, with one last act of love that my body was capable of producing.
“I will always be here.”
Then I pressed my lips to his.
And my last breath went through his mouth.
Suddenly it was all dark.