Chapter 17 Crimson Snow
SEVENTEEN
CRIMSON SNOW
TOM
The bathroom floor was cold against my back. Tile and grout pressing into my shoulder blades, the smell of carbolic soap sharp in my nostrils, and somewhere far away the sound of carols drifting from the chapel.
Silent night, holy night.
Couldn't remember how I'd got here. One moment I'd been standing at the back of the service, watching candlelight flicker across faces lifted in song. The next, Danny's voice in my ear, clear as the day he'd died. Tom. Tom, I can't feel my legs. Tom, please.
And then I was running.
My hands wouldn't stop shaking. Pressed them flat against the tile, tried to ground myself the way the medical officer had taught me back in France. Five things I could see. Four things I could touch. Three things I could hear.
Couldn't see anything. Eyes squeezed shut against images that weren't real, weren't here, weren't now. Danny's face. The boy in the window. Dozens of others, crowding in like they'd been waiting for me to crack.
All is calm, all is bright.
Nothing was calm. Nothing was bright. My chest had caved in, lungs refusing to work properly, each breath a fight against wire wrapped tight around my ribs.
Cold sweat soaked through my shirt despite the chill.
Heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat, my temples, the tips of my fingers.
This was worse than usual. This was the kind that sent men home in pieces, the kind that got you labelled shell-shocked and shuffled off to some hospital where doctors asked useless questions and nurses looked at you with pity.
Couldn't let anyone see. Couldn't let them know how broken I really was.
Footsteps in the corridor. Quick, purposeful. I pressed harder against the floor, willing myself invisible, willing whoever it was to walk past.
The door opened.
“Tom?”
Art's voice. Of course it was Art. Of course he'd noticed me leave. Of course he'd come looking.
“Go away.” The words came out wrecked, barely recognisable as my own voice.
He didn't go away. The door clicked shut, and then he was crouching beside me, his face swimming into focus above mine. Pale. Worried. Glasses slightly askew.
“You're on the floor.”
“Observant.” I tried to laugh. It came out closer to a sob.
“What do you need?”
Such a simple question. Such an impossible answer. What did I need? To stop seeing dead men every time I closed my eyes. To unhear Danny's last words. To be someone other than what the war had made me.
“Nothing. I'm fine. Just needed a minute.”
“You're shaking so hard I can hear your teeth chattering.” His hand hovered near my shoulder, uncertain. “Should I fetch Dr Hart?”
“No.” Too sharp, too loud in the small space. I forced myself to breathe. “No doctors. No one. Just... give me a minute and I'll be fine.”
“You keep saying fine. I don't think that word means what you think it means.”
Despite everything, my mouth twitched. “Did you just quote Lewis Carroll at me?”
“It seemed appropriate.” He sat down properly, back against the wall, close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating off him. “I'm not leaving.”
“Art—”
“I'm not leaving you alone on a bathroom floor on Christmas Eve.” His voice had gone quiet but fierce. “So you can either tell me what's happening, or we can sit here in silence until you're ready to get up. But I'm staying.”
The carols had stopped. Or maybe I just couldn't hear them anymore over the ringing in my ears. I stared at the ceiling, at water stains that looked like maps of countries that didn't exist, and felt something crack open in my chest.
“Sometimes I can't make it stop.” The words scraped out raw. “The memories. They come and I can't... I'm back there. In France. In the mud. Watching Danny die. Watching all of them die. And I know I'm not really there, I know it's not happening now, but my body doesn't believe me.”
Silence. Then Art's hand found mine on the cold tile. His fingers were trembling too, but his grip was steady.
“The medical officer called it an acute stress reaction. Said it would pass. It's been months and it hasn't bloody passed.”
“Maybe it doesn't pass.” Art's thumb moved across my knuckles, a small repetitive motion. “Maybe it just... changes. Becomes something you carry instead of something that carries you.”
“Is that supposed to be comforting?”
“I don't know. I'm not very good at comforting.” A pause. “I'm better at patterns and problems. And right now you're both.”
The shaking was starting to ease. Whether from Art's presence or simple exhaustion, I couldn't tell. But the wire around my chest had loosened enough that I could take a full breath.
“Everyone saw me leave.” Reality crashing back in. The chapel. The turned heads. Father Avery pausing mid-sentence. “Everyone saw me run out of Christmas Eve service like a madman.”
“So?”
“So they'll know.” I sat up too fast, head spinning. “They'll know I'm broken. That the sniper they brought in to protect everyone can't even sit through a church service without falling apart. Christ, Art, how am I supposed to do my job if everyone knows I'm—”
“Human?” His voice was sharp. “If everyone knows you're human?”
“Weak.” The word tasted like ash. “If everyone knows I'm weak.”
Art's eyes flashed. “You think this is weakness?”
“What else would you call it?”
“I'd call it surviving.” He was on his feet now, pacing the small space like he did when equations weren't balancing.
“I'd call it carrying more weight than any person should have to carry.
I'd call it being a man who's seen things that would break most people and still getting up every morning and doing the job anyway.”
“You don't understand—”
“Don't I?” He spun to face me, and there was something wild in his expression, something cracking open behind his careful control.
“You think I don't know what it feels like to be drowning?
To lie awake calculating how many people died because I wasn't fast enough?
To walk into the canteen and wonder if anyone can see the blood on my hands even though it's invisible?”
“That's different.”
“How? How is it different?” His voice rose.
“Because I don't pull the trigger? I just tell other people where to aim.
Because I sit in a warm hut instead of a trench?
People still die, Tom. My work still kills them.
And I have to live with that every single day while pretending I'm fine, everything's fine, I'm just odd Arthur Pembroke with his numbers and his notebooks and his complete inability to function like a normal person.”
He was shaking now too. Hands clenched at his sides, breath coming fast, and I could see the same fractures in him that I felt in myself. The same barely-held-together edges.
“At least you have an excuse,” he continued, quieter but no less raw.
“At least people understand that soldiers come back damaged.
What's my excuse? I've never been shot at.
I've never watched a friend die. I just sit at a desk and translate death into neat little reports and then can't sleep because the numbers won't stop.”
I got to my feet. Unsteady, but upright. “Art—”
“Don't tell me it's different. Don't tell me I don't understand. We're the same, Tom. Broken in the same places. Carrying the same weight.” His voice cracked. “And I'm so bloody tired of pretending I'm not.”
The space between us had shrunk. Two steps, maybe three. Close enough that I could see the dampness on his cheeks, tears he probably didn't know he was shedding. Close enough that when he swayed slightly, exhausted by his own outburst, I reached out to steady him without thinking.
My hand on his arm. His hand coming up to grip my wrist. Both of us breathing hard, raw and exposed in ways we'd spent our whole lives avoiding.
“You're not weak,” he said, fierce. “You're not. And if you ever say that again I'll... I don't know what I'll do but it will be decidedly unpleasant.”
Something bubbled up in my chest. A laugh or a sob, impossible to tell which. “Decidedly unpleasant?”
“I'm not good at threats.” His mouth twisted, almost a smile. “But I mean it. You're the strongest person I know. And I won't let you believe otherwise.”
“Art.” His name came out broken. “I'm not strong. I'm barely holding on.”
“Then hold on to me.” Simple. Certain. Like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I'm not going anywhere.”
The bathroom was quiet. The whole estate was quiet, everyone still in chapel or gone to bed, and we stood in that small space with our hands on each other and our walls crumbled at our feet.
“Why?” The question scraped out before I could stop it. “Why do you care so much?”
“Because you're bona.” The Polari slipped out soft, almost unconscious. “Because you're the first person who ever looked at me and didn't seem to wish I was different. Because when you're near I can actually breathe instead of just performing breathing.”
His fingers tightened on my wrist. I could feel his pulse hammering against my palm.
“Because I want—” He stopped. Swallowed. Started again. “Because I want things I've never let myself want before. And it terrifies me. And you terrify me. And I don't care. I don't care about any of it because you're here and you're real and you see me, Tom. You actually see me.”
“I see you.” The words came out rough, barely a whisper. “I've been seeing you since the moment you corrected my grammar in the middle of a snowstorm.”
His laugh was wet, surprised. “That was obnoxious of me.”
“It was you.” I brought my other hand up, touched his jaw. Felt him shiver. “And I can't stop seeing you. Can't stop thinking about you. Can't stop wanting—”
I didn't finish the sentence. Didn't have to.
His mouth found mine in the half-dark, clumsy and desperate and tasting of salt. Nothing like the careful, tentative thing I'd been imagining in my weaker moments. This was raw. This was need. This was two people who'd been drowning finally finding something to hold on to.