The Gift Of Borrowed Life

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

I held her hand tight, and I wasn’t ever letting go.

We met on the train to the camp. She knew by sight that I was a Death-Touched. Even as we were packed on everyone avoided being near to me.

Except her.

She asked to sit. Made conversation. Made it feel normal, like we were on a school trip rather than being rounded up and taken away. Made me feel normal.

When the train was overturned she Warped the window open and we were the first out. She gripped my hand and we ran into the forest.

Others came with us. Others went their own way. We all knew that splitting up, scattering, was the best defence against the Boots who’d chase us. But that wasn’t why our band dwindled so quickly.

People didn’t want to be near me.

Soon it was just us two.

While her power was so useful, so much better than mine, able to get us through walls and fences without leaving a trace, she herself is so vulnerable. Even wearing both our coats she suffered from the cold. Whereas I feel rejuvenated after walking through woodlands, being surrounded by such life, she needs actual food.

Then the cough started. Dots of malignant life filling her lungs. Everyone carries untold dots of life within them which isn’t them; we’re more trains for the living than we are life ourself. But these were different. The others shrank away. These dots were like me.

They were death.

For the first time, I leant into my power. It took me days to be able to reach inside without hurting her. Days more to be able to pluck the life from those dots leaving them useless trash for her body to dispose of. But they rallied and continued to push, to eat, to drain her.

By the time the battle was won, the war was lost.

She is barely breathing now. Thin and pale and straggly. A shadow of the woman she was before. It’s painful to see. I wish I could pour life into her, could turn her back to that shining hope who chose to sit with me.

But I don’t know how to turn the life to her life. How to give it to her in a way her body will accept rather than another intruder for it to fight.

So I wait. Wait as her breath peters out. Wait as the spark fades from her eyes. Wait as the life sputters out, a billion signal fires running out of fuel. Wait until there is nothing left in her to fight.

Then I lean forward and kiss her forehead. Pour everything I’ve been saving into the waiting husk. The fire which fills her isn’t true life; monochrome neon rather than the colourful patchwork she had minutes before.

Her eyes flutter open again. Her heart beats, unnaturally steady. Clockwork. Her breath wheezes.

“Kkkkris?”

I beam and hold her hand tight. I’m never letting her go.

Prompt was the first sentence.