Chapter 428: Over the Edge
"Jo. Jo, honey, look at me."
Joanne froze.
She snapped out of her trance and looked down at her hands.
They were slick with dried blood. None of it was hers.
She had been applying a tourniquet to a man with a large gash in his leg, with an even larger piece of shrapnel jutting out next to it.
Joanne hadn’t even heard the cries of the man underneath her. But she heard Malachi’s voice when he called for her.
"You’re making it a little too tight, babe. Remember how Cee showed us."
Malachi gently loosened the man’s tourniquet as much as he could without restarting blood flow.
Joanne nodded shakily. Malachi knew that it was time to get her out of here.
He turned around and called for the nearest emergency responder.
"Hey, O! Got another ready for transport over here."
Opal strode across the lawn with a few of her men and they helped load the man onto a floating backboard.
Once the victim was secure, Opal gave the nod and the two men took him towards a fleet of transport vehicles waiting nearby.
"Thanks for the call, guys..." Opal noticed the black, distant look in Joanne’s eye. A wave of concern arose in her. "You alright, sugar?"
Joanne was good at putting up fronts. She brushed aside any concern for her and focused on the matter at hand.
"I’m fine. Do we know who did this?"
Opal hesitated to answer. "We’ll comb through the place for a definite answer... In the meantime, you should probably go-"
"I can’t go anywhere yet. T-They still haven’t brought her out." Joanne got to her feet shakily.
A look was exchanged between Malachi and Opal that would have crushed her had she noticed it.
Gently, Mal held Joanne by her forearms and kept her in place.
"Jo... we need to go. You can’t be-"
"I-I’m not going anywhere until I see that she’s okay!" Joanne pushed him away. "I-If you don’t want to stay then that’s your choice, but I-"
"Jo... Serosh couldn’t find her. I can’t sense anyone else in the building-"
"Y-You’re just not looking hard enough! Fuck off if you’re not going to help!"
"JO!" Malachi screamed back. As soon as he saw her flinch, he immediately felt a surge of guilt eat him from the inside.
"...She’s gone. I’m sorry." He whispered.
Joanne felt every nerve in her body turn fuzzy. It felt like a low level of electricity was coursing through her blood, her tissues, her bones.
Her vision failed her. The only thing she saw were mirages.
She pictured Awena, rushing through the front door, covered in ash and soot. Complaining loudly about how washing her clothes was going to be next to impossible.
And then she’d walk over, and Joanne would tell her that she needed to slow down and get looked at, and Awena would likely respond with ’you first’.
Joanne felt sick.
She couldn’t stomach their last conversation being what it was.
She didn’t know how she was supposed to live with herself with that being the last conversation they had. She didn’t think she wanted to.
"Jo..!" Malachi looked horrified.
Joanne felt something warm dribble down her lips.
She brought a hand to her face and pulled it away to find her fingertips freshly stained with red.
This time, it actually belonged to her.
Joanne felt the buzzing in her body intensify.
It was the last thing that she was aware of before her legs gave out from underneath her and she took a hard tumble.
- Four weeks later...
Grief affects everyone differently.
Just as people come in a variety of different shapes, colors and creeds, they respond differently to stress and loss.
Some resort to the extremes. Either insurmountable grief or anger.
Others make themselves as busy as they can. The less time they give themselves to think about what’s missing, the easier it all seems.
Over the past few weeks, Joanne had taken on a more active role in the house and at work.
She wakes up in the morning so that she can make the kids lunches and put on a pot of coffee for everyone else. Then they descend into Japan and continue their efforts to rebuild it.
She and Malachi had been glued together for the past several weeks. That isn’t to say that they neglected everyone else but, nine times out of ten, if you were looking for one then you would find the other with them.
Sunrise had barely started to cover the skies of Japan.
A faint orange light had begun to creep into the ship from the towering windows and warmed the kitchen with its glow.
The fragrant, bitter smell of brewing coffee wafted through the air.
Joanne was placed on top of the kitchen counter. Her arms were draped over Malachi’s shoulders as he clung to her tightly.
The only sound in the kitchen was silence. All the two of them wanted to do was hug each other.
Occasionally, they would stare into each other’s eyes and shed a tear or two. But it must have been too difficult for the both of them to keep seeing each other like that, because they had been pressed together for several minutes.
With the way they were positioned, Malachi could feel Joanne’s pulse through his lips.
It was ordinarily nice and steady. But when his hands occasionally brushed her stomach, he felt it jump.
"S-Sorry..."
"No, it’s fine... I-I’m probably just being unreasonably jumpy about the whole thing."
Joanne slowly took Malachi’s hand and placed it against the softness of her stomach. The first time in several weeks.
The warmth of Malachi’s hand comforted her so much that it nearly brought tears to her eyes. His touch was intentional. It was healing. Joanne didn’t know how much she needed it.
"It’s, umm..." she paused as her eyes started to water again. "It’s about time for the girls to start getting up. You want to give me step by step instructions on how not to burn French toast sticks?"
For weeks now, Malachi had been chuckling along with Joanne’s thin attempts at dry humor.
But for some reason, this morning he just couldn’t let things go by as they had been.
"Do you want to talk about it..?"
Malachi heard Joanne’s pulse quicken again, just as she began trying to get down from the counter.
"I-It’s not really anything to talk about, you know..? I wasn’t that far along anyway so I... didn’t have that much time to get my hopes up." She forced herself to smile.
Malachi kept Joanne sitting on the counter. When he wouldn’t let her down, she became slightly anxious.
"Hey... the kids will be up soon, so..."
"I promise you, Jo. I’m going to find whoever did this and make them pay. "
Joanne hesitated to look into Malachi’s eyes.
She was grieving differently than he was. His grief sat in the pit of his stomach and hardened like a kidney stone.
Joanne could feel the anger that never left him. She knew the demonification was only a small factor.
Every morning, no matter how long he held the golden cup, Malachi’s eyes didn’t return to normal.
The deep, vibrant purple had dimmed into a simmering maroon.
Joanne feared that she was dragging the man she loved down a path of self destruction. And she didn’t know how she would survive if that came to pass.
"...We’re not law enforcement, you know...? You can’t say things like that."
Mal was starting not to care. As much as he hated himself for it.
"Honey... I’m already not sure which way is up right now." Joanne’s voice quivered. "You can’t start changing on me now too, or I really won’t have anything else."
No matter how firm she tried to make her voice, the illusion didn’t sell.
Joanne was indeed one major blow away from shattering. Malachi couldn’t and wouldn’t be that final piece.
"I’m sorry. I’m just..." he couldn’t finish his words.
"It’s okay, I get it. We’re still human after all.. mostly."
When Malachi and Joanne shared a moment of eye contact this time, neither of them wept. Even if they were still raw on the inside.
For the first time in several weeks, the two shared a kiss.
It wasn’t the usual small peck the two of them had been exchanging before bed or in the hallway. The kiss was the kind they shared before everything went wrong.
Joanne actually thought she might have shed tears over just how much she missed the feeling.
When they pulled away from each other, Joanne was surprised that he didn’t stop there.
Gently, he lifted up her shirt and revealed her stomach. Something she had deliberately not shown him in weeks.
It was clear she still wasn’t fully comfortable. Her pulse had become rapid once again.
Malachi placed his lips against the tender flesh of her stomach.
Joanne felt her entire body turn warm. Many emotions ran rampant through her mind. Not all of them warm and delightful.
In four weeks, Joanne had never managed to get through a full day without crying.
She would try again tomorrow and see if things went better.