And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no more sea. (REV 21:1)
When he woke, he wished he hadn't.
Consciousness ebbed through him slowly, like a sunrise bleeding into the desert and completely in sync with the purplish light beginning to burn along the horizon. Craig surfaced a little, became aware of a terrible, rancid ache in his leg, only to sink back down again and struggle to stay there. The stiffness in his neck was making it difficult, and the juddering of the vehicle engine below roused him every time he inched too close toward oblivion. Soon enough, he found himself stirring, eyes blinking open and sweeping over the dashboard, crusted with dried blood, and the windshield which had a crack like a spider web across it. The fissures sparkled like jewellery in the spreading dawn. He tried to sit up, only to be rendered breathless by the pain, and the warm fabric thing spread over him slid limply off his shoulders into his lap.
Tweak's jacket. The hoodie he had taken up to Brass Ridge. He must have left it in the car yesterday.
Yesterday... something had happened yesterday. Or no. Something had happened today. Craig had slept between now and then, his memory slowly returning as he looked around and took in the damage that whatever it was had caused.
"Good morning." Tweek sounded exhausted, and he probably was. His knuckled looked white and bloodless on the wheel, his shoulders rigid like he was made of stone. The wind through the broken side window sent his hair whipping loosely around his face, and in the silver blue glow of the morning he looked so pale he was ghostly, an apparition from across a universal plane. Craig's skin prickled, and he realised he was cold.
"Hi..." he trailed off, glancing at the speedometer and the clock on the dashboard. The time was after nine am. "Is the clock broken or something?"
Tweek's jaw tensed and he shook his head.
"Nope. Not what I can tell. We've driven almost 400 miles according to the speedometer. So five hours."
"We should be out of the Basin by now." Craig told him, as though he hadn't already figured that out.
"Sun should be up too." Tweek said, his grip on the wheel growing tighter. "But it isn't. Just that glow on the horizon."
Craig winced and forced himself into a sitting position.
"It's nothing. There have been some weird weather patterns recently," he assured him feebly. "Is the GPS working?"
Tweek shook his head, and Craig saw that he was shaking again, so close to breaking into shivers. He turned his face away, looking to the sky where the light blended into the fading night, and studied the stars on the cusp of that moment where they disappear into the light of day. The moon was still visible, far to the east, and Craig realised it had stopped raining. The water from above had fallen to the earth, swallowed by the thirsty sand and sent down deep into the aquifer beneath the Basin floor.
"If you keep driving, we will reach the rim soon."
It was strange that he could still say that, even though he didn't really believe it.
They drove until the Isuzu ran out of gas.
They ran out of gas at what the clock said was eleven twenty nine am, but might have been just before daylight started breaking. The stars were still out, faded and ethereal, and the moon hung in place like it had been frozen in time, an unearthly vision difficult to rationalise, and harder to ignore. The gradual slowing of the vehicle made Craig's stomach turn. He tried to brace himself to prevent the final jerk upsetting his leg, but to no avail. Even the tiniest nudge of motion ending made him feel light headed in pain.
"I think my leg is broken," he said, "I think..."
He tried to remember where he had hurt himself. Had it been before or after they left the hotel?
"I pushed you into the table," Tweek told him, "I didn't realise until we were outside. I didn't mean to."
Craig blinked at him, piecing the fragments of his memory back together. Was that what happened? He thought it was. He recalled the smell of gasoline and the sound of an unseen aggressor breaking in the rear kitchen door. If Tweek hadn't pushed him out of the way, he would have taken a whole lot of shattered door to the face, and he thought he could be slightly grateful for that, if nothing else.
God, had that all really happened? It seemed so far away.
Now they were still again, Craig took a moment to close his eyes. He could feel himself starting to get thirsty, his head throbbing with the dull, tired soreness of dehydration. Were there still bottles of water in the back? Kenny always used to keep bottles of water in the back.
When Craig thought of Kenny, his heart seemed to stop and his eyes snapped open, wide and staring into the distance. Tweek was still sitting with his hands on the wheel, hair hiding his face and the expressions passing over it.
"Is Kenny still back there?" He asked, the dread audible and heavy on the air between them.
Tweek nodded.
And everything suddenly came upon him all at once, an unrelenting replay of his life, his home, and everything that had slipped from his grasp like sand pouring in between his fingers. The understanding was so heavy, denser than the atmosphere of a billion planets all layered into one, and it seeped through his along his nerves and into his bones in a way that made him shake with awe and grief for what he had lost.
Kenny was gone. His home was gone. Everyone who knew him, the people who had smiled at him, and learned his name, were gone and he could never go back. And as he pulled together the threads of this logic, it became clear that had Tweek stayed away, had this boy just gone like he had meant to and left Craig alone, he would have stayed safe and happy in his caravan, watching old animated shows and fixing dusty old engines until the moment he died, and he would never have known loss again. He would have been safe and no one would have noticed him, disappearing into the forgotten valleys of history. He wished he could go back to that. Go back to wanting that.
Because that was the worst part. That deep down somewhere, he didn't want to.
He wanted gardens and cities, and drizzle on a Friday afternoon. He wanted fresh coffees, and walks along the river, and the sound of traffic filling his ears so that he could forget the Radiant Basin, and Kenny, and everything inside him that had kept him there so long without second thinking. He regretted his choices, and he regretted his birth, and most of all he regretted letting himself be reminded of life outside. Of winter and laughing at small dogs on leashes, and smiling politely at strangers he passed on the streets.
What was he going to do with himself now? Now he didn't have a home? He couldn't go back, but he couldn't go anywhere else either. Not now he had lost his roots, and the only stable thing he had in a careless and chaotic universe. His parents, his childhood home, seemed like the place of a stranger, and there was no way to imagine a life now, after this. How could there be anything after this? Alone in the desert with a vehicle and a corpse, and a boy who had taken everything he had away from him without a second thought.
Rage moved through him, and it was a relief, because unlike grief rage prompted action, and action meant that maybe, sometime in the distant future, there might be change.
He jerked the door release handle, and steeling himself against the blinding pain as he moved he slid out and landed on his good leg outside, pressing the chair shift leaver so he could reach through and drag Kenny's body through the gap toward him with his bandaged hand.
"What are you doing?!" Tweek sounded anxious, but Craig didn't care. Let him be anxious all he wanted, there was no way for him to understand the real depth of what he had brought upon them. The awful, evil things that his choices had inflicted upon others.
Fuck him. Fuck him and everything about him. Craig felt repulsive, for having warmed to him. He felt betrayed, for having been taken in. Tweek was the devil, the bringer of the end. Craig wished he had thrown him to the Disciples when he had the chance.
Kenny's body fell onto the dirt with a loud thump, and gasping every time he moved Craig hobbled around to the back of the trailer to avoid looking at him. He looked so small without his life in him. So slight and fragile like a broken twig. His hair was clotted with blood and sand, one side of his face crushed concave against the wheel Tweek was sat behind. Craig felt himself gag as he thought of it, but he swallowed it back down again in order to open the hatch and pull out the shovel.
"Craig, what are you doing?!"
He heard Tweek get out of the car, but he was already on his way around the side, back to where Kenny's corpse lay in the dust. The shovel made it easier to walk without putting pressure on his sore leg, and it was a lifesaver when it came to dragging Kenny's body across the dirt further off the compacted road. When Tweek reached him, he was making ready to start digging, balanced on one leg and driving the shovel with great difficulty into the earth.
"Craig stop it!"
Craig didn't stop it. He almost lost his balance, and he was light headed from the pain, but Craig Tucker was going to dig a grave for his past life if it goddamned killed him.
"Craig! Stop!"
Tweek grabbed the shovel, jerking it out of his grip and throwing it a decent six feet away. Furious, Craig tried to scramble after it, but his leg made it difficult to even move a step and Tweek was seizing him before he could make it even a quarter of the way. A small struggle ensued, but as Craig had thought on that very first day, it was absolutely no match between them. Weak and trembling with pain, he gave in instantly, barely managing to hammer a feeble punch against Tweek's chest.
"You did this!" He told him, voice choked by the emotion he couldn't convey. "You did this to me! I was happy, before you came and ruined everything!"
He glared at him, his clammy, sweaty face, and his eyes greener than the greenest thing Craig would ever remember seeing in his life. His paleness like alabaster in the cold light was unearthly, and he seemed more like a stranger now than he ever had been. This life ruiner, this angel of death. Craig didn't even know his real name.
"... Who are you?" he asked finally. And for a moment, Tweek looked as though he might reply.
"I-"
He cut himself off, spotting something over Craig's shoulder that captured his attention. With much difficulty, Craig craned his neck to see where he was looking at.
Far overhead, above the blurry fracture where the heavens met the earth, streaks of silver light like rain moved silently across the sky towards the ground. The stars which had shone for a million years started moving, the gravity that held them in place began breaking, and even though Craig was seeing he couldn't understand because that was impossible. Worse than impossible. Unthinkable. Overwhelmed by the shear incomprehensibility of it all, he felt himself start crying, and his fists resting on Tweek's chest became claws, pulling at his shirt and trying to move closer against him.
"I'm scared," he told him honestly. "I'm so afraid, I don't know how to die. I've never had to do it before."
"You aren't going to die." Tweek pulled him close against his chest, and for a moment, the world became the small gap between them. Craig could see nothing but the light edging between their bodies, and smell nothing but the drying rain over his sweat. Right now, he could be anywhere, anywhere but here, and wrapped in his arms it felt like Craig was in the last safe space in the entire world. The only refuge in the middle of a storm. He felt breath against his ear, and hands braced against his shoulders and back, and soon the light bleeding between them became blinding, as though the sun was finally rising and a new day had finally begun, but soon, the light became even more blinding than that - Craig couldn't bring himself to look at it.
"You won't die." Tweek repeated to him softly, his voice echoing like it was passed across an impossible distance, just for him "I promise."
-Xiao-
And maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he would. Maybe if he did, it wouldn't mean anything. Life was life, and death was death, and if this was going to be his final resting place then that was that. He was no-one great or special, and he certainly was in no position to challenge the will of a God.
If this was the end, then this was the end. His bones would lie against Tweek's for all eternity, his dead eyes fixed unseeing on the endless, starless void of the sky.
THE END