[Fic] all the people weeping (Apostle - 2018)
- Fandom: Apostle (2018)
- Pairing: Malcolm Howe/Thomas Richardson
- Tags: Post-Canon, Rebuilding
- Word-Count: 2075
- Status: Complete
- First Published: 2024-09-27
- Disclaimer: I do not own Apostle (2018) and make no profit from this—it is solely a hobby for fun, with no financial compensation.
Summary:
In the mornings, Malcolm gardens.
Notes:
- For psychomachia.
Work Text:
In the mornings, Malcolm gardens.
Scarcely bigger than a handful of meters, the garden is a shabby thing; full of weeds he can't dislodge and a wilting fence, hares and foxes sneaking into it every other night. The sheep wander over sometimes, too, watching him while they placidly eat the grass growing outside of it and Malcolm is heaving with the pick-axe, trying to wedge up the earth and turn over it, vaguely aware that that's something that should be done.
In truth, he is not a farmer. If he ever was it has been lost to him, time wearing away at who he once was, leaving a starving husk in its wake. He needs the earth to sprout, needs the seeds to take, needs the grass to grow and the sheep to breed, and he is not a farmer. Not a blacksmith, either, for all that he needs nails, and hammers, and a new axe. He needs—so many things, truly, but he is but one man and he can not leave the island. And there has been no boats, for a while now. No new people bringing news, or dreams, or a workforce he can put to use. There is only him, and he is not a farmer.
But the island needs him.
Or; well, the island needs something. Malcolm doesn't yet quite entirely understand what that is, but that's of no matter. He'll carve himself into what it wants, what it needs, become something that is a part of it, instead of something that just so happens to walk across it.
He can barely remember the life he had before the island, now. Can't remember the people, the faces, the names. Malcolm has lost everything since then, twice over. Has lost his child, his wife, his best friends, his brothers in arms.
His faith.
Everything he has, torn asunder.
So he gardens. It's a handful of potatoes that take root, in the end. A paltry single-number of carrot. A tomato plant. But Malcolm tends to them like he tended to his flock, when it was new and needing more attention than he had in him. He rose to the challenge then, and he can rise to this challenge, now, he thinks.
Especially with Thomas.
After tending the garden, Malcolm eats his sparse breakfast. There was, at least, a comfortable amount of food stored away that survived the fall, but he's cautious, anyway. He already knows the island can drive him out, can starve him, can deny him. He won't repeat his mistakes.
Thomas lies on the grass, still. His eyes stare up at the sky, slow blinks that can't do much for the dryness. He is a holy vision, has blessed Malcolm; and Malcolm prostrates before him, bends to his knees and begins the daily routine of keeping him warm and fed and watered. He knows not what Thomas needs, not really, but he knows he did wrong with Her. Knows that, at some point, he imagined himself knowledge and surety he did not possess; assumed his understanding of Her and how She worked to be correct, to be objective truth. She needed blood—why, he thinks now, did he assume that that was to be the only answer.
She needed it when She was trapped, but She must have spent eons free. Eons on an island with no people, no humans to drink from, and he knows when She was trapped animal blood didn't give her enough. She needed more.
But Thomas is not trapped.
Malcolm does nothing to him but maintain his body while Thomas ignores him, staring into the sky with vacant eyes. It's enough—it's not the flinch teh first time Malcolm did his best to shave his beard for him or the wince when he did his best to wash Thomas' hair, vines curling through it. He doesn't know what Thomas needs, not truly; but he has fed him no blood and Thomas still lives. The island still breathes. He is righteous, is power, is life.
Malcolm does not know what Thomas wants, now, but he can give him this. Can keep his inhuman body whole, stitch up the echoes of old wounds and the split of the skin when it gets too dry in the sunlight and cracks. So he keeps him fed and warm and watered, and he builds, slowly, a roof over him, one rusty nail at a time, the sound of the hammer ehcoing like thunder in his ears. Glances at Thomas every other second; can't help it, keeps ceaseless track of his every reaction.
Because Thomas reacts, still.
He must know Malcolm is here.
Sometimes Malcolm swears he can feel Thomas' eyes on him, swears that he can taste the attention on his dry tongue. He stills; his hands freeze as he sews on the new button on Thomas' old shirt, and he holds his breath as the weight in his rib-cage squeezes tight. But it passes; it always does. He exhales, and he carefully buttons up the whole in the sleeve where the vines burst through when they subsumed Thomas, burrowed under his skin and made themself a home. Malcolm doesn't touch them—he knows, too, that the island remembers the pain he wrought upon it. He will not be forgiven easily, he thinks, hand shaking as he brushes it softly over the course hair on Thomas' still arm.
Thomas does not flinch.
He will not be forgiven easily, he thinks, but he has not been wholly rejected, either.
And so Malcolm gardens.
In the mornings, the sunlight lie heavy over the settlement, a hazy kind of glow over the broken houses, the ash that still line the streets, the collapses roofs and the abandoned fields. He pulls water out of the well with heaves of giant breaths, huffing and puffing as he works harder than he has in decades, his spine straining, his muscles aching. But he does. He cares for his plants, and the animals, and he fixes up his house as best he can. Stares at a sketch of his daughter, and then stops. That way, he knows, lies nothing.
In the afternoons, he tends to Thomas. Not that it's needed, possibly—but he does. Thomas does not grimace at his cautious, gentle touch, does not flinch when Malcolm speaks, does not turn his gaze away from him.
When Malcolm looks up from carving a cat in a piece of wood half-eaten by fire, Thomas is looking at him.
It is a quiet gaze, contemplative, he thinks. Malcolm smiles at him, and he turns so Thomas can have a better view of what he's doing, can watch the flick of the knife and the way Malcolm's fingers turn the wood. Nicks one of his fingers, just because, and he huffs, tilting his head in acknowledgement of his mistakes. Thinks that maybe Thomas is paying attention, still, that he thought the mistake amusing. Malcolm doesn't mind, either way.
In the evenings, he does his best with the funerals. It's of no use putting them off, but Malcolm doesn't have the strength to move dozens of corpses all on his every hour of the day, as much as he might wish to—and he does wish to. But he must take care of the land, must apologize, must make amends. Much watch over the animals, lest they eat something they shouldn't. Must tend ot his garden. Must repair the fences. Must find some way to make medicine for himself, those simple concoctions that kept the colds at bay. He does not have the luxury of taking care of his friends, his flock, his faithful, as much as they should be.
They were friends, once. More than that, of course; true believers, faithful, brothers in arms. But friends, too. Malcolm has always been weak, to friendship. It is why. Well. Why, he supposes.
He doesn't sleep much, in the night. Sometimes he's lucky; his exhaustion from the days work wears him out, and he falls asleep nearly as soon as his head hits the lumpy pillow. But most nights are not lucky. Most nights sleep come in fits and starts, and he wakes more than he sleeps, echoing dreams in his ears and staining his lips. He recalls hardly anything from them but the horror, the taste of ash on his tongue, and the rightness of it all, too. Because he would not have Thomas if not for this and perhaps... well, perhaps.
One afternoon, and Thomas turns his head to watch Malcolm write in his notebook. Malcolm freezes—his heart trips into his throat, and his hand clench on the worn pencil, but he bends his head and looks over, and he smiles at Him. Thomas is gazing up at him with a clear gaze, his head turned naught but the breath of a thumb. But it is—more than it has ever been, Malcolm thinks, smiling. Asks, "Would you like me to read it to you?"
Thomas doesn't respond. But he doesn't look, either, and so after a deep breath Malcolm goes back to his writing. He doesn't read it out that day, but he thinks it's only a matter of time, anyway. He wants, aches, to share everything with Thomas. Wants to tell him everything, reveal everything, bare his soul to Him.
But he will not rush.
He rushed once. They all—rushed. Wanted everything all at once. Did nothing but tear and tear and tear, in order to get everything they wanted. They found, he thinks now, simple way. And they buried their heads in the sand.
Malcolm most of all.
Is it selfish of him, to still—?
But no. He shall not dwell. Thomas i_s—everything,_ he thinks. Everything he could have ever prayed for, and more. He watches Malcolm, now, turns his head to follow Malcolm with his gaze, as Malcolm carves yet another poor imitation of teh sheep grazing not far from him, keeping half his eye on them. But they make no trouble for him, and appear healthy, still. And so he lets them be, swallowing heavily as Thomas' gaze moves over his skin, travels over his body, studies him. Like a particularly interesting bug, he might think. Like one might watch a butterfly that won't fly back out the window.
Malcolm is—flattered, honestly. He will pretend no other. He is tired of the lying, of the denial, of turning his face away. The attention Thomas grants him is—all-consuming, sometimes. Malcolm looks at him, lying there, a Becoming onto His own, and knows he will never walk away. No matter how this ends, what price he must pay, how far he mst go, what he must do—he will not walk away from Thomas.
So in the mornings, he gardens. In the afternoons, he tends to Thomas earthly coil as best he can, keeps his clothing intact and his mortal body as healthy and clean as he can. In the evenings, he eats alone and disposes of the corpses until there are no more, and then he spends more time with the animals. More time walking his territory, trying to figure out how far he needs to pull back, because he can not take care of it all himself. In the nights, he sleeps in fits and starts, and dreams of horror and salvation and the damnation of his soul, of the way Thomas looks at him, the way Thomas allows him to touch him, to care for him.
Malcolm is, in the end, a selfish man.
He doesn't know what comes next. Doesn't know what he wants to come next, truly. But he holds Thomas' hand and he reads out loud as he writes in his journal with his other, and Thomas watches him, vines wiggling under his skin, a soft sigh falling from lips when Malcolm pauses, eyes narrowed as he tries to wipe away a smudge on the page. It doesn't much work, and he doesn't much care; Thomas' hand squeezes his, a minute motion that is scarcely more than the spasm of the muscle, and yet Malcolm knows it to be true. Absolute.
Knows the sound of Thomas breathing, of his heartbeat, watches the rise and fall of his chest.
Smiling, Malcolm makes himself more comfortable, settles in beside Thomas, squeezes his hand in return. "It's a beautiful day, isn't it?" he asks, and Thomas exhales.