Creatures

EPILOGUE

She stroked the side of his face. "You can't bury that shit. Believe me."

"Can't I just push it down until one day I implode on myself?" He tried to joke. Though Chrissy wasn't laughing.

After a moment, mustered enough courage to tell her something. "He, uh... hooked me up to some kind of generator. It felt like everything in my body was being torn apart and smashed back together." He took a breath but his voice cracked anyway. "I just saw... flashes. Pitch black and bright white. The sound is nothing you can even articulate." He took another breath. "And when he decided on that, I was grateful."

It would take years for Christine to know everything he went through, all the psychological and physical torture. And some days she wished she hadn't known at all.

*

They woke up later that evening to a knock at the front door.

"I got it," Chrissy groaned, touching Tristan's arm as she left the bed.

"Put on pants." He muttered.

"No."

He sighed and turned over in the bed. Chrissy ran downstairs to unlock and open the door. She suddenly wished she had been wearing pants. It was Tristan's mom, of course.

"Hi, Elizabeth." She said, raking a hand through her hair and parting it on the opposite side. Liz looked rough.

"Hi, Chrissy. Uhm, I heard that Sloane and Micah had the baby. Congratulate them for me?"

She nodded. "Yeah, of course. Her name is Bronte."

They stood in an awkward silence for a moment. "Can I see him?" She asked.

She shook away her shock and sleep. "Absolutely, uh, come in." Chris opened the door to let her in. It occurred to Christine to let Liz up the stairs first so she wouldn't have her mother-in-law staring at her ass.

Chrissy walked into their room and sat by Tristan, running her hand through his hair to wake him up. "Tris," she murmured, "your mom is here."

He roused, sat up with some effort required. "Told you to put on pants." He grumbles.

Chris rolled her eyes at him and grabbed a pair of sweatpants off the floor and put them on. "Anybody want coffee? Or tea?" She asked, wanting to give them a little space.

"I'll take a coffee, I'd you don't mind." Liz asked.

"I could go for a coffee." Tristan told her.

"I'll make a pot." She said. She walked downstairs and stopped halfway, as it occurred to her she shouldn't drink caffeine. Her next thought was, naturally, that she could use some nicotine to stay awake for a while.

Nope.

"Fuck." She muttered to herself, continuing down the stairs.

She sighed, looking at the coffee maker and started preparing coffee for them. As she watched the coffee trickle into the pot, all she could do was stare at it. Stare at it... And cry.

She folded her arms on the counter, buried her face in them and just started... sobbing.

Chris didn't have a particular reason for crying, she just couldn't hold it together anymore. She wanted to stand there and cry for years. Maybe the pain would slowly leak out of her tear ducts.

Her husband was traumatized, she was traumatized, she saved her people, she was pregnant, she'd killed a man, she was so confused, and the list just kept going.

Chrissy finally ended up catatonic on the floor, squeezing her knees to her chest.

*

It'd been a while since Christine had gone to make them coffee. A lull had come in Liz's and Tristan's conversation.