skull_bearer | Past Tense- Part three (Reply)

The second time it had happened he had been awake and if anything, that had made it worse. It had been morning, the faint pre-dawn light brightening into a beautiful sunrise that neither of them were in any state to appreciate. It was late summer, but the mornings were still cold and Charles felt a creeping dread whenever he thought about how it would feel to be here in a few months.

He felt strange that morning, slightly dizzy and he hoped to God that he wasn’t getting ill- although God didn’t seem to have been listening lately. They’d swallowed their breakfast hurriedly, for once eager to get to work. Their command had been ordered to clear out a section of wild ground some miles from the main camp, which had been overrun with brambles. It was relatively easy work, and which would hopefully give them the chance to snatch some of the berries when the guards weren’t looking.

‘Better than working at the Sonderkommando,’ Erik had remarked while they’d quickly wolfed down their pitiful meal, out of the wind behind one of the barracks. ‘Two transports this morning, one after the other.’

He’d nodded, it was nothing they hadn’t already known, since the noise of the trains arriving had woken them each time.

After his first attack, he’d felt terrified whenever he heard a train pass, wondering if it would happen again. But each time, nothing had happened until he had started to hope that what had happened was a one-off- certainly, it hadn’t occurred to him at the time to feel anything then but helpless pity for the people who were about to die. And feeling glad that they weren‘t in the Sonderkommando, who would have to work very fast that morning..

It had happened when they’d marched out, he’d felt groggy that morning, but hadn’t paid it any attention, with the amount of sleep they usually got, combined with having been woken up twice by the trains, it was nothing unusual. What was strange was that instead of clearing away as he woke up, the grogginess just increased. Still, he hadn’t realised what was happening until they were marching past the SS and the crematorium lit up.
It wasn’t minds he felt, but pain. Pure, unrelenting, unbearable pain. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear. He was utterly cut off from the world by a wall of such pain that he couldn’t even hold it in his mind, it was too huge. Then the heat, burning heat like the bowels of hell, searing. He could feel his skin peeling back, blackening and crumbling under the flames like brunt paper, he could feel his bones cracking under the heat, marrow dripping and drying and cracking again.
It stopped, and he was shivering and trembling and Erik was dragging at his shoulder trying to get him to move before someone noticed. Then it came again a wave of devouring flames, and at the crest of it the realisation of what was happening.
Two transports. One after the other. Not enough time. The Sonderkommando had had to work too fast, and most of those they’d thought dead from the gas were only unconscious. They were still alive when they went to the ovens.
Then the pain returned, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t see anything but the hungry flicker of the flames and hear nothing but the muffled screams of those they were devouring. Charles choked, and opened his mouth to give voice to his own screams.
A hand clamped itself over his mouth. The touch was like sandpaper on raw nerves, and he tried to twist away, only to be caught by the scruff of the neck by another hand and forced forwards.
For a moment Charles had thought he was about to fall over, and bit down on the offending hand out of sheer reflex. Then the pain returned and he bit down harder, the taste of blood flooding his mouth a sharp counterpart to the smoke and charred flesh. The screams, the pain, endlessly loud until he wanted nothing more than to cry out in turn. His legs buckled under him, barely holding him up as he staggered forwards. The grip on his neck was like a vice, forcing his head down even as it pulled him forwards. He’d focused on that, the contrast of real pain, even as his mind screamed at him that he was being burnt alive. It had been the only constant thing he had to hang on to as the pain came again and again.
He never knew how long the pain had lasted, only that if it had lasted much longer it would have driven him mad, and as it was he had bitten Erik’s hand almost to the bone. The pain had started to die the further they went from the camp, and when they were far enough away that there was nothing left but echoes, he’d dared to look back and watch the ashes blow away.

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Erik strips off his clothes quickly, sitting down on his haunches next to the pail and washing as quickly as he can, trying to stay out of the cold breeze that pulls on the closed flaps of the tent. The water might still be warm, but the moment it touches his skin it seems to turn to ice. Shivering, he runs his hands quickly over his chest, wishing he had been able to find some soap. It’s the first time he’d been able to wash himself properly since they’d arrived here.

He’d wanted to even when they’d arrived, but after seeing his condition, they had only deloused him, stripped off his clothes and put him to bed immediately. At least, that was what Charles had told him. He only remembered waking up sticky and filthy in the hospital bed, and while he had been able to clean himself off somewhat, he was still sick enough that they didn’t want to risk getting his whole body wet.

He hadn’t felt too understanding at the time, but he’s grateful now. Even as it is, when it’s relatively warm and he feels stronger than he has for a long time, the cold’s enough that he’s still shivering hard enough for his teeth to chatter. The water is starting to turn opaque by the time he’s started on his legs, and it take Erik a minute to realise that the prickling on the back of his neck is not due to the chill.

He turns around and looks at Charles questioningly. His friend has an odd expression on his face, one Erik can’t quite place. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” The word comes out a little quickly, and Erik sighs and turned back, feeling slightly embarrassed at being naked in front of his friend- which is absurd, of course. They have no secrets from each other where that is concerned.

It hadn’t even been that embarrassing the first time, although that was because they’d had more to worry about than being naked in front of each other and a dozen other men. After that, they had grown used to it, barely feeling human enough to pay any attention to modesty or shame.

“You’re looking better,” Charles added, his voice straining a little and breaking into a brief cough.

Or perhaps once, when Charles had kissed him back and he’d felt… not exactly uncomfortable, but certainly strange, not sure what to do or say.

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Erik does look better, the razor edges of the bones beneath his skin are beginning to look less prominent, the hollows between his ribcage and hips less obvious. His limbs are still more bone that flesh though, the joints seeming swollen in comparison; and now clean, his skin seemed almost translucently pale.

Charles doesn’t realise he’s staring until Erik turns around, looking quizzical. “What is it?”

He feels a brief bolt of shame at having been caught staring, followed by an even swifter bolt of confusion as to why he should feel ashamed. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before and it’s the first time- well, almost the first, but that doesn’t count- that he’s felt as though he should turn away.

The morning after he’d kissed Erik, waking up and finding himself sprawled across his friend. He’d felt absurdly mortified, and wondered if he should move away and risk waking him. Such an alien fear, compared to that which they lived with every day, so petty and small. He’d welcomed it, remembering how to feel human for a brief while, a normal person with normal worries, before the bell had rung and his mind slid back into the old pattern of survival. He’d pushed himself off Erik without a second thought, feeling nothing but his own exhaustion and pain and fear.

“Nothing.” He says quickly- too quickly. Erik raises an eyebrow, of course he’d know- Charles sometimes wonders why they bother to speak sometimes- and he doesn’t understand why Charles would be bothered either. “You are looking better,” He tries to continue, but the strain of speaking catches up with him and something lodges in his throat. He coughs.

Erik shakes his head, as though wondering which God landed him with a friend like this, and dries himself with a blanket before he picks up his clothes from the floor. For a moment Charles can see him wonder whether or not to put them on, then he shrugs, and tosses them over on top of his coat- Charles suspects it’s more to prove a point than anything else. He drags the pail to one side, and climbs into his bed, lying on his back under the pile of blankets and clothes. Charles watches him for long moments, just studying his face.

Thin even when they met, only emphasised by the strong chin and nose, and broad cheekbones. Eyes already hollow from the ghettos, the muscles in his cheeks twitching as he ground his teeth against the pain.
Skin paling in winter, even under the grime and dirt which they’d had to live with as a matter of course, eyes like blue watch fires under the pale frozen sun, shrouded and seeming too big for his face.
Lying in the bunk, smiling when Charles kissed him that first time, the skull-face melted by human joy.
The thin lines of pain and exhaustion in those last few weeks, slack in sickness, taut in delirium.

The edges of his face have filled out a little, the eyes less sunken, cheeks less hollow. He sees Charles watching and again raises an eyebrow, ‘Now what?’

Considering the circumstances, Charles decides the best response is to lean over to Erik’s side of the bed and kiss him. It’s the best response he can think of. It still feels strange to kiss, but then this always feels strange in a wonderful way Charles simply can’t describe even to himself.

Often, when they had touched in the camps it had been cold, impersonal. Helping each other when they fell, holding the other up during the interminable roll calls, even when they were crushed close together for warmth in winter it still felt somehow detached, as though the numbness in themselves had come out to infect everything around them. It felt strange to kiss then, to feel that numbness melt like ice pressed to hot metal.

Erik’s lips are warm and damp from the water, and his are cold. He can feel Erik smile against his lips, one hand coming up to close over his bare scalp, gently pushing him away. Charles lies down facing him, and Erik rolls on to his side, face to face.

“How do you feel?” Erik’s speaking English, it’s stilted and unemotional, but he appreciates the effort, he could never manage Polish, and speaking German is always unpleasant.

“Better.” It’s true, he knows he should worry about Erik getting sick too, but after this long in each other’s company a kiss isn’t going to hurt.

Erik had wanted him to stay away when he was sick with typhus, the disease was carried by lice and he hadn‘t wanted Charles to become infected too. In another world, Charles might have laughed at the absurdity. His clothes were so covered in lice that some nights he couldn’t sleep from scratching. Erik hadn’t heard the phrase, ‘closing the door after the horses have bolted’ and he didn’t think it had an equivalent in Polish, so he’d simply answered that he wasn’t going anywhere, and anyway those were their lice, or had Erik forgotten their promise to share everything?
In that another world, Erik might have laughed back, but as it was he’d felt gratified to see a ghost of a smile on his friend’s face.